Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye Author(s): Jerry Aline Flieger Reviewed work(s): Source: New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 1, Cultural Studies: China and the West (Winter, 1997), pp. 87-109 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057403 . Accessed: 15/03/2013 03:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to New Literary History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Postmodern

The

Perspective: Jerry Aline deals

paper

This

the

with in both

Paranoid

Eye

Flieger relation

between

and

fiction

and

paranoia in at least

three to (referring

theory, postmodernism, structural, and transferential thematic, registers: nature of the reading process). This continuum in the transactional turn opens to a fourth realm?the of the social, widely con domain on East/ to the discussion is the context most germane strued, which West cultural studies in which we are engaged here. The transparency of our

information-saturated and

"contact"

access,

in

monad,

global doubtless

a

confers

the

of

age

paranoid

instantaneous to

modality

"post

us

the feeling that we are watched life, giving everywhere, a information and transcribed bank. Much monitored by ubiquitous an writing reflects this feeling of being under the gaze of postmodern modern"

surveillance?the

anonymous

us

which

all has

sense

that

its eye on for political

the

ever

"the

age

of

paranoia,"

a

raging

our

social and us, tracking to facili sometimes reasons, in the credit rating system in (as

catalogues economic history, sometimes or cultural order tate the new economic concerns the of this age, which the West). Given termed

database

growing

debate

Teresa

Brennan to

continues

take

has place

the ramifications of this postmodern condition.1 Is it a bleak concerning or even to the effacement of the individual leading psychotic moment, of social contact? Or is it rather an expansion and the diminution and of the definition and the of the social in the global recasting possibilities information the spirit age? Does it increase contact with otherness?in encounter of the East/West fostered by the exchange of essays in this in a culture of the virtual and the volume?or does it efface otherness a diminution of productive difference instantaneous, (the leading to as In other puts it, of Mao with McDonald's)? meeting, Terry Eagleton use a familiar postmodern words, what is the status of the global?to to is it marker?and cultural cross-pollination conducive which would or exoticism in Tucson) (Thai restaurants go beyond mere commercial an epidemic a culture free of ethics, does it disseminate of sameness, obedient of performance? only to the demands I would like to suggest that part of the answer define

the

concept

or as an episteme, New Literary History,

"paranoid,"

a (postmodern)

as

a clinical

mode

depends

psychosis,

of knowledge.

1997, 28: 87-109

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

on how we

in Freud's

sense,

I focus here

on

88

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

a

its relation to the specular and aspect of paranoid modality, as and hence its relation to the Lacanian Imaginary mode, in his concept of the mirror in human stage development. an For paranoia may be considered in Lacan 's construct, imaginary sense of the term, because a of its etiology: stems as it from fixation, Freud tells us, in the narcissistic state, and is characterized by the overtones in narcissistic of specular identification implied imaginary In fact, postmodern constructs like projection. paranoia may be consid ered a special case of the specular Jean Baudrillard imaginary?which particular the visible, adumbrated

has called of the virtual in the "hypervisibility"?the preeminence to the real millennial blindness era, accompanied by an increasing that ground us.2 material conditions on Lacan 's topography But I want to ask here?expanding of the of the virtual might human psyche?if this postmodern hyperimaginary a not be countered like a postmodern by something hypersymbolic, (as Lyotard, among others, suggests), depend symbolic of the sublime that the unpresentable "on the presentation in words ing, Lyotard's of matter itself, in a face-off with the exists," and on the persistence the computer virtual and the technological.3 (Even in our cyber-lives, are dis real the for the disk cables down" fails, maintenance, "goes matter us of and of of the reminds This obdurate object quality rupted.) even into the ether of of the real, its intrusion the ineluctability cyberspace.

Against

the

naysayers

of

postmodernism

and

"post-culture,"

Iwould like to ask what an engaged postmodern subject might be, if not a soporific video consumer, mesmerized in front of a monitor? Engaged vis-?-vis the Other, the world and in anticipatory thinking and projection to the object of a its objects, this subject would not merely be reduced rather gaze, effacing her subjectivity, but would disciplinary panoptic to the "hypervisibility" train a listening eye on the world, as an antidote that otherness of the human may be subject today. This implies of the prescient but not assimilated, where the recognition encountered "internet" of looking and listening others, results in a kind of salutary in Jean Baudrillard's words, allows "me not to repeat paranoia which, TE forever" ( 174). myself

I. Postmodernism

and

Paranoia

to their translation of Derrida's Mes Chances, introduction Smith and Joseph forge a simple and serviceable Kerrigan text: literary postmodernism is "the to describe the postmodern of discourse."4 For Smith and Kerrigan, embrace of the uncertainties is allied with an immer narrative of postmodern then, the experience In the

William maxim

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

89

in a version of events that cannot be verified from the "the uncertainties of discourse. "Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard outside, celebrating on postmodernism a also hinges on the take which has philosophic is characterized for of belief: Lyotard, postmodernism by "the question In spite of their different in metanarrative." loss of belief emphases, sion or belief

of the unreliability of discourse and the celebration both formulae?the or a authoritative discourse in guaranteed disbelief metanarrative?may vision which refutes the be read as consistent with a certain paranoid or consensual version of reality (the reality that authoritative accepted an uncertain even while dis normal people agree upon), sustaining course (the paranoid's alternative version of events). This suggests that insofar as it be considered discourse might "paranoid" postmodern act is read as a where narrative results from a fundamentally projective rather than as and contingent function of idiosyncratic perspective of any verifiable reality. transcription on I have the above formulae, (in my earlier work) Elaborating of the postmodern sketched four characteristics text, both literary and text is iterative, driven by the compul theoretical: (1) the postmodern to repeat, obsessed with citation and recursive narrative; (2) it is it with excess, remainder, indeed, aftermath, fragment: preoccupied seems to bear witness to a global often catastrophe, psychological, or aesthetic, of the Cartesian the splintering historical, including crisis of legitimation, includ rational subject; (3) it reflects a profound as referent, of its the authority language questioning capacity to ing creates and confronts; account for the it both and world apprehend sion

it also

visually,

the

questions

viewpoint

organizing

of

one

sovereign

its (4) the post-text often gravitates toward the comic mode, perspective; to antics undermine (Fredric Jameson serving authority slippery linguistic notes the proclivity of postmodern for example).5 writing for pastiche, in postmodern I have added As I have been reading around fiction, to my list, at issue here: the postmodern text the fifth characteristic more

often

suggested formulae notion

than

that of

not

reflects

the grain

for postmodernism "the embrace"

a

free-floating

paranoia.

I have

already

of paranoia may be discerned in the two with which I began?Smith and Kerrigan's cannot be verified, of a discourse which

of the paranoid's characteristic certainty about his or her own idiosyn cratic version of the world and its events. The same observation holds for of postmodernism, the second definition "the of belief loss by Lyotard, in metanarrative."

