"I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night": Lacan and the Uncanny Author(s): Mladen Dolar Reviewed work(s):

Source: October, Vol. 58, Rendering the Real (Autumn, 1991), pp. 5-23 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778795 . Accessed: 07/03/2013 09:36
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"I Shall Be withYou on Your Wedding-Night": Lacan and the Uncanny

MLADEN

DOLAR

The dimension of the uncanny,introducedby Freud in his famous paper, is located at the verycore of psychoanalysis.'It is the dimension where all the come together,where its diverse lines of argument concepts of psychoanalysis forma knot.The uncannyprovidesa clue to the basic projectof psychoanalysis. And yet Freud appears to be somewhatat a loss about how to make use of this clue. Although he enumeratesa number of instancesof the uncanny,givingan he leaves us in the array of examples embellished with theoreticalreflections, end withonly a sketchor a prolegomenon to a theoryof the uncanny. Exactly how the different pieces fittogetherremains unclear. The Extimate Freud startsoff with a lengthylinguisticdiscussion of the German term for Freud thatsuch a paradoxical word existed It was fortunate das Unheimliche. in the German language, and perhaps it gave him the idea for the paper in the and is thus firstplace. The word is the standard German negation of heimlich supposed to be its opposite. But it turnsout that it is actuallydirectlyimplied which means familiar, homely,cozy,intimate,"arousing a sense of by heimlich, as in one withinthe four walls of his house"; and security agreeable restfulness and securelytuckedaway is also hidden, concealed by extension,whatis familiar fromthe outside, secret,"kept fromsight. . . withheldfromothers"; and by a further fearful, occult, extension,what is hidden and secretis also threatening, un"uncomfortable,uneasy, gloomy,dismal . . . ghastly"-that is, unheimlich, become where the two coincide and is There a meanings directly point canny.2 and the negationdoes not count-as indeed itdoes not count undistinguishable,

1. Psychological Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny' " (1919), The StandardEditionof theComplete vol. XVII (London: Hogarth Press, 1955). ed. James Strachey, Works, 2. Ibid., pp. 221, 222, 225.

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in the unconscious.3The English translation, "the uncanny," largelyretainsthe essential ambiguityof the German term,but French doesn't possess an equivSo Lacan had to invent alent,l'inquiltante being the standardtranslation. etrangeti one, extimit". This term aims directly at the essentialdimensionof psychoanalysis. Putone could say thattraditional tingthissimply, thoughtconsistedof the constant effortto draw a clear line between the interiorand the exterior.All the great philosophicalconceptual pairs-essence/appearance, mind/body, subject/object, etc.-can be seen as just so many transcriptions of the division spirit/matter, betweeninteriority and exteriority. Now the dimensionof extimiti blursthisline. It points neitherto the interiornor to the exterior, but is located there where the most intimateinteriority coincides with the exteriorand becomes threatthe intiening, provokinghorror and anxiety.The extimateis simultaneously mate kerneland the foreignbody; in a word,it is unheimlich. Freud writes, "the which leads back to what is known of uncanny is that class of the frightening old and long familiar."4 And it is thisverydimensionbeyond the divisioninto "psychic"and "real" thatdeserves to be called the real in the Lacanian sense. Freud then proceeds in an "inductive"way,somewhathaphazardly enuinstancesof thisstrangedimension-the paradoxical realm meratingdifferent between the livingand the dead (what Lacan will later call the area "between two deaths"); the anxietyprovoked by the double, the point where narcissism becomes unbearable; "the evil eye" and the dimensionof the gaze; the seriesof coincidences thatsuddenlybear a fateful meaning (where the real, so to speak, to cut off etc. is It obvious thatthe different cases have a limbs; begins speak); Lacanian common denominator which is the of the real into simple irruption We of can the of "homely,"commonlyaccepted reality. speak emergence somewell-known divisions and which that shatters cannot be situated within thing them. (This holds not only for the classical divisions subject/object, interior/ exterior,etc., but also for the "early" Lacanian division symbolic/imaginary.) is thusput intoquestion. The statusboth of the subjectand of "objectivereality" In dealing withthe different instances,Freud is graduallyforced to use the entire panoply of psychoanalytic concepts: castrationcomplex, Oedipus, to repeat, death drive, repression,anxiety, (primary) narcissism,compulsion all seem to etc. convergeon "the uncanny."One could simply They psychosis, which psychoanalytic around is the that it concepts revolve, pivotal point say the point that Lacan calls object small a and which he himselfconsidered his to psychoanalysis. most importantcontribution
is highly 3. "The way in which dreams treat the categoryof contrariesand contradictories remarkable.It is simplydisregarded. 'No' seems not to existso far as dreams are concerned. They into a unityor forrepresenting themas one show a particularpreferenceforcombiningcontraries vol. IV, p. 318. and the same thing."The Interpretation Edition, ofDreams(1900), in The Standard 4. Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" p. 220.

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"I Shall Be with You on YourWedding-Night"

It seems thatFreud speaks about a "universal"of human experience when he speaks of the uncanny,yet his own examples tacitly point to its location in a to the historical historical conjuncture, particular rupturebroughtabout specific is a dimension the thatemerges There with the of uncanny Enlightenment. specific by in is not the as but the I interested What am uncanny uncanny such, modernity. and whichconstantly haunts that is closelylinked withthe advent of modernity it from the inside. To put it simply,in premodern societies the dimension of the uncanny was largely covered (and veiled) by the area of the sacred and and sociallysanctionedplace in the untouchable. It was assigned to a religiously of from which the structure and a hierarchyof power, sovereignty, symbolic this privilegedand values emanated. With the triumphof the Enlightenment, excluded place (the exclusion thatfounded society)was no more. That is to say that the uncanny became unplaceable; it became uncanny in the strictsense. sensitiveto the historicalshifts, took successPopular culture,always extremely of ful hold of it-witness the immensepopularity Gothicfiction and itsromantic It has oftenbeen pointed out thatthe Gothicnovel was being written aftermath.5 at the same time as the French Revolution. There was an irruption of the uncanny strictly parallel withbourgeois (and industrial)revolutionsand the rise of scientific of rationality-and, one mightadd, withthe Kantian establishment of whichthe uncanny presentsthe surprisingcountranscendentalsubjectivity, Ghosts, vampires,monsters,the undead dead, etc., flourishin an era terpart.6 when you mightexpect them to be dead and buried, withouta place. They are itself. somethingbrought about by modernity Freud, in his paper, gives a somewhatmisleadingimpressionwhen he says that the uncanny is the returnof somethinglong surmounted,discarded, and superseded in the past. Just as Lacan has argued that the subject of psychobased in the Cartesian cogito and unthinkanalysis is the subject of modernity able withoutthe Kantian turn,so one has to extend the argumentto the realm of the object, the object a. It, too, is most intimately linked withand produced What seems to be a leftoveris actuallya product of by the rise of modernity. its counterpart. modernity, The Quadruple Let us see how the Lacanian "simplification"-the introduction of a common pivotal point-affects Freud's formulations on the uncanny. Freud takes as the paradigmaticcase the well-known short story"The Sand-Man" by E. T. A. Hoffmann, an example suggested by Jentsch and which serves Freud's
5. See James Donald's excellentaccount,"The Fantastic, the Sublime and the Popular; or What's at Stake in Vampire Films?" in Fantasyand theCinema,ed. James Donald (London: British Film Institute,1989). 6. See Slavoj Ziiek's articlein thisissue.

