Vol.2, No 7, 2000 pp. 121 - 128
UDC 820.01
THE DOUBLE AS THE "UNSEEN" OF CULTURE:
TOWARD A DEFINITION OF DOPPELGANGER
Milica Živković
Faculty of Philosophy, Niš, Yugoslavia
Abstract. Despite a considerable interest in the fictional double,
as a literary device for articulating the experience of self-division,
the motif of the double seems to resist narrow catagorization and definition.
The starting position in the attempt to arrive at a comprehensive definition
is founded on the assumption that the fictional double is not a literary
motif but a construction of traditional culture – myth, legend and religion.
Although surviving as a perennial motif present in all literary styles,
periods and genres the double is never "free" – it is not "outside" time
but produced within and determined by its social context. Though it often
struggles against the limits of this context, it cannot be understood in
isolation from it. Its origins in traditional culture make him a motif
liable to semantic changes because literature tends to adjust its treatment
of the double to the respective culture, being in functional correlation
with it. In a progressively secularized culture dialogues of self and the
double are increasingly acknowledged as being colliloquies within the self:
the double has become an aspect of personal and interpersonal life, a manifestation
of unconscious desire. Through the introduction of some modern psychoanalitic
theories, it has been possible to claim for the double motif a subversive
function. Signifying a desire to be reunited with a lost centre of personality
the double shows in graphic forms a tension between the "laws of human
society" and the resistance of the unconscious mind to these laws. In this
way the double changes the focus from intrapsychic psychology toward a
view of the social structures. It points to the basis upon which cultural
order rests tracing the unseen and the unsaid of culture: that which has
been silenced by the symbolic, rational discourse. Many dual and disintegrated
bodies in modern literature violate the most cherished of all human unities:
the unity of 'character", drawing attention to its relative nature and
its ideological assumptions, mocking the blind faith in psychological coherence
and in the value of sublimation as a "civilizing" activity. Like its mythical
predecessor, the double in modern literature desires transformation and
difference. By attempting to transform the relations between the imaginary
and the symbolic, the double hollows out the real, revealing its absence,
its great other, its unspoken and its unseen.
DVOJNIK KAO "NEVIDLJIVO" KULTURE:
KA DEFINICIJI DOPPELGANGER-A
I pored brojnih studija posvećenih motivu dvojnika u književnosti, kao
kritički termin dvojnik je i dalje neprecizno određen. Ovaj rad je pokušaj
da se bliže odredi pojam, uloga i značaj motiva dvojnika u savremenoj književnosti.
Polazna pretpostavka jeste da je motiv dvojnika kulturna kategorija, to
jest mitski simbol duboko društvenog karaktera. Njegova forma je ostala
relativno nepromenjena, a njegovo značenje menjalo se u skladu sa promenama
kulturne stvarnosti i književnih normi. U savremenoj književnosti motiv
dvojnika se koristi kao personifikacija otuđenog dela čovekove ličnosti,
koje čovek ne prepoznaje kao sastavni deo sebe i koje izrastaju u autonomnu
"demonsku" silu. Sekularizacijom kulture i promenama definicija čovekove
stvarnosti i subjektivnosti tokom 18. i 19. veka, dvojnik gubi mogućnost
da se tumači u transcendentalnom "ključu" i na osnovu jednoznačne hrišćanske
polarizacije etičkih koncepata dobra i zla. Zahvaljujući tome on postaje
sredstvo od centralnog značaja za tematsku i strukturalnu diferencijaciju
teksta. U svetlu Jungovog tumačenja, kao i savremenih psihoanalitičkih
teorija, moguće je u dvojniku prepoznati "mračno" naličje preterane racionalnosti
zapadne civilizacije, to jest priznati mu ideološki subverzivnu funkciju.
Udvojeni i dezintegrisani likovi savremene književnosti narušavaju sliku
objedinjenog i stabilnog ega - osnovnog stuba buržoaske i patrijarhalne
kulture. Izražavajući želju za imaginarnim poretkom, za nevidljivim i nepriznatim
sadržajima dvojnik izražava večnu težnju dvojnika za celinom i integritetom.
Istovremeno on otkriva metode kojima se kultura brani od nepoželjnih sadržaja
i nastoji da neutrališe njihovu potencijalno subverzivnu ulogu.
