The Exploration of the Dialectical Interface of Other and Subject: A Reading of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

대타자와 주체의 변증법적 인터페이스 탐색 -크리스티나 로제티의 「도깨비 시장」 읽기

This study takes its point of departure from Lacanian psychoanalysis and explores the point that an irremediable gap in the human subject can be illuminated in terms of the Lacanian categories, fantasy, symptom, gaze or voice as cause of desire of the Other. With respect to the category of the symptom, Lacan claims that the Other is always already there in the constitution of the subject, that is, the relation of the subject to the Other that is overwhelming as well as attracting the subject. Chapter II deals with the unthought, excessive ground of the conscious that borders on the subject, as is the case of self-excentric aspect of the man. Indeed, in Lacan's early work, the subject is essentially a relationship to the Other as desire(objet petit a), and there is no such thing as a symptom or fantasy without some subjective involvement. Lacanian unknown real, perpetual excess as the cause of desire animates the subject even as it threatens to blast it apart. The structures that establish the lines of desire in every individual are derived from an ineluctably intersubjective field. The Other is always already there in the constitution of the subject. In the final years of Lacan's teaching we find a kind of universalization of the symptom and almost everything that is becomes in a way symptom. Symptom, embodied in Laura in "Goblin Market," is her only substance, the only positive support of her being. By looking at the Laura's symptom in chapter III we gain an insight into the forbidden domain, into a real space that should be left unseen and unthought. The voice of goblin men therefore functions as a sublime object that is animating as well as dominating element even as it threatens to disintegrate the subject. Objet petit a as a sublime object that must be excluded in reality returns in the real, taking on a certain materiality which has an effect on Laura, that is, animates Laura's desire. Objet petit a is a real object, signifying nothing. In conclusion, the theoretical importance of Lacanian psychoanalysis is the relation between a subject and an Other as Objet petit a.