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purpose verywell. Freud's account of the storyhinges upon two relations:the and Olympia, the one between the student Nathaniel, the hero of the story, be out to a an who turns of doll, automaton; the other young girl angelic beauty in his variousguises as the lawyerCoppelius, the betweenthe Sand-Man figure, by ProfessorSpalanoptician Coppola, and the Father (later partlysubstituted the two intersecting the four on to characters is zani).7 One tempted place the sort of L-scheme Lacan: proposed by diagonals of The Sand-Man Olympia

Nathaniel

Father

Of course thisdiagram doesn't correspondat all to Lacan's originalintena different illustrates and tion point. The L-schemewas introducedin order to situate the imaginaryego produced by the mirror phase in relation to the to the Other of the symbolic order,and to a subjectthatis not an ego. symbolic, Lacan's So the entire tension of diagram, the drama it represents,is between the imaginaryand the symbolicdiagonals. In our case, both the "imaginary" one are haunted by the intrusion line (Nathaniel-Olympia)and the "symbolic" of the real, the dimension that was not yet elaborated in early Lacan and had no assigned place in the L-scheme,or whichwas presentthereonlyin an implicit way. With its introduction,both diagonals become troubled and presage a disaster. Nathaniel fallsmadlyin love withthisbeautifulgirlwho seems remarkably silentand reticent.It is true thatshe dances and she sings (as one can hear in Offenbach'sHoffmann's Tales), but in a verymechanicalway,keeping her beat too accurately.Her vocabularyis ratherlimited; she only exclaims "Oh! oh!" fromtimeto timeand says "Good night,love!" at the end of long conversations in whichhe is the only speaker. Her eyes gaze into emptinessforhours on end. her throughhis spyglass,and thisis sufficient Nathaniel never tiresof watching for bringingabout the follyof love: "She says but a few words, that is true,"
de 7. H61kneCixous points out in "La Fictionet ses Fant6mes: Une lecturede l'Unheimliche cuts in Hoffmann's Freud," Poitique(1972), vol. 10, pp. 199-216, thatFreud makes some arbitrary of his narrativestrategy. Although this is true to storyand doesn't take into account the subtlety some extent,one could show that those elementsdo not contradictFreud's reading. It seems that cuts and the Cixous triesto prove too much; for the veryact of interpreting operates by arbitrary thatseemed of the veryinterpretation effect is a retroactive alleged wealthof the object interpreted to an original textual wealth, I proceed by to reduce it. Here, rather than claiming any fidelity me. takingup only one essentialpoint thatinterests

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"I Shall Be with You on YourWedding-Night"

remarks Nathaniel, "but these few words appear as genuine hieroglyphsof an inner world fullof love and a higher knowledgeof the spirituallife in contemplation of the eternal Beyond." "Oh you glorious, profound nature, only you, you alone understand me completely!"8A blank screen, empty eyes, and an "Oh!": it is enough to drive anybodycrazywithlove. There is a strangereversal in this situation: the problem is not simply that Olympia turns out to be an automaton (contrivedby the Sand-Man figureCoppola, who contributedthe eyes, and Spalanzani, who took care of the mechanism) and is thus in the uncanny area between the living and the dead; it is that Nathaniel strangely reacts in a mechanical way. His love for an automaton is itselfautomatic; his fieryfeelings are mechanicallyproduced ("his senseless obsessive [zwanghafte, compulsory] love for Olympia," says Freud).9 It takes so littleto set up that blank screen fromwhich he only receiveshis own message. The question arises as to who is the real automaton in the situation,for the appearance of the automaton calls foran automaticresponse,it entailsan automaticsubjectivation. Hoffmann'sironical twist, the social parody implied in the episode, highlightsthe role sociallyassigned to the woman: it is enough to be there, at the appropriate place, at the most to utter an "Oh!" at the appropriate time, to produce that specterof The Woman, thatfigureof the Other. The mechanical doll only highlights the mechanicalcharacterof "intersubjective" relations.It is the characterexploited by the positionof the analyst:the analyst,too, uttersat the most an "Oh!" here and there (and perhaps a "Good night, love!"); he makes himselfan automaton in order to give rise to the dimensionof the Other, the real interlocutor of the patient's"monologue," and also in order to produce that strange kind of love, perhaps love in its strictest and purest sense, which is love. Nathaniel'slengthy transference conversations withOlympia prefigurethe analyticsession. But Olympia is both the Other to whom Nathaniel addresses his love and his amatorydiscourse (like the Lady of courtlylove) and his narcissistic supplement (love can afterall be seen as the attemptto make the Other the same, to reconcile it with narcissism).Like him, she is in the position of a child toward the fatherfigures:"Her fathers,Spalanzani and Coppola, are ... nothingbut new editions, reincarnationsof Nathaniel's pair of fathers."'1She is his sisterimage, the realization of his essential ambivalence in relation to the father figure-the attempt to identifywith the father on one hand, and to make oneself an object for him, to offeroneself as the object of his love on the other (what Freud calls the "feminineattitude"):"Olympia is, as it were, a dissociated complex of Nathaniel's which confrontshim as a person."" She is his "better
8. 118. 9. 10. 11. E. T. A. Hoffmann,Tales ofHoffmann (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 117 and Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" p. 232. Ibid. Ibid.

