Echo and Narcissus

Echo and Narcissus: Echolocating the Spectator in the Age of Audience Research

By

Polona Petek

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Echo and Narcissus: Echolocating the Spectator in the Age of Audience Research, by Polona Petek This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright 2008 by Polona Petek Publication of this work was assisted by a publication grant from the University of Melbourne. All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-544-4, ISBN (13): 9781847185440

Greek mythology articulates our shared cultural narratives. Yet, given their rich ambiguity and openness to re-interpretation, they are always capable of being read otherwise. Elizabeth Grosz, Sexual Subversions (1989) echolocation: [f. ECHO n. 1 + LOCATION n. 7.] The location of objects by means of the echo reflected from them by a sound-signal, as of ultrasonic sounds emitted by bats or by man-made devices. Hence echolocate v., echolocating vbl. n. and ppl. a. Oxford English Dictionary

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part I: What should not have remained secret and hidden but has slipped out of sight: The Myth of Echo and Narcissus in Psychoanalysis Chapter One................................................................................................. 7 Uncanny Encounters: Freud and Narcissus Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 18 Misogynistic Metamorphoses: Lacan, Narcissus and Oedipus Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 27 Abject Resurrection: Kristeva and Narcissus Part II: The Strange Case of Echo and Narcissus in Film Scholarship Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 41 Mirrors, Shadows and Doppelgngers: Narcissuss Cinematic Metamorphoses Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 53 That Obscure Object of Desire: Narcissus and Screen Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 66 What Lies Beneath: Narcissuss Screen

viii

Table of Contents

Part III: Out of Sight: Deconstruction and the Myth of Echo and Narcissus Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 78 The Mirage of Echo Chapter Eight............................................................................................. 87 Narcissuss PunishmentEchos Revenge? Chapter Nine.............................................................................................. 97 Echos Reward Part IV: Flirting with Echo Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 125 Echo and Screen Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 137 Mise-en-abme, or A Case of Mistaken Identity Chapter Twelve........................................................................................ 152 No Longer Secret and Hidden: Echos Postmodern Screen in Flirt (In)conclusion.......................................................................................... 176 Bibliography............................................................................................ 177 Filmography ............................................................................................ 199 Notes........................................................................................................ 202 Index........................................................................................................ 231

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover image M. C. Escher, Bond of Union (1956). Lithograph. 2008 The M.C. Escher Company, Holland. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com. Figure 1...................................................................................................... 40 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Narcissus (159799). Oil on canvas, 110 x 92 cm, Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica, Rome. Archivio Fotografico, Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della citt di Roma. Figure 2.................................................................................................... 137 Quentin Metsys, The Moneylender and His Wife (1514). Oil on panel, 68 x 61 cm, Muse du Louvre, Paris. Photo RMN Grard Blot. Figure 3.................................................................................................... 166 Geno Lechner and Dwight Ewell in Flirt (Hartley, 1996, USA/Germany/ Japan). Photo: Christa Kfer. Used with permission.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to a number of people whose intellectual, emotional and otherwise support has helped make Echo and Narcissus possible. My deepest gratitude is due to Barbara Creed, whose always enthusiastic comments were an inexhaustible source of inspiration during my research, and Meredith Martin, the most generous friend, who is always on the same page and whose wit and razor-sharp mind I value most highly. I warmly thank Hamid Naficy for an impromptu yet profoundly encouraging discussion about Echo in Oxford a couple of years ago. I give my heartfelt thanks to Ramaswami Harindranath, Jeanette Hoorn, Marija Konina, Scott McQuire, Nikos Papastergiadis, Marina Tavar Krajnc and Ksenija Vidmar Horvat, whose keen interest has provided plenty of intellectual sustenance on both sides of the world. Thankyou also goes to Hal Hartley and Jack Patrick from Possible Films; Margareth Verbakel from the M.C. Escher Company; Raphalle Cartier and Florence Hemici from the Photo Agency of the Runion des Muses Nationaux; Isabelle Deborne from Muse du Louvre; Angelo Sinibaldi and Maria Castellino from Archivio Fotografico, Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della citt di Roma; and Vlatka Kolic, Carol Koulikourdi and Amanda Millar from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. I am indebted to all my friends for sharing my obsession with cinema, for numerous thought-provoking questions and for enduring my Echo-induced distraction and awaiting patiently the completion of the manuscript. Above all, I shall always be grateful to my family: to my sister for always being there for me despite geographical distance; to my mother for introducing me very early on to the mesmerising world of Greek mythology and for her warm understanding and interest in my often obsessive academic pursuits; and to my father for his selfless and most loving support in every possible sense of this word.

INTRODUCTION

The myth of Echo and Narcissus has continually lent itself to reinterpretation, fascinating artists and scholars alike with its protean ability to traverse disparate socio-historical paradigms and always find a way to echo the deepest anxieties and taboos as well as desires of the current pistm. The fact that in the past five years English readers should be offered not one but two entirely new translations of Metamorphoses (Ovid 2003, 2004) confirms that the power of the ancient tale is anything but waning. This being the case, a sustained discussion of the significance of the myth of Echo and Narcissusin our culture in general and in cinema in particularis sorely lacking. Thus far, critical attention to the tale has been anything but balanced. Narcissus has always occupied centre-stage, be it as the doomed hero of the doppelgnger narratives or an object of painterly fascination, as the enchanted spectator of classical Hollywood cinema or as a personification of a universal human condition. The end of the second millennium saw the publication of a handful of feminist studies that attempt to turn the tables in favour of Echo. Segals readings of French literature and Lawrences analysis of Hollywood cinema have certainly brought Ovids nymph to light. Yet, their interventions fit quite neatly into the canon of scholarly work on Ovid and the dominant cultural interpretation of Echo. Namely, Echos fate in theory, art and culture in general has been a dj vu of sorts. As I will demonstrate, Echo is anything but speechless, powerless or insignificant; yet, her role, if acknowledged at all, has been persistently interpreted precisely as such. Echo has become, rather than remained, the ignored, disenfranchised, unthought other (Segal 1989, 170). My central aim in this bookwhich unfolds in dialogue with the discourses of psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial studies, deconstruction and postmodernism, especially those that are particularly germane to film scholarshipis twofold. Most importantly, I claim recognition for Echo; however, I also reconsider Narcissus and call for his recuperation. I revisit the Ovidian tale and argue that the myth, traditionally used in psychoanalysis to explain the imaginary formation of the ego, in fact stages the entire trajectory of human psychosexual development. My reappraisal offers a more adequate account of the