For

metanarrative

is,

quite

simply,

the

consensual

versions of history that things writ large, the teleological as or in belief cherish the (such Progress Enlightenment). people Lacan?whose be read as a work may Interestingly, Jacques on status of the of the version the debate psychoanalytic postmodern scheme

of

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

90

NEW

subject vis-?-vis Otherness?argues just such a disbelief, an incredulity order.6

Symbolic

seem

For

the

LITERARY

HISTORY

that the paranoid is characterized by the guarantability of the concerning events

paranoid,

and

causes

are

not

what

they

to be to rational

people; for, as Lacan points out, "normal" people a function order, the order which pact with the Symbolic by making that experienced is meaningful, in the guarantees reality caught web of the Other of meaning). The (as guarantor intersubjective rejects

paranoid

the

authority,

of metanarrative

realm

par

excellence,

which like Progress or Idealism. requires belief in anchored concepts as the last word, For the paranoid in the Other fails to believe an alternative belief in what Lacan calls "the Other of the constructing Other,"

the

fantasmatic

who

persecutor

has

arranged

a

system

under

to the apparent Symbolic order, belying mining "reality" as it appears for everything in it. (One thinks, the rest of the world, but accounting of the Wizard for instance, of the final moments of Oz?a tale familiar to Asian audiences, I am told, as well as to the Western public?where "ex revered by consensual the magnificent wizard, reality, is finally man as the Other of the Other, the behind the pulling strings posed" the curtain.) Of course, as Freud suggests and Lacan the confirms, sense of is in a sense the paranoid the Other himself?his own to his him in is unconscious returned message, persecution inverted form. The paranoid does not Believe, he Knows, because he is source of the knowledge to which he bears testimony, the unconscious a truth impervious to the test of the Symbolic social reality of Others. or Given the affinities of paranoia with the slippage of the Symbolic, a it is not perhaps of discourse, the unverifiability that surprising a similar find haunts much We postmodern writing. paranoid modality

Other

thematic

of

nexus

in

the

work

of

many

postmodern

writers?such

as

Paul Auster, William Gass, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Emily Pynchon, the protagonist feels watched, Acker?where surveyed by Prager, Kathy an eye in the sky; she is in the grip of an ineffable conspiracy of global or haunted by the chatter of "white noise" from unseen proportions, sources use Don their modernist DeLillo's term). Unlike (to predeces as Boris Siri Luisa Valenzuela, sors, postwriters Hustvedt, Vian, (such ?talo Calvino) do not just rehearse the Umberto Eco, Harake Marukami, absorbed in the Rather of self-referentiality. than being vicissitudes own interior of world?however tormented?the their post sublimity Thomas

from without, haunted of these writers seem to be menaced protagonists once at and elusive, ubiquitous maddeningly by cryptic characters, sinister shadows which the hero can't quite figure, or finger. The minds of these protagonists take on the riddle of life, and are persecuted by it, not with a metaphysical of modern nausea, but with the compulsion out detectives of sorts, driven by an urge to figure last (this things

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

91

salient in certain French writers, who characteristic being particularly fiction: Raymond of detective cite the tradition Queneau, Georges Sarrau te). But this very obsession t, Nathalie Perec, Alain Robbe-Grille this

for

system, causes the

theatrical that

to

need

to

investigation

with

scenario

Flaubert's

to discover,

list,

real

careen

it?-Julian has

parrot

more

to account, off

Barnes's an

and

course,

often the

literary historian series

innumerable

than

not or

novelistic

of

discovers "original"

a giant corpse in the closet, who continues copies; Ionesco 'sAm?d?e has to inflate like a Macy's parade balloon, bursting out of the closet at moments. Donald Barthelme 'sLilliputian hero in Similarly, importune The Dead Father drags a gigantic paternal corpse cross-country, feeding on

it en

route.

does indeed set the stage for paternal corpse?psychoanalysis scene. Just what is paranoia, and who wants to the paranoid postmodern text comes that my reading of the postmodern know? I have indicated out of two psychoanalytic takes on paranoia, and their interaction: on Schreber?and his very brief essay on female Freud's writings on 's Freud's in Seminar II and in Lacan and writings writings paranoia; all of these the Four Fundamental Indeed Concepts of Psychoanalysis. on the notion of center and theoretical introjec speculations projection tion, and the related notions of the optical and the visible in a shared a field of vision. Thus these theories elaborate variously complex on the the interplay between symbolic, the imaginary, and the position identification real. They suggest not only that projective is one postmark of the postmodern but also that the paranoid modality of protagonist, Aha?a

the

text

postmodern

bears

upon

the

act

of

writing

itself,

not

only

but structurally. For as psychoanalysis thematically, clearly suggests, from fear or even Angst in its intersubjective differs paranoia identificatory the boundary the fantasy and the real, between mechanism, blurring protagonist

and

even

antagonist,

II. Freud's Dr.

reader

Paranoid

Schreber

and

writer.

Narrative:

as Posthero

In his famous analysis of Dr. Schreber's writing (1911), Freud tells us is a disorder that paranoia from at the narcissistic fixation resulting causes or to be fixed on a one's libido to be turned inward state, which like object, resulting in homosexual In Dr. Schreber's tendencies.7 case, is a defense and a strategy of adaptation: Freud speculates, paranoia the off wards homosexual attraction the libidinal psyche by projecting from whence it returns as transformed, impulse outward, disguised and aggression rather than amorous is (This persecution capture.

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

92

NEW

demonstrated transformation returns

the

fantasies tence,

HISTORY

in Freud's famous grammatical example, tracing the of the statement "I love him" to "he hates me," which to

message

and hearing the

LITERARY

compulsion

its

as

sender

of voices to create

are a

a

threat.)

accompanied complete

Schreber's

persecutory

by fantasies

cosmological

of omnipo

system,

and

an

of the world fantasy. In Schreber's the persecutor, The narrative, of the Other, is God himself, who communicates Other with directly and then as His victim. This, Schreber, whom He takes as his concubine Freud tells us, is a prime example of projective thinking?Schreber's returns to him as homosexual love, projected outward, "explained" a cosmic a manifestation of homosexual aggression, systemic energy, in a network of nerves and rays which finally even threatens God Himself. Thus becomes the motor of fantasy and of projective thinking have delusion. Many Freudians, stressed the primacy indeed, psychotic rather than of persecutory of projective thinking in paranoia, fantasy? of perception is not only illness, but a mode and thought, the paranoia difference being only one of degree; indeed, much normal behavior has the projective mode resonances, especially by which we paranoid end

and identify with the responses of others, in advance. (This is, anticipate or Sherlock Holmes? the technique of the sleuth?Dupin for example, so consciousness and commentary; inWestern it postmodern prominent is also the technique of the writer herself.) case we find the adumbration that in the Schreber It is significant of fiction: cosmological hallucinations, many of the themes of postmodern or the end of the world fantasy (as in Auster 's In the Country of Last 's Les Fleurs bleues; Pynchon's Things', Vian's LEcume des jours; Queneau the Gravity's Rainbow, Beckett's Fin de partie; Eco's Foucault s Pendulum); once loved (the absent mother of of a hated persecutor, centrality the Barthelme Dead lover 's who Vineland, Father; rejecting Pynchon's in Hustvedt's to stalk the heroine The Blindfold); the construc cosmos or tion of an encyclopedic system (Walter Abish's Alphabetical A Users Barnes's The History of theWorld in Perec's Manual; Life: Africa; New York Auster 's Ten and One Half Trilogy); an obsessive Chapters; to detail and a proliferation of sheer data (Ionesco, Pynchon, attention of this data seems like a proliferation Sometimes, Perec, Sarraute). returns

like noise White Noise). Indeed, (the theme of DeLillo's background own of her mistakes who the Freud's female throbbing paranoid, protago orgasm for the clicking of a hidden camera, many postmodern internal nists are haunted noises, which are actually by unexplained noises projected outward; for the chatter to which Beckett refers may be a paranoid noise but the sound considered construct, not background of the posthero's

own wheels

spinning.

