Reading Lacan's crits: From The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' by Derek Hook;Calum Neill;Stijn Vanheule;

Author:Derek Hook;Calum Neill;Stijn Vanheule;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Resistances here are the result of discourse. They are enunciated by the analysand in the form of tropes, which Lacan borrows from Quintilian again: catachresis, litotes, antonomasia, and hypotyposis.14

Metaphor and metonymy as Lacan has discussed them so far are primarily dealt with from a linguistic standpoint, following Jakobson, who Lacan cites for his contribution (440, n. 13). The reintroduction of Quintilian here suggests another context which is properly rhetorical. The logic of the unconscious is mediated by metaphor and metonymy and the subject is a species of metaphor. But the concrete discourse of the analysand should be understood rhetorically, and thus analyzed with the tools appropriate to that discipline. As Lacan says, “Can one see here mere manners of speaking, when it is the figures themselves that are at work in the rhetoric of the discourse the analysand actually utters” (433, 4)? Although Lacan conflates figure and trope somewhat, despite his separate lists, his reason for choosing trope is clear in Quintilian’s own writing on the subject: “By trope is meant the artistic alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another … the changes involved concern not merely individual words, but also our thoughts and the structure of our sentences” (1922: 301). Quintilian’s examples of metaphor are expansive and include many literary devices that we could classify separately, such as some anthropomorphisms that are not simple substitutions. Trope (and its French equivalent, trouver) have a Greek and Latin origin meaning “to turn.” While figures might be thought of as simple ornament, tropes are active operations that change both structure and meaning. Note that trope is not about choice—even Quintilian notes that they are in common use, and many examples in English could demonstrate how words that were once figurative become eventually proper labels. These are called “dead metaphors” because, while they remain metaphorical, this aspect does not register consciously with the speakers who employ them (“dead metaphor” is an example, as is “metaphor” itself—its literal roots mean between or above containers). Therefore, analysands may employ trope without knowing that they do so, and thus reveal the operations of the unconscious that interest their analysts.

Should we expect analysts to master not only the pathologies displayed by individual subjects but a range of literary, linguistic, and rhetorical concepts as well? In short, yes.

To interpret the unconscious as Freud did, one would have to be, as he was, an encyclopedia of the arts and muses, as well as an assiduous reader of the Fliegende Blätter15 … we must resolve to do so. The unconscious is neither the primordial nor the instinctual, and what it knows of the elemental is no more than the elements of the signifier.

(434, 2–3)

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