Re-reading The Purloined Letter - Alternation Journal

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397 Re-reading The Purloined Letter defines ‘hero’ as the subject like Oedipus, who accepts the consequences of his act. The reverse of the subject’s message is its repressed, thus, we can see the idea of the impossibility of metalanguage is linked to the return of the repressed. Žižek (1992:14) asks the question: What could the Derridean notion that a letter can also miss its destination mean? He responds: That the repressed can also not return and yet by claiming this, we entangle ourselves in a naïve substantialist notion of the unconscious as a positive entity ontologically preceding its ‘returns’ that is; symptoms qua compromise formation, a notion competently called in question by Derrida himself. Here, we cannot but repeat after Lacan: there is no repression previous to the return of the repressed: the repressed content does not precede its return in symptoms, there is no way to conceal it in its purity undistorted by ‘compromises’ that characterize the formation of the symptoms. ‘A letter always arrives at its destination’ implies that one can never escape one’s fate and Žižek (1992:16) defines this in psychoanalytic terms as ‘the symbolic debt has to be paid’. The letter which arrives at its destination is also a letter of request for outstanding debts; what propels the letter on its symbolic circuit is always some outstanding debt. Žižek (1992:16) declares that this dimension of fate is at work in the very formal structure of Poe’s The Purloined Letter: there is something distinctly ‘faithful’ in the way the self-experience of the main characters in Poe’s story is determined by the simple ‘mechanical’ shift of their positions within the intersubjective triad of the three glances (the first which sees nothing; the second which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides; the third which sees that the first two glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whomever would seize it). In the way, for example, the Minister’s fate is sealed not because of his personal miscalculation or oversight but because the simple shift of his position from the third to the second glance in the repetition of the initial triad causes his structural blindness. Žižek (1992:16) sees this as the mechanism of imaginary (mis) recognition: the participants in the play automatically perceive their fate as something that pertains to the letter as such in its immediate materiality (this letter is damned, whoever comes into possession of it is brought to ruin!)—
Pravina Pillay what they misrecognized is that the curse is not in the letter as such but in the intersubjecive network organized around it. Žižek (1992:20) examines the concept of the Real and again agrees with Lacan that ‘a letter always arrives at its destination’. This in effect means that ‘we will all die’. It is the only letter that nobody can evade: the letter which has each of us as its infallible addressee is death. It is important to note that the Real is also associated with life. Lacan (1992:22) points out that the very notion of life is alien to the symbolic order. The name of this life substance that proves a traumatic shock for the symbolic universe is enjoyment. Žižek (1992:22) sees the ultimate variation on the theme of ‘a letter always arrives at its destination’ as ‘you can never get rid of the stain of enjoyment’—the very gesture of renouncing enjoyment, produces a surplus enjoyment that Lacan (1992:22) calls ‘object small a’. In his concluding remarks on The Purloined Letter, Žižek (1992:22) states that its story stays within the confines of the ‘structuralist’ problematic of a senseless, ‘mechanical’ symbol order regulating the subject’s innermost self-experience. Žižek (1992:22) contends that if one looks at the last years of Lacan’s teaching, the letter which circulates among the subjects in Poe’s story, determining their position in the intersubjective network, is no longer the materialized agency of the signifier but rather an object in the strict sense of materialized enjoyment—the stain, the uncanny exists that the subjects snatch away from each other, forgetful of how its very possession will mark them with a passive ‘feminine’ stance that bears witness to the confrontation with the object—the cause of desire. I would suggest that Žižek’s attempt at defending Lacan’s seminar lacks substance. He fails to defend Lacan against the numerous charges made by Derrida. Žižek’s entire defense is centered on one of Derrida’s objections against which he piles up his counter-argument. 5 Conclusion I have attempted in my essay to show the complex readings which have formed around The Purloined Letter, with special reference to Lacan, Derrida and Žižek. It is imperative to note Freud’s influence on Lacan’s reading of The Purloined Letter. However, it is also evident that Lacan neglects to mention The Uncanny, and Derrida considers it to be one of the 398
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Page 3 and 4: Pravina Pillay Derrida, whose own d
Page 5 and 6: Pravina Pillay heart of Poe’s ‘
Page 7 and 8: Pravina Pillay direct application o
Page 9 and 10: Pravina Pillay How, then, is this m
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Page 13 and 14: Pravina Pillay a remainder whose im
Page 15 and 16: Pravina Pillay The letter then acts
Page 17 and 18: Pravina Pillay child relates to him
Page 19 and 20: Pravina Pillay anything but ‘fait
Page 21 and 22: Pravina Pillay Freudian and Lacania
Page 23 and 24: Pravina Pillay Derrida criticizes L
Page 25 and 26: Pravina Pillay As if one has to add
Page 27 and 28: Pravina Pillay ‘veiled’ and ‘
Page 29: Pravina Pillay Such questioning is,
Page 33 and 34: Pravina Pillay References Benvenuto

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