Showing papers in "Substance in 1979"

Semiotics of Poetry

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Dracula as Totemic Monster: Lacan, Freud, Oedipus and History

Abstract: One "message" of psychoanalysis that finds its echo or development in contemporary literary theorizing is that life is story production, that identity (ego) is a product of the story one (always already) invents to explain/connect the data of one's past. Story production in turn involves two elements: a characterology, or structure of personae in their relations to each other, and a plot, through and in which this characterology is manifested/constituted. For example (and there is nothing random about it), the Oedipus "complex," a triangle of relations, and the Oedipal scenario, a dream of incest and parricide, are synchronic and diachronic representations of the individual subject's insertion into "our" culture. Perhaps the most elaborate schematization of this characterology-of-insertion is Lacan's schema R,I presented in connection with a re-analysis of Freud's analysis of Dr. Schreber's Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1903). Lacan's schema presents a kind of "norm" from which Schreber's psychosis differs, a culturally determined norm depending, for example, on a Cartesian conception of the (skeptical) ego. Contemporary with Schreber's madness (and Freud's early work), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) exhibits an elaborate narrativization of Lacan's characterology. What follows is a demonstration of a mapping of the characters in Dracula onto the intersections of schema R by way of Freud's Group Psychology. The value of this demonstration is two-fold: in one light, it is an explanation-by-example of the sense of schema R; in another, it is one of a set of demonstrations on Gothic texts which outline the rise of the Oedipus "complex" as a determinant of bourgeois psychology in the nineteenth century. In the beginning of Dracula we are introduced to six young people and to the monster who is to threaten the peacefulness of their lives. These young people are all biologically unrelated, but connected as friends or friends' friends. After Lucy is killed and Mina attacked, as Maurice Richardson says,

Irony, Identity and Repetition: On Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony

Abstract: L'ironie comme decalage, difference, entre le phenomene et l'essence, entre le langage et le sens| elle est du cote du vide silencieux qui sous-tend le langage ne renvoyant qu'a lui-meme. Essentiellement paradoxale, l'ironie est la determination par excellence de l'individualite, qui est et n'est pas ce qu'elle est| elle pose fondamentalement la question de l'individualite. Suit une analyse du personnage de Hamlet, et de l'essai de T. S. Eliot sur la piece. L'ironie nie le passe en le repetant fictivement et en se posant comme origine. La foi se presente des lors comme necessaire pour fonder veritablement le passe| mais elle peut a son tour etre reprise par l'ironie, en un double jeu de miroirs sous fin.

Notes for a Discussion

Abstract: The uses of the word "play" may be grouped in two major classes. The first covers every material process in which the behavior of individual elements is supposed to be either incalculable/inexplicable in principle or at least without importance for understanding the process itself which is of a "higher" order. Such is the play of individual electron movement in a beam. It is also the play of events which constitute the movement of supply, demand, and price on the market or the play of differential relations which define the constitutive rules for a given corpus of signifiers. The second class of play includes all uses of the word which refer to activities of living beings (animals, children, adults, groups, cultures, etc.). It would be easy to show that the first class is only an anthropomorphic (or "biomorphic") projection, an "animistic projection" following the expression of Jacques Monod (i.e., metaphorical extension of the second meaning to processes which are supposed to be, are understandable as, inanimate). But this is not the place to analyze this excellent example of metaphor's role [investissement] in our scientific thinking whose results, as we have suspected for a long time, are not purely scientific. Derrida has begun to analyze this, and recently, Claudine Normand has tried to demonstrate it.' The informal remarks which follow treat exclusively the second class of play. The question which I wish to raise may be stated as follows: what purpose will it serve the social sciences to introduce "play" as an operative concept, or more precisely, how can one shape these "unexplained zones" of human behavior where the introduction of this concept might serve as an explicative principle? The proposals which I offer will obviously require carefully founded and elaborated arguments. I am putting them to paper only provisionally in the context of this written colloquium. Really, I am thinking of two groups of problems. One concerns the way we interpret the signifying practice in the most general sense of the term [pratique signifiante], particularly this aspect of what Kristeva has called the symbolic,2 placed in relation with the concept of the thetic act. The other group of

