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Burkey Dissertation.pdf (952.17 KB)

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Prisoners of Loss: Melancholia in Contemporary American Literature

Burkey, Adam P
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1374594525

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, English.
This dissertation traces the recurrence of melancholia in post-1980 American culture and literature about the psychological consequences of atrocity and sudden loss. Narratives within this subset often concern Vietnam combat, slavery, rape, the Holocaust, the perpetration of violence, the attacks on September 11, or the suicide of loved ones, and critics have frequently analyzed such works within the context of trauma studies. I argue that such a critical lens, with its postmodern attention to representation, deemphasizes subjective states of ambivalence, reality-testing, mourning, and self-negation, which are major components of melancholia that Sigmund Freud described in his 1917 essay, "Mourning and Melancholia". After demonstrating how these subjective states uniquely surface in novels by Tim O'Brien, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Don DeLillo, I reveal how melancholia emerges within the contemporary cultural mindset as a symptom of postmodernism's rejection of the reality principle - a metaphysical foundation necessary for mourning. Mourning, these writers all demonstrate, is simultaneously wanted and rejected within a postmodern milieu composed of overlapping realities, infinite translation, and representational aporia. From this argument I thus bring the following postulates to the surface: that the framework of melancholia has an ethical advantage when it comes to addressing the subjectivity and complicity of victims of atrocity and loss, especially as it concerns their individual recoveries; that the framework of melancholia has an analytical advantage when it comes to theorizing mourning, loss, and the management of desire; and that the framework of melancholia reveals an underlying cultural condition of impossible mourning within the period known today as the postmodern.
Timothy Melley (Advisor)
Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member)
Andrew Hebard (Committee Member)
Robert Thurston (Other)
140 p.
American Literature; Literature; Mental Health; Philosophy; Psychology
melancholia; melancholy; mourning; US Literature; trauma; trauma studies; postmodernism; psychoanalysis; Freud, Sigmund; loss; reality testing; desire; OBrien, Tim; Morrison, Toni; Foer, Joathan Safran; DeLillo, Don; Abraham, Nicolas; Torok, Maria

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Burkey, A. P. (2013). Prisoners of Loss: Melancholia in Contemporary American Literature [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1374594525

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Burkey, Adam. Prisoners of Loss: Melancholia in Contemporary American Literature. 2013. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1374594525.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Burkey, Adam. "Prisoners of Loss: Melancholia in Contemporary American Literature." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1374594525

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

miami1374594525
566
© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.