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The immanent American fantastic: immanence and liminality in contemporary U.S. fantastic literature
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Ciccolo, Drew J.. The immanent American fantastic: immanence and liminality in contemporary U.S. fantastic literature. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-0sqp-j642

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TitleThe immanent American fantastic: immanence and liminality in contemporary U.S. fantastic literature
NameCiccolo, Drew J. (author); Keene, John (chair); Goodman, James (member); Cortés, Jason (member); Shavers, Rone (member); Rutgers University; Graduate School - Newark
Date Created2022
Other Date2022-10 (degree)
SubjectAmerican studies, American literature, American history, Hyperreality, Immanence, Liminality, Social death, Symbolic violence, The fantastic
Extent161 pages
DescriptionThis dissertation is a study of “the American fantastic,” i.e. the literary fantastic in an American context. I suggest that conceiving of the fantastic in the context of Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s philosophy of immanence productively supersedes more common, dyadic conceptualizations of the fantastic, and that this dissolving of traditional binaries appears to be the next logical step in the the way we think about the fantastic. Using this conceptual framework, I analyze three particularly resonant, contemporary fantastic U.S. novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban (1982), and Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991). I show the ways these narratives engage with the fantastic in order to enable profound and compelling critiques of dominant U.S. social orders, from the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras to the postwar suburbs to Reagan-era Manhattan, as well as the ways they prefigure current American social phenomena. In doing so, I locate connective themes of liminality, the return of the repressed, captivity, uniformity and alterity, and the desire for an end to evolving forms of subjugation inherent in the colonialist impetus to dehumanize and exploit for wealth and power, which these novels arguably depict as not just destructive, but self-destructive.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-0sqp-j642
LanguageEnglish
CollectionGraduate School - Newark Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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