THE VICISSITUDES OF HERMENEUTIC DESIRE IN THE SPACE OF THE PERFECT

MU/ORDER

Vadim Linetski

To say that "desire" is just another notion of the current criti-

cal parlance would be an understatement. In many crucial respects it

is the notion - an issue which, in the final analysis, sustains the

unifying labeling of the contemporary hermeneutic procedures and prac-

tices as "poststructuralism". Unfortunately, it is precisely this no-

tion that is directly responsible for one of the main theoretical dis-

contents of poststructuralism - a tender self-diagnosis (cf.Kaplan

1988) meant as a preventive stroke in order to bar any serious thera-

peutic intervention. However, such an intervention is what our present

inquiry aims at.

Why poststructuralism has placed its stakes on desire is clear

enough. Thematized along psychoanalytical lines, desire is regarded as

a force which can radically subvert the logocentric paradigm as such

and in doing so furnish us with a new textual as well as exegetical

model. Not for nothing this model, especially in feminist theory, hap-

pens to be propounded primarily as a model of new subjectivity delive-

red from the burden that logocentrism has imposed on it (claims on

mastery, law, order, authority etc.). According to Lacan, it is preci-

sely desire which, introducing the dimension of intertextual depene-

dence on the discourse(s) of the other(s), acts as a guarantor of his

fundamental postulates - unconscious is structured like a language and

is the discourse of the Other. What constantly escapes attention is

that these postulates cannot be sustained separately. Obviously, the

necessary link can be provided only by the notion of desire, and this

because only desire can establish a signifying "see-saw" (Lacan 1988a:

168) which connects the subject and the Other through the mutual lack.

What remains unthematized is that this connection (signification, com-

munication) will immediately collapse the moment we withdraw the crutc-

hes of desire. However, the gist of the problem is that even these

crutches cannot improve the matters in any substantial way. For, on

more careful inspection, the option in favour of desire qua lack turns

out to be incompatible with Lacanian concept of unconscious qua langu-

age. Irony resides in the fact that this option is inevitable from the

poststructuralist point of view.

With this in mind it becomes immediately clear that to challenge

the view of desire as a liberatory force (cf. Goodheart 1991) means

not to challenge desire at all. Desire is a psychoanalytical concept,

and psychoanalysis, as one of the theorists of desire has timely re-

minded us, "is not a voluntarism" (Rose 1989: 103). What distinguishes

the poststructuralist stance from the celebration of desire by Herbert

Marcuse is precisely the fact that the question of whether desire li-

berates or not is relegated to the periphery, and hardly surprising,

for in order to play the role assigned to it on poststructuralist the-

ory desire has to be purged from all subjective phenomenality.The cru-

cial point is to sustain desire not as a liberatory but first and fore-

most as a structural force,as a structural principle (1) which produces

subjectivity by the very movement of producing objectivity. And this

production is possible only insofar as both dimensions are grounded in

the mutual lack. Unfortunately, it is this grounding which undermines

both fundamental concepts of Lacanism - that of unconscious and that

of language, questioning his celebrated allegiance to Freud as well as

his equally celebrated Saussurean stance.

So long as Freud is concerned the paradox is more pungent and ob-

vious. In effect, the simple fact that "desire is essentially a nega-

tivity" (Lacan 1988a: 147) makes desire incompatible with the notion

of unconscious which, as everybody knows and Lacan is the first to

stress, "is inaccesible to contradiction" (Lacan 1977: 31). On the ot-

her hand, according to Freud's essay on "Negation" (1915), negation is

an essential manifestation of consciousness. Hence the foregrounding

of desire, especially in feminist theory, cannot help but lead preci-

sely to that "cut off of the concept of the unconscious" in which

J.Rose quite correctly sees a main danger to feminism (1989: 89) and

this because unconscious should reveal "a resistance to identity at

the very heart of the psychic life" upon which, in Rose's view, "rests

above all feminism'S affinity with psychoanalysis" (91). However, to

maintain this affinity is impossible along the lines of desire. Wit-

ness Rose's own acknowledgment that within this framework the woman

can be defined only negatively, that is, "purely against the man (she

is the negative of that definition - 'man is not woman')" (74).

Which explains why the Freudian quandary has a necessary Saussu-

rean corollary. The Lacanian unconscious can destabilize logocentric

identity only inasmuch as it is equated with language: "Lacan calls

this the Other - the site of language ... where ... 'identity' and

'wholeness' ... certainty, knowledge and truth" are revealed as adhe-

ring to the order of fantasy" (55-56), and this thanks to the fact

that "speech ... is the transmission of desire" (Lacan 1988a: 244),

"of the loss of the object, of the difficulty inherent in the subjec-

tivity itself" (Rose 1989: 64). And once again it is nothing else than

the notion of desire as lack/loss that confronts this train of thought

with a subversive paradox unwittingly brought to the fore by Lacan

himself: "Modifying the formula I have of desire as unconscious -

man's desire is the desire of the Other - I would say that it is a

question of a sort of desire on the part of the Other" (1977: 115).If there

are two desires and,consequently,two lacks,then both terms - self and

the Other - are interchangeable.Which amounts to saying that there is no

Other with the capital 'O', to wit, no language, at least in the Saus-

surean sense of this term.

Thus the refutation of Lacanism seems to be inevitable. Rose's

attempt to preclude such a refutation is bound to fail precisely beca-

use her analysis is not thorough enough to expose the logic leading to

this refutation. Consequently, she remains blind to the fact that the

substitution of the language of the Mother for Lacan's language of the

Father - a common move of feminist theorizing - has the same result as

Lacan's own speculations. Ironically, J.Rose remains up to this day the

only one to passionately argue against the mentioned twist.

Hence the value of her critique of Kristeva's work. Rose is quite

astute in pointing out that Kristeva's interest in the interaction

between the mother and child "immediately produces a split between the

order of the mother and of the father, giving to the first the privi-

lege of the semiotic and separating it out from the culture in which

it is inscribed ... Lacan's emphasis on the symbolic was first of all

developed against this tendency ... as soon as Kristeva gives to this

relation the status of origin - psychic or cultural, or both - it is

handed over to the realm of senses, outside of all history and form"

(153). Strangely but not illogically, Rose is reluctant to notice that

in her own analysis exactly the same impasse characterizes Kristeva's

early - Lacanian - stage: "Lautreamont and Mallarme are chosen by

Kristeva because of the ... marginal expression ... But in so far as

these writers fail to move back in the opposite direction and to take

up the recognisable social institutions and meanings from which they

have been banned, so they fall prey to aestheticism, mysticism and

anarchy" (146). In other words, "revolution du langage poetique" -

practical as well as theoretical, as is too often the case with revo-

lutions in general, was doomed to end in reaction, failing to live up

to its own aims and aspirations. However, it is precisely this reacti-

on, to wit, Kristeva's inability to propose a genuinely new theoreti-

cal framework, which should be thematized.

What makes of Kristeva a test case from our point of view is the

fact that she has amply explored both paths along which the feminist

thought moves, showing their ultimate convergence.(2) Not accidently,

Rose ignores the obvious similarity of both Kristevan stages, for to

thematize it would mean to expose the fundamental failure of post-

structuralist project committed to the notion of desire.So long as her-

meneutic desire is concerned feminism can really teach us an invaluable

lesson, baring inherent in this notion self-deconstructive logic care-

fully obscured by other poststructuralist trends and at the same time,

despite itself, highlighting a promising way out.

To prove that our assessment of Kristeva's work as well as Rose's

critique is correct suffice it to focuse on Rose's surprise and inabi-

lity to explain Kristeva's recent dictum: "I desire the Law" (1983:

237). This surprise reiterated throughout Rose's analysis has not found

an explanatory appeasement albeit the question "What has happened?"

(Rose 1989: 142) need not even be posed, for Kristevan dictum is

already a more than sufficient answer. In fact, "I desire the Law" boils

down to a tautology: desire is Law. Significantly, this tautology

makes its appearance in Rose's own discourse where desire and

Law/phallus are defined in similar terms: "Desire can be defined as

the 'remainder' of the subject, something which is always left over,

but which has no content as such. Desire functions much as the zero

unit in the numerical chain - its place is both constitutive and emp-

ty" (55); "The phallus always belongs somewhere else; it breaks the

two-term relation and initiates the order of exchange ... but the sta-

tus of the phallus is a fraud" (62-64).(3) Thus the first paradox to

claim our attention thanks to Kristeva's candidness is the following

one: to optate for desire means to optate for the Law since the struc-

ture of both is the same. However, the gist of the matter is that, as

we shall soon have an occasion to ascertain ourselves, this structure

has nothing in common with the Saussurean understanding of the lingu-

istic structure as well as with the Freudian view of the unconscious .

