Dark temples brimming with sweetness from the shared impulse of all living things: Jaan Oks’ subject in process Cover Image

Tumedad templid täis magususi kõikide elavate ühisest tungist Jaan Oksa protsessuaalne subjekt
Dark temples brimming with sweetness from the shared impulse of all living things: Jaan Oks’ subject in process

Author(s): Kristjan Haljak
Subject(s): Estonian Literature, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: SA Kultuurileht
Keywords: early 20th-century Estonian literature; psychoanalysis; Jaan Oks; subject in process; avant-garde; gender;

Summary/Abstract: This article delves into the modernist/avant-garde subject that emerges in Jaan Oks’ poetic prose, utilizing psychoanalytic theories. It aims to elucidate how the libidinalimpulsive dynamics of the psyche manifest within the context of the poetic revolution seen in the texts under scrutiny, expanding the concept of the subject beyond fixed identities and the conventional portrayal of selfhood as something stable and permanent. Key concepts include Julia Kristeva’s subject in process and the Freudian oceanic feeling: these concepts are employed to describe various movements of this elusive modernist subject as, for example, atomization, flowing, and disintegration, thereby framing different phases in the avant-garde rejection of illusory wholeness to unveil the fundamental fragmentation of the psyche. In doing so, the article also explores the emergence of a complex sexual paradigm in Oks’ poetics and its potential transgressive semantic associations with the possibilities inherent in the subject’s gender identity.

  • Issue Year: LXVII/2024
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 95-107
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Estonian
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