The Crying of Lot 49: a Different Take on the Freudian Conception
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沈可榆 Sylvia
Literary Theory
November 12th, 2012
In this essay, I would settle on parts of psychoanalytic theories (mostly Freudian theories) and retool my understanding of the other three works, which contains Kant’s discussion on alienation and human condition/rationality, Lyotard’s postmodernism, and Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49, to propose a different take on the Freudian conception. The body of this essay is constructed with theories followed by the explanation and example. I choose to use parts of their work to suggest my viewpoints since each theorist has far too much on their work for me to use in my limited understanding. Instead, I am focusing on certain aspects and using them as means of sufficient comparison to argue my points based on the Freudian theories. My standpoint here is the ideas and content in those theories mentioned above could somehow have the psychoanalytic concepts infused within them.
Firstly, it is already known that Freud had extensively been influenced by Kant, and that his theoretical engagement with Kant’s critical philosophy affects his own studies on psychoanalysis as well. In Freud’s view, the sharp distinction between subject and object makes them a clear division that a person’s mental phenomenon (the “subject”) has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity (the "object"). That is to say, the subject (our mental activity) is the observer whereas the object (could be a physical material such as a book , or a mental reference such as a person or a dog) is anything/anyone that could be observed. Apart from that, I found a quite similar viewpoint in Kant’s view toward “alienation”. Kant argues that we can’t judge something (the artwork) properly and fairly if we bare pre-existing cognition or understanding upon it. Thus, we should keep a distance between the observer and the observed. There is a relation between the “subject” and the “object” here as well, both
沈可榆 Sylvia
Literary Theory
November 12th, 2012
In this essay, I would settle on parts of psychoanalytic theories (mostly Freudian theories) and retool my understanding of the other three works, which contains Kant’s discussion on alienation and human condition/rationality, Lyotard’s postmodernism, and Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49, to propose a different take on the Freudian conception. The body of this essay is constructed with theories followed by the explanation and example. I choose to use parts of their work to suggest my viewpoints since each theorist has far too much on their work for me to use in my limited understanding. Instead, I am focusing on certain aspects and using them as means of sufficient comparison to argue my points based on the Freudian theories. My standpoint here is the ideas and content in those theories mentioned above could somehow have the psychoanalytic concepts infused within them.
Firstly, it is already known that Freud had extensively been influenced by Kant, and that his theoretical engagement with Kant’s critical philosophy affects his own studies on psychoanalysis as well. In Freud’s view, the sharp distinction between subject and object makes them a clear division that a person’s mental phenomenon (the “subject”) has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity (the "object"). That is to say, the subject (our mental activity) is the observer whereas the object (could be a physical material such as a book , or a mental reference such as a person or a dog) is anything/anyone that could be observed. Apart from that, I found a quite similar viewpoint in Kant’s view toward “alienation”. Kant argues that we can’t judge something (the artwork) properly and fairly if we bare pre-existing cognition or understanding upon it. Thus, we should keep a distance between the observer and the observed. There is a relation between the “subject” and the “object” here as well, both