The Aesthetic Unconscious 2010

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I What Freud Has to Do with Aesthetics

y title does not men tht intend to tl bout

the ppliction o the Freudin theor o the

unconscious to the domin o esthetis 1 will

not be speking bout the psychonlysis o rt

nor bout the numerous nd signiicnt borrow-

ings tht historins nd philosophers o rt hemde rom prtiulr theses dned by Freud

or Lcn I he no prticulr ompetene regrd

ing psyhonlyti theory ore importntly

howeer my interest lies in dierent diretion

I m not interested in the ppliction o Freudin

concepts to the nlysis nd interprettion o liter

r tets or plstic wors o rt will insted s why the interprettion o these tets nd wors

1 Thi text was originally preented in he form of o lecture,

delvered at the "School for Phoanale in Buel iJanu-

ay 2000 on the nviation of Didier Cromphout.



What Freud Ha to Do wth Aesthetics

occupies such an impotant, strategic position in

Freuds demonstration of the pertinence of

analtic concepts and forms of interpretation. I

hae in mind here not onl the books or articles

that Freud specicall deoted to writers or artists

to Leonardo da Vincis biograph, Michel-

angelos Moses, or ensen's Gdiva but also the

references to litera texts and characters that

requentl support his demonstrations such as the

multiple references made in the Interetation of

Dreams to both the glories of the national literay

tradition such as Goethes Faust and contempo-

rar works like Alphonse Daudets Sapho.

The reersal of approach proposed here does

not impl an intention to turn Freuds questions

around against him in order to ask for example

wh he is interested in Michelangelo's Moses or a

specific note from Leonardos Notebook in patic-

ular The members of the analtic profession hae

alread explained to us the circumstances of the

father of pschoanalsiss identiication with the

guardian of the Tables of the Law or the import of

his conusion between a kite and a vlture M

at Freud Has t D wth Asthtcs

goal is not to pschoanalze Freud and am not

concerned with the wa in which the literary and

artistic gures he chose t into the analtic

romance of the Founder What interests me is the

question of what these figures sere to proe and

what strctures allow them to produce this proo.

What these figures sere to proe at the most

general leel is that there is meaning in what

seems not to hae an meaning something enig

matic in what seems selfeident a spark of

thought in wat appears to be an anodne detail

These gures are not the materials upon which

analtic interpretation proes its abity to inter

pret cltural formations The are testimony to the

existence of a paicular relation between thought

and nonthought a partiular wa that thought is

present within sensible materialit meaning

within the inignificant and an inoluntary

element within conscious thought n short, Dr

Fred the interpreter of the anodne facts aban-

doned b his positiist colleagues can use these

examples in his demonstration because the are

themseles tokens of a certain unconscious To

3



Wat Freuda< to Do with Aesthetics

put it another way: if it was possible for Freud to

formulate the psychoanalytical theoy of the

unconscious, it was because an unconscious

mode of thought had already been identifiedotside of the clinical domain as such and the

domain of works of at and literature can be

defined as the privileged ground where this

"unconscios is at work My investigation wil

thus bear upon the way Freudian theory is

anchored in this already existing configuration of

unconscious thought in the idea of the reationbetween thoght and nonthought that was

formed and deeloped primarily in the field of

w hat is called aesthetics We wil therefore inter-

pret Freud's aesthetic studies as marking the

inscription of analytic thought within the horizon

of aesthetic thought

This project naturally presupposes that we cometo terms with the notion of aesthetics itself. I do

not consider aesthetics to be the name of the

science or discipline that deals with ar In my view

it designates a mode of thought that develops

with respect to things of ar and that is conceed

4

at Freud H to Do wth Aesthets

to show them to be things of thought More nda-

entally aesthetics is a particuar historica regime

of thinking about ar t and an idea of thought

according to which things of art are things of thought It is well known that the use of the word

aesthetics to designate thinking about ar is

recent Its genealogy is generally referred to in

Bagartens Aesthetica, published in 1750 and

Kants Crtique ojJ udgment. But these landmarks

are equiocal For Baumgaren he term aesthet-

ics in fact does not designate the theor of ar butther the domain of sesibe knowedge the clear

but nonetheess "confused or indistinct knowl-

edge that can be contrasted wi the clear and

distinct knowledge of ogic Kants position in this

genealogy is equay problematic When he

borows the ter "aesthetics from Baugaren as

a nae for the theor of forms of sensibiity Kantin fact rejects what ge it its meaning namely the

idea of the sensible as a consed ineligible

For Kant it is impossible to conceive of aesthetics

as a theor of indistinct knowledge Indeed the

Ctique of the Facul�y of udgment does not

5



What udHa.' to with Aesthetics

recognize aesthetics as a theor; aesthetic only

appears as an adjective and it designates a pe of

judgment rather than a domain of objects. It i oy

in the context of Romanticism and postKantianidealism through the ritings of Schelling the

Schlegel brothers, and Hegel that aesthetics

comes to designate the thought of art even as the

inappropriateness of the term is constantly

remarked Only in this later context do we see an

identification beteen the thought of art the

thought effectuated by works of art and a certainidea of consed knoledge" occur under the

name of aesthetics This new and paradoxical idea

makes art the territor of a thought that is present

outside itself and identical ith nonthought. It

unites Baumgarten's denition of the sensible as

consed" idea ith Kant's contrar definition of

the sensible as heterogeneous to the idea Henceforth confused knowledge is no longer a lesser

form of knoledge ut properly the thought of that

which does not thnk2

2 So f requently today one hears deplored the f act that aesthetics

has been led as tra y f m its true des tination as a critique of the

6

What Freudla.' to Do with Aesthetics

In other ords aesthetics" is not a new nae

for the domain of art It is a specific congura-

tion of this domain It is not the ne rbric under

hich e can group hat formerly fell under thegeneral concept of poetics. It marks a transforma-

tion of the regime of thinking about art. This ne

regie provides the locus where a specific idea of

thought is constituted My hypothesis in this book

is that e Freudian thought of the unconscious is

only possible on the basis of is regime of think

ing about art and the idea of thought that is imma-nent to it Or if ou prefer Freudian thought

despite the classicism of Freuds artistic rerences

is only possible on the basis of the revolution that

moves the doan of the a fm the reign of poet-

ics to that of aesthetics.

In order to develop and justi these proposi

tions I ill attempt to show the link beteen a

judgment of taste, as Kant had formulated it in a suar of

Enlightenment tought But onl what exists can be ed asa.

Since aesthetics never was the theory of taste the wish hat i

might become it once again erel expresses the endess refrain

of a "return to soe impossibe prerevolutionar paradise of

liberal individualism

7



Wat Freud Has to Do with Aesthetics

certain number of privileged objects and odes

of interpretation in Freudian theor and the

changing status of these obects in the aesthetic

configuration of thinking about art. Giving creditwhere credit is due, we will begin with the central

poetic charactr in the elaboration of psycho

analysis, Oedipus In The Interetaon of

Dreams, Freud explains that there exists

"legendar material whose universal dramatic

power rests upon its conformity with e univer

sal ta of infant pscholog. This material is theOedipus legend and e eponymous drama by

Sophocles.3 Freud thus hypothesizes that the

Oedipal dramatic scheme is universal from a

double point of view: as the development of

universal - and universally repressed - infantile

desires but also as exemplar form of revelation

of a hidden secret The gradually intensied and

3 Sigmund reud, Te Interetation of Drems, n e Stndrd

Edton of the Cmplete Pycholog l Work of gmund Freud

tTans. and ed Jame trachey (London; Hogah 54), vol

4 p 2. Hereafr ted a Stndrd dton wth tite of nd-

idual work olume and page number

8

Wat Feud H< to Do with Aesthetics

skillf ully dela yed re velation of O e d i p u s t he K n g is comparable, sa ys Freud to the work of ps ycho -anal ysis. He thus cobines three tings within a

single aff irmation of uni versality: a generaltendenc of the human psyce, a determinate f ictional material and an exemplar dramaticschema The question then becomes what allows Freud to af f rm this adequation and ake it the center of his demonstration? In other tes what ,are we to make of the universal dramatic power of

the Oedipal stor and the scheme of re velation emplo yed b y Sophocles The diff icult experience of a playwright who attempted to exploit the success of this material will pro vide the example tat will allo us to approach this question

9



2 A Defecive Subjec

n 1659 Corneille was commissioned to write a

traged for the festial celebrating Carnial For

the plawright who had been absent from the

stage for seen ears following the resonding

failure of Pehate it was the chance for a come

back He cold not afford another failure and onl

had two months to write his traged. The greatest

chance at success he felt would be proided b

the definitie tragic subject. Since it had alread

een handled b illustrious models he would onl

hae to translate and adapt it for the French

stage. He therefore chose to do an Oedus. Butthis golden subject uickl turned out to be a trap

n order to hae an chance at the success he was

counting on Coeille had to gie up the idea of

transposing Sophocles. The schema of reelation



A Dfv Sbj

and Oedips's guilt w as completely impr actical

and needed to be r ew or ked.

I kne w that what had passed f or miraculous in

those ong-ago times would seem horribe in

our age, and that the eloquent and curious

description of the way the unhappy prince

pts out his eyes - and e spec acle of the

bood f rom those same dead eyes dripping

do wn his f ace which occupies the whole f th

act in the incomparable origina version

would of f end he deicacy of the ladies who

compose the most beautif l portion of or

adience and whose disgust wold easily

entail condemnat on by those who accompany

them, and f nally that since loe plays no part

and ladies hae no roles in the subject it was

lacking in the principal ornaments that

ordinariy win s the approbation of the

public.4

j Pierr Cornc, Cuvres complte, d. Gorgs outon (ar;

Glmrd BbHothqu d 1 P 1987). vo 3, pp. 18-19

12

A Dfv Sbj

CorneilJe's problems, as you will have noted

did not stem from the theme of incest They

derived from the way the theme is turned into a

narrative from the schema of revelation and the

theatrical physicality of the denoumnt. Three

points made the simple transposition that had rst

been envisaged impossible: the horror of Oedi

puss dead eyes the absence of love interest and

nally te abse of oracles which allow the audi

ence to gess the anser to the riddle too easily

and make the blindness of the solver of riddlesnbelievable.

