Lacanian Perspective of Three Orders and Sexuality In Nabokov’s Lolita

By Alireza Kargar

The present study aims to limit its scope to explore the three top characters in Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov’s Lolita through the aforementioned Lacanian concepts. Through the analysis of the main characters in the mentioned novel, this study asserts that these concepts are structured with the effect of the Lacanian symbolic order and the language. In other words, in this study, it is argued that the formation of the human personality takes place in the unconscious, where desire, alienation and sexuality are formed. Moreover, it is laid bare that each character’s appreciation of reality hinges heavily on his position in one of Lacanian three Orders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365555831

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Lacanian Perspective of Three Orders and Sexuality In Nabokov’s Lolita

Lacanian Perspective of Three Orders and Sexuality in Nabokov’s Lolita

Author:

Alireza Kargar

Copyright © 2015, Alireza Kargar

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover design by Day System Research Center Experts;  www.day-system.ir;

ISBN: 978-1-365-55583-1

Acknowledgement:

To

my True Companion

Table of contents

Contents                                                               page

Abstract 1

Chapter One: Introduction   2

1.1. Preliminaries 3

1.2. Review of Literature 5

1.3. Statement of the Problem 14

1.4. Hypothesis 15

1.5. Definitions of Keywords 15

1.6. Significance of the Study 16

1.7. Methodology 16

1.8. Limitation of the Study 16

1.9. Cauterization of the Study 17

Chapter Two: An Introduction to Lacan and His Selected Theories118 

2.1. Lacan’s life and Career19

2.2. Key Theoretical Concepts24

2.2.1. The Imaginary24

2.2.2. The Mirror Stage26

2.2.3. The Symbolic28

2.2.4. The Primacy of the Signifier30

2.2.5. The Oedipus complex34

2.2.6. The Meaning of the Phallus35

2.2.7. The Superego 37

2.2.8 The Real 39

2.2.9. Das Ding41

2.2.10. The Impossibility of the Real and Jouissance43

2.2.11. Phallic (Masculine) Jouissance45

2.2.12. Other (Feminine) Jouissance46

Chapter Three: An Introduction to Lolita49

3.1. Summary of Lolita 50

3.2. Character Analysis 53

Chapter Four: An Analysis of Lolita in Lacan’s Triple orders and Sexuality55

4.1. The Desire is always the Desire of the Other56

4.2. The Primacy of the signifier 62

4.2.1. Mrs. Haze 63

4.2.2. Lolita 63

4.2.3. Humbert 64

4.3. Phallic Jouissance 66

4.4. Other Jouissance 67

4.5. Objet a 70

4.5.1. Lolita 70

4.5.2. Humbert 71

4.6. The Superego 77

4.7. The Imaginary Order 81

4.8. The Symbolic Order84

4.8.1. Mrs. Haze85

4.8.2. Lolita 88

4.9. The real 92

Chapter Five: Conclusion96

5.1. Finding and results97

REFRENCES 106

Abstract

Before unleashing the new, inexplicable yet highly fascinating aspects of psychoanalysis by the advent of French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Freudian psychoanalysis used to play the pivotal and, accordingly, unique role in the realm of literary criticism which suffered from some drawbacks and left many questions unanswered in the psychoanalytic sphere. However, under the auspices of Lacan, almost all of these eerie ambiguities have already been suitably resolved.  Apart from his multifarious concepts in the realm of psychoanalysis, Lacan introduced a three-part phase for the development of psyche: the Imaginary Order, the Symbolic Order and the Real, which entail many other concepts to be grasped, and are applied to many other fields from philosophy, to sociology, even mathematics. Considering the above hypothesis in mind, the present study aims to limit its scope to explore the three top characters in Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov’s Lolita through the aforementioned Lacanian concepts. Through the analysis of the main characters in the mentioned novel, this study asserts that these concepts are structured with the effect of the Lacanian symbolic order and the language. In other words, in this study, it is argued that the formation of the human personality takes place in the unconscious, where desire, alienation and sexuality are formed. Moreover, it is laid bare that each character’s appreciation of reality hinges heavily on his position in one of Lacanian three Orders.

