Blanchot and Freud: The Step/Not beyond the Pleasure Principle

Author(s): Alan Bourassa

Source: SubStance, Vol. 24, No. 3, Issue 78 (1995), pp. 105-120
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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Blanchot and Freud: The
Step/Not
Beyond
the Pleasure
Principle
Alan Bourassa
But
dying,
no more than it cannot
finish
or
accomplish itself,
even in
death,
does not let
itself
be situated or
affirmed
in a relation
of life,
even as a
declining
relation,
a
declining of life...
And
life
knows
nothing of dying, says nothing
about
it, without, however,
confining itself
to
silence;
there
is,
suddenly
and
always,
a murmur
among
words,
the rumor
of
absence that
passes
in and to the outside
of
discourse...
-Blanchot,
Le Pas
au-dela
(The
Step
Not
Beyond
[93])
Freud's "Death Drive": An
Impossible Project
DOES FREUD EVER SPEAK OF DEATH? Does he ever make death
present
through speaking?
Does he realize death as
possibility
in
trying
to make it
the
object
of a scientific-albeit
speculative-discourse?
In
Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle,
Civilization and its
Discontents,
and The
Ego
and the
Id,
Freud traces out his elusive
theory
of the death
drive,
undaunted
by
the
impossibility
of his
project,
and
finds,
at the
end,
a still unresolved
disjunc-
tion between life and
death,
Eros and Thanatos. Libido seems to be
everywhere.
It is what
acts,
what
speaks,
what
conjoins-pure
affirmation,
an affirmation so relentless
that,
like the
pleasure principle,
it seems to
allow
nothing
to
escape
its
power.
It is that in relation to which death can
only
seem a
silence,
a
passivity,
an
inertia,
but still a silence that
stifles,
an
inertia that
anchors,
a
passivity
that resists
energy.
Death must act in
Freud. It does not
escape
libidinal
investment,
is not seen
except
in con-
junction
with Eros. For this
reason,
as we shall
see,
the death drive is
regarded,
if not as one of the
workings
of the
pleasure principle,
then at
least as a form of affirmation. But what other choice is
there,
if one is not to
become
entangled
in
impossibility
and
paradox?
Freud's
attempts
to dis-
tinguish
a death drive that works
against
the force of libido leads him into
just
such
entanglements.
Yet,
it is also
impossible
to
say
that the
question
of the death drive is
badly posed,
and does not
really
serve to
explain
SubStance
#78,
1995 105
106 Alan Bourassa
anything.
The death drive cannot be
dismissed,
because even if it does not
exist,
it
insists,
and its insistence will not be denied.
For Maurice
Blanchot,
the insistence of
dying,
its
impossibility,
its
incompleteness,
is the
starting point
of
any speech
that tries to
speak
of
dying.
Between
speaking
and
dying
there
is,
at
once,
an
unbridgeable gap
and
yet
a
resonance,
an absence rendered all the more intimate
by
proximity. Through
Blanchot,
we see that what is for Freud
beyond
the
pleasure principle
is not
death,
but
dying.
There is
dying beyond
the
pleasure principle.
There is
nothing beyond
the
pleasure principle.
These
statements do not contradict each
other,
but neither are
they
identical. The
"there is" is what renders the
question
of the
pleasure principle impossible.
As Blanchot observes in The
Writing of
the Disaster:
Between the two
falsely interrogative propositions-why
is there some-
thing
rather than
nothing?
and,
why
is there evil rather than
good?-I
do
not
recognize
the difference which is
supposed
to be
discernible,
for both
are sustained
by
a "there is"
[un "il
y
a"]
which is neither
being
nor
nothing-
ness,
neither
good
nor
evil,
and without which the whole discussion
collap-
ses,
or on account of which it has
already collapsed.
(65)
Does this movement of the neutral
correspond
to the
non-moving
move-
ment of the death drive?
Certainly
this does not describe Freud's own
view, but, rather,
a
paradox implicit
in the
concept
of "the death drive."
According
to Deleuze and
Guattari,
it is Freud who makes the death drive
a
principle
of
transcendence,
a kind of
pure
silence:
non-action,
non-desire.
Deleuze and
Guattari,
on the other
hand,
make death a
principle
of con-
struction,
of
affirmation,
a kind of zero state that each
system
or
"desiring-
machine" carries within itself:
We
say
... that there is no death instinct because there is both the model
and the
experience
of death in the unconscious. Death then is a
part
of the
desiring-machine,
a
part
that must itself be
judged,
evaluated in the
functioning
of the
desiring
machine and the
system
of its
energetic
conver-
sions,
and not as an abstract
principle.