Introduction

construction of subjectivity in postmodernity. I demonstrate that Ovids story stages a diachronic link between its two protagonists, a passage from Narcissus to Echo, as a process of socialisation. Moreover, this process is not a one-way rite of passage but rather a nexus, which produces an infinite state of oscillation endemic to the decentred postmodern subject. Chapters One to Six are dedicated almost entirely to Narcissus, mapping his fascinating encounter with psychoanalysis, feminism and cinema. Chapters Seven to Twelve, in turn, deploy the strategies and insights of deconstruction, queer theory, postmodernism and postcolonial studies to revisit these debates and find Echo. It may seem strange to begin with Narcissus, who has always been the privileged protagonist of the readings and appropriations of Ovids tale. However, the decision to do so is strategic, and it is intimately related to my central argument. Ever since Freud, Narcissus has figured as a key constituent of the psychoanalytic model of the human subject and, by extension, as the paradigmatic cinematic spectator. Throughout the twentieth century, these theorisations have remained immensely influential and become ever more complex and compelling. However, dissenting voices have also been steadily emerging, contesting the two paradigms and gradually debunking them as anything but neutral, universally applicable or, most importantly, historically aware. The structure of Echo and Narcissus mimics the course of these shifts. Parts I and II attempt to convey the irresistible allure and complexity of Narcissus, which have yielded intricate and groundbreaking theoretical paradigms. Yet, these paradigms, not unlike the mythical Narcissus, are also rather self-absorbed, totalising, more or less ahistorical and reductive. This became clear when feminism, queer theory, postcolonial studies, postmodernism and, above all, deconstruction provided the tools for their re-evaluation and proper contextualisation. These critical discourses stage their intervention in an Echo-like fashion, through a retroactive assertion of difference and deferral. Hence, I bring them into play in the later chapters of Echo and Narcissus. This powerful interventionwhich I interpret as specific to Echo and typical of, although not exclusive to, postmodernityreveals the historical specificity of the Freudian-Lacanian employment of Narcissus. No longer sustainable as a universal model of the subject/spectator, the psychoanalytic Narcissus, or more precisely, Narcissus-cum-Oedipus, can now be properly appraised as an ontological and epistemological paradigm of the phallomorphic subject/spectator of modernity. Echo, in turn, offers a tool for re-examining and critiquing conceptual blindspots and metaphysical biases of modernity. Even more, the nymph, flickering in the play of differences and deferrals, becomes a potent model of the

Echo and Narcissus

postmodern subject/spectatorthe subject without a stable prediscursive identity, who actively assumes different symbolic positions at different times. Echo, or more accurately, Narcissus-cum-Echo, disproves the utterly negative exegeses of postmodernity, such as Jamesons and Baudrillards obituaries to the subject and their disbelief in the possibility of personal identity and political agency. Narcissus-cum-Echo poses a challenge to the attempts to install too rigid a cleavage between modernity and postmodernity. As Narcissuss postmodern symbolic incarnation, Echo emulates as well as parodies the modernist searching for integration and wholeness of personality (Hutcheon 1989, 109). To illustrate the contiguity of postmodernity with modernity, I draw on, and expand upon, the notion of the uncanny. The uncanny has been regularly associated with the tropes mobilised in representations and conceptualisations of the subject/spectator in both epistemological paradigmsnamely, with the doppelgnger of modernity and mise-en-abme of postmodernity. In addition to shedding light on the affinities and the differences between modernity and postmodernity, the uncanny proves invaluable also in that it reveals the key role of cinema in both paradigms. The question of how representative of the postmodern condition is cinema, when compared to other contemporary media, is of little concern to me. Rather, what motivates Echo and Narcissus is the desire to show that the medium need not be seen as confined to the experience of modernity. I argue that cinema should be seen as a discourse of postmodernity because it makes space for Narcissus-cum-Echo. I demonstrate that cinema is a postmodern phenomenon not only because of its newly enhanced power to obscure the difference between simulation and reality but rather because of its much older and much more radical potential to reveal that our perception of reality and ourselves is always mediated, constructed and culturally contingentthe potential with a strong fascination for Narcissus-cum-Echo. Echo and Narcissus does not attempt to identify a radically new or postmodern mode of filmviewing. Rather, it offers a radically different conceptualisation of spectatorship. The book is thus a critical response to the recent shift of focus in the studies of cinema. While the seventies and the eighties were marked by increasingly complex theorisations of spectatorship, the last two decades have witnessed a turn towards ethnographic research into film reception. Yet, this long overdue turn towards the empirical viewer has not produced a genuinely broader scope of analysis. It has rather, all too hastily, consigned the spectator, the textually constructed viewing position, to oblivion, thanks to the concepts