Play as the System of Systems

Abstract: Let us begin abruptly with two quotations. One is from Marx who writes in Capital that the capitalist system prevents the worker from enjoying his work "as play of his own physical and mental forces." The other quotation is from Heidegger who writes in the "Onto-theological nature of metaphysics" [Identity and Difference]: "the essence of Being is Play in itself." These two quotations are not at all isolated, infrequent or arbitrary. Again in Capital, Marx writes, letting the word "play" remain playful: "at the same time that routine work is an ultimate attack on the nervous system, it oppresses the varied play of the muscles and confiscates all free activity, physical and mental." On the other hand, in The Principle of Reason Heidegger asks: "must we think about Being ... by beginning with the essence of play?" Marx thinks that alienation and exploitation prevent the worker from developing his activity as play. The desired suppression of capitalism would permit man's multiple activity to manifest itself in play and as play. Hence the distinction between work (necessary) and play (free) would be abolished. Marx did not pursue this inspiration thoroughly. Heidegger thought that play constitutes the essence of Being which can be conceived from the ground of play, but not vice versa. This was also a fleeting inspiration. Heidegger did not emphasize it, did not develop all its consequences. In fact, he seems to have abandoned it. Marx, on the ontological horizon, thinks ontico-(ontologically). He thinks about man's work as production and techne thanks to which the auto-production of the world is achieved. It is this practical world-making work which could become play. Heidegger, taken with the ontic, thinks ontologico-(ontically). He thinks about the meaning of Being which has been forgotten by man. Since Being and man's being are interrelated, it could be that the meaning of Being lies in Play. Marx and Heidegger, with Nietzsche situated between them as that modern thinker about play influenced by Heraclitus, try to go beyond philosophy and metaphysics. One could call their thought "metaphilosophical" in the sense that it doesn't make World or Being dependent on a transcendent ideal principle, source of the True, Good, and Beautiful. But how and where do we encounter the philosophy of play which goes

At the Boundaries of Man's Power: Play

Abstract: To understand the world, to act on the world, such are undoubtedly the goals of Science. At first glance, one might think that these two goals are inextricably bound. For in order to act, isn't it first necessary to have a good grasp of the situation? And inversely, isn't action indispensable in order to achieve a good understanding of phenomena? Such would undoubtedly be the case if St. Thomas' renowned "adaequatio rei et intellectus" always reigned in our universe. But the universe in its immensity and the human mind in its frailty are far from always offering us such a perfect fit. There are many examples of perfectly understood situations in which there is no possible course of action. For example, there is the man on the roof of a flooding house who watches the water rise to inundate him. Inversely, there are situations where one can act efficaciously without understanding why. As a proof of this, one could cite, almost without exaggeration, the entire history of medication. For example, the clinical properties of aspirin have been known and exploited for a long time, but a theoretical explanation on the molecular level has been only recently proposed. All such circumstances in which there is flagrant inadequation between our possible courses of action on the one hand, and our capacity for analysis on the other, are sources of man's "unhappy consciousness," for man attains "happy consciousness," his full and total realization of personality, only in reasoned action whose goal and efficacy are clearly apparent. The question of man's power touches, then, on ethics. Epictetus understood this at the beginning of his Enchiridion where he invites us to make the distinction in our affairs between

The Symbolism and Celebration of the Earth in Nietzsche's "Zarathustra"

Abstract: In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche consistently utilizes the symbols and structures of the onto-theo-logical tradition for the purpose of providing the most profound critique, and the ultimate shattering, of the foundations of that tradition. I wish to investigate here the manner in which one of those symbols, that of the earth, functions within that work, and to discuss the broader significance of this aspect of Nietzsche's critique of the tradition. As a touchstone to this investigation, it may be helpful to outline certain cross-cultural features of the lived experience of human spatiality, as is quite clearly expressed in Mircea Eliade's work on the phenomenology of religious experience.1 Secular space may be characterized as that which is of neutral value, that which has no innate qualitative differences, and is thus indicative of a chaotic, unstructured level of human experience. Sacred space represents the foundation of the world qua hierophany: it secures an absolute fixed point, a center, in relation to which man may orient himself within the relativity of the chaos of his secular existence. Sacred space : cosmos = secular space : chaos. This orientation is achieved by the consecration of space, which is a form of construction of a holy place as the center of the world, which achieves the connection between underworld, earth, and heaven. Such a construction is man's ritualistic reproduction of the originary cosmogony, of the Creation of the world: it is man's reproduction of the work of the gods. It is precisely in this sacred space where man is closest to the gods, the place where the earth opens up unto the heavens. Thus, the earth is an all-encompassing symbol. It sustains all relationships, from the chaotic to the structured, from the sacred to the profane, from the allgiving, fruitful womb, the ripe, nourishing Earth-Mother, to the evil, destructive Terrible One, bringing decay, famine, and plague.2 Earth symbolism is not merely open to interpretation according to the context within which the particular symbol is located, but it is rather the very symbol of ambivalence. We may find a parallel use of earth symbolism within Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. On the one hand, we may understand the earth here to symbolize that "primitive text of nature" which is the chaotic,3 differential4 system of the will-to-power, the ultimate foundation of Nietzsche's ontology. But we must