(332)
For Deleuze and
Guattari,
nothing
is more affirmative than death.
Rather than
nothingness
or
unspeakable emptiness,
death is modelled on
"the
Body
without
organs"
("The
body
without
organs
is the model of
death"
[329]),
a state of
pure virtuality
from which all
possibilities
can be
actualized. Death is as much desire as is life:
Death is not
desired,
there is
only
death that
desires,
by
virtue of the
body
without
organs
or the immobile
motor,
and there is also life that
desires,
by
virtue of the
working organs.
There we do not have two
desires,
but two
SubStance
#78,
1995
106 Alan Bourassa
Blanchot and Freud 107
parts,
two kinds of
desiring-machine parts,
in the
dispersion
of the machine
itself.
(329)
This definition of the death drive
corresponds
more to Freud's
pre-
1920
definition,
in which the libidinal sexual instincts were
opposed
to the
self-preservative, aggressive ego
instincts invested
by
the death drive.
Freud was
forced,
in
Beyond
the Pleasure
Principle,
to define this difference
as
merely topological
(63).
Deleuze and
Guattari,
in
defining
the death
drive as a
part
of the same
desiring-machine
that includes
life-desires,
make the same
topological
distinction as Freud. The
dovetailing
of libido
and
ego
instincts leads Freud to a more
difficult,
even
impossible, question.
Libidinal instincts-which now include both sexual and
ego
instincts-are
opposed by
the death drive which must
be,
in some
way,
non-libidinal. But
death is so
easily,
so
inevitably,
defined in terms of
life,
that it is difficult to
imagine speaking
of death.
Freud faces this
problem
when
trying
to find some
way
of
indicating,
if
only indirectly,
the
workings
of the death drive. The
paradoxical
nature
of the
very
term "death drive," not lost on
Jacques
Lacan
(101),
forces
Freud into
defining
the death
drive,
now as
pure
silence,
working by
a
kind of
inorganic
passivity
("...
we shall be
compelled
to
say
that 'the aim
of
all
life
is death'
and,
looking
backwards,
that inanimate
things
existed
before
living
ones"
[Beyond
46]),
and now as an active force
only
stifled
by
a
stronger
sexual drive
which,
once exhausted
through
satisfaction,
fails to
control the
upsurge
of death as an
agent:
... death coincides with the act of
copulation
in some of the lower animals.
These creatures die in the act of
reproduction
because,
after Eros has been
eliminated
through
the
process
of
satisfaction,
the death instinct has a free
hand for
accomplishing
its
purposes. (Ego
and Id
46-47)
Indeed,
the fusion of the mute death drive with the "clamor" of the
libidinal drive becomes a
strategy
that allows Freud to
bring
the death
drive,
however
problematically,
into the realm of
speaking.
Once this
death drive is made an
object
of
thought
it
becomes,
for
Freud,
not so much
a
principle
as a
category
for
explaining
a number of
phenomena
that seem
to
point
to a force
"beyond
the
pleasure principle."
For
Freud,
death is no
longer simply
that which
opposes
life or tries to return life to its
origins
in
inorganic
matter. The death drive becomes an
explanation
for those errant
processes
that seem to fit neither into the unconscious nor into the con-
scious-preconscious (Stoodley
184-185).
These errant
processes
are,
as
Laplanche points
out,
hardly compatible
with each
other,
and include "the
SubStance
#78,
1995
Blanchot and Freud 107
108 Alan Bourassa
reduction of tension to zero
(Nirvana),
the
tendency
towards
death,
self-ag-
gressiveness,
the search for
suffering
or
unpleasure"
(108).
Laplanche goes
on to demonstrate how one of the cornerstones of
Freud's death drive
theory,
the "Nirvana
principle,"
is
compatible
with a
heightening
of tension and excitement rather than an ineluctable diminish-
ment. Freud
says:
The
dominating tendency
of mental
life,
and
perhaps
of nervous life in
general,
is the effort to
reduce,
to
keep
constant or to remove internal
tension due to stimuli
(the "Nirvana
principle"
. .
.)-a
tendency
which
finds
expression
in the
pleasure principle;
and our
recognition
of that fact is
one of our
strongest
reasons for
believing
in the existence of death instincts.
(Beyond
67)
Laplanche,
however,
reminds us that a
principle
of
constancy
and a
zero
principle
are not
necessarily compatible.
If an
organic system
has as its
goal
the maintenance of a certain
energy
level
N,
then the
system
will
either evacuate
energy
when the level of tension is too
high
or seek excita-
tion when the
energy
level is too low. The
goal
of the
system
to maintain
homeostasis does not then lead it to a total evacuation of
energy
(113-114).
