Surplus Enjoyment, Violence, and Woman: Posthuman Feminism in Kathy Acker

本論文主要探討凱西•艾克的小說中女人與現代性之間的關係。馬克斯認為現代社會奠基於資本主義，以「交換價值」為社會關係的基礎，使得一切人事物被商品化，人際關係變成商品與商品之間的關係，造成現代人的疏離感。但班雅明認為商品化及疏離感有可能造成新的感官經驗，進而產生新的主體架構。商品物結引起班雅明所說的「現代性的迷幻」，意識型態與烏托邦想像糾結，商品化及革命成為一體兩面。60 年代的性革命對於女性所造成的影響也應循現代性的迷幻或矛盾這個脈絡來探討。 60 年代的性革命是以解放女性身體為目標。但女體本身成為解放或革命對象之後，就有物化或商品化之虞。而女體解放論述在普遍化及絕對化之後，無所不在的影響力，使得享樂或解放成為一種強制性，並進而內化為命令女性享樂或解放的「超我」。物化或商品化的女體及被強制的享樂，使現代女性和妓女無異，妓女遂成為現代女性的象徵。女體物化或商品化可能會對女性造成壓迫性的暴力，造成女性在尋求身體解放的過程中產生罪惡感、疏離感、或受虐情結。另一方面，女體物化或商品化可能會對女性造成革命性的暴力，使兩性關係、女體、及女性主體性得以重塑。 凱西•艾克的小說以性革命及女體為主軸。前期小說探討性革命對女性帶來的疏離感及以性解放為基礎的新兩性關係對女性所造成的暴力，後期小說則把女體解放導向後人類，重新定位由原本由男性社會所主導的人性，替女體或女性主體開創新局。 班雅明的暴力理論有助於我們了解壓迫性暴力和革命性暴力之間的關係：暴力本身是中性的，暴力可造成壓迫，也可造成革命。拉岡的「剩餘蕩力」理論則有助於我們了解享樂或解放的不同面向：享樂或解放有可能為律法所收編，也有可能超越律法，彰顯主體性。The main concern of this dissertation is the relationship between woman and modernity in Kathy Acker’s novels. Modernity or capitalist society, for Marx, features the exchange value by virtue of which everything is commodified, and the human relationship becomes the relationship between things. Hence the alienation of modern people in capitalist society. For Benjamin, however, the experience of commodification or alienation can point to a new perception or a refiguration of subjectivity for modern people. For Benjamin, commodity fetishism constitutes the phantasmagoria of modernity in which commodification or objectification is implicated with revolution. The sexual revolution happening in the ’60 should be seen in the context of this ambiguity of modernity which commodifies and liberates woman at the same time. The sexual revolution and the liberation of the female body amounts to the commodification or objectification of the female body, which is why the prostitute can become a figure for modern women. The commodification of the female body can become a repressive violence on women or it can cause a female revolutionary violence by which the male-dominated sexual relationship and female subjectivity can be reformulated: modern women’s pursuit of bodily enjoyment may be repressive for them and causes guilt, alienation, or masochism in women when the female body is taken as an object; on the other hand, women’s pursuit of bodily enjoyment may become revolutionary when sexual relationship, the female body, or female subjectivity is redefined. The sexual revolution and the liberation of the female body is the common theme of Acker’s novels. In Acker, most of the heroines either are prostitutes or act like prostitutes. Her earlier novels are informed by the connection between sexual enjoyment and the commodification of the female body or the sexual violence caused by man’s taking woman as a sexual object; her later novels features a posthumanity figured by the female motorcyclists and the pirate girls, a posthumanity which triggers a violence against violence of the human (man) and enacts a utopia or freedom through the violent transformation of the human into the inhuman (animal) or the inorganic object. Benjamin’s theory of violence can help us understand the relationship between the two kinds of violence: repressive violence can be a transgression of the law and at the same time an accomplice of the law since law-preserving violence and law-making violence are implicated with each other, whereas revolutionary violence can really transcend the law and elevate the human to the level of the divine. And Lacan’s theory of surplus enjoyment can help us understand the different sides of enjoyment or transgression: the surplus as enjoyment in the law can be turned into the superegoic imperative to enjoy; on the other hand, surplus enjoyment can point to Freudian death dive and enact the refiguration of the subject.Contents Acknowledgements Abstract Introduction 1 Part I Chapter One Reading Acker Reading Woman: Phantasmagoria, Modernity, and Woman Phantasmagoria as a Critical Model: The Shock Experience, the Crowd, and Modernity 15 Postmodernity and Schizophrenia 27 Postmodern Feminism 30 Madonna as a Figure of the Postmodern Woman 38 The Figure of the Prostitute and (Post)Modern Subjectivity 41 The Figure of the Prostitute in Kathy Acker 47 The Figure of America in Kathy Acker: America as Postmodern Space 52 How to Read Kathy Acker?: A Review of Acker Criticism 56 Part II Chapter Two The Sexual Revolution, Surplus Enjoyment, and Violence Sexual Pleasure or Sexual Violence? The Sexual Revolution and Its Discontents 66 Surplus Enjoyment: From Enjoyment beyond the Law to Enjoyment in the Law 77 Is the Father Dead? The Decline and Redemption of the Oedipus Complex 84 Is Woman Subject or Object? Femininity, Masochism, and Superego 87 Whose Violence against Whom? Superego, the Double, and Paranoia 100 Superegoic Violence and Mythic Violence 107 Chapter Three The Woman’s Two Bodies: From Body Jouissance to Body Totalitarianism and Back The Repressive Hypothesis and Body Jouissance 111 Foucault against the Repressive Hypothesis: The Body, the Panopticon, and the Carceral 114 Knowledge, Fantasy, and the Docile Body: The Foucauldian Body in Acker 123 Visibility, City Space, and Body Totalitarianism: The Body and Public Space in Acker 131 From Sexual Violence to Body Jouissance: The Motif of Abortion in Acker 139 The Violence of/on the Body: The Otherness of the Body and the Figure of the Animal in Acker 143 Part III Chapter Four Violence, Antagonism, and Difference: Apocalypse or Nihilism? Visibility, the Gaze, and the Blind Spot: the Subject as Violence against Violence 150 The Flaneur, City Space, and Social Antagonism: Postmodern Space as a Ruin in Acker 164 Violence as Difference: The Discourse of the Third World in Acker 170 Terrorism and Nihilism: The Figure of the Punk Boy in Acker 180 A Critique of the Politics of Difference: Lesbianism and Its Discontents in Acker 188 Chapter Five Violence and Utopia: Posthumanity, Becoming, Virtualization, and Mimesis The Revolutionary Violence between the Two Deaths: From the Prostitutes through the Punk Boys to the Pirate Girls 200 Woman and the Posthuman: The Emergence of the Catastrophic Subject 211 Becoming Animal: The Cyborg Animal, the Female Motorcyclists and the Pirate Girls 228 Organs without Bodies: The Spectral Body, Virtual Space, and Mimesis 243 Utopia: The Labyrinth and Pure Becoming 254 Conclusion 262 Bibliography 27