A New Philosophical Interpretation of the Libido

Abstract: Working with new concepts of impulsive intensity- libidinal space, libidinal time, libidinal identity, Jean-Fran?;ois Lyotard's Economie libidinale' sets out to interpret in a coherent discourse the essential data of psychoanalysis, which had been formulated in a fragmented- physicalist, mechanist, hydraulic and mythical--language, or, in the phenomenological reworking, in mentalist, intentional, language. But Lyotard's book does not only devise a philosophically more coherent language for the findings of psychyanalysis; it also elaborates an interpretation of the data themselves. Assembling literary and theological texts along with certain Freudian texts given a new importance, Lyotard's book shows how theoretical activity and political economy reverberate with libidinal processes, and how the primary process libido continues even in its matured and sublimated forms. This new conceptual elaboration is principally due to a divesting of the Freudian conceptual apparatus of its phallocentric and reproductive normativity, and even of the idea of organism as a norm. If wholeness, organism, is the general form of any norm, then we can say that this philosophy presents a libido without norms. Just what kind of theoretical work do we have here? It is not really an autonomous phenomenology of sexual experience, taken to be an exhibition of the pretheoretical, preconceptualized given experience. Phenomenology could pretend that it could, with its own vocabulary allegedly framed after immediate intuitions, elaborate a purely descriptive account of, among other things, sexual experience, which could then function as a criterion against which to judge the theoretical elaborations of science, because it thought it had found an autonomous locus of access to the primary and preconceptual experience itself. This locus was self-consciousness. It was originally all intuitive: an intuition of itself in its primary, that is, intuitive, acts or contacts with various zones of mundane reality. Lyotard's work is, to be sure, philosophical and not empirical. In what sense? Not in this phenomenological sense. The "thing itself," the libidinal life, is not a succession of acts essentially intuitive. These sensuous sensations would not fit in, with minor adjustments, to the Husserlian concept of perceptions

Chances Aren't: Roubaud's Numerical Poe-Tricks

Abstract: If the starting assumption is that there is an entity, within the framework of the theory of literature, which can be designated as text, it is appropriate to take into account this notion of text in relation to its formalist origins and inception. Let us consider, then, that a text is a unit organized as a system which is both autonomous and closed and that its core is a linguistic one. The main implication of the formalist notion of text is that its functioning is deeply rooted in the functioning of language. It may beas J. Lotman assertsthat the functioning of language in a text belongs to a primary system and that its literary value belongs to the realm of a secondary system. In any given text, different sets of procedures can be used to uncover the relevant characteristics of this secondary system. If taken as a separate object, this secondary system belongs to the foundations of knowledge with all the generality that it implies. Therefore, any kind of auxiliary discipline (sociology, philosophy, history, psychology, semiotics, etc.)' can be summoned in order to analyze and evaluate a text in such a way that some of its parts may be integrated in the cognitive foundation of human knowledge. Hence the notions of "socio-text," "semio-text," "grottext."2