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half," the missinghalf that could make him whole, but which turns out to be the materialized,emancipated death drive. She presentsthe point where the stumbleson the real. narcissistic complementturnslethal,where the imaginary is tension of the second diagonal conditioned the by Olympia's position the fatherand the Sand-Man. The threat that connects the two fatherfigures, of a loss of sight,the menace to one's eyes,whichis the red thread of the story conand for Freud the main source of its uncanny character,is immediately nected with the castration complex, the threat of the loss of what is most valuable. Hoffmann'sstorytreatsthiscomplex in the simplestand mostclassical way, with the duplication of fatherfigures.The fatheris split into the good father,the protectorand the bearer of the universalLaw, and the bad father, the castrater,the menacing and jealous figurethat evokes the fatherof the The good fatherprotects jouissance. primalhorde, the fatherlinkedwithterrible with threatens the bad one Nathaniel's eyes; blinding.The good fatheris killed for the blame it, thus resolvingin a simple way the by the bad one, who takes the subject'slove forhim and his deathessentialambivalencetowardthe father, behind is irresolvable: wishagainsthim. But the tensionbetweenthe twofathers the fatherwho is the bearer of the Law, and as such reduced to the "Name-ofthe-Father"(i.e., the dead father),there is the horriblecastratingfigurethat the fatherwho wouldn't die and who Lacan has called the "father-jouissance," The comes to haunt the Law (and actually endows it with its effectiveness). and lethaljouissance. Sand-Man is the bearer of thisterrible For Freud, the uncanny effectdepends on castration,which also links togetherthe two diagonals and centersthemon the relationto the object. The Sand-Man as the castratingfigureand the figureofjouissance"alwaysappears who alwaysemerges derLiebe]."He is the intruder as the disturberof love [St~irer a "sexual relation,"to at the momentwhen the subjectcomes close to fulfilling find his imaginarysupplement and become a "whole."'2 It is because of the on the symbolic diagonal thatthe completion appearance of the father-jouissance one. One could say thatin thisfirst failson the imaginary approach, the uncanny is preciselywhat bars the sexual relation; it is the dimension that preventsus fromfindingour Platonian missinghalves and hence imaginary completion;it The objectal of our subjectivity. is the dimension that blocks the fulfillment dimension at one and the same time opens the threatof castrationand comes but one which to fillthe gap of castration.The uncannyemerges as a reality, a negative existence, of negativity, has its only substance in a positivization castration. The positive presence of the objectal dimension is the "positive expression" of what Lacan, in one of his most famous dictums,has called the absence of sexual relation("Ii n'ya pas de rapport sexuel").
his bestfriend;he destroys and fromher brother, "He separates Nathanielfromhis betrothed 12. the second object of his love, Olympia,the lovelydoll; and he driveshim intosuicide at the moment when he has won back his Clara and is about to be happilyunited to her" (Ibid., p. 231).

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The Double The dimension of the double, another source of the uncanny,simplifies the quadruple scheme of the Sand-Man into a dual relation where the tension appears between the subjectand his double. Freud dwellson the omnipresence, the obsession withthe theme of the double in Hoffmann'swork,and mentions von Prag. The exthe then-recentexample of Stellan Rye's filmDer Student Miller haustive studies by Otto Rank and more recently Karl have shown the by in of this use motive literature extensive its (and elsewhere), particularly very incredible proliferationin the romanticera.'3 The authors range (apart from Hoffmann) from Chamisso (Peter Schlemihl), the Gothic novel, Andersen, Lenau, Goethe, Jean Paul, Hogg, Heine, Musset, Maupassant, Wilde, etc., to Poe (William Wilson) and Dostoyevsky (Golyadkin). featuresof these storiesthat can themThere are some simple structural with different outcomes. The selves have a number of complex ramifications with his of the himself is confronted double, (that can go very image subject or of his mirror or with the disappearance, tradingoff, image his shadow), along and this crumbling of the subject's accustomed reality,this shatteringof the bases of his world, produces a terribleanxiety.'4Usually only the subject can see his own double, who takes care to appear only in private,or for the subject effects:he arranges alone. The double produces two seeminglycontradictory things so that they turn out badly for the subject, he turns up at the most inappropriate moments,he dooms him to failure; and he realizes the subject's hidden or repressed desires so that he does thingshe would never dare to do or that his conscience wouldn't let him do. In the end, the relation gets so unbearable that the subject,in a finalshowdown,killshis double, unaware that his only substance and his very being were concentratedin his double. So in killinghim he kills himself."You have conquered, and I yield," says Wilson's double in Poe's story. "Yet henceforward artthou also dead-dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist-and, in my death, see by this thou hast murdered thyself.""5 As a rule, image, whichis thineown, how utterly all these stories finishbadly: the moment one encounters one's double, one is headed for disaster; there seems to be no way out. (In clinical cases of autoscopia--meeting or seeing one's double-the prognosis is also ratherbad and the outcome is likelyto be tragic.)'6 Otto Rank gives an extensive account of the theme of the double in different mythologiesand superstitions.17 For all of them the shadow and the
13. Otto Rank, TheDouble:A Psychoanalytic (London: Karnac-Maresfield Study Library,1989) and Karl Miller,Doubles(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 14. The heroes of these storiesare always male. As will appear later,the double is also a device to avoid a relationshipto femininity and sexualiltyin general. 15. ed. David Galloway (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1979). Writings, Edgar Allen Poe, Selected 16. See Eric Blumel, "L'hallucinationdu double," Analytica 22 (1980), pp. 35-53. 17. Rank, The Double.