The Sophoclean schema of the revelation is

defectve in that it shos too clearly what should

only be said and makes knon too soon hat

should remain mysterios So Corneille had to fix

these deciencies In order to spare the sensibility

of the ladies he moved off-stage the momentWhen Oedipus goges out his eyes But he put

Tir esias offstage as ell He suppressed the

verbal confrontation so central for Sophocles

beteen the one ho knos bt does not want

to speak and tells the tth anway and the

3



A Defective Subject

one who wants to know but refuses to hear the

words that reveal the trth he Corneille

replaced this alltooapparent of hide-and

seek that the guilty detectie plays ith e trthwith a modern plot that is a plot involving a

conict of passions and interests that creates inde

cision about the identiy of the guil pary The

love stor lacking in Sophocles' play was neces

sar in order to roduce this confict and

suspense. Corneille gave Oedipus a sister Dirc

whom he deprived of the throne that was hers by

right, and gave Dirc a lover Theseus Since Dirc

thinks she is resonsible for the journey that cost

her father his life and Theseus has doubts about

his own birth (or at least he pretends to in order

to protect the woman he loves) three interpreta

tions of the oracle becoe possible and three

characters could turn out to be guilty The love

story preseres suspense and unceraty about

the dnouement through careful handling of the

distribution of knowledge

Sixty years later another plawrght encountered

he same problem and resolved i in much e same

14

A Defective Sul: ect

way At te ag e of t en V olr e chose e subjectof Oedips to star t his car eer as a dr aatist But he did so on e basis of an even more dir ect c ticism

of Sophocles an that of Co ele denounci g he impr obabilities of the lot of Oed us the K in g.It is unbelievable that Oedipus does not know the cir cstances in which his pr edecessor Laiosdied It is equally unbelievable hat he does not under stand what Tir esias to hi and that he

insults the an who he had br oug ht bef or e hi as a vener able pphet and calls hi a liar The conclusion dr awn by V ol e is cal: "It is a def ect in the subject people say and not one intr oduced by the author . As if it wer e not the author ' job to cor r ect his subject when it is defective!5 V oltair e er ef or e cor r ected his subject by finding another candidate f or Laios's mur de

r Philoctetes, formerly an exosed child desper ately in love wit Jocasta, who had disappear ed f rom Thebes at the time of the urder and r e pr ecisely at the tie a g uil par ty is needed.

5 V oltair e, l et tr es ur in ( uvr s comhlet (Ox for d: The

Volaire Foundation, 200 voL A p. 337

15



A Dfctiv Subjct

A defectve subect s thus how the classcal

age the age of representaton saw the workngs

of Sophoclean psychoanalyss Ths deficency

we ust ephase agan s not due to the ncest

story The dffcultes Cornelle and Voltare

encountered n adaptng Sophocles provde o

grst for an arguent aganst the unversalty of

the Oedpus coplex What they do put nto

doubt o the other hand, s the unversalty of

Oedpal "psychoaalyss that s Sophocles'

scenaro for the revelaton of the secret ForCornelle and Voltare ths scenaro establshed a

defectve relaton between what s see and what

s sad between what s sad and what s under

stood. Too uch s shown to e spectator. Ths

excess oreover s not erely a ueston of the

dsgustng spectacle of the gougedout eyes; t

conces the ark of thought upon the bodyore generally Above all the scenaro allows too

uch to be understood. Contrary to what Freud

says there s no proper suspense and skllul

progresson n the unvelg of trth to both the

hero and the spectator What then coproses

A Dfctv ubjct

this dramatic ratioality? There can be no doubt: it is the sub ject, the character of Oedipus himself.t is the fury that compels him to want to know at any cost against all and against himself, and at the same time not to understand the barely veiled

words that offer him the trth he demands. Here lies the heart of the problem Oedipus, driven mad by his need for knowledge does not merely upset the "delicacy of the ladies when he gouges out his eyes What he upsets in the end, is the

order of the representative system that gives dramatic creation its rle

Essentially two things are meant by the order of representation In the first place it is a cerain order of relations beween what can be said and hat can be seen The essence of speech in this order is to show. But speech shows within the

bounds of a double restraint. On the one hand ,

the nction of visible manifestation restrains the power of speech Speech makes maifest sentimen ' and wills rather than speaking on its ow,as the speech of Tiresias - like that of Sophocles or Aeschylus - does in an ocular or enigmatic

7



A fecve Subjec

d O th th and ths fut stans

th pw f th vsbl tslf Sph sttuts a

rta vsblt t aks anfst what s hddn

suls uts ad dss what s fa fn's s But s dng t stans th vsbl

that t aks anfst und ts and t

fbds th vsbl f shwg n t wn f

shwg th unspakabl th h f t

gugdut s

n th snd pla t d f pstatn

s a rtan d f latns bwn knwldgand at Daa sas Asttl s an aang

nt f atns At th as f daa a haa

ts wh pusu partula nds whl atng

ndtns f partal ga whh wll b

slvd n th us f th atn What ths

xluds s what sttuts th v gud f

th Odpal pfan, nal th paho f

kwldg th aaal lntlss dtnatn

t kw what t wuld b btt nt t knw th

fu that pvnts undstadng th fusal t

gnz th trth th f n whh t psnts

tslf th atastph f usustaabl kwng

18

A Defecve Subjec

a knwng that blgs n t wthdaw f th wld f vsblty Sphcls' tagdy s ad f ths p atho s. A lady A sttl n lng

undstands t ad psss t bhnd th thry f daatc actn that aks knwng a sult f th ngnus achry f vsal ad cgn-t It s ths patho s that n th classcal agaks Odpus a pssbl h unlss adcal cctns a ad. Ipssbl t bcaus h klls hs f ath and slps wth s th, but

because of the way that he leas about itbcaus f th dty f ppsts that h ncanates in this leanig the tagic idetity of know-ig ad not knowing, of action u dertake and p at ho s undergoe.

]9



3 I The Aesthetc Revolution

It s thus a whole egme of thnkng about poet

that ejets the Oedpal senao e an put ths

the othe wa aound the Oedpal senao an

onl aque a pleged status afte the abolton

of the epesentate egme of thnkng about theats a egme that mples a etan dea of

thought: thought as aton mposng tself upon a

passe matte. Ths s pesel what I hae alled

the aesthet eoluton the end of an odeed set

of elatons between what an be seen and what

an be sad knowledge and aton att and

passt o Oedpus to be the heo of the

pshoanal eoluton then thee must st

be a new Oedpus one who has nothng to do

th those magned b Conelle and Voltae

Beond enhstle taged beond een the

stotelan atonalzaton of tag aton ths

21



e esthetic Revolution

new Oedipus to restore the tragic thought

of Sophoces. Hlderin Hegel, and Nietzsche

were among those who put f orh is new Oedi-

pus and the new idea of traged y that corresponds to him.

Two traits characterize this new Oedipus and

make im e er of a "new idea of oug a

claims o revive e idea of oug aesed o by Greek ragedy Oedipus is proof of a cerain exis

enia savagery of oug a definiion of know

ing no as e subecive ac of grasping anobecive ideaiy bu as e affecion passion or

even sickness of a living being. Te significaionof e Oedipa sory according o 1e Bh f

edy is a knowedge in ief is a crime

agains naure.6 Oedipus and ragedy generay

aes o e fac a in e maer of oug

ere is aays a quesion of sickness medicine

and their paradoxical uni. This philosophical

restaging of the tragic equivalence between

rr Ntzh Te Birh of Rymd G

d Rl r Cam bridge U niverity Pres,

1999), 47

Te esthetic Revoluton

knowing and suering (e ahe mahs of

Aescyus or Sopoces) presupposes a gaering

e rio of ose wo are sick wi knowing:

Oedipus and Hamle ogeer in e Inerea- n f Dreams as ey were in Heges Lecures

n Aeshecs and Faus wo is ere as wel. Te

ivenion of psycoanaysis occurs a e poin

were piosopy and medicine pu eac oer

no quesion by making oug a maer of sick

ness and sickness a maer of oug

u is soidariy beween e ings of oug and e ings of sickness is isef in soi

dari wi e ne regime of inking abou e

produions of ar If Oedipus is an exempary

er i is because is ficiona figure emblema

zes e properies given o e producions of ar

by e aeseic revouion. Oedipus is e wo

knows and does no know wo is absoluey acive and absouely passive Suc an ideniy of

onraries is precisely ow e aeseic revou

ion denes wa is proper o ar. A firs sig

eems ony o se an absoue capaciy for creaion

n opposiion o e norms of e represenaive

T h l T A h i l i



Te Aesthetic Relution

regime. The work now stands under its own law

of production and is its own proof But at the

same time this unconditional creativity is identi

ed with an absolute passivity Kant's conception

of genius summarizes this dualit The genius is

the active power of nature who sets his own

creative power against any model or norm The

genius, we might say becomes a norm for

hiself But at the same time he is the one who

does not know what he does and is incapale of

accounting for his own activity

This identit beteen knowing and not know-

ing beeen activity and passivity is the ve fact

of art in the aesthetic regime; it radicalizes what

Baumgarten called "confused clarity into an iden-

tit of contraries In this sense the aesthetic revo-

lution had already begun in te eighteenth centu

when Vico undertook to establish in his New Science, the gure of what he called the true

