All That Is Solid Melts On the Road

• 발행기관: 한양대학교 수행인문학연구소
• 저자명: Lee Hyungseob
• 간행물 정보: 『수행인문학』수행인문학 제40집 제1호, 143~157쪽, 전체 15쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 기타인문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2010.05.30

영문 초록

In this paper, I give a Lacanian reading of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. For this purpose, I situate the novel within Habermas’ diagnosis of postmodernity, and then trace certain Lacanian themes that draw the psycho-linguistic boundaries of the narrative. The connection of Habermas with Lacan is by no means arbitrary, and I first show that Habermas’ philosophical understanding of postmodernity has a clear echo in Lacan’s psycho-linguistic theory. Having established the theoretical framework based on Lacan and Habermas, I go on to demonstrate how illuminating this framework can be in reading Kerouac’s novel. In so doing, it becomes clear, I hope, that all three elements of the postmodern, as expounded by Habermas, have so powerful a presence in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as to render it essentially a novel of postmodern attitudes. I further argue that when read this way, the novel becomes all the more powerful as a work of literature because beneath the exhilarating and exhaustive surface of its narrative, On the Road contains Lacan’s (and Kerouac’s) profoundly ironic sense that human language is capable of neither representing the reality nor imparting any meaning.

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Works Cited

〈Abstract〉

키워드

postmodernity fragmentation decenteredness intersubjectivity primordial unity signifier signified metonymy