Description
This project theorizes socially constructed perception of identities to examine how institutions, particularly the insane asylum, reveals itself as a space that perpetuates abjection and balances powers as an invisible practice. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and Henry David Thoreau's Walden highlight reactions to abject identities and provide a solution to breaking down these perceptions by confining oneself and raising awareness. Within these texts, the protagonists struggle to remain grounded amongst a chaotic society and battle others to establish their true identity. They fall into the trap of behaving in a way that subjects them to common stereotypes, however they threaten these learned behaviors by remaining in confinement. They represent the anxieties of dominant notions of identity in becoming the Other and the fear of non-acceptance as they attempt to find agency amongst constant oppression. Examining the fears of marginalized identities in terms of the institutional apparatus allows for an exploration of the difficulty in forming identity and perhaps even a way to locate individuality. Particularly, by unveiling the history of the insane asylum in how it separated certain people based off of external factors, the disconnect between identities explains some of the common fears of what is considered abject.