The Mimesis of Madness and the Semiotics of the Text

Abstract: Being primarily the social adventure of subjectivity, madness enters into a multiple discourse. From Plato's psychology to schizo-analysis, discourse constantly displaces it from the periphery to the center and from the center to the periphery. Condemnation, glorification, apotheosis, negation, normalization-madness resides as much in a diversity of viewpoints as in the clinical apprehension of its somatic and psychic manifestations. The diverse semiotic orders arrogating madness at times nourish themselves with its signs and symptoms, at others impugn it in the name of a critical discourse on the mental and social structures which produce it. The discourse productive of madness is inevitably a servile and pragmatic discourse, whatever its meta-linguistic anchorage. The discourse apprenticed to madness is one of ready contempt, of a wager placed on the refusal of the fiction of fixed anti-theses, hence a para-dialectical discourse. Understood as a phenomenon of unreason, madness inevitably refers to the play of oppositions which put reasoning reason, intelligence, on stage, such as it is, unchanged by its intellect. Thus, as a prisoner of reason, as a lugubrious epiphenomenon of reason, madness is not spared the idiosyncracies of anti-madness. Situated between madness and anti-madness, the signs are gaping and futile, as long as they undergo the interpretive gesture inscribed within the circuit of the theses and anti-theses of the dominant ideology.

Condemned to Speak Excessively: Mythic Form and James Joyce's Ulysses

Abstract: ... we constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it, but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified. It would seem that we are condemned for some time yet always to speak excessively about reality. Roland Barthes, Mythologies1

New Perspectives in Anthropology and Modern Literature

Abstract: Il s'agit bien de cet objet: tete de cheval plus grande que nature oui s'incruste toute une ville, ses rues, et ses remparts, courant entre les yeux, epousant le meandre et l'allongement du museau. Un homme a su contruire de bois et de carton cette ville, et l'&clairer de biais d'une lune vraie, il s'agit bien de cet objet: la tete en cire d'une femme tournant echevelke sur le plateau d'un phonographe. Yves Bonnefoy Anti-Platon

Mutilation and Reparation: Writing in Melanie Klein

Abstract: Throughout her own written texts (recently republished in four volumes by Hogarth Press)1 Melanie Klein sporadically but persistently is attentive to the psychopathology of writing, seen both as a literal, graphic activity and as a form of significant discourse. Although in her analysis of children she may seem to have encouraged the play of the signifier not so much through words as through toys (those same toys which an incensed Deleuze will later accuse her of having preloaded, as trains and tunnels, with debilitating Oedipizing significance),2 Melanie Klein does in fact look hard and perspicaciously at the marks, letters, words and sentences which her patients trace before her. In a fragmentary "Contribution" in 1927 she writes: "I pointed out in my papers and lectures that the child differs in its mode of expression from the adult by the fact that it acts and dramatizes its thoughts and phantasies. But that does not mean that the word is not of great importance in so far as the child commands it" (III, 314). Command of the word and the word's commands continuously provoke her interest and inform her theoretical work. In configurations of letters, distortion of handwriting, displacement and denial of meaning, she locates the anxieties, idealizations and repressions which compose the scene of the child's psychic life, and it is within this scene that writing originates. The process of symbolization, including speaking, reading and writing, is decisively affected and marked by the child's relationship to part-objects, to its own body and, particularly, to the inner and outer space of the mother's body. Part-objects, on which the ego and the superego are modelled, exist as real or phantasized, present or absent; these objects, primarily breast, penis and faeces, are consistently characterized as "good" or "bad," depending on the nature of associations and indentifications connected with them. (The words "good" and "bad" are always to be read as being enclosed in quotation marks; henceforth this is to be taken for granted.) The primary relationship between child and mother is based on a relation to a part-object: this objectrelation is not only with the real breast but it also involves "the infant's emotions, phantasies, anxieties and defences" (III, 51). The part-object becomes introjected as a mental concept, and takes on qualities associated

Freud: Translation and/or Interpretation

Abstract: The status of interpretation and particularly of an interpretation of dreams raises some important questions about the relation of two different discourses: the literary and the psychoanalytical. To assume Freud's major premise in The Interpretation of Dreams, that every dream is the satisfaction of a wish, implies that we elucidate the status of that wish in the context of the very interpretation which proposed it. The difficulty lies in the fact that we cannot think of the dream wish as really separate from Freud's interpretative "wish" to establish such a theory. Our own interpretative discourse is consequently bound, obeying, as it were, the satisfaction of the dream wish. Freud introduces the relation between the manifest and the latent dream content in an effort to