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

93

In a similar vein, the capacity to attend to detail becomes in obsessive and is the plague of many postheroes, like Robbe-Grillet's postfiction, detective (Les Gommes) or Auster's (New York journalist investigative or Perec's disembodied a narrative eye (Life: A User's Manual), Trilogy), kind of floating camera that enters into a linguistic maze as it describes the contents of various apartments joined by a staircase, and explores the interlocking jigsaw puzzle of the tenants' life stories. The latter-day of all of these writers make an uncanny discovery, Oedipae deciphering clues that are often inscribed in writing: they each finally discover that are the mysterious in the encoded urban culprit they tracking labyrinth, the suspect they suspect, is none other than themselves. Here the private is in fact a private eye, a persecutor whose investigator gaze inculpating is turned upon himself. resonance And there is another of Oedipus in many a postmodern tale: in many of these works, a dead or silent father?like Beckett's Godot

events, almost father, been

or

or

Knott?presides

however

hovers,

over

absently,

the

novel's

or

lack of them. In psychoanalytic other terms, this hovering seems like the residue of the superego, the remainder of the slain the paternal corpse that refuses to go away even after his Law has eluded?or

exploded,

worse,

replaced

by

a value-free

postmodern

rules of sheer performativity. It is as though this lost code, the cybernetic father, this anchor, this signifier, has been expelled from the subject, in an act of disavowal or casting out (Freud's Verwerfung), only to return as a looming the bleak threat, a hovering eye that seems to monitor postmodern Now this

is strikingly motionless

scene. media

postmodern

universe,

like that constructed and

rapt

for

hours

overseen

and projected at

a

time,

caught

by

a

by

eye,

monitoring

by Dr. Schreber, a network

who of

sits

nerves

that he calls God, tormented by a barrage of inner voices; he halluci nates a complete system (he could almost be said to be on cosmological In Schreber's case, "God" himself line, "surfing" on his private internet). is a terminus linked to a subject in ecstasy, an eye who is overseeing sinister

and

hostile,

rather

than

the

giver

of Law

or

value.

brief examples and exhibited

Indeed,

as

my

of paranoia that I have cited signal, all of the tendencies case are the Schreber insistent in fiction by postmodern and theory: fantasies of persecution, construction of elaborate systems, and otherwise, of internal reality outward, and linguistic projection overseen schemes the grandiose by floating eye. Since projective is the hallmark of the paranoid state, thinking the postnarrative has something in common with the dream, moreover, is also a hallucinatory which its author's desire in projection reflecting a and certain "scenes," disguised performing Wunscherf?llung?Freud's

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

94

NEW

term

LITERARY

HISTORY

more rendered in the French wish-fulfillment, aptly du d?sir. And like the dream the accomplissement paranoia, displaces for

onto

affect

subject's

a

Many

other

characters

and

in

seems

text,

postmodern

fact,

objects. to be

written

in

an

oneiric,

of desire mold the text, and mode, where the fluctuations hallucinatory there is a slim line between where and wish-fulfillment, animism, In these dream which often into texts, paranoid projection. slip paranoid the

nightmares,

shares

too,

reader,

in

the

ultimate

fantasy

of

persecu

one could argue that tion, by being absorbed by the tale. Moreover, a itself has dimension: the is a sort of "overseer," reader writing paranoid an "eye in the sky" looking over the author's shoulder, as he anticipates "what

the

reader

wants."

III. Lacan's

Post-Theory:

Paranoia Revisited It is in light of these questions that Lacan's work ismost helpful. For he asserts in Seminar III that paranoia is a question of knowledge, belief, and speech. For Lacan, of course, speech is an intersubjective dual, an encoded message

to be deciphered,

puzzle from

the

in

Other

an

wherein inverted

the form.8

subject Lacan's

receives

his

best-known

is from Freud's jokebook; the well-known anecdote about the example two old Jewish men on their way to Krakow, wherein the interlocutor reads the truth as a lie, in his complaint: "Why are you lying by telling me so to I'll Krakow think else when you're going you're going somewhere to see to It is the Krakow?" dimension easy you're really going paranoid in the listener's wary reaction to the of this projective identification truth. For the second old man does not believe in the Symbolic Order as on reliable information?he relies instead on paranoid knowledge, a in himself the other's in inverted message putting place; receiving on the form. Lacan that Poe's detective ("Seminar argues Dupin on like the Purloined does same, Letter"), any sleuth, paranoid relying reasoning

to arrive

In Seminar significantly,

at

the

III, Lacan a female

truth.

goes on to discuss

paranoid.

When

one of his own cases, who

she meets

a notorious

is,

womanizer

in the stairway, and tells him "I've just been to the butcher's" (charcuterie), she complains that she hears a voice, probably his, calling her "Sow," sexual connotation. Lacan with an explicit insists that the reply is a own of desire the woman's for the rakish offender, delusional, sign on nature since she insists sexual the of the insult (a sow, she especially at is the stuffed and dismembered Lacan thus insists butcher's). implies, on the projective nature of the paranoid and testimonial discourse,

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

"she

where

is

to me

talking

95

about

. . .vital.

something

In

short,

she

bears

witness" (P38). In other words, the paranoid's speech is testimony to his see them. The or her belief, which is a disbelief in things as sane people paranoid's terested

Lacan

Nonetheless,

we

committed

communicates

speech information.

argues,

a certain

rather

testimony,

paranoia

is the mode

than

disin

by which

about relations, about our intersubjective knowledge own his of For using projective and deduction, power thinking in the Other's the paranoid himself draws affinities place, of objects as such, he makes all knowledge he connections, a plot by taking the place of the Other?one thinks of the "plots"

all obtain

reality. putting between creates

in Foucault s Pendulum (Eco) or The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon). (In his Lacan illustrates this theory of paranoid knowledge, earliest discussion with a parable of sorts: three convicts are shown two black patches and three white ones; one is affixed to the back of each man, and they are left together in the room. The first to ascertain the color of the patch on his back will be allowed to go free. Each convict divines that his patch is white by the same process: figuring out what the other two would do if he were black, and waiting for them to do it, which they don't.9) Lacan that this ability to shift subject positions is a primor argues, moreover, dial human trait, and not a sign of illness as such: "All human knowledge stems from the dialectic of jealousy, which is a primordial manifestation two young of communication. takes place between children What one transitivism the fact that this fundamental involves by expressed can me. not other beat It's has beaten that he child who another say?The is the other," literally (P39). is lying?he structure of projective Indeed the paranoid is the basis identification the human and the animal world: of the distinction between "What the human world a world covered with objects derives from the makes fact that the object of human interest is the object of the other's desire" with the object of the other's desire (P 39). That is, our identification a certain transitivism of the subject, implies allowing the human subject to take the other's place. This transitivism is an effect of the mirror stage, the result that the dialectic of the unconscious with always implies of the the coexistence with the other as aggressor: struggle, impossibility .. . "the initial synthesis of the ego is essentially an alter ego, it is alienated as encounter and the first with the object iswith the object object of the other's desire.... A primitive otherness is included in the object, insofar as primitively it's the object of rivalry and competition" (P39). an It follows that all knowledge at least, paranoid, is, in the beginning effect of projection ence in level between alienation

in

psychosis,

and identification, but Lacan insists on the differ as the general form of the alienation imaginary and where

"from

the moment

the

subject

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

speaks,

the

96

NEW

...

