https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/33440 2026-04-11T12:19:29Z 2026-04-11T12:19:29Z Lloyd, Declan https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/32602 2024-06-03T05:50:55Z 2018-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Symbolic survival : beyond the destruction of language in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea and Patrick Suskind’s Perfume Authors: Lloyd, Declan Abstract: In his theory of psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan puts forward his famous conceptualisation of the three primary orders—the imaginary, the symbolic and the real—which are the pillars in the constitution of the subject. Lacan’s dual theorisation of death skirts that of biological, physical death, and instead centers around the symbolic death: that is, as Jin Sook Kim neatly summarises, ‘the radical annihilation of the symbolic order through which reality is constituted […] this death implies the obliteration of the signifying network itself’. How then, could such a symbolic death be expressed through the linguistic confines of literary fiction? In some cases, this breakdown is presented not just through the more overt disintegration of language, but through images and other metatextual visual dimensions. In others, the survival beyond the symbolic death allows for transcendence into a psychical state beyond the stable, rational mind which is so cordoned and confined within the symbolic order, and beyond the malignant clutches of what Slavoj Žižek designates as the presiding ‘Big Other’. In this paper, I shall analyse a number of key texts by late modernist authors who navigate this point at which the symbolic order breaks down and the structures of language fail, paving the way for the ensuing ‘real’.

2018-06-01T00:00:00Z Randles, Liam https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/32601 2024-06-03T05:51:40Z 2018-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: ‘Post-Los Angeles’ : the conceptual city in Steve Erickson’s Amnesiascope Authors: Randles, Liam Abstract: Within Steve Erickson’s texts, we often find setting functioning as a conceptual vehicle, the result of which is the creation of works identifiable by a number of disorienting and tangential qualities. Emanating from such employment is the presence of a symbiotic relationship existent between protagonists and their environment. Not only does this manifest in terms of interpersonal relationships, with topography fluctuating in accordance with the state of these, but we also find it apparent internally, often reflective of individual character. It is worth considering, however, the various elements and influences that inform Erickson’s conceptual settings. The writer’s fifth novel, Amnesiascope (1996), arguably depicts the most arresting of these conceptual settings. Featuring an author surrogate as the text’s central character, we find notable associations with his home city that create a ‘post-Los Angeles’. My essay aims to explore the extent to which Erickson’s own biographic details and personal interests shape this particular setting, detailing its place in the wider context of his work, whilst also analysing how a range of themes manifest within the confines of such a carefully crafted milieu.

2018-06-01T00:00:00Z Callus, Ivan https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/32600 2024-06-03T05:54:55Z 2018-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The time of criticalthinkings Authors: Callus, Ivan Abstract: An island: there, in smaller times in a timeless sea. Stung by recent events, its people achieve consensus on the need for critical thinking. Improbable. But impossible things had happened, even there. They surprise themselves, but something had to be done. ‘As a nation, we must think more, and we must think more deeply,’ they declare through those who think up this kind of thing. ‘Our thinking must not only go deeper, it has to develop the capacity for critique,’ the people sort of learn to say. Or, as the intoning tells them, you, we, might not survive ourselves. Having got this far, they turn their half a million backs on the political groupings that had previously dulled that capacity with the rewards of loyalty, as well as on the religions that had schooled them in the rewards of faith. They are thrilled by this double emancipation. Some time is needed before the thrill can be worked off. Pragmatism, the greatest of survivors, then asserts itself. So not unreasonably they ask, ‘But who will teach us critical thinking?’

2018-06-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/32595 2024-06-03T05:55:40Z 2018-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: About our contributors [Antae Journal, 5(2)] Abstract: Short biographies of the contributors in this issue.

2018-06-01T00:00:00Z