| This dissertation, "Subject to Delusions: Narcissism in Sigmund Freud, Henriette Hardenberg, Djuna Barnes and Unica Zurn," is part of an ongoing interrogation of the relationship between Freud and Modernism. It compares Freud's foundational essay on narcissism, "Zur Einfuhrung des Narzissmus" (1914), with experimental writing by twentieth century women authors in order to challenge Freud's separation between language and "the body." Freud's argument rests on a nature/culture opposition, but his essay also suggests that "nature" is an imaginary and linguistic construct, the implications of which he fails to develop. As this dissertation shows, experiences and emotions perceived to be beyond language can be conveyed: Hardenberg's Expressionist poetry in Dichtungen (1918) focuses on the articulation of physical movement, such as dance; Barnes' novel Nightwood (1936) portrays a love relationship in terms of visual and verbal self-reflections which gradually arrest the narrative; Zurn's Surrealist Der Mann im Jasmin (1970) depicts the protagonist's madness through a hallucinated figure who forces her to write. Each of these works corresponds to a concept in Freud's essay (primary narcissism, the ego ideal, paranoia), yet they all challenge the discourse of psychoanalysis. Instead of locating subjectivity in an extra-textual, biological body, as Freud does, these texts perform a truth of their own, thus raising the question to what extent the "self" may be, in fact, constructed through language. |
