In the name of the father: reflexive sadomasochism and the Symbolic Order in Chuck Palahniuk's "Choke" ; or, "What would Jesus not do"?

• Autores: Vicente Rosselló Hernández
• Localización: Proceedings of the 30th International AEDEAN Conference: [electronic resource] / María Losada Friend (ed. lit.), Pilar Ron Vaz (ed. lit.), Sonia Hernández Santano (ed. lit.), Jorge Casanova García (ed. lit.), 2007, ISBN 978-84-96826-31-1
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Chuck Palahniuk's fourth novel, "Choke" (2001), firmly secured his reputation as one of America's foremost literary enfants terribles. In addition to his trademark plot intricacy, narrative twists, mordant satire and grotesque wit, "Choke" contains a high level of sexual explicitness dexterously interwoven with Christian imagery. The novel's exploration of the particularly turbulent identity crisis of its white male narrator indicates a continuing interest, on the part of this writer, in a comprehensive revision of dominant forms of masculinity in contemporary U.S. culture. Furthermore, the inclusion of a relatively straightforward confrontation with the narrator's mother suggests a certain will towards a more ambitious, decidedly uncompromising critique of the gender system. This paper attempts to probe these various conflicts through a combination of David Savran's (1998) study of reflexive sadomasochism as a crucial paradigm for the representation of contemporary white American masculinity, and a Lacanian-inflected reading of the novel's examination and proposed disruptions of the Symbolic Order.