Browsing by Subject "Psychoanalysis"
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Item Appropriating Elizabeth : absent women in Shakespeare's Henriad(2010-05) Andrews, Meghan Cordula; Rebhorn, Wayne A., 1943-; Bruster, Douglas S.When scholars look for a Shakespearean analogue to Queen Elizabeth I, they often look no farther than his Richard II, the deposed and effeminate king with whom Elizabeth was known to compare herself. This report seeks to broaden our reading of Shakespeare's Henriad by arguing that, in fact, there are echoes of Elizabeth in both Henry IV and Henry V, successors to Richard II. These traces of Elizabeth reveal the Henriad's fantasy of a male-dominated political sphere as just that: a fantasy. Moreover, this appropriation of maternal or effeminate characteristics is not limited to the Henriad's rulers, but occurs several times in the Shakespearean canon. This absorption becomes another way for Shakespeare's plays to manage their anxiety over threatening women even as they appropriate the authority of an aging Elizabeth.Item The boob tube : television, object relations, and the rhetoric of projective identification(2015-08) Mack, Robert Loren; Gunn, Joshua, 1973-; Brummett, Barry; Cloud, Dana; Stroud, Natalie; Staiger, JanetMuch of the existing scholarship on the popular appeal of television emphasizes the role of content over any of the medium’s other elements. Work within the cultural studies tradition, for example, often centers the importance of specific television programs when discussing the small screen’s allure for discerning viewers. Other analyses that proclaim explicit concern for “the rhetoric of television” as a whole nevertheless tend to limit their focus to specific, recognizable elements within broadcast programming. As a result, there exists no strong theoretical perspective that helps account for an attraction to television as a medium, despite that fact that many people are familiar with instances of television reception that appear to have nothing to do with the specificity of broadcast content (i.e. collapsing in front of “the box” after a long day and watching whatever happens to be on—sometimes for hours at a time). The present study remedies this absence by proposing a rhetorical mode for the medium of television based on the psychoanalytic concept of “projective identification.” Originating in the object relations work of Melanie Klein, projective identification names a primary mechanism by which individuals manage unconscious anxieties that attend modern subjectivity. This study asserts that specific elements of the televisual apparatus in combination invite unconscious acts of projective identification from viewers. Because this invitation relieves viewers of primal anxieties and increases their attraction to the medium itself, it is appropriate to interpret projective identification in this context as an inherently rhetorical concern. This study progresses in three basic sections. The first two chapters review relevant literature in the fields of rhetoric, media, and psychoanalysis in order to propose “the rhetoric of projective identification” as a mode of address inherent to the medium of television through the second half of the 20th century. The middle three chapters then validate and extend this mode by considering three elements of the televisual medium in even greater depth: Intimacy, flow, and instances of audience activism. Finally, the conclusion of the study considers the continued utility of the proposed mode in a contemporary era marked by media convergence and technological implosion.Item A critical appraisal of relational approaches to psychoanalysis(2008-05) Mascialino, Guido; Richardson, Frank C.In the last twenty years, relational psychoanalysis has emerged as an important voice in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Relational approaches operate within the tension between intrapsychic and interpersonal levels of explanation. On the one hand, intrapsychic explanations assume the existence of a private inner life focusing on internal processes such as fantasy, desires, repression, and unconscious motivations. On the other hand, interpersonal explanations focus on transactions with others, the daily give and take of our relationships, and our inextricable participation in the social realm. Schools in the relational movement often struggle to integrate these two poles, but the risk seems to be collapsing one explanatory pole into the other. This work argues that framing this discussion within a wider philosophical horizon can suggest a compelling new way of thinking about these matters. The theoretical psychology of Jack Martin and Jeff Sugarman (1999, 2000), the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1977, 1994), and Martin Heidegger (1993, 1996), offer a view of selfhood that transcends the problematic internal-external dichotomy pervasive in relational approaches.Item In Freire more than Freire : towards a new psychoanalytic foundation for critical pedagogy(2022-08-14) Armonda, Alex Joseph; De Lissovoy, Noah, 1968-; Brown, Keffrelyn D; Urrieta, Luis; Salgado, Cesar ATurning to the key texts in Paulo Freire’s body of work, the purpose of this theoretical study is to examine and reframe the philosophical and practical principles of Freirean critical pedagogy from the standpoint of psychoanalytic theory. Situating Freire in relation to notable theorists in the psychoanalytic tradition, such as Jacques Lacan, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, Alenka Zupančič, and Slavoj Žižek, among others, this study argues that the problem-posing pedagogical experience, developed throughout Freire’s work, can be rearticulated on the basis of a still unspecified relationship to analytic theory and method. The dissertation begins from Freire’s claim that his problem-posing works as a “kind of psychoanalysis,” and attends to the parallels (and divergences) that appear between Freire’s account of the critical pedagogical encounter, and psychoanalysis’ account of the clinical encounter. I argue that Freire’s critical pedagogy can be accurately described as a