This blog consists of my notes on various literary and critical texts I teach at the undergraduate and postgraduate classes. Critiques and comments are welcome...
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) is
one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.Plenty of information about his life and
works is available on the internet. However, this write-up provides a
simplified overview of his complex and yet extremely exciting ideas, which
might help a beginner to start reading his dense texts.
Foucault who began his
research in philosophy and psychopathology was intrigued by the phenomenon of
madness in the western civilization. Though the west was familiar with the
phenomenon of madness right from the Greek times and they were represented in the
plays and other texts, the scientific and disciplinary study of the phenomenon
begins only in the nineteenth century. However, before this process of
objectification of mad people, the processes of their social exclusion and
confinement began in the seventeenth century.
This historical observation
has multiple implications:
1.0 What is considered to be universal, constant,
essential and invariant like phenomenon of madness is actually historically variable
one. It has not remained identical over time and it varies from culture to
culture. It is actually historically discontinuous.
What was madness for the
Greeks was not what madness was for the Elizabethans (famous examples of Lady
Macbeth, Hamlet or King Lear comes to my mind) and it is no longer the same
thing in the nineteenth century.
This implication applies to
other cultural phenomenon or societal categories like ‘ literature’ ‘sexuality’
, ‘punishment’ ‘ author’ or even ‘ human body’ and ‘ man’ which are often considered invariable and essential
( ahistorical). Hence one of the gestures of Foucault is to demonstrate
that these categories are historically variable across cultures and periods.
Foucault goes on to analyze social mechanisms that brought about these shifts
in meaning and functions of these categories.
Foucault’s classic essay ‘What is an Author?’ treats the whole category of ‘ author’ as a variable and
constructed category whose function he goes on analyze. Apart from madness, Foucault
maps these shifts and functions of other social categories like sexuality,
punishment and governmentality.
1.1 This implies we need a
different model for understanding history and practicing historiography. In contrast to the linear model of history
based on some idea of ‘ progress’ or ‘development’ which begins with some point
of ‘origin’ and ends with ‘ contemporary’ point, we need a model of history
which does not privilege the idea of origins , essences, identity and ‘
development’, in short a non-teleological model of history. Foucault turns to Nietzsche’s
idea of ‘genealogy’ which underscores non-identity, discontinuity and is not
based on the ideas of origin or progress. Foucault, like Nietzsche also emphasizes
the role of writing history to impact the present times, i.e. the idea of “effective
history”. See his essay, "Nietzsche,Genealogy, History".
Foucault’s treatment of the idea
of author, madness or sexuality is hence, ‘genealogical’.
2.0 The emergence of the
disciplines of knowledge like social sciences of psychiatry , linguistics,
anthropology and the reduction,
subjugation, marginalization, domination of people as ‘ the object of study’,
their ‘ othering’ (e.g colonialism) are not two distinctive or divergent phenomenon but
proverbially “ two sides of the same coin”. That is, both these phenomenon are
produced by the same underlying social
and historical mechanisms. Hence the task of a historian of ideas is to
uncover these underlying social mechanisms or the epistemological grids,
specific to the historical periods (Foucault calls such a grid ‘episteme’).
Such an operation resembles structuralism. However, Foucault terms it ‘archeology
of knowledge’.
The domain of knowledge and
the domain of exercise of power are not seen as mutually exclusive. This brings
us to the next great Nietzschean theme in Foucault’s writing of ‘Will to Truth’
being inseparable from ‘Will to Power’. Foucault
uses the term ‘discourse’ in a specialized sense to indicate a unified
mechanism of producing, circulating, consuming and controlling both knowledge
and power. In Foucauldian view, most of the social categories seen as universal,
pre-discursive and constant by the ‘common sense’ are actually products and effects
of discourses or are ‘discursive constructs’.
This means we have to
radically rethink what we mean by both knowledge and power.
