Browsing by Subject "psychoanalysis"

This thesis examines the use of alchemical imagery in selected love poems and religious verse by John Donne. Donne’s alchemical imagery has been argued to represent a blend of eschatology and alchemy, and the mystical imagery can be interpreted as a psychological representation of what Jung calls the “projection of the process of individuation”. The intersection of mystical alchemy, eschatology, and psychological integration materializes as a rich literary concoction in the following poems: “A Litanye”, “Resurrection. Imperfect”, “A Nocturnall vpon St Lucies Day”, “An Elegie vpon the death of the Ladie Marckham”, and “The Extasie”. Through close reading, this thesis employs a combination of textual criticism and Jung’s psychoanalytic treatment of alchemy. This thesis demonstrates the purpose of alchemy in Donne’s poetry to clarify, first, “why alchemy?”, and second, “what makes alchemy a potent tool for the poet?”. The alchemical influence in Donne’s poetry has been broadly recognized by literary critics, but an integrated Jungian analysis provides a more substantial and psychologically informed understanding of Donne’s poetic conceits and images. In this thesis, I present textual and historical readings within the context of the Jungian theory of individuation. The purpose of using Jung’s psychoanalytic concepts is to deepen our critical understanding of the spiritual and physical experiences of Donne as psychologically descriptive and significant. This thesis shows that Donne’s use of alchemical imagery illustrates his psycho-spiritual processes and self-formation in textual form. Close reading and the integration of Jungian alchemical theories help bring these processes to the surface, making what is concealed manifest in Donne’s words. While staying rooted in Christian doctrine, Donne utilizes alchemy as a tool for textual mappings of the internal motion of his soul. By appropriating alchemy as a poetic tool, Donne also participates in a diachronic thread of alchemical thinking from the wake of Hermeticism to 20th-century psychoanalysis and modern-day embodied schemata in cognitive science. The chosen imagery serves as a culturally appropriate vehicle for making sense of abstract subject matter during the golden age of alchemical developments. Furthermore, Donne’s verse shows that for the poet no union and wholeness can be achieved without love as the proverbial alchemist, and neither can he experience redemptive transmutation without God as the “Arch-Chymist”. By turning to psychoanalysis and Jungian concepts, this thesis shows that the process of individuation, and mystical union – coniunctio – is lodged in his verse. The unification of conscious and unconscious mind is textually illustrated in Donne’s reflections on the nature of love and spirituality. Indeed, the selected poems carry a distinct consciousness that seeks moral-intellectual refinement and purification to emulate the divine and to endure the transmutation process to become unified with the divine. Finally, the connection between love and alchemical transmutation lies in the union Donne seeks on spiritual and physical levels.

The War on Terror has been waged for almost two whole decades now. President Barack Obama pledged to end the “boundless Global War on Terror” during his tenure but there are still US troops present in Middle East and North Africa. Despite the rhetoric on ending the war, the war got even more violent in terms of air strikes and the military budget kept on rising from that of president Bush under Obama’s first term as president. Since these circumstances suggest that there was no considerable change to be perceived in the outcome of the war from Bush to Obama, there seems to exist a process of political meaning-making through which the meanings attached to the US engagement in the Middle East are altered. Thus, this study aims at analysing the underlying fantasmatic logics through which the War on Terror was legitimized to the public during Obama’s presidency. This study contributes to the study of international relations through Lacanian-Žižekian framework, which has only recently been introduced to the study of international politics. The theoretical and methodological background of this thesis is rooted in Lacanian psychoanalysis, discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe and Lacanian-Žižekian theorizations on ideological fantasies. By adapting the logics approach of discourse theory as a qualitative method, this thesis analyses 105 speeches on terrorism that Barack Obama delivered in 2009–2016. The analysis is focused at analysing discursive articulations, nodal points and master signifiers that partake in structuring the fantasies regarding War on Terror. In this thesis I will argue that it is through the fantasmatic logics that the ideological grip of Obama’s War on Terror becomes intelligible: By structuring the fantasmatic objects of desire at least on three levels, Obama succeeds at granting the illusion that the unachievable and impossible enjoyment – that the subjects of War on Terror desire – is achievable. However, Obama organizes the fantasy in a way that keeps the realization of the ultimate fantasy of lasting peace, safety, prosperity and security always at a distance. The desire is sustained by articulating enemies, such as al Qaeda, Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Assad’s regime and ISIL, as inferior objects of desire that are “forgotten” and replaced by one another in the signifying chain of enmity. In addition to this “forgetting” of inferior objects of desire, there exists a process of “reminding” or “remembering” that sustains the desire of War on Terror’s subjects. I then argue that some of these objects of desire are used to remind the subjects of what the possible enjoyment would feel like when it is finally achieved. These enemies are also articulated as “the constitutive othesr” that prevent the subjects of War on Terror to realize their fantasy of lasting peace. The results show that the signifier “terrorists” functions as a subtle epithet through which various and differential groups can be articulated as enemies.