Stories in Abjection. Alice Munro's Selected Short Fictions in The Horizon of Psycho-Philosophical Criticism

      Аннотация: From the postmodern psycho-philosophical perspective the subject is not a limited, ordered and definite concept, but it has an evolutionary and transgressive essence which is always in process. Abjection as the foundation of Kristeva’s ‘le sujet-en-proces’ is a response to the eruption of the Lacanian Real. Kristeva perceives the abject situation as the most important challenge for the subject and subjectivity in which the subject confronts meaninglessness. Being everything in uncertainty and ambiguity, the subject attempts to demarcate the borders of me/ Not me but the absurdity remains an ever-lasting curse in the wilderness of meaning. The Kristevian subject along with the character in fiction make possible a deeper reading of subjectivity in the understudy short fictions of Alice Munro. The characters in “Runaway”, “Floating Bridge” and “The Bear Came over the Mountain” confront inner and outer psychic dilemmas and experience vacuum of meaning in life. Taking refuge in imaginary worlds, the characters resist against the absurdity, yet stay in the abject. In Alice Munro’s selected short fictions the subject is subversive and he is not limited to the symbolic systems.

Ключевые слова: Absurdity, Julia Kristeva, semiotic, Subjectivity, Symbolic, Subject-in-process, Abjection, Alice Munro