Kristeva's dictum is that very frame of reference within which

one can at last appreciate the full impact of the famous Lacan-Derrida

controversy over the notorious letter/phallus/signifier. Over-abundant

commentaries have had a negative effect: contributing nothing to a

real understanding, they made the issue appear trite. Derrida repeats

Lacan's mistakes, B.Johnson - Derrida's etc. - ad infinitum. Taken at

face value, Derridaean critique is an instance of pungent misreading.

However, the logic of this misreading, which thus far nobody has vo-

lunteered to explore, proves to be subversive of that very hermeneutical

practice which commentators gloating over Derrida's fallacies help to

promote.

"The letter, says Lacan, cannot be divided ... This indivisibility,

says Derrida, is odd indeed, but becomes comprehensible if it is

seen as an idealization of the phallus, whose integrity is necessary

for the edification of the entire psychoanalytical system" (Johnson

1977: 155). The logic of Johnson's analysis suggests that the same

movement of idealization in a displaced form would make its appearance in

Derrida's own discourse. However, Johnson fails to provide an example.

In itself this already means that the whole transferential machine of

mutual entanglement comes to a standstill. Irony resides in the fact

that this outcome can easily be avoided but the price to be paid is

the total deconstruction of the mechanism in question.

That the Lacanian phallus/Law is indivisible seems to confirm the

generally accepted view according to which Lacan remains privy to the

logocentric paradigm.(4) Even if we grant pertinence to this point of

view, which as was shown elsewhere is more than problematical,(5) we

can do so only with a corrective: the indivisibility in question is

grounded in a fundamental lack - in that very lack which guarantees

the indestructibility of desire (cf.Lacan 1977: 32). Now, exactly the

same dialectics governs Derridaean dissemination propounded as a wea-

pon against Law, mastery and order.

On the one hand, Derrida is at pains to stress that "the lack do-

es not have its place in dissemination" (1988: 185), but on the other,

the latter comes to be defined as "the failure to reach a destination

(which definitively rebels against the destination of the lack)"

(197). Unfortunately this rearticulation which comes suspiciously clo-

se to a mere word play cannot improve matters, to wit, to delineate

two hermeneutical models. And this because dissemination is by defini-

tion an unrestricted, movement which no one can stop (Derrida 1981a: 253).

In other words dissemination is indestructible just as desire is, and,

by the same token, its motor is once again the lack. Witness Derrida's

own formulations: "... the blank or the whiteness (is) the totality,

however infinite, of the polysemic series, plus the carefully spa-

ced-out splitting of the whole, the fanlike form of the text. This

plus is not just one extra valence, a meaning that might enrich the

polysemic series" (252). Not only the mere wording - "whiteness",

"spaced-out splitting", "fanlike form" (6) - is Lacanian (7) (a fact

suggestive in its own right so long as we are concerned with the dis-

course of a man who is so particular about the terms he uses prefer-

ring those of his own coinage), but also the content conveyed: for "it

follows - ... that any description of 'themes', particularly in Mal-

larme's work, will always run aground at the edges (8) of this greater

or lesser extent of theme which makes it possible that 'there is' a

text, that is, a readability without a signified (which will be decre-

ed to be an unreadability by the reflexes of fright): an undesirable

that throws desire back upon itself" (253). If the Derridaean

"Plus"/"supplement" has nothing to do with enrichment, then precisely

because it introduces a lack, an intertextual hole making a given text

dependent on the discourses of the other(s). Which means that a text,

according to Derrida, is produced by the dialectics of desire ("grea-

ter or lesser extent of theme which makes it possible that 'there is'

a text") that secures an intratextual dimension of self-reflexivity

("... throws desire back upon itself"). But the effect of this

self-reflexivity is the arrival of the hermeneutical desire at its

destination, its coincidence with itself. And this arrival is all the

more secure since the notion of truth thanks to Derrida's postal ser-

vice remains in "souffrance". Paradoxically, it is this very notion

which, appearances notwithstanding, precludes the arrival of the let-

ter in Lacan's reading.(9) In other words, subsuming desire under the

notion of truth the traditional hermeneutics makes its own enterprise

fallible and insecure. It follows that the poststructuralist option,

pretending to deconstruct the tradition, furnishes, in actual fact,

the latter with a seemingly perfect semiotical construction. To put it

aphoristically, if Lacan is the purveyor of truth, then Derrida is the

purveyor of desire. And once again the difference between two roles is

the difference between two actors impersonating Oedipus.

Semiotically speaking, the space produced by the Derridaean prac-

tice of spacing is the space of the perfect order in so far as it al-

lows for a free flow of missives neither of them getting missed, fal-

ling prey to forgetfulness (10) thanks to the self-reflexive intratex-

tual device of infinite doubling (Ronell 1989: 339; Derrida 1988:

203). Psychoanalytically, this space is the space of bisexuality which

is nothing else than Derrida's "double square" (1988: 197): "... And

now to bisexuality! I am accustoming myself to regarding every sexual

act as a process in which four individuals are involved" (Freud 1962:

249). To correlate both descriptions means to show that the poststruc-

turalist hermeneutical model is radically opposed to the Freudian con-

cept of the unconscious, whereas the textual model propounded by Der-

rida, Lacan and the likes discards the basic Saussurean postulate abo-

ut the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign.

The fundamental paradox of Derrida's grammatology envisaged as a

critique of Saussure's alleged logocentrism is that, contrary to what

one is justified to expect, it leads to the reconfirmation of the mo-

tivated character of the link between the signifier and the signified.

This reconfirmation is the necessary consequence of the option in fa-

vour of the disseminating desire, for the emerging structure comes to

be grounded in the lack/loss which makes an intertextual connection

between two signifying entities ineluctable, i.e., motivated. However,

to rest satisfied with this general description would mean to miss the

most interesting part of the story.

That something is fundamentally wrong with Derrida's anti-Saussu-

reanism was recently sensed by one reader. Unfortunately, Gary Genos-

ko's explorations closely resemble those of J.Rose. Both of them rema-

in the only ones to perceive respective troubles whose real nature and

origin they are unable to disclose.

Genosko's intervention is rather a rambling one, although his aim

deserves our full appreciation:

"Everyone may have learned the formula 'value precedes significa-

tion', but the focus on value has served to shift attention away from

its poorer partner, signification. To focus on signification is not to

seek to dis- or re-place value or to repeat the same kind of misemphasis,

but rather, to create a interpretative foil against those who have

subsumed signification under value" (1994: 18).

Genosko has his own suspicions as to whether Derridaean "differance"

does not by chance abolish the Saussurean bar which separates the sig-

nifier and the signified. But the conclusion he draws, namely, that

Derrida's grammatology is just another instance of an overdue emphasis

on value to the detriment of signification, is an over-simplification,

if not a misrepresentation of the problem under discussion. This is

why it is not surprising that in the last resort Genosko proves him-

self unable not only to attain his aim but even to suggest anything

worthwhile in respect to Derrida-Saussure controversy.

The gist of the matter is that in itself Derrida's discarding of

the bar - just as Genosko's defence of the latter - promotes neither

signification nor value. For it is not "the ongoing search for a third

term whose absence has driven readers of Saussure off the track and

into extralinguistic reality" (Genosko 1994: 19) but the quandary with

the sign's fourthness to which our problem boils down.

In effect, according to Saussure, the sign is constituted by four

terms: signifier, signified, the separating bar and the delimiting

circle (or oval). Genosko does refer to the fourth term but only in

order to ensure the structural role of the bar failing to appreciate

the structural function of the circle: "the bar is literally third

(this does not mean that the circle is literally fourth)" (21). What I

am going to argue is precisely that the circle as the fourth term sho-

uld be taken literally, i.e., seriously.

Paradoxically, the priority in this respect should be granted to

nobody else than to Derrida himself, although he is certainly wise

enough to claim no copyright. It was up to his follower to unwittingly

expose the inventor.

Taken at face value, dissemination as a free unrestricted move-

ment of signifiers/missives induces an average reader to believe that

Derrida is the most stubborn propagator of the sign's arbitrariness.

In effect. what else if not the arbitrariness can be inferred from a

passage such as this one: "The non-sense or non-theme of the spacing

that relates the different meanings to each other ... and in the pro-

cess prevents them from ever meeting up with each other cannot be ac-

counted for by any description" (Derrida 1981a: 252-253), description,

naturally enough, being equated with metalanguage/mastery. However. it

is precisely the reference to "spacing" which Derrida cannot avoid

that should set us on the right track.