Introduction

perceived hegemonic and totalising premise. Echo and Narcissus intervenes into this state of affairs by arguing for a productive nexus between theorisations of spectatorship and the currently more fashionable audience research. I show that an informed mapping of contemporary (and past) filmviewing practices still requires a spectatorial model, which can, and should, be complemented with empirical audience research. My critical recuperation of the Ovidian myth affords such a model. It echolocates a spectator with discursive access to all types of cinema, yet, flexible enough to accommodate a range of viewers responses and their cultural diversity. Echo and Narcissus revisits existing debates conflict and attempts to cast new light upon them. And what could possibly be a better way to do so than by adopting Echos tactics of repeating with a difference? In its typically postmodern guise, the strategyas the titles of my chapters suggestis perhaps best summarised as a fascination and play with quotation, an unencumbered and replenishing foray into a territory of perceived exhaustion. The aim of Echo and Narcissus is to initiate such a foray into the territory of cinema and its affinity with the ancient story of Narcissus and Echo.

PART I WHAT SHOULD NOT HAVE REMAINED SECRET AND HIDDEN BUT HAS SLIPPED OUT OF SIGHT: THE MYTH OF ECHO AND NARCISSUS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

The literary version of the myth of Echo and Narcissus has reached our times predominantly through Ovids version,1 recorded in his Metamorphoses, which he wrote in the first decade of the common era. However, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that psychoanalysis brought the story into focus as an ontological and epistemological paradigm.2 In Part I, I examine the employment of the myth in the work of three key exponents of psychoanalysisFreud, Lacan and Kristevawho use the myth to conceptualise the human acquisition of a sense of self, and firmly tie this process to gender and sexuality. Narcissus was the son of the nymph Liriope. She gave birth to him after being ravished by the river god Cephisus. When Liriope asked Tiresias whether the boy would live to a ripe old age, the blind seer enigmatically replied: If he neer know himself. (Ovid 1977a, 149) By the time Narcissus reached the age of sixteen, he had been adored by men and women alike, but the beautiful youth never returned their love. One day, as he was wandering through the woods, Echo saw him and fell in love. Yet, she could not declare her love, for Echo was the once talkative nymph who had been punished for deluding Juno (the Roman equivalent of the Greek Hera) with cunning stories while the goddesss husband Jove (also referred to as Jupiter, the counterpart of the Greek Zeus) stalked other nymphs. When Juno realised the ruse, she cursed Echo: That tongue of thine, by which I have been tricked, shall have its power curtailed and enjoy the briefest use of speech. (Ibid., 151) Henceforth, Echo was forced to repeat the words of others. Following Narcissus, lost in the woods, she waited for him to speak first. When this finally happened, the nymph joyfully echoed Narcissuss call, Here let us meet (ibid.), and came forth with her arms spread wide open, ready to embrace the beautiful youth. But Narcissus spurned her. To his cruel refusal, Hands off! embrace me not.

Part I: What should not have remained secret and hidden but has slipped out of sight

May I die before I give you power oer me!, Echo could only respond with her sad confession, I give you power oer me (ibid., 1512). Heartbroken and humiliated, Echo pined away until her body melted into thin air, her bones were turned to stone and only her voice remained. Narcissus continued living for himself, snubbing ever more admirers, until one of them prayed to Nemesis to punish the unreceptive young man. The goddess heard their plea. Again in the woods, Narcissus happened upon a pool. While drinking, he caught sight of his reflection in the silvery water and instantly fell in love. The beautiful figure returned his smiles and mimicked his inviting gestures, yet, shied away every time Narcissus, reaching out to embrace him, stirred the smooth surface of the pond. Perplexed but enchanted, Narcissus spoke to the trees, seeking an answer why his love would not be returned. At last, the truth dawned upon him. The captivating apparition not only mirrored his gestures, yet, eluded his touch; it also moved its lips when Narcissus spoke to it, but no words would ever reach his ears. Thus Narcissus recognised his lover was nothing but his own reflection. Yet, his love did not fade away; it grew even stronger. Narcissus lamented over his impossible lover and longed for death to end his misery, while the spurned nymph watched and echoed his weeping. At last, wasted with grief, Narcissus closed his eyes in deathly sleep and his body vanished. Only a yellow flower awaited the naiads and the dryads, who came to mourn their doomed brother, and Echo joined their cries of sorrow.

CHAPTER ONE UNCANNY ENCOUNTERS: FREUD AND NARCISSUS

Narcissus first appears in the psychoanalytic discourse in 1898, when Ellis (1928) invokes the myth to describe a Narcissus-like psychological attitude. A year later, Ncke coins the word Narcismus as a designation of a type of perversion (Freud SE XIV:73n). It is Freud, however, who fully elaborates the reference to the mythical youth in love with his reflection. His ideas concerning narcissism first emerge in Three essays on the theory of sexuality (SE VII:123245), then assume an increasingly important role in Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood (SE XI:59138) and Totem and taboo (SE XIII:1162), to be developed into a full-length study in the 1914 essay On narcissism (SE XIV:67102). In this essay, Freud incorporates and complicates Elliss and Nckes understandings of narcissism by interpreting it as a three-fold phenomenon. He agrees with his colleagues that narcissism can occur as a fully developed perversion or an attitude manifest in a broad range of other phenomena and disorders (such as megalomania, illness, hypochondria, sleep and homosexuality). However, he also argues that narcissism, first and foremost, designates a stage in the regular course of human psychosexual development. Freud dubs this stage primary narcissism and describes it as a necessary intermediary stage between auto-eroticism and object-love, that is, a stage linking the initial amorphous and the eventually fully structured states of the human psyche. Narcissuss love for his mirror image thus comes to represent the moment in the infants life in which something [is] added to auto-eroticisma new psychical action (ibid., 77). This actionthe attachment of libido to the childs mirror imagemakes possible the acquisition of the first sense of self. The childs amorous encounter with her/his reflection facilitates the formation of a unity, the ego, and it provides libido with its first love-object. The first crucial outcome of Freuds reconsideration of narcissism is thus its incorporation into the regularthat is, non-pathological trajectory of human psychic development. And second, since he thereby

