HARPUTLU, Zeynep Siirt University - School of Foreign Languages, Turkey

SPECTRALITY AND ABJECTION IN THE STORIES OF CHARLES DICKENS’ THE SIGNAL-MAN AND HERMAN MELVILLE’S BARTLEBY

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The stories of Charles Dickens and Herman Melville, The Signal-Man (1866) and Bartleby (1853) respectively, have received much critical attention more than one century to date. The settings and themes of the two stories suggest that they share a common understanding of mid-nineteenth century Britain and America in terms of urban alienation, industrialised landscape, and the division of labour. In this study, I argue that spectrality has been used as a narrative strategy to describe the experience of abjection, a psychoanalytical theory developed by Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror (1982), which refers to human reactions (such as horror or exclusion) to a breakdown of distinction between self and other or subject and object. Kristeva asserts that when an adult confronts the abject, s/he simultaneously identifies it and feels a sense of helplessness. Thus, an abject turns into a threat against the self and “it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border” (Creed, 1993, p. 65). Once the subject is driven into the world of the abject and imaginary borders are disintegrated, fear and horror become unavoidable. The occupations and eccentric characterizations of the signalman and Bartleby signify this fragile border between their selves and experiences of abjection through spectrality.

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Spectrality , Abjection , The Signal , Man , Bartleby , Urban space , Alienation , Industrialism , Wall , Street

Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi

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