THE LOGIC OF SEDUCTION AND THE ILLOGICALITY OF GIFT

Vadim Linetski

If one wishes to coordinate more closely than is usually the case

the current hermeneutic practices, summed up under the title post-

structuralism, and psychoanalysis and, in doing so, to avoid the rebu-

ke for endorsing a new metalanguage, then such adjectives as "hyste-

rical" or "transferentially-oriented" seem to be of considerable prac-

tical value. Retaining a pleasant flavour of neologisms, they will not

provoke resistance. In effect, "hysteria" and "transference" figure

prominently among those notions from the psychoanalytic vocabulary

which have not suffered penance for the alleged logocentrism of Freu-

dian legacy. Unfortunately, to enter the domain of hysteria means to

lose innocence. For this domain happens to be governed by the phenome-

non which S.Freud has succinctly dubbed "the blindness of the seeing

eye".(1) With this in mind, we have a unique chance to explain satis-

factorily the paradoxical fate of deconstruction which, as the saying

already goes, has reached the stage of decline.

Contrary to the common view, I would argue that the problem with

deconstruction is not its implications (for instance, social and poli-

tical disengagement to which it supposedly leads) but its premises,

that is, the very concept of tradition which Derrida sets out to de-

construct. According to Derrida, tradition is logocentric insofar as

it is oriented towards "truth" (and other values concomitant with this

notion). Having granted thus much, it is an easy job to show how a gi-

ven text "deconstructs itself" subverting the search for mastery and

(unambigous) meaning. For, in actual fact, the notions which furnish

deconstruction with its target are of secondary importance in respect

to the main goal of Western hermeneutics. Prior to "truth" tradition

is concerned with itself, with perpetuating the interpretative process

as the process of self-regeneration: there is "truth" only inasmuch as

there is tradition. Therefore in order to appreciate the project of

traditional hermeneutics we must foreground the notion of self-refle-

xivity - that very notion which is central to Derrida's own hermeneu-

tics. By no means does the traditional self-reflexivity lead to a "gain

in self-reflexive transparency, on the contrary" (Derrida 1980 :

417) for such a transparency would only mean a shortcircuit, a rupture,

a standstill of that interpretative perpetuum mobile which is the

tradition itself. The logocentric transparency of meaning has its pla-

ce in the traditional project, but only as an ultimate goal to be sus-

pended indefinitely, a goal which has to be absent in order to allow

for the construction of tradition. Thus, we are justified to see in

deconstruction a pick of Western hermeneutics. Which explains why, in

the final analysis, Derrida has failed to suggest a really new textual

as well as interpretative model.

However, to question the results does not mean to invalidate the

intentions. On the contrary. For reasons mentioned above, there can be

no gain in discarding the Derridaean thrust. Derrida's project has to

be pursued precisely because it remains unaccomplished. Obviously, the

most convenient point of departure is the close investigation of the

logic of Derrida's failure.

Even a casual observer of the current theoretical scene will notice

that a great number of notions are used metaphorically, that is,

irresponsibly. The assumption underlying such use is that of self-ob-

viousness which, on a more close analysis, cannot be maintained. Such

is the case with the notion of seduction (Cf.Durand 1980; Levin C.1980;

Hunter 1989 etc.) which brilliantly illustrates both our postulates

propounded at the outset. On the one hand, the popularity of this no-

tion attests that, consciously or unconsciously, the current literary

theory operates within the framework derived from the Freudian theory

of hysteria, by the same token, exposing itself to the specifically

hysterical "blindness". This blindness is nothing else than the

far-reaching misconception of tradition which, understandably, cannot

be perceived by the "hysterical" eye.

The only one to thematize seduction directly was (and remains) Jean

Baudrillard. However, the misconception of tradition in his work (2) is

strictly analogous to Derrida's, and this because the place assigned

to seduction in his theory corresponds to that of (non-transparent)

self-reflexivity in the theory of Derrida. Both our men are alleged

critics of depth and interpretation to which Baudrillard opposes the

strategies of seduction and appearances. Still more interesting is the

difference between them precisely because in this respect this diffe-

rence is merely stylistic. The straightforwardness of Baudrillard's

style allows us to trace the logic of seduction concealed by Derrida-

ean finery. For it becomes clear that seduction cannot be divorced

from intentionality - as will be shown, a more than disturbing conclu-

sion for both theorists.

"... it is not elsewhere in a Hinterwelt or an unconscious, that

we should be looking for what deflects a discourse - what really

displaces it, 'seduces' it in the true sense of the word, and

makes it seductive; it is in its appearance itself, the circula-

tion (aleatory or meaningless, or ritual and carefully planned),

its signs on the surface, its accents, its nuances; it is all that

which effaces the terror of meaning and which is seductive, whe-

reas the meaning of a discourse never seduced anyone" (Baudrillard

1979 : 78)

Significantly, Baudrillard cannot avoid the reference to something

which "seduces" the discourse so that despite himself he leads the re-

ader to another question than the one shared with Derrida. The emer-

ging theme is not of the discursive seduction or of the seduction by

the discourse, but of the seduction of the given discourse. The disco-

urse in its "raw" state is not seductive, it must be seduced in order

to be dubbed afterwards "seductive". But what makes the discourse se-

ductive? Is this a familiar logic of Derridaean "pharmakon" ("what

deflects a discourse", hollows it from within and hence belongs to the

textual reality) or quite another logic - that of the interpretation?

The answer to this question is to be sought in the reading practice of

Derrida himself.

