Perversion the Social Relation

"I Know Well, but All the Same ..." 89has gone through a similar period, but has forgotten it, as the fetishisttoo has. This is the period of the first Verleugnung, of the disavowalof anatomical reality, and of the constitution of the phallus as somethingmagic. I am speaking of structures, for in Talayesva's case too,of course, whatever transpired at the moment he discovered femaleanatomy, the first Verleugnung, remains obscure; the crisis of initiation,however, faithfully reproduces the same structure, as is readily seen.With Casanova, however, we have to assume the existence of a secondperiod of which the Hopi model presents not the slightest trace, a periodin which magical belief itself is attributed to the credulous, so that itis no longer by magic, but, literally, thanks to an imposture that Casanovapossesses the phallus. However, just like the shaman, this impostoris a magician all the same; magic itself survives as a "memorial to castration,"in Freud's phrase. Thus Casanova continues to be exposed tothe threat of what can perfectly well be called magical castration. Theimpostor does not really have access to reality: Casanova knows well,as he says twice, that his operation will fail, but this is of no importanceto him. What is of importance to him is that the "but all the same"seems to be realized: he wants rejection of the imposture to lead back,not to the truth—which would doubtless save him, if he were capableof being saved—but to credulity. That is, he wants to be thrown backfrom his "system" to the "idea whose superstitiousness took nothingfrom its power."Constructions of this sort would only seem rash if we offered themwith a view to reconstituting a real sequence of events, but they are indispensableif we are to get beyond mere description and specify differencesin structure. To date, we have not had much success in treatingmagic in anything other than general terms; we are reduced to makingcontrastive descriptions of its most pronounced features, without beingable to say exactly how an obsessional neurotic's rituals compare andcontrast with, say, a "primitive" tribe's. When we try to chart the variouseffects of the original Verleugnung and the way in which they aretaken up again and organized, we are led to make finer distinctions.The logical sequel to the present essay would be an attempt to discoverwhat the magic of the fetish consists of. Here, however, everythingis shrouded in darkness; the path we have followed so far does not leadto further knowledge. If Verleugnung and the transformations of belief