As we have already heard, "the lack does not have its place in

dissemination". Unfortunately, the translation is quite adequate. The-

refore we are justified to relate this dictum to Lacanian statements

about desire and phallus/Law which similarly sustain Lacan's topology

exactly by virtue of having no place in it. And it is this non-place

of the lack which is crucial for Derrida's concept of the sign paving

way to the transformation of the arbitrary relation between signifier

and signified into a motivated one.(11) For Derrida does not simply

discard the Saussurean bar but replaces it with the notion of the hin-

ge (Derrida 1973: 139-140) which, already etimologically, corresponds

to the Lacanian see-saw of signification as an intertextual "movement

of exchange with the other" (Lacan 1988a: 174). Be it only en passant,

it is worthwhile to note that this see-saw is a Lacanian libidinizing

translation of the Freud's fort/da game, a translation that radically

excommunicates the death drive from the psychoanalytic theory.

Derrida's and Lacan's commitment to the topological mode of thin-

king is an obvious fact.(12) What is less obvious is that this topology

grounded in the notion of lack by necessity produces a space which

contains the lack, encircles it, subject it to the Law as a control-

ling restriction of dissemination. This outcome is explicitly stated

by Lacan. Suffice it to continue citing the passage from his Seminar

about "the see-saw movement, the movement of exchange with the other,

thanks to which man becomes aware of himself as body, as the empty

form of the body, in the same way as everything which is then within

him in a pure state of desire, original desire, unconstituted and con-

fused, finds expression in the wailing of the child" (1988a: 170).

This is the structure of Lacan's language of the Father. Paradoxical-

ly, the same structure characterizes the language of the Mother propo-

unded by Kristeva and the likes who foreground such essentially "phal-

lic" elements as "a pure state of desire ... unconstituted and confu-

sed", "the wailing of the child" etc. (cf.Rose 1989: 152 ff).

Unfortunately, under the rubric "and the likes" fall the majority

of Derrida's followers. In this respect the most illuminating example

provides the work of Avital Ronell which rapidly gains in popularity

as a new revolution in semiotics (a characteristic obviously implies

that other "revolutions" for all the turmoil they have caused have fa-

iled).

To justify our parenthetical remark suffice it to ponder a little

over the title of Ronell's major work - "The Telephone Book" (1989).

Viewed against the background of Ronell's allegiance to Derrida the

substitution of the telephone code for Derrida's postal one (this code

being a Derridaean code par excellence) in itself is an acknowledgment

of the deficiency of the latter. Understandably, this deficiency is

carefully obscured by Ronell. Novertheless, at least one remark in her

discourse points to the very heart of our problem.

Far from being marginal, this remark is meant to define Ronell's

stance, her option in favour of "the unnegotiable endurance of paraph-

renia" opposed to the "hysteria's finitude" (116). As has been amply

demonstrated in our preceding chapters, Derrida's theory promotes the

hysterical mode of interpretation. Equally, it was already proved that

an adjective "hysterical" is the most apt and penetrating definition

of the traditional strivings of Western hermeneutics. In this respect

to accentuate "hysteria's finitude" is another way to speak about the

actual restriction of dissemination by the Law referred to above. The-

se remarks should help the reader to understand the real nature of Ro-

nell's thrust. For Ronell's aim is to save Derridaean dissemination

from the Law to which it remains privy.

Regretably, Ronell's endeavour is doomed to fail. For one, because

thus far nobody among psychoanalysts have succeeded in delineating

hysteria and para- or schizophrenia. (13) Secondly, because Ronell's

version of schizo-analysis - and this holds true for the original ver-

sion of Deleuze/Guattari - by necessity ends in that very "celebration

of noise" (14) of the language of the Mother which - just as the langu-

age of the Father - has "psychically normative implications" (Rose

1989: 147). Hence it is hardly surprising that the telephone code can-

not help but reveal its profound identity with the postal code, so

that, in the last resort, Ronell is unable to add anything substanti-

ally new to the poststructuralist theory of communication as a "dis-

connection which actually disconnects the disconnection" (Ronell 1989:

132). (15)

However, the full impact of Ronell's failure can be appreciated

only if we bear in mind that at stake is the arbitrariness of the lin-

guistic sign. And once again despite the reinforcement of disseminati-

on by the anarchy of schizo-analysis the result is the same as in the

case of Derrida. And this because the telephonic semiosis is grounded

in lack/loss/deprivation even more profoundly and explicitly than Der-

ridaean postal semiosis.(16) Which explains why the path of schi-

zo-analysis is the royal path of the Law/castration/oedipalization. (17)

From the point of view espoused by Deleuze/Guattari, Ronell's te-

lephone is a perfect desiring machine or a machine of desire. Whereas

the description of these apparatuses in "Anti-Oedipus" remains abs-

tract and foggy, Ronell's machine is clearly first and foremost a ma-

terial thing. As every reader of Marx knows, this discursive shift is

the only possibility to test the validity of a theory.

The materialization of the machine of desire, concomitant with

the schizophrenical "engulfing transformation of the human subject in-

to a technologized entity" (Ronell 1989: 110), makes of both a perfect

container within which the seemingly amorphous continuum of signifying

desire (454) governed by a "switchboard" (116; cf. Derridaean "hinge")

becomes a full signifying entity, to wit, a motivated one. (18) Witness

the famous case of Miss St. whose body, once transformed into a machi-

ne of desire, becomes a place of intertextual inscriptions - pertain-

ing, notably, to the literary period marked by the celebration of order

- to the Weimarer classicism (125-127, 130).

Following the circular movement of poststructuralist theory in

its deconstructionist and feminist version, the movement which trans-

forms the sign's arbitrariness into a motivated signifying entity, our

own discourse itself has encircled the theory under consideration. So

it might be useful to draw some provisional conclusions.

If the Language of the Mother leads to just the same pitfall as

the language of the Father, if this pitfall is the impossibility to

utilize Saussurean theory, the stigmatization of the latter as logo-

centric being an attempt to make a virtue of necessity, then the re-

sult is a complete demise of poststructuralism which falls prey to

those very notions of mastery and Law which are its target. The ques-

tion arises whether this result is really inevitable? I do not think

so. The value of our preceding explorations stems from the fact that

we have traced the poststructuralist quandaries back to their true

origin, namely, to the notion of desire and to the mode of theoretical

thinking that it fosteres, the thinking grounded in the lack. The al-

ternative which we are going to explore allowing us to divulge a num-

ber of intriguing Freudian and Lacanian intuitions and to circumvent

poststructuralist and psychoanalytic quandaries will ultimately fur-

nish us with a genuinely new semiotical model.

Psychoanalytically, the shift we are advocating amounts to a

shift from the framework of hysteria to that of obsessional neurosis.

It is a well-known fact that the boundaries between the ailments on

which psychoanalysis traditionally focuses constantly tend to become

blurred. However, this impasse does not invalidate psychoanalysis as

such, as one might be led to assume. And this because the problem has

bearing outside the psychoanalytic domain boiling down to the age-old

contradiction between theory and praxis. And here psychoanalysis can

teach the humanities an invaluable lesson.

For the mentioned impasse is in actual fact a purely subjective

affair stemming from the reluctance of the psychoanalytic edifice to

differentiate strictly between clinical, therapeutical attitude aimed

at restoration and the theoretical one which, as Freud was the first

to point out in "The Beyond of the Pleasure Principle", can indulge in

speculations. In order not to loose ground one has only to constantly

refer his/her theorizing to the textual reality and to keep in mind

that a text is not a patient.(19) Which means that the applied psycho-

analysis can free itself from its precarious status of an ancillary to

the clinical mainstream becoming instead a true site of theoretical

advancements.

Which is not to say that the applied psychoanalysis can relinqu-

ish all reference to the clinical data. On the contrary. The gist of

the matter is to acquisce oneself with interpreting them in a manner

essentially different from the therapeutical one. Appearances notwith-

standing, this mode of interpretation, in the last resort, will enrich

clinic itself helping to clarify a number of crucial theoretical ques-

tions which cannot be satisfactorily addressed and resolved by a cli-

nician.

One of these questions is the urgent necessity to delineate hys-

teria from obsessional neurosis. Freud's failure to do so stems exact-

ly from the fact that at the crucial initial stage he was ensnared in

therapeutical concerns. And only during the rare moments of pure theo-

rizing some insights were allowed to announce themselves. One of these

insights provides an apt starting point for our investigation.

