『워더링 하이츠』에 나타난 고딕성과 스피노자적 욕망의 윤리
Spinozist Ethics of Desire and the Gothic in Wuthering Heights
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This essay reads Heathcliff, the gothic villain of Wuthering Heights, in the light of Spinoza’s ethics of desire. In Ethics, Spinoza not only exposes the anthropocentric nature of the concepts of good and evil but also argues that the desire of an individual (i.e., a singular thing) constitutes his/her singular essence. In other words, Spinoza’s ethics of desire thrusts a radical critique of conventional morality as well as presents an individual’s singular desire, not universal reason of human species, as his/her essence. Furthermore, proposition 57 of Part III in Ethics, which was used as an epigraph in Jacques Lacan’s doctoral dissertation, makes it clear that an individual’s singular essence lies in his/her singular affects. Heathcliff, a gothic villain or a Romantic hero in gothic novels, embodies Spinozist ethics of desire. His singular essence lies in his obsessive affects that deviate from “normal” social desire; the bizarre turn of his devaluation of human values, such as pity, humanity or duty, shocks our ordinary senses or affects, and challenges the entrenched regime of signs. While his singular desire is manifested in his desiderium (longing/desire) for Catherine and his pursuit of vindicta (vengeance) among the list of affects in Spinoza, it is ultimately the fulfillment of his death along with his strangely cheerful changes before it in the last part that epitomizes his singular and gothic essence: “my heaven.”
Abstract
This essay reads Heathcliff, the gothic villain of Wuthering Heights, in the light of Spinoza’s ethics of desire. In Ethics, Spinoza not only exposes the anthropocentric nature of the concepts of good and evil but also argues that the desire of an individual (i.e., a singular thing) constitutes his/her singular essence. In other words, Spinoza’s ethics of desire thrusts a radical critique of conventional morality as well as presents an individual’s singular desire, not universal reason of human species, as his/her essence. Furthermore, proposition 57 of Part III in Ethics, which was used as an epigraph in Jacques Lacan’s doctoral dissertation, makes it clear that an individual’s singular essence lies in his/her singular affects. Heathcliff, a gothic villain or a Romantic hero in gothic novels, embodies Spinozist ethics of desire. His singular essence lies in his obsessive affects that deviate from “normal” social desire; the bizarre turn of his devaluation of human values, such as pity, humanity or duty, shocks our ordinary senses or affects, and challenges the entrenched regime of signs. While his singular desire is manifested in his desiderium (longing/desire) for Catherine and his pursuit of vindicta (vengeance) among the list of affects in Spinoza, it is ultimately the fulfillment of his death along with his strangely cheerful changes before it in the last part that epitomizes his singular and gothic essence: “my heaven.”
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