Seductions in Narrative: Subjectivity and Desire in the Works of ...

Introduction

“Which is to be Master”: The History of our Own Obscurity; Or Subjectivity, Desire, and Narrative in Con-text

We are never alone, always in relation. We are born related to an object. We are, in short, Postmodern.

—Norman N. Holland, Postmodern Psychoanalysis 299

Identity is a paradox.

—Norman N. Holland, Postmodern Psychoanalysis 303

Someday we must write the history of our own obscurity—manifest the density of our narcissism.

—Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs 83

“Which is to be Master,” claims Humpty Dumpty to a puzzled Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871), soon after he nonchalantly acknowledges that whenever he uses a word, he gives it the meaning that he freely chooses.