Other

. . . [?a parle]. Analysis . . . the speaks beyond

is there that

something

about him than he believes" (P41). And in psychosis, the projection in Lacan's

example,

he hates me") [This shows] . . . the

other

you here

words,

nature

the properly

. . .

unconscious

subject

is inverted

and

that

says

more

For

generalized. not

does

("He

paranoia

HISTORY

love me,

in that love has become hatred. alienation, of the entire system of the deterioration

the profound extensive

the

. . . and

persecutory

is "a converted

it's

says

LITERARY

of

imaginary

the world,

about

interpretations

at itsmaximum

disturbance

shows

extension"

(P43). In the following for the difference in the chapters, Lacan accounts neurotic between and in it is a neurosis, etiology psychotic projection: return a of of the in the it is of question repressed; psychosis, question is rejected (not repressed, what but cast out) returning from without. (One

example

is on

Lacan's

on Hamlet,

essay

which

reads

the

encounter

with his father's ghost as a return of the foreclosed "reality" of Here Lacan his oft-discussed of doctrine castration.) poses psychosis as a hole in reality: "Let's start with the idea that a hole, a fault, a point of in the structure of the external world finds itself patched over rupture, by psychotic fantasy. How is this to be explained? We have at our disposal of projection" the mechanism (P45). Lacan's chapter 4 elaborates on the Verwerfung?the casting out of an or as such the object unsymbolized phenomenon castration?whereby return of that object, not symbolized the of the internally, filling of Hamlet

external

hole

in

the

real,

causes

paranoid

delusions.

It is not

a return

of

the repressed, but a return of the rejected. Psychotic projection is "the mechanism that makes what has got caught up in the Verwerfung?that the general is, what has been placed outside symbolization structuring the subject?returns from without" (P47). Now

Lacan's

take

on

paranoia

that

suggests

Freud's

may

theory

text on (at least) four levels: at the thematic the postmodern a is within the text itself (the hero is paranoid, level, paranoia topic at the textual or structural of "signs" everywhere); seeing conspiracy

elucidate

level?the fantasy,

or

reflects story a nightmare

a where

paranoid the

scenario, assassin

like

is oneself.

an

end-of-the-world (In

these

texts,

the

are out to get him. The is not paranoid, hero he is right?people structure of the tale itself is paranoid.) At the level of the text's inception and creation (extratextual), paranoia figures as amode of wish-fulfillment, and Daydreaming") is which, as Freud speculates (in "Creative Writers in every literary act. Finally, at the level of intertext, we could operative cite the rich interplay among texts, often exercised in a particularly ludic mode.

(Vian's

intellectual

hero

is named

"Jean-Sol

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Partre"

and

he

POSTMODERN

PERSPECTIVE

97

writes whole chapters in a pastiche of a stuffed vomit; Queneau the detective novel.) of literary styles, including in the postmodern text raises of paranoia the insistence Moreover, frame the To in several interesting questions. question psychoanalytic

exhibits number

the

does

terms,

text's

postmodern

recursive

narrative

resemble

the

or does

it resemble what Freud calls repetition, analysand's compulsive to say, citing and What does itmean "remembering working through"? that is Derrida's well-known "there outside assertion, Jacques nothing or a definition the text"? Is this a paranoid of text in social assertion, terms?

two very different I submit that postmodern affects, writing presents two vicissitudes of two distinctly emblematic different of modes these affects be allied Moreover, may sensibility. opposing postmodern the postmodern with two readings of "paranoia": in the first instance, of leads to illness, a system closed upon condition itself, a condition a collapse of the intersubjective network, leaving only or total and derisory death, signs of fragmentation "pornographic" of is characteristic of the blindness and certain work Baudrillard (this in and of Deleuze second "view" the ; Guattari, among others) writings much of and the of "millennial" of work (characteristic Lyotard's writing isolation

and

the paranoid Zeitgeist would be symptom writers like Donna Haraway), in the Other, whose vision always challenges atic of an investment the our own or us to of narcissistic monolithic centrality implosion, causing view

ourselves

this essay, templates paranoia, navigating

from

the

place

where

see

others

us.

In

the

remainder

of

as of each modality then, briefly to examples in contemporary fiction and theory, in order to suggest that read through Lacanian theory, may actually provide amap for the last years of our exhausted century. I will

refer

IV. The

Transparent

Eyeing

Globe:

the Other

in Arthur Kroker and David Cook's disturbing enough, Interestingly The Postmodern is the emblem Scene, the dominant book, postmodern avatars the its disembodied Cook and Kroker evoke satellite.10 in eye, spy of Foucault's Discipline and corporate symbol, the panopticon vacant the and reflective Punish, ("Le Miroir") of Magritte, eye-painting even in the floating film Liquid Sky. This alien of the cult optical the CBS

disembodied of Georges course,

CNN's

eye also recalls Kristeva's Soleil Noir and the upturned eye UHistoire de l'oeil. More Bataille 's pornographic recently, of camera

has

become

the

ultimate

floating

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

eye,

reporting

98 war

NEW

as media

"live,"

event.

Cook

Indeed,

and

Kroker's

LITERARY

HISTORY

scene

postmodern

or less than a global information network, where the subject even atavistic. For in this not only transparent but helpless, seems to herald the demise of Oedipal aftermath?which bleak sex and of (both reality phone intersubjectivity?virtual "projections" is no more is rendered

sorts)

have

real

replaced

contact.

human

In

same

the

and

vein,

more

influential essay on postmodernism as well as his more recent work (The the death of the social, wherein the trumpets Transparency of Evil), of communication.11 the eye augers intersubjective implosion floating Baudrillard's prose conjures up a futuristic vision of an hallucinatory in a kind of space capsule, in the isolated being, a satellite-man floating a kind of virtual reality, the ultimate Nintendo "The of game, grip of In this circuit the of Communication." bliss, subject has Ecstasy still, Jean Baudrillard's disturbing ("The Ecstasy of Communication"),

a screen

become

circulation talking

of

sorts,

a flat

that has replaced

to one

another,

social

agonistic than

rather

in an

terminal

of pure

orgy

interaction

information

(that is, people Interface?

messages).

exchanging

line?has replaced face to face, in line. In the bleak vision of The Transparency of Evil (1993), for instance, an isolated disembodied satellite man, a robotic describes Baudrillard "the more-visible mesmerized hypervisibility, by pornographic subject on

than-the-visible

what

. . . the

of what

obscenity

in information

dissolves

no

longer

has

any

secret,

communication"

and

of

(EC

completely 131). the loss of dimen Like Baudrillard, (The Inhuman) describes Lyotard no is that sional intersubjectivity, space longer an enabling suggesting interval

between

subjects,

the

scene

of

the

exchanged

gaze:

contempo

scene

of communication without community, rary cyberspace in Lyotard's information.12 saturated with hypervisible Interestingly, are paramount: but whereas work as in Baudrillard's, optical thematics on the insists laments a surfeit of transparency, Baudrillard Lyotard to our view, and stubborn opacity of matter which remains impermeable to resist the suggests that the intractability of matter may be mustered some for human of the virtual, retaining agency. purchase transparency with the Like his fellow postphilosophers, Slavoj Zizek is concerned of the virtual, Looking Awry at such optical in the age of the ascendancy fiction and mystery or horror culture as detective instances of popular on film. But in spite of his concern with user-friendly topics, Zizek's take is anything but sanguine: he too depicts a subject who is postmodernism "obscene" virtual reality (X-rated of overexposed prey to the fascination as well by the eruption of threatened and if Hitchcock, you will), always is the