Insofar as our own dicourse is situated at the juncture of lite-

rary theory and applied psychoanalysis, the most suggestive among Der-

rida's texts seems to be "The Post Card from Socrates to Freud and Be-

yond". One part of the book, published separately as "The Purveyor of

Truth" and concerned with Lacan's Seminar on Poe, has elicited

over-abundant commentaries reiterating the theme of Derrida's first

critic B.Johnson that Derrida "repeats the very gestures he is criti-

cizing" (Johnson 1977: 154;cf.Belsey 1993 : 403). Elsewhere we have

already explained why this type of critique is not up to the point at

all. (3) What interests us here is yet another paradox: in the second

part concerned with speculating on "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"

Derrida subjects Freud's text to just the same procedure as that of

Lacan. However, thus far, nobody has volunteered to defend Freud. This

paradox, quite revealing of the true nature of the celebrated "return

to Freud", has, as we shall soon see, a more direct connection with

our theme.

Some twenty years ago in a number of papers Robert J.Langs had

initiated the study of what he himself calls "therapeutic misallian-

ces" in psychoanalysis. The results of his restudy of the three Fre-

ud's case histories (Dora, Rat Man, Wolf Man) focused on the misalli-

ance dimension offer an ample framework for our inquiry.

Generally speaking, psychoanalytic misalliances (to be understood

as a descriptive rather than an evaluative term) stem from "deviations

in the analyst's usual stance" (Langs 1980a : 59): "noninterpretative

measures of all kinds prove detrimental and the source of misallian-

ces" (60) precluding "the establishment of a sound therapeutic stance"

(60), i.e. the maintenance of the "one-to-one relationship" (61) with

the patient. A most casual reader of Derrida has already recognized

here the basic traits of Derridaean reading strategy.

The dismissal of the "one-to-one- relationship" with the pati-

ent/symptom/text is analogous to the dismissal in current literary

theory of the text-centered interpretation which is said to be orien-

ted towards unambigous meaning. "The ineluctability of a certain Ver-

mittlung ... is what 'La Carte Postale' is all about" (Weber 1987 :

128). Between a given text and its interpreter, says Derrida, there is

a third party, a mediator, an intertextual screen. What the papers

collected in the volume "Freud and his Patients" (1980) clearly show

is that Freud's failures originate in the dimension of misalliance, to

wit, in the intertextual space of seduction.

"The beginnings of a response, or of a strategy, in 'La Carte

Postale', is, then ... to translate Freud's speculations into the

terms of the code that has 'imposed itself' upon Derrida's reading of

'Beyond', the postal code" (Weber 1987 : 122). As is generally beli-

eved, this code is an improvement of the strategy practiced by Lacan

in his Seminar on "The Purloined Letter". However, this is not the

whole truth. For just the same strategy was already used by Freud in

his treatment of Rat Man's obsessions - with not exactly satisfying

results.

In the original case record (that is, in the notes for the first

three months of the analysis preserved by Freud contrary to his habit)

there is a reference to a post card which Freud has sent to his pati-

ent. In the following session the Rat Man produced associations which

were interpreted by Freud "in terms of the genetics of the Rat Man's

illness missing the likely tie to a later-reported 'deviation' that

had already occured: a postcard that Freud had recently sent to the

Rat Man. The latter responded with great irritation with Freud ... and

added that the postcard ... which had been signed 'cordially', was too

intimate" (Lacans 1980ó : 221). The common stance is to trace these

deviations in Freudian technique back to his own unconscious, to see

in them the effect of countertransference and the result of lacking

self-analysis. However, the latter assumption in which this train of

thought is grounded can hardly be maintained. The case history of the

Rat Man was penned by Freud in 1909, whereas in a letter to Jung writ-

ten two years earlier (2.09.1907) one finds a significant self-diagno-

sis: "While you define yourself as hysterical, I am obviously an ob-

sessional type, that is, one of those who live in a self-contained

world" (Freud-Jung 1974 : 91). This allows us to refute the aforemen-

tioned view and to suggest that it was exactly the insight into the

non-semiotic nature of obsessions gained through self-analysis which

fostered Freudian "deviations". The latter were bound up with the re-

cognition that only thus one can break "a self-contained world" of ob-

sessions, that is, semiotize it.

The logic of this semiotization is the one of seduction. The aim

is to produce a space where interpretation can take place - and not

this or another interpretation but interpretation as such. Signifi-

cantly, already the clinical material shows that the production of the

space of interpretation amounts to production of the intertextual di-

mension.

The "apparently seductive postcard" (Langs 1980ó : 227) fostered

Rat Man's fantasies culminating in suicidal ones. "At this point ...

Freud gave him Zola's 'Joie de Vivre' to read, apparently because the

hero of this novel was perpetually occupied with thoughts of his own

and other peoples' deaths" (225). And once again the effects of this

gift "remained unanalyzed" (227). However, Langs' reconstruction suf-

ficiently elucidates this issue forcing us to draw conclusions which

are rather disturbing, and not only for the psychoanalytic edifice.

"Freud's 'deviations' in technique ... contributed to the ongoing

flow of the patient's associations" (229). These associations enabling

Freud to propound the "symbolic translation" (221) of Rat Man's obses-

sions were destined to enrich psychoanalysis with a lot of exhibitio-

nistic and voyeuristic imagery and thus to help psychoanalytic tradi-

tion to constitute itself.(4) However, they were only "derivatives"

(229) - in the sence assigned to this term in the theory of hysteria.

Which explains why Freud has failed in his main task - in alleviating

Rat Man's obsessions, in reaching the text of obsessional neurosis,

instead translating it into "the language of hysteria" (Freud).(5)

Still more illuminating, from our perspective, is Freud's failure

in the case of - supposedly - "pure" hysteria - in the celebrated case

of Dora. It is this failure which ultimately subverts the alleged in-

novativeness of Derrida's reading practice.