Chapter One

establishes that sexual energy instigates and fuels the conscious core of the human sense of self (the ego), Freud institutes sexuality as central to human subjectivity. These observations lead to a major reformulation in Freuds work. Whereas earlier he understood the human psychic apparatus as comprised of the unconscious, preconscious and conscious systems (SE V:509622), the discovery of primary narcissism now paves the way for the formulation of the so-called second topographythe id, the ego and the super-ego (SE XIX:166; SE XXIII:139208). The new topography does not replace the former; rather, it complicates it. Consciousness is now reduced to the nucleus of the ego, which, in turn, is much less autonomous and extends beyond the domain of the preconsciousconscious system. In other words, while Freud still sees the ego as the chief mediator between the individual and her/his physical reality, he no longer considers this agency to be entirely conscious. He understands the egos major role to be defensive mechanisms, motivated by perception of unpleasurable phenomena (such as anxiety) and largely unconscious. Freuds earlier notion of the unconscious already presented a challenge to the Enlightenment subject, based on a conception of the human person as a fully centred, unified individual, endowed with the capacities of reason, consciousness and action (Hill 1998, 97). However, it is the later understanding of the narcissistic formation of the ego that brings out the radical nature of Freuds work. In the early formulation, the unconscious could still be misunderstood as an additional sphere of ones existence,1 the sphere that the rational and fully present Cartesian subject (now reinterpreted as the conscious component of the ego) is unable to control. With Freuds second topography, however, the unconscious forces invade and destabilise the ego itself. This finding ensues as a corollary to Freuds argument that the very foundation of the ego, primary narcissism, must undergo repression. The ground-breaking insight of this contention notwithstanding, this is also the point where one of the major problems of Freuds theory of narcissism becomes apparent. Freud initially identifies several rather different factors that bring about repression. First he establishes that what makes it necessary at all for our mental life to pass beyond the limits of narcissism and to attach the libido to objects is the damming-up of libido in the ego, which creates unpleasurable tension and seeks release (SE XIV:85). Then he maintains that narcissism must be repressed because it come[s] into conflict with the subjects cultural and ethical ideas, passed on to the child through the parents, their substitutes and, later on, society at large (ibid., 93). However, rather inexplicably, Freud ultimately decides that the main agent of repression can be singled out in the shape of the castration

Uncanny Encounters

complex (in boys, anxiety about the penisin girls, envy for the penis) (ibid., 92). What comes to light here are thus not only the centrality of sexuality and the identification of the unconscious forces at the core of the human sense of self. Freud also posits sexual differencedefined anatomically, in binary terms, and postulated as the crux of the castration complexas the decisive factor in human socialisation, and he valorises male anatomy as the norm according to which the castration complex is experienced. Critique of this formulation of the castration complex appeared almost immediately. In The trauma of birth (1952), Rank challenges Freuds account of the castration complex. Rank argues that humans experience the separation from the mothers body at birth as the original trauma, which becomes the model for all subsequent anxieties, including the anxiety caused by perception of sexual difference. For Rank, the fear of castration merely translates the fear of birth (Wright 1992, 43). In a similar attempt, Strcke (1921) points to breast-feeding and weaning as a possible blueprint for later experiences of castration. In addition to these critiques, the problematic nature of Freuds interpretation of the castration complex is quite obvious within his own framework. As a result of repression of primary narcissism, the initial libidinal cathexis (the investment in ones own ego during primary narcissism) is split into love for external objects and love for a newly formed internal ideal, which functions as a substitute for the lost narcissism (SE XIV:94). Narcissuss love is thus internalised and the beloved image is solidified in a socially sanctioned ego ideal, to which the ego henceforth aspires to conform. If repression of primary narcissism is successful, Narcissus experiences metamorphosis. Unlike Ovids single yellow blossom that replaces the youth, Freuds Narcissus is displaced by the interplay of the ego, the ego ideal and the super-ego, a triangular constellation that traverses all three systems of the first topography.2 The child, no longer the innocently enamoured Narcissus, enters the next stage of development, the Oedipus complex, whose resolution determines ones choice of love-objects. In Freuds explication of the earliest stages in human life, the castration complex thus ends primary narcissism and facilitates the childs entry into the Oedipus complex. Yet, Freud argues that this sequence of events typifies the development of the female subject (SE XIX:24160), whereas in males the castration complex, if successfully resolved, ought to bring about the dissolution of the Oedipus complex (SE XIX:17382). Freuds account of the regular course of pre-oedipal development thus conflicts with his positioning of the castration complex at the end of the oedipal

