N O T E S

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1. Cf. "the reference to desire is not a psychological reference

- and reference to the hysteric's desire is not a psychological refe-

rence" (Lacan 1977: 13)

2. Which explains why feminists are at pains to stress Kristeva's

exceptional status within/without feminism. For to unequivocally re-

cognize her as their own would imply a thorough revision of the femi-

nist (and, by the same token, of the poststructuralist) project.

3.Lacan himself is even more explicit in pointing out the common

structure of desire and phallus/Law (cf. 1977: 154,226; 1988b: 38-39;

1966: 103-115)

4. In the lenient wording of his adepts this means that Lacan "is

not a 'poststructuralist'" (Zizek 1987)

5. Cf. the discussion in the preceding chapters.

6. On "whites" see Lacan 1977: 110; on the "fan-like structure"

cf.Lacan 1988a: 83

7. I say "Lacanian", but may it not be the other way round? Alt-

hough the problem of copyright has no bearing on our analysis, in my vi-

ew, it is Derrida who is the borrower. The terms in question stem from

the Eleventh Seminar of Lacan originally published in 1973. For his

part, Derrida never refers to it in his attacks on Lacan (1988/1975/;

1980; 1991), albeit this Seminar so strikingly invalidates his criti-

que.

8. Derrida's "edges" have a neat structural counterpart in La-

can's notion of the "rim" (1977: 171-173)

9. This paradox has been carefully examined in the preceding

chapters.

10. Ronell's telephone is a memory-machine precisely because it

is the machine of desire, and this thanks to its intratextual

self-reflexive structure: "The telephone has already reproduced itself

by producing the effect of scrambling, tampering with a proper's name

spelling, throwing to the winds utterances whose exact positioning may

be wed to transparent veils of forgetfulness" (1989: 285). Thus for-

getting is transparent. Which comfirms our assessment of poststructu-

ralist semiotics as a hysterical one, for it is precisely the hysteri-

cal desire which guarantees the provisional albeit constitutive status

of forgetting as loss/lack. Generally speaking, "'desire' should not

be distinguished from 'memory', as I prefer that the terms should rep-

resent one phenomenon which is a suffusion of both. I have tried to

express this by saying that 'memory' is the past tense of 'desire'"

(Bion 1988: 19). This is why the poststructuralist option in favour of

desire promotes the transmission of tradition.

11. The reader who might wish to dismiss this reading as biased

is advised to bear in mind that another one would turn out to be even

more disastrous. For the only other possibility to read this dictum is

to assume that the lack has its place outside of the dissemination,

whereas Derrida's project hinges on the assertion that nothing can es-

cape the disseminating movement, and this because to surmise that the-

re can be an "outside" means to acknowledge that - at least partially

- logocentrism remains "deconstruction-proof"

12. Cf. discussion in the preceding chapters.

13. The difficulty to delineate both ailments is a leit-motif of

Freud's correspondence with Jung (Freud-Jung 1974). See also papers in

Spillius 1988

14.The notion of "noise" is central to Ronell's telephonics (cf.

1989: 135,259,386)

15. The very wording of crucial passages in "The Telephone Book"

is recognizably Derridaean. For instance: "For our purposes ... it wo-

uld be necessary to figure out whether the concept of operator can in

fact be seriously dislocated from the very possibility of a telephone

connection ... or if the Operator is not already instated in Heideg-

ger's call of conscience" (80). Hence under the innovative phrasing we

discover "familiar, all too familiar" Derridaean "pharmakon".

16. The telephone as a material thing as well as the semiosis it

fosters is a culmination of "a long line of deprivations" (Ronell

1989: 128): it is a Lack par excellence.

17. Similarly to Derrida's dissemination, the brunt of Deleu-

ze/Guattari boils down to arguing in favour of desire which lacks not-

hing. However, this line of thought pursued to its logical end bares

the fundamental paradox of the notion under examination. For the desi-

re which lacks nothing is the insatiable desire, the desire which

cannot be satisfied by definition, i.e., the desire that does not lack

this or that object but is the Lack itself. This paradox constantly

escapes attention (cf. Ronell 1989: 454)

18. Ironically, Derrida himself unwittingly admits that one of

his main notions abolishes the bar on which the sign's arbitrariness

depends: " ... the veils, the fabric that hides the bars ... of the

fort/da" (1977: 130). Since all the notion of Derrida are essentially

interchangeable, what holds for "veil" holds equally for his other

concepts.