Hoer in opposition to Aristotle and the entire

representative tradition. It is worth recalling the

context in order to clar i the filiation that interests

us Vicos prima target is not the theo of art

24

Te Aethetic Revolution

but the old theologicopoetic business about the

wisom of the Egyptians This question of

whether hieroglyphic language was a code in

which religiOUS wisdom forbidden to the uniniti-

ated has been deposited an likewise whether

ancient poetic fables were the allegorical epres-

sion of philosophical thought dates back at least

to Pato In denouncing the immoralit of the

Homeric fables Plato in effect refuted those who

aw cosmological allegories in the divine adulter-

e they narrated The question reappears in the

rotoChristian era when pagan authors, seeking

t reute the accusation of idolat, once again

romote the idea of wisdom encypted in

ogramatic writng and the fables of the poets

It returns with force in the seventeenth and eigh-

teenth centuries borne by both the development

eegetical methods and the philosophical quar-re over the origins of language Withn this

ntet Vico seeks to kill o birds with one

tone. He hopes to liquidate the idea of a myste-

us wisdom hidden in imagistic writing and

oeti fables In opposition to this search for

25



e Aesec Revouon

hidden menings he proposes new hermene

tis tht instead relates the to the onditions

of its prodtion. Bt t the sme time he demol

ishes the trditional imge of the poet s theinventor of fbles hrters, nd imges. is

disover of the tre Homer reftes the Aris

totelian and representtive imge of the poet s

inventor of fbles hrters imges nd rhymes

on for points First, he shows Homer is not n

inventor of fbles. e did not reognize or

distintion between histor nd fition, nd in ftonsidered his so-lled fbles to be hitor

whih he trnsmitted as he hd reeived them

Seondly he is not the inventor of hraters is

solled haraters Ahilles the brave Ulysses

the lever Nestor the wise re neither individl

ized hrters nor llegories invented for poeti

prposes They are absttions in imges, whihare the only way for a thoght tht is eqlly ina

pble of bsttion nd individliztion to repre

sent virtes orge intelligene, wisdom or

stie that it nnot oneive nor even nme s

sh Thirdly, Homer is not the mhelebrted

6

Te Aesec Revouon

inventor of betifl metphors nd briliant

imges e simply lived in n ge when thoght

od not be seprated from the imge nor he

abstrt from the onrete. is imges re nothg bt the wy people of his time spoke. Finlly

he is not the inventor of rhyth nd meters. e

is simply proof of a stge of lngge in whihspeeh and song were identil Men sng before

speking before pssing to rtilted lngge

he poeti harms of sng speeh re tally

oly the stammerngs of lngges infny stilloservbe in the lngge of def-mtes Ths

e for trditionl privileges of the poet-inventor

re trsformed into properties of his lngge.

is angge is his only insofr s it does not

eong to him; it is not an instrment at his

isposl bt the token of n infntile stge of

agage thoght, and hmnity omer is poet aot of the identity between what he wants wht he does not wnt wht he knows nd

a he does not know wht he does nd whte oes not do The eistene of poetr is tied to

is ientity of ontrries to this gp between



Te Aesthetic Revolution

speech and what t says. There s soldar

between the poetic charcter of language and ts

ciphered character But ths cpher does ot hide

any secret scece It is n the end othing more

than the nscrption of the process that prodces

speech itself This hermeneutical fgure of the "true Homer

s a prerequste to the gure of Oedps as an

exemplary ad uversally vad tragc sbject

Ths figure presupposes a regme of thnking

abot art n whih art s deined by its beng theidentit of a coscious procedure and an uncon

scos production, of a willed acton and an vol

untary process In short the dentt of logos and

pathos wl heceforth be what attests to the exis

tece of art. Bt there are two contrar ways to

thk about ths identt: as the mmanence of

logos in pathos, of thought in nothought, ornversely as the mmanece of pathos in logos of

no-thought n thought We d the rst manne

illustrated n the great founding texts of th

aesthetc mode of thought such as Hege's

Lectures on Aesthetics. Art, n Schellings terms

28

Te Ae st he tc R e vol ut ion

a spirt's odysse outsde of tsel In Hegels systematizaton ths sprt seeks to become manf est, whch means n the rst place to make tself manf est

to itself through the matter that is its opposite the compactness of bul or sculpted stoe n the denst of color or n the temporal nd sonorous materialt of language It seeks tself n the doble sensble ex terority of matter d the image It seeks itself and msses itsel . But ths game of hide-andseek t creates tself as

e nteror light of sensible materal the beatl pearance of the god of stone the arbores ent thrst of the Gothc v ault and spre, or the rital brlliance anmating the still-lif es insgnif n e Te nv erse model that can be opposed to s odsse is that of the beautil and ratonales etic appearance whose obscure d

epths are v en wth pathos. In Schopenhauer ths model is essed b the mov ement that turns its back on e pearances and the lov el causal order of the W d of representaton n order to f ace the s e, subterranean and nonsenscal world of e · .

109-O-tsel : the meaningless wo ld of naked

29



Te Aesthetic Revolution

will-tolife, of the paradoxically named " will

whose essence is to want nothing, rejecting the

model of the choice of ends and the adaptation of

means to those ends that f orms the usual meaning

of the notion of will. In Nietzsche it is expressed

b y the identification of the existence of art itself

with the polari of A pollonian eautiful appear

ance and the Dion ysian drive that rings jo y and

suf f ering in e qual measure and comes to light in

the ver y f orms that would den y its e istence

30

4 I The Two Forms of Mute Speech

Psychoanalysis thus nds it historical birthplace

wthn this counter-movement whose philosophi

cl heroes are Schopenhauer and the young Niet

zshe and which reigns in the literature that frm

Zla to Maupassant, Ibsen or Strinderg plungesto the pure meaninglessness of raw life or into

the encounter with the powers of darkness We

re not merely conceed with the inuence of

he spirit of the age; more precisely we are tring

t estalish the positions possile wihin a syste

s dened by a certain idea of thought and a

ertan idea of writing. For the silent revolutiont we have called aesthetic opens the space in

ih an idea of thought and a corresponding

ea of writing can be elaorated This idea of

ught rests upon a fundamental afrmation:

ere is thought that does not think thought at

31



e Two Form of Mute peeh

work not onl in the foreign element of non-

thought but in the ver form of nonthought.

Converel, there i nonthought that inhabit

thought and give it a power a it own. Thi non-thought i not imply a form of abence of

thought it i an ecaciou preence of it oppo-

ite From whichever ide we approach the equa-

tion, the identi of thought and nonthought i

the ource of a ditinctive power

Correponding to thi idea of thought i an idea

o writing Writing refer not onl to a form ofmanifetation of peech but more ndamentall

to an idea of peech itelf and it intrinic power

It i well known that for Plato writing deignated

not onl the materiali of the written ign on a

material upport but a pecic tatu of peech

He conidered writing to be a mute logos, peech

that i incapable of aing what it ay differentl

or of chooing not to peak It can neither account

for what it proffer nor dicern thoe whom it i or

i not appropriate to addre. Thi peech imul-

taneouly mute and chatt can be contrated

with peech that i action dicoure guided by a

32

e Two Forms o f Mute Speech

signcation to be tranmitted and a goal to be

achieved. For Plato thi wa the peech of the

master who know how to explain hi word and

how to hod them in reerve how to keep themawa rom the profane and how to depoit them

ike eed in the oul o thoe in whom the can

bear frit The claical repreentative order iden-

tfied thi "living peech with the active peech of

the great orator who move deepl and

peruade edifie and lead oul and bodie

is model likewie include the dicoure of thetragic hero who purue hi will and hi paion

to the limit.

In oppoition to thi living peech that

provided the repreentative order with it norm

riting i the mode of peech that correpond to

the aethetic revolution: the contradictor mode

of a peech that peak and keep ilent at the

same time that both know and doe not know

hat it i aing. But there are wo major gure

of thi contradictor mode, correponding to the

o oppoite form of the relation between

ought and nonthought. The polariy of thee

33



e Two Form ofMe Speech

two gures sketches out the space of a single

domain that of literar speech as smptomatic

speech?

Mute writing in the rst sense, is the speechborne b mute things themseles. It is the capa

bilit of signification that is inscribed upon their

e bod summarized b the "eerthing

speaks of Noalis the poetmineralogist. Ee

thing is trace estige, or fossil Eer sensible

form beginning from the stone or the shell tells a

stor In their striations and ridges the all bear the tces of their histor and the mark of their

destination. Literature takes up the task of deci

phering and rewriting these signs of histo writ

ten on things Balzac summarizes and celebrates

this new idea of writing in the decisie pages at

the beginning of Te Wild A' Skin that describe

the antiquas store as the emblem of a new tholog a phantasmagoria formed entirel

from the ruins of consumption. The great poet of

the new age is not Bron the repoer of the

7 See Jacque Rancre La Parol mut: Esai sur ls conradi-

ion de la littraur (Pa: Hachette 1998).

