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The Cleaving Of House And Home: A Lacanian Analysis Of Architectural Aesthetics, Sarah E. Thorne

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and digital media studies, this thesis explores the radical disconnect between the home as a fantasmatic object of desire and the house as the space in which the fantasy of home is staged. By analyzing the house as a prosthetic replacement for our originary home (the womb), the aim is to uncover how architectural aesthetics of the Victorian, modern, and postmodern house respond to this irreconcilable gap, and why each aesthetic necessarily fails to create a more homely home. Considering recent trends in architecture, the thesis then examines the coincidence of the “small house” movement with …