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mirrorimage are the obvious analogues of the body, its immaterialdoubles, and thus the best means to representthe soul. The shadow and the mirror it is that reflections image survive the body due to their immateriality--so than itsowner: constitute our essentialselves.'8The image is more fundamental his substance,his essentialbeing, his "soul"; it is his most valuable it institutes part; it makes him a human being.19It is his immortalpart, his protection against death. would agree. Afterall, thisis what Lacan's theory In a way,psychoanalysis that aims at: it is only by virtueof one's mirrorreflection of the mirror-phase one can become endowed with an ego, establishoneself as an "I." My "egocomes frommy double. But the troublewiththe double springsfrom identity" the factthathe seems to stand forall threeinstancesof Freud's "second topic": the essentialpart of the ego; he carriesout the represseddesires he constitutes from the Id; and he also, witha malevolencetypicalof the superego, springing the subject from carryingout his desires-all at one and the same prevents time. So how do the three instancesfittogether? There is a momentin the legend of Narcissuswhen the blind seer Tiresias makes a prophecy to the beautifulboy's mother: "Narcissus will live to a ripe The prophecyseems directly old age, provided thathe never knowshimself."20 "Know dictum to contradictthe old philosophical Instead, forTiresias, thyself!" a of condition as the an essential ignorance appears long and happy life. In the will to know himself, fact,Narcissus willcome philosophicalmaxim prefer for him. The legend will be fateful and that knowledge to the prophet's offer, minimal narcissistic the foretellsof the loss that is always already implied by mechanismpresentedby the mirrorphase. in the mirrorit is already too To put it simply:when I recognize myself late. There is a split: I cannot recognize myselfand at the same time be one With the recognitionI have already lost whatone could call "selfwithmyself. The in mybeing and jouissance. being," the immediatecoincidence withmyself has already rejoicingin the mirrorimage, the pleasure and the self-indulgence, introduces the dimension of been paid for. The mirrordouble immediately castration-the doubling itselfalready,even in its minimalform,implies cashas its tration:"This inventionof doubling as a preservation againstextinction castration counterpartin the language of dreams,whichis fondof representing
18. There is also the traditional"animistic"belief that what befalls the image will befall its See Heine, as whichis stillalive concerningcracked mirrors. owner-for example, the superstition in a mirror face one's than more is "There Rank: in accidentally seeing uncanny nothing quoted by moonlight"(p. 43). This explains whyghosts,vampires,etc.,don't cast shadows and don't have mirrorreflections: theyare themselvesalready shadows and reflections. 19. That is why trading one's image in a kind of "pact with the Devil" or with some occult of the image,and the subjectoverlooks substitute alwaysends badly: the Devil knowsthe importance it. 2 vols. (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1960). Robert Graves, The Greek 20. Myths,

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of by a doubling or a multiplicationof a genital symbol."2'The multiplicity snakes on Medusa's head, to take another example from Freud, is there to dissimulate the lack; the One, the Unique is missing.So the doubling, in the simplestway, entails the loss of that uniqueness that one could enjoy in one's self-being,but only at the price of being neither an ego nor a subject. The doubling cuts one off from a part, the most valuable part, of one's being, the immediate self-being ofjouissance.This is what Lacan will later add to his early theoryof the mirrorphase: the object a is preciselythat part of the loss that one cannot see in the mirror, the partof the subjectthathas no mirrorreflection, the nonspecular. The mirrorin the most elementaryway already implies the splitbetween the imaginaryand the real: one can only have access to imaginary to the world one can recognize oneself in and familiarizeoneself with, reality, on the condition of the loss, the "fallingout," of the object a. It is this loss of the object a that opens "objective"reality, the possibility of subject-objectrelations,but since its loss is the conditionof any knowledge of "objective" reality, it cannot itselfbecome an object of knowledge. We can now see the trouble with the double: the double is that mirror image in which the object a is included. So the imaginarystartsto coincide with the real, provokinga shattering anxiety.The double is the same as me plus the that invisible of a, object part being added to myimage. In order for the mirror to contain the image object a, a wink or a nod is enough. Lacan uses the gaze as the best presentationof that missingobject; in the mirror, one can see one's but not the which is the that is lost. But eyes, gaze part imagine that one could see one's mirrorimage close its eyes: thatwould make the object as gaze appear in the mirror.This is what happens with the double, and the anxietythat the double produces is the surest sign of the appearance of the object. (It can also be brought about in the opposite way, by the disappearance of one's mirror dubbed "the negativeautoscopia," an example of which is to image, technically be found in Maupassant's Le Horla.) Here the Lacanian account of anxiety differssharplyfromother theories: it is not produced by a lack or a loss or an incertitude;it is not the anxietyof losing something(the firmsupport, one's it is the anxietyof gainingsomethingtoo much, bearings,etc.). On the contrary, of a too-close presence of the object. What one loses with anxietyis precisely the loss-the loss that made it possible to deal witha coherentreality. "Anxiety is the lack of the support of the lack," says Lacan; the lack lacks, and thisbrings about the uncanny.22 The inclusion of the object also entails the emergence of that lost part of jouissance. The double is always the figure of jouissance: on one hand, he is somebodywho enjoysat the subject'sexpense; he commitsacts thatone wouldn't
21. 22. Ibid., pp. 356-57. See Blumel, "L'hallucination,"p. 49.

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dare to commit,he indulges in one's represseddesires and makes sure thatthe blame fallson the subject.On the otherhand, though,he is not simply someone who enjoys, but essentially a figurethat commandsjouissance.The double is a "disturberof love": he typically springsup at the momentwhen one is about to touch,or to kiss,the girlof one's dreams; he springsup when the subjectcomes close to the realizationof his wishes,when he is on the brinkof attainingfull the completionof the sexual relation.But whilethe double appears enjoyment, what is significant is the choice of the to be the one who spoils and obstructs, who It who the the one retains the object and is double, myself prefers object. who can provide jouissanceand being, to the beautiful girl who can give me pleasure. Only the alter ego can offerthe truejouissancethat I am not willing to give up in favorof pleasure. The magnificent younggirlis ratherthe obstacle to my privileged relation to myself;she is the real spoiler in this game, the so one has to get rid of her (and the double takes care of spoiler of narcissism, in to order this) mydouble. He retainsthatlost primordial join myreal partner, a substitute.But of course joining one's no woman can be for which object being,is lethal.The subjectcan onlyattain regainingone's primordial jouissance, it by his death. doesn't make itan objectof possible The appearance of the objectin reality it As a rule, appears onlyto the subject;the othersdon't "objective"knowledge. see it and thereforedon't understandthe subject'speculiar behavior.It cannot become a part of accepted intersubjective space. It is the privileged private his to the accessible subject, incorporatedself-being. only object introducesthe death The double, retainingthe object, also immediately and the shadow the mirror of the double function drive.The original (as image) an of the destruction was "an insurance againstthe 'energeticdenial of the ego, 'double' of power of death' . . . and probablythe 'immortalsoul' was the first a the body.'"23Yet what was designed as a defense against death, as protection contradicts is thatanankewhichmostimmediately of narcissism--one'smortality wholeness-turns intoitsharbinger:when the double and limitsthe narcissistic appears, the timeis up. One could saythatthedouble inauguratesthedimension of the real preciselyas the protectionagainst "real" death. It introduces the death drive, that is, the drive in its fundamentalsense, as a defense against the first repetitionof the biological death. The double is the initialrepetition, in same, but also that which keeps repeating itself,emerging the same place of the real), springingup at the mostawkward (one of the Lacanian definitions times,both as an irruptionof the unexpected and with clockworkprecision, totallyunpredictableand predictablein one. But the intrusionof the real in stories about the double is drastic and dramatic, and is not part of everyday experience. It can spring up for a
23. Graves, The Greek Myths, p. 356.