I refer to the letter to Jung of 21.12.1908 in which Freud not

only is reluctant to accept the Jungian view of the libidinal lack

("underproduction of libido") as the trigger of dementia praecox, but

conceding that such a lack may actually play a certain role in the ae-

tiology of this ailment, is bent upon maintaining that in case of me-

lancholia/mania "one can do perfectly well without this notion" (Fre-

ud-Jung 1974: 212). The value of this statement can hardly be over-es-

timated especially because it is made in respect to melancholia which

as it seems so obviously foregrounds the lack (mourning over the lost

object). Generally,this statement allows us to surmise that Freud's

thinking, contrary to the thinking of his adepts and critics, was not

grounded in the notion of the lack (or at least was constantly stri-

ving to free itself from it). Which means that, contrary to what is

generally believed, "Freud's epistemological paradigm" (Ronell 1989:

97) is an attempt to expell the lack as castration and/or Law. For the

remark just cited is an echo of a passage from the famous "Project for

a Scientific Psychology" which in the search for knowledge grants pri-

macy to the "experiences of satisfaction" (nonlack) over those of de-

sire and its progenies - wish and anticipation (Freud 1962: 360). What

should be retained is that it is satisfaction, and not the loss, which

is primordial and unconditioned.

To be sure, even if conceived along these lines satisfaction pro-

duces desire as lack, and this while every satisfaction calls for a

reproduction, repetition (360). Thus one might be led to believe that

Freud actually "doesn't take a step without then, with the next step,

retracting it" (1980: 153), as Derrida would have it. However, as we

shall momentarily see, Derrida is all too hasty in celebrating the

triumph of undecidability which, despite its claims to complicate,

proves to be an over-simplification of the textual reality, at least

of the reality of Freud's texts.

If the mechanism of production of desire as lack is that of repe-

tition we should seek for forces which can bring this mechanism to a

standstill. Fortunately, psychoanalytic theory abounds in insights,

however accidental, incoherent and unthematized, that can facilitate

our enterprise.

What substantiates Freud's rejection of the notion of the lack

from the aetiology of melancholia/mania is the fact that already at

the initial stage of psychoanalysis melancholia was recognized as a

provisional foot-bridge which "with unexpected frequency ... resolves

into obsessions and therefore should be studied from this point of vi-

ew" (Freud 1896a: 371). On the other hand, it was up to Anna Freud to

insist that the obsessive repetition has nothing in common with

pre-ego mechanisms which arise from repetition compulsion, the latter

being modeled after the rhythm of sucking and mouthing,(20) the former

- after the rhythm of straining and expelling (1966: 116-123). If we

correlate both statements, we can conclude that not only there are two

types of repetition - one operating on the pre-ego level amorphous and

hence unrestricted, the other obsessive and restricted, constrained,

operating on the level other than that of the ego, but two types of

restrictive containment as well.

In effect, the pre-ego repetition in which an astute reader has

already discerned the rhythmic structure of the language of the Mother

appears unrestricted only at first glance, whereas actually, as we ha-

ve seen, it promotes control in the patently patriarchal sense of this

word, i.e., in the sense supplied by the dictionary of the language of

the Father. The rhythm of the Lacanian see-saw and of the feminist

sucking and mouthing are profoundly identical: both transform the su-

perficial anarchy of dissemination into motivated signifying entities

through a substitution of the hinge/lack for the Saussurean bar and the

encirclement as a means of control.The result of this transformation is

a motivated sign/signifying entity which by virtue of this motivatedness

grounded in the lack installed at its very heart can be motivatedly -in-

tertextually - compared with similar entities in a non-contradictory

way. (21)

As our stress on the notion "transformation" suggests, the model

in question is a step away from the textual reality proper. And here

the reference to clinical data not only corroborates our assessment

but in so doing highlights an alternative.

Consider the analysis of a certain Mrs.A. reported by Melitta

Sperling (1975). The interest of her account stems from the fact that

this case history "resembles that of Freud's Dora" (745). Explicitly,

Sperling aims at "a revision of classification and concepts" of con-

version hysteria and conversion symptoms (745), whereas implicitly she

cannot help but question Freud's diagnosis of Dora's ailment. This re-

sult is a logical consequence of Sperling's attempt to examine "the

role of the dual instinct theory in conversion, an issue which has not

been considered by Freud or other investigators" (750).

At first glance, there seem to be no reasons to doubt that the

reported case history is that of hysteria. The distinctive features of

the latter cannot help but leap to the eye: indestructible but cons-

tantly thwarted desire and hence dependence on the other(s) (750-751),

essential loss (746-749) fostering the separation anxiety (750), repe-

titive character of symptoms (751), transference (761) and so on. (22)

However a more close examination of the patient's behaviour immediate-

ly proves that matters are not so simple as that.

What should make us suspicious to the hysterical mode of interp-

retation deployed by Sperling is, paradoxically, nothing else than the

hysterical symptom par excellence - transference. Our analyst is can-

did enough to raise a question avoided by her colleagues and to leave

it unanswered. "How does a positive transference enable the patient to

control seemingly involuntary somatic behaviour before the unconscious

fantasies underlying these symptoms have been analyzed and before any

definite changes in the personality structure of the patient have oc-

cured?" (761). If the question which has not only psychoanalytical be-

aring is already a challenge to the edifices of psychoanalysis and

poststructuralism, an answer to it is an overt threat to them. That

the transference after which poststructuralist hermeneutics is modeled

can control symptoms without analyzing them means that the poststruc-

turalist thrust is to move away from the textual reality, to simplify

it, to leave it unanalyzed. Further, it means that this strategy ine-

vitably promotes mastery and control and other logocentric values aga-

inst which it is polemically directed. Fortunately, as Sperling's ac-

count suggests, these values far from defining the textual reality

proper are the result of an interpretative intervention and therefore

can easily be circumvented. What is necessary is only a good will

strangely lacking in poststructuralism.

The effect of Sperling's interpretations operating through trans-

ference was to help the patient to "control her impulses and feelings"

(754) giving her "the possibility of moving around freely, something

she had been unable to do for many years" (755). Clinically or thera-

peutically, the result is quite laudable,(23) albeit theoretically it

comes very close to a complete surrender. From the point of view of

hermeneutics the result is invalidated because it is achieved by a vo-

luntary blinding of the interpreter, by his/her refusal to read the

text/symptom. The psychoanalytical perspective helps us understand

that this blindness elevated by poststructuralism to the rank of a ne-

cessary and fruitful moment of hermeneutical dialectics far from cul-

minating in a blissfull insight is the logocentric blindness of Oedi-

pus.

That the main effect of the cure is to rectify the movement pat-

tern of the patient fostering the control of her movements as a sine

qua non of the ability to move freely means that the ailment of Mrs.A.

was defined first and foremost by another type of movement restricti-

ons. Which amounts to saying that Sperling's patient (and by the same

token, Freud's Dora) was, in actual fact, suffering not from hysteria

but from obsessional neurosis. This is why the case history of Mrs.A.

illuminating Dora's case at the same time throws additional light on

the obsessions of the Rat Man.

A number of parallels with the latter case history immediately

leap to the eye. One of Mrs.A.'s traumas is bound up with "the head of

a rat sticking out of the bed where her aunt ... was lying" (747),

whereas one of her wishes, revealed by the analysis, is the Rat Man's

wish for a "breast-penis-baby" (752). Certainly, it would have been

possible to dismiss these parallels as accidental. However, as we

shall momentarily see, they signal a profound structural analogy bet-

ween two accounts. And it is this analogy which makes of a psychoana-

lytical quandary with hysteria and its obsessional adversary a general

problem of hermeneutics.

According to Freud (1909b) one of the distinctive features of ob-

sessional neurosis is a regression onto the pregenital level. For her

part, Sperling stresses her "patient's readiness to regress to early

pregenital levels of object relatedness" (753), to wit, to the level

of the language of the Mother (763). What characterizes this level is

"the fluidity of cathexes" which make of the obsessional regression a

perfect counterpart of the regression in dreams (Major 1974: 425). How-

ever, this fluidity strikingly contradicts the very nature of obses-

sions as a restrictive device. The contradiction is even more devasta-

ting since thus far nobody has succeeded in defining obsessions other-

wise than through the notion of regression (cf. Brusset et al.1993).

Therefore we are left with a dilemma: to discard the fundamental con-

cept of regression, or to preserve it but in doing so to finally re-

solve the obsessional neurosis in hysteria which is governed precisely

by "the fluidity of cathexes".