Lacanian real into the web the menacing intrusion that awakens the paranoid millennial

of

reality?an symbolic subject from an absorp

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

99

tion in the image on the screen, with a reminder of the precariousness evident or meaningful. of all that appears invoke, for (One might the

instance, camera

lens,

effect?at

disconcerting an "obscene"

object

I suggest that absorption.) radical opacity [that] blocks affinity with Lyotard's notion matter, which remains all too Lyotard's man")

perspective, lurks which

our

a

movies?of onto

on

hair

screen

the

of

the

fantasy

this blot,

what Zizek calls "a producing has some every essay of interpretation,"13 of "the inhuman," in the sense of obdurate seems symptomatic, in visible. This matter

a certain

of in

the intruding

very

phantom nature,

alien

("the

presence eyeing

disconcerting,

us

inhu awry.

two notions, in turn?Zizek's "inhuman" blot, Lyotard's weighty as to read counternotions both Baudrillard's notion of be matter?may in the diaphanous the ubiquity of "the hypervisible" web of virtual that both limits culture and data, produced by the surfeit of information and exceeds our capacity of understanding. These

for the survival of the subject in the new world order, these in the notion of the global; ask if there is any sphericity more of the the apt reference for exploits Columbus?perhaps reversing seem to these essays is the voyage of Marco Polo?the postphilosophers trans discover that the world is indeed flat and self-same, increasingly to to the in itself. Thanks of the satellite eye parent ubiquitous sky Pleading reflections

the triangulated which has eclipsed surveillance, gaze, there Oedipal seems to be little Otherness left in each other. The human being is at a disembodied risk of becoming data terminal, "no longer earth bound," global

alienated

from

human

community,

a

cog

of

the

socioeconomic

nexus.

Still these works suggest that if any depth remains in human interac tion?if there is any sphericity left to support otherness, the resisting to is of the all-too-visible?it be found in the inhumanity perhaps cerebral eye which refuses to avert its gaze. All sphere of the human three works, from very different slants, enjoin the reader not just to look but to see, to engage something like "the listening eye" (Swedenborg via an act our encounter in of mindful with the of world. Lyotard) opacity in this telescopic in argues that the intellectual, the for rifts and reactivates quiry, "combing sky," looking reversibility, the role of the subject's eye in the search for answers. sees opaque matter as Here Baudrillard approaches Lyotard?who the stubbornly sublime stuff of creativity, and a symptom of a radically an inassimilable that haunts the species?and alterity, "inhumanity" sees an ineffaceable as of who "the obscene Zizek, object postmodernity" of to that sticks that refuses be flattened. out, presence something an thus is of obstruction?a distance Language sign unbridgeable Indeed

between

Baudrillard

self

and

its objects?rather

than

a serviceable

tool

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

that

"reflects"

100

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

the world. Moreover, the materiality of language is the stuff of projective in symbolic space, rather than narcissistic reflection. We identification, that

say

might

the mirror

of

language

a convex

as

acts

refractor,

rather

than flat reflective surface. It does not repeat narcissistic it self-sameness; alienates and constitutes a in like subjects something "paranoid" bond, where what we know only comes to us through the refracted vision of an other. onlooking is slightly different: an Other he postulates as a emphasis as a felt the is that of mind haunted remainder, phantom anguish by a familiar and unknown guest which is it delirious but agitating it, sending it think, or at least intuit the also making He if that suggests unthought. one claims to exclude this one an if doesn't it outlet, Spectral Other, give one aggravates it. But as Freud already suggests in Beyond the Pleasure in human beings "remainder" (the Principle, if there were no inhuman to the there would be no creative death-impulse, compulsion repeat) Lyotard's

play

access

no

and

to

humanity.

our debt to childhood, an unsocializable remainder, Acknowledging our that native to resist the Lyotard suggests "inhumanity" be mustered machinations of the automaton.14 Lyotard seeks to enlist this insistent in the work of culture and politics: authentic "this debt to diff?rend is one we never pay off. ... It is the task of writing, childhood thinking, to it" (17). For Lyotard as for literature, arts, to venture to bear witness less is at stake here than the fate of the human Baudrillard, nothing for in the age we risk becoming subject, postmodern programmable, over to bits and communication which is circulatory and given by pieces rather

regulatory antidote

to

than

the

of

virus

and

progressive sameness:

an

But

contingent. appeal,

there

paradoxically,

an

is to

the

is the kernel of our humanity. much of The Inhuman deals with a revision of Kantian Accordingly as the "presentation aesthetics of the sublime?characterized that the inhuman

which

opposes passibility cannot

see

feeling

certain

facile

postmodern

chic

Lyotard

a certain of avant-garde the difficulty demands art, which from its viewer, a receptivity to the work of art in its irreducible as matter,

presence

a

To

exists."

unpresentable

as an

everything,

requires

"the

event

that

that matters.

Artists

the unpresentable

extinction

. . the

of.

subject's

make

us

exists:

The

mirror

...

see

that

we

sublime of

its most

elementary capacity for synthesis" (7157). on the sublime, In his post-Kantian ruminations Lyotard thus signals the end of Kantian aesthetics of the beautiful. Whereas painting used to serve

an

ordering

function,

with

the

eye

of

the monarch

as

vanishing

the avant-gardes of painting seek out new point, the focus of perspective, "indirect and all but ungraspable rules, new vantage-points, making to the invisible in the visible" (1126). The allusion artist avant-garde

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

POSTMODERN

101

PERSPECTIVE

to the "matter" at enjoins us to listen with the eye, to lend ourselves its anamnesis" hand, for "matter in our effort performs (I 46). "The senses the of the in the listening eye" presentation unpresentable as matter that refuses of the attentive idealization; just obstinacy to the barrage of postmodern "internal ear" remains impervious white like the artist, the writer works with matter, for "words And in the most secret place of thought, are its matter" themselves, (7142). Thus though the Kant is everywhere here, so is Freud: the sublime version of Freud's uncanny; the might well be called the postmodern return of the repressed is the return of obdurate matter, the object that the seer in a field of reciprocal insists on being seen, and on captivating not to his be that reduced may gazes superior one-point perspective. a sidestep Like Lyotard, Zizek is concerned with a shift in perspective, noise.

that

allows

the

to

viewer

an

perceive

alien

uncanny,

in

presence

the

field

sticks out from (see LA ch. 8). This phallic surfeit of presence incommensurate its surroundings, with our normal organizing perspec tive. In "The Hitchcockian Blot" (chapter 5), Zizek rehearses Lacan's on Holbein's "The Ambassadors": "At the bottom of the commentary

of vision

picture, of an

under amorphous,

the

figures

of

extended,

the

two

'erected'

a viewer

ambassadors, It is

spot.