2.1 We cannot see knowledge as a great ‘ascetic’ renunciation of material
power or something which is distant from political domain, nor can we see knowledge
as inherently liberating, emancipating and benevolent.
We will also have to rethink
what we mean by modernity and the Enlightenment is. We cannot think that
modernity is something which is better than previous periods like the Middle Ages
(as many Marxists, neo-Marxists or even progressive liberals do). This
skepticism makes Foucault a ‘postmodern’ thinker who questions the very basis
of progressivism.
2.2 We cannot think of
power as something which is operating ‘top- down’ from the State onto people,
nor can we think about it as being merely coercive or repressive (as many Marxists,
neo-Marxists or even progressive liberals do). Power is pervasive and creative. It produces
knowledge, disciplines, institutions, even selves and people.
Foucault sees power as ‘actions
which control and regulate other actions’. These actions may be on one owns
actions or the actions of the others. One of the concerns in Foucault’s later
works is to see how people use power/knowledge to shape and manufacture themselves and their lives (biopolitics)
and govern themselves in contemporary
times.
Influence and Criticism
Foucault’s influence in
contemporary culture studies and social sciences is immense. One of the most
influential and famous application of Foucault’s theorization is Edward Said’s Orientalism ( 1978) which argues the discipline
of producing knowledge about the East ( Orientalism) cannot be seen
independently of project of colonialism and that the whole discourse of producing
knowledge about the East actually produced
the East as an object to be dominated and consumed. Said’s book inaugurated contemporary postcolonial
studies.
The idea that gender and
sexuality are not ‘pre-discursive’ givens or universals but are discursive
constructs whose effects and functions vary historically and socially and are
open to archeological and genealogical analysis which Foucault elaborates upon
in his classic History of Sexuality volumes
(1976-84) are central to contemporary
Gender and sexuality studies.
Many scholars have been
extremely critical of Foucault.
The German historian
Hans-Ulrich Wehler attacks Foucault of being historically inaccurate and having
tendency to oversimplify. Nancy Fraser claims that Foucault's work is a mixture
of "empirical insights and normative confusions". Richard Rorty points
out that Foucault's 'archaeology of knowledge' is fundamentally negative, and
thus fails to adequately establish any 'new' theory of knowledge per se.
“What deconstruction is not? Everything
of course! What is deconstruction? Nothing of course!”
Jacques Derrida,
"Letter to a Japanese Friend"
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) whose name is associated with the
term ‘deconstruction’ is one of the most renowned and prolific philosophers of
the twentieth century. His writings are characteristically postmodern in the
sense they seek to go beyond modernity. Derrida has written prolifically on various
themes like translation, ethics, aesthetics, responsibility, death and
mourning, politics of friendship, cosmopolitanism, Marxism, globalization,
technology and terrorism. His dense and complex writings have had
an enormous influence in psychology, literary theory, cultural studies,
linguistics, feminism, sociology and anthropology.
Though
the term has become very popular in literary criticism and theory, its precise
meaning is extremely problematic. In fact, Derrida himself in the famous "Letter
to a Japanese Friend" (1983) pointed out that the term was a product of
his wish,” to translate and adapt to my own ends the Heidggerian word
Destruktion or Abbau. Each signified in this context an operation bearing on
the structure or traditional architecture of the fundamental concepts of
ontology or of Western metaphysics”. This operation on the traditional
structures of western thought was not a negative one connoting destruction but,
“rather than destroying, it was also necessary to understand how an
"ensemble" was constituted and to reconstruct it to this end.” Derrida
also reminds his Japanese friend that deconstruction is “neither an analysis
nor a critique” and is not, “a method and cannot be transformed into one.” For
Derrida, deconstruction is not something that you do, rather “Deconstruction
takes place, it is an event that does not await the deliberation,
consciousness, or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It
deconstructs itself.” J. Hillis Miller in
“Stevens' Rock and Criticism as Cure" (1976) notes, "Deconstruction
is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it
has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin
air."
