Research Semiotics Text By Kaja Silverman Required

Due Friday 10AM EST
The texts available for use on this essay are Sonya Hartnett's Surrender, Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief, and Stephen Chobsky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The objective here is to apply semiotic theory to reveal meaning in the text. Also, consider the literary text a construct, a world unto itself that may or may not reflect the symbolic order of our phenomenal/noumenal world precisely as the theory defines it. Lastly, be sure that you engage both the theory and the literary text directly, specifically, and precisely.
For this essay you will need a minimum of 5 quotes from the Semiotics text to support your ideas. Also, it is a VERY GOOD idea to have direct quotes from the primary (literary) work to show direct engagement.
The Subject Of Semiotics by Kaja Silverman.
Question 1:
Similarity and contiguity are the signifying strategies utilized by the primary and secondary processes. In the primary, these manifest as condensation and displacement, and in the secondary, as paradigm and syntagm. Mediating between the two opposing strategies is metaphor and metonymy. As we discussed in class, these processes are in constant states of fluctuation and fluidity, or to use Silverman's term, “facilitations.” That is, they cannot be neatly compartmentalized, and taken together they help to shape Desire. For your essay, locate aspects of similarity and contiguity in the mediating elements of metaphor and metonymy and then explore how they reveal aspects of the primary and secondary processes—specifically condensation/displacement and paradigm/syntagm. Explain how these help to shape our understanding of character, theme(s), or message of your chosen text/topic. Finally, in an effort to determine meaning, how does the function of similarity and contiguity reveal signification and meaning in the text and what specifically is that meaning or message?
Question 2:
“Literature depends upon a medium which has been elaborated for the suppression of affect and the articulation of difference—i.e. language. In using that medium, a poem or a novel is obliged to adhere at least to some degree to its paradigmatic and syntagmatic rules. Some literary texts deliberately break those rules (e.g. Finnegans Wake, the poetry of ee cummings), but that violation has the paradoxical effect of evoking the rules themselves. More often the rules are carefully observed. However, these syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships provide the support for metonymic and metaphoric ones, and almost always the play of linguistic difference succumbs to the dynamic of desire; certain terms are privileged over others and signifying positions become ‘fixed.' Besides, as we observed above, literature is a ‘second-order language,' and in it the operations of connotation are as critical as those of denotation. As Barthes points out, connotation introduces into texts what might be called a ‘cultural unconscious,' provides one of the chief vehicles for ideological meaning. Literary texts, like cinematic ones, are the products of diverse interactions between the primary and secondary processes and are consequently rich in metaphoric and metonymic configurations” (108-109).
How does the text you have chosen invoke, adhere to, and/or violate the paradigmatic and syntagmatic rules that literature depends upon? What ARE the rules that the text either upholds or defies? How do paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships provide support for metaphoric and metonymic rules, and what are some examples of metaphor and metonymy that the text provides? If these rules and their treatment introduce us to the connotative value in the text, what are those connotative messages? What elements of the cultural unconscious—in the world of the text itself—are invoked? In an effort to elucidate meaning, an aspect of the secondary process, what specific meaning do you derive from the examination of paradigmatic and syntagmatic rules, metaphor and metonymy, and cultural unconscious?
Question 3:
"Within the Lacanian account of subjectivity one other momentous event is linked to these others--to the inauguration of meaning, the loss of the real, the formation of the unconscious, and the entry into the symbolic--and that event is the birth of Desire. Desire commences as soon as the drives are split off from the subject, consigned forever to a state of non-representation and non-fulfillment. In short, it begins with the subject's emergence into meaning. Desire has its origins not only in the alienation of the subject from its being, but in the subject's perception of its distinctness from the objects with which it earlier identified. It is thus the product of the divisions by means of which the subject is constituted, divisions which inspire in the subject a profound sense of lack" (176).
Entrance into the symbolic order is marked by a succession of losses, a series of events, some of which are referred to in the above passage: "to the inauguration of meaning, the loss of the real, the formation of the unconscious, and the entry into the symbolic." The subject experiences the dual registers of the “imaginary” and the “symbolic,” each of which has its own qualities and processes. Taken together, all of this leads to the birth of desire.
In your selected literary text, trace the "momentous events" (as outlined above), such as when and where these events take place/happen, how certain events can be read as inauguration of meaning, loss of the real, etc. Finally, provide a reading of when, where, and how the birth of desire happens for the subject you have chosen and how that subject enters the symbolic order, as marked by the Name-of-the-Father and the paternal signifier, the phallus.
Question 4:
“Lacan indicates his belief that the female subject neither succumbs to as complete an alienation from the real, nor enjoys as full an association with the symbolic as does the male subject. She thus has a privileged relation to the real, but a de-privileged relation to the symbolic. The female subject escapes that ‘castration' which alone assures the male subject his symbolic potency. We are told by Lacan and his commentators that she ‘lacks lack,' and that while signifying ‘castration' within the symbolic order, she nonetheless continues (unlike her male counterpart) to ‘be' the phallus” (186).
Select one or more female characters from the text(s) you've chosen and provide an analysis of her placement or lack thereof in the symbolic order. How is she “alienated,” what does she “lack,” how is she “de-privileged,” and what does it all mean? Why is it significant? Is the escape from castration and the liminal status of the female subject actually an alternate position of power? Does the female subject challenge or reinforce the existing symbolic order of the text?