34

e Two Form ofMte eech

souls turmoil It is Cuier the geologist the natu

ralist who reconstitutes animal populations from

bones and forests from fossilized imprints8 With

him a new idea of the artist is deined as one whotraels through the labrinths and crpts of the

social world e gathers the estiges and tran-

scribes the hieroglphs painted in the congura

tion of obscure or random things e gies the

insignicant details of the prose of the world their

power of poetic signification. In the topograph

of a plaza the phsiognom of a facade, thepaern or wear of a piece of clothing the chaos

of a pile of merchandise or trash he recognizes

the elements of a mholog e makes the true

sto of a ciet, an age or a people isible in

the figures of this mholog foreshadowing indi

idual or collectie destin Evething pea"

i plies the abolition of the hierarchies of therepresentatie order The great reudian rle that

tere are no inignicant details that on the

contrar it is e details that put us on the path of

8 Hono de Balzac T Wild Ass's Skin, trans Hebert J Hunt

(Hmondsworth Penguin 1977, p. 41

35



Th To }ms of Mu Spch

truth - is in diret ntinuit with the aestheti

revlutin. There are n nble and vlgar

subjets nr imprtant narrative episdes and

aessr desriptive nes There is nt a singleepisde desriptin r sentene that des nt

bear within itsel the signing pwer the

entire wrk There is nthing that des nt bear

the pwer language Everthing is n an equal

ting equal imprtant equall signiiant

Thus the narratr At the Sign of the Cat and

Racket sets us in rnt the ade a husewhse asmmetrial penings hati reesses

and utrppings rm a tissue hiergphs in

whih we an deipher the histr the huse -

te histr the siet t whih it bears witness

- and the destin the haraters wh live there

Similarl Les Misrables plunges us int the sewer

that like a ni philspher sas everthing; it

brings tgether n an equal basis everthing that

ivilizatin uses and thrws awa its masks and

its distintins as well as its everda utensils The

new pet the gelgial r arelgial pet

perrms the same s inquir that Freud

36

Th To Foms of Mu �ch

nduts in e Interetation of Dreams. He

pses the priniple that nthing is insigniant

that the prsai details that psitivisti thught

dsdans r attributes t a merel phsilgialratinalit are in at signs enrpting a hist.

ut he als pses the paradxial nditin

ths hermeneutis in rder r the banal t reveal

s seret it must rst be mhlgized The huse

and the sewer speak the bear the trae truth

- as will the dream r the parapraxis and the

Maian mmdit insar as the are rsttransrmed int the elements a mhlg r

phantasmagria

The writer is thus a gelgist r arhelgist

explring the labrnths the sial wrld and

later thse the sel He gathers remnants

exhumes ssils and transribes signs that bear

wtness t a wrld and write a histr Te mute

writing things deivers in its prse the truth

a ivilizatin r an age that the neglrius

sene "living speeh had hidden rm view

The latter has nw beme a vain sene

rat the disuse superiial agitatins. ut

37

T F m fM t S h T F f t Sp h



Te wo Forms ofMute Seech

the interpreter of signs is also a doctor a smpto

matologist who diagnoses e illnesses aicting

the enterprising individual and the brilliant soci

ety The naturalist and geologist Balzac is also a

doctor able to detect at the heart of the intense

activity of individuals and societies, a sickness

identical to this intensit In Balzacs work the

name for this sickness is wi: the malad of

thought that seeks to transform itself into reality

and so carries individuals and societies toward

their destruction. Indeed, the histor of nineteenthcentur literature can be described as the

histor of the transformations of the will In the

naturalist and smbolist period it will become

impersonal destin heredit, the accomplishment

of a willto-live devoid of reason, an assault upon

the illusions of consciousness b the world of

obscure forces Literar smptomatolog will thenacquire a new status in this literature of the

pathologies of thought centering on hsteria

nevosism," or the weight of the past These new

dramaturgies of the buried secret trace the life

histor of the individual in order to uncover the

38

Te wo Forms of ute Speech

profound secret of heredity and race and, in the

a instance, the naked and meaningless fact of

e.

This literature is attached to the second form of

denti of logos andpathos mentioned above the

one following an inverse path from the cear to

the obscure and from logos to pathos, to the pure

suffering of existence and the pure reproduction

of the meaninglessness of life A second form of

mute speech is likewise at work here In place of

e hieroglph inscribed on the bod and subjectto deciphering we encounter speech as soliloqu,

speaking to no one and saing nothing but the

impersonal and unconscious condtions of speech

itself. In Freuds time it was Maeterlinck who most

forcel theorized this second form of mute

speech of unconscious discourse in his anasis

of second-degree dialogue in Ibsen's dramas9This dialogue expresses not the thoughts senti

ments and intentions of the characters, but the

9 Marice Maeerlnck, "The ragical n Daily n The reasure

of te Humble, trans. Alfred Sutro (Ne York: Dodd Mead and

Co ) nd pp. 13-35.

39

T F fM t Sp h e Two rm ofMu Speech



e Two Form ofMute Speech

thought of the third person" who haunts the

dialogue the confrontation with the Unknown,

with the anonymous and meaningless forces of

life. The language of motionless tragedy" tran-

scribes the unconscious movements of a being

reaching luminous hands through the battlements

of the artificial forress in which we are impris

oned"0 the knocking of a hand that does not

belong to us [and) strikes the secret gates of ou

instinct" These doors says Maeterlinck in sum

cannot be opened but we can listen to theknocking behind the door" We can transpose the

dramatic poem, formerly dedicated to an

0 Jles Hret "Conversation avec Marice \aeterlinck and

Maeterlinck, Confession de pote in Maetelinck Intduc-

tion a une pholog ds onge et atre (Brussels: abor

986) pp 156 and 8L11 Maeterlinck Small Talk The Theater in Symbolit Ar To

ri: A Crtal Atholo, ed Henri Dorra (Berkeley Universiyo Califoia Press 1995 p 14. I am well aware that Maeter

Iinck places himsel in the lineage of Emerson and the mystial

tradition not in that of chopenaerian nihilis Bt what

interests me here - and what moreover makes possible the

confsion of the two traditions is the same stats they give to

voiceless speec as the expression of an nconscios willing

o eistene

40

e Two rm ofMu Speech

aangement of actions" into the language of

hese blows, the speech of the invisible crowd

that haunts our thoughts Perhaps what the stage

needs is for this speech to be incarnated in a new

body no longer the human body of the actor/

character but that of a being who would appear

to live without being alive" a body of shadow or

wax granted to this multiple and anonymous

voice12 From this Maeterlinck draws the idea of

an android theater that links Villiers de L!sle

Adams novelistic reverie with the future of the

theater from Edward Gordon Craig's berMari

onee to Tadeusz Kantors Dead Class.

The aesthetic unconscious consubsantial with

e aesthetic regime of ar, manifests itself in the

polariy of this double scene of mute speech: on

the one hand a speech written on the body that

must be restored to a linguistic signification by alabor of deciphering and rewriting; on the other

he oiceless speech of a nameless power that lurks

behind any consciousness and any Signication, to

2 Maetelnck mall Talk p 5.

41

T Two Forms (M Sp

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/voice.12

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/voice.12



p

whih voie nd bod m be given The o

however m be h hi nonmo voie nd

ghotl bod led e hmn bje down he ph

of he gre renniion ord he nohingne

of will whoe Shopenherin hdow eigh o

hevil on he lierre of he nonio

42

5 I From One Unconscious to Another

he gol of hi oline of he lierr nd philo

ophil gre of he ehei nonio i

m ber repeing i no o provide he model

for ne genelog of he Fredin nonio

e hve no inenion of forgeing he medil

nd ienifi onex in whih phonli

w elbored nor of diolving he Fredin

onep of he nonio he eonom of he

drive nd he d of he formion of he

nonio in enrold ide of nknon

knowing nd hogh h doe no hink Nor i

here n poin in ring o rn he gme rondnd how how he Fredin nonio i

noniol dependen on he lierre nd 1

whoe hidden ere i lim o nveil. h

mer i rher o poin o he relion of

omplii nd oni eblihed beeen he

43

Frm One Unconscious to Another Frm One Unconscou, to Another



Frm One Unconscious to Another

aesthetic unconscious and the Freudian uncon

scios. We can dene the stakes of the encounter

between these two versions of the unconscious

on the basis of Freud's own indications when he

recounts the invention of psychoanalysis in e

Interetation of Dreams. His narrative posits a

contrast between psychoanalysis and the notion

of science associated with positivistic medicine,

which treats the peculiarities of the sleeping mind

as negligible data or attributes them to deter

minable physical causes In his battle against thissort of positivism, Freud calls on psycoanalysis

to forge an alliance with the old mythological

heritage and poplar belief concerning the signi

cation of dreams. But there is another alliance

woven into The Interetaton q Dreams, which

will become more explicit in the book on

Gradva: an alliance with Goethe and SchillerSophocles and Shakespeare as well as oter writ

ers less prestigious but nearer to him suc as

Popper-Lynkeus and Alphonse Daudet Freud is

dobtless playing the athority of the great names

of clture off against those of the masters of

4

Frm One Unconscou., to Another

cience Bt, mor e f undamentally these great

names nction as guides in the jouey across

e Acher on under aken by the new science. If

ide ar e necessar y it is precisey because te

pace beteen positive science and popular

elief or legend is not empty The aesthetic

nconscious took possession of this domain by

edefining te tings of ar as specic modes of

nion beeen the thought that thinks and the

thought that does not think It is occupied by te

ite ature of tr avel into the depths, of the hermeneutics of mute signs and the transcription

f voiceless speech. This literatre has already

ceated a link between the poetic practice of

dipaying and interpreting signs and a particular

idea of civilization, i ' br illiant appearances and

bcure depths it sicknesses and the medicines

apprpr iate to them This idea is not limited to the natur aist novel's interest in ster ics and the

yndomes of degener ation. T he elaboration of a

new medicine and science of the ps y ch e is poss-

ible because a w ole domain of thoght and w rit-

ing separates science and sperstition But the

45

From One Unconscous to Another From One Unconscious to Another



From One Unconscous to Another

fact that this semiological and symptomatological

scene has its own consistency makes any simply

utilitarian alliance between Freud and writers or

artis" impossible. The literature to which Freud refers has its own idea of the unconscious, the

path os of thought, and the maladies and medi-

cines of civilization Pragmatic utilizaton is no

more possible than unconscious continuity Te

domain of thought that does not think is not a

realm where Freud appears as a solitary explorer

in search of companions and allies. It is an already occupied territo where one unconscious enters

into competition and conict with another

In order to grasp this twofold relation we must

pose the question again in its most general form:

what business does Freud have in the history of

ar? The question is itself double What pushes

Freud to make himself into a histoan or analystof art? What is at stake in the llscale analyses

that he devotes to Leonardo to Michelangelo's

Moses or jensens Gdiva or in his shorter

remarks on Hoffmanns Sandman or Ibsens

Rosmerholm? Why these examples? What is he

46

From One Unconscious to Another

looking for in them and how does he treat them?

