Subject
Re: Fwd: Re: Re: JO Morgan & Michael Maar's evidence/ J-1
From
Date
Body
Dear Jansy
Re your comment that "Freud's genius lay in the discovery that the same
mechanisms that prompted dream symbolism were those that produced neurotic
symptoms, lapsus linguae and other parapraxies, poems..."
In SNLR I have argued that Nabokov was deliberately playing with this kind
of Freudian insight when he parodied Lewis Carroll's provocative tendency
to drop lapsus linguae into the letters he sent to his so-called 'child-
friends.' Examples of this strategy exist in VN's Invitation to a Beheading
and The Enchanter.
While some people will no doubt dismiss the issue as to whether a boy can
be replaced with a girl within a text like Lolita as only mildly
interesting, I would suggest that many people (perhaps the majority) would
react quite differently. Misreadings of Lolita have contributed
significantly to the unethical sexual exploitation of under-aged girls by
the market. In SNLR I have attempted to trace signs of Lolita's socio-
cultural impact within fashion, films, teenzines starting in the 1950s. The
market exploitation of young American girls cannot be divorced from social
indicators that attest to their poor general health and well being (e.g.
early introduction to coitus, exorbitant abortion rates, sexploitation by
considerably older males etc.) American girls rate very poorly on key
social indicators compared to other developed (as well as developing)
nations.
I repeat that I believe VN's concerns re the traumatic consequences of
child sexual abuse were very real. In deciding to take on Freud's Oedipus
complex theory in the covert manner that he did, VN has ultimately revealed
himself to be a (too well disguised) child rights activist that he always
was. This is but one of the many paradoxes he has bequeathed to us.
Jo Morgan
Sydney
P.S By the way, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek when I apologised for my
prior presumptuousness.
----- End forwarded message -----
Re your comment that "Freud's genius lay in the discovery that the same
mechanisms that prompted dream symbolism were those that produced neurotic
symptoms, lapsus linguae and other parapraxies, poems..."
In SNLR I have argued that Nabokov was deliberately playing with this kind
of Freudian insight when he parodied Lewis Carroll's provocative tendency
to drop lapsus linguae into the letters he sent to his so-called 'child-
friends.' Examples of this strategy exist in VN's Invitation to a Beheading
and The Enchanter.
While some people will no doubt dismiss the issue as to whether a boy can
be replaced with a girl within a text like Lolita as only mildly
interesting, I would suggest that many people (perhaps the majority) would
react quite differently. Misreadings of Lolita have contributed
significantly to the unethical sexual exploitation of under-aged girls by
the market. In SNLR I have attempted to trace signs of Lolita's socio-
cultural impact within fashion, films, teenzines starting in the 1950s. The
market exploitation of young American girls cannot be divorced from social
indicators that attest to their poor general health and well being (e.g.
early introduction to coitus, exorbitant abortion rates, sexploitation by
considerably older males etc.) American girls rate very poorly on key
social indicators compared to other developed (as well as developing)
nations.
I repeat that I believe VN's concerns re the traumatic consequences of
child sexual abuse were very real. In deciding to take on Freud's Oedipus
complex theory in the covert manner that he did, VN has ultimately revealed
himself to be a (too well disguised) child rights activist that he always
was. This is but one of the many paradoxes he has bequeathed to us.
Jo Morgan
Sydney
P.S By the way, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek when I apologised for my
prior presumptuousness.
----- End forwarded message -----