19. However trite, this warning is relevant now as it was at the

outset of the psychoanalytical endeavour. For the refutation of the

"bedside" attitude towards a literary text in itself does not alter

anything so long as the applied psychoanalysis remains faithful to the

framework of restoration/reparation (cf. Segal 1977; Fuller 1980; Eh-

renzweig 1970; Gagnebin 1994). Paradoxically, this framework is fore-

grounded by deconstructively informed versions of it, --precisely becau-

se these versions place their stakes on the notion of transference

(Felman 1988)

20. And not by chance "mouth" is allotted such a prominent place

in Ronell's telephonics (cf.1989: 88,99,102,104,128,169,253-254)

21. Witness the newest transcription of intertextuality which

abolishes arbitrariness precisely by utilizing the notion of the lack

(hole) and in doing so optates for the language of the Mother (hence

the reference to "symbiosis"): "The concrete images in my framework

are the mortise and the tenon -terms that are normally used in cabinet-

making and terms that presuppose a human creator (writer). A mortise

is a hole in a framework designed to receive the end of some other part,

usually a tenon, which is a projecting piece of wood made for insertion

into a corresponding cavity (especially a mortise) in another piece.Thus

the two terms are closely linked and form a kind of symbiosis. Symbiosis

is an integral part of the theory of writing" (Durey 1991: 632). The

impossibility to conceive of intertextuality purely structurally, amply

demonstrated by Durey's review,corresponds neatly to the psychoanalytical

quandary with the unconscious (see below). This is the paradox of hys-

terical semiosis which fosters and subverts intertextuality. Hence the

return of the author whose grave intertextuality was said to be. That

psychology is bound to re-appear at the end of intertextual theorizing

means that this theory cannot acount for the structure of a literary text.

22. Significantly, Sperling's hermeneutics revives the mother-child

relationship (762,763,765)

23. However, even clinically the result remains, strictly spea-

king, rather problematical for it is far from being clear how thorough

is the alleviation of symptoms achieved along these lines. (Does this

technique really preclude their return?) In other words, clinical

psychoanalysis inevitably leads to theoretical problems which it can-

not solve itself (in our case, the problem is a profound one: the

age-old controversy "means vs. ends").

24. Laurent Jenny is quite correct in pointing out that, in the

last resort, the very possibility of interpretation hinges on the

existence of intertextuality (cf. 1982: 495-517)

25. Irony resides in the fact that Samuel Weber who thus far rep-

resents the only exception from the rule (and whose translation of

the passage in question we have slightly modified to make it match more

strictly the original) promotes the very structure exposed by Nietzsche

and does so under the motto of being "more deconstructive than Derrida

himself" (1987: 5-17)

26. Cf.the whole psychoanalytical tradition of equating (i.e.,

symbolization) eyes and phallus going back to Freud's essay on "The

Uncanny"

27. However rarely, Lacan's students acknowledge that the

"Absolute Master" in actual fact espouses "parole" instead of "langue"

or "langage" (cf. Forrester 1990: 148; the only other examples of this

candidness are those of Felman 1980 and Bellemin-Noel 1982) but in do

ing so try to make a virtue of necessity. Unfortunately this attempt

is doomed to fail. To be sure one can easily dismiss Lacan's explicit

reverence toward Saussure as an instance of self-deception and argue

that his theory is much more close to that of Austin (the point of vi-

ew of the mentioned authors). But this implies the foregrounding of

the speech of the psychoanalytic session. However, to proceed along

these lines one has to drop all discussion of Lacan's dictums - the

unconscious is structured like language and by the same token is the

discourse of the Other. To put it bluntly (and the example of Forres-

ter allows us to do this), to discard them precisely because they can-

not be reinterpreted within the framework of the speech acts theory.

It is up to the reader to decide what would become of Lacan's theory

without these fundamental concepts.

28. It is exactly the hindrance of penetration which characterizes

the symptoms of Mrs. A. (752-753). Hence the structural impossibility

of a symbolical interpretation of obsessions.

