Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:12:35.785Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Senses: Perversion and the Failure of Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Dennis A. Foster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ballard's novels return repeatedly to some scene of trauma to explore the perverse effects that derive from that moment. This essay focuses on three novels. Crash (1973) is most obsessively concerned with the erotics of violence and injury, while Empire of the Sun (1985) and Running Wild (1989) locate the traumatic events in childhood. What Ballard finds is a failure of the representatives of authority (fathers, kings, capital) to found a reliable world, leading children to cling to the often horrible satisfactions of some early experience. The results in Ballard's world include mixtures of masochism and advertising, middle-class terrorism and the fetishization of presidents, war and ecstasy. And what might once have appeared a wild aberration, a violent exercise of the death drive in the pursuit of enjoyment, becomes a way of life.

Type
Cluster: Readings of Narrative, 1937-87
Information
PMLA , Volume 108 , Issue 3 , May 1993 , pp. 519 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

The Adjuster. Dir. Atom Egoyan. Orion, 1992.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G The Atrocity Exhibition. 1970. San Francisco: Re/Search, 1990.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G Crash. 1973. New York: Vintage-Random, 1985.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G Empire of the Sun. New York: Pocket-Simon, 1985.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G Hello America. London: Cape, 1981.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G “Killing Time Should Be Prime Time TV.” Guardian 15 Nov. 1979. Rpt. in Ballard, Re/Search 108–10.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G The Kindness of Women. New York: Farrar, 1991.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G Re/Search: J. G. Ballard. San Francisco: Re/Search, 1984.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G Running Wild. New York: Farrar, 1989.Google Scholar
Barthelme, Donald The Dead Father. 1975. New York: Penguin, 1986.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean “Symbolic Exchange and Death.” 1976. Trans. Charles Lewin. Selected Writings. By Baudrillard. Ed. Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Caserio, Robert L “Mobility and Masochism: Christine Brooke-Rose and J. G. Ballard.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 21 (1988): 292–310.Google Scholar
Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine Creativity and Perversion. New York: Norton, 1984.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don The Names. New York: Vintage-Random, 1982.Google Scholar
Desser, David Eros plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Emerson, Gloria “The Children of the Field.” Triquarterly 65 (1986): 226–22.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage-Random, 1979.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel An Introduction. 1976. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage-Random, 1980. Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. trans, and. James Strachey. Vols. 4 and 5. London: Hogarth, 1953. Vol. 4:1–338; vol. 5:339–627. 24 vols.Google Scholar
Greenland, Colin The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British “New Wave” in Science Fiction. London: RKP, 1983.Google Scholar
In the Realm of the Senses. Dir. Nagasi Oshima. Surrogate, 1976.Google Scholar
Kulowski, Jacob Crash Injuries: The Integrated Medical Aspects of Automobile Injuries and Deaths. Springfield: Thomas, 1960.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits A Selection. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Norton, 1977.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. 1973. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1978.Google Scholar
Marcus, James Rev. of Running Wild, by J. G. Ballard. New York Times Book Review 17 Dec. 1989: 19.Google Scholar
Norman, Carlos, and Reuben, William A. “Brainwashing in America? The Women of Lexington Prison.” Nation 27 June 1987: 881+.Google Scholar
Sante, Luc “Tales from the Dark Side.” New York Times Magazine 9 Sept. 1990: 58+.Google Scholar