Sadomasochistic Subject (Ivat) ion in D. H. Lawrence's "the Prussian Officer"
Journal
東吳外語學報
Journal Issue
27
Pages
1-20
Date Issued
2008
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper analyzes D.H. Lawrence's short story ”The Prussian Officer” (1914) by drawing on the problematic distribution and formation of power, operated intrinsically in complex psycho-sexual matrices. The essay first traces the physic and physical apparatuses in the officer-orderly relationship, based on the Hegelian master-slave narrative, and it argues for the failure of equilibrating the power dynamics within the psychic horizon. Furthermore, probing the tension of oppositions and paradoxes of subjection, a theory already elaborated by Judith Butler, the essay contextualizes two theoretical discourses, subjection and intersubjectivity, to examine Lawrence's story where the formation of subjectivity (subjectivation) emerges and splits and where sexual/physical sadism and masochism (sadomasochism) both merge with and diverge from each other, thereby enacting a problematic re-constitutive dynamics of modern subjectivity. The paper attempts to provide a view in which Lawrence presents a product of intersubjective collapse into the terrifying modern psychic life.
Type
journal article