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moment-as in that highlyunpleasant experience of Freud's when he met his mirrordouble in the verycozy and homelysettingof a wagon-lit compartment while alone in his dressing gown and travelingcap.24 The world was out of an elderlygentleman withthe apparitionof the intruder, joint, for that instant, dressed just like him, until he recognized his own mirrorreflection. But "normally" the lack implied in narcissismis the pivotal point between the mirror phase and the Oedipus-that which can give it a "normal" outcome. What happens with the Oedipus, which is the entryinto the symbolic,is the shiftin which the loss entailed by the mirrorreflection is inscribedinto the registerof The father's Law is what the Name-of-the-Father. now denies the subject his the immediacyof hisjouissance, as well as the access to thatprimordial self-being, for object of completion which is the mother.The fathertakes responsibility the loss, which makes him an ambiguous figure,subject to a lack and splitinto a "good" and a "bad" father,producing the object that cannot fit into the paternal law. The Law offerswords instead of things(instead of the Thing); it guarantees the objective world instead of the object. This is the only way it is possible for the subject to deal withthe loss, although thisoperation necessarily The produces a remainder which will come to haunt realityas it is instituted. immediate appeal of the theme of the double lies in the fact that it points to that remainder. In fact, we are never rid of the predicament of the mirror reflection. The theme of animism is closely connected to narcissism;it is its prolonis conceived as gation. The realitythat is opposed to narcissisticsufficiency laws as interiority-itis animated,inhabited subject to the same "psychological" etc. One gives up part of one's omnipotenceto those spirits, but since by spirits, of are the same nature as the one can influence seduce them, them, they ego, trade with them. The underlyingassumption is the omnipotence of thought; "the distinctionbetween imaginationand realityis effaced ... a symboltakes over the full functionsof the thingit symbolizes."25 There is the class of phenomena where a series of coincidences and contingentevents suddenly starts to signify and take on a fatefulmeaning, or conversely, a chance event seems to realize one's thought,thus confirming the belief in its omnipotence. "I know that thoughtscan't kill,but nevertheless... I believe theydo." Here too, the source of the uncanny is the reappearance of a part that was necessarilylost withthe emergence of the subject-the intersection between the "psychic"and the "real," the interiorand the exterior, the "word" and the "object,"the symbol and the symbolized-the point where the real immediately coincides with the to be into the of service the So what is symbolic put imaginary. uncannyis again the recuperationof the loss: the lost part destroysrealityinstead of completing
it.
24. 25. Ibid., p. 371. Ibid., p. 367.

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The Unique So far I have considered the uncannyon a rathergeneral level, following Freud's examples, which are, although he never explicitly mentionsit, historicallysituated.Hoffmann,the sudden emergenceof the doubles in the romantic obsessionwithghosts,vampires,undead dead, monsters, era, the extraordinary and all throughthe nineteenth the realm of the etc., in Gothic fiction century, fantastic-they all point to the emergence of the uncanny at a very precise historicalmoment.It is Frankenstein, thatis perhaps the best example however, of this. I started with a quadruple scheme in Hoffmann'stale, which was then reduced to a dual relationship withthe double. Now we can undertakea further or condensation of the problemby reducingit to a singleelement simplification best presented by the theme of the monster. It appears at firstsight that Frankensteinis the direct opposite of the theme of the double: the creaturecreated by Frankenstein is a monsterwithout a name, and his basic problem in the novel is preciselythathe cannot find his or a genealogy,withoutanybodywho double.26It is a creaturewithoutfiliation would recognize or accept him (not even his creator). His narcissismis thus thwartedfrom the outset,and the main part of the plot actuallyspringsfrom his demand for a partner,somebody like him, a wife,so that he could starta He is One and Unique, and as such he cannot even have a line, a new filiation. name-he cannotbe represented (which absence is often "spontabya signifier in his cannot be a part of the symbolic. filled "father's" he name), neously" by The storyitselfhad the strangefateof becominga "modern myth," a veryrare versionsin whichthe original occurrenceindeed. The huge numberof different to this fact. All these versions turn around the same is virtuallylost testifies in the L6vi-Straussian It is a myth itto infinity. fantasmatic kernel,retranscribing sense of the word: the mythas "a logical model to resolve a contradiction (an is real)"27-ultimatelythe contradiction beinsoluble task if the contradiction tween nature and culture. discourse. Shelley's"IntroducThe mythhas its starting point in scientific Erasmus Darwin as the tion" takes up witness,along with the background of of research into electromagnetic occurrences,galvanism,etc. The possibility of the a small extension seems to be a human just seemingly being creating limitlesspossibilitiesof the new science. But the connectionwith the Enlightenment goes much further.
Shadow(Oxford: 26. I am greatlyindebted to two recentanalyses:Chris Baldick,In Frankenstein's et Philosophie Oxford University Press, 1987) and Jean-JacquesLecercle, Frankenstein: (Paris: Mythe otherpossibilities offered P.U.F., 1988). But I concentrateon onlyone line of argument, neglecting by the material. Claude Levi-Strauss,Structural trans. Monique Layton (Chicago: University of 27. Anthropology, Chicago Press, 1983).

