关键词: 主体; 欲望能指; 语言; 他者; 现代性; 乡愁

Abstract:

Modern narratives reorchestrate the desire-laden journey in which the subjective makes attempts for self redemption in modern context. Keenly experiencing the original trauma that he undergoes when bidding farewell with “childhood”, the subjective tries to find comfort in the social language. In the grand masquerade that modern culture enacts, the subjective revels in the indulgence of the desire signification and dances with it, disguising himself in the splendid apparels of modernity. The subjective is hereby turned into a disconnected signifier, floating and tripping aimlessly in the linguisitic system. And with it, the true ego vanishes into meaninglessness, his self-redemption journey turning out to be a ticket to death. Try as he might, out of the desperate passion of “death drive”, towards that lost “thing”, the subjective can never escape his destiny imposed by social language. However, if contemporary humanity is well aware of his “original intention”, and therefore take a nostagic look upon the lost childhood, he might circumvent the misleading development conceptions. At close reading of modern English classics, the paper attempts to disclose the true nature of subjective in the modern sphere, and herein makes new assessments of modernity, with relevant philosophical propositions suggested by postmodernist scholars like Lacan, ?i?ek and Foucault.

Keywords: subjective; desire signification; language; other; modernity; nostalgia