Freud's technique with Dora was basically the same as with the

Rat Man so that Lang's summary of the latter case holds true for the

former. Once again "the notes portray the homosexual and sadomasochis-

tic qualities in the misalliance sector which directly gratified many

of the patient's pathogenic unconscious fantasies ... an element of

misalliance in which Freud and the patient alternately played the role

of voyeur and exhibitor, as well as seducer and seduced. It was large-

ly Freud, however, who played the active, penetrative, seductive,

overgratifying role that the patient ... defended himself against"

(229).

If the hysterical semiosis enjoys currently such popularity, then

because of its close affinity to Derridaean notions of "differance"

and "dissemination" which are fundamental for the theory of intertex-

tuality (cf.Moi 1985 : 187). However, the text of Dora's ailment res-

tudied from the point of view proposed by Langs reveals that these qu-

alities, far from being primal, that is, peculiar to the text itself,

stem from the interpretative intervention aimed at seduction. For ins-

tance, "ambivalence ... expressed in splittings and reversibility"

(Kanzer 1980a: 74) of Dora's first dream imagery (flight from the burning

house) which allows the author to draw far-reaching intertextual pa-

rallels was, in the last analysis, a patient's reaction to the - un-

consciously perceived - strongly seductive atmosphere of the precee-

ding sessions (Langs 1980 a : 64-65,69). The question to be pursued is

how this "reactive" status determining the structure of Dora's dream

undermines and subverts the possibility of its intertextual interpre-

tation.

According to Langs, the seductiveness of Freud's technique with

Dora prompted by a failure to establish a sound alliance with the pa-

tient should be traced back to the circumstances, strictly speaking,

extraneous to the text of Dora's ailment as well as to its analysis:

"the first sector of misalliance between Dora and Freud related to the

manner in which Dora entered analysis. Her father brought her to Freud

with the evident intention that Freud should actively intervene on his

behalf so that Dora would no longer press him to give up his affair

with Frau K." (61-62). Thus, analysis was from the start doomed to go

askew because of the involvement of "various third parties" (61).

Now, it is precisely such an involvement which guides Derrida in his

speculations on Freud.

Derrida's strategy in "The Purveyor of Truth" is analogous to

Freud's technique with the Rat Man in that the intertextual seduction

is played out on an entirely formal level: the "third party" involved

is another text - be it Zola's in Freud, or a whole "library" which,

according to Derrida, was ignored in Lacan's reading of Poe (1988 :

198). In "To speculate - on 'Freud'"/"Coming into one's own", (6) as in

Freudian account of Dora, the content is the form itself: the "third

parties" are protagonists of Freud's "recit" known as "Beyond of the

pleasure principle" but their involvement, argues Derrida, determines

directly the very structure of this recit.

Derrida's aim in his reading of Freud is twofold: to show why the

pleasure principle has no beyond and to explain how a text can become

a foundation of "a world institution" (1977 : 121), to wit, of the

institution of psychoanalysis. Not only are these aims interrelated,

but, in Derrida's view, we have one and the same structure - that of

abyssmal dissemination. If Freud has failed in what was the object of

his main concern in "Beyond", then because he could not master the

disseminating movement of writing, but this failure has turned out to

be highly productive giving birth to other writings, ensuring the mec-

hanism of tradition (1977 : 119-121). The latter, intertextuality in

the sense proper, is grounded in intratextuality - in the self-refle-

xive repetitive movement of infinite doubling structuring a given text

(Derrida 1988 : 203; 1977 : 119).

In case of Freud's "Beyond" this means that, while pretending to

write about the death drive, the author cannot help writing his own

biography: "In every detail we can see the superimposition of the sub-

sequent description of the fort/da (on the grandson'S side of the hou-

se of Freud) with the description of the speculative game ... of the

grandfather in writing 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'... the descrip-

tion of Ernst's game can also be read as an autobiography of Freud;

not merely an auto-biography ... but a more or less living description

of his own writing, of his way of writing 'Beyond the Pleasure Prin-

ciple' in particular" (Derrida 1977 : 119). Thus we have "an au-

to-bio-thanato-hetero-graphic writing scene" (146). However, the scene

of writing is in fact "the genealogical scene" (129). The dissemina-

ting intertextuality on the basic intratextual level stems from the

fact that Freud's speculation is undermined by "geneological" concerns

of the author: "the wooden reel that is supposed to represent the mot-

her" actually represents also "the father, in place of the son-in-law,

the father as son-in-law" (118). To say the very least. Hence "the

blurred syntax" which is responsible for all the ambiguities in Fre-

ud's text and ultimately for its "athetic nature" (129). Which corres-

ponds neatly to the picture of Dora's analysis, as sketched above.

The most sriking paradox of Derrida's project is probably that

his refutation of the death drive and concomitant construction on (and

out of) its scattered ruins of his own (inter)textual model is groun-

ded in the thematization of the self-reflexive repetitive doubling

structure of the fort/da game whereas, by Freud's own admission (and

Derrida is the first to remind us of it right at the outset of his

exploration; 1977 : 114) this game does not prove the existence of the

death drive. Freud's argument is based ultimately on different eviden-

ce, and even from the purely quantitative point of view one cannot

well assign to the description of the game with the wooden reel a de-

terminig place in the economy of the "Beyond". Hence even from this

perspective, the one adopted by Derrida, the speculation on the

fort/da does not say anything about the existence of the death drive.

However, I would argue that Freud's real failure was exactly an all

too hasty dismissal of this celebrated example, the failure to discern

in it the workings of the force opposed to Eros. As the reader will

see, the pursuit of this train of thought is essential for our purpo-

ses.