only

when,

catches on

sight the

very

threshold of the room in which the picture is exposed, the visitor casts a final lateral glance at it that this spot acquires the contours of a skull, of the picture?the thus the true meaning disclosing nullity of all terrestrial goods, objects of art and knowledge that fill out the rest of the picture" This

(LA 90-91). phallic

stain

denatures

the

rest

of

the

picture,

as

the

now

a double take of sorts, casting a skewed gaze at suspicious viewer does the image. Thus we could say that Holbein's the sidelong image makes a viewer a bit paranoid, from lateral of the vantage point, leery peering revealed representation straightforward by the head-on perspective: to be, everything is what it seems is to be interpreted, "nothing to possess some supplementary is supposed (LA everything meaning" And since "the oscillation lack and surplus meaning between 91). the proper dimension constitutes of subjectivity" (LA 91), all meaning is resonance: hence imbued "It skewed because with subjective, paranoid is by means of the 'phallic' spot that the observed picture is subjectivized: our position as 'neutral,' 'objective' observer, [it] undermines pinning us to the observed object itself. This is the point at which the observer is a way, it is thepoint inscribed in the observed scene?in already included, at which the looks back us" In other (LA 91, my emphasis). from picture itself the alien object, the viewer momentarily perceiving adopts the the of knows who that the is world position paranoid, always looking back at him, as an object. Like the intrusive anamorphic skull, the object of

words,

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

102

NEW

is a sign "of the world's of incommensurate

LITERARY

HISTORY

(LA 8), of the impossible As such, the object is perspectives. entrance and importune?its marks the excessive very inaccessibility this entry into desiring into subjective humanity. And is subjectivity indeed fraught with trouble, for in a sense what we assume, along with our subjectivity, is our objectivity, our capacity to die as subject, to submit to the other's gaze in an act of identification that warps the centrality of

desire

inconsistency"

coexistence

our own vision. To be a subject, is, then, to step out of misrecognition to see clearly by looking askance. into a tragic recognition, and is not just a In other words, subjectivity implies intersubjectivity, of the imaginary and the symbolic, but also of the real (as function as Zizek And insists, Lacan draws a clear distinction death-drive). between

the real?the

symbolic

reality, which

the

pact

of

our

is "out there"?and brute material world which is always a function of interpretation, caught in of

construction

intersubjective

in

meaning,

the

contex

tual social world. Fantasy is "unreal"; reality is what we all agree is real; "matter" and Baudrillard's the real itself?like "strange Lyotard's even

attractor"?resists scenely

this

even

assimilation,

while

ob

remaining

present.

"real" that inhabits every object and and meaningless cannot be willed away or assimilated by the work every meaning simply course is of in Holbein's skull of projection. (The significant and picture must cast it be viewed, from which but its awry, position, symbolic, nature of matter, the and nonsensical reminds us of the contingency us cast it to in this allows A awry: framing real.) argument sidestep For

the brute

we

perspective,

Lyotard's

may

argue

that

the

real

is matter

that

refuses

to vacillate when it erupts. and which causes significance symbolization, is associated In other words, the kernel of the real in every symbolization in the symbolic order it with the drive that will never be exhausted sustains.

of the real object both this obdurate kernel Thus paradoxically, and sustains reality, just as Holbein's undermines image of Renaissance the and undermined life is both supported by image of the skull, the Renaissance humanist the of life, imposed "real" meaning upon so looks of triumph. The psychotic, metanarrative however, awry at of sees the the that that she guarantor meaning, symbolic Other, reality does not exist, a blinding knows) that can sever all insight (as Oedipus is delusional because ties with normal precisely reality. The psychotic her object

paranoia becomes

envelop But

dominant,

the entire even

more

contains

for

field

"normal"

than as

of vision, subjects,

a kernel it

expands

outside "The

of

the to

for

real;

determine,

skew,

alien and

consensus.

of symbolic emergence

the

her,

of

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

language

opens

103

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

up a hole in reality, and this hole shifts the axis of our gaze. Language that can be filled redoubles reality into itself and the void of the Thing out only by an anamorphotic gaze from aside" (LA 13). In language, then,

the

in

subject

healthy

"recognition"

two

occupies

at

places

once,

drive as the inexorably obscene presence accepting to live symbolically nonetheless, of matter, and following the injunction as though the hole in sense may be patched, albeit from a side angle. is an essential human trait. Thus the ability to shift subject positions to is For to be a human be surrounded excessive subject by objects, the real of the death

human

and

return

which

inanimate,

the

the

gaze:

model

anamorphic

of

outside the suggests that we all must adopt positions painting the Renaissance of lord (of prince, sovereign vantage point one-point in order to shift our perspectival field (see FF 86-89). perspective) at oneself in Lacan's theory, it is the deflected Indeed, glance?gazing us to out a of the Other?that the stake speculation permits through to in Our is constituted relation in others, subject position. subjectivity that "you never look at me from the place where the realization I see

Holbein's

you"

(FF 74). And "hears

she

others;

every voices"

subject that

are

is formed her

snare

of

always

two

at

theory

of Lacan's

that

pun

hears

assures,

in

the

Poe,

knowledge

may be read

purloined

its destination."

seems it may

angles:

on

she

"the a letter

to suggest be

that paranoid

considered

as

either

the

in error?hopelessly "errant" psychotic adrift from or as the of interaction; grounding intersubjectivity, of all-too-human dealings dupes with their fellows. famous

of

images

voice

to her as the answer from the Other caught in the

transference,

(counter)

projective

formulation

closing arrives

Lacan's from

a

love,

the

rather,

is her own "message," returning from beyond the other. This is the voice of the unconscious, famous

introjected

by

or

own,

the

name

of

the

father

(le nom

du

of

province

the

human

p?re:

symbolic the daily double Evoking Lacan's le

non-dupe

erre,

in French), Zizek reminds us that the only way pronounced identically not to be duped is to err ("the non-duped err"), to look awry, to wander outside the normal point of view?to oneself up to the possibility of give The to does not belong seen, objectified. being privileged perspective of the overseeing the of the lord but eye prince, one-point perspective, to

the This

mind. wandering an view suggests

answer

to Baudrillard's

assertion

of

the

"trans

parency" of evil: you must deflect your gaze to see the alien presence the skull) that inhabits human existence, and to get (the death-drive, out of narcissistic and even psychotic closure. is the This paranoid breach wherein the other, as subject, is implicated, not just "projected" in our image, but understood to be the object that objectifies us in turn,