29. In the wake of Lacan the model of dream interpretation has

come to be elevated to the status of the psychoanalytical interpreta-

tion as such (Major 1974 ; Skura 1981)

30. This throws light on the real function of "interruption" pro-

pounded by posrstructuralism as a subversion of communication. That

the structure advocated by Ronell, Torok and Abraham (1978) and Lap-

lanche is identical is a quite telling fact in its own right.

31. In his book on anxiety (1981) Laplanche does not pursue this

theme.

32. Although in the generally accepted view Derrida's celebrated

thematization of the "always-already" is opposed to logocentrism pre-

cisely by virtue of the fact that it "focuses on ... the retensional

dimension of intentionality", the result is essentially the same as

the one achieved by tradition, to wit, the reconstitution of memory,

that is, of the tradition itself: "the past's belated reconstitution"

(Gasche 1987: x-xi). It is precisely this reconstitution which obses-

sions make impossible.

33. This type of movement is peculiar to the obsessional neurosis

(cf. Kestenberg 1980) in general and to Sperling's patient in particu-

lar (756). Which obviously questions Sperling's diagnosis.

34. Consider for instance the role railroads in the elaboration of

psychoanalytic theory of hysteria. "Traumatic neurosis came to the

attention of the medical profession in the mid to late nineteenth cen-

tury as a result ... of the rise of industrial manufacturing and the

importance of claims pertaining to industrial accidents for the insu-

rance companies. These were "pension hysterias" of which Abraham wrote

in 1907. As one might have expected, given early railways and indust-

ry, the English physicians were preoccupied with these questions

first, coining the terms "railway spine", "railway brain" and others

to cover the clinical pictures that seemed to be a direct result of

accidents suffered on railways and in the factories. But it was Char-

cot and, following him Breuer and Freud who made the most of these

clinical pictures. Thus Charcot argued that these neuroses, which see-

med to follow from accidents, displayed the same symptoms as hysteria

and neurasthenia, thus qualifying them as classical neuroses" (Forres-

ter 1990: 194). The problem which consequently came to the fore was

that of trauma. And it is this problem that radically delineates Fre-

ud's thinking striving to escape the notion of lack from the thinking

of his alleged followers, Forrester and Lacan included, which tries to

promote hysterical semiosis by collating trauma with the device of

Nachtraglichkeit peculiar to the latter. However, even such a conven-

tional account as Forrester's cannot help but highlight this crucial

difference. In effect, trauma is first and foremost an "excess (of

stimuli)" (193) whereas the hysterical semiosis espoused by Lacan as a

sole psychoanalytic mode of operation "feeds upon frustration ...

which Lacan's practice ... heightens" (203). Hence the role allotted

by Lacan to belated understanding, Nachtraglichkeit which allows to

transform trauma into lack, the latter being the sine qua non of sig-

nification. However, Forrester is candid enough to admit that Freud

himself already at the stage of "Studies on Hysteria" "had to discard

the causal role of absence ... a term that describes both a pathologi-

cal phenomenon and a putative cause of other pathological phenomena"

(192). "Our conception of trauma is thus one that combines the overw-

helmingly obvious with the mysteriously ineffective ... this absence

is the reason for the efficacy of the trauma ... the efficacy of this

event, its traumatic character is specifically predicated upon the

lack of physical effects" (195-196). Unfortunately this line of reaso-

ning ends in an impasse. For there arises the question of conversion

hysteria - that very question which was astutely stressed by Sperling

in the paper mentioned above. Not only is Sperling an astute analyst

but also a candid one. Witness her conclusion that within the hysteri-

cal framework to thematize trauma means to end with the paradoxical

result of expelling conversion symptoms from the aetiology of hysteria

(1977: 770). And with this conclusion Sperling ends her paper leaving

unanswered the question of how then one should conceive of conversion

which becomes a veritable "floating signifier" without a signified (to

wit, without a place in the aetiology of neuroses or psychoses). Which

means that astuteness and candidness do not necessary go hand in hand

with boldness. To avoid our impasse all one has to do is to unequivo-

cally and truly "return to Freud" although this implies to challenge

the psychoanalytic edifice. If the hysterical semiosis as a "repetiti-

on with a difference" (Forrester 1990: 202: 203) depends on the effi-

cacy of trauma which can be ensured only by the transformation of the

trauma into a lack - and this is what Lacanian theory of the repetiti-

on compulsion boils down to (203-206) - then Freud's own view seems to

be exactly an opposite. Witness the passage from the "Project for a

Scientific Psychology" (1962: 357) cited above which clearly links se-

miological inefficiency with an excess and thereby restores to the

trauma its subversive status of a "failure of translation" (1962: 233)