To prove our point it suffices to refer once again to the analy-

sis of Dora. Surprisingly enough, thus far, nobody has connected the

structure of this analysis, as exemplified by Dora's first dream, with

the fort/da game, albeit such a connection is more than obvious. In

effect, Dora's dream about the flight from the burning house is struc-

tured by the same mevement as Ernest's game. Irony resides in the fact

that we must avoid the temptation to take this sameness at face value,

i.e., to conceive of it along Freudian and Derridaean lines.

To be sure, it is tempting to see in Dora's dream only an uncons-

cious precipitation of her decision to break off the treatment (Langs

1980 a : 65), or at best, an ambiguous message that, although wishing

to leave, "she was in no hurry to leave Freud" (Kanzer 1980 a : 78).

Incidentally, the first point of view was the one adopted by Freud:

"He consistently perceived more readily her desire to flee from him

than her desire to remain and be seduced by him, although his own ana-

lysis unmistakably demonstrated this" (74). We shall return to this

reverse side of Dora's desire to explore its real nature. For the mo-

ment let us, however, remark that Freud's insistence to see only one

aspect (fleeing/fort) is in line with his final statement on the game

of his grandson. In Derrida's words: "the 'first act', the departure

or Fortgehen, was in fact independent: 'it was staged as a game in it-

self'. Departure, dispatching, is thus a complete game, practically

complete in itself within the entire game" (1977 : 137). Far from con-

firming the existence of the death drive, argues Derrida, this for

ever precludes the very possibility of a definite pronouncement upon

the matter - thanks to the force of writing: Fortgehen staged by Er-

nest is doubled by Freud's note mentioning the real Fortgehen (death)

of Ernest's mother (140-146). Although Derrida does not say so him-

self, one is bound to immediately recognize here the pattern on which

Derridaean dissemination is modelled. Dissemination - a new version of

the "flight from the father fantasy" (Kanzer 1980 a: 75) - is precise-

ly Fortgehen staged as a game in itself, but - and this is of crucial

importance - not on its own stage but within another game eroding the

latter, hollowing out in it an abyss - in just the same manner as the

pleasure principle, which is nothing else than "mastery in general",

is hollowed out by "what returns ... as its/his own other ... not un-

der the name of death drive or repetition compulsion, another master

or an antimaster but something other than mastery, entirely different"

(Derrida 1977 : 131). The problem is whether dissemination can play

this "entirely different" role assigned to it? I do not think so. And

this precisely because striving to subvert mastery equated with the

Western tradition Derrida does the tradition an invaluable service:

dissemination bares the device without which there is no tradition at

all. In the wake of deconstruction we can assume that the mechanism of

tradition functions better and is more secure so long as the question

of mastery remains suspended. But, if there is mastery only insofar as

there is a tradition, it is equally true that the tradition perpetual-

ly regenerates mastery - be it in this form or another. Witness Derri-

da's own reading strategy which, as our exploration shows, is analogo-

us with Freudian technique of seduction. (7)

However, if we are to follow Derrida in seeing in the "Fortgehen"

an ultimate - because ambiguous - triumph of the pleasure principle,

(8) then it is the "da", the return, the part of the game which is so

obviously governed by pleasure, that becomes the "supplement". Parado-

xically, for once, the author who has coined the notion cannot accomo-

date it. For it is the "fortgehen" which plays the role of supplement,

of pharmakon to the pleasure principle. Hence Derrida himself leads us

to question the status of the "da", its supposed subsumption under the

pleasure principle. Freud's case histories give some interesing hints

in this respect.

Consider the case of Dora, namely, her return some fifteen months

after the termination of analysis. To follow Langs (68-69) or Kanzer

(78-79), we are to see here a conclusive evidence of her desire to be

seduced. Sucha a desire, essential for a clinical understanding of

hysteria, is what makes the hysterical semiosis so attractive, or, to

be more precise, what makes of hysterical symptoms semiosis at all.

Ambiguity present in transference, an interplay between passivity and

activity (seducer/seduced), far from subverting interpretation, makes

it possible, ensures the interpreter's place in the structure of a gi-

ven symptom/ text. (9) As Freud has noted more than once, hysterics are

in earnest when it comes to transference, to the privileged symptom of

hysteria. Now, no one who has thus far written on Dora has denied that

"Freud stated that he immediately knew that she was not in earnest"

(Langs 1980 a : 68). It is this statement which questioning Freud's

diagnosis of Dora's ailment as hysteria, leads us to the reconsidera-

tion of the whole problem of the "da".

That Dora was not serious means that we are no longer allowed to

see in her return a new - transferential - edition of the "primal sce-

ne". The second scene was not an act of revenge (an equally serious

affair: another face of love) but an act of mockery, the subversion of

the "primal scene", that is, of Freud's interpretation of her text.

What does it really mean that during this return visit Freud "forgave"

Dora (Langs 1980 a : 69; Kanzer 1980 a : 79) - a question that nobody

thinks worthwhile considering. (10) Might we not assume that implicit-

ly Freud acknowledged Dora's (author's!) mastery over the text's mea-

ning, acknowledged the subversion of the interpretative logic of se-

duction through the textual illogicality of gift? For, if Dora was not

serious, then the function of her return was to expose the fact that

the two scenes could be connected only thanks to a gratuitous act.

Which makes of it a manifestation of an another force than Eros that

does not seek connections for their own sake but only necessary connec-

tions, i.e., structural ones. (11)

The connections Derrida is after adhere to the second type, are

necessary ones. (12) The intertextual library is a necessary element of

Poe's tale (1988 : 198) the structure of which, by this virtue, becomes

"invaginated" : the boundaries between text and interpretation are

blurred. There is only intertext. Which amounts to saying that an in-

terpretative act is, by necessity, inscribed in a given text's struc-

ture. Not as a search for a hidden meaning but as an act preventing

"the arrival of the letter to its destination", the possibility of a

non-arrival being a necessary element of text's structure (200-201).