Key Words: Jacques Lacan, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Imaginary Order, Symbolic Order, the Real

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

1.1 Preliminaries

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, most famous as the author of Lolita, was born in April 23, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He wrote his first poem at the age of 15 and privately published two books of poetry before leaving the school. Due to political instability, the Nabokov’s had to leave Russia for England in 1919. Nabokov and his brother subsequently attended Cambridge University, where Nabokov graduated in French and Russian literature. After his father’s murder while attempting to stop an assassination in 1922, Nabokov returned to school and graduated later that year, and decided to move to Berlin in 1923. He spent his time writing poetry and short stories for The Rudder, a Russian newspaper his father founded. He also met his future wife, Vera Slonim, a Russian émigré, whom he married in 1925.

Mary (1926), Nabokov's first Russian novel, was a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia but received little attention. King, Queen, Knave (1928) was Nabokov’s second novel, which received a greater attention than the first one. However, it was his third novel, The Luzh in Defense (1930) published serially, that established him as the leading new writer of the Russian emigration. In 1930, Nabokov published the novella The Eye, and in 1931Nabokov’s fourth novel, Glory emerged. Laughter in the Dark (1932) is another novel by Nabokov which is an examination of the various states and levels of blindness, both literal and metaphoric.

The eruption of the war soon caused Nabokov to flee Paris for New York in 1940, along with his son Dmitri who had been born in 1934. He succeeded in getting a position at the Museum of Natural History in New York. He was rather successful in his Lepidoptera studies, and his work includes the naming of several butterflies and the publication of scientific studies.

Invitation to a Beheading (1935) came to publish which appeared serially, giving much to debate and controversy. All in all the story is about a protagonist, Cincinnatus C., a citizen of an unnamed country, is condemned to death for a type of crime related to turpitude, and the novel relates his final days in prison leading up to his execution.

In 1938, Nabokov wrote two plays produced in Russian in Paris: Sobytia (the Event) and Izobretenie Wal’sa (The Waltz Invention) and at the same time began writing The Real Life of Sebastian Knight in English. In 1939, he published the novella The Enchanter which was his first version of the Lolita story. In 1941, Nabokov published his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Bend Sinister, another English novel, appeared in 1944. In 1948, Nabokov is offered and accepts a professorship of Russian literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. And in 1953, he received his second Guggenheim Award and American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Meanwhile, he finished writing Lolita.

Lolita (1955), Nabokov’s most famous and equally infamous novel was written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, in 1958 in New York. The protagonist, a 37-to-38-year-old literature professor called Humbert Humbert, who gets infatuated with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather. Nabokov kept on writing a few more novels and finally died in 1977.

1.2 Review of Literature:

This chapter summarizes a number of studies on the imaginary order, the symbolic order, the real, desire, Oedipus complex and jouissance with an emphasis on the theory of subjectivity in Lacanian perspective. One main consideration should be kept in mind regarding this review. All these concepts, especially the three orders, are extremely broad. Given the limited space of the thesis, it is not my ambition to deeply explore each of them. Instead, the goal is merely to scratch the surface of the fields, outlining the epistemological background of the study’s subject.

Ulla Kerren in her 2012 thesis, exploring the protagonist Alex Cleave in John Banville’s Eclipse, illustrates the fragmentary nature of human subjectivity and the priority of the symbolic, primarily language, in constructing subjectivity whereby she concludes that identity is unstable and constructed within language.

John Banville’s novels are concerned with identity issues. In Eclipse, Alex Cleave is on his search for his self. After having experienced a breakdown on stage, Alex, a fifty-year-old actor, returned to his childhood home to write down his story. His disjointed writings reflect his shattered subjectivity. Alex is struggling with the intricate problem of finding his identity, however his situation get worse rather than better. Brendan McNamee, who investigates The Human Moment: Self, Other and Suspension in John Banville’s Ghosts, explains that [s]elf-obsession goes hand in hand with self-division: a self looking, a self being looked at (76).He holds roughly the same point as Lacan, who claims that I am not, wherever I am the plaything of my thought (Unconscious 2005, 66-86). In other words, he means the more one contemplates on himself, as the center of his thoughts, the deeper the gap between his ‘I’ as the subject and his I’ as the object gets. So, practically speaking, there is no way to escape the rupture and its torturous plague other than making a fool of oneself, that is, immersion in the symbolic, because it is the only way which provides the subject with a coherent and unified subjectivity, though mistakenly. This fact is well-supported by Alex’s dream in which a plastic chicken lays a yellow plastic egg made of two hollow halves glued together (6). Here, it is clear that the eggs are complete and unified as long as they hold a relationship with the (m) other and that they are divided as soon as they dismiss the (m) other. As a result, we can assert that human subjectivity, his being recognized as an independent subject, heavily and directly hinges first on his relationship with the Other,