Re-Collecting the Lost Object: The Poetics of Narrative as Aesthetic Representation of Melancholy

In Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1989), Julia Kristeva suggests that melancholy—an experience of ‘object loss’ (effectively, when a sign fails to correspond to its meaning, as established by Freud)—is a language which requires learning in order for this state of being (or ‘nonbeing’) to be understood. Melancholy affect, Kristeva argues, can thus be transposed into art where the ‘symbolic’ is represented through the ‘sign’; she states: ‘Artifice, as sublime meaning for and on behalf of the underlying, implicit nonbeing replaces the ephemeral’. In other words, in the experience of ‘object loss’ we look toward the imagination and the construction of signs to fill the void and make meaning—absence evoked by a presence. Compiled under the candidature of a Doctor of Creative Arts and comprising of a critical dissertation (exegesis) and creative narrative artefact (thesis), this submission explores the above Kristevian psychoanalytical approach to melancholy and applies this theory to creative writing practices in order to: 1. assemble currently disparate critical discourses on melancholy, cultures of collecting, and narrative fiction practice; 2. discuss point 1. (above) and the inherent theoretical approaches with specific relation to narrative elements as understood and utilised in both critical and creative practices of creative writing, demonstrated by the analysis of published works and the accompanying creative narrative artefact (thesis) as exemplars; 3. undertake the above points with the unique design of utilising germane aspects of methodological approaches practiced by collectors in the classification and arrangement of collected objects, and apply this methodology as an apposite organising principle of the subject matter at hand; and subsequently 4. construct an original creative narrative artefact (thesis), the Arc: A Novel of Melancholy and Re-Collection, to demonstrate the above theoretical approaches through creative praxis, particularly in relation to the form and function of narrative in the creation of a melancholy aesthetic.For full text access, please contact the author: RWatkins@usc.edu.auSubmitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing), University of the Sunshine Coast, 2010