In words of R.Barthes who has so strikingly anticipated Derrida's for-

mulations, "the reader is the space on which all the quotations that

make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a

text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination"(1977 : 149).

Contrary to both theorists, I would argue that the notorious "letter"

always arrives at its destination - but this destination is textual

and not interpretative. And this fact makes of the arrival a truly de-

constructive affair for it paralyzes the intertextual mechanism of seduc-

tion - the only device which can produce mastery.

The (intertextual) logic of seduction fosters indebtedness - the

very soil on which the notion of mastery strikes roots and blossoms. I

do not think that Derrida is entirely blind to these consequences of

his theory. Already in the extended version of his speculations on

Freud's "Beyond" he cannot conceal fascination with the ease with

which Freud declines his debt(s) to Nietzsche (and for all that to

philosophy in general) : "Freud ... is so much at ease in such an em-

barrasing situation, he declines the debt with such rapid assurance,

with such imperturbable facility that one cannot but wonder whether

the debt in question is his at all, or whether it is not the debt of

another? (1980 : 280-281). "Borrowing is the law" (410). The debt re-

mains a debt,one can only transfer it onto another.But precisely because

the mechanism involved is that of intertextual (hysterical) transfe-

rence, deployed in its exemplarity in hysteria, the debt, contrary to

Derrida, is rendered neither "infinite" nor "insolvent", neither

"null" nor "void" (415). However, Derrida's fascination with the prob-

lem should not be dismissed, and all the more so because it reemerges

in his recent works as an attempt to thematize the notion of gift.

According to Derrida, gift is "the tautological designation of

the impossibility as such" (1991 : (15): "in case of gift it suffices

to preserve the meaning of gift in order to annull the gift" (27),

transforming it into its obverse - into debt, assimilating it to the

circular economy of exchange. Which explains why it is impossible not

only to account for gift but simply to speak of it insofar as language

is subject to this very economy of exchange and debt (26). However, to

my mind, this impossibility exists only for Derrida who is trying to

assign the gift a place in his intertextual paradigm, to enrich the

latter with one more term said to be synonymous with such notions as

"invagination", "supplement", "frame" etc. (13) What this operation re-

veals is the inadequacy of Derridaean hermeneutics to the textual rea-

lity.

According to Derrida, the notion of gift is incompatible with

temporality, in the first place, with memory (27) : a gift must be

forgotten in order to remain a gift. But what does it mean to forget a

gift if not to transform it into its opposite, to wit, into debt?

Exactly this says Derrida for whom there is gift only as "a gift of

writing/le don d'une ecriture/" conceived as an intertextual memory,

as an archive (63). To dub this dialectical twist a perfect example of

Freudian repression through reversal into opposite (Verkehrung ins Ge-

genteil) does not mean to evaluate it, but to point to the very heart

of the problem.

In Derridaean perspective, the mechanism of gift becomes analogo-

us to what is known in psychoanalysis as the formation of symptoms (Symp-

tombildung). It was up to Lacan to demonstrate that the symptom and

the linguistic sign have the same structure. The price to be paid was

the refutation of the basic Sausurrean postulate concerning the sign's

arbitrary nature. The (unconscious) signified and the (conscious) sig-

nifier have a necessary connection - just as the "primal scene" is ne-

cessary connected with its derivative which reveals and conceals at

one and the same time thus opening the possibility of interpretation.

In Poe's tale, says Lacan, "there are two scenes" (1988 ó : 30) - in

exactly this sense. For his part, Derrida insists that this dyadic lo-

gocentric structure is doubled in its turn: Poe's tale confronts the

reader with "the double square" (1988 : 197), "the squaring of this

scene of writing" (204) is said to invalidate the Lacanian model deri-

ved from linguistics (196). Be it only a revealing example of parapra-

xis,but, if we bear in mind that Derrida conceives of dissemination as

an endless divisibility, it is surprising to read that in Poe's tale the-

re are "only four kings" (204). But why "only" four - if not precisely

because Derrida's grammatological deconstruction, far from being "en-

tirely different" to traditional semiology, cannot be termed even its

opposite. It is situated on the same side, representing a refinement

aimed at ensuring semiosis which happens to be in danger so long as

the basic unit is conceived of as dyadic. With its stress on doubling

of the doubles, grammatology is linguistics in the second degree.Which

explains why the notion of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign is

refuted by Derrida even more consistently than it is in Lacan's case.

In the light of his later Seminars Lacan's Seminar on Poe turns out to

be far more adequate to the textual reality than Derrida's critique

aimed at safeguarding the possibility of intertextual seduction.

Of crucial interest is the following "re-articulation" from La-

can's Eleventh Seminar:

"Alienation is linked in an essential way to the function of the

dyad of signifiers. It is, indeed, essentially different, whether

there are two or three of them. If we wish to grasp where the

function of the subject resides in the signifying articulation,

we must operate with two, because only with two it is that he can

be cornered into alienation. As soon as there are three, the sli-

ding becomes circular. When passed from the second to the third,

it comes back to the first - but not from the second ... if there

exist ... only two, the phenomenon of alienation is produced, in

other words, the signifier is that which represents the subject

for the other signifier" (1977 : 236)

Now, if we wish to grasp the function of Derrida's critique (writ-

ten, by the way, in 1975, i.e., after the publication of Lacan's text

in 1973 of which Derrida takes no notice) in the light of what Lacan

quite correctly terms "a re-articulation of a number of formulae"

(236), we have no other choice than to acquiesce ourselves with the

point of view propounded throughout this paper. For if the structure

of Poe's tale is dyadic,if there are two scenes, as Lacan stresses in

his initial reading, this means that there is no arrival of the letter

- according to Derrida's best wishes. However, what appears a crude

misreading is in actual fact an elaborate manoeuvre aimed at safeguar-

ding the mechanism of tradition. To accentuate with Derrida the doub-

ling of the doubles means to push the logic of seduction (or alienati-

on, in Lacan's words) to its limit, that is, to move from the intra-

textual level (on which Lacan tries to situate Poe's tale) to the in-

tertextual one, the latter being grounded in the former. The gist of

the matter is that this move, with the misreading of Lacanian reading

it entails, is dictated by a more or less conscious perception that

Poe's tale itself radically subverst this mode of interpretation in

nucleus, to wit, subverts the logic of interpretative seduction as the

very logic of interpretation as such.