10

Chapter One

stage as experienced by the male child. During this stage, the little boy should accomplish the transition from the love for his mother to the love for another woman (that is, from one love-object to another), which is brought about by the threat of castration represented by the father. Freud, however, does not explain how the infants object-love could have developed in the first place if the little boy had not already experienced castration anxiety. But, as Creed has demonstrated in her formulation of the concept of the monstrous-feminine, the boy in fact is already aware of castration. Creed brings to light Freuds own repressed phantasy (1993, 3), namely, the image of the powerful pre-oedipal mother, who represents the threat of castration even before the boy has experienced any such anxiety in relation to the father.3 As far as the female child is concerned, Freuds position is equally confusing. In girls, who realise that they have already been castrated, primary narcissism intensifies in order to keep away from their ego anything that would diminish it (SE XIV:89). Women are thus essentially indifferent, not capable of loving but only of being loved.4 Yet, according to Freud, they are envious of the males penisa problem which is finally resolved when women give birth to a child, in which a part of their own body confronts them like an extraneous object, to which, starting from their narcissism, they can then give complete object-love (ibid., 8990). As Kofman (1980) has argued, the notion of the narcissistic woman experiencing penis-envy and the need to be loved is a rather absurd idea. Why would a beautiful and perfectly self-sufficient figure be envious or in need of anything? This has led Kofman to conclude that Freuds essay On narcissism undermines its own argument about pregnancy being the fruit of penis-envy (ibid., 40). Rather, it inadvertently demonstrates that narcissism might well be the ground of object-love and therefore of all desire (ibid., 39). Kofman thus manages to secure narcissism as the paradigm for human subjectivity as well as intersubjectivity, while abandoning the Freudian idea of the castration complexcastration anxiety in boys, penis-envy in girlsas regulating interpersonal relations. The introduction of the castration complex thus presents a critical moment in Freuds theory of narcissism. Nevertheless, as Kofmans analysis confirms, Freud has offered a valuable reading of the myth, which considerably recasts the significance of Narcissus. In contrast to Elliss and Nckes reductive understandings of narcissism, Freud interprets the phenomenon as constitutive of human subjectivity and indispensable to socialisation. Prior to the narcissistic formation of the ego, the infant is not aware of itself and is therefore unable to impose a structure on the world and to locate itself in relation to this world and other beings and objects in

Uncanny Encounters

11

itjust like the mythical Narcissus, who loves no one until he meets his mirror image. Freuds reading has thus recuperated Narcissus, who is no longer seen as an exceptional pervert but rather as the universal model of the human individual. This is a fascinating reading, not only because it posits narcissism as absolutely indispensable to human subjectivity and socialisation, but also because it interprets narcissism as a dynamic process and it detects in it a darker force that lies at the core of the human self. The mythical Narcissus is not a static character forever blissfully in love with himself. The beautiful youth dies as soon as he knows himself and only a yellow flower is found in place of his body. Ovid thus allows his protagonist to abandon the world of mortals and puts an end to his suffering. In other words, the Roman poet grants Narcissuss wish:
Oh, that I might be parted from my own body! and, strange prayer for a lover, I would that what I love were absent from me! [] Death is nothing to me, for in death I shall leave my troubles; [] we two shall die together in one breath. (1977a, 157)

The very last glimpse of Narcissus that Ovid affords his readers is strangely ambiguous. In Millers translation, it reads: Even when he had been received into infernal abodes, [Narcissus] kept on gazing on his image in the Stygian pool. (Ibid., 159) In Ovids version, however, the melancholic quality of the scene is significantly diminished. Narcissuss impossible lover does not resurface: Tum quoque se, postquam est inferna sede receptus, in Stygia spectabat aqua. (Ibid., 158) Narcissus, at last at peace (in both senses of the phrase), simply continues gazing in the waters of the river of the Greek netherworld. This detail has not escaped Freuds attention. In his perceptive reading, Narcissuss death takes on an elaborate symbolic meaning. To become a fully socialised subjectto survive socially, so to speakthe infant must master its narcissism. The child must leave Narcissus behind; yet, Narcissus cannot die, for Narcissus is the child. Freuds Narcissus thus metamorphoses much more literally than Ovids, who is replaced by his flowery surrogate rather than transformed into it. Controlled but not annihilated, Freuds Narcissus more or less furtively survives in the trinity of the ego, the ego ideal and the super-ego, forever waiting to resurface openly to end the egos suffering, that is, to end the egos struggle to conform to the ego ideal and meet the demands of the super-ego, which constantly watches the actual ego and measures it by that ideal (SE XIV:95).

12

Chapter One

What is alluded to here is Freuds earliest intimation of the death drive. Freud fully articulates the concept in Beyond the pleasure principle (SE XVIII:164). However, in a rudimentary form, the idea already appears in his essay on narcissism. As Lasch puts it,
primary narcissism conforms quite closely to Freuds description of the death instinct as a longing for the complete cessation of tension []. Narcissism in this sense is the longing to be free from longing. (1979, 2401)

Freud thus exhausts the entire trajectory of the mythical Narcissusfrom his initial indifference (auto-eroticism) through his infatuation (the formation of the ego through primary narcissism) to his longing for death (the emergence of the death drive)to bring to light not only the existence of the unconscious facets of human subjectivity and its fundamentally narcissistic structure but also its essentially self-destructive nature. As Royle argues, Freud shows that death is not simply the termination of life [] but lifes driving force, its animating, dynamic principle (2003, 85).5 Freuds commentators often refer to the death drive as one of the most controversial concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis.6 What makes it controversial is the argument that the death drive refers to the basic desire for the ultimate elimination of tension, which renders the death drive something more than any particular type of instinctit is rather that factor which determines the actual principle of all instinct (Laplanche and Pontalis 1973, 102). The death drive is the mechanism of both life and death instincts, which is why Freud claims that even the pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts (SE XVIII:63). Freuds short but extremely dense essay on narcissism and, consequently, the Ovidian myth occupy a pivotal point in the psychoanalysts work. The ideas emerging in this essay have shaped significantly Freuds later work as well as the work of his successors. Before exploring their elaboration in Lacans and Kristevas theories, however, I want to draw attention to another of Freuds texts that can be read as a reference to Narcissus. His 1919 essay The uncanny (SE XVII:21756) is of particular interest to film scholarship, for it was in this context that cinema was related to the myth for the first time. Considering the fact that Freud developed and practised psychoanalysis primarily as a therapeutic method, it is hardly surprising that he was not interested exclusively in the regular course of human psychosexual development; in fact, he was particularly fascinated with instances of its failure and deviations. The uncanny offers the most elaborate discussion of such a failure in repression of primary narcissism,