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The subtitle,"The Modern Prometheus,"was probablydirectly borrowed fromLa Mettrie's L'Homme-Machine.28 La Mettriepraises the craftof Vaucanson, of automatons (a highlysuccessfulfluteplayer, the famous French constructor to say nothingof the digestingduck). It seems that he was not far from being able to produce a speaking being-"the machine which should not be considered as impossibleany more, especiallyin the hands of a new Prometheus"'29with which La Mettrieonly gives voice to a fantasythat was then very much alive: if Descartes could thinkof animals as machines,somewhatmore complicated than human products, if he could see the human body as essentiallya mechanism, a machine like a watch, it was only to highlightthe difference and the spirit.The Galilean revolutionin physicsopened between the resextensa the perspectiveof the cosmos as a mechanism (hence the ubiquitous presence of billiardballs and clockworkin the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies)and in of A the the hundred autonomy put question yearslaterLa Mettrie's spiritual. was to do with that to see the automaton not difference, away point precisely in in but also the the It was of the fascinationwith only body, spirit. age automata, stillat work in Hoffmann,Poe, etc. What was at stake was the link between matterand spirit,nature and culture. The notion of the subject of the Enlightenmentwas all along an attemptto provide this link. This is whatjoins together its differentfacets: Locke's tabula rasa, le bonsauvage, l'homme-nature, Condillac's statue gradually acceding to the senses, the blind man-a major (cf. Molyneux's famous problem for which all the figureof the Enlightenment of time the on theBlind, etc.; philosophers proposed a solution,Diderot's Letter one could go so far as to say that the subject of the Enlightenment was blind), then Rousseau's Emile (who was an orphan), etc. What theyall have in common is the quest for a "zero degree" of subjectivity, the missinglink between nature and culture, the point where the spiritualwould directlyspring from the material. They all seem to aim at a subject beyond the imaginary,singularly deprived of a mirrorphase, a nonimaginary subject fromwhich the imaginary clear with the support in the world has to be taken away (this is particularly fromthis "zero" point. it, in its true significance, blind) in order to reconstruct Frankenstein'screature demonstratesthis in a particularly poignant way: it is the realization of the subject of the Enlightenment, the missinglink produced by its scientific and he has project. He is created, so to speak, ex nihilo, to recreate the whole complexityof the spiritualworld ex nihilo.And we have, in the most extraordinary central part of the book, a first-hand account of his
28. La Mettrie,L'Homme-Machine (Paris: Denoil Gonthier,1981). 29. Ibid., p. 143. It seems that the parallel was firstestablished by Voltaire in 1738, some ten years before La Mettrie: Le hardi Vaucanson, rival de Promethde Semblait, de la nature imitantles ressorts, Prendre le feu des cieux pour aimer les corps.

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narrationof the passage fromnature into culture. a first-person subjectivation, and herein lies his paradox: as the He is the zero point of natural subjectivity, embodiment of the natural zero state, he is counter to nature, a monster, cultureonly gets excluded fromnature and culturealike. Through his tragedy, of culture.The noble is the monstrosity back its own message: his monstrosity savage, the self-educatedman, turns bad only because the culture turns him to integrate itsinability showsitscorruption, down. By not acceptinghim society nature link. Culture own its include to (that is, by his him, missing judges by The creature and heart his culture not (that is, by looks), sensitivity). good by but being refused one he wants to as the Unique only wants a social contract, destroy the contractthat excludes him and so to vindicate himself.Since he the cannot found a family-a minimalcontractwithhis like-he exterminates link with his his who wouldn't his of creator, offspring, only recognize family culture. In the end all the figuresof the novel are dead (except for Walton, who lives to tell the story). The paradox of the creature lies in the factthat this embodimentof the subject of the Enlightenmentdirectlydisrupts its universe and produces its limit.The creature, that small extension of scientific endeavor, would fillthe missinglink and make it exist; it would bridge the gap. With its addition,"the great chain of being" would be complete; one could pass withouta break from matterto spirit,fromnature to culture.There was an emptyspace betweenthe two that the monstercomes to fill,but what we get with this continuous,full horror universe is the opposite of the traditional vacui; it is a horror plenitudinis, like Promethe horror of an unsplitworld. Frankenstein brings to humanity, theus, the spark of life,but also much more: there is a promise to provide it with its origin, to heal the wound of castration,to make it whole again. But reaches its limitby realizing the lack is catastrophic-the Enlightenment filling it,just as the appearance of the double, in another context,produced the lack of lack. is thenopen to a variety The emergenceof thislimitof the Enlightenment The religious one is closest to hand: Frankenstein,who of interpretations. withGod's business,has to be punished forhis presumptionand his interferes rebellion against the divine order, the presumptionand the rebellion of the whichhas gone too far.But thereis an opposite,romantic itself, Enlightenment which not only exhibitsa coma interpretation, positiveview of the monster, but also nature of his inherent for the betrayedby society, goodness passion of his horribleoutlook-he appears againsta background admires the sublimity of spectacular natural scenery(Mont Blanc, the Arctics),along withits unfathomable wildness,being thus the embodimentof thisother nature. Not the one a mechalike clockwork, writtenin mathematicallanguage and that functions view of nature, nism, but the one that was lost with this mechanical scientific endeavor and that can only be the one that became the lost object of scientific the Kantian definition present as that effortto representthe unrepresentable,