This rst series of questions, as we have seen

plies another how should we think of Freuds

place in the history of ar? Not only the place ofFreud as an "analyst of art but of Freud the

scientist the doctor of thepsyche, interpreter of its

formations and their disturbances? The histor of

ar in this sense is something quite different from

he succession of woks and movements It is the

history of regimes of thinking about art that is of

paricular ways connecting practices to modes ofmaking those practices visible and thinkabe. In

the end this means a histoy of ideas of thought

itself 13 The double question can then be reformu-

lated as follows what is Freud looking for and

what does he nd in the analysis of the works or

hought of aists What lin does the idea of

unconscious thought that animates these analseshave with the one that defines a historical regime,

he aesthetic regime of ar?

13 Sec on this poin Jaques Ranr, Te Poltcs ofAsthtics: T Dtrbuton o th Snsbl, tra. Gbl Rokhll (London:

Contnum 2001).

47

From One Unconscious to Anoher From One Unconscious o Anoher

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/itself.13

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/itself.13



We can pose these questions on the basis of t o

theoretical signos. The first is posed by Freud

himself, the second deived from the works and

characters privileged by his analysis. As we have

seen, Freud rms that re is an objective alliance

eeen the psychanalyst and the t, and paic

ularly beeen the sychoanalyst and the poet

"Creative writers are valuable allies he asserts at

the beginning of lusions and Dreams in jensen s

Gdva14 Their kowledge of thepche, the singu

lar formations and hidden operations of thehuma mind is ahead of that of the scientiss ey

kno things that the scientists do not for they are

aare of the imortance and rationality roper to

this phantasmatic component that positive science

either sees as cmercal nothingness or atributes

to simple physical or hysiologil uses Poes and

novelists are ths the allies of the psychoanalystthe scientist who sees all the manifestations of the

mind as equally imorant and knos there is a

profound rationali to its "fancies abeations and

14 Sigmund Freud, Deluion and ream n jenen' "GradivC.Standard Eitn, vol 9 p. 8

48

n-sense This imoran oint is too often

derestimated: Freud's approach to a is not in

e least motivated by a desire to demysti the

limities of oetry and art and reduce them to

e sexal economy of the drives His goal is not

exhi the dirty (or stupid) little secret behind

e grand myth of creation. Rather Freud cals on

art and poetr to bear positive witness on behalf

f the profound rationality of fantasy (antaisie)

ad lend suppor to a science that claims in a

cein way to put fantasy poe ad mythology

ack within the fold of scientific rationalty This is

hy the declaration of alliance is immediately

accmanied by a reproach the poets and novel

are in fact only halfallies They have not given

enough credence to the rationali of dreams and

fancy not taken a clear enough stand on behalf of

he meaninglness of the fantasies they haveporayed

The second signpost is provided by the figures

chosen as examples by reud A certain number

f them are drawn from contemporary literature

fm the aturalist drama of destiny as found in

49

From On Unconscious to nothr Frm On Unconscious to nothr

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/Gradiva.14



From On Unconscious to nothr

Ibsen or from a fantastic tradition exemplied by

Jensen or PopperLynkeus and reaching back to

JeanPaul Tieck and Hoffmann But these

contempora works stand in the shadow of a few

great models First are the two great incarnations

of the Renaissance Michelangelo the somber

demiurge of colossal creations and Leonardo d

Vinci the artist/scientist/inentor the man of

great dreams and great projects whose handl of

realized works appear as the arious figures of a

single enigma Then there are the two romanticheroes of tragedy Oedipus bears witness to a

saage antiquity that stands in sharp contrast with

the polite and polished antiqUiy represented in

French tragedy and to a patho of thought that

oerurns the representatie logic of the arrange

ment of actions and its harmonious distribution of

what can be seen and what can be said Hamlet isthe mode hero of a thought that does not act or

rather a thought that acts by its er inertia In

shor in opposition to the classical order there is

the hero of saage antiquity as celebrated by

H6lderlin or Nietzsche and the heroes of the

50

Frm On Unconscious to nothr

aage Renaissance that of Shakeseare but also

that studied by Burckhardt or Taine As we hae

een the classical order is not sply the etiquette

of a Frenchsle courtly art It is properly speak

ing the representatie regime of art, the regime

hose rst theoretical legitimation is found in

stotles elaboration of the noton of mimei its

emblem in classical French tragedy and ts

systematization in the great treatises of the French

eigteenth centuy from Batteux to La Harpe by

way of Volaires Co mmentire ur Co rneie. Atthe hear of this regime was a conception of the

poem as an ordered arrangement of actons

moing toward resolution by way of a confronta

on beteen characters who pursue conictng

goals and manifest their wills and sentiments in

heir speech following a system of rules of suit

ablity This system submitted knowledge to theauthority of history and isiblty to the autho

of speech in a relation of mutual restraint beeen

what can be seen and what can be said It is this

order that is split apart by the romantic Oedipus

the hero of a thought that does not know what it

Frm One Unnss t nther



knows wants what it does not want, acts b

suering and speaks through muteness Oedi

pus and the whole lineage o great Oedipall\HJ; along with him - is at the center of the

Freudian elaboration, it is because he is the

emblem of this regime of art that identiies the things of art as things of thought insofar as they

are tokens of a thought that is immanent in its

other and inhabited by that other that is ever-

where written in the language of sensible signs

and withdrawn into its own obscure heart.

5

6 I Freud's Corrections

Freud makes an appeal to artists he remains

n the other hand obective dependent upon

te presuppositions o a determinate regime o

art. We now need to understand the speciicit o

e conection between these to acts whichcstitutes the specicit o Freud's interention

wth respect to the aesthetic unconscious is

rmar goa as we have alread noted is not to

establish a sexual etiolog or artistic phenoena

but raer to within the notion o

unconscious thought that provides the produc

tins o the aesthetic regime o art with theirnorm. Freud seeks that is to reestablish proper

rder in te wa art and the thought o art situate

the relations between knowing ad notknowing

sense and nonsense l and ah the rea

and the antastic. is interention is rst o all

5

Fud's Cctin ud Cctin.;



designed to discredit an interpretation o these

relations that plays pon the ambiguit o the real

and the antastic or sese and non-sense and

leads the thoght o art and the interpretation o

the maniestations o "antasy toward a pure anddeinitive airmation o pathos, o the brte

meaninglessness o lie He wants to contribute to

the victor o a hermeneutic and explanator

vocation o art over the ihilist entropy inherent

in the aesthetic coniguration o art

n order to nderstad this we need to

compare preliminary remarks made by Freud in

o dierent texts At the beginning o e Moses

of Michelangelo Fred explains that he is not

interested in artworks rom a ormal perspective

but in their "sbject-matter in the intention that is

expressed and the content that is revealed IS At

the beginning o the Gradiva he reproaches poetsor their ambiguiy with respect to the signica

tion o the minds antasies We cannot der

stand Freuds declared choice o the content

I' Freud, The Moses oficelangeo, Standard Edton 3, pr.2-2 .

5

ne o works unless we see it in relation to the

cond position The qest or the content as we

w enerally leads toward the discover o a

ressed memor and in the nal instance

ard the original moment o inantile castrationxiety This assignation o a nal cause is geer

ly mediated through an organizing antasy

(ntsme) a compromise ormation that allows

e rtists libido most ote represented by the

ro) to escape repression and sublimate itsel i

e work at the cost o inscribig its enigma there

This overhelming precoception has the singu-

r consequece o transorming iction into bi

raphy Freud ierprets the antastic dreams

d ightmares o Jenses Norber Hanold Ho

anns Nathaniel and bsens Rebecca West as i

ey ere pathological data peraining to real

eole and jdges the writer according to thelcidiy o the analysis he gives o them The lmit

example is ond in a note to the discussion o

Te Sandman in e Uncanny where Fredadduces the proo that the optician Coppola and

te lawyer Coppelis are one and the same

55

Freud's Coection Freuds Coetions



person, namely te castrating fater He tus

reestablises te etiolo of Nataniel's case In

is role as a fantasy doctor, Hoffmann blurred tis

etiology but not to te point of iding it from is

knowledgeable colleague, for "Hoffmanns igi-native treatent [PhantasieJ of is material as

not made suc wild consion of its elements tat

we cannot reconstruct teir original arrange-

ent16 Tere tus exists an original arrangeent

of te case of NatanieL Beind wat te writer

presents as te product of is unfeered imagina-

tion we must recognize te logic of te fantasy

(antasme) and te primal aniety tat it

disguises: little Nataniel's castration anxiety an

expression of te familial drama experienced by

Hoffmann imself as a cild

Te sae pcedue rns trug te wole

book on Gdiva. Beind te arbitrary decisionand te fantastic story of tis young man wo as

fallen in loe wit a gure of stone and dream to

te point of being unable to see te real woman

1( Freud "T 'Uncany S Eii vol 17, p. 232 not

56

aning more tan a pantasmatic apparition

tis antique gure Freud attempts to reestab-

h te true etiology of te case of Norbert

aold te repression and displacement of te

dlescents sexual attraction for young Zoe Tisoection obliges Freud to found is reasoning