This
leads Derrida to question,” Can deconstruction become a methodology for reading
and for interpretation? Can it thus be allowed to be reappropriated and
domesticated by academic institutions?” In spite of Derrida’s disclaimers and
caveats, there have been innumerable attempts to explain, simplify, define or
‘package’ deconstruction for the academic malls, a tendency that Derrida
protested and criticized throughout his life. The present article does not try
to simplify or package Derrida’s philosophy, but offers some starting points
into more serious and rigorous examination of his works.
Background
to Deconstruction
Derrida
and Heidegger:
One of the essential places to start while approaching
Derrida’s texts is in the works of very controversial and yet one of the most
influential German philosophers Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). In Being and Time, Heidegger argued that
the western thought has neglected or repressed the question of Being of beings
(or entities) by failing to make the ontological difference between ‘ beings’
and Being. The metaphysical tradition of the western thought has always been
concerned about ‘beings as beings’ (i.e. treating entities as entities, rather
than their mode of existence) which has resulted in a deep crisis in the
western civilization. Heidegger demands the destruction (Destruktion) of the Western philosophical tradition, which is not
its destruction but total transformation. In his later works, Heidegger talks
about the importance of the question of language in philosophy and points out
that it is ‘language that speaks, not Man’ and that language is ‘the house of
Being’. Heidegger’s own language is extremely dense and often very strange as
if Heidegger is not just offering a critique of the language of western
philosophy but reinventing it. Derrida continues – and critiques- the Heideggerian
themes of radical rethinking of the very foundations of western thought by
dismantling the metaphysical tradition and raising the key question of language and
reinvention of the language of western philosophy. While Heidegger
argued that the neglect and repression of the question of Being of beings is a
blind spot of the entire western thinking and dwelling in this question one can
deconstruct the entire western tradition of philosophy, Derrida in the first
book Of Grammatology (1968) argues that neglect and the repression of the question of
writing in its conception of language as speech is another such blind-spot in
the western thought and the rigorous pursuit of this question can similarly
‘deconstruct’ the tradition of western thinking.
Derrida
and Saussure:
Another
important place to approach Derrida’s works is Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857-1913)
Course in General Linguistics.
Saussure made an influential distinction between the signifier (the sound image
of a word) and signified ( or the concept or meaning) and that the relationship
between them is arbitrary, that is, there is no inner relationship, say between the word ‘ sister’ and the person
it signifies. The relation between the signifier and the signified is merely
conventional and that convention can be considered as a ‘code’, which combines
the signifier and the signified to make, the linguistic sign. It also implies
that the signifier does not naturally lead to the entities in the world beyond the linguistic system but stays within it by pointing to other signifier.
Derrida notes that the signifier does lead to some universal and stable entity
or fixed and universal meaning (transcendental signified) but only to another
signifier- just as what we consider as what we consider as ‘meaning’ in the
dictionary are actually other words which have meanings of their own. As Derrida
demonstrates the arbitrariness of the sign results in indefinite ‘deferral’ or
postponement or the delay of reaching this ‘ultimate and absolute’ meaning
beyond language. It is in this context one has to see his famous statements
which appears in an essay on Rousseau in his book Of Grammatology (1967) that
"there is nothing outside the text" (il n'y a pas de hors-texte).
Another important point that Saussure makes is
that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms”, that is,
we can recognize and understand one linguistic item – say the phoneme ‘p- only
by contrasting it with everything that is ‘not-p’. Saussure goes on to say,
“The entire mechanism of language, with which we shall be concerned later, is
based on oppositions of this kind (e.g. between the word ‘father’ and ‘mother’)
and on the phonic and conceptual differences that they imply.” Derrida shows
that the same applies to the language of philosophy and the entire mechanism of
this language is based on binary oppositions like ‘light’ vs. ‘dark’, ‘ male’ vs. ‘female’, ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’,
‘speech’ vs. ‘writing’ ,‘nature’ vs. culture’ and so on. However, Derrida
points out that these oppositions are not equal but hierarchic where the second
term is considered either derivative or inferior to the first, the privileged
one. What allows this inequality and hierarchy, according to Derrida is the
tendency in the western thought to privilege ‘presence’ over ‘absence’, which
Heidegger had termed as ‘metaphysics of presence’.
