Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.

What is it that makes language powerful? This book uses the psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism and libidinal investment to explain how rhetoric compels us and how it can effect change. The works of Joseph Conrad, James Baldwin, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Arthur Miller, D.H. Lawrence, Ben Jonson, George Orwell, and others are the basis of this thoughtful exploration of the relationship between language and subject. Bringing together ideas from Freudian, post- Freudian, Lacanian, and post-structuralist schools, Alcorn investigates the power of the text that underlies the reader response approach to literature in a strikingly new way. He shows how the production of literary texts begins and ends with narcissistic self-love, and also shows how the reader's interest in these texts is directed by libidinal investment. Psychoanalysts, psychologists, and lovers of literature will enjoy Alcorn's diverse and far-reaching insights into classic and contemporary writers and thinkers.

Rhetoric, Text, and Subjectivity

Narcissism and the Literary Libido

Marshall W. Alcorn

The period between World Wars I and II was a time of turbulent political change, with suffragists, labor radicals, demagogues, and other voices clamoring to be heard. One group of activists that has yet to be closely examined by historians is World War I veterans. Mining the papers of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion (AL), Stephen R. Ortiz reveals that veterans actively organized in the years following the war to claim state benefits (such as pensions and bonuses), and strove to articulate a role for themselves as a distinct political bloc during the New Deal era. Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill is unique in its treatment of WWI veterans as significant political actors during the interwar period. Ortiz’s study reinterprets the political origins of the “Second” New Deal and Roosevelt’s electoral triumph of 1936, adding depth not only to our understanding of these events and the political climate surrounding them, but to common perceptions of veterans and their organizations. In describing veteran politics and the competitive dynamics between the AL and the VFW, Ortiz details the rise of organized veterans as a powerful interest group in modern American politics.

Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.

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