This
tendency
towards zero that characterizes the death drive would also
seem
incompatible
with its other
attributes-aggression
both towards the
self and towards the outside
world,
and the
compulsion
to
repeat.
Though
the idea of an
organism
whose main
goal
is to die seems
rather un-Darwinian for a thinker
trying
to
forge
bonds with
biology
(Sul-
loway
407),
Freud
attempted
to
explain aggressiveness
with reference to
the death
drive,
but
only
at the
price
of
making aggressiveness
for the
purpose
of survival a
secondary
characteristic of the
organism.
It
appears
that,
as a result of the combination of unicellular
organisms
into
multicellular forms of
life,
the death instinct of a
single
cell can
successfully
be neutralized and the destructive
impulses
be diverted on to the external
world
through
the
instrumentality
of a
special organ.
This
special organ
would seem to be the muscular
apparatus;
and the death instinct would
thus seem to
express itself-though probably only
in
part
-as an instinct of
destruction directed
against
the external world and other
organisms. (Ego
and Id
38-39)
But
surely
not
aggression
for the sake of
aggression.
The
aggression
turned
toward the
world,
whether in the form of
hunting, eating,
or
self-defense,
is more than the
projection
of an instinct to the outside in order to
protect
the
organism. Certainly aggression
towards the outer world-if
only
in the
form of the
placid
bovine destruction of
grass-is
a
primary
characteristic
of
any living organism,
and is far more
compatible
with the drive for
SubStance
#78,
1995
Alan Bourassa 108
Blanchot and Freud 109
survival than with the
tendency
toward death. These
aggressive
drives,
it
is to be
remembered,
are the same drives that Freud saw as the basis of
ego
production,
an
ego production
that,
after
1920,
Freud called libidinal.
The death drive-in the form of
aggressiveness-even
when not
projected
to the outside
world,
can be
introjected
and form a
part
of the
severe
superego
(Civilization 78).
Deleuze and Guattari
complain
that
Freud "could no
longer
conceive the essence of life
except
in a form turned
back
against
itself,
in the form of death itself"
(333).
This
turning
of life
against
itself that
goes by
the name of death also raises the
question
of
sadism and
masochism,
which Freud sees as two
phases
of a
single
move-
ment.
But how can the sadistic
instinct,
whose aim is to
injure
the
object,
be
derived from
Eros,
the
preserver
of life? Is it not
plausible
to
suppose
that
this sadism is in fact a death instinct
which,
under the influence of the
narcissistic
libido,
has been forced
away
from the
ego
and has
consequently
only emerged
in relation to the
object?
...
Masochism,
the
turning
round of
the instinct
upon
the
subject's ego,
would,
in that case be a return to an
earlier
phase
of the instinct's
history,
a
regression. (Beyond
66)
Repetition:
"An
Awesome,
Independent
Force"
Leaving
aside the
question
of
pain,
of how or
why pain
indicates the
working
of the death drive
(since
pain
is more
accurately interpreted
as a
part
of the
body's
self-defensive feedback
system),
we can see in
masochism the trace of an older and more relentless drive than either life
or
death-repetition.
In
Masochism,
Deleuze subordinates
pain
to the work-
ings
of
repetition, saying,
"This is the essential
point: pain only acquires
significance
in relation to the
forms of repetition
which condition its use"
(119).
For Freud the
pleasure principle
is
suspended by
a force
binding
in-
stinctual excitation:
...
only
after the
binding
has been
accomplished
would it be
possible
for
the dominance of the
pleasure principle
(and of its modification, the
reality
principle)
to
proceed
unhindered. Till then the other task of the mental
apparatus,
the task of
mastering
or
binding
excitations,
would have
precedence-not,
indeed,
in
opposition
to the
pleasure principle,
but inde-
pendently
of it and to some extent in
disregard
of it.
(Beyond
41)
Only
a
highly
cathected
system
has the
energy
to bind
incoming
excita-
tions;
a
system
can be
hyper-cathected,
that
is,
have more
energy
directed
towards it in order to bind more
powerful
excitations. This
speculation
led
Freud to assume the existence of a neutral desexualized
energy
that
SubStance
#78,
1995
Blanchot and Freud
109
110AlnBuas
proceeds
from a narcissistic
appropriation
of Eros and that
operates
both in
the
ego
and the id
(Ego
and Id
42).
He writes:
The transformation [of erotic
libido]
into
ego-libido
of course involves aban-
donment of sexual
aims,
a desexualization...