- a failure that from the point of view of literary theory is nothing

else than a subversion of intertextuality. The only chance to refute

our conclusion is to point out that this frog-like leap should in it-

self be justified. However, it is nobody else than Forrester himself

who has most explicitly stressed that "we must approach the problem of

trauma more textually and historically" (194) - since its clinical va-

lue has been diminished - but, as we see, textual and historical rea-

lities (that of Christie's novel and of Freud's theory) are repugnant to

the conclusions which Lacanians would like to reach through adopting

the mentioned point of view.

35. Cf. Christie's own "4:50 from Paddington" and "The Mystery of

the Blue Train", P.Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train" and "Ripley's Ga-

me", Freeman W. Crofts' "Death on a Train" and "The 12.30 from Croy-

don" among many examples.

36. "The literature through which the telephone threads its peal

is of course vast, and deserves another study to sustain it" (Ronell

1989: 440). In the most general fashion our problem was already posed

by Hart Crane: "For unless poetry can absorb the machine, i.e., accli-

matize it as naturally and causally as trees, cattle, galleons, cast-

les and all other human associations of the past, then poetry has fai-

led of its full contemporary function" (quoted by Vierek 1953: 52).

The gist of the matter is that this acclimatization runs counter to

the poststructuralist option in favour of intertextual desire.

37. What supports our analysis is that we can easily relinquish

gloating over another paradox of Derrida's disseminating interpretati-

on which, when applied to the textual reality, cannot help but accentu-

ate the lack that theoretically has no place in it. To stress that the

text on the death drive is athetic means that the death drive is lac-

king. And this is the brunt of Derrida's exegesis.

38. Interestingly, the route of the orient express seems to cor-

respond neatly to Derrida's best wishes in respect to the intenerary

of the letter /signifier: far from being a direct one, it is circuito-

us to the point where the arrival at the destination seems to be an

exception, if not a miracle.

39. Another vital point which follows logically from the hysteri-

cal nature of the plan of the perfect murder is that this party is

characterized in terms of bisexuality: "... the description of the

mythical 'small dark man with a womanish voice', a convenient descrip-

tion, since it had the merit of not incriminating any of the actual

Wagon Lit conductors and would apply equally well to a man or a wo-

man" (186)

40. This elucidates the real motives of the poststructuralist po-

lemically exaggerated reluctance to "break the surface". In actual

fact, the poststructuralist hermeneutics operates at a deeper level

than the traditional one making its chief concern not the content of

interpretation but the laying down of its foundation - a task left

unaccomplished by Western hermeneutics.

41. "... the detective story takes certain features inherent in

any narrative and concentrates its textual operations upon their dep-

loyment; here, too, it exaggerates the reader's natural wish to iden-

tify with the characters in a story and offers him one character in

particular who fulfills the criteria of an ideal reader" (Most 1983:

349)

42. According to Derrida, Lacan's final separation from Dupin ex-

posing the blindness of the latter and thus allowing for Lacan's own

insight promotes mastery. This may be true or not. But the gist of the

matter is that the dialectic of Lacanian hermeneutics corresponds ne-

atly to the deconstructive dialectic of blindness/insight elaborated

by Paul de Man.

43. The crucial point which made of Mrs.Hubbard's role the most

important one was to prevent Poirot from Focusing his attention on the

door, that is, in our terms, to abolish the bar.

44. Contrary to Major's remark, echoed by Hull, that "Freud seems

to have as little need of the Rat Man's theory as Dupin of police ins-

pector" (429), the mode of interpretation advocated by Major by neces-

sity privileges the police over the detective and thus leads to the

distortion of the textual reality.