| Summary: | 博士 === 輔仁大學 === 比較文學研究所 === 95 === Crises of the Subject, Anātman, Subject-in-Process:
Comparative Perspectives on Subjectivity
of Lin Yao-de, Chan Master Sheng-yen, and Julia Kristeva
by Doris Li-wen Chang
Abstract
This dissertation aims to demonstrate that the subject is impermanent and illusory, that it is always a “subject in process,” as Julia Kristeva (1941-) puts it. Beginning by questioning the definitions of “subject,” and “subjectivity,” and how these two terms have been employed to establish a Taiwanese Cultural Subjectivity in various discourses while they actually signify various meanings, I investigate how the phenomena of the subject in process/crises are manifested in Lin’s writing, especially in his novel Mahāvairocana (1991). Examining Lin’s treatment of the crises of the subject in Taiwan at the turn of the century in light of his other writing and literary activities within the social, historical, and theoretical context at that time is significant because it serves as a key to exploring the intertwined mysteries about subjectivity at three levels: textual, contextual, and even theoretical. It serves as a text of fiction representing the writer’s perceptions of various crises facing the speaking subject in Taiwan in search for a more definite identity. It also contrasts with the writer’s efforts trying to establish himself as a speaking subject in contemporary Taiwan’s literary arena, as a spokesperson for a “New Generation” that breaks away from the previous generations in the seventies. Contextually, Lin’s efforts in establishing his generation as unique speaking subjects correspond to the collective efforts of literary and cultural study scholars in search for defining features of a Taiwanese Cultural Subjectivity. Theoretically, Lin’s treatment of how the crises of the subject could be resolved by means of catvāri-dhyānāni of the Buddhist tradition and fiction writing as a lay psychoanalytic practice as described by Kristeva offers a nexus, a point of intersection from which we can pursue beyond the textual and contextual levels and examined from a meta-theoretical level where two theoretical discourses can be brought into close comparison and contrast. And it is through this theoretical dialogue between two thinkers from contemporary Chan Buddhism and Psychoanalysis that I try to explore how the instability and impermanence of the subject can be examined and explicated. As Kristeva points out, the subject is “a screen over emptiness,” that “We are no doubt permanent subjects of a language that holds us in its power. But we are subjects in process, ceaselessly losing our identity, destabilized by fluctuations in our relations to the other, to whom we nevertheless remain bound by a kind of homeostasis” (In the Beginning Was Love 1985: 9)
Hence, I divide the dissertation into five chapters. Chapter One introduces how “subject,” and “subjectivity” are brought into question and how I shall demonstrate the thesis. Chapter Two examines how the phenomena of “subject in crises” are represented by late Taiwanese writer Lin Yao-de’s writing (1964-1996) and how his treatment of the crises of the subject provides clues for further exploration of Buddhist and Psychoanalytic approaches to the issues related to subject and subjectivity. Chapter Three focuses on how Chan Master Sheng-yen (1931-) demonstrates Anātman, that there is no such thing as a permanent, unified, autonomous, and dominating self within the human subject, not even within the universal phenomena that are constituted by causes and conditions. By means of Chan meditation, analyzing the Five Aggregates, the Eighteen Realms, and the Twelve Links of causes and conditions, and specifically demonstrating how manas, the seventh consciousness that generates the consciousness of the self is formulated at the most delicate level, Master Sheng-yen shows how the defining essence that constitutes the subject or subjectivity is found to be non-existent. Chapter Four focuses on Julia Kristeva’s theories about the subject in process and how they develop from Freud’s and Lacan’s related theories while contrasting the psychoanalytic theories of the subject with the previous chapter. And Chapter Five concludes the dissertation with an alternative approach to the impermanence of the subject: to embrace the infinite possibilities of a subject that is constantly in crises and in process.
|
|---|