By
thus
getting
hold of the
libido from the
object-cathexes, setting
itself
up
as the sole love
object,
and
desexualizing
or
sublimating
the libido of the
id,
the
ego
is
working
in
opposition
to the
purposes
of Eros and
placing
itself at the service of the
opposing
instinctual
impulses. (Ego
and Id
44-45)
Here,
Freud assumes a force counter to
libido,
the death
drive,
but
places
it
in the service of a
desexualized,
neutral
energy
that is able to cathect both
erotic and destructive
impulses
(42).
Thus desexualization seems-like
repetition-to
function as a force that
precedes
both the life and death
instincts,
or at least functions
independently
of them. On the other
hand,
it
is also
possible
to see this force-because it
proceeds
from the
ego's ap-
propriation
of the id's
object-cathexis-as
a force
operating
under the
governance
of the
pleasure principle. Repetition
also has this
problematic
relationship
to the
pleasure principle.
Repetition
is characterized
by
Deleuze as a
binding power
that
proceeds
from Eros and holds both life and death under its
sway.
Al-
though
Freud sees the
compulsion
to
repeat
as "more
primitive,
more
elementary,
more instinctual than the
pleasure principle
which it over-
rides"
(Beyond
25),
he also sees
binding
as a force which acts "on
behalf
of
the
pleasure principle;
the
binding
is a
preparatory
act which introduces
and assures the dominance of the
pleasure principle" (Beyond
75-76).
Deleuze sees in
repetition
a twofold character. In one form it acts as a force
that
precedes
even the death
drive,
that renders the death drive
only
a
secondary
effect. He writes:
The
"binding"
action of Eros...
may,
and indeed
must,
be characterized as
"repetition"-repetition
in
respect
of
excitation,
and
repetition
of the mo-
ment of
life,
and the
necessary
union...
repetition
is what holds
together
the
instant;
it constitutes
simultaneity.
But
inseparable
from this form of the
repetition
we must conceive of another which in its turn
repeats
what was
before
the instant-before excitation disturbed the indifference of the unex-
citable and life stirred the inanimate from its
sleep
. . .
Beyond
Eros we
encounter
Thanatos;
beyond
the
ground,
the
abyss
of the
groundless;
beyond
the
repetition
that
links,
the
repetition
that erases and
destroys.
(114)
Repetition
here becomes "an
awesome,
independent
force"
(Deleuze 120)
behind which
life, death,
and
pleasure
follow
obediently.
No
longer
in the
service of
mastery, repetition puts
into
question
the
efficacy
of
power
and
mastery
themselves. One does
not,
in other
words,
repeat
in order to
SubStance
#78,
1995
Alan Bourassa 110
Blanchot and Freud
111
master;
rather, one is mastered
by repetition,
a
repetition
that
refuses,
in
spite
of its
primacy,
to serve as a
grounding
for
any principle:
"No sooner
have we reached the condition or
ground
of our
principle
than we are
hurled
headlong beyond
to the
absolutely
unconditioned,
the
'ground-less'
from which the
ground
itself
emerged"
(Deleuze 114).
We find ourselves on the
edge
of an
abyss,
and before I allow Blanchot
the final
shove,
I want to
stop
and reiterate what we have uncovered so far
in the Freudian death drive. Freud
has,
in
fact,
discovered
processes
that
are not
directly
under the
sway
of the
pleasure principle. Binding,
like
repetition
and
desexualization,
seems to
oppose
the
pleasure principle.
But
for
Freud,
binding
is
precisely
what founds the
pleasure principle.
It is
libidinal both in its
energy
source and its
goals. Repetition
occurs in the
name of
mastery
and desexualization in the name of
energy.
Thus,
if there
is a
beyond
of the
pleasure principle,
there seems to be
nothing beyond
libido. When
Laplanche
concludes that ". .. the death drive does not
possess
its own
energy.
Its
energy
is libido.
Or,
better
put,
the death drive
is the
very
soul,
the constitutive
principle,
of libidinal circulation"
(124),
he
acknowledges
two irreconcilable
aspects
of the death drive.
First,
it does
not
displace
libido. There is
only
libido,
nothing
else. What is done in the
unconscious,
what is
bound,
discharged,
sexualized, desexualized,
is done
with the
energy
of libido.
Second,
it somehow makes
possible
libidinal
circulation. This recalls Deleuze and Guattari's
body
without
organs,
the
"immobile
motor,"
the zero state of
pure virtuality
from which an as-
semblage springs.
The death drive functions not as a
drive,
but as a set of
intervals, differences,
displacements.
