The Internal Landscape of My Mysterious Body: Burger’s Daughter in the Mirror of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In the novel Burger’s Daughter, Nadine Gordimer’s (1923 -2014) treatment of Rosa after her return to her country-a character who repudiates the Law of the father- is an account in which the phallocentric ideology and desire reenact the tenets of Lacanian theory. In order to proclaim her autonomy Rosa can revolt only against another insurgent because her father is a political activist and fights for freedom in a strictly racist ideology. In their home children have few rights to express themselves. In such a complicated situation Rosa is able to reach her subjectivity only when she gains a boyfriend, and stays away from her father’s ideology. Her parents are blind to the fact that her role as a partner denies the reality of her emotions. All in all, Rosa who is introduced as “Little Rosa Burger” at the beginning of the novel becomes once again a child at the final section of the novel. She lives a destiny which has been prepared for her. In the novel women either white or black who want to get beyond the bounds of the Law are trapped; their belief in the ideology leads them to shun or annihilate anything that might endanger that ideology, leaving them no way out. Rosa runs up against the boundaries of a white male hegemony, underscoring her inability to find any space outside the ideology that defines her. The aim of this paper is to see in what ways Rosa is the embodiment of the psyche of her society. It focuses on the ways in which Rosa negotiates subjectivity. Where she internalize the law-of-the-Father, and when she rejects her imposed identity.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s2p383