Fortunately, our dilemma does not pertain to the reality - be it

of texts or symptoms. In fact, it is a deadlock into which the hyste-

rical mode of interpretation is doomed to corner itself. In order to

avoid this danger it is necessary only to re-think the notion of re-

gression. The enterprise is rewarding, for in doing so we will revive

the Freudian notion of the unconscious with which post-Freudian psyc-

hoanalysis has proved itself unable to cope.

It might appear that Freud himself was inclined to let fall the

notion of regression which in case of the Rat Man had thematical as

well as structural impact coming to the fore in the Rat Man's attempts

to return the money to the Lieutenant A. In the light of Derrida-Lacan

controversy over the return of the purloined letter Freud's efforts to

represent this issue as "comedy" (1909b: 398) are strikingly similar

to the Derridaean rhetoric suggesting that both interpretative strate-

gies are governed by the same concerns to establish an intertextual

space of a perfect order where a hermeneutical act can take place. (24)

This is why Freud's failure has direct bearing for the poststructura-

list hermeneutics.

In the light of our preceding examination it can hardly come as a

surprise that Freud's first step is to make of the Rat Man's body a

perfect container. Hence his assertion that the return of the money

was only a screen erected by consciousness to conceal Rat Man's ongo-

ing preoccupation with the rat torture which came to be associated

with the thoughts about the father's death (396-402ff.). The next step

is to prove that the connection between the rat torture and the fear

that the father may die, far from being arbitrary, is a motivated one.

Conceivably, this leads to a symbolical interpretation, an interpreta-

tion which tentatively sketched by Freud (421-438) results in a whole-

sale intertextuality erected by Shengold (1980). What I would like to

stress is that this intertextuality has as a necessary prerequisite

the discarding of the regression thematized by the Rat Man as a move-

ment return.

The symbolical interpretation of the rats penetrating into the

anus installs the lack making of the Rat Man's body a signifying enti-

ty. This lack through the intermediary links - castration/Father/Law -

leads to the notion of bisexuality, to wit, of "the ambivalence and

ambiguity of all symbols" (Laplanche 1980: 251). According to Laplanc-

he, interpretation can proceed only along this path. And it is at this

point that the collision between Freud and his ancestors becomes ine-

vitable.

Not only because Freud is candid enough to concede that obsessions

of the Rat Man do not originate in bisexuality which is so essen-

tial for hermeneutics based upon the Language of the Father as well as

of the Mother, but what is more he proves himself unable to maintain

even the "solf" version of bisexuality - the love/hate ambivalence

(414).

Be it as Derrida's "double square" or Lacan's splitting of the

subject the notion of bisexuality, appropriated by poststructuralism

to dislocate "the ideal unity" of subjectivity (Rose 1989: 9),is evi-

dently a topological one.Hence an accent placed in current theory on

"mapping","spacing", "traces", etc. At stake is the possibility to "ins-

cribe" the reader in the structure of a text in order to safeguard in-

terpretation. The inscription of the reader/interpreter/analyst pre-

supposes the installation of a lack at the heart of the text's struc-

ture. This movement is the very movement of disseminating Derridaean

hermeneutics: "The purloined/that is, lacking, missing/letter is in

the text ... contained in the text ... At the very monent when Dupin

and the Seminar find it, when they determine its proper location and

itinerary, when they belive that it is here or there as on the map, a

place on a map as on the body of a woman, they no longer see/i.e., be-

come blind in a Oedipus-like manner/the map itself: not the map that

the text describes at one moment or another, but the map that the text

'is', that it describes, 'itself', as the deviation of the four" (Der-

rida 1988: 187). However, for his part, Freud is forced to admit the

impossibility to "map" Rat Man's regressive movements discursively and

has to seek resort in the suggestion of his translators, Mr. and Nrs.

Strachey, to literally provide the reader with a map (1909b: 431-432).

Which means a self-defeat of hysterical semiosis depending for its

existence on the exclusion of everything "literal".

It is this movement of exclusion which so strikingly characteri-

zes the contemporary epistemological/hermeneutical paradigm signali-

zing the profound convergence of supposedly logocentric structuralism

and allegedly non-logocentric poststructuralism. Paradoxically, nobody

seems to notice or mind that one of the main precursors of (post)mo-

dern theorizing has pinpointed the mechanism of exclusion (Derrida's

"pharmakon") as the chief device of Western tradition. Namely, it was

up to Nietzsche to stress that "the original meaning of ostracismos...

was: 'No one should be allowed to be the best among us; if someone is,

however, then let him be elsewhere and with others" for otherwise "the

competition would fade and the eternal vital foundations of the Helle-

nic state would be in jeopardy" (1955: 241-242). In this respect,

poststructuralism is nothing else than an attempt to circumvent the

self-deconstructive outcome with which the Western hermeneutical game

is constantly threatened.(25) Hence the role assigned to desire as the

movement of production of the lack constitutive for interpretation.

Our last excerpt from Derrida allows us to assume that our inquiry in-

to the "genealogy of desire" is complete for it confirms that dissemi-

nating deviations, by virtue of being produced by the lack, remain sub-

ject to the Law (of castration).

However, the gist of the matter is that the poststructuralist

version of the traditional play of exclusion as the play of desire or,

the libidinization of the Freud's fort/da game, far from securing, ac-

celerates the self-deconstruction of the hysterical semiosis. For to

pursue the thematization of desire thoroughly and consequently means

to end with its aphanisis.

The notion of the aphanisis of desire introduced by E.Jones is

another insight which has been discarded by the psychoanalytic edifice

to its own detriment. However, despite Lacan's constant attempts to

make fun of this notion (cf.1977: 207), he cannot help but reconfirm

the validity of Jones' insight. As we shall momentarily ascertain our-

selves, this reconfirmation substantiating some Freudian remarks about

the nature of obsessions which run counter to the official theory of

this ailment leads directly to the new textual/hermeneutic model as

well as to the reassessment of Freud-Saussure connection.

Lacan's Eleventh Seminar is a last attempt to accommodate the death

drive within the confines of psychoanalytical theory. Significantly,

Lacan's final suggestion in this respect is to align the death

drive with the scopic drive. Lacanian failure stems from the fact that

simultaneously he tries to maintain the hysterical semiosis as inter-

textual dependency on the other(s) and hence is bound to end with a

new transformation of Thanatos in unifying Eros.

Within the framework of libidinal economy the hallmarks of which

are lack/desire/castration/Law Lacan's note that "indeed, it is the

scopic drive that most completely eludes the term castration" (1977:

78) is bound to appear paradoxical, to say the very least.(26) However,

the paradox evaporates the moment we recognize in Lacan's words a

derivative of the Jones' aphanisis of desire which is defined exactly

as the fear of seeing desire disappear (Jones 1967: 87). In Hegelian

terms, favoured by Lacan, the disappearance of desire is the disappea-

rance of the lack, the separation from separation, to wit, the

self-negating negation of the Law. And this, in its turn, throws light

on the equally paradoxical Freudian remark to be found in a letter to

Fliess of 12.6.1997 that "obsessions properly speaking cannot be traced

back as far as hysteria and, by the same token, leave no place in the-

ir genesis to the father who tends to become more and more considerate

as the child grows up" (1962: 183).

That the obsessional neurosis is radically opposed to the desire

qua lack qua Law means that the obsessive restrictions on movement are

fundamentally different from the controlling devices of hysterical

dissemination which make of an arbitrary sign a motivated signifying en-

tity. It follows that to conceive of the textual reality along the li-

nes of obsessional neurosis means for the first time to introduce lin-

guistics into literary theory without misrepresenting Saussure's ideas,

that is, without substituting Peirce for Saussure - a common stra-

tegy from Benveniste to Samuel Weber and Gary Genosko via Lacan and

Derrida.

It should be stressed that this introduction is bound to enrich

psychoanalysis for it presupposes a rectification of the notion of the

unconscious. Understandably, Jacqueline Rose who to this day remains

the only one to point out that the unconscious, all Lacanian-Deleuzian

sound and fury notwithstanding, is constantly threatened with excommu-

nication from psychoanalytical theory, is not valiant enough to make

her remarks more precise (1989: 1-25). For to do so will mean to un-

dermine the theory of desire in general as well as the Lacanian versi-

on of it to which Rose has committed herself.