This subversion is what, despite himself, Lacan shows in his Se-

minar on "The Purloined Letter". Obviously, if the letter returns to

its point of departure, as Lacan is at pains to drill into the heads of

his readers, then only thanks to the fact that, albeit "there are two

scenes" (1988 ó : 30) they are "structured by three glances" (32).

Which,already in the light of Lacan's later development, means that

the return, the "da" has nothing to do with repetition automatism, go-

verned, in the last analysis, by the pleasure principle, but is an

instance of perfectly gratuitous act. And it is this act as an act of

gift which, contrary to Derrida, not only can be represented without

being destroyed by representation, but which in Lacan's words, "makes

the very existence of fiction possible" (29). (14) Therefore, the conc-

lusions to be drawn do not lead to an immediate invalidation of the

postulate which Lacan makes Poe's tale to illustrate (namely, the com-

mon origin of fiction, speech and symptom), as Derrida has, from his

own perspective, only too sound reasons to announce, but to a much mo-

re productive task of endowing Lacan's thesis with adequate meaning.

By Lacan's own admission, his conception of speech is derived

from hysteria (1966 : 47). Thanks to transference, the text of hyste-

ria not only secures the place of an interpreter but makes it neces-

sary. 15) It is in hysteria that the logic of seduction plays the up-

per hand. By the same token, hysterical semiosis foregrounds the in-

tertextual dimension. The only problem here seems to be that of inter-

minability of analysis, of undecidability, radicalized by deconstruc-

tion as a notion of unreadability. However this problem is only an ap-

parent one. To hit the target one must aim higher. To aim at readabi-

lity itself, as the hermeneutic tradition does, is a sure way to miss

it. As becomes more and more clear, the deconstructive unreadability

is, in fact, an endless readability (Cornis-Pope 1992 : 90). To put it

paradoxically, it may well be that it is precisely the apparent reada-

bility which leads to a radical unreadability precluding the possibi-

lity of an interpretative intertextual seduction as the only possibi-

lity to interpret at all. In other words, if hysterical semiosis is a

disseminating "Fortgehen" bound up with an endless suspension of the

"da", then it is the latter as a gratuitous act of gift which can fur-

nish us with a radically new textual model. My contention is that the

psychoanalytic correlate of such a model should be sought in the cli-

nical data provided by obsessional neurosis.

In effect, the Lacanian reading of Poe suggests that the textual

reality is structured as an interplay between dyadic and ternary mo-

dels, which subverts the hysterical semiosis. I see no obstacle to

correlating this picture with the falling apart and contradiction of

the formation of symptoms (Symptombildung) and formation of substitu-

tes (Ersatzbildung) mentioned by Freud as peculiar to the obsessional

neurosis (1915 : 259-260). Although left unelaborated (as is the case

with Freudian and post-Freudian theory of obsessional neurosis in ge-

neral which constantly turns out to be transformed into "transferenti-

al neurosis", i.e., into a modification of hysteria), the mentioned

contradiction offers a vantage point if we wish to preserve the diffe-

rence between two ailments - the difference which is of crucial value

for literary theory. For only thus we have a unique chance to avoid a

misalliance between the latter and linguistics, foregrounding the fun-

damental arbitrariness of the linguistic sign unanimously discarded by

theoricists working in the field as an obstacle to a marriage. That a

given text is structured through the illogicality of gift means that

it reiterates a gratuitous act constitutive of human communication,

thus exposing radically the fragility of the latter - the fragility

which happens to be obscured in structuralist as well as in poststruc-

turalist theory. (16)

Naturally, our theoretical elaborations would have no value were

they not supported by textual evidence. Detective fiction as a frame

of reference suggests itself for two reasons. First, it bares the ba-

sic devices of literariness. Hence its laws are valid for fiction in

general. Second, as the discussion of Poe's tale shows, whereas struc-

turalism tends to identify these laws with intratextuality, in post-

structuralist perspective they become those of intertextuality. There-

fore we must question the premises of both approaches.

To my mind,the generally accepted distinction between detective and

crime fiction is more than problematical - especially in a context such

as ours. For instance,theorists have failed to assimilate the fact that

"The Purloined Letter" which gave birth to detective fiction of the

"whodunit" type has no "secret" in the sense proper: everything is

played out before the eyes of the reader, nothing is hidden from him.

(17) Hence both Lacan's and Derrida's strategies are aimed at seducti-

on, to wit, at the installation of a "secret" - be it through the

identification of the letter with the phallus, or through the denial

of the possibility for the letter to have any referent even in the sym-

bolic domain which amounts to saying that it is destined to preserve its

"secret" for ever. However, the text itself makes no attempt to seduce

the reader, to provoke in him the desire for hidden truth/meaning. The

reader can follow the detective in all his actions wondering whether

he will succeed or fail without any reference to "secret" being made at

all. In Poe's case this means that the reader's attention is focused

on the way in which the connection between the two scenes will be ma-

de. The arbitrariness of this connection subverts intertextuality in

its most basic form of intratextuality as a necessary link between two

signifying units. Exactly such a subversion, or the substitution of

the illogicality of gift for the intertextual indebting logic of se-

duction defines the textual strategy of Patricia Highsmith whose no-

vels are exemplary for the poetics of crime fiction.

