This essay considers the ways in which Silvia Kolbowski's 2018 video That Monster: An Allegory addresses the psychical and political basis of Donald J. Trump's appeal in the 2016 US election. The video is crafted out of a collection of fragments from James Whale's 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein, which Kolbowski plays first with a score by Philip Glass and then in silence. This article asks how such a format might illuminate resonances between certain psychoanalytic concepts and the postmodernist discourse of allegory as exemplified in the work of Paul de Man and Craig Owens. I argue that these theoretical frameworks help us to retain an open reading of Kolbowski's allegory which shifts an interpretive focus from questions of identity to problems of repetition, refusal, and erasure.

中文翻译：

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那边的怪物：西尔维娅·科尔博夫斯基、特朗普和寓言


本文探讨了西尔维娅·科尔博夫斯基 (Silvia Kolbowski) 2018 年的视频《那个怪物：一个寓言》如何阐述唐纳德·J·特朗普 (Donald J. Trump) 在 2016 年美国大选中的吸引力的心理和政治基础。该视频根据 James Whale 1935 年的《弗兰肯斯坦的新娘》中的片段精心制作，Kolbowski 首先播放了 Philip Glass 的配乐，然后默哀。本文探讨这样一种形式如何阐明某些精神分析概念与保罗·德曼和克雷格·欧文斯作品中所例证的后现代主义寓言话语之间的共鸣。我认为这些理论框架有助于我们保持对科尔博夫斯基寓言的开放式阅读，它将解释焦点从身份问题转移到重复、拒绝和擦除问题。