عنوان

Selfhood as instance of horror :

TLets504325

Selfhood as instance of horror :

[Thesis]

Jones, Steven David

ontology, ideology, and narratives of body-terror

University of Sussex

2009

Ph.D.

University of Sussex

2009

This thesis investigates the ways In which Horror metaphorically appeals tothe viewers sense of identity by presenting a moment of crisis anddeconstructing normative auto-boundaries. I employ various films and novelsto illustrate the philosophical complexities of selfhood, especially centringupon the supposed "norm" subject. These moments of trauma are evinced inthe contradictory pulls of ideology, and are symbolically rendered through thedeconstruction of the body (the signifier of selfhood) onscreen. I employ a rereadingof psychoanalysis and post-structuralism,a s well as grounding thesemore abstract theoretical thrusts in the socio-political reality of AIDSdiscourses.I begin by positioning my work in the critical field, especially in relation to thephilosophy of consciousness and feminism. My second chapter utilises casestudies that investigate Otherness within a locus of ideological "normality" -America. Here, I demonstrate the fragmentation of selfhood that occurs whenself and Other interact, as well as the multiplicity and instability of identity. Mythird chapter opens with a re-evaluation of the slasher cycle. From thisexplicitly gender-based angle, I go on to explore the relationship between sexand death through the rape-revenge film, then pornography. Here, as in theslasher film, bodies interact, and can be read as problematising the interrelationshipsbetween selves. Pornography's desire to be read as "authentic"also implicates the viewer as one of the selves that are problematised duringthis interaction by transgressing the line between fiction and reality. My finalchapter continues along this line of enquiry, probing narratives in which thecharacter selves do not adhere to singular body-spaces, thus figurativelymanifesting the crises of subjectivity, as the self Is paradoxically bothabstract/intangible and embodied/physical.

Jones, Steven David

University of Sussex

p

[Thesis]

276903

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