Paradoxically, the "Absolute Master" seems to be more stout-hear-

ted than his disciples in acknowledging that something is fundamental-

ly wrong with his assessment of this fundamental concept of psychoana-

lysis. Some of his pronouncements remain quite startling even if we

treat them as slips of the tongue. For instance, right at the outset

of his Eleventh Seminar we come to hear that "the status of the un-

conscious, which, as I have shown, is so fragile on the ontic plane,

is ethical" (1977: 33). Which amounts to saying that the celebrated

dictum - unconscious is structured like a language - cannot be mainta-

ined. For if the former is an ethical phenomenon it has nothing to do

with the latter (structure/ontic plane) and, by the same token, cannot

be aligned to the Saussurean notion of "langage" as something consti-

tutive in respect to consciousness being, on the contrary, the product

of it, to wit, Saussure's "parole", at very best. (27)

Fortunately, Lacanian quandary has bearing only within the confi-

nes of hysterical semiosis, for it is here, as Freud was the first to

point out,that it is more correct to speak about two Egos and not of the

conflict between the Ego and the Id in the sense proper (1895: 95).

This is why the language of the Father (as well as of the Mother) as

the language of castration/lack/deprivation/Law foregrounding the in-

terplay between selection and combination which abolishes the sign's

arbitrariness is strictly opposed to the Freudian unconscious that is

structured like the Saussurean sign in so far as it bares the bar as

one the obsessive restrictions transgressing the Law and to secure

this bar draws a constraining circle - the forth element of the sign's

structure and the most important one being as it is the guarantor of

the sign's arbitrariness. And this because the circle hinders the pen-

etration (28) which, as we have seen, installs a lack and in doing so

makes inevitable an exclusion that sets in motion the signifying

see-saw of intertextual exchange with the desire of the other. That

this exchange is intertextual is evident for the desire as the motor

of the whole mechanism originates in the other (be it only in the se-

cond consciousness in which case we are assigned to an intratextual

level) and hence is not original, has a prototype. But by same token,

intertextuality propounded as a radical break with interpretation as a

search for a hidden meaning/truth becomes a means of safeguarding this

search said to be characteristic for traditional hermeneutics. For in-

tertextuality is nothing else than a foundation which the tradition

has forgotten to lay, a foundation without which all logocentric valu-

es are doomed to remain fragile. Witness Rene Major's elaboration of

the Lacanian language of the Father as a model after which the uncons-

cious is supposedly structured: an analyst has not "to establish a

translation of one person's fantasy into another's but rather a brid-

ge-head where they can meet. Furthermore, this link should not be fal-

se ... but rather symbolic in the sense of finding, in some manner,

the lost object" (1974: 431). A perfect corroboration of our view that

the price to be paid for intertextuality is the discarding of the

sign's arbitrariness.

Which is not to say that the Freudian unconscious should be cru-

dely divorced from the structure of Saussurean language. On the cont-

rary. The only language after which the unconscious is not modeled is

the poststructuralist language (in actual fact,the Saussurean "speech")

of the Father or of the Mother, and this because of their groundedness

in the castration or lack both terms being the derivatives from the

central notion of desire. In effect, it is a hard job to try to recon-

cile the non-contradictory nature of the unconscious and the concept

of castration which operates according the logic of contradiction as

expulsion/exclusion. Laplanche is quite correct in pointing out that

this dilemma is carefully avoided by the psychoanalytic edifice (1980:

178). Paradoxically, Laplanche's own suggestions in this respect can-

not help but make of the dilemma a double bind, for to substitute cir-

cumcision for castration means to deepen the ambivalence inherent in

the latter, to place an accent on bisexuality (265) and finally to end

with the notion of "desire to be castrated" (207) strikingly similar

with Kristeva's dictum "I desire the Law" as another tautological re-

confirmation of the perfect order of the status quo by the very gestu-

re aimed at its subversion.

However, in order to answer the question which "has not been pro-

perly posed, least of all solved even by Freud himself" (178) all is

necessary is to take seriously Laplanche's own admission that what is

really irreconcilable with the Freudian unconscious is not the castra-

tion as such but first and foremost "its regulatory effects which pro-

mote a harmonious order" (237). These effects are the effects of

the abolishing of the sign's arbitrariness by the language of the Fat-

her/Mother which from the moment of its inception in the works of the

first Saussure's disciples grants primacy to the selection/metaphor

over combination/metonymy.

It is this primacy which so strikingly collides with the Freudian un-

derstanding of how the unconscious functions. Consider another passage

from the "Project for a Scientific Psychology":

"For instance it has happened to me that in the agitation caused

by great anxiety I have forgotten to make use of the telephone,

which had been introduced into my house a short time before ...

what was old established won the day. Such forgetting involves the

loss of the power of selection, of efficiency and logic, just as

happens in dreams" (1962: 357)

To use this excerpt solely as an argument against Lacan's semiotical

extension of psychoanalysis, an extension, which, as everybody knows,

constantly draws on "The Interpretation of Dreams" as a source of ins-

piration and proof, would mean to diminish its impact. To be sure, the

fact that dreaming involves "the loss of the power of selection" cle-

arly invalidates the Lacanian hermeneutics (along with that of Jacob-

son) which defines the dream-work in exactly an opposite way. (29) Ho-

wever, we have already proved thus much single-handed and can easily

relinquish another corroboration, be it even such an advantageous one.

If we have nevertheless cited this passage, then because it bears di-

rectly on the vicissitudes of desire bound up with the intervention of

anxiety.

The psychoanalytic edifice will readily grant us the right to see

in anxiety a representative of the death drive (cf.Rechardt 1986) but

only in order, with the next move, to take this admission back, to

wit, to libidinize all the more throughly the death drive itself. That

anxiety is an effect of the primordial loss/separation - and this is

another point where all the post-Freudian trends in psychoanalysis

converge - means that it is ensnared in the libidinal economy governed

by desire, where its status is precisely that of Derridaean "non-arri-

val" or Lacanian "non-encounter" as a constitutive but dialectical-

ly-provisional moment of communication (cf.Laplanche 1980: 308). For

his part, Freud conceives of the problem in exactly an opposite way.

As our quotation shows, anxiety is not an effect but the cause, and

the only lack it produces is the loss of intertextual devices, disrup-

ting the see-saw of signification as an interplay between selection/me-

taphor and metonymy (in terms of the Freudian quotation,"efficiency and

logic").And in this Hegelian move anxiety escapes the trap of hysterical

semiosis delimiting it from the obsessions.

Significantly, this result is unwillingly acknowledged by Laplanche:

"Alongside with these moments of anxiety which are necessary and

fruitful interruptions (30) in the on-going process of symbolisa-

tion, there subsists anxiety encountered in phobias, that, cont-

rary to the hysterical anxiety, is an anxiety within the symptom

itself "une angoisse dans le symptome lui-meme". Whereas the hys-

terical symptoms binds anxiety, phobias signal a failure of sym-

bolisation" (309)

It is up to us to pursue this line of thought which, for apparent

reasons, Laplanche is forced to drop. (31)

The restrictions which phobias impose upon the free movement have

nothing in common with the constraints layed on the dissemination by

the Law. For these restrictions allowing "the old-established" to win

the day bring to a standstill all the mechanisms of signification.

Which means that the compulsion to repeat as encountered in the obses-

sional neurosis is a regression without progressive movement which

should accompany the former in order to make of the repetitive automa-

tism the fundamental hermeneutic device.(32) The space thus produced

is a closed, claustrophobic one, but it is not the space of the per-

fect order, for the restricted movement peculiar to the obsessional

neurosis closely resembles the Bergsonian "movement abberant" (33) that

escapes the regulatory effects of desire/lack/castration/Law. And it

is this topology which enables us to understand the doom that ineluc-

tably comes upon the desire if one is valiant enough to pursue its vi-

cissitudes to the end: "The true aim of desire is the other, as cons-

trained, beyond his involvement in the scene" (Lacan 1977: 183). Which

means nothing less than an unequivocal acknowledgment of the aphanisis

of desire for to reach the text of the other constrained by the en-

circlement defying any effort at penetration is an impossible task.

However, our own task is not as yet completed for we have to prove

that our theoretical speculations are sufficiently sustained by the

textual reality. So long as our primal psychoanalytical concern is the

theory of obsessional neurosis the most illuminatig frame of reference

seems to be the detective fiction - be it only as a tribute to the

characteristic which the father of the Rat Man has given his son:

"This child will be a great man or a criminal" (Freud 1909b: 426). The

reader will soon have a chance to ascertain him/herself that thanks to

these words the initially psychoanalytical problem cannot help but ac-

quire a more general dimension and wider scope.

Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" (1972/1933/) se-

ems to suit perfectly our purposes. For one, because trains figure

prominently in clinical psychoanalysis (34) as well as in the poetics of

the detective genre. And hardly surprising, considering their status

as means of communication. Remember the famous analysis of a fo-

ur-year-old Dick whose paralyzed symbol-formation was re-established

precisely thanks to the fortunate circumstance that despite his gene-

ral indifference to toys and games he retained some interest in trains

(Klein 1984 /1930/). Hence the "railroad" tradition (35) within the de-

tective fiction, considered as a quintessence of literariness, seems

to confirm the fundamental status of intertextuality. Secondly, rail-

roads and telephones, chronologically, are nearly twins representig a

technological expansion into the domain of logocentric subjectivity.

Ronell's thematization of telephonics can be viewed as an implicit

acknowledgment that Derridaean attempt to dislocate the latter through

the postal code remains insufficient, that is, that Derrida's "post-

card" just as Lacan's unconscious remains fragile on the plane of

structure. Hence we have a chance to test the "structurality" of this

advanced version of poststructuralism and its adequacy to the textual

reality - a task which was posed by Ronell herself. (36) And - last but

not least - "Murder on the Orient Express" is a perfect murder. Hence

the question whether, if at all, the latter project is compatible with

the poststructuralist project aimed at establishing the space of the

perfect order where the interpretation can at last feel itself secure

thanks to the thematization of the communicative instability which

granting the latter the status of the Law of communication makes of

all "slippages" and "discrepancies" the motivated phenomena.

However, it was no one other than Freud who can be regarded as the

first critic of views summarized above. Significantly, in "Civilizati-

on and its Discontents" (1930) having praised technological progress

Freud shifts to pessimistical questions the first of them being: "If

there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never

have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his

voice" (447). As we shall momentarily see, the causuality suggested by

Freud subverts radically the libidinal economy of desire, for the pri-

macy allotted to the railway is recognizably the primacy of the anxie-

ty which lacks nothing and produces the only lack--that of communicati-

on. And it is here that Christie's novel proves to be a vantage

point for our discussion and this because its structure leaves no

chance to the poststructuralist hermeneutics which Ronell tries to

ground on the Freudian remark we have just cited (cf.Ronell 1989:

86-91 et passim).

As is well-known, "Civilization and its Discontents", along with

"Beyond of the Pleasure Principle", is one of the main sources of Fre-

ud's theory of the death drive. It is worthwhile to note that in his

discussion of the fort/da game Freud once again refers to trains

(1920: 15). The use to which Derrida tries to put this reference cor-

responds neatly to Ronell's interpretation of the discontents caused

by railroads and telephones:

"Freud seems surprised and indicates a definite regret that it

never occured to the good little boy to pull the reel behind him

and play Wagen (carriage, car, train) with it. It's as if the

speculator (whose phobia for railroads is well enough known to

put us on the right track) would have played train himself with

one of those 'small objects'...Why doesn't Ernst play train or car?

Wouldn't that be more normal? If Freud have been playing in his

grandson's place (thus with his daughter, since the reel represents

her ...) the (grand) father would have played train (please grant

me all these parentheses - the (grand) father, the daughter (mother)

they are necessary to indicate the blurred syntax of the genealo-

gical scene, the fact that all the places are occupied and the

ultimate origin of what I have called the athetic nature of 'Be-

yond of the Pleasure Principle'" (Derrida 1977: 129) (37)

Mimicing Derrida, I am going to ask the reader to grant me this long

quotation for it is indispensable for our discussion summarizing all

the poststructuralist quandaries and contradictions we were at pains

to trace. "The blurred syntax of the genealogical scene" is the inter-

textual abyssmal structure that inscribes the reader in the text's,

invaginates him - the structure which Derrida praises himself to have

discerned in Freud's writings. The necessary corollary of intertextua-

lity is the refutation of the death drive (hence "the athetic nature")

of "Beyond"). This refutation produces the space of the perfect order:

"all the places are occupied". Which does not mean that in this space

nothing is lacking, for the practice of spacing in its turn is "the

ultimate origin" of the exclusion of the death drive and, as Derrida

has pointed out more than once, "the origin is in the situation of de-

mand, that is, of lack or exile. The origin is indebted a priori to

the translation. Its survival is a demand and a desire for translati-

on" (1985: 152). To be sure, this is an ultimate pitfall of poststruc-

turalism, but the reader might argue that his/her intellectual powers

are not deranged and we could have easily spared reiteration. Although

reiterations are useful from the propaedeutical point of view, especi-

ally in a work such as ours which so obviously sets itself against the

main stream of contemporary theorizing, we can with clear conscience

discard the mentioned argument. For our excerpt does not only acknow-

ledge a theoretical self-defeat of poststructuralism but pungently

stages the contradiction between Derrida's theory and the textual rea-

lity for which it strives to account.

To be sure, Freud's phobia for railroads is a well-known fact

(cf. Levin B. 1970; Shengold 1966), a fact which should be taken seri-

ously. But to do so means to foreground a self-deconstructive paradox

of Derrida's reading which vitally hinges on the simultaneous recogni-

tion and dismissal of Freud's phobia. In effect, only the reference to

it can sustain Derrida's interpretation of the fort/da game as an intra-

textual self-reflexive device of the "double square" (grandson's game

with the mother who is the daughter of the grandfather whose specu-

lations double the doubling of the fort/da), but in the next move this

reference should be annulled. For one, because Derrida is certainly

astute enough to notice that he has pushed the matters too far: if

there is a phobia on Freud's part, Derrida's emphasis on the grandfat-

her's wonder at Ernst's reluctance to play train comes very close to a

hermeneutic tour de force. Secondly - and more importantly, because

only thus Derrida can re-establish the libidinal economy of desire as

hermeneutics grounded in deprivation. Which means the hysterical semi-

otization of phobia effected by a foundational act of expulsion. (130

ff.). Unfortunately,this semiotization proves to be incompatible with

the textual reality which resembles the clinical picture of the obses-

sional neurosis.

In case of Christie's novel the resemblance is almost perfect,

and this due to a collision between the plan of a perfect murder and

the seemingly perfect order of the space where the project is carried

out, albeit at first glance the space and the plan seem to presuppose

each other so that the novel is seemingly structured by their interp-

lay, to wit, by the Lacanian signifying see-saw.

In effect, the plan can be dubbed perfect only in so far as the

murder of Samuel Edward Ratchett is committed in a "perfect container"

- in a railway coach. From the point of view of the detective this means

that "the murderer is to be found among the occupants of one par-

ticular coach - the Stamboul-Calais coach" (1972: 180). Hence the

restrictions imposed upon Poirot by the rules of the game are the lo-

gocentric restrictions of the disseminating hysterical semiosis? Which

explains why an interplay between the perfect space from which nobody

can escape and the perfect plan aimed at incriminating a phony outsider

(in itself a genuinely Derridaean option) makes of the whole an

"ideal case"(38) for the representative of Law/mastery whose method

is essentially a transformation of what seems to be random into a mo-

tivated entity:

"The first and most important is a remark made to me by M.Bouc in

the restaurant-car at lunch on the first day after leaving Stam-

boul - to the effect that the company assembled was interesting

because it was so varied - representing as it did all classes and

nationalities. I agreed with him, but when this particular point

came into my mind, I tried to imagine whether such an assembly

were ever likely to be collected under any other conditions. And

the answer I made to myself was - only in America. In America

there might be a household composed of just such varied nationa-

lities" (183)

And it is only through this transformation that the solution is re-

ached: the passangers of the Calais couch are the members of the Arm-

strong household in which a kidnapping drama had taken place, the main

perpetrator of which they have now punished. However, an apparently

smooth functioning of the hysterical semiosis comes to be disrupted by

an intervention of obsessive devices which provoke a regressive move-

ment contaminating all levels of the novel's structure.

For one, the hysterically constrained space of the perfect order

on which the perfection of the plan depends suffers another restricti-

on - notably, an obsessive one. In effect, the sine qua non of the

whole scheme is a surmise that the train would proceed to its destina-

tion, that the disseminating free movement would not be paralysed, (38)

for otherwise it would be impossible to burden the crime on the

non-existent outsider - on the party (39) which has to be excluded in

order to guarantee the functioning of the hermeneutic machine. Howe-

ver, due to the heavy snowfall the train comes to a standstill which

is the standstill of the mentioned machine itself. Concequently the

hysterical space of the perfect order is immediately transformed into

the obsessional claustrophobic space which prevents penetration making

impossible the inscription of the lack that should invaginate the in-

terpreter. As we shall see, it is this impossibility which constrains

the first interpreter, Poirot himself, forcing him, in the last chap-

ter, to "propound two solutions" (179), to wit, to relinquish the per-

fect one.