Uncanny Encounters

13

while it also provides further evidence of the problems stemming from Freuds theory of narcissism. Freuds objective in The uncanny is to uncover the origin of a particular type of frightening phenomena, especially as they are manifested in the realm of aesthetics. These occurrences are described as uncanny (unheimlich), for they arouse the feeling of horror and strangeness in relation to what should be innocuous and familiar. Freud (ibid., 219) mentions a fertile but not exhaustive paper by Jentsch (1906) as the only earlier attempt to elucidate the uncanny. Thus setting himself up as a pioneer charting a rather unfamiliar territory, Freud first consults several dictionaries to establish that heimlich [homely] is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich [unhomely, uncanny] (SE XVII:226). This ambivalence at the core of the term is perfectly captured in Schellings gloss quoted by Freud: Unheimlich is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. (Ibid., 224) The uncanny, in short, is the frightening recurrence of something repressed. Freud then introduces the distinction between two classes of the uncanny: one in which what returns are repressed infantile complexes, and the other in which surmounted or discarded primitive beliefs are confirmed once again. Ultimately, Freud asserts that animism, magic and sorcery, the omnipotence of thoughts, mans attitude to death, involuntary repetition and the castration complex comprise practically all the factors which turn something frightening into something uncanny (ibid., 243). He lists several manifestations of the uncannyinvoluntary and unintended repetition; recurrence of events, objects, people or situations; premonitions; certain superstitions; dead bodies; the fantasy of being buried alive; bodily dismemberment; and the blurring of the distinction between fantasy and realityand finally singles out the double or the doppelgnger as the uncanny phenomenon par excellence. Before presenting his own analysis of the double in Hoffmanns short story The Sandman (1967), Freud acknowledges Ranks study of the double (1914), published five years before Freuds essay on the uncanny and drawing extensively on Freuds theory of narcissism. It is in Ranks essay that the first link between cinema and Narcissus is forged. Although he feels compelled to apologise for using such a lowbrow example, Rank refers to the German Expressionist film The Student of Prague (Rye and Wegener, 1913) at the very beginning of his essay. In the rest of the study, Rank limits his discussion to literature;7 however, the prominent placement of the cinematic reference not only draws attention to one of the

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Chapter One

earliest examples of the double in cinema but possibly also suggests a unique cinematic predisposition for representations of this phenomenon. What is of interest in the present context is Freuds isolation of the double as the paradigmatic instance of the uncanny, particularly because his opinion about just what exactly returns in this uncanny harbinger of death (SE XVII:235) is hardly consistent. At one point, Freud establishes an immediate link between the double, primary narcissism and castration anxiety:
The double was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego []. This invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction has its counterpart in the language of dreams, which is fond of representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of a genital symbol. [] Such ideas [] have sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism. (Ibid.)

Conversely, the reappearance of the double (after primary narcissism should have been repressed) is described as an uncanny experience. In other words, the return of Narcissuss unattainable lover, no longer indifferent but openly threatening, is hereby firmly tied to the failure of repression of infantile complexes (more specifically, the castration complex) and, without further elaboration, declared paradigmatic. But then Freud, paradoxically, goes on to argue that the uncanniness of meeting ones own image unbidden and unexpected belongs to the group of surmounted or discarded primitive beliefs (ibid., 248n). Considering the problems with Freuds equation of repression of primary narcissism with the resolution of the phallocentrically defined castration complex (that is, the boys anxiety about and the girls envy of the penis), the inconsistency outlined here is hardly surprising. It is, however, rather amusing that Freud refuses to classify the double as the return of repressed narcissism when he relates the phenomenon to a personal experience, namely, that of mistaking his own reflection in the mirror for a fellow passenger on the train (ibid.). The unsustained, and unsustainable, imposition of male anatomy as the norm in On narcissism thus resurfaces in The uncanny and disrupts Freuds argument concerning the double. This is particularly evident in Freuds selective reading of The Sandman. Hoffmanns story is an intricately structured text about a young man, Nathanael, whose life is a string of uncanny events leading to his tragic end. The first part of the story is told through letters (the first and the last written by Nathanael and the second by his fiance Clara), through which the reader learns about Nathanaels mysterious childhood trauma. In

