Poe’s “Purloined Letter” and Lacanian Psychoanalytical Criticism – 2

Continued…
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The letter in “Purloined Letter” by way of its movements, links, connects positions of people in different ways in their relationships to others. At his point, the function of the letter in the story is to simply position people. Jacques Lacan, in his analysis considers this structure as triangular one. He talks about two basic scenes that he’s interested in the story. First one is the primal scene, the events taking place in Queen’s room when the letter is stolen for the first time. Second scene is Minister’s apartment, where this time Dupin who can think like his opponent with empathy, steals the letter. I wish I could draw triangles but I can’t, so it’s better if you imagine.
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First scene: Lacan talks about these two scenes where the two different events of stealing the letter take place. One could think of a third scene for sure, but I’ll talk about this in the next post. In these two scenes, there are three available positions in relation to the other. The letter locates different people according to their relations to the letter. In the first scene, King is in the role of “blind”, doesn’t see the letter, the signifier, phallus. The King in a way signifies the “law” which is blind to the signifier. Signifier is a threat to the system. We can think of the King as symbolic system that’s blind to signifier. In relation to letter, Queen is person who sees that the “other” doesn’t see the letter. Queen knows that if she puts the letter full-view on table, King would not notice it and be curious. She is the first person who feels secure because of the possession of the letter; she sees that King doesn’t see. In his seminar, Lacan tells this story, the myth about ostriches. There are total of three ostriches: 1) First one puts its head in sand and thinks he’s invisible by doing that. 2) Second one sees that it has put its head in sand, so it can see what first one cannot see. Thus it thinks it is safe, secure. 3) The third one can come and pluck the second one’s rear. Queen thinks she is able to see, and she is safe. Lacan associates Queen basically with imaginary position; not exactly as repetition of mirror scene but similar. You see an image, you see something that doesn’t see you, so you conclude that you are powerful, and that you are able to see it. Third of all, there is the Minister in this first scene. He makes a kind of substitution, takes the original letter and puts a fake one in its place.
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Second Scene: Minister’s apartment. There are the Police, who cannot see (similar to the King in the first scene). According to Lacan, they are looking for the letter in reality. They are searching for an object. Actually their rationality which assumes that letter is an object is correct. They conclude with ultimate rationality that letter must be in the apartment, which is correct. The Police divide all squares of the apartment in pieces in order to investigate and cannot find the letter still. Lacan states that it is the language itself, when we talk about the “letter” (meaning the letters of the alphabet). Lacan interestingly and impressively implies that the story constructs the “letter” as language; so he goes on saying that this kind of letter cannot be divided. Even if you divide the letter, it would still be a letter. Therefore it doesn’t fit in the logic of the Police. The letter in Purloined Letter is an empty signifier. In this second scene, because the Police cannot find it, Minister thinks he is safe. Dupin sees what others are doing (He sees both Minister and the Police); and as the third person (similar to the Minister in the first scene) he finds the letter and substitutes it. We can see that from first scene to the second, Minister’s position changes. It is not because one character is more intelligent than the other, but because of their transforming relation to the letter. At this point Lacan firstly says that letter positions characters. Secondly he underlines that this is the story of how symbolic order constructs subjects. The substitution of signifier is the symbolic system which defines our beings, provides us with unconscious, defines us in accordance with relations to others and creates us as subjects. In substitution, you take position according to how you are related or relate yourself with the signifier (which is the letter in the story). You fantasize that you are in possession and recognize that you are always seen by the other. This kind of emphasis in Lacan is closely related with Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life: By the false identification with sense of security, sense of yourself as to be in possession of object, you keep failing, you keep losing. You see and think that the others cannot see; there is always the other that sees you so you are never full, complete.
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Shoshana Felman suggests that “not seeing at all” could be associated with Lacanian “the Real” but I guess it’s somehow problematic. The fact is that, the position of seeing that you are not seen is imaginary; a falsifying shield over lack and the ego. Symbolic as the other for Lacan may be understood in two ways: 1) Otherness of symbolic system; language for instance and the fact that you have to define yourself in a foreign system. 2) Unconscious. Within you, there is the otherness whose language you don’t know, knowledge that you don’t possess, what remembers everything that you don’t possess. In this case, Lacan states that “Unconscious is the discourse of the other”. One other thing: As I already mentioned in the beginning of first post, Lacan begins discussion of this story while talking about Beyond the Pleasure Principle of Freud. Freud in this book writes about death instinct. He formulates it by repetition compulsion. Freud observed something strange about his patients; people who had traumatic experiences repeated those experiences in their dreams, fantasies. For Freud, thinking about death brings along desire to repeat; desire to return the original equilibrium before birth. Lacan also begins his discussion with this formulation. He uses the idea of repetition compulsion in Poe’s story. For him, there was a repetition compulsion in the narrative, between the scenes 1 and 2 which I explained before. Two scenes are repeating certain structures. For Lacan’s interpretation, the story is repetition of structure. Additionally, story was not just about positioning of the subject but it is about how letter keeps returning by the repetition of structure. Thus Lacan concludes that “It’s the insistence of signifier in signifying chain and that’s compulsion to repeat.” For Freud, compulsion to repeat is desire of death. Lacan does not disagree, but places an intermediate step: Compulsion to repeat = compulsion to repeat the signifier which is constantly substituted. There is always a lack, absence, sliding of substitutions. Whole use of language in symbolic system is what we do through compulsion to repeat. Lacan agrees that there is something to do with death. This whole chain of substitution in symbolic order is kind of death; acceptance, living with death. Well, how? This is actually not a unique Lacanian idea; it is his regeneration of post-structuralist theme. Especially Derrida talks about “dying into language”. Entry into language, writing is a kind of death because it is a submission to something that is alien. You somehow accept your lack of uniqueness by entering a foreign system, by naming yourself within that system. Lacan states that initially you enter symbolic order. You give up the phallus and replace it with the name of the father by entering network of language. You accept your castration, lack and look for substitution. On the other hand, death is something unique, full, unsubstitutable and complete. While writing, you become divided by translating yourself into something else. That’s why there is some kind of death in entry to the symbolic. For Lacan, rather than death wish, it is carrying the knowledge of death; carrying yourself upon your knowledge, destructivity of death.
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I’ll go on talking about the “third scene” that I mentioned before in “Poe’s “Purloined Letter” and Lacanian Psychoanalytical Criticism-3”
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