UC Davis

This project identifies and analyzes the relationship between radical ideology and identityformation, using the works and lives of Zinaida Gippius and Mishima Yukio as case studies. My thesis proposes a model of subject formation based on Lacanian methodology which I have called the “Persona” model. The Persona model demonstrates how authors like Gippius and Mishima utilize prescriptive ideology to restructure the symbolic order that determines their perception and reflection by the dialogic other. I use Lacan’s definition of the Other (A) as the overarching set of signifying meanings and rules in linguistic exchanges and examine how the author as Persona performs outside-in self-fashioning whereby they structure the outside world according to ideology informed by their own internal goals. I define the function of ideology in the Persona model as a remedy for perceived maladies of identification, one which serves to restructure the world and the perceptual order according to the author’s idealized conception of self. The author as Persona uses ideology as a road map for perception through which the other can reflect what Lacan calls the Ideal-I. My thesis looks at texts by and biographies of each author and explores the ways in which ideology seeps into the work as a method for assertion of author identity. I ultimately argue that through using the Persona framework to understand cases like Gippius’ and Mishima’s, the roles of ideology, identity, and public consciousness demand that the work be read as a vehicle for asserting subjectivity in the context of complex identity formation.