Uncanny Encounters

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the first letterwritten to Claras brother Lothair, however, in a telling slip of the pen, sent to Clara herselfNathanael describes how, as a child, he hated and feared the nights when a sinister old man, German lawyer called Coppelius, visited Nathanaels father and all the children were immediately sent to bed. To silence their grumbling, their mother and their nanny used to call upon a figure from a ghastly childrens story, the Sandman, who throws sand in childrens eyes, pulls them out and feeds them to his brood. In Nathanaels vivid imagination, Coppelius and the Sandman soon became one and the same person, and the death of Nathanaels father during one of the lawyers visits only intensified this delusion. Several years later, Nathanael, now a student, happens upon a Piedmontese weatherglass peddler, Giuseppe Coppola. Nathanael is convinced that the Sandman has taken on yet another identity, that the tradesman is not the lawyers namesake or doppelgnger but rather the lawyer himself, and the student is determined to avenge his fathers death. The second part of the story is a first-person narrative whose narrator remains more or less unknown, describing himself only as Lothairs and Nathanaels friend. He unravels the rest of Nathanaels story. A short holiday at home nearly ends in a disaster. Clara barely manages to prevent Nathanael and Lothairs duel, prompted by Nathanaels insult; the student has called his strong-minded and independent fiance a lifeless automaton. Upon returning to his studies in the city, Nathanael meets Olimpia, the daughter of Professor Spalanzani, and falls in love, despite a friends warning that the girl seems too perfect to be true. Nathanaels courting ends catastrophically when he realises that Olimpiaand not Clara, as he has so recklessly, and ominously, remarkedis indeed an automaton, Spalanzani and Coppolas most outstanding achievement. Furious, Nathanael attacks Spalanzani, then falls ill and is finally taken to a madhouse. When he regains consciousness and sanity, or so it seems, he is back in his hometown and Clara stands by his side. They rekindle their relationship and everything seems to be going well until they climb the tower of the town hall. There, Nathanael once again uses the binoculars that Coppola has sold him and through which he first saw Olimpia; only this time, he sees Clara and suddenly goes mad again, trying to hurl Clara over the railing. Lothair manages to save his sister, but Nathanael, seeing Coppelius amongst the crowd down below, leaps to his death. Freuds interpretation of Hoffmanns text focuses on a single example of uncanniness, the one manifested in (Nathanaels anxious perception of) the doubling of the Sandman, the lawyer Coppelius and the peddler Coppola, coupled with the equally malevolent consequences of the students encounter with Professor Spalanzani, and closely related to the

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Chapter One

fear of losing ones eyes. Freud declares The Sandman a paradigmatic text and restates the argument that the uncanny ensues from the failure of repression of castration anxiety. He does not explore what might be the significance of the rather obvious doubling of the storys female characters, Clara and Olimpia, and he pays little attention to the uncanniness produced by the automaton, who blurs the line between the animate and the inanimate. The underlying phallocentrism of Freuds discussion of the double and the uncanny has not gone unnoticed. Cixous argues that Freud displaces the more fundamental uncanniness of the automaton onto the uncanniness of Sandman/Coppola/Coppelius/Spalanzani as the castrating father figure. Rather than elucidating the innermost uncanniness of the double as the harbinger of death and a reminder of human mortality, Freud in fact represses it. His relegation of Olimpia to a footnote (SE XVII:232n) is no less than a typographical metaphor of repression (Cixous 1976, 537). Freud has thus repressed the premonition of death embodied in the automaton, but the uncanny apparition continues to haunt him. Unwilling to see in the figure of Olimpia the uncanniness of womanthe uncanniness of female genitals as the entrance to the former home for all humans (Todd 1986, 524)he can only see her as mans mutilated double, confirming the reality of castration for the male subject (ibid., 527). Freuds interpretation of Hoffmanns story thus unconsciously reveals that womans penis-envy is not a fact but rather his own projection, that is, a phallocentric fantasy originating in the male fear of castration.8 Indeed, something is not quite right in Freuds essay (ibid., 519). His insistence on the phallocentrically defined castration complex has prevented him from acknowledging the more fundamental meaning of uncanniness as a rehearsal of an encounter with death (Jackson 1981, 68). What Freud represses in his discussion of the uncanny is his own earlier intimation of the death drive. As Royle contends, the death drive may well be the most uncanny instance of uncanniness; the death drive comes to figure uncanniness better than anything that is actually discussed in Freuds essay; yet, this most uncanny example of uncanniness is eerily not in The Uncanny (2003, 88). In a similar vein, Apter (1982) suggests that the source of the uncanny cannot be said to lie in the discovery of sexual difference. What renders the double uncanny is its profoundly ambiguous incarnation of desire and fear, love and hate, life and death, as they confront human beings regardless of their sex or gender. The readings of Freuds text on the uncanny have provided evidence that there are indeed inconsistencies and contradictions in Freuds

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argument. However, it was not their intention to dismiss his theory altogether. Freud has rightly established that the uncanny signifies the failure of repression, which has enabled Todd (1986) to perform a symptomatic reading of his essay and argue that the text provides an example, rather than an analysis, of patriarchal oppression of women. Jackson (1981) is even more favourable to Freud. She maintains that his discussion helps shed light on the socially transgressive potential of the uncanny. Freud may not have been willing to see the uncanny as frightening as well as alluring; however, his pioneering work on the topic has opened up a space for subsequent reconsiderations of the uncanny as a transgressive and pleasurable materialisation of Narcissuss refusal of the phallocentric symbolic order. Freud may have seen the double as an embodiment of a taboo love liaison necessitating Narcissuss social death; yet, by offering such a resolute interpretation of this uncanny figure, the psychoanalyst has also provoked analyses that show that the uncanny functions to subvert and undermine cultural stability by permitting articulation of cultural taboos and giving expression to fantasies of violating these taboos (ibid., 6970).9