politically militated psychoanalysis, and more importantly, that it can be presented in a way that embraces the radical concepts of subjectivity and the unconscious elaborated in psychoanalysis, while affirming, and opening new possibilities for, critical pedagogy as an emancipatory praxis. Three major sections comprise the dissertation. First I explore the psychoanalytic antecedents of Freire’s thought, and I outline new ways to understand the dialectic of Oppressor/Oppressed in Freire, the concept of radical love that defines the stance of the critical pedagogue, and the central role of desire in problem-posing experience. Second, I remap the psychical and subjective dimensions of the problem-posing engagement, and I redefine familiar terms in Freire—such as ‘dialogue’ and ‘naming’—on the basis of their link to the process of signification psychoanalysis describes apropos the unconscious and traumatic (or real) knowledge. Freirean praxis, it is argued, situates the encounter with unconscious social knowledge as the key site for facilitating new kinds of political subjectivation for students and teachers alike. This study concludes with a qualitive analysis of a developing critical educator’s experience with problem-posing pedagogy in an elementary public school classroom. Leveraging a psychoanalytic reading of Freirean practice, this qualitative section provides new insights on the impasses and possibilities that define the problem-posing act.Item Mad and black : the 1939 Notebook of the Évolué(2016-05) Chi, Chienyn Ju; Wilks, Jennifer M., 1973-; Wettlaufer, Alexandra KIn A. James Arnold and Malachi Mcintosh's recent readings of Aimé Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), the speaker “I” is presumed to be the author. Moving away from this kind of reading, I offer a different approach. I analyze the poem in psychoanalytic and rhetorical terms in order to delineate a poetics of “black madness.” Drawing on Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, and Frantz Fanon's psychoanalytic observations, I argue that the speaker of Cahier, an évolué, is “mad.” He is a black man who believes he is white and is doubly alienated by this delusion. He is separated from his own Martinican people and from Western society which seeks to objectify him. The poetics of Cahier presents a possible “way out” for the speaker's marginality and “madness.” It is in the poem's pathos, irony, metaphor, and allegory that the “madness” of being black is brought out of the “unconscious.”Item The mediated veteran : how news sources narrate the pain and potential of returning soldiers(2015-05) Rhidenour, Kayla Beth; Gunn, Joshua, 1973-; Ainslie, Ricardo; Brummett, Barry; Cloud, Dana; Jarvis, SharonThe “global war on terrorism” has pervaded the social scene following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Although the ripple effects of the wars are continuing to spread across the globe in the various political and foreign policy arenas, the aim of this study is to turn attention to the individuals who bore the battle, have returned home, and now face new challenges. The United States veteran population has experienced an unprecedented increase in numbers as a response to troop withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although previous research has considered the potential difficulties veterans face when reintegrating into society, this study goes a step further and investigates how news media sources are called to participate in narrating veteran stories of war and specifically their stories documenting post-traumatic stress disorder. Drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives and utilizing a multi-methodological approach, this study seeks to answer four central questions: First, how and by what channels do sources enter the news media conversation to comment on the veteran experience? Second, are veterans the main sources narrating their experiences or do other individuals, groups, or organizations speak more often in the news media? Third, what stories circulated and gained traction by narrating the lived experiences of veterans with PTSD? And fourth, what stories did veterans tell about their experiences, and what stories were told about veterans who suffer from PTSD? This study is organized in two distinct parts. Part one employs a quantitative content indexing analysis of four veteran related news media events across various newspaper, broadcast television news, and cable television news outlets in order to determine how sources entered the news media landscape, and who the sources were. Part two turns to examine four dominant news narratives that emerged from the direct quotation and paraphrased remarks gathered from part one’s analyzed news media texts. The study concludes by illustrating the powerful role news media sources play in the news, as well as the stories that emerge to define the lived experiences of veterans who suffer from PTSD.Item The subprime object of ideology(2010-05) McDonald, Robert Olen, 1986-; Cloud, Dana L.; Gunn, JoshuaThis investigation combines contemporary Marxian political economy with Lacanian psychoanalysis to understand the discourse of finance capitalism, and to understand the dialectical seeds of the industry’s eventual destruction that were inherent within the hegemonic commodities of the era. These commodities, which include derivatives, futures, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and subprime mortgage loans, were ideological and communicative as well as profitable, and thus do a double duty under finance capitalism’s dominance. Lacan’s concepts of metaphor, fantasy, the quilting point, and the master signifier are extended in order to understand how subjects come to know themselves and their world through the terms given to them by capital. In addition, the rhetorical interventions of two chief ideologists for finance capitalism in the 1990s, Thomas Friedman and Alan Greenspan, are interrogated as exemplifications of the fantastical nature of late capitalism.Item The instance of the post in the digital unconscious : rhetorical subjects after posthumanism(2020-05-14) Cowan, Jake