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Poe’s The Purloined Letter is a story whose plot revolves around the acts of seeing and not seeing. Hence psychoanalytical analysis of the story reveals not only the blindness of the characters but also the blindness of the reader. In his seminar on The Purloined Letter, Lacan states: “As we have seen, neither the King nor the police who replaced him in that position were able to read the letter because that place entailed blindness.” Although deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida accuses Lacan for seeing the story as an illustration of psychoanalytical truth and for not paying attention to the literary dimension while applying psychoanalytical theory to the text; I’ll be mentioning of Lacanian interpretation of the text in relation to the notion of “literary blindness”.
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First of all, In The Purloined Letter, as a reader we don’t know the content of the letter; thus we are blind to it. Poe’s characters are blind to the letter too. According to Lacan, the letter – independent from its content – returns where it was before; hence it always reaches at its destination. In the story, this movement of the letter as the phallus – for Lacan – indicates that nobody can actually possess the phallus. Nonetheless according to Lacan, the letter is doing something; it is functioning in the way that in enables the narrative without even suggesting any relevance of its signified. This function of the letter provides the one who seeks the letter (which can metaphorically represent the reader) with the opportunity of actual touch; since the letter’s function is not to stand for or make present some definite meaning. Eventually the reader who discovers the text step by step – becomes a detective like Dupin – becomes blind by the act of actual touching.
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Second of all, since the letter as a signifier doesn’t correspond to a definite signified, one can conclude that there is no system for one to fully possess the letter. In other words, the lack of the signified metaphorically points at “the impossibility of knowing how to read”. Therefore Dupin is able to find the letter, while the police can’t, despite their elaborate research. In this regard, Dupin represents the reader, who doesn’t know how to read, while the police stand for the one who knows how to read, but fails though. The police conclude with ultimate rationality that the letter must be in the apartment, which is correct. The police divide all squares of the apartment in pieces in order to investigate and still cannot find the letter. At this point, Lacan states that it is the language itself, when we talk about the letter (also meaning the letters of the alphabet). Lacan implies that the story constructs the letter as language; so this kind of letter cannot be divided. Even if one divides the letter, it would still be the letter. Therefore it doesn’t fit in the logic of the police; the letter in “The Purloined Letter” is an empty signifier.
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All in all, in order to find the letter one has to be engaged to the act of voluntary blindness. The emptiness of the signifier as Lacan suggests, leads one to not to know how to read in order to find the letter. This may be interpreted as follows: For the literary text to fulfill itself, as Blanchot would suggest, one shouldn’t know how to read. In “The Purloined Letter” Dupin realizes this act.
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