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

104

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

that situates us in a world of seeing objects that look back, irrecuperably a way to get out of the "hell of altering our vision, but also providing sameness" (7E174). vector of projective The positive is also germane identification to our of the of world. For Lacan's Lyotard's interrogation "inhumanity" is formed mimetically, the theory posits an ego which by introjecting is adumbrated image of the other. This notion by Freud in Totem and is Taboo, where he suggests that identification (with the tribal father) in the effected cannibalistic that him, gesture actually by devouring the tribal totem. For psychoanalysis, the play then, it is precisely grounds of the

inhuman

the "savage" identification with the human, with the is of constitutive the human, the taboo other, which grounding the ego (Lacan). It is by a mechanism of introjec (Freud), constructing tion and identification that the subject is constituted; and subsequently

alien

it is through projection of the self into the place of the other, that the for other purloined subject "lends an ear" (perhaps in exchange parts) to the other, in what Lyotard calls the "multiplication of minds which causes the diversity of the world and complexity of bodies" (I 41). in of the effect Hitchcock's Zizek's cinema paranoid Similarly, reading its objectifying the object sticks out, obscenely, force, where amplifies a paranoid effect (LA 42). and looks back at us, producing be seen as "paranoid" in Indeed, all three of these treatises might of authoritative

their mistrust that

in

Zizek's

words

"the

symbolic Other

must

significance not

know

and all,"

their insistence that

no

one

a global view (LA 74). For we only appre can encompass perspective a stance that acknowledges that every view is off hend the "other" from itself is a point of view, a matter of locus. This is kilter, that knowledge the lesson of Lacan's reading of Poe's parable of purloined knowledge: not even the detective he is only the organ is the site of fixed knowledge; that no One is a know-it-all of projective identification, demonstrating identification with others, the (he is only le sujet suppos? savoir). Through as threatening little piece of the real?not sleuth sees the obvious?the all-too but as visible floating signifier. The hypervisible, hallucination, evident, transparent clue becomes visible when the too-public eye in the the seeing private "I." becomes sky that haunts paranoid discourse,

V. Epilogue:

Postfiction

and Paranoia

two examples of this paper, I would like to examine one two in of the each fiction, exemplifying projection paranoid serves as both Paranoia of paranoia (salutary or noxious). readings The Blindfold novel of Siri Hustvedt's theme and mode frightening To

conclude

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

105

PERSPECTIVE

POSTMODERN

the is a central preoccupation: (1993).15 At the level of plot, paranoia main character of The Blindfold suffers from the anxiety of being watched than a hint that it is her own and there is finally more and pursued, Iris seems the text's heroine her. For is that interiorized stalking guilt the first-person into several menacing personae: split and projected who shares her room in the psychiatric ward the madwoman narrator; a male character (Klaus) (who seems to be an onlooking alter-ego); a novel she is translating; a photogra from borrows she whose identity a demonic character named Paris pher who takes lewd photos of her; shows

who

From when

up

Iris

she

wherever

is.

an uncanny,

sentence

the opening encounters

the

Mr.

enigmatic

delusional

Morning,

is set,

ambiance

a sinister

recluse

who

hires her to do research for a "biography of inanimate objects" belong a and for which he requires absurdly precise woman, ing to murdered a typical detailed is, of course, (the obscenely object descriptions into Iris's descent delirium theme). begins Significantly, postmodern and his obscene the "murderer" with the encounter with objects. an excess of of her own descriptions, by the hyperrealism Spawned a life of their own, and begin to haunt her on take the objects reality, not in the usual way we think of objects as lifeless" ("They weren't dead, Mr. As ("bits [24]). pervades her consciousness Morning progressively invaded my of his conversation and pieces appearing thoughts, to at night" at all hours, especially unsummoned [25]), Iris begins her

suspect

merely But

she

that

fears

she

is

paranoid,

things.

imagining

is not

paranoia

or

is the murderer,

employer

just

a

theme

of

the

it is a structural

novel;

device.

links delusion with the reading and writing this narrative explicitly a as as in certain well with game, projective mode of thinking, especially

For

narratives

alternating

Iris

concerning

and

her

alter-ego

Klaus?the

in a novel she is transliterating character (that is, both reading the For Iris both reads and invents her alter-ego, spinning and writing). sadistic

other's

existence

of

her as

in a seedy men's the thinking,

own she

"daily cross-dresses

residue." and

Klaus prowls

Iris's

becomes New

York

at

suit. Like a dreamer

of sorts, Iris engages in an of her Other outwards, casting identification which has a decidedly relation of aggressive resonance in the ("Klaus" seems to pursue her, incarnate

night dressed in projective imaginary

out

other,

nocturnal/oneiric

paranoid enigmatic figure of Paris). if Paris, and the other persecutors, But the novel leaves us to wonder own are projections, In other of Iris's fevered imagination. figments a view narrative certain of of the itself lends the words, "paranoid" point too to is the reader's reader undecidability experience?the caught in to suspect that the collapse or failure of the Symbolic order, beginning

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

106

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

than the reality they appear to simple things harbor more significance reflect. One might even say, after Lacan, that the sinister objects that Iris in the initial incident are the "unsymbolized" fails in describing ele ments

are

that

cast

out,

a hole

tearing

in

real.

the

is rescued momentarily Although by a love affair with an older too her lover is finally contaminated professor, by their "project," sadistic fantasy wherein bringing Klaus to life in a reciprocally projected Iris is bound, blindfolded, and raped. After her abandonment by the is the sinister character Paris (evoking both lover, Iris's final projection the mythological raptor and the city), who has no real name and who seems to show up wherever she is. When she finally confides her to him, he laughs, then pushes his hand "over the terrifying experiences she

she runs into the [her] dress between [her] legs"?nauseated, by the black hole of New York (just as her photo engulfed blot in a snapshot, image had been engulfed by a hallucinatory graphic in an earlier episode). Thus in the final image, she is pursued, described and sardonic figure, an incarnation "like a bat out of hell," by a demonic of all the men who have abused her, and a projection of her guilty desire of

cloth

subway,

for

men.

these

a fundamental the novel fiction, suggests, paranoid requires or maintained illusion: the novel thus undecidability begins with a scene But

of

aftermath,

the

immersing

reader

in

the

of

ambiance

a

sinister

after

even now I think I see him in the street or effect: "Sometimes standing in a window or bent over a book in a coffee shop. And in that instant, that it's someone before I understand else, my lungs tighten and I lose my breath" (3). Even if the reader is unsure who "he" is, she knows that a threatening is "still" around: indeed, the residual shadow of madness of

presence

the

ters,

other

lurking

So in this terrifying

the

opens

paranoia

vicissitudes

the

exceeding

novel

of

plot

narrative.

in several

always functions or

character

or

regis struc

narrative

of reading the dynamic itself: the delusion works ture, and entering the reader in a lurid from within the narrative points of view, engrossing like delirium. We are drawn into this web, significantly, by something the compulsive what Zizek calls "the obscene object of postmodernism," This is the iteration of the murdered women's possessions. and obsessive or cast refuses defies that assimilation, symbolization, object description out in a Verwerfung that rends the fragile web of reality, leaving a hole for Since we can only speculate on what is real and psychotic projection. of hallucina what is not, our reading has been lured into an enactment As Mr. himself identification. suggests: "Imean tory projective Morning that You've

you've already

The world

the

invented chosen

does

an

indeed

story

yourself. a way ending,

seem

... out"

It

belongs

to

you,

not

me.

