Subjectivity-construciton And Self-transformation

As a typical postmodern anti-detective fiction, The New York Trilogyrespectively narrates three protagonists’ fortuitous encounter with the other andexposes their identity crisis as well as their entrapment in the paradoxical constructionof subjectivity. This thesis attempts to apply Lacan’s theory of the Three Orders torespectively elaborate on three protagonists’ identity confusion and misrecognition inthe mirror stage, their construction and dissipation of the subjectivity in theparadoxical cage of language in the Symbolic, and eventually their yearning and urgeto retrieve the original and purest being in the impossible Real. The analysis of thefiction by virtue of the Three Orders theory finally illustrates that the subjectconstruction and destruction are indeed a progressive process of self-transformation,which is a perpetual and open play, denying any certainty or closure in thepostmodern society.Chapter One, based on Lacan’s mirror stage theory in the Imaginary, analyzesthat three protagonists all realize their being of incompleteness, and thus form theirillusive and alienated selves. In addition, the gaze in the Imaginary also arouseseroticism and aggressivity between the self and the other.Chapter Two focuses on the subjectivity construction in the language andsymbolic world of the three protagonists. Expecting to find and construct a stablesubject, three protagonists are disappointed to find that the Symbolic Order cannotprovide a stabilized subject without chasm between their fragmented selves and theillusive ideal self that they identity with. The subject constructed by the signifiers ofwords is simultaneously dissipated on the floating chain of the signifiers. This chapterconcludes that the subject is constructed by language and signifiers of words, whichsimultaneously destruct the subject due to the inefficient and paradoxical nature.Chapter Three discusses three protagonists’ longing for the impossible Real andpoints out that their embrace of the Real through transient death indicates the urge toretrieve the mother figure and the longing for the impossible Real as well. Auster exposes their yearning and thirst for the Real by depicting the quest for the Tower ofBabel, the research for the prelapsarian language and the unconscious Edenticlonging.In conclusion, the thesis summarizes that the self-quest and subjectivityconstruction are an open and progressive exploration. The subject is not dissipated inthe end, yet it has gone through a certain phase of self-transformation in order toembark on a further level of subjectivity construction.