CHAPTER TWO MISOGYNISTIC METAMORPHOSES: LACAN, NARCISSUS AND OEDIPUS

Freuds theories have found their chief supporter in Lacan, who takes up Freuds ideas and, rather than disputing the arguments as such, shifts their foundation from anatomy to discourse. He re-formulates Freuds theory of human psychosexual development, which, for Freud, is dependent upon the anatomical distinction between the sexes. In contrast, Lacan argues that the human subject is indeed essentially a sexual, or rather, a sexed subject, for it is constructed as such in discourse rather than determined by anatomy. Lacan believes that he has thus divorced the binary definition of sexual difference (phallic/castrated) from anatomy and instead defined it as discursively fabricated. In principle, Lacan fully espouses Freuds account of Narcissus as the model of the human subject; however, he complicates and radicalises the idea. Not only does he make clear the intimate relationship between the subject and narcissism; he also shows that they are inextricably linked with the uncanny, the double and the death drive. Moreover, Lacans account clarifies the value of Narcissus not only as an ontological paradigm but also as an epistemological one. However, his account of human psychic development, like Freuds, is ultimately unable to transcend its implication in phallocentrism. The key text in which Lacan first elaborates these ideas and puts forward his own reading of the ancient myth is The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience (1977, 17). Although seemingly quite simple, the mirror stage designates a rather intricate concept, and it becomes even more complex in Lacans subsequent rearticulations in various contexts. In this essay, in less than ten pages, Lacan lays out Freuds entire scheme of Narcissuss coming into being and his amorous encounter. Lacans initial concept of the mirror stage denotes the moment in childhood, somewhere between the ages of six and eighteen months, when the infant first notices its reflection in the mirror and joyfully assumes it as its own image. In this process of identification with ones specular image,

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the ego is formed. Lacan thus argues that the ego is formed through imaginary projection. The ego believes to be what is essentially merely its counterpart, its external reflection; it projects itself onto this ideal ego. The fact that Narcissus thus almost instantly reaches the closing scene of the myth confirms that Lacan takes on board Freuds argument about narcissism as a crucial and necessary stage in human socialisation (namely, the relinquishment of the self-absorbed auto-erotic stage). However, Lacan also radically re-interprets the closing sequence of the ancient tale by reversing the epistemological outcome of Tiresiass prophecy. Narcissus now gets to live to a ripe old age for he never really gets to know himself; the ego is based on misrecognition (mconnaissance), rather than recognition, at the heart of human selfknowledge. The ego brings about a fundamental alienation of the human subject (1993, 149). It comes to figure as a symptomindeed, the human symptom par excellence (1987, 16)for, in Lacans view, alienation is inevitable if the ego and consequently the socialised human subject are to be formed at all.1 The ego, however, only initiates this decentring of the subject that the human individual has yet to become. Lacan elaborates his understanding of the notion of the subject in his conceptualisation of the so-called orders of human existence: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real.2 This tripartite system significantly complicates Lacans view of the mirror stage. The latter can no longer be seen as a historical, one-off occurrence that terminates at some point in early infancy; the mirror stage becomes a permanent component of the human psychic apparatus, constituting the Imaginary and manifesting itself in the dual relation between the ego and the ideal ego (1993). The subject, on the other hand, only comes into being with ones entry into the SymbolicNarcissuss metamorphosis. The passage from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, occurring between the ages of three and five, is what the Oedipus complex stands for in Lacans theory. In other words, even though his understanding of the Oedipus complex is rather different from Freuds, Lacan too believes that Narcissus transforms into Oedipus and ultimately into the fully socialised human subject. Moreover, when sexual difference is taken into account, both psychoanalysts stumble at more or less the same point in what they see as the regular course of psychic development. Freud distinguishes between positive and negative forms of the Oedipus complex (SE XIX:166). In its positive form, the concept designates the childs desire for the parent of the opposite sex and rivalry with the parent of the same sex; in its negative form, the relations are reversed. Although every child, according to Freud, experiences the

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complete Oedipus complex, which, in various degrees, consists of both positive and negative forms, it is only in the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred of the other as a rival (SE XXI:229). For Freud, only the little boys experience of the complex can lead to anxiety (caused by the threat of castration that the father represents), which yields the dissolution of the Oedipus complex (the boys transition from the desire for the mother to the desire for another woman). Because of the value that Freud assigns to the male sexual organ, there can be no such anxiety (only penis-envy) for the girl, who is thus stuck, so to speak, in the Oedipus complex indefinitely. Lacan rarely uses Freuds expression the castration complex; he simply refers to castration. Thus, he underscores his dismissal of Freuds binary conceptualisation of the castration complex as castration anxiety in males and acceptance of castration and penis-envy in females. Lacan preserves the argument that castration is indispensable to the resolution of the Oedipus complex and the ensuing formation of the fully socialised subject. However, he argues that castrationthat is, its acceptance rather than anxiety about itbefalls both sexes and that, in both cases, it brings about the resolution of the Oedipus complex. What enables Lacans reconsideration of the childs trajectory through the Oedipus complex is his elaboration of the notion of the phallus. Lacan (2000) quite emphatically argues that the penis and the phallus are not to be confused or even conflated.3 The penis denotes the male sexual organ whereas the phallus is neither an object nor an organ; rather, it is a function that regulates the transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic (that is, the Oedipus complex) and the relations within both registers. In short, the phallus in Lacans theory designates the signifier of desire. In the Imaginary, one assumes ones counterpart as ones own image; yet, the ego that is thus formed perceives an imbalance in this relationship.4 In comparison with the childs relatively uncoordinated body, the image looks surprisingly coherent. Hence, the ego looks for confirmation from without; the infant looks for something or someone who will confirm that the image is indeed the infant itself. The child finds this reassurance in the (literal and metaphorical) returned gaze of the adult. This is the figure that possesses the imaginary phallus, that is, the power to make the child feel complete and do away with its lack. Lacan dubs this figure the imaginary or phallic mother.5 The presence of this single, omnipotent adult of the mirror stage, however, does not suffice for the child to enter the Symbolic, which is the order of interpersonal relations, the realm of social exchange. The transition can start taking place once the child has realised that the mother is also lacking, that she too desires something (the phallus); this is