HEROIC SUBJECTIVITY IN FRANK MILLER'S THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

The genre of superhero is challenging. How does one explain the subjectivity of the hero with superpowers, morality norms, justice orders and ideological backgrounds? Many authors and critics interpret superheroes in cultural, political, religious and social contexts. However, none has investigated a superhero's subjectivity as a dynamic and in-process phenomenon. The present paper examines the relationship between hero and subjectivity through Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986). Miller shows the necessity of subjective dynamics for the sublime in a model of subjectivity that echoes with questions about the subject that has flourished within literary, psychoanalytic and linguistic theories since the mid-twentieth century. Thus, this study employs Julia Kristeva's concept of subject in process with the aim to indicate that subjectivity is a dynamic phenomenon in Miller's superhero fiction.