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of the sublime. One can also see a politicaldimensionin it: the storytakes place at the time of the French Revolution,whichwas already labeled as "monstrous" by Burke (another theoristof the sublime) and which produced, in a whole generation of young English intellectualsand poets, a mixtureof enthusiasm and horror. Mary Shelley was best placed to draw the consequences of this as the "founder" of feminism situation: both her parents,Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin as the "founder" of anarchism, placed themselves in a radical line of revolutionarydemands-"Englishmen, one more effort"-to the effortparadoxicallyaccomplished by their realize the revolutionary thrust, in One could see it the birthof the proletariatand the horror that daughter. conservative discourse provokes-and verysoon took hold of the monsteras a of and of the mass, workers' demands, a personification metaphor upheavals "the rule of the mob."30 are not correct; they are all plausible, It is not that these interpretations and evidence can be found to support them. The point where the monster seized by an overwhelming amount of meaning emerges is always immediately -and that is valid for the whole subsequent gallery of monsters,vampires, aliens, etc. It has immediate social and ideological connotations.The monster can stand for everything that our culture has to repress-the proletariat,sexthe Other.3' uality, other cultures, alternativeways of living, heterogeneity, in the content that can be projected onto this There is a certain arbitrariness point, and there are many attemptsto reduce the uncanny to just thiscontent. The importantthingfroma Lacanian point of view,however,is thatwhile this contentis indeed always presentin the uncannyto a greateror a lesser degree, it doesn't constituteit. The uncanny is always at stake in ideology-ideology perhaps basicallyconsistsof a social attemptto integratethe uncanny,to make it bearable, to assign it a place, and the criticism of ideology is caught in the same frameworkif it tries to reduce it to another kind of contentor to make the content conscious and explicit. This criticismis always on the brink of a naive effortto fix things with their proper names, to make the unconscious conscious, to restore the sense of what is repressed and thus be rid of the uncanny.The constantresurgenceof "right-wing" ideologies that find support in the uncanny always comes as a surprise-the fascinationwon't vanish, the historicization fails,the "hidden contents"do not exhaust it. Thus the criticism of ideology helplessly repeats the modernist gesture-the reduction of the uncanny to its "secular basis" throughthe verylogic thatactuallyproduced the uncanny in the firstplace as the objectal remainder. Psychoanalysisdoesn't of the uncanny; it maintainsit as a limit provide a new and betterinterpretation to interpretation. Its interpretation tries to circumscribethe point where inter-

30. 31.

See Franco Moretti,Signs Taken (London: Verso, 1983). for Wonders Ibid., p. 236.

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translation can be made. It tries to pretation fails,where no "more faithful" in the dimension of the that crack before different object pinpoint tiny meanings hold of it and saturate it with the that can never be successfully sense, get point chain. In otherwords,psychoanalysis differs from recuperatedby the signifying other interpretations its insistence on the formal of level the rather by uncanny than on its content. Lacan's specification thatthe best presentification of the object is the gaze doesn't contradictthisformallevel of analysis.It seems thatit names the object and thus assignsit a place, but the gaze in itsformalstructure is rathera device to open a "non-place,"the pure oscillation betweenan emptinessand a fullness. Frankenstein'sstory again reveals this simply and efficiently. The principal source of the uncanniness of the monster,for Frankenstein, is preciselythe cannot endure, gaze. It is the being of the gaze. The point that Frankenstein of the creation the is the moment when the creature monster, during opens its the renders is this that it the when the makes eyes, gaze-it opening Thing those that seemed almost of the same color "wateryeyes, Thing. When seeing in as the dun-whitesockets which theywere set," Frankensteinruns away in But the gaze comes to pursue him in his bedroom; the monstercomes horror.32 to his bedside-"his eyes, if eyes theymay be called, were set on me."33The emergenceof thisimpossiblesubjectis the emergenceof the gaze-the opening also thatwhichcomes to fillit withan of a hole in realitywhichis immediately and plenitudo unbearable presence,witha being more being than being,vacuum all in one, the plenitude as the directconsequence of the emptiness.One could say that the monster'sterribleappearance is only a mask, an imaginarycover to provide a frame for his gaze. The same traumaticpresence of the gaze can also be pinpointed in the second "primal scene," the attemptedcreationof the monster's bride in a Scottishcottage, the scene that is interruptedprecisely because of the appearance of the gaze. It finisheswith the announcement of the reappearance of the gaze in the third"primal scene": "I shall be withyou And he will. The bearer of the gaze will turn from on your wedding-night."34 a son-into the figureof a creature-that is, somethingcreated,an offspring, the father-jouissance. The gaze thatoccurs withsuch precisionin all the "primal scenes" of the Lecercle has already pointed out that novel is an impossiblegaze. Jean-Jacques It it is situated as the presence of the gaze at the subject's own conception.35 its of the in the moment of with the subject, emergence emerges together It is this object that would make and an hors-sexe. conception, as an hors-corps
in ThreeGothic 32. Novels,ed. Peter Fairclough (Harmondsworth: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Penguin, 1979), p. 318. 33. Ibid., p. 319. 34. Ibid., p. 438. 35. Lecercle, Frankenstein, p. 99.

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the subjecta causa sui if itcould be integrated-the missingcause of subjectivity, the missinglink of its emergence. The Fantastic Tzvetan Todorov's "theoryof Before concluding, let us consider briefly His account seems to come the uncanny" in his classical analysisThe Fantastic.36 Lacanian it differs from it in the most important close to the one, yet very respect. For Todorov, the main source of "the fantastic" (roughlythe realm of the in In Lacanian to lies an "intellectual matters) uncanny, simplify uncertainty.""37 termsit is the eruption of the real in the midstof familiarreality;it provokes a hesitationand an uncertainty and the familiarbreaks down. Of course this hesitationis structural-it affectsthe internal,implicitreader who is inscribed in the text, not the empirical or psychologicalone. For Todorov, in the last has to be explained and dissolved.The hesitationcannot instance,the fantastic be maintained indefinitely: eitherthe unexplainable turnsout to be just oddthe hero was deluded, mad, victimof a conspiracy,etc.-or the supernatural reallyexists,in whichcase we exchange our realityforanother one withdifferent rules (a mythical world,the world of fairytales,etc.). In both cases, the real obtains a sense, it is allotted a meaning, and it thus evaporates. The uncanny could onlysubsistin the narrowmiddle ground thatexistsbeforethe uncertainty as to its nature is dissipated. And it was only in thatno-man's-landthat it could to floatingwithouta produce anxietyand doom the subject to utterinsecurity, anchor. of Todorov then draws the point admirably implicationsof this simple shows a number of conditions that spring from startingpoint, supplementary and it demonstrates on a number of it, convincingexamples. The strength of thistheorylies in its simplicity and especiallyin its purely formalcharacter. It also offersan immediate link with the Lacanian view that the real can never be dealt with directly, that it emerges only in an oblique makes it vanish. Nevertheperspective,and thatthe attemptto grasp it directly less, one could say that this theorycovers both too much and too little.Too much because its formaldescriptionapplies also to a much broader area which one could call thelogicofsuspense. In its simplestform,it consistsin the mechanism wherebyan essential piece of information of the mur(e.g., the identity derer) is withheldfrom the (implicit)reader and is disclosed only at the end. That delay makes the hero and the reader uncertainas to whatis actuallygoing on withoutnecessarilyproducing the effect of the uncanny.Most detectiveand

36. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic:A Structural to a Literary Genre,trans. R. Howard Approach (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973). 37. Ibid., p. 29.

