Browsing by Author "Ms. Amina-Achouak DJEMIL"

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    Cannibalism as Desire: Lacanian Identity and the Unconscious in Camille DeAngelis' Bones and All (2015)
    (UNIVERSITY OF MOHAMED BOUDIAF- M’SILA, 2025-07-15) Ms. Amina-Achouak DJEMIL; Ms. Meryem Cheyma BECHACHE
    Abstract Instances of cannibalism, across the history of humanity, have been metaphorically linked to otherness, taboo, and the grotesque. In Camille DeAngelis’ Bones and All, however, the cannibal figure is reimagined not as a symbol of primitive violence, but as a persona of repressed desires, fragmented identity, and psychological struggles. Through Jacques Lacan’s lens of psychoanalytic theory, this dissertation argues that the characters’ craving for human flesh reflects a set of unconscious desires rooted in Lacanian concepts such as lack, objet petit a, the Imaginary, the Real, and the Symbolic order. This analysis further investigates how desire, when denied by society and internalized, ultimately manifests through transgression, eventually leading to Lacan’s concepts of the jouissance — a pleasure intertwined with suffering— and the death drive. In addition, this research explores the fragmentation within the identities of the novel’s main characters, particularly Maren and Lee, whose journeys reveal the conflict between their Ideal-I and the Lacanian Name-of-the-Father. It also examines how cannibalistic acts differ in their meanings and functions across the characters, which highlights the relationship between desire, identity, and the Other. Ultimately, this study offers a new interpretation of Bones and All, positioning it within the tradition of psychoanalytic literary criticism and shedding light on how transgression can be read as a metaphor for the unconscious desire and the struggle for identity