More Fun with Repetition (But Seriously, This is Different…)

Megan Minarich

Narrative Theory

Prof. Jay Clayton

Response 9

22 OCT 2008

 

 

In his seminar response to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” Jacques Lacan attempts a psychoanalytic reading of the short “detective story” (which is a point to which I will return) wherein he traces various characters’ responses to and actions involving a letter which must not be found. In this story, we are presented with two camps of persons: those invested in keeping the letter hidden (i.e. the Minister) and those interested in finding the letter (i.e. the police, M. Dupin). Lacan seeks to demonstrate how the subject (signified) is constituted in relationship to the letter (signifier). Drawing upon Freud, he asserts that “it is the symbolic order which is constitutive for the subject” and illustrates “in a story the decisive orientation which the subject receives from the itinerary of a signifier” (Lacan 28).

 

 

Repetition, particularly following from Freud’s idea of the repetition automatism, is one aspect of “The Purloined Letter” that Lacan engages. On page 32, Lacan introduces the idea of intersubjective repetition: although an action is repeated, this repeated action is performed by different persons for different reasons with different results. Taking the example of the glance, Lacan identifies three instances of repetition with different contexts: a glance that “sees nothing,” one that “sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides, “ and the third glance that “sees that first two glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whoever would seize it” (32). This kind of intersubjective repetition allows variations within the repeated action to inform the subjective development of those engaged in later instances of repetition. Gérard Genette, in Narrative Discourse, also raises the issue of repetition not being a direct replication of something original (such as an action); because each repeated action occupies a different moment in time, the actions cannot be exactly the same, which, as we discussed, goes against Walter Benjamin’s concept of repetition. How does Lacan’s addition of the psychoanalytic element to the repetition of an action further complicate the relationship between repetition and reproduction? What is at stake in producing a psychoanalytic reading of a structural choice within the narrative? And perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but how might a Lacanian reading of “The Purloined Letter” differ from a cognitive theoretical reading?

 

 

A last little tidbit from this essay that caught my eye is Lacan’s fleeting mention of genre and convention. What of “the fact that the story is told to us as a police mystery?” (Lacan 33) Lacan mentions how a certain genre, such as the mystery, can “provok[e] a specific interest in the reader,” yet he backtracks, saying that, with regard to Dupin’s tale, “even if the genre were established in the first, it is still a little early for the author to play on a convention” (33). What is the relationship between genre and convention for Lacan? If the genre has been established early on, what prohibits the authors from using generic convention?