3-29-11 de Lauretis, Freud's Drive and "Desire in Narrative"

Teresa de Lauretis, “Desire in Narrative”

Summary: Narrative theory must be more concerned with narrativity, which is a process of narrative’s “work and effects,” troubling the notion of (particularly feminine) identification in narrative.

Teresa de Lauretis, Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film

Summary: de Lauretis focuses her analysis around what she calls the “enigma of the now,” attempting to understand spaces of ambivalence that are not expressible through language and work through the complications of Freud’s death drive by arguing that Foucault and Freud must be read together, by queering Laplanche’s reading of Freud, and by arguing that Freud saw the psyche as text through a reading of Nightwood, among others.

 “The continuum of intimacy and abuse, eroticism, aggression and passivity that must have shaped the writer’s sense of self and her relations to others is inscribed in a writing which is both stark and intensely allusive, at once lucid and obfuscating, as if only style (I am paraphrasing Barnes) could dress life in the garments of the unknowable.” (122)

I chose this passage because it is rich in description and metaphor; I found the garment metaphor to be rather beautiful and complicated.  I am also interested in how it seems to do something that is slightly off-kilter in relation to the rest of the text—its insistence in identity formation is striking in a chapter that wants to situate itself comfortably in the space of ambiguity.  At the same time, though, de Lauretis backs off her insistence by using a metaphor to complicate the way that identity is constructed through the text.  There are two moves here that I’m interested in: one is the use of metaphor, and the other is the paraphrase of the author in a sentence about the author.

While de Lauretis insists that the continuum must have shaped Barnes, I don’t think this adds up to any kind of insistence on a solid identity that we can find somewhere in the text of Nightwood.  Even though de Lauretis also insists that the psyche is the text, she also insists on the process of that production rather than the product itself.  Here the continuum is an important part of shaping that psyche (and this text), and the continuum implies a rather diffuse and varying process.  This isn’t a binary system here, and what’s more, the second part of the continuum (“intimacy and abuse” being the first) is not two but three points.  Because of that, it isn’t easy to identity a beginning or ending point, and eroticism, aggression and passivity seem to go hand-in-hand with each other while at the same time being different.

This is, in turn, what “shape[s] the writer’s sense of self.”  First of all, “shapes” is a different kind of verb from one like “constitutes” or “creates.”  In a sense, to shape is to create, but there is no origin.  Shaping is working with material that is already there.  This connects back to de Lauretis’s discussion of construction vs. essentialism, where she says that the self is always constructed, but it can be implanted and become an important part of the self (46).  What’s more, the “sense of self” seems similar to de Lauretis’s discussion of the “sensation of a thought” on pages 130-31.  If I were to summarize that paragraph very briefly, I would say that it is about the ways that the self is shaped through thought, particularly through the text’s function as memory of experience.  That is what I think de Lauretis is talking about in this sentence, particularly where she says that “her relations to others is inscribed in a writing.”  If writing is memory of experience, then writing is a reconstitution of the self in its most unguarded moments. (or at least an attempt at this).

Next is the metaphor.  Dressing is a particular act, one that is fraught with social decisions, directed by the mode du jour.  It’s something that one has to consciously do every morning, and it’s a choice, but not really a choice, as there would be an intense amount of consequences for leaving the house naked.  I think this particular choice of metaphor reflects upon de Lauretis’s concern with the “enigma of the now,” where she can’t quite find a way to express why and how she is troubled by the current events which have inspired her to revise her ideas and her former militancy.  There is a sense that she can’t quite be as militant as she wants, she can’t leave the house naked, because la mode du jour insists that she put on some clothes or requires that she deal with a certain level of ambiguity.  I find it interesting also that, in this analysis, I am directly talking about the author’s sense of self—this is a performance of this move in ways similar to de Lauretis’s paraphrasing of Barnes.  Also, this metaphor for dressing is a performance of guardedness, which relates back to my discussion of “shaping.”  In that same place where de Lauretis talks about essentialism vs. construction, she says “How else could they penetrate the body in depth, as Foucault said in a perhaps unguarded moment, even without the mediation of consciousness or of the subject’s own representations?” (46), implying that even identity is mediated and is constituted by representations.  Clothing acts as a mediator here; it’s also a representation of the self.

What’s more, the metaphor itself is a particularly beautiful illustration of the way that language obfuscates the experience of the Real.  In a sense, the unguarded militancy that de Lauretis feels she can’t sustain any longer is now being clothed in the “enigma of the now,” or the garments of the unknowable.  Yet, I’m struck here by the “as if” which all of the sudden seems to turn all my prior analysis on its head.  What I have previously described in the sentence leading up to “as if” seems to constitute a certain desire to inscribe the self in writing, as if we could mediate our experience of the Real into writing somehow.  But it’s more complicated than that: the garments are that of the unknowable, and the process of getting dressed in something unknowable is rather hard to describe.  That is where we run into the problem of Barnes’s style: at once lucid and obfuscating.

