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Contention Of Lust, Caution: Sexuality, Visuality And Female Subjectivity, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This paper investigates the ways in which Ang Lee provides new insights into subject formation in his film Lust, Caution (Se Jie, 2007). In the paradigm of structuralism, the subject is defined, as well as confined, by the symbolic order or the dominant ideology. The puzzle therefore rests on how to explain the subject’s negotiation with its normative identity, its denial thereof, or even its subversion of said identity. In a close reading of the female protagonist’s subject formation in Lust, Caution, this paper acknowledges the power of ideology, specifically the power of its interpellative operation, in constructing a subject. …