Suicidal Fantasy in Three American Author

As persons whose work often reflects on being pushed out, forced out, and abandoned by society, their family, and sometimes both, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Kathy Acker, and David Wojnarowicz show us what it is like to be confused about wanting to live or die and to want another kind of life. Baraka, Acker, and Wojnarowicz create an author in their work whose identification depends on suicidal fantasy. These fantasies involve an identification with who or what is dead, lost, or gone; an aspiration for freedom from the way identification ensnares us; and a wish to be more than dead inside. Significantly, the dream of one's own demise, however, is also a dream of survival and the creation of a new identity. The ambivalent desire of suicidal fantasy is essential for a fuller, more ambitious recognition of the American fantasy of finally becoming. This fantasy yields an excess of identification, something in need of escape. Thus, these authors explore how suicidal fantasy is a means of both identifying and disidentifying with marginalized identity. This dissertation explores three ways these paradoxes come to light. In the work of Baraka (Jones), the proper name is a form for identification with suicidal fantasy; in Acker, plagiarized autobiography; and in Wojnarowicz, a mask of another face, the face of the poet Arthur Rimbaud. Wojnarowicz's archive in particular suggests the significance of New York City as offering a complex dream of both danger and refuge for marginalized artists.;This project constructs a psychoanalytic methodology that keeps questions of interpretation and desire open. Focusing on fantasy in particular avoids reductionist interpretations like that of psycho-biography and, instead, emphasizes figuring the critic at the intersection of the fantasies the works engage. Critics' openness or resistance to interpreting suicidal fantasy depends on their own desires. Sometimes critics sideline a more thorough recognition of suicidal fantasy in order to stabilize the author's identity, yet this is out of step with the work. Suicidal fantasy in the authors created by Baraka, Acker, and Wojnarowicz can teach us about becoming witness to those who lack witness without overdetermining the author's identity.