A perfect example would be, of course, her first novel "Strangers

on a train" - a study of the psychological dimension a "plan for a

perfect murder".

"Bruno slammed his palms together. 'Hey! What an ideal! We murder

for each other, see? I kill your wife and you kill my father! We

meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Per-

fect alibis! Catch?'" (30)

Apparently, the underlying structure of this plan is one of exc-

hange and debt. On the other hand, already the successful realization

would, in the economy of the genre, impaired intratextuality precluding

the possibility to connect two murders/two scenes. However, this thre-

at belongs to the intratextual structure as the possibility of its

existence. (18) Hence a typically structuralist approach would seem to

be quite correct: In Geoffrey H.Hartman's wording, "the detective story

structure - strong beginnings and endings and a deceptively rich, co-

unterfeit, "excludable" middle -resembles almost too much that of sym-

bol and trop" (1983 : 219). And once again the polemically drawn boun-

dary between structuralism and poststructuralism becomes hard to main-

tain. For one, it was Harold Bloom (1973,1975) who argued that inter-

textuality can be formalized as a system of tropes. On the other hand,

Derrida, despite his dismissal of traditional rhetoric as another

instance of logocentric constraints on dissemination (cf.1991 : 123),

pushes this approach to its logical limit, so that the structure of

gift becomes the structure of a tale's title whereas a tale itself

turns out to be only a "gloss or a long note on the title" (114), i.e.

"excludable". Intertextuality, says Derrida, is introduced through the

title's self-reflexive doubling (111-113). Which already amounts to an

unspoken acknowledgement that intertextuality has no place in the tex-

tual reality proper, where it comes to be annulled through the illo-

gicality of gift opposed to the intertextual seductiveness of a title

(113).

A paradox of the sketched approach is precisely that it assumes

that the structure of detective fiction is a structure of a success-

fully realized "perfect murder". However, such a structure does not

exist so long as the textual reality is concerned: every murder proves

to be imperfect in this way or another, and it is this imperfection

which allows for the genre to exist. However, the basic imperfection

of an actual structure is far more subversive than the "deflective"

activity of Derridaean "pharmakon" recently equated with gift (171).

In case of our novel intra- as well as intertextual subversion as

the replacement of seduction through gift is staged on both leves -

that of structure and that of content. Hence it is to be expected that

the crux of the matter is precisely the impossibility to dissociate

them.

To start from the beginning: Bruno's plan comes to be rejected by

Guy to whom the proposal has been made. Thus the latter, after the

first murder took place, has to be coerced, seduced into doing his

part. And he does it - in order to free himself, to escape the pressu-

re exercised on him by Bruno. As can be easily expected,he plays his ro-

le in an imperfect way, deflecting perfectly clear instructions with

which Bruno has furnished him (notably, in a letter). However, even

despite his clumsiness, the police fails to connect the two murders -

but this belongs to the laws of the genre. Now comes the private de-

tective, Gerard. To be sure, he is bound to expose the blindness of

the police. And, in effect, our expectations are not frustrated. Cong-

ratulations. Why not arrest them at once? And here the most interesting

things start to present themselves.

Illogically enough, over-abundance of evidence notwithstanding,

there seems to be no legal possibility available if the perpetrators

would not confess themselves, which boils down to making them confess,

cracking them down, that is, seducing them (222-225). This incosisten-

cy, however slight and insignificant it might appear, deserves our

full attention.

For, on close inspection, this forceful introduction of the logic

of seduction that disrupts the perfect functioning of the literary

mechanism which is believed to function smoothly by definition, proves

out to be only a final point of the mute subversion of this logic.

That seduction remains the only possibility to expose the murde-

rers, i.e., to bring narration to a close means that the two mur-

ders/scenes can be connected only arbitrary: the act of seduction as

an act of interpretative necessity par excellence cannot conceal its

underlying gratuitousness. Which means a neat subversion of intratex-

tuality, for, contrary to what structuralist poetics assumes, the se-

cond scene is not necessary in order for successful detection (Todorov

1971 : 57), or, to be more correct, it is necessary for detection as

the search for truth, but the paradox is that this search which is sa-

id to structure the narrative can never bring by itself the narrative

closure without the supplement of seduction. This proves our initial

postulate that the strategy of seduction foregrounded by deconstructi-

on helps to achieve the traditional hermeneutical goals which the tra-

dition is obviously incapable of achieving "legally". However, to en-

gage in the logic of seduction is to engage in the self-deconstructive

affair.

Despite his solemn assurance that he has some unrefutable eviden-

ce to make Guy crack down (225), Gerard has no chance to use it: Guy

confesses of his own free will to a friend of his who is too indiffe-

rent (249) to betray Guy to the police. If this, however, happens,

then only thanks to a pure chance:

"'There wasn't time for a dictaphone. But I heard most of it from

just outside your door'" (255)

Thus there still remains the possibility for Guy to deny it all. And

it is only at the last moment that he decides against it:

"Guy tried to speak, and said something entirely different from

what he had intended. 'Take me'" (256)

Thus the structure of our text is determined by an act (Gerard's)

and decision (Guy's) both of them coming about "in a glance's time

1988 ó : 32), to use Lacan's definition for the revelation of truth in

Poe's tale. Concerning this notion Lacan himself refers the reader to

his paper "The logical time and the assertion of anticipated certainty"

(1945) where an attempt is made to define temporality peculiar to

psychoanalytic experience. The ternar structure of this temporality

(204) is the one of "suspended movement" (203) which obviously means

that the certainty is destined for ever to remain suspended, never co-

mes to be actualized. (19) This proves that Lacan's and Derrida's views

on semiosis are basically the same. What is important is that this se-

miosis, in the light of Lacan's later formulations, is a hysterical

one, modelled on the transference-hysterical symptom par excellence.

