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Title Hermeneutics of Void: A Study of Parallactical Modes of Being in Milan Kundera’s Fiction

Author(s) Mr. Sheheryar Khan

Abstract ABSTRACT Title: Hermeneutics of Void: A Study of Parallactical Modes of Being in Milan Kundera’s Fiction Milan Kundera’s fiction transcends his spatio-temporal situatedness. He is a contemporary writer with a nostalgic yearning for the ontology of the self. He explores certain paradoxical positions that take on different meanings and contours if observed from opposite angles. The change in perspective turns binaries like the individual and political, body and soul and universal and particular into two conflicting standpoints. It is a kind of illusion to use the same language for both of these conflicting positions as these are mutually untranslatable (Zizek 4). In Kundera’s fiction, we see that this tension is brought forth to explore the dimensions of the ‘self’ and how these dichotomies define and limit his characters’ existence. The mutual untranslatability of these warring positions engenders a gap, a void at the center of human experience, and Kundera’s fiction may possibly be exploited to investigate the nature of this gap. Slavoj Zizek understands this gap not as ‘nothing’ or ‘pure void’ but a positive entity – a site where the two contrary points split into two. This parallactical positioning makes these ontological modes appear as two but Zizek’s radical stance attempts to demonstrate their inherent ONENESS. Zizek uses Hegelian/Marxist theoretical framework to talk about the positivity of the void and his insights are employed to analyze Kundera’s fiction to explore the nature of ontological divides. This research project is a study of Kundera’s fiction using Zizekian concept of parallax view to explore whether it is possible to find a common ground for the mutually untranslatable phenomena like the individual and political, body and soul, and the universal and the particular. This would open new vistas for looking into these modes of being from a radical angle and offer a critique of increased polarization between them as observed in the recent decades.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2021-03-24

Subject English Literature

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