A Utopia to Come? New Oedipalization in J G Ballard's Kingdom Come

Abstract

Mainly using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theoretical frameworks on capitalism and (anti-)oedipalization this thesis aims to explore the problematic cycle of recoding and decoding desire in J G Ballard’s Kingdom Come Ballard is an influential writer in contemporary English literature known for his distinctive writing style His last novel Kingdom Come delineates a utopian consumerist community in the face of its downfall striving to bring about radical social reforms Unlike other psychoanalytical analyses of Kingdom Come this research attempts to adopt the account of immanent desire to explore the actions and events in the novel as affirmative ways of resisting the existing social milieu Such a strategy can retrospectively help us reveal the flaws of (anti-)oedipalization I first examine how consumerist power oedipalizes desire in this imagined community Then I explore the two failures associated with sustaining and revolutionizing the consumerist utopia in terms of boredom racist violence fascism and willed madness With these focuses on Kingdom Come we can try to answer the following questions: How does Ballard adopt his “political” writing to reflect on and issue warnings regarding the consumerist culture of England in the twenty-first century? Can social reforms and progressions lead to the achievement of a utopian dream? What are the ethical dilemmas produced in the cycle of decoding and recoding desire and how are we to grapple with these problems?

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chung-Hsiung Lai (Supervisor)