Finally, de Lauretis not only uses a metaphor to overturn this idea of “sense of self,” but she also paraphrases Barnes, once again performing the allusions of Barnes’s Nightwood, her style, and her process of dressing.  She shapes her own text with Barnes, performing a complicated mediation.  What I have done here is to set up a web of relationships within the text: if there is no clear narrative strand that runs through this post it’s because I found that each piece of this sentence performs another part of the text.

3-22-11 Freud and Bersani

Leo Bersani, The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art

 “The social function of literature—its critical power—consists in its demystifying the force of argument, argument’s claim to truth.” (67)

In the pages surrounding this sentence, Bersani attempts to unpack literature’s connections to psychoanalysis.  While he doesn’t hierarchize the two or attempt to link them in any coherent way (page 112), he does attempt to discuss the ways that literature reveals the function of language within psychoanalysis.  Seemingly, then, this sentence is about literature and what it is, but a closer examination of the subject of this sentence removes some of the validity of that statement.  The phrase “the social function of literature” can be culled down by removing the prepositional phrase “of literature,” leaving “the social function”.  As “social” is an adjective here, the subject of the sentence then becomes “function.”  Structurally, this word is a noun, but it takes on a connotation of a verb, as it is a noun that implies action.  It’s a doing verb, but it’s also a being verb, as function implies something’s basic operation.  When I hear the word “function,” I also think of math, where function connotes a connection between two variables, always in relation.  That makes this noun’s connection to its adjective even stronger, as both “social” and “function” connote relationality.  Thus, the function of “function” is inevitably social.  The way that the possessive works in this phrase is also interesting.  Instead of saying “literature’s social function,” the text makes the possessive slightly weaker here by using “of.”  “Literature” and “social function” are still highly connected, but not as strongly as they would be if they were constructed otherwise.

This possessive structure is repeated in the sentence, with “force of argument”.  What is interesting about “force of argument” is that the possessive structure is repeated in a reversed form immediately after.  The two things that argument possesses, claim and force, are another two words with dual personalities: verb and noun.  Unlike function, though, they are violent words, conjuring a relation of power.  Where function connotes a strong relationality (and I think it’s important to note here that consists, the verb connected to function, means to hold together), claim and force connote a more resistant and hesitant relationality.  I say this because the object of claim does not have much agency, and neither does the object of force.  The function of literature makes clear this relationship.

Yet, what is strange about this sentence is that Bersani emphasizes literature’s power.  The dashes make this renaming stand out.  It seems like literature’s power, then, lies in its ability to make clear its own power.  But I don’t think this sentence is as circular as the previous sentence might suggest.  The two “its” don’t connect clearly to either “function” or “literature”.  I could argue that “its” is a replacement of the subject “function,” but I’m hesitant to do that because of the fact that its is possessive here, too.  Possessive structures occur frequently in this sentence, and in the same way that argument possesses claim and force, literature possesses function and critical power.  This sentence is rather mystifying, then, because it forcefully makes certain claims that, at the same time it thinks it shouldn’t be doing.  Rather than demystifying, it further obfuscates.  I think it is performing the function of literature, but at the same time, there is no easy possession.  Possession is reversed, turned back in on itself, making the possessor unidentifiable. 

Additionally, the ontology of the sentence is also rather confused.  Bersani claims frequently that attempts at locating (55) and defining (60) are problematic, actions that are clearly ontological.  On one level, though, this sentence is also ontological, as literature’s function is to consist, or to be.  In this way, I think the sentence fails.

I chose this sentence at first because I thought it made an interesting claim about what literature is and does in the context of psychoanalysis.  But as a I read it more closely, I realized that in many ways it fails to do what I initially thought it was doing; it also fails at the thing it claims to do.

3-15-11 Freud and Laplanche

Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Freud explores the pleasure principle and its role in psychological development, where self-preservation is a mechanism of repression when one cannot achieve satisfaction.

Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis

Summary: Laplanche offers a reading of Freud that uses the seeming contradictions of Freud productively and intervenes in the debate surrounding the object (subject?) of psychoanalysis: the ego.

“Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: narcissism is a libidinal investment of the self, a love of the self—a thesis which is anything but surprising; but this libidinal cathexis of self occurs in man necessarily through a libidinal cathexis of the ego; and—the third thesis—this libidinal cathexis of the ego is inseparable from the very constitution of the human ego.” (Laplanche 67)

Here, Laplanche begins by attempting to cohere Freud’s ideas (assumably from Beyond the Pleasure Principle) into a condensed and radicalized version of the original.  Even though  “thesis” is a singular noun, the act of condensing is not an attempt at unification.  To condense means to decrease the volume of many different particles by bringing them closer together.  It is an aggregation, a process where different units come together to form a group.  Laplanche brings three propositions together to form a thesis. 

The other act that Laplanche claims to carry out here is radicalization.  Radicalization is typically used to describe a major change or a departure from what is usual or traditional.  The term “radicalization” is not just a shift or a departure.  It is a different kind of change from one that just moves in a different direction; it’s a return to origins.  The change influences the entire concept all the way back to its roots; it changes what is fundamental about the concept.  It is an all-encompassing change.  Laplanche’s use of “in a sense” seems to be ambivalent—why doesn’t he say just “radicalize”?  This phrase, though, is the opposite of ambivalent, as this phrase emphasizes what follows it.  It is a specification of radicalization.  This placement performs a further specification of the word “radicalize” in that it emphasizes the importance of knowing the meaning of the word radicalize, and it enacts that specification of meaning into the text itself.  Adding “in a sense” is an interpretation, having important implications for Laplanche’s overall project of interpreting Freud.

This sentence acts as a microcosm for Laplanche’s project in that his interpretation is a radicalization of Freud in general.  By returning to the fundamentals of Freud, he radicalizes Freud’s work.  Laplanche changes the direction of the way that Freud has been read by others by returning to its origin.  Presumably, he is responding to the idea that the self and the ego are separate things: “The crucial point, however, which is already indicated by Freud and renders useless and even fallacious a distinction between an “ego” and a “self,” is the observation that the genesis of the ego itself is marked by the indissolubly linked image of self and other” (54).  Here, the stakes of the return lie in distinctions.  Complete and total distinctions distort the origins of psychoanalysis in such a way that requires a radicalization of the misreading of Freud. Yet, Freud and Laplanche make distinctions all the time (the different between fear and fright, for example).  What then becomes important is how these distinctions are made and the process behind differentiation versus unification.  This process, as Laplanche performs through this sentence, is condensation.  It is a balance between discrete units that are completely different from each other and an attempt to unify discrete units into a coherent whole.  The process is somewhere between these two extremes: it’s a recognition of the parts of the whole; it’s cellular.

The idea of parts of the whole is enacted in the structure of this sentence.  Laplanche uses semicolons rather than commas or periods to do this work.  Semicolons indicate that each of the mini sentences in the larger sentences are parts of the whole.  The condition of the use of semicolons, though, require that each piece set off by semicolons is a complete sentence and can exist on its own if it had to, but they’re also closely related more so than if they were just separated by periods.  They’re not quite discrete but they’re not quite unified either.  The pieces set off by semicolons are ambivalent that way.  Also, Laplanche calls each of them “propositions” which are part of the larger thesis that he is condensing.  Yet, he then calls each of them a “thesis” when he’s talking about them at the cellular level, performing the ambivalence of the semicolons in another way.  What’s more, these labels of “thesis” are enclosed with dashes, setting “thesis” off while at the same time emphasizing it.

Additionally, the colon joins the smaller cellular sentences to the larger sentence and to Laplanche’s acts of condensation and radicalization.  The colon requires that each thing that follows it be closely related to what precedes it.  This construction also requires a return to the origin.

Here’s a chart that illustrates how each cell of the sentence looks on its own and how the colon enacts a return:

Narcissism is a libidinal investment of the self, a love of the self—a thesis which is anything but surprising.

But this libidinal cathexis of self occurs in man necessarily through a libidinal cathexis of the ego.

And—the third thesis—this libidinal cathexis of the ego is inseparable from the very constitution of the human ego.

Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: Narcissism is a libidinal investment of the self, a love of the self—a thesis which is anything but surprising.

Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: But this libidinal cathexis of self occurs in man necessarily through a libidinal cathexis of the ego.

Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: And—the third thesis—this libidinal cathexis of the ego is inseparable from the very constitution of the human ego.

While my purpose behind separating these out was to illustrate how each cell can exist on its own and how the colon requires a return, actually seeing it written this way is strange.  By making each cell discrete from the larger context of the sentence, a few things stand out: the fact that “three propositions” is followed by just one and the fact that the last two cells following the colon start with coordinating conjunctions.  These coordinating conjunctions are unemployed, wandering around without jobs, unable to integrate themselves into the economy of the sentence.  This sentence is constructed as cellular, as a relation of parts to a whole.  It offers a way of reading relationality in psychoanalysis as a relationality of the middle or the gap: the ego and the self aren’t entirely separate but they aren’t entirely unified, either.