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Nightwood and the Terror of Uncertain Signs

Introduction

Nightwood and the Terror of Uncertain Sign are the literature written by Teresa de Lauretis. She is an Italian based author, and a professor at the University of California. She was born in 1938 in Italy. She was a professor of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She got her literatures doctorate from Bocconi University in Milan. She took this degree before coming to United States. Her theories are mostly feminine. Her writing also includes science fiction. She is the author of both languages, English and Italian.

The themes to which he dedicated include semiotics, the psychoanalysis, the theory of cinema and literature, and the feminist and queer studies. He has also written about in fiction. He is fluent in both English and Italian and writes in both languages. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. Teresa de Lauretis born and educated in Italy, where he received his doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Boccioni in Milan. Came to the United States shortly after completing his degree and taught Italian literature, comparative literature, studies of women and film theory at several American universities, including the University of Colorado and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is currently professor of the history of meaning, belonging to interdisciplinary doctoral program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has been a visiting professor at several universities in the United States and as Canada, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. He has written numerous essays and published books on literature, film, semiotics, and feminist theory.

Critical Analysis

In the process of reading an essay written on Djuna Barne's Nightwood (“Nightwood and the Terror of Uncertain Signs,” Teresa de Lauretis), which featured psychoanalytic concepts, I was reminded of something that always struck me whenever I would read a piece of literary analysis like this one, that is, the strangeness of our tendency to dissect the actions and dialogue of the inhabitants of a story as if these characters were here among us, as real as we are, and as if these dissections would somehow lead us to a clarification of the mystery of text this mystery being the strangely powerful effect of the work of literature upon us. This privilege of being open to interpretation is certainly not granted to those around us, to real human beings, who are not “open to interpretation” in the same way as a character in a novel, especially not in our everyday interactions with them; one can interpret a glance, or a nuanced phrase, but one does not interpret a person at least; one knows or has been taught that it is unfair and pointless to judge a person before one “knows” him/her.

This is undoubtedly true, according to Derrida, because someone living is not yet affixed, is as of yet ephemeral and unexplored until he/she got recorded, in biographies or diaries, letters, court or medical records, etc for interpretation is exclusive ...