Difference:
Derrida
combines two characteristics of the language mentioned above: the arbitrariness
or the tendency to defer the ultimate and final meaning, and the systemic
differentiality of language and coins a new term ‘différance’ – the tendency or
the force of language to defer and differthat is intrinsic to language. The
new term is a pun, and is possible in French as the word différer can mean
either to differ or to defer, depending on context.
In his rigorous readings of classical western
philosophical texts, Derrida overturns the binaries like ‘ nature’ and ‘
culture’ or ‘ speech’ and ‘writing’ to show that the whole idea that the first
term is basic or central and the second term is derived or marginal -is
actually illusionary and ‘metaphysical’. He demonstrates how the second term can
also be considered
‘basic’ and ‘central’ to a philosophical system, and the philosophical text can
be read to mean exactly the opposite of what it starts out to state. This
results in ‘undecidability’ or ‘aporia’ regarding which reading or
interpretation is the ‘true’ or ‘right’ one.
He does this to demonstrate that any act of communication or
significance is a function ‘differance’ rather than some stable entity outside
of language.
The tendency in the western
philosophy to repress or neglect writing- or as Derrida calls it
‘phonocentricism’ is a manifestation of ‘logocentricism’ of the western
metaphysics- the tendency to privilege presence over absence, which is undone
due to the force of ‘difference’ within the mechanism of language.
Interestingly, what differentiates ‘différance’ and ‘difference’ is inaudible,
and this means that distinguishing between them actually requires that they be
written.
Derrida’s assertion that
‘deconstruction’ is not something that you do, but something which ‘happens’ to
texts implies that it is the force of ‘differance’ which is the part of the
system of thought that brings about the production and signification of
binaries and their subversion and the resultant aporia, rather than a person,
school or a historical period causing it.
Structure , Sign, and Play
In his famous essay, ‘Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourses in Human Sciences’ which was read at the John
Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences
of Man” in October 1966, Derrida demonstrates how structuralism as represented
by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss which sets out as a criticism or
rejection of science and metaphysics can be read as embodying precisely those
aspects of science and metaphysics which it seeks to challenge. The essay
concludes by saying, “There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of
structure, of sign, of free play. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of
deciphering, a truth or an origin which is free from free play and from the
order of the sign, and lives like an exile the necessity of interpretation. The
other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms free play and tries
to pass beyond man and humanism.” Thus, we have two diametrically opposite
interpretations of structuralism, and we are unable to decide which the ‘right’
one is. This ‘aporia’ between two interpretations is due to the force of
‘difference’ intrinsic to the structure of language. The force of ‘differance’
makes language characteristically ‘centrifugal’, that is moving away from the
center by ‘scattering’ of the philosophical system or by its ‘dissemination’
into multiple and conflicting interpretations. Characteristically, Derrida in
this essay notes that ‘language bears within itself, the necessity of its own
critique’. The essay is considered as
inauguration of ‘poststructuralism’ (going beyond structuralism) as a
theoretical movement.
Though
Derrida wrote occasionally on literature, his primary focus was on the
classical texts of Western philosophical tradition starting from Plato onwards.