the less tan irmly establised fact of te

al existence of a fictional creation But more

portantly it requires a mode of dream interpre-

ton tat seems sligtly naie wit respect to

euds own scientific prnciples. e idden

ssage is in fact proided by a simple translation

the dream gure into its real equvalent you

re inteested in Gradiva because in eality it is

Ze yu are intested in. Tis synopsis sows

hat someting ore tan just te reduction of te

ctional to a clinical syndrome is going on ere

ud een calls into doubt wat migt ake teydrme interesting for a doctor namel te

diagnosis of fetisistic erotomania He furter

eglects wat migt interest te scolar

concerned wit relating clinical practice to te

history of m namely te long istory of ms

57

reud's Coetio reuds Coetions



exemplied by Pygmalion, about men ho fall in

love ith images and dream of actually possess

ing them. Only one thing seems to interest Fred

reestablishing linear causalit in the plot even if

this requires him to refer to the unverifiable facts

of Norbert Hanold's childhood Even more than

the correct explanation of Hanold's case his

conce is to refute the status that ensens book

gives to literatures inventions. His retation

bears on to undamental and coplementar

points first the authors airmation that thfantasies (anames) he describes are the sol

invention of his fanciful imagination (antase);

second, the moral that the author gives to his

stor, namely the simple triumph of real life in

lesh and blood and good old plain German

hich through the voice of its homonym Zo

mocks the folly of the scholar Norbert and setsits simple and joyous perpetuit in contrast ith

his idealistic reveries The authors insistenc

upon the freedom of his imagination is obviously

of a piece ith his denunciation of his heros

reveries This congence can be summaried b

a single Freudian term, desublimation If there is

e sublimation going on here it is the novelist and

ot the psychoanalyst ho carries it out nd it

ocides ith his lack of seriousness ith

respect to the phantasmatic fact

Behind the reduction of the ictional datum to

a nonexistent pathological and sexual reality is

us a polemic seeking to refute the confusion of

e ctional and the real that grounds the practice

a the discourse of the novelist By insisting that

e fantasy is the product of his fanY and retigs characters reverie in the name of the reali

nple the novelist grants himself the capacit

o circulate freel on both sides of the bondar

een reality and fiction Freuds first conce is

o assert a univocal stor against such equivocit

e important point that justifes all the shortcuts

of the interpretation is the identification of theove plot ith a schea of causal rationalit It is

ot the inal cause the unverifiable repression

ong back to Norberts childhood that interestsreud so much as causal concatenation as such t

atters little hether the stor is real or fictive.

59

Feud Coecons



The essential is that it be univocal tt in contrast

to Romanticism's rendering the imaginary and the

real indiscernible and reversible it set forth an

istotelian arrangement of action and knowledge

directed toward the event of recognition.

60

I On Varos Uses of Deta

re the relation between Jreudian interpretation

the aesthetic revoltion begins to get compli

te Psychoanalysis is possible on the basis of

regime of art that delegitimizes the represen-

$tie ages wellordered plots and in trn grants

itimac to the athos of knowledge. t reu

kes a distinct choice within the configuration of

e aesthetic unconscious He privileges and

aorizes the first form of mte speech, that of the

ptom that is the trace of a history in opposi-

ion to the other form that of the anonymous

oice of nconscious and meaningless life Thisopposition leads him to try to recapture the

oantic figures of the euivalence of ogos and

athos within the old representative logic The

ost striking emple is to be found in the text on

ichelangelos Moses e obect of this analysis is

61

On Varo Uses ofDetail On Varous es q Deil



in fact quite unique Freud does not talk here as

he did in the text on Leonardo about a ntasy

found in a note He talks about a sculptural work

that he says, he has returned to see several timesHis analysis is based an exemplar adequation

between visual attention to the works detail and

the psychoanalytic privilege given to insigni

cant" details As is well known this relation passes

by way of an endlessly commented reference to

Morel/Lermolieff the doctor who became an

expert in artworks and the inventor of a forensicmethod of identiing works on the basis of slight

and inimitable details that reveal the artist's indi

vidual touch A method of reading works is thus

identied with a paradigm for research into causes

But this detailoriented method can itself be prac

ticed in two ways which correspond to the o

major forms of the aesthetic unconscious There is

on the one hand the model of the trace that is

made to speak in which the sedimented inscrip

tion of a histor can be read. n a famous text

Carlo Ginzburg has shown how the reference to

Morellis metod inscribes Freudian interpretation

62

in the great judicial paradig that seeks t recon-

stitute a process on the basis of its traces.17 But

ere is also the oer model, which no longer sees

the insignificant" detail as a trace that allows a

process to be reconstituted but as the direct mark

of an inarticulatable trth whose imprint on the

surface of the work unoes the logic of a well

arranged stor and a rational composition of

elements It is this second model for analyzing

etails that certain art historans will later cham-

pion in opposition to the privilege that Panofskyave to the analysis of painting on the basis of the

stor represented or the text illustrated. This

polemic caied on in the past by Louis Marin and

today by Georges DidiHuberman stands under

the authorit of Freud the Freud inspired by

Morelli as the founder of a mode of reading that

locates the truth of painting in the details of indi vidual works: an inSignificant broken column in

17 Calo Gnzburg, "Clues: Roots of an Evidentl Pradigm in

Gues, Myth and th Htorcal ethod tns. John nd Anne

Tedeschi (Batimoe The Johns Hopkins Universty Pess 1989)

pp. 9612 5

63

On Varous Ues ofDetal On Varous ses ofDetail

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/traces.17



Giorgiones Tempest, or splotches of color imitat

ing marble on the base of Fra Agelicos Madonna

of the Shadows. 18 Such details functon as part-

objects, fragments that are impossible to integrate

and that undo the order of representation, legit-

imizing an unconscious trth not to be found in an

individual histor but rather in the opposition

between wo orders: thegural beneath thegu-

rative or the vual beneath the represented vis-

ible But wat is today hailed as psychoanalysiss

contribution to the reading of painting and itsunconscious is something that Freud himself

wanted nothig to do with. Nor did he have any

trck with all the Medusas heads representatives

of castration, that so many contemporar commen

tators have managed to discover in every head of

Holofernes or John the Baptist, in some particular

detail of Ginevra de Benci's hair or an individualvortex drawn in Leonardos notebooks

IH Louis Marin, On Representation, trans. Cathene Porter (Stan

ford: Stanord Universt ress 2001; eoges Dd-Huberman

Coronting Image: Quetioning the Ends ofa eain lito/

oA. trans John Goodman Unvesit ark ennsylvana Stae

Universit ess 2005)

64

t is clear that this ps ychoanalysis of da Vinci as

cticd notably by Louis Marin, is not the same

Freuds t might be argued that what interests

Feud in the detail privileged in this wa y is

ther truth of the painted or sculpted gure,

at of the histor of a singular subject symptom

fantasy and that what he is looking fr is the

fatas y that pvides the matrix of an artist's

ativiy, not the unconscious igural order of art.

he example of Moses, however runs against this

ml explanation While the statue is indeed

hat interests him the principle of this interest is

uprsing. The long anal ysis of the detail of the

sition of the hands and the beard does not

eval an y childhood secret or encrypted uncon-

cious thought It poses instead the most classic of

questions: exactl y what moment of the biblical

tory does Michelangelo's statue represent? Is itdeed that of Moses fur? Is he in the act of

dropping the ablets of the Law? Here Freud is as

f ar as possible from the anal yses of Louis Marin

W e could even say that in the debate between

W orringer who tried to ident dif f erent visual

65

On Vaou Ue ofDeail On Vaou Ue ofDeail



orders that coud be correated with dominant

psychoogica traits and Panosky, who made the

identiication o forms secondar to that of the

subects and episodes represented, Freud de acto

takes Panoskys side More undamentay his

attention to detai reers to the ogic o the repre

sentative order in which the pastic orm was the

imitation o a narrated action and the particuar

subect o the painting was identica with the

representation o the pregnant moment in

which the movement and meaning o the action is

condensed Freud deduces this moment rom the

position of the right hand and the Tabets. t is not

the moment when Moses is about to strike out in

indignation against the idoaters The moment for

Freud is that o anger mastered when the han

ets go of the beard and irmy grasps the Tabets

once again This moment is not of course to befound in the text of the Bibe Freud adds it in the

name of a rationaist interpretation in which the

man who is master o himse wins out over the

seant of the eaous God The attention to detail

in the end sees to identi Moses position as

66

estimony to the triumph o the wi Michean

eos Moses is interpreted by Freud as something

ike inckemanns Laocoon the expression o

e victor o cassica serenit over emotion. n

e case o Moses, it is speciicaly reigious pahos

a is conquered by reason Moses is the hero o

emoion conquered and brought to order t is not

rticuary important whether, as a certain tradi

ion has it what the Roman marbe reay repre

ents or the patriarch of psychoanaysis is his

own aitude with respect to his rebeious disci

es Much more than a circumstantia se

ortrait this Moses reproduces a cassica scene of

e representatie age: whether it be on the tragic

ge in opea sea or histor painting, the

umph o wi and consciousness incarnated by a

oman hero who reasserts his mastery o himse

d the universe: Brtus or Augustus, Scipio oritus. As the incarnation of victorious conscious

ess Freuds Moses stands in opposition not so

uch to idoaters or dissidents as to those who

ve produced nothing and remained victims o

expicated antasy e are of course thinking of

6

O Varous Uses of Detail



ichelangelo's legendar alter ego, Leonardo da

Vinci the man of notebooks and sketches the

inventor of a thousand unrealized proects the

painter who never manages to individualize

gures and always paints the same smile in sort

the man bound to his fantasy and stuck in a

homosexual relation to the Father.

