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In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, the narrator attends support groups for people with fatal illness in order to alleviate his insomnia. He does this because he states 「we all work so hard all the time. This is the only place I ever really relax and give up. This is my vacation.」 He has to cry out during the sessions so he can let out his repressed emotions that have been keeping him sleepless. He goes to the meetings because they are the places where people really listen and encourage each other without judgment or prejudice. These people are excluded from what we called 「normality.」 Therefore, to get a feel for what is being 「abnormal」 is like to release his burdens; as he puts it, the support groups always make him feel like 「the warm corner of the world.」
論述的規範性
醫學論述
自我監控
資本主義論述與反論述
拉崗的主體三界域
結論
References
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| 論述的規範性 |
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In Foucault's Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, he talks about how the authorities use discourses organized by binary oppositions to control people. For instance, the sick/healthy, normal/abnormal, insane/sane, and usually the group belonging to the more privileged category has power over the other. It is done by the work of discourse (knowledge) and surveillance (power) that these 「abnormal」 people get used to self-examining and seeking proper treatment or solutions. Therefore, in order to comply with the 「power,」 people police or monitor themselves for signs of abnormality. The narrator is not physically ill; nevertheless, he represses his emotions and thoughts unconsciously, and he asserts 「Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you.」 It shows his fear of crossing the line of normality and of being picked out as being abnormal. Such is the function of Panopticon, when suspicion and surveillance work automatically of people's own accord.
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醫學論述
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By means of normative discourse, institutional apparatuses attain and exercise power. The discursive formation of psychological behavior and the definition of symptoms exemplify all 「technologies」 to regulate people. And nowadays, the sign of depression is, in my opinion, also a typical product of normative discourse. It is being talked into an actual phenomenon through a series of statements; for example, people behave on different levels of depression as the medical discourse develops. Decades ago people with the depression symptoms as we define them now would not have looked for advice from institutional authorities, and if they did, it would probably have been treated differently as well.
In Fight Club, for example, the narrator's doctor tells him that 「Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what's actually wrong. Listen to your body,」 and that if he wants to see what real pain is, 「swing by First Eucharist on a Tuesday night. See the brain parasites. See the degenerative bone diseases. See cancer patients getting by.」 It is perhaps one effective way to make oneself feel grateful to have a healthy body; yet, I think it's important to come up with a way to feel the same without seeing the pain in others. What could be more pathological, if not pathetic, than feeling content and safe with others' sufferings? The conversation reveals the ideological function and the arbitrary nature of the medical discourse.
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自我監控
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The narrator goes to the meetings as a kind of escapism, i.e., seeking to be freed from the confinement of normality that comes in the form of surveillance (of a consumer, an employee, or a student) and other social apparatuses. Seeing the patients in pain, without hope or dying, he is reminded of the unfulfilled desires he represses because they might be unacceptable to the society. Unfortunately, he comes across another character, Marla Singer, who goes to the sessions without physical illness, either. He assumes that Marla will expose both of their identities as 「tourists.」 In chapter 2 he thinks 「With her watching, I'm a liar.」 「Marla's lie reflects my lie, and all I can see are lies….」 He's panicked though no one really notices his false identity, not even Singer. We see how self-surveillance operates and makes him so paranoid when confronted with the threat of not being able to stay in the support groups.
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| 資本主義論述與反論述 |
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To Foucault, knowledge, constructed by language and discourse, goes hand in hand with power. It actually works both ways: when knowledge is power, the powerful ones can persuade us to believe that anything is real knowledge. This is the case with normative discourse, and is just as true with counter-narratives. In Fight Club, being more charismatic and eloquent, Tyler Durden, the narrator's split personality, presents his nihilistic view of possession in the capitalist society—he observes that 「nothing is static」 and that 「even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.」 For this counter-discourse to make a deeper impression, Tyler resorts to drastic measures. For example, to destroy the narrator's reliance on material basis, when he is in control (of the body), he uses his knowledge to blow up the narrator's apartment. Through Tyler, the narrator comes to the realization that he has been a slave to material culture. It dawns on the narrator that 「it took my whole life to buy this stuff (quality furniture), then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own; now they own you.」
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拉崗的主體三界域
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This material confinement does not merely result from capitalistic discourse, but also from that of other social institutions where language plays the same role as the mediator of power. Jacques Lacan shares with Foucault's view that language serves normative and manipulative functions. Speaking from the psychoanalytical perspective, Lacan contends that when a person submits to language, s/he experiences a split and loses a feeling of wholeness. In the following, I will use Lacan's theory of the subject's three registers—namely, the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real—to analyze the operation of power in Fight Club.
From my point of view, because of the fear of castration (fear of the lack) people who join the fight club (formed by the narrator and Tyler Durden as a therapeutic group through fighting) want to be rid of the dominant discourse that oppresses them. Therefore, in place of language, which is repressive, they opt for the body, which represents what has hitherto been repressed. In chapter 6, the narrator says 「Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn't about words,」 because he reckons, 「Most guys are at fight club because of something they're too scared to fight.」 As the fight club is not run by an authoritative apparatus, it serves as an alternative society (like a heterotopia) for the social misfits to eschew the Symbolic order.
Lacan uses the Name of the Father to represent the concrete social order, i.e., the Symbolic. In the novel, the narrator claims that 「What you see in fight club is a generation of men raised by women.」 It's hard to miss the Oedipal undertone in it, as it reveals an antagonistic attitude toward the Father. He goes on to explain that 「My dad, he starts a family in a new town about every six years. This isn't much like a family as it's like he sets up a franchise,」 「My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college」 and 「Maybe we didn't need a father to complete ourselves」. Ironically, however, the endless pursuit of material gratification signifies his attempt to become the Father, the person that possesses the 「phallus,」 which is a symbol of power and of full presence in the patriarchal system.
It is through fight club that the narrator realizes he can actually divorce himself from the social norms and survive without the restrictions. After establishing the fight club, he challenges his boss by hitting himself (not being hit by the authority but hit himself to threaten the authority) and experiments living outside of the rules. Later on, the idea is compounded by Tyler Durden's attempt to destroy the order (the Symbolic) altogether with a group of followers called 「the space monkeys」 (who resemble the monkey king Sun Wukong in Journey to the West in their disruptive activities). It is the desire to compete with the Father, and to assert their own historic significance, that drives them.
In my view, Tyler Durden represents a crack in the narrator's ego, revealing the Real that eludes the Imaginary. Tyler does not want to be responsible for his thoughts and the death drive (Thanatos) rules him. I suppose deep down there is a part of him that is nostalgic for the old-fashioned patriarchal power, so much so he desires to usurp the Name of the Father. This explains why he establishes his own language/rules in the fight club, and plays the role of the Father to the 「space monkeys」 by controlling them. To beat or to be the Father--Hamlet's famous predicament is essentially that of the split Subject, i.e., all of us.
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結論
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To conclude, the slit personality of the narrator is sparked due to the ambivalent sentiments toward the orderly world that advocates 「normality.」 Through language and discourse, he becomes a subject of surveillance, and because of internalized surveillance, he is at a loss about his place in the world. In the hope of gaining control again, to fill in the lack, he creates Tyler Durden, who is daring, and with special knowledge (i.e., power) to challenge the convention. However, in the end, he has to confront himself (his unconscious) and face the music once more.
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References:
Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions). U.K:
Oxford UP, May 2000.
Hall, Stuart. Representation- Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. USA: SAGE,
1997.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. U.K: Vintage, 1997.
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