Most of his important statements on literature are collected in the book Acts of Literature. However, ‘deconstruction’ became popular in
literary criticism largely due to the literary theorists and scholars
associated with the Yale School like Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis
Miller, and Harold Bloom ( For my entry on Harold Bloom click here) . One of the most important practitioners Paul de Man (1919–83)
in ‘The Resistance to Theory’ ( For my entry on ' Resistance to Theory' click here) says that the rhetorical and figurative dimension
of language makes it an unreliable medium for communication of truths. Literary
language being predominantly rhetorical and figurative, to take for granted
that literature is a reliable source of information about anything but itself
would be a great mistake.This gives rise to a particular
crisis in literary studies because "literariness" is no longer seen
as an aesthetic quality nor is it seen as a mimetic mode. As we consider language
as an intuitive and transparent medium, as opposed to the material and conventional
medium that it is, aesthetic effect, according to de Man, takes place because
we tend to mistake the materiality of the signifier with the materiality of the
signified. Mimesis, like aesthetic quality, is also an effect of the rhetorical
and figurative aspects of language. The assumption of ideological and
historical contexts or backgrounds to literary texts becomes problematic if
language is no longer seen as a transparent and intuitive guide from the
textual material to the historical situation. Consequently, the theorists who
uphold an aesthetic approach to literary studies and those who uphold an
historical approach both find deconstructive approach inconvenient and
challenging. De Man practiced his own
variety of deconstruction in his philosophically oriented literary criticism of
Romanticism, especially the writings of William Wordsworth, John Keats,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, William
Butler Yeats, Friedrich Holderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke. In Blindness and Insight, de Man sought to
deconstruct the privileging of symbol over allegory and metaphor over metonymy
in Romantic thought. In Romantic philosophy, metaphor implied self-identity and
wholeness, decomposition of self-identity implied inability of overcoming the
dualism between subject and object, which Romantic metaphor sought to
transcend. To compensate for this inability, de Man argued that the Romanticism
constantly relies on allegory to attain the wholeness established by the
totality of the symbol.
Legacy
of Deconstruction:
As
against the Yale School’s obsession with figurative language and the close
reading of the texts, many New Historicist, Cultural Materialists, feminists,
and postcolonial theorists have used deconstruction as a political weapon to
expose the political, historical and the ideological biases built into the
text. While feminists and gender theorists find deconstruction useful in
subverting the gender binaries in literary texts, the postcolonial theorists
find it a powerful tool to undermine and explode the colonizer’s master
narratives from within. Cultural materialists have found Derrida’s emphasis on
the materiality of language and its social and institutional context very
useful to critique the idealistic modes of reading literature. New Historicists
like Louis Montrose have used Derrida to formulate a new way of reading
relationship between literature and history by focusing on ‘reciprocal concern
about historicity of texts and textuality of history’. Thus, deconstruction remains one of the most
influential theories in literary studies till today.
An
Attempt to Summarize:
Though
the term’ deconstruction’ has become very popular in literary criticism and
theory, its precise meaning is extremely problematic. It has had an enormous influence in psychology,
literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics, feminism, sociology and
anthropology.It
has influenced a wide range of theoretical approaches to literary studies like
feminism and gender studies, cultural materialism, new historicism,
postcolonial studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis and so on. It involves the close reading of
texts in order to demonstrate that any given text has irreconcilably
contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical whole. Though
it is often misunderstood as negative activity of destruction, it
is in many ways continuation of Heideggerian project of dismantling and
transforming the entire tradition and architecture of western thought by
building upon the insights from contemporary linguistics regarding the
mechanism of language and meaning production.
One of the most influential French cultural theorists of the twentieth century, Jacques Lacan (1901-1980) is responsible for revival of interest in Freud, notably among the feminists who saw Freud as a typical MCP- Male Chauvinist Psychologist. While most of Jacques Lacan’s writing is willfully obscure and irritatingly playful, one can approximately discern the general thrust of his theory.
Lacan’s emphasis is on the anti-humanistic implication of decentered and split human self in Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud’s theory replaced the idea of coherent and autonomous human self (which is a humanist idea) with the idea of human ego existing on the fringe of the all powerful Unconscious- the huge area of human self existing outside of human awareness. In Freud’s view, the car of human life is driven from the back seat of Unconscious. Freudian theory, in Lacanian interpretation, is chiefly about decentering or marginality of human self in relation to itself.
