De ce teoria queer nu poate elimina tragicul: conflictul metodelor în literatura comparată
Bogdan Popa
Descriere autor:
Transilvania University of Brașov
E-mail:
E-mail personal autor:
george.popa@unitbv.ro
8
Rubrica:
Studii literare
Why Queer Theory Cannot Eliminate the Tragic: The Conflict of Methods in Comparative Literature
Abstract: The idea of tragic is a battlefield, which is fiercely disputed in recent contemporary debates in comparative literature. Two methods are fighting over conceptual supremacy, given that both share a common goal of eliminating tragic conditions from our social life. The first method, which I call Lacan+, sees the tragic as an unavoidable effect of our desires, which struggle for recognition and transformation. The second method, which I call Foucault +, is rather skeptical of the first method aim to preserve the impossibility associated with desires and seeks to change the social to limit its tragical negative effects. At the heart of the debate is the role of impossibility, which for the first school functions as its condition of possibility while for the second serves as a fantasy that needs to wither away. This article analyzes the debate as it is articulated in several works in queer theory and concludes that the idea of tragic is best served by anchoring it in impossible desires.
Keywords: methods, comparative literature, Foucault, Lacan, queer theory.
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