Sartre's second century
Sartre's second century
Sartre's second century
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Temporality and the Death of Lucienne in Nausea 49<br />
and Nothingness, Sartre repudiates these conceptions of the past by<br />
describing the temporal structure of consciousness, and by describing the<br />
past as an integral aspect of this structure. In Nausea, the repudiation of<br />
these conceptions takes a different form. Rather than describing the<br />
temporality of consciousness directly, Sartre has Roquentin illustrate this<br />
temporality by way of his stream-of-consciousness reaction to the news of<br />
Lucienne's murder.<br />
Upon hearing of the fate of Lucienne, Roquentin admits to having a<br />
desire to rape. He describes how this desire comes upon him: "A soft<br />
criminal desire to rape catches me from behind." 9 Note how Sartre has<br />
Roquentin emphasise this formulation of being taken "from behind":<br />
[...] existence takes my thoughts from behind and gently expands from<br />
behind; someone takes me from behind, they force me to think from<br />
behind, therefore to be something, behind me [...] he runs, he runs like a<br />
ferret, "from behind" from behind from behind [...]. 10<br />
Sartre has Roquentin repeat the phrase "from behind" a total of thirteen<br />
times in the space of a page and a half. Why does Sartre place such<br />
emphasis on this formulation?<br />
The reason can be found in <strong>Sartre's</strong> discussion of temporality in Being<br />
and Nothingness. This formulation plays a very specific role in <strong>Sartre's</strong><br />
phenomenology of temporality. I give below three examples from Being<br />
and Nothingness in which Sartre describes the past as an unavoidable<br />
obligation that catches one "from behind":<br />
[...] the past is precisely and only that ontological structure which obliges<br />
me to be what I am from behind. 11<br />
The past is given as a for-itself become in-itself [...]. It has become what it<br />
was—behind me. 12<br />
[...] the Past is an ontological law of the For-itself; that is, everything<br />
which can be a For-itself must be back there behind itself [.. .]. 13<br />
Sartre uses this imagery of being claimed "from behind" to describe our<br />
relation to the past. The past is an ontological structure of consciousness<br />
9<br />
Nausea, 101.<br />
10<br />
Ibid., 102.<br />
11<br />
Being and Nothingness, 172.<br />
12<br />
Ibid., 174.<br />
13<br />
Ibid., 175.