This notion of decentering ties up with the similar ideas in Heideggerian existentialism. Heidegger’s remark ‘it is language that speaks, not man’ sums up this position of the decentered human self in relation to language.
Lacan draws attention to the fact that we tend to misconstrue (méconnaissance) ‘I’ of our linguistic utterance (enunciation) - as in “I am going home” (which is grammatically in subject position of enunciation) for the self of the speaker (‘enounce’). This gap between the speaker’s self and the linguistic ‘I’ is due to this decentering of human self in relation to language. Just like the structure of language displaces man by being the real producer of meaning instead of human soul, the unconscious displaces the humanist idea of autonomous coherent self which knows –’the cogito’.
Lacan also notes that as any use of language assumes the presence of the audience, the ‘self’ and ‘the other’ split is built into language. That is, we always assume the presence of someone when we use the language. This someone may be oneself as when we talk to ourselves or when we write things like diaries for one. This means the use of language (as in thinking) results in the split between the self (the addresser) and the other (addressee) who might be the same person.
It is this conception of decentering and splitting of human self which is expressed by Lacan’s widely quoted dictum, ‘ The Unconscious is structured like language’. It implies that the laws governing the unconscious and the laws governing human language are analogous and that unconscious functions in much the same way as language does.
Lacan draws upon the works of Saussure and Roman Jakobson on the mechanism of language to demonstrate that the mechanism of unconscious also functions on similar lines. For instance, the dream work described by Freud as comprising of mechanisms of displacement, condensation and symbolism is in Lacan’s view, actually ‘language work’. Drawing upon Roman Jakobson’s work on aphasia and poetics, Lacan notes that the mechanisms of dream work like the processes of condensesation, displacement and symbolism are actually analogous to ‘tropes’ of language like metaphor and metonymy.
In Lacan’s view, the splitting of human self and the decentering occurs when human beings acquire the symbolic cultural system represented by language. This system as noted by Saussure is the system of differences based on binarisms like the self and the other, man and woman. With language acquisition, the human beings position themselves within this system of differences and assume identity and the sense of self and the other.
What is lost in the process of differentiation is the sense of oneness and union with our mothers and we try to regain it in our lives. This is possible only at the level of imagination or the Imaginary where the distinctions and differences are believed to be non-existent. Hence human beings operate on two levels in their lives: the Imaginary and the Symbolic. These levels can only be accessed through human language and hence are seen as ‘registers’ in psychoanalytical theory.
The humans can articulate desire only through language, the Symbolic domain and as Lacan points out the structure of language is the structure of signifiers where one signifier perpetually leads to another signifier. That is, the meaning of one word is another word or another set of words. Consider a dictionary entry on a difficult word.The entry itself is composed of words whose meanings lay elsewhere. This means that the meaning does not lie ‘in the signifier’ but elsewhere. The signifier ‘lacks’ meaning and it is this ‘lack’ which makes the movement from one signifier to another possible. This movement from one signifier to another driven by ‘lack’ becomes the movement of ‘supplemantarity’ and difference in Derrida’s philosophy.
Lacan points out that the human desire is a combination of ‘the demand’ and ‘the need’. The need which is biological can be gratified, while the demand which can only be articulated through language can never be satisfied. The demand for something (this thing is a signifier) can lead only to another signifier which leads to another signifier ad infinitum. Hence, the Lacanian dictum: ‘All speech is a demand and all demand is a demand for love.’ The demand which can never ever be fulfilled as each signifier ‘lacks’ meaning and links to another signifier.