Austin; Davis, Diane; Boyle, Casey; Gunn, Joshua; Spinuzzi, Clay; Rickert, ThomasJoining an active conversation within rhetorical theory and beyond about the agency, boundaries, and conditions of possibility for contemporary subjectivity within online environments, this dissertation aims to articulate the transformative capacity of digital media for contemporary rhetorical subjects. Positioned at the intersection of rhetorical studies, media ecology, and poststructuralist criticism, this project attempts to break with rhetoric’s abiding humanist inheritance, including many of the foundational presuppositions about a writer’s autonomy, being, and consciousness that have historically subtended rhetorical theory. Couching my argument within the evocative wordplay and enigmatic lexicon of Lacanian psychoanalysis, this research complements work by a growing number of rhetoricians from various other-oriented vantages who contend that the conventional belief in a rational and independent human mind at the center of communicative practice is no longer tenable in the face of emergent ecosystems of online presence and digital rhetoric. Technological developments such as these not only have not only threatened the accustomed priority of human being, but can moreover provide novel ways of inventing and enacting an original posthumanist subjectivity, I argue, especially when approached from a psychoanalytic standpoint that emphasizes the convolutions of anfractuous signification, indestructible desire, forged onto-epistemology, and a tropical unconscious. To this end, I suggest that Lacan’s reconfiguring of the classical Freudian unconscious as a cybernetically structured symbolic network of signifiers that he characterizes as the extimate Other provides one avenue for rethinking how modern media affect the means of communicating with and conceiving of one another (as well as ourselves), helping rhetoricians to theorize a compositional practice that embraces rather than represses the various ways technological developments disturb and displace customary notions of solidified and singular human being. From a position that grounds rhetorical subjectivity not according to static sovereign selfhood but in the precarious disruptions of the Other and taking the figure of the social media post as my model for posthumanism, this project opens a way for rhetoricians to reconceive pedagogical practice from a perspective that would relinquish customary commitments to raising consciousness and objective reason in favor of the jocose and allusive contingencies of a hybridized digital unconsciousItem Toward a dialogical view of sexuality and subjectivity in psychoanalysis(2001-08) McCarroll, Jennifer Colleene; Richardson, Frank C.Item Trauma and the rhetoric of horror films : the rise of torture porn in a post Nine-Eleven world(2013-08) Tiffee, Sean R.; Gunn, Joshua, 1973-The events of September 11, 2001 fundamentally changed the world for many in the United States. It was shocking and horrifying -- it was, in a word, traumatic. This trauma took on a new dimension with the release of the horrifying Abu Ghraib "torture photographs" in 2004. Large-scale traumatic events such as September 11 and the Abu Ghraib revelations can impact not only the individual and his or her personal identity, but entire social bodies and its corresponding national identity as well. This study investigates how the American social body psychically dealt with the horror of these national traumas and socially negotiated what it means to "be an American." Specifically, it examines a disparate group of rhetorical artifacts, from articles in mainstream news reports to popular horror films, and looks for emergent patterns to provide insight into the larger whole. This study draws on a variety of theoretical perspectives and employs a method of close reading and frame genre analysis to organize and understand the complex interplay of forces tuned toward a deeper understanding of the rhetorical dimensions of horror in times of social upheaval. It focuses first on the mainstream news organizations reporting of both September 11 and Abu Ghraib to outline the master narrative and counter-narrative that emerged. It then analyzes three sets of films in the popular culture to better understand how the nation attempted to rhetorically constitute an "American Subject" in the wake of a horrifying trauma. The study concludes with an analysis of the different psychical subject positions that may be taken in the rhetorical negotiation of the American Subject and offers an explanation of the rhetorical function of the torture porn horror genre in this time of national trauma.Item Yours truly : Fireworks and its psychosexual passage(2016-05) Edwards, Thomas Pearson; Reynolds, Ann Morris; Flaherty, GeorgeIn his 1947 film, Fireworks, young Kenneth Anger – both director and star actor – enacts a sexual rite of passage, using film techniques, theoretical methods, and visual tropes that descend from the avant-garde—favoring especially Surrealism and its penchant for psychoanalysis. Through the popularization of psychoanalysis in the United States and the influx of European avant-garde culture in Los Angeles in the 1940s, this thesis explores how Anger used these channels of influence to characterize his own fantastic sexual coming of age. The thesis reads select shots from the film to propose moments where form, Anger’s acting, and composition create meaning specific to an avant-garde, Surrealist context. In doing so, the paper identifies Anger’s filmic and ideological influences, allowing a historically and socially positioned viewing of Fireworks. Finally, the thesis addresses the implications of the growing trend in the 1940s for filmmakers and actors to exhibit their intimate, often sexual dreams and fantasies in the form of avant-garde, psychoanalytic work. The project’s supporting research includes mainly primary source material from little magazines, relevant avant-garde works preceding Anger’s film, film theory and criticism by Parker Tyler, and psychoanalytic texts by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.