The Monstrous Fantastic Conference Paper Abstracts - International ...

140. (CYA) The Monstrous Self MapleChair: Janice HawesSouth Carolina State UniversityThe Inflicted “Self” in Robin McKinley's Deerskin: Implanted Memories, Fragmented Bodies, and Re-envisioned IdentitiesKendra HolmesUniversity of FloridaIn both narratives and literary theory, trauma has had many denotations, representations and connotations. Freud explains trauma as theoccurrence of a situation or circumstance too vast for our consciousness to process. Barthes relates trauma to the “punctum”-- a sensory arrestthat disallows any rational understanding of perceived circumstances. Jacques Lacan uses trauma to describe the meaning of his term, the“Real,” which is a space that can neither be tamed nor named, a space that thrives on chaos and disrupts our everyday lives. Theorist such asFredric Jameson and Nicholas Abraham, have suggested that spaces of the fantastical, in relation to trauma, are constructed in order to recivilizethe “inflicted” protagonist and re-institutionalize the bildungsroman.Using Robin McKinley's Deerskin (1993), I will argue that the spaceof the “fantastical” acts as a continuous space of re-constructed memories, trauma, and a compilation of identities; resulting in a change inidentity and forgotten history. I will argue that the creation of the fantastical space or entity is the rupture in one’s identity. As highlightedthrough McKinley's novel, I believe that “fantastical” fragments the body by conflating the “self” and the “other”. Moreover, “implanted”memories become a process of sustaining trauma, while the magical creates traumas. I will conduct a Lacanian reading of the text, applyingLacan's Three Orders, The Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real to McKinley's novel. Thus, applying Lacan's structures to the growth and developmentof Lissar (the protagonist) in her journey to becoming a civilized, (un)fragmented adult. In my paper, the “symbolic” will be mapped onto thespace of memory and the fantastical, the “real” onto trauma, and the imaginary onto Lissar's psychological and biological development fromchild to adult.The Mirror Self and the Dream Self: Recognizing Disparity between Psychic and Performed IdentitiesNaToya FaughnderUniversity of FloridaPerhaps there is no greater recognized symbol of the outcast than that of the monster who is most often presented as that which is to befeared; it is the Other, the abject, that which brings discordance to order. In Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and theSubjectivity in Children’s Literature, Karen Coats notes that “[abjection] is the process of expulsion that enables the subject to set up clearboundaries and establish a stable identity.” (140). Like the abjection of the monstrous figure in society, the abjection of the monstrous self is ameans of establishing a stable identity construction, of establishing an identity performance recognizable as within society’s boundaries ofacceptance. This is a process present in adolescence, presented in the struggle to leave behind childhood and achieve maturity and adulthood.In Catharine Fisher’s Corbenic, a contemporary YA Arthurian novel based upon the Perceval Grail Quest, the process of maturation andabjection is explored through the complicated intersections of trauma, memory, and the mythic past. Fisher’s protagonist must confront themonstrousness of his traumatic past and his deepest fears for himself (including the knowledge that he may have inherited his mother’sschizophrenia) in order to truly come to terms with who he is and the adult he is becoming. This essay explores the roles of trauma,melancholia, and memory in identity construction, asserting that sometimes what one wishes to expel is that very quality that makes one whos/he is. Fisher’s novel, I will argue, represents that it is only through a confrontation with the self—with personal traumas, fears, and biases—that real psychological growth can occur. In this paper, I draw from children’s literature scholars such and Karen Coats (above), RobertaSeelinger Trites, and Eric Tribunella, but I also closely examine the Arthurian literature from which Fisher draws her source material and muchof the pertinent scholarship concerning those texts.Becoming the Dark Lord: Colonial-Cultural Rupture and Constructing Antihistorical Identity in Kage Barker’s The House of the StagShaun DukeUniversity of FloridaOne of the unique methods used by the colonial system to reproduce its culture is by controlling history. Dipesh Chakrabarty notes that byattempting—and largely succeeding—to make European historical model—linear, “fact”-based history—the “only” way by which culture can berelayed, colonialists managed to suppress indigenous culture. But such processes also created an acute sense of exile amongpostcolonial/subaltern peoples—what Yanick Lahens calls “internal exile.” Since the colonial model sought to degrade or devalue non-European culture (i.e., reconfigure the indigenous as other), the feeling of exile had repercussions for identity formation. These processes formthe basis of Kage Baker’s The House of the Stag, a young adult maturation text. Gard, the protagonist, is doubly-exiled, forced out into a worldof empires where he must construct a new identity for himself in a sea of cultural impositions. What lies at the heart of Baker’s text is a drivefor a subaltern figure to consume a historical narrative and to demand an identity that operates on their terms. Using postcolonial theory, thus,becomes a productive avenue for considering how subaltern figures such as Gard manipulate historical narratives to form new identities. Forthis paper, I will use theorists like Chakrabarty, Lahens, and Spivak to argue that Baker enacts a form of antihistorical narrative that eagerlyseeks to recreate a connection to a lost history through the fabrication of an identity based on reshaping history/mythology and acceptinginternal monstrosity or otherness. The construction of Gard’s identity, thus, arises from a colonial-cultural rupture that demands anantihistorical response, one which at once reconciles the processes of exile which make subalternity possible and makes manipulating historicalnarratives a constitutive element of resistance.