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'Literature, Psychoanalysis and the Death Penalty, 1900-1950'

“文学、精神分析和死刑，1900-1950”

基本信息

批准号：
AH/R001480/1
负责人：
Katherine Ebury
金额：
$ 25.16万
依托单位：
University of Sheffield
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2018 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FR001480%2F1
关键词：
Literature Psychoanalysis Death Penalty 1900

项目摘要

The key aim of this project is to examine how the cultural and ethical power of literature offered early twentieth-century readers opportunities for thinking through capital punishment in the UK, Ireland and the US in the period between 1900 and 1950. Further, during this period both literature and conceptions of justice were profoundly influenced by the developing science of psychoanalysis. In a 1926 article 'Über die Todesstrafe' Thomas Mann used Freud's 'Totem and Taboo' in support of his view that capital punishment was inherently retributive. And in fact, Freud published a short anti-death penalty tract called 'View on Capital Punishment'; his followers Theodor Reik, Hans Sachs and Marie Bonaparte would lobby powerfully against the death penalty using psychoanalytic arguments. This aspect of the history of psychoanalytic theory has been insufficiently studied, but it was one of the key ways in which psychoanalysis made a major intervention in culture, as there was a general consensus in support of the death penalty except for specific writers and specific advocacy groups. In fact, the impact on readers of literary representations of the death penalty informed by psychoanalysis cannot be overestimated, given that capital punishment was no longer a public spectacle. I will examine the way that the death penalty had gone into the cultural unconscious, its reality only accessible by means of imaginative effort, and how efforts by literature and psychoanalysis to imagine and reimagine the death penalty had a powerful effect on public debate in the period. Further, the impact of psychoanalysis was also political since abolitionist movements were divided about the value of affect and empathy and these arguments were informed by psychoanalytic discussions. For example, in the UK, there were two differing abolitionist movements: one, The Howard League, which rejected emotive tactics and which still exists today, and the other more idiosyncratic, founded by Violet van der Elst, which used shock tactics modeled on suffragette campaigns. The project will consider how the power of literature in this context is demonstrated in, for example, the irresistible appeal of literature to campaigners in the debate: while both the American lawyer Clarence Darrow and the anti-death penalty activist Violet van der Elst published nonfictional works that advanced their causes, each were also inescapably drawn to fiction as a medium. In 1905, Darrow published a now-forgotten novel about capital punishment that influenced Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy', while in 1937, the same year that van der Elst published 'On the Gallows', and with the same press, she published a volume of popular ghost stories that reflect on judicial violence. The project will therefore examine how connections between 'high' and popular culture seem particularly inextricable where the death penalty is at stake. This study is focused specifically upon Anglophone representations of the death penalty across the UK, Ireland and the USA in the period 1900-1950: as I have demonstrated in the Case for Support, this will maximise the project's originality. The major international conflicts of the period WWI and WWII, which will be addressed in a chapter of the monograph, will further ensure that I am able to address transnational aspects of the death penalty within the English language.In short, this project seeks to critically examine how literature responds to and participates in psychoanalytic debates around capital punishment in the first half of the twentieth century, and to further reflect on the relevance of these debates for a contemporary world where the death penalty still exists. Connections between the death penalty, literature and psychoanalysis therefore present an entirely original nexus of interdisciplinary study that has the potential to transform modernist studies and to benefit a range of local, regional and national public audiences.

这个项目的主要目的是研究文学的文化和伦理力量如何提供二十世纪初的读者通过1900年和1950年之间的英国，爱尔兰和美国的死刑的思考机会。此外，在这一时期，文学和正义的概念都受到发展中的精神分析科学的深刻影响。在1926年的一篇文章“Über die Todesstrafe”中，托马斯·曼用弗洛伊德的“图腾与禁忌”来支持他的观点，即死刑本质上是报应性的。事实上，弗洛伊德出版了一本反死刑的小册子叫做《死刑观》；他的追随者西奥多·雷克、汉斯·萨克斯和玛丽·波拿巴会利用精神分析理论大力游说反对死刑。精神分析理论历史的这一方面还没有得到充分的研究，但它是精神分析对文化进行重大干预的关键方式之一，因为除了特定的作家和特定的倡导团体之外，人们普遍同意支持死刑。事实上，考虑到死刑不再是一种公共奇观，从精神分析中得知的死刑文学表现对读者的影响怎么估计也不为过。我将研究死刑进入文化无意识的方式，它的现实只有通过想象的努力才能接近，以及文学和精神分析对想象和重新想象死刑的努力如何对这一时期的公共辩论产生了强大的影响。此外，精神分析的影响也是政治性的，因为废奴主义运动在情感和同理心的价值上存在分歧，这些论点都是由精神分析的讨论提供的。例如，在英国，有两种不同的废奴运动：一种是霍华德联盟（Howard League），它拒绝情绪化的策略，至今仍存在；另一种则更为独特，由维奥莱特·范德埃尔斯特（Violet van der Elst）创立，采用模仿妇女参政运动的冲击策略。该项目将考虑在这种背景下文学的力量是如何表现出来的，例如，文学对辩论中的活动家的不可抗拒的吸引力：尽管美国律师克拉伦斯·达罗（Clarence Darrow）和反死刑活动家维奥莱特·范德埃尔斯特（Violet van der Elst）都发表了非虚构作品，推动了他们的事业，但他们都不可避免地被小说作为一种媒介所吸引。1905年，达罗出版了一部现在被遗忘的关于死刑的小说，这部小说影响了德莱塞的《美国悲剧》，而在1937年，也就是范德埃尔斯特出版《绞刑架上》的同一年，她在同一家出版社出版了一卷反映司法暴力的流行鬼故事。因此，该项目将研究“高级”文化和流行文化之间的联系如何在死刑受到威胁的情况下显得特别密不可分。这项研究特别关注1900年至1950年期间英国、爱尔兰和美国以英语为母语的死刑陈述：正如我在“支持案例”中所展示的那样，这将最大限度地发挥项目的原创性。第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战期间的主要国际冲突将在本专著的一章中讨论，这将进一步确保我能够用英语讨论死刑的跨国问题。简而言之，本项目旨在批判性地审视文学是如何回应和参与二十世纪上半叶围绕死刑的精神分析辩论的，并进一步反思这些辩论与死刑仍然存在的当代世界的相关性。因此，死刑、文学和精神分析之间的联系呈现出一种完全原创的跨学科研究联系，有可能改变现代主义研究，并使一系列地方、区域和国家公众受益。