(20) The mechanism of tradition is ensured through the endless suspen-

sion of certainty, the possibility of interpretation - through the

text's self-reflexive "acting out" (cf.Derrida 1991 : 85). The textual

evidence provided by P.Highsmith suggests another view. "A glance's ti-

me" subverts hysterical semiosis, radically eliminating, and not simp-

ly "suspending", the notion of certainty/mastery. Which allows us to

retain Lacan's intuition concerning the analogy of the mentioned

structure and the clinical picture of obsessional neurosis avoiding

the transformation of the latter into hysteria as it happens in Laca-

nian teaching.

Lacan's paper on logical time bears the subtitle "A New Sophism",

i.e. a paradox. A logical problem under examination stems from an of-

fer made by a prison governor to the three inmates to free on con-

dition that he will correctly identify the color of a disc afixed

between his shoulders reasoning from the colours of his colleagues

(one white, two blacks) - and not simply to guess but to ground

his conclusion logically. Hence the initial situation is typically one

of seduction. By Lacan's own admission, the problem allows for no "fa-

ir" solution. However this invalidates the proposed - "perfect" (198)

- solution only insofar as it invalidates logic in general for every

logical problem can be shown to be a sophism. This allows Lacan to si-

tuate his discussion on the purely logical level, to wit, that of sig-

nifiers in their necessary interplay with one another. However, as the

discussion proceeds, Lacan's slyness becomes quite obvious. The solu-

tion is imposible so long as logic is concerned, but the problem is

easily solvable on the psychological level (204-208) through the at-

tention to the slightest variations in how the persons involved react.

Hence the logic of seduction comes to be undermined by the grounding

psychological act of gratuitous gift. Which explains why the prison go-

vernor,contrary to his expectations, has to free not one but all parti-

cipants. By the same token, we cannot dismiss the psychological dimen-

sion of the textual strategy deployed by P.Highsmith.

To pick up our discussion where we have let it drop: it can be objec-

ted that Guy's confession, albeit forestalling Gerard's seduction, ne-

vertheless is forced by this logic in a far more profound way being

dictated by the sense of guilt. Guilt is debt. Which refers us to the

primal scene of Bruno's offer so apparently based on exchange (Bruno

needs his father's money, Guy - to be free to marry another woman).

But what underlies this offer is an unconscious wish to make a gift to

a person he likes (25). Thus, in strictly Derridaean terms, what un-

derlies "a plan for a perfect murder" is "a forgotten gift", and the

murder would have been perfect had Guy's unconscious transferentially

reacted to Bruno's. The crux of the matter is, however, that the motor

of the narrative is not this logic, but Guy's striving to separate

himself from Bruno's seductiveness, to remain a stranger to him. (21)

Paradoxically, this strategy can lead only to the foregrounding of the

notion of gift as something which separates, which cuts all connecti-

ons. This explains why Guy's confession cannot be regarded as animated

by guilt for his intention is not to pay the debt, that is, morally

speaking, to unambiguously acknowledge his compliance in the first

murder but to prevent that " the end" should "be like the beginning"

(246), to achive through confessing to Owen an illogical result, name-

ly, to prevent "that Owen in turn would capture another stranger who

would capture another, and so on in infinite progression of the trap-

ped and the hunted" (246). (22) Owen's indifference bears witness to

the absence of intratextual self-reflexivity between the end and the

beginning, while on the intertextual level it signals the standstill

of the transferentially-oriented hysterical semiosis to which Derri-

da's theory of gift boils down.

Which explains why so readable a text, in actual fact, effective-

ly resists interpretation. As we have been reiterating throughout this

paper, the chief merit of deconstruction is to show that interpretati-

on can be considered secure only insofar as a given text is connected

with other text(s) in a necessary way. Deconstruction discards the me-

ans of traditional hermeneutics but not its ends, quite correctly

stressing that the latter cannot be achieved through the former.Thus the

deconstructive model is a true realization of the very ambitions of

Western hermeneutics. This model amounts to a radical destinction bet-

ween "what the text says" and "what the text does". The always present

contradiction between these two levels of articulation opens an inter-

textual space known in psychoanalysis as a space of transference. In

clinical psychoanalysis the treatment of obsessional neurosis is aimed

at its transformation into transferential one for only thus can one

gain mastery over obsessions. However a literary text is not a clini-

cal patient. In our view, the textual reality is very near to the cli-

nical picture of obsessional neurosis. The impossibility to dissosiate

the level of structure from that of content, as an example of P.High-

smith clearly shows, means that the text effectively resists intertex-

tual seduction and interpretative transference subverting them through

the obsessive illogicality of gift.

Obviously this means a return to the "text-centered" criticism

which recently has been discarded with such contempt. However, I do

think that such a return is more than justified - precisely from the

point of view of mastery from which the dismissal took place. Parado-

xically, the proponents of this approach are led to acknowledge that,

despite its deconstructive potential, a text cannot resist appropria-

tion by the logocentric tradition. (23) Understandably, the reasons are

left unexamined. For it is precisely the complicity of poststructura-

list theory with tradition which is responsible for such an outcome.

Poststructuralism is a one more step away from the textual reality. If

a text is said to be not resistant enough means, simply and bluntly,

that it is made to be so. Here it might be of use to distinguish bet-

ween mastery over text and mastery over its meaning: the appropriation

always concernes only the former aspect, whereas the latter is a

text's potential of resistance. But the meaning is not what decons-

truction understands under this term. A text's meaning is only a move-

ment of subversion of the logic of seduction which is at the core of

the hermeneutical project from Plato to Derrida - and beyond.

notes