Therefore it is the nature of the space that defiles the plan as

well as its deciphering. A snowdrift draws "a clear circle round the

Stamboul-Calais carriage" (184). This circle, the fourth element of

the Saussurean sign which guarantees the arbitrary nature of the whole

bares the bar. Exactly such baring, "owing to the accident to the train"

(187), is an unavoidable result of an attempt to carry out the

project under these unfavourable circumstances.

"There was, I imagine, a hasty consultation, and then they deci-

ded to go through with it. It was true that now one and all of

the passangers were bound to come under suspicion, but that pos-

sibility had already been foreseen and provided for ... It was so

arranged that if suspicion should fall on any one person, the

evidence of one or more of the others would clear the accused

person and confuse the issue" (186-187)

Thus the text to be deciphered and the deciphering technique are two

sides of the same coin of the hysterical semiosis, two aspects of in-

tertextual dependency which should expell every trace of arbitrari-

ness. However, under the obsessive restrictions of the practice of

spacing to which the perfect murder and the perfect interpretation of

it boil down their reflexive confrontation cannot help but result in

the mutual deconstruction.

On the one hand, the perfection of the text of the murder as the

perfection of the hysterical semiosis itself is blotted by the fact

that one person is placed beyond the mutual entanglement which should

defy "the bedside security of the analyst" (Felman 1988: 150). Notab-

ly, this "flaw", far from being accidental, is "in the nature of

things":

"There remains Mrs. Hubbard. Now Mrs.Hubbard, let me say, played

the most important part in the drama. By occupying the compart-

ment communicating with that of Ratchett she was more open to

suspicion than anyone else. In the nature of things she could not

have an alibi to fall back upon" (189)

That the foundational principle ("the most important part") of the

transferentially-oriented hysterical semiosis is not a hysterical one

means that the whole machine sooner or later is bound to get broken.

This is why an interpretive intervention is first and foremost aimed

at concealment of the mentioned deficiency.(40) Witness Lacan's tech-

nique in his Seminar on Poe's tale. Contrary to Derrida, this conceal-

ment as a grounding act of hysterical hermeneutics has nothing to do

with the production of the dimension of "truth": it produces the spa-

ce where the interpretation as such, Derrida's own included, can take

place. The distortion of the textual reality which this manoeuvre fos-

ters becomes especially lucid and instructive in case of detective

fiction and this because in the generally accepted view (Porter 1981:

Hilfer 1990 ; Eco and Sebeok 1983 etc.) the activities of the detecti-

ve and the interpreter are essentially identical: (41) "the detective

is a figure for the reader" to identify with insofar as he himself is

"an ideal reader" (Most 1983: 349). For his part, Lacan is at pains to

make us believe that all he is doing is pursuing Dupin's strategy to

its logical end and the naive reader happily takes the bait (cf.Felman

1988: 147). Paradoxically, not only does Derrida simply adhere to this

category but seems to be one of the most notorious "dupes" willing to

be deceived. And this because one of the chief results of his critique

of Lacan is the promotion of the identification (1988: 203) which

blurring the boundary between the imaginary and symbolic secures the

transferential semiosis aimed at establishing the homogeneity between

the text and its interpretation. (42) It is precisely this semiosis the

radical subversion of which is staged by Christie in the novel we are

discussing.

At first glance, Poirot's technique adheres to the poststructura-

list hermeneutics. As was already mentioned, the initial step of Poi-

rot's investigation is to discern in "strangers on a train" - members

of the Armstrong household and thus to transform the text/sign he is

deciphering into a motivated signifying entity. Although this trans-

formation is a sine qua non of the hysterical interpretation, owing to

the fundamental "flaw", the latter, if pursued consequently, cannot

help but end in the self-deconstruction, to wit, in the interpreter's

self-defeat.

This self-defeat is inevitable, for the hysterical text of the

perfect murder cannot be deciphered otherwise than through the utili-

zation of the fundamental imperfection of this semiosis. Which means

to turn the latter against itself. And this is what Poirot's technique

boils down to.

If Poirot solves the riddle then only because Mrs.Hubbard has fa-

iled to play her role on which the whole scheme hinges:

"Mrs. Hubbard had told us that lying in her bed she was unable to see

whether the communicating door was bolted or not,and so asked Miss

Ohlsson to see for her. Now, though her statement would have been

perfectly true if she had been occupying compartments Nos.

2,4,12, or any even number - where the bolt is directly under the

handle of the door - in the uneven numbers, such as compartment

No.3, the bolt is well above the handle and could not therefore

be masked by the spongebag in the least. I was forced to the

conclusion that Mrs.Hubbard was inventing an incident that had

never occured" (184)

Thus the solution hinges on and brings to the fore the door between

two compartments which should have remained "concealed". (43) Which

means that the hysterical text and the hysterical deciphering of it,

instead of abolishing, flaunt that very bar ("door") which separating

the signifier and the signified separates and opposes the text and its

interpretation. And this outcome stems precisely from the obsessive

restrictions imposed upon the disseminating movement of exegesis,

restrictions which transform the hysterical device of repetition auto-

matism as the mechanism of production of desire by an act of ex-duction

into the obsessive compulsion to repeat which produces a claustrop-

hobic space that cannot be penetrated intertextually.

In effect, Mrs.Hubbard's failure to play her part is a failure of

an actress:

"To play the part she played - ... an artist was needed. But the-

re was an artist connected with the Armstrong family - Mrs.Arm-

strong's mother

- Linda Arden, the actress ...'

He stopped.

Then ... Mrs.Hubbard said:

'I always fancied myself in comedy parts ... That slip about the

sponge-bag was silly. It shows you should always rehearse proper-

ly'" (189)

But she was not able to rehearse properly precisely owing to the

snowdrift which bringing the train to a standstill made of it an ob-

sessively impenetrable space opposed to the intertextual space of the

hysterical perfect order on which the project depends.

Which explains why Poirot is forced to propound two solutions and

to optate for the wrong one.

This effort to leave the criminal(s) unpunished, to turn the who-

le business into a "hush-hush" affair is characteristic for Agatha

Christie's poetics. However, thus far it has been interpreted as the

author's idiosincrasy, that is, psychologically and/or thematically

(cf.Grossvogel 1979). Paradoxically, the only attempt to broach the

problem from a structural point of view has led the author to equate

the sense of this type of an ending with the subversion of mastery ac-

hieved along purely poststructuralist intertextual lines of transfe-

rentially-oriented mode of interpretation (Hull 1990: 207,213). Howe-

ver, the resulting impossibility to see in Poe's "The Purloined Let-

ter" the origin of the genre (210) should make us suspicious to this

line of reasoning.

As Christie's novel shows, the decision of the detective to save

the criminals, or, in terms of Hull's reading of Dupin's strategy "not

to give the lady away" (207), in itself does not subvert mastery. On

the contrary, paradoxical as it might seem, it is a last effort to sa-

feguard logocentric values of hysterical semiosis. Confronted with the

impenetrable claustrophobic space of obsessions where the connection

between the text and its deciphering by necessity becomes an arbitrary

one, Poirot, in order to preserve his technique, has to relinquish the

perfect solution and to subscribe to that which was originally envisaged

by the conspirators, for to do otherwise would mean to acknowledge the

collapse of hysterical semiosis. In other words, to retain the herme-

neutic desire, to retain the possibility of an interpretative attitude

as an intertextual inscription of the reader, the place of this ins-

cription being the one of the structural lack, Poirot has to put every-

thing to an outside job (180), for the fundamental lack can be pro-

duced only by an act of exclusion of the nonexistent outsider. And

this is "the solution we offer to the Yugo-Slavian police when they

arrive" (191). Unfortunately, this solution cannot help but ultimately

spoil what it was designed to safeguard.

For the price to be paid is a paradoxical one. In effect, the so-

lution in question implies the exclusion of the "ideal reader" inscri-

bed in the text, to wit, of the detective himself. Instead, in order

to penetrate the claustrophobic space the reader has to identify with

the police because only this identification follows logically from the

acceptance of the wrong solution which, in its turn, is the only pos-

sibility left to the reader to inscribe him/herself in the text. (44)

Therefore if the detective fiction in general - and not merely one

instance of it (Hull 1990: 211) -resists mastery, then thanks to the

fact that the rules of the genre lay bare the logic of hysterical in-

tertextuality which tries reconfirm the values of Western hermeneutics

and in doing so stage the subversion of the interpretative attitude as

such which hinges on the interplay between metaphor and metonymy, va-

lue and signification, an interplay that abolishes the arbitrariness

of the linguistic sign.

If the literary text is a site of resistance,then precisely because it

disrupts this signifying see-saw, bringing about the aphanisis of the

hermeneutic desire.

notes