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Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies
The Extinction Race: Techniques Of The Human In Proust, Via Houellebecq, James Dutton
The Extinction Race: Techniques Of The Human In Proust, Via Houellebecq, James Dutton
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article, “The Extinction Race: Techniques of the Human in Proust, via Houellebecq” James Dutton “reads” identity and race from the point of view of technics. Namely, he does so through the work of two nominally “Eurocentric” authors, Marcel Proust and Michel Houellebecq, observing how familial and racial resemblance is a living inscription of “lost time.” This inscription comes about through the technical means available to and constitutive of the categories which bind them. Thus, instead of furthering unfinishable racial distinctions which only serve to support discourses of racism, this article follows assertions made in the novels of …
The Symbolism Of Clothing: The Naked Truth About Jacques Lacan, Peter D. Mathews
The Symbolism Of Clothing: The Naked Truth About Jacques Lacan, Peter D. Mathews
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In the work of Jacques Lacan there exists an extended metaphor of clothing, whereby the ‘naked’ truth is always ‘clothed’ in deception. For Lacan, clothing functions at the intersection of the symbolic and the imaginary, with outward appearance shaping what we imagine to be underneath in order to determine the landscape of symbolic desire. Joan Copjec considers the political implications of this metaphor, arguing that utilitarianism, in particular, divides desire into a false dichotomy of rational, naked desire, and the ornamental clothing of irrationality, a mindset woven into both capitalism and French colonialism. The article then examines two examples from …