6

8 I A Conict beteen Two Kinds

of Medicine

There is another "gure of stone that can be set

in opposition to this classical Moses: the bas-relief

of Gdiva. Freud judges the similarity of gait

between the stone igure and the living young

woman together with the encounter of Zoe in

Pompeii to be the only invented and arbi

trar element in the presentation of Norbert

Hanolds case 1 9 I would happily sa the opposite

This young Roman virgin whose gracel gait is

composed of suspended ight and rm touch on

the ground, this expression of lively action and

tranquil repose is anything but an arbitrar inven

tion of Wilhelm Jensens brain On the contrary,

we can early recognize a fgure celebrated

hundreds of times the age of Schiller and

19 Freud, Jense : "Gradiva . Stadard Edtio voL 9, pp. 41-2

6

A Conct beten Two Knds ofMedcne A Conct between Two Kn ofMedcne



yn ldrlin and gl h whol ag took

this imag of th ke from Grian rns and thir

mmoris of th Panathenaia friz and ilt

pon it thir dram of a nw ida of th snsil

ommnity of a lif at on with art and an art at

on with lif. or than an xtraagant yong

sholar orrt anold is on of th innmral

itims whthr in a tragi or omi mod of a

rain thortial fantasy th qiring lif of th

stat of th fold of th tni or th fr gait that

inaatd th idal world of a liing ommnity.

h fantast Jnsn finds it amsing to onfront

in this way th dramd lif of antiq ston

and th ommnitytoom with th tiali of

ptitorgois lif nighors anaris in th

windows and passrsy in th strt h lor

of lifinarnatdinston is alld ak to th lif

of prosai and manspiritd nighors and thanality of ptitorgois honymoons in Italy

Frd onstrts his intrprtation opposton

to Zos r whih simply liqidats th dra

in this way and las no pla for motional

kathais dnons th omplii twn

0'

c "

position of th fantast and a rain prosai

nd of th dram his dnniation itslf is not

nw W might rall th pags of gls

etues n Aesthetis whr h dnons th

ritrar haratr of JanPal or iks fany

nd its ltimat solidarity with th philistinism of

orgois lif In oth ass what is dnond is

rtain s of romanti wit (Wtz) y th

fntast t within this proximity an ssntial

rrsal has orrd. gl ontrasts th s

friolity of Witz with th sstantial rality of

ind Frd rproahs th fantast for his failr

to rogniz th sstantiality of th play of Witz

gl's primary on is to st asid an p

figr of fr stiiy rdd to its rpti

ti slfaration Frd onfrontd with th

n dlopmnts of th asthti nonsios

sks ao all to pt into qstion a rain idaof otiity that is smmarizd y th ida of th

isdom of lif. In th as of th laghing Zo

Brgang and th fantast Wilhlm Jnsn this

isdom looks fairly anodyn t this is not th

as in som othr rs othr ways of nding

1

A Conict between Two Kinds ofMedicine A Conct between T Kin q edicine



dreams" illustrated by the literary medicine of

the late nineteenth century Here we might think

of o exemplary fictions one invented by a

doctor's son and the other taking a doctor as its

hero. The rst is the conclusion of the Sentimen-

tal Education with its evocation of the failed visit

to La Turques bordello which in the collapse of

both their idealistic hopes and their positive ambi

tions represents the best of Frdrics and

Deslaurierss lives Even more signicant no

doubt is the end of Zolas Doctor Pascal, which isalso the conclusion of the whole Rougon

Macquar cycle and its moral. This moral is

unique to say the least: Doctor Pascal recounts

the incestuos love affair between the old doctor

who is also the family historiographer and his

niece Clothilde. At the end of the book after

Pascals death Clothilde breastfeeds the child who is the reslt of this incest in the former

doctors office that has now become a nursery

The child in his innocence of any culural taboo

raises his little fist not to some glorious future but

simply to the blind and brte force of life assuring

72

its own perpetuty. This triumph of life affirmed

by a banal and even regenerative incest repre

sents the serious" and scandalous version of

jensens lighthearted fatasy (an taisie). Zolas

moral represents precisely the bad" incest that

reud refuses bad not because t shocks moralty

but because it is disconnected from any good plot

based on causality - and clpability - and there

fore from any logic of liberating knowledge

I do not now whether Freud ever read Doctor

Pascal. He certainly did read however, and withcare the works of one of Zolas contemporaries

Ibsen the author of exemplary histories of the

souls troubles and of childhood secrets cures

confessions and healings. Freud gives an analysis

of his play Rosmeholm in the essay Some Char

acterTypes Met with in Psychoanalytic Work

This text studies a paradoxical group of patients who are opposed to the rationality of the psycho

analytic cue some because they refuse to

renounce a satisfaction and to submit the pleasure

principle to the reality principle; others to the

contrary becase they ee from their own

73

A Coit between Two Kin ofMediine A nit etween Two Kinds ofMedine



suess and refuse a satisfation at the er

moment the an otain it hen it is no longer

marked the seal of impossiilit or transgres-

sion Suh are the young lad ho has long

shemed her marriage and the professor ho isaout to otain the hair for hih he has long

itrigued and ho lee from the suess of their

enterprise Freuds interetation is that the possi-

ilit of suess prookes the inasion of an

unontrollale feeling of ulpailt. At this point

he rings in examples dran from to exemplar

plas Macbth, of ourse ut also Rosmerholm.

Sine Isens pla is less ell knon than Shake-

speares, it is orthhile to summarize the plot

The setting is an old manor house loated on the

outskirts of a small ton in Nora huddled at

the end of a fjord In this manor onneted to the

orld a footridge rossing a turulent mill-

rae lies the former pastor Rosmer the heir to a

long famil of loal notales A ear efore the

ation of the pla his i suffering from mentl

illness, thre herself into the ater In the same

house lies the goerness Reea ho am

74

ere aer the death of her stepfather Dr West.

This freethiker had eduated Reea after her

others death and oneed her to his lieral

deas Rosers ohaitation ith the young

oman has to onsequenes Frst the former astor is onerted to lieral ideas hih he

pulil endorses, to the great sandal of his

rotherinla headmaster Kroll the leader of the

loal par of order Seondly, his intelletual

ounit ith Reea is transformed into feel

gs of loe and he proposes marriage to her. But

Reea, aer a momentar reaton of jo

deares marrage impossile Whereupon head

aster Kroll arries to reeal to his rotherila

hat his ife as drien to suiide and to Reea

hat her irth as illegitmate: she is in fat the

atural hild of her stepfather Reea energet-

all refuses to eliee this She admits hoeer

at she as e one ho had insinuated into the

dead omans mind the ideas that droe her to

suiide She then prepares to leae the manor at

hih point Rosmer again asks her to eome his

ife She refuses one again saying she is no

A Coit between wo Kin ojMediine A Conit btween wo Kind ojMediine



lge te abitius yug wa w ad

ved it te use ad uietly gtte id f te

wife w std i e way If kwig e as

veted t fee tugt se e

tay as bee ebled by tat wit iSe a lge ey te suess se as w

It is ee tat Feud itevees e agai wit

te gal f etig te explaatis give by

te aut ad eestablisig te e eilgy f

te ase Adig t Feud, te al eas

ivked by Rebea is eely a see Te

yug wa eself idiates a e slid

eas se as a past Ad it is easy t ude

stad wat tis past is by aalyzig e eati t

te evelati abut e bit f se efuses s

eegetially t adit tat se is Wests daugte

ad if te seuee f tis evelati is t

ake e e iial aeuves it is

beause se was tis s-alled stepfates lve

Te egiti f iest is wat sets ff te feel

ig f guilt it ad t e mal vesi

stads i te way f Rebeas suess I de t

udestad e beavi we ust eestablis te

6

tt tat te play des t tell ad uld t tell

te tha by vague allsis

But we e ppses this "te idde eas

t te alizig e delaed by te eie

Feud fgets wat gives Rebeas beavi itsl eaig i bse's eyes fgets te ed

f te play wee eite maliZig vesi

te sig weigt f guilt is peative

Rebeas tasfati is lated beyd gd

d evil ad is aifesed t by a vesi t

ality but by te impssibility f atig, theipssibilit f willig eve F Rebea wh

lge wats t at ad Rse w lge

wats t kw the st eds i a patiula kid

f ystial ui They uite ad ah yusly

twad te ftbidge wee tey dw tgethe i te usig wate Tis ultiate ui f

kwledge ad kwledge f ativity adpssivity fully expesses te lgi f te aesteti

sus Te tue ue te tue ealig is

Speaeia euiati f te will t live,

0 d " m ChtTy t it h in Pyh- nlyi

Wk 5'andad Edon l 4 329.

77

A Coict between Two Kin r Medicine A Conict between Two Kin ofMedicine



selfabandon to the original sea of nonwilling

the "supreme bliss into which Wagner's Isolde

descended and that the young Nietzsche assimi-

lated to the triumph of a new Dionysos

Such bliss is what Freud refuses Against it he

puts forard the good causal plot te rationalit

of the feeling of guilt liberated by headmaster

Krolls cure It is not the moralizing explanation

but the innocence of plunging into the primor-

dial sea that he opposes. Here again the ambigu-

it of Freuds relation to the aesthetic unconscious

appears in stark relief: faced with this nihilism

this radical identity of pathos and logos that in the

age of bsen, Strindberg and Wagnerism became

the ultimate truth and the moral of the aesthetic

unconscious Freud retreats to what is in the end

the position adopted by Corneille and Voltaire

when confronted with Oedipus's r He seeks to

reestablish against this ath, a good causal

concatenation and a positive virtue tat would be

the effect of knowledge The force of what is at

stake here for Freud can be felt in a rief refer

ence to another of Ibsens psychoanalytic

78

dr amas, Te L ady from t he Se a, in which Dr W angels wif e is haunted by the irresistible call of the sea W hen her husband leaves her fr ee to follow the passing sailor in whom she recognizes the incar nation of this call Ellida r enounces her

desire Just as Rebecca claimed that contact with Rosmer has tr ansformed her Ellida claims to have been set free by the choice her husband gave her.

