Search results for "Bret Easton Ellis"

Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991) : Confusing Signs and Signifiers

2009

http://www.graat.fr/roche.pdf; International audience; This article examines how matter, in Ellis's scandalous novel, is read according to the texts that inform the yuppie's etiquette, labeling the body as either “healthy” or “unhealthy.” Basing his argumentation on the works of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, Clément Rosset and D.W. Winnicott, the author argues that the body is perceived as a sign of something when it is actually an effect of the signifier, and that the novel's excess makes the invisible workings of what Michel Foucault called “power” extremely visible. The novel thus undermines the yuppie/psychopath-narrator's essentialist quest. Indeed, the psychopath attemp…