Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Twelve: The Abjection of Death Seeks to Destroy Us All (Continued) –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

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Now, a brief look at the relationship that exists between parent and child as a central concern in O’Connor’s works.

Wise Blood, like many of O’Connor’s short stories (with “The Enduring Chill” being notable among them for this discussion), creates what Sue Walker views as an ironic version of Kristeva’s view of the abject and the mother-child dyad; with O’Connor we encounter the death-bearing mother whose excessive control leads to death; discussing O’Connor in “The Being of Illness: The Language of Being Ill,” Walker notes that for Kristeva, “abjection shows up as a struggle on the part of the child to separate from the mother.

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Eleven: The Abjection of Death Seeks to Destroy Us All –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

Epigraphs

He thought about the chifforobe in his half-sleep and decided his mother would rest easier in her grave, knowing it was guarded.

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Ten: Configuring the Abject (Continued) –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

Text

This study before you does not pretend to be an analysis of narrative strategies.

I admit that I am having another one of those days that I suppose bloggers must occasionally experience. So, with that minor, self-conscious confession out of the way, I further admit that this posting falls (pun intended) under the wide-net category of the well-known riddle involving the tree having fallen in the forest and the sound it may or may not have made:

Making the Abject Body Count(s):

An Autobiographical Reading of

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

– Part Nine: Configuring the Abject (Continued) –

(Note: Previously posted installments of this series have included bibliographies in the form of endnotes for the text’s parenthetical citations; however, hence forth, the bibliographies will be omitted (to save space and time) but are nevertheless available to any reader who requests the complete bibliography for this series.)

Text

The intellectual relationship between Kristeva and Lacan is complex and deserves attention beyond that which is possible in this study of O’Connor’s Wise Blood.