Since she can choose she will stay with him. T his time however the r elation beeen the author's reasons and the interpreter's appear in

an inverserelation Freud conrms the character s interpr eta-tion and sees it as a successful cure" carr ied outby Dr W angeL Ibsen s pr eparator notes

however reduce this fr eedom to an illusorystatus; the plot summar he gives is r esolutely

Schopenhauerian :

Life is apparenty a happy, easy and ively

thing up there in he shadow of the mountains

and in the monoony of tis secusion The

the suggestion is thrown up that this kind of

life is a ife of shadows. No iitiaive; no fght

79

A Conflict between Two Kin oMedicine A Coict be/ween Two Kinds Medicine



for liberty. Only longings and desires This is

how life is lived in the brief lght sumer. Ad

aerards - into the darkness. Then longings

are roused for the lfe of the great world

outside But what wold be gained from that?

With changed srrondings and wth one's

ind developed, there is an increase n ones

cravngs and longngs and desires. L . ]

Everyhere litation From ths comes

elancholy like a subdued song of ourning

over the whole of hun existence and all the

actvties of en One bright sumer day with

a great darkness thereafter that is all . . ]

Te seas power of attraction The longng for

the sea People akn to the sea. Bound by the

sea Dependent on the sea. Must return to t.

[ J The great secret is the dependence of te

huan wll upon "the wllIess 21

Ths the cycle of seasons in the north s identifie

with the vanishng of the illusions of representation

21 Hcnrik Ibsen, Draft or The ady from th Sa in OxfIbsen ed. James Waltr MFarlane (London: Oxord Unversy

Prss 1966), ol 7, pp. 449-50

80

,

ito the nothingness of the will that wills nothing.

I this case Freud adopt Dr Wangels ad the Lady

om the Seas moral in oppositio to the one

proposed by the author

We might cosider this to be a "historical issue

bt this does ot mean that there is aythig

circumstantial abot it. Fred was not simply

fightig agaist a ideology present i the spirit of

the age - a age moreover that was already

receding into the past when he wrote these texts.

The battle is between two versions of the uncon

scios, o ideas of what lies beeath the polite

polished surface of societies two ideas of ciiliza

tions ills and the way to heal them. Since we are

speaking of periods, let s ote precisely whe

this one is located Te Moses ofMichelangelo was

written in 1914; both he Uncanny and the short

texto Ibsen in 1915. We are not far from the

uing poi i Fred's work constituted by the

introduction of the death drive i Bond the

Pleasure Princle. reud himself explaied this

u in his wor in tes of the dedction of the

death drive om the study of the problematic

81

A Coct btwn Two Kn Mdcn A Coct bn Two Kn oMdcn



traumati nurosis. But its rognition is also

bound to th bow that th war of 1914 divrd

to th optimisti vision that had guidd th rst

ra of psyhoanalysis and th simpl opposition

btwn plasur prinip and raity prinpl

hr ar howvr rasons to suspt that this

planation dos not haust th signian of

this omnt h disovry of th dath drv is

also an pisod in Fruds long and on

disguisd onfrontation with th grat obsssiv

thm of th poh in whih psyhoanalysis was

fomd th unonsious of th Shopnhaurian

tinginitslf and th grat litrar tions of

rturn to this unonsous. h ultimat srt of

th whol tradition of th novl of th illusions of

th wi summarizing th litratur of a ntury

th ltratur of th asthti ag is that what lif

prsving instints ultimatly prsv for lif isits movmnt toward its dath and that th

"guardians of if ar in fat myrmidons of

dath Frud nvr stoppd ghting with this

srt ndd th intrprtation of th "raity

prinipl is at th hat of th orrtons Frud

2

ks to Jnsns Hoffmas or bsns pots

his onfrontation with th logi of astht

nonsios is what omps him to rstablish

th orrt tioogy of Hanold or Nathanils as

and th propr nding to Rosmeholm, but also

ot attitud of Moss that of th am

itor of rason ovr sard passon. Erything

ours as if ths analyss wr so many ways of

rsisting th nihilist ntropy that Frud dtts

and rts in th works of th asthti rgim of

art bt that h will also lgtimz in his thoiza

tion of th dath driv

W ar now in a position to undrstand th

paradoia ration btwn Frud's asthti

anayss and thos that will latr laim his patron-

ag. h intnton of th lattr is to rt Fruds

biographism and his ndiffrn to artisti form

hy look for th fft of th unonsious in thpartiulartis of pitorial touh that silntly bl

th gurati andot or in th stammngs of

th itrar tt that mark th ation of anothr

languag whin languag. ndrstood in this

way as th stamp of an unnamabl truth or th

3

A Cont between wo nd ofMedcne A Cont tween n ofMedcne



hok poded b he foe of he Ohe, he

nonio exeed in piniple an adeqae

enible peenaion A he beginning of e

Moe ed eoke he hok pooked b gea

wok and he diaa ha an eie hold of hogh onfoned wih he enigma of hi hok

"Poibl indeed ome wie on aehei ha

dioeed ha hi ae of inelleal bewilde

men i a neear ondiion when a gea wok

of ar i o ahiee i geae effe wold onl

be wih he geae elane ha I old bing

melf o beliee in an h neei22 Themainping of ed anale, he eaon fo he

priilege he gie o he biogaphial plo whehe

i be he biogaph of he fiional haae o of

he ari an be fond in he fa ha he ee

o aibe he powe of paining lpe o

lieae o hi bewildemen In ode o ee

he hei of hi hpoheial aeheiian, edi ead o eie an o and if neear een

ewie he aed ex B he aeheiian who

e oes

2

8

lVI<ft:'U"t:J. Sndad don vol , pp

wa a hpohei fo ed i oda an aal

ge in he eld of aehei hogh a geneal

rle he elie peiel on ed o poide he

gonding fo he hei ha hi paon waned o

efe, he hei ha link he wok powe o i bewildeing effe 1 hae in mind hee o

pailal he anale in whih ]ean-anoi

Load owad he end of hi life elaboaed an

aehei of he blime whoe hee pilla ae

Bke Kan and ed23 Load ona he

weak-mindedne of aehei wih he powe of

he pioial oh oneied a a powe of dieie The be diamed b he amp of he

atheton he enible ha affe he naked ol

i ononed wih a powe of he Ohe whih in

he nal inane i he fae of God ha no one

an look pon ping he peao in he poi

ion of Moe befoe he bning bh Again

edian blimaion Load poe hi amp of 23 See Jean-Fanois Lyotad e Inuman: Reeos on Yme

ans. Bennngton n Rchel Bowlb (Stnfod; Stn

od Pes 992) n Postmoden Fabes. an

Geoge Van Den Abbele (M nneapol

Pes 997o Mnnesot

85

A Cc wn Tw Knd q Mdcn A Cc bwn T Kn fMdcn

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/Freud.23

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/Freud.23



the subime producing the triumph of a pah

irreducibe to an g a pah that in the fina

anasis is identified with the power of God

himsef caing Moses

he reation beween the wo versions of theunconscious then taes the shape of a singuar

crisscross Freudian pschoanasis presupposes

the aestheti revoution that rescinds the causa

order of cassica representation and identifies the

power of art with the immediate identit of

contraries, of g and pah It presupposes a

iterature based on the wofod power of mute

speech. But Freud maes a choice within this

duait Against the nihiist entrp inherent in the

power of voeess speech, Freud chooses the

other form of mute speech the hierogph

offered to the abor of interpretation and the hope

of heaing Foowing this ogic, he tends to assim-

iate the wor of fantas and the abor of its

deciphering with the cassica pt of recognition

that the aesthetic revoution had reected He thus

bngs bac within the frame of the representative

regime of art the gures and pot strctures that

this od regime had rejected and that it too the

aesthetic revoution to put at his disposa oda

a diferent Freudianism argues against this return

It puts into question Freudian biographism and

caims to be more respectfu of the specifici of art I t presents itsef as a more radica Freudiansm

in that it has been freed from the seques of the

representative tradition and harmonized with the

new regime of art that made Oedipus avaiabe

the new regime that equates activi and passivi

b arming both the antirepresentative auton-

om of art and its forcib heteronomic nature, its

vaue as testimon to the action of forces that go

beond the subject and tear it awa from itsef In

order to do this of course it reies above a on

Beynd he eare nce and other tets of

the 1920s and 1930s that mar the distance Freud

has taen from the corrector of Jensen bsen and

Hoffmann, from the Freud who admired Moses

for having freed himsef from sacred fur his

project requires a decision within the contradic-

tor ogic of the aesthetic unconscious, within the

poari of mute speech opposite to the one

87

A Conict between Two Kns ofMedicine



made y Freud. The voiceless power of the

Others speech must be valorized as something

irreducible to any hermeneutics This requires in

turn an assumption of the whole nihilist entropy,

even at the cost of transforming the bliss of

returning to the original abyss into a sacred rela-

tion to the Other and the Law. This Freudianism

then executes a turning moement around

Freud's theory bringing back in Freuds name and

against him the nihilism that his aestheti analyses

never stopped fighting against This turning

movement affms itself as a rejection of the

aesthetic tradition24 But it might in fact be the

nal trick that the aesthetic unconscious plays on

the Freudian unconscious

24 See Lyor, "Ama Mna n Pst Fbs pp. 235-9

8

Ix

acton

and knowledge 19,

60

acvt

and passiv 21 23-

27, 87

aeshec reoluon 21-3036 61 867

aesthec unconscos

3- 5 61 62

71 77 78 83 87-8

aesthecs

Baumgaren on 5

and "confused

knoledge

Kant on 56

eanng of 4

as though of a 5 67

aitheton 85

Angelco, Fa

Madonna q the Shadows6

sole 8 9 5

ar 2830 5

and aeshec evoluon

and aesthec

unconscous 5

aesthecs as hout of 45

Feud and hstory of

At the ofthe Cat andRacket 36

Balzac Hono de 38

The Wild A' Skin

Bateux5 ]

Baumgaten 6 2

Aethetica 5

bogaphs 83 8 87

Buckhad Jacob

Chrstopher 5 1

Buke Edund 85

9

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The Aesthetic Unconscious 2010