Lacan notes that desire is a movement from one signifier to another and hence ‘syntagmatic’ or ‘metonymic’ while the movement of neurosis is the movement of substituting one thing for another (‘a symptom’ for an unconscious wish) and hence ‘paradigmatic’ or ‘metaphorical’.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the phallus is ‘the privileged signifier’, as language and culture in patriarchy function under the ‘Law of Father’. The Phallus, being a signifier also ‘lacks’ positive meaning. The idea of the phallus as a privileged signifier comes from Lacan’s reinterpretation of Freud’s oedipal phase or phallic phase of psychosexual development (see the entry on Freud).
While most of the ideas discussed above are later development in Lacan’s philosophy, his ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I’ (Ecrits, 1977) is an early essay dealing with question of human identity formation. In contrast to traditional humanistic notion of identity as being innate and organic to human self, Lacan notes that it is formed in the process of identification with something which is not self and something which is outside of self. Lacan’s views on identity formation resemble the Hegelian notion of dialectic between the self and other as expressed in his ‘Master-Servant’ relationship. The Mirror Stage, according to Lacan, results in child’s recognition and discovery of self as a reflection. This misidentification of reflection for self is central to Lacan’s theory.It implies that ‘identity’ is a product of misidentification and misconstruction (méconnaissance) rather than discovery of ‘true’ or ‘real’ self. Lacan gives instances from neurology and zoology where visual knowledge of similar species is necessary for full biological development of the organism (as in pigeons and locusts). Lacan also points out how this ‘specular I’ contributes to development of motor skills in a child. Hence this méconnaissance is necessary for biological development of an organism.
The notion of mirror stage in Lacan also brings to fore his disagreement with Freud. While Freud sees the oedipal phase or phallic phase as being crucial to identity, including the gender identity, Lacan points out that the processes of identity formation start even earlier at the pre-linguistic and pre-phallic stage of psychological development. This idea in Lacan also prefigures his theorization of ‘the Imaginary’ register in psychoanalysis. The Imaginary is the register where human beings are able to imagine themselves as undifferentiated totality and where the complete intimacy with the other is possible.
.
There is a huge amount of good quality reference on Lacan available on the Internet. Here are links to a few:
Sigmund Freud’s `Dostoevsky and Parricide’ (1927) is an excellent example of application of Classical Psychoanalysis to literature. The essay is significant because it contains Freud’s classic exposition of the Oedipus Complex and its relation to literary texts. The essay can be read together with Freud’s other famous and insightful essays on literature like `The Uncanny’ (1919), `Creative Writers and Day Dreaming’ (1908) and `The Theme of Three Caskets’ (1913). That Freud should write extensively on literature is not surprising as he considers psychoanalysis as being ` art of interpretation’ and that many of his ideas are drawn from literary texts.
Freud is fascinated by complex and rich personality of Dostoevsky. He points out four facets of Dostoevsky’s personality, viz., the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner. Freud, characteristically, declares ` before the problem of creative artist, analysis must, alas, lay down its arms.’ Freud is more interested in Dostoevsky the neurotic and the causes of his neurosis.
Freud argues that Dostoevsky’s epileptic attacks, compulsive gambling, his latent homosexuality and his submissive attitude to religious and state authorities are manifestations of his neurosis resulting from his `Oedipus Complex’.
The Oedipus complex is an essential concept in Freudian psychoanalysis. According to the theory, during the `phallic phase’ (the phase where child’s phallus is the centre of his erotic interest –his love object) of psychosexual development of a child, the child recognizes that he is not a sole object of his mother’s love and sees father as his sexual rival. He is jealous and directs his aggression towards his father.
During the Oedipal phase, the child wants to take place of his father and thus become the object of his mother’s love. This requires identification on the part of the child with his father to obtain his mother’s love. Freud points out that the child identifies with the father to an extent that the father becomes the part of child’s personality. This part of child’s personality formed by identification with parents is called `Superego’ by Freud.