(36).

to end, as the narrator's

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

"blindness"

(The

POSTMODERN

107

PERSPECTIVE

Blindfold) seems to engulf the entire city, like the blot that engulfs her The novel shows external collapse (in the cataclysmic end photograph. of-the-world

as

fantasy,

the

narrative

into

disappears

the

"black

hole"

of

the subway) mirrored by internal collapse, as Iris is eaten alive by "the condition hole in the real." In this grim view the postmodern leads to a a a state closed of isolation and illness, upon itself, system collapse of and the intersubjective network, leaving only derisory "pornographic" shards of distorted reality. But a second perspective reveals a more of sanguine postmodernism or for a reentry reactivation into the recovery, allowing possibility, of a order. For if postmodern records the presence writing Symbolic certain watchful other, the eye in the sky, it also sometimes registers a a transparent and unified vision. This completely playful revolt against reflects the postmodern kind of projective vision of the thinking or maintained or reactivated desire, where of difference, undecidability an a social haunts us still, but as a comrade, self/alter-ego Oedipal on the lookout for the Other is fellow. A case in point being, always 'sLes Heures bleues, which, on a thematic level, again Raymond Queneau between dreaming, writing, and paranoid projec stages the relationship a medieval tive thinking.16 The text's hero is split into two protagonists, le duc d'Auge and Cidrolin, who may duke and a modern-day Parisian, each be read as paranoid projections of the other. As in The Blindfold, too begins with a scene of aftermath, this novel with a decidedly in the reader the of a certain dreamlike ambiance quality, immersing altered generated

fiction, d'Auge,

reality, from

an

end-of-the-world a

pun

on

and fuss or incident. the

"sovereign"

The

"projection."

the

word

histoire,

This wordplay on

perched

his

taken

narrative variously

is first introduced turret,

who

itself as

is

history,

by the Due

surveys

the

after

math of what seems to be the explosion of history and language ("Such a lot of history, or fuss, or how many stories, for a few puns!" [3]). The duke himself is an overseer here, an eye in the sky of sorts, scrutinizing the

fragments

strewn

about

cliches, and puns, historical Old Francs and new francs

the

landscape,

a

wordscape

consisting

of

saws and homilies made concrete (some on some the blacksmiths beach; idling

their chickens before they striking while the iron is hot; people counting are bits of cultural to These residue that seem to refuse hatch). are these about, scraps pell-mell, decompose. Lying linguistic/cultural not unlike the "daily residue" from which Freud is says the dream or the of that kernel inhabits the composed, reality always paranoid fantasy.

binary structure of the novel derives from the interwoven dream of Auge and Cidrolin; the medieval duke and the modern experiences each in dream each other, narratives, day bargekeeper alternating The

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

108

NEW

the other's

spinning

each

words,

of

out of his own

existence two main

the

is an

characters

LITERARY

HISTORY

In other

"daily residue." imaginary

until

alter-ego,

one

to a reunion of two day when they actually meet up, awakening same name that the have first selves, discovering they (Joachim). mirrored the of mutual is Moreover, process paranoid projection associated with the act of writing, for Cidrolin has the habit of scrawling graffiti on his own door, while asleep, "dreaming up" Auge; while Auge himself forges the cave paintings of prehistoric man, on his way to Paris and the twentieth century. is one

There

other

the

character,

important

who

passerby,

watches

his door

after it has been defamed every morning, repainting "murderer" every night. Eventually this witness exposes by the word as the author of his own calumny, forcing him to own up to his Cidrolin Cidrolin

own

nocturnal

shadowy

counterpart,

This

Auge.

and

existence, omniscient

to meet

hence

up

with

his to

contributes

passerby

dream

the

para

tone of the novel, embodying the reader's own role as onlooking to the "histoires." Significantly, as witness after the revelation of Cidrolin are again Cidrolin and Auge of his own defamation, the author noid

a

by

separated

great

flood.

waters.

receding

At

the

of blue

the appearance

with

In

a

end,

flowers

sense,

then,

then,

the

("ink blots" the

story

novel

on

recommences,

the page), the

parallels

in the

course

a

of

successful analysis, where the paranoid recognizes himself as the "other" the self. (Still, the reunion is provi who threatens him, and reunites that separates Cidrolin from his alter-ego wipes the sional: the flood slate

clean,

a new

making

ground

for

so

graffiti,

that

the

fiction

may

recommence.)

insofar as it enacts the failure 's work, Queneau a systems, is finally parable that rejects the global claims of even while in projective is the thinking. This engaging or of maintained reactivated desire, a vision of difference, Thus

of totalizing the paranoid, postmodern playful revolt

the sovereign's overview. As the blue flowers crop up, after the not by marked another celebrates Queneau "postmodernism": deluge, of differ but the information networks, by "undecidability" totalizing haunts us still, ence, where no "one" has the last word, where Oedipus that we are social beings, on the lookout for the Other. the guarantor there? cries the paranoid. Who goes Qui parle} ask the French Freud against

ians.

But

the

paratext

postmodern

also

carries

a

warning,

a lesson

to

the

that of the late twentieth century, the suggestion culture of narcissism asocial withdrawal may result in the return of the Other as a looming threat,

a

recounting fantasy

global

a holocaust.

catastrophe,

the tale of Oedipus,

contains

a

grain

of

whose

For

worst

as

Freud

fears were

reminds

realized,

truth.

Rutgers

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

University

us,

in

every

POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE 109 NOTES 1

See Teresa

See Jean as TE. 2 3

"The Age of Paranoia," Paragraph, 14, no. 1 (March The Transparency of Evil (New York, 1993); hereafter

See Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard, and Brian Massumi

Bennington 4 Joseph Literature 5

Brennan, Baudrillard,

Fredric

Smith

(New York,

Lacan,

1984). Chances: Taking

Works

Logic

on Knowledge,

Derrida,

20-45. in text

tr. Geoff

Psychoanalysis,

of Late Capitalism

(Durham,

and

N.C.,

tr. Alan Sheridan Concepts of Psychoanalysis, as Seminar XI in text as FF. Originally published

The Four Fundamental

p. 95; hereafter

(Paris, 1973). 7 See Sigmund Freud, of Paranoia (Dementia

A Report

Condition:

Kerrigan, 1984), p. ix. or The Cultural Postmodernism

Jameson,

1981),

(Minneapolis,

and William

(Baltimore,

1992). 6 See Jacques

The Postmodern

1991), cited

cited

in an Autobiographical Notes Account of a Case "Psycho-Analytic in The Standard Edition Paranoides)," of the Complete Psychological ed. James Strachey 12:9-82. (London, 1953-74),

of Sigmund Freud, The Psychoses, Book 1955-56, Lacan, tr. Russell Grigg Miller, (New York, Jacques-Alain 9 "No. 1: "If I were black the second guy would 8

III of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. cited in text as P. 1993), p. 36; hereafter know if he were black that the third guy know he must be white and would leave. The

Jacques

see two black and thus would patches, the second guy would know he's not black, but third guy doesn't leave, so if I'm black, I am white." This anecdote is So I am not black, leave. He doesn't. and he would white, in Anthony The Language the related and discussed Wilden, (Baltimore, 1984), pp. Self of 105-6.

would

10

See David

Cook

and Arthur

Kroker,

The Postmodern

Scene: Excremental

Culture

and

(New York, 1986). Hyper-Aesthetics tr. John of Communication" 11 See "The Ecstacy de la communication"), ("L'extase in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Johnston, cited in text as EC. Wash., 1983), pp. 126-34; hereafter Paranoia and the Hypervisible," "The Listening 26 Diacritics, Eye: Postmodernism, of Johns Hopkins Press. here by permission (1996), 90-107, University printed to Jacques Lacan 13 Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction Culture through Popular as in text hereafter LA. cited Mass., 1992), 151; p. (Cambridge,

12

14 15 16

The Inhuman cited Fran?ois Lyotard, (Stanford, 1991), p. 7; hereafter Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold cited in text. (New York, 1993); hereafter Les Fleures bleues (Paris, 1965), p. 3. Queneau, Raymond

This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:51:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

in text as /.