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crime fictionis based on this,but with the advance certainty that events will have a plausible natural explanation (the certainty embodied in that subject Too little, since not onlydoes it leave supposed to know,who is the detective).38 out a great number of instancesof the fantastic, but also because, ultimately, the main source of the uncannyis not at all a hesitation or an uncertainty. The instances not accounted for by this theoryare easily found. A large literature"has no intentionof makingthe reader hesitateas part of "fantastic to the true nature of eventsbut is builton the assumptionfromthe outsetof a we have to assume, for the duration "supernatural" postulate. In Frankenstein of the narrative,the possibility of a "synthetic" productionof "human" beings; in Stephen King's Pet Sematary, to take a contemporary example, we find the of the of the dead" under certain conditions.Once we "resurrection possibility no hesitationoccurs, and yet those stories are have accepted this hypothesis, occur" knowledgethat"such thingsdon't normally definitely uncanny.The firm doesn't diminishthe uncanny effect.The question may then arise of why we thatruns counterto are so easily inclined to swallowan improbablehypothesis so into and be usual all anxietyby horror. easilyduped experience sentence: "Not only did In his book on jokes, Freud quotes Lichtenberg's of in he was not even he disbelieve frightened them."39 Clearly,the ghosts; to has be distinguishedfrom the area of to uncertainty belonging knowledge but "I know all the same . . . I believe," the unconscious belief. very well, in his classic paper, is at Octave Mannoni formulaso admirablypinpointedby The of the uncanny.40 the basis of thisfabrication knowledgedoesn't contradict the belief,nor does the beliefsimplylose its forcethroughknowledge,since it situated in relationto the object-which is not the object of is fundamentally knowledge. to make. The knowledge,and We have a second, more basic distinction on the level fromthe terrible is to be distinguished its (un)certainties, certainty whichscience can that goes beyond any certainty of the object. It is a certainty whereas provide, or better,it is only here that we reach the level of certainty, and science can onlyyieldexactitudeand remainssubjectto doubt,questioning, one's that the it as is the can only object provides certainty, object give proof. Only literature (or itsmodernversion, being. One can easilysee thisin good fantastic "horror fiction"):the logic of its uncanniness is even directlyopposed to the what logic of suspense-what is horribleis thatone knowsin advance precisely is bound to happen, and it happens. One could saythaton thislevelthecertainty
Lacan through toJacques An Introduction (Cam38. See Slavoj Zifek,Looking PopularCulture Awry: bridge: MIT Press, 1991). vol. Edition, and TheirRelationto theUnconscious 39. (1905), The Standard Sigmund Freud, Jokes VIII, p. 92. (Paris: Seuil, 40. ou L'Autre pourL'Imaginaire "Je sais bien ... mais quand meme," in Clefs scone 1969).

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is opposed to the unconsciousbeliefas well.The fateful eventsseem unavoidable fromthe veryoutset,yetunconsciously one doesn't believe thatthe unavoidable will happen.4' So there is a passage from "I know verywell ... yet I believe" to "I don't reallybelieve . . yet I am certain."The mechanismof uncanniness doesn't leave you any space foruncertainty and hesitation. If thereis a structural or floating, attachedto it,itcomes fromthe impossibility of espousing hesitation, the terriblecertainty-it would ultimately entail psychosis,an annihilation of The apparent oscillationbetween knowledge and belief is rathera subjectivity. strategyof postponement to defer the encounter with the Thing (a strategy similarto obsessional neurosis). So forTodorov the fantastic comes froma lack of certaintyand is dissipated when certaintyis restored. From a Lacanian when escape through perspectivethe uncanny comes fromtoo much certainty, hesitationis no longer possible,when the object comes too close. Todorov deals witha well-circumscribed a clearlycut realm corpus of texts, of the fantastic.Its beginningcoincides roughlywith the advent of modernity and its scientific coincides with background; itsclosure, somewhatsurprisingly, the advent of psychoanalysis:"Psychoanalysis has replaced (and therebymade What appeared indirectly superfluous) the fantasticliterature."42 through the fantastic can be dealt withdirectly So by psychoanalysis. psychoanalysis appears to be the most fantastic of all fantastic tales-the ultimatehorror story. Such a conclusion seems ratherabrupt, but there is a sense in which one was the first to point out systematically the uncanny mightagree. Psychoanalysis dimension pertainingto the veryproject of modernity, not in order to make it disappear, but in order to maintain it, to hold it open. It is true that modern literature had to develop other strategiesto deal with it, as Todorov points out.43 But what is currentlycalled postmodernism-and this is one way to disentangle the growing confusion around this term-is a new consciousness about the uncannyas a fundamentaldimensionof modernity.44 It doesn't imply a going beyond the modern, but rather an awareness of its internal limit,its split, which was there from the outset. Lacan's object a may be seen as its simplestand most radical expression.

41. See Ziz'ek,Looking Awry, pp. 70-71. 42. Todorov, The Fantastic, pp. 168-69. 43. Todorov gives the paradigmaticexample of Kafka's "Metamorphosis,"where the source of the uncanny is actually the very absence of uncanny effectsfollowingany uncanny event: the supernatural is treated as natural, thus becoming "doubly" uncanny (p. 183). One could add that the verycommonplace everydayevents of an entirely Joyce uses the inverse strategyin Ulysses: of the Thing by theircomplex treatment "uneventful"day in Dublin are endowed withthe dignity through language: the natural becomes "supernatural." 44. to thisshiftby Again, it is contemporarypopular culture thatdisplaysthe greatestsensitivity its insistenceon and "workingthrough"the "fundamentalfantasies."The "returnof the uncanny" currently appears to be its prevailingfeature.

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