However, during this based on his knowledge of girl’s genitals, the child develops the anxiety of losing his prized possession, of being castrated and losing his masculinity. His aggression towards his father, the desire to kill him has to be repressed or driven away beyond his conscious mind into the unconscious part of his psyche out of the fear of father and father’s power to castrate him. Freud also points out the `ambivalence’ towards father in the mind of child where there is distinct love and tenderness for the father along with the desire to kill him. This gives rise to deep guilt in the mind of the child.
In Dostoevsky’s case, Freud argues, this emotional crisis arising in his phallic phase is unresolved and gives rise to his neurosis. Dostoevsky has identified with his father and hence the wish to kill his father is also a desire to kill oneself. This unresolved and unrepressed conflict results in `epileptic attacks’ which resemble the experience of dying for Dostoevsky.
The guilt arising from his unconscious parricidal desire manifests itself in self-punishing attitudes in Dostoevsky. This severe guilt and desire for self punishment, according to Freud, is at the back of Dostoevsky’s compulsive gambling, which Freud sees as a self punishing activity. As Dostoevsky’s internalized father, his superego, Freud says, is sadistic and Dostoevsky’s ego is masochistic in its desire for self punishment.
Freud also says that gambling which is a form of play is also a substitute for masturbation and hence a cause for guilt for Dostoevsky.
Freud remarks that the three masterpieces of literature Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Dostoevsky’s Brother Karamazov should deal with parricide carried out of sexual rivalry for a woman is not an instance of coincidence. In the light of his theory, all literature embodies neurotic conflicts and unconscious instincts in a disguised and indirect ways so as to make them acceptable.
The writers employ literary devices to make these unconscious sexual and socially unacceptable contents of psyche acceptable to people. In Oedipus Rex, the hero kills his father unintentionally, in Hamlet, it is carried out by someone else and in Brothers Karamazov the deed is carried out by the brother of the protagonist Dmitri. Freud also draws attention to a scene in Brothers Karamazov where Father Zossima bows down at the feet of Dmitri when he learns Dmitri is planning to kill his father.
Freud seems to imply that creative writing is similar to dreaming or neurotic symptoms which he sees as camouflaged and indirect expressions of conflicts arising from early sexual development of the child and unconscious instinctual wishes. This is obviously very `reductive’ view of literature which is a far more complex artifact. Freud himself does not seem to be entirely unaware of this limitation.
Another problem with such an approach is that too preoccupied with ` origins’ of work of art instead of its structure and meaning –critics term as originological fallacy or genetic fallacy. Hence, the obsession with biographical details and personal neurosis of the author.
As Jung (1930) points out the man who suffers and the man who creates are not identical and personal history of the artist is not very useful for understanding the works of art because the artist has to transcend himself in order to create so that he may reach out to the entire humanity. But, remember what Freud has said about `analysis…laying down its arms in front of creative artist’ in the beginning of the essay.
Freud’s ideas have been received very skeptically and often with hostility ever since their statement. Critics have pointed out that they cannot be proved rigorously and scientifically.Other critics have also pointed out the deep seated gender bias in his theory especially his ideas like `penis envy’ which is feminine counterpart to man’s `castration anxiety’. However, Freud has always been very influential thinker whose influence is felt not just in literary criticism but also on the creative writers themselves.
Freud’s ideas regained prominence in literary theory in the twentieth century largely due to Jacques Lacan’s semiotic and structuralist reading of Freud.
A poet, translator and academician working with English, Marathi and Gujarati languages and literatures. I work as Professor in Department of English, Faculty of Arts, The M.S. University of Baroda.
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Foucault’s influence in
contemporary culture studies and social sciences is immense. One of the most
influential and famous application of Foucault’s theorization is Edward Said’s Orientalism ( 1978) which argues the discipline
of producing knowledge about the East ( Orientalism) cannot be seen
independently of project of colonialism and that the whole discourse of producing
knowledge about the East actually produced
the East as an object to be dominated and consumed. Said’s book inaugurated contemporary postcolonial
studies.
