Double Articulation and the Dynamics of Deception -H. C. Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes-

초록

This article discusses H. C. Andersen’s famous fairy-tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, arguing that the text presents a double articulation-that is, a subtle address to a younger and an older audience at one and the same time. In doing so, the fairy-tale essentially constructs a strategic discourse containing a naive as well as an ironic perspective. Generally, the story seems to refer to a situation in which one has seen through the deceptions of power or authority, and thus is able to find out what is real and what is deceptive. This is no doubt an important point in the story, but perhaps even more important is the fact that everyone-except the little child- actually is being deceived in the story. No one among the adults is actually able to escape the dynamic of deceit. The story is thus, in a deeper sense, less a story about the exposure of deceit, but rather about the ways in which everyone believes he or she is capable of avoiding being duped. In this article, we argue that Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes illustrates in an exemplary way what the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek refers to as cynicism as a form of ideology. In his numerous books and articles, Zizek frequently refers to Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, although never develops a full analysis of the story. This article will attempt to reconstruct a possible Zizekian reading of Andersen’s famous fairy-tale with a specific focus on the text’s double articulation of the naive and the ironic.

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