Kortsluiting in het symbolische: Hamlet, Katadreuffe en Van Egters verkennen de grenzen van het bedreigde Vader-land

Abstract

In this dissertation I have

used three Dutch literary works, Karakter by Borderwijk, De avonden by Reve and

Hamlet versus Hamlet by Lanoye, to discuss the Hamlet constellation from a

psychoanalytical and a cultural analytical perspective – taking into account both a historical as well as conceptual approach – in order to show the waning belief in the father’s role, or more radically termed, to show a process of emancipation. In Freud’s vision and the Oedipus complex sits centre stage. In his early theory Lacan also uses an abstract Oedipal model in which the father’s role is dominant and where the access to the symbolic order is created by means of symbolic castration. The Hamlet constellation is a supplementary model next to the Oedipus complex which is necessary to interpret a subject position of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Using the Oedipus complex it was possible to read the neurotic construct of the patriarchal master discours, based on a meaning construct where the external ground of authority took an hierarchical position related to the subject. The horizontal authority is a conviction based on the Sinthomatic model of communal acceptance of a ground, the laws on which authority is founded.