Blanchot:
Not
Death,
But
Dying
In theoretical
discourse,
death is
anything
but
inevitable;
there is noth-
ing
more
elusive,
nothing
that evades
experience
more
completely.
Yet
nothing
seems more
important.
Libido is marked
by
what refuses to
exist,
speech
is incited
by
what refuses to be
spoken.
The
incompleteness
of
Freud's
project
to
provide
a scientific discourse on death-indeed the im-
possibility
of the
project
from the outset-is the
sign
of the
working
of
something
that I hesitate to name, but that Blanchot has
struggled
with
throughout
his
writings.
The first interaction of Blanchot and
Freud,
one that seems
vitally
necessary,
is the
rereading
of the Freudian death drive
through
the
Blanchotian distinction between death and
dying.
SubStance
#78,
1995
Blanchot and Freud 111
112 Alan Bourassa
There is in
death,
it would
seem,
something stronger
than
death;
it is
dying
itself-the
intensity
of
dying,
the
push
of the
impossible,
the
pressure
of the
undesirable even in the most desired. Death is
power
and even
strength-
limited,
therefore. It sets a final
date,
it
adjourns
in the sense that it
assigns
to a
given day-both
random and
necessary-at
the same time that it defers
till an
undesignated day.
But
dying
is
un-power.
It wrests from the
present,
it is
always
a
step
over the
edge,
it rules out
every
conclusion and all
ends,
it does not free nor does it shelter. In
death,
one can find an
illusory refuge:
the
grave
is as far as
gravity
can
pull,
it marks the end of the
fall;
the
mortuary
is the
loophole
in the
impasse.
But
dying
flees and
pulls
in-
definitely, impossibly
and
intensively
in the
flight.
(Disaster 47-48)
The
attraction,
the
"pull"
that
dying
exercises on what exists is not the
result of its
offering
a
positive presence.
Attraction,
for
Blanchot,
is
ground-
less,
not so much a force as a void. As Foucault writes:
To be attracted is not to be beckoned
by
the allure of the
outside; rather,
it is
to
experience
in
emptiness
and destitution the
presence
of the outside
and,
tied to that
presence,
the fact that one is
irremediably
outside the outside...
The outside cannot offer itself as a
positive presence-as something
inward-
ly
illuminated
by
the
certainty
of its own existence-but
only
as an absence
that
pulls
as far
away
from itself as
possible, receding
into the
sign
it makes
to draw one toward it (as
though
it were
possible
to reach it). (27-28)
An absence that is more attractive than
any presence,
a non-existence
that cannot
simply
be
ignored,
a
nothingness
that nonetheless
imposes
a
kind of
demand,
a demand that Freud cannot bracket or do
away
with.
Blanchot writes:
If it is true that for a certain
Freud,
"our unconscious cannot conceive of our
own
mortality"
(is
unable to
represent mortality
to
itself),
then it would
seem to follow that
dying
is
unrepresentable
not
only
because it has no
present,
but also because it has no
place,
not even in time...
(Disaster 118)
Freud's encounter with death
seems,
if
anything,
willful. As much as it
evades,
he will set his
traps
for
it,
ensnare it with
Eros,
open
a
space
in
hatred,
aggression,
or
repetition
for it to enter and be seen. Like Blanchot's
suicide,
Freud
goes
out to meet
death,
subordinates death to the
will, but is
caught
in the
duplicity,
the double nature of
death/dying.
As Ann Smock
writes:
But
dying
is not
among
the
things
which can be
done;
it is not one
more,
one
final
thing among
the
things
that are
possible.
It is not the ultimate
thing,
but rather
something
like an ultimatum
bearing upon
the ultimate itself. It
is the disaster ...
Thus,
the suicide-he
who,
scorning
to flee
death,
sets
forth
resolutely
to meet
it-discovers,
Blanchot
says,
another
death,
which is
sheer
flight
and
evasion,
and not an
undertaking
that can be
brought
to a
finish.
(6-7)
SubStance
#78,
1995
112 Alan Bourassa
Blanchot and Freud 113
Death as a final
possibility
is what allows Freud to
posit
it as the zero
state-a condition of zero
energy
that,
through
inertia,
can draw life to
it,
the
inorganic
to which all life strives to return. But this is still the death that
can be
realized,
and this zero state is the most
positive
and affirmative of
all
possibilities.
Deleuze and Guattari
acknowledge
this in their talk of the
body
without
organs.
This
body,
because it is a state of
pure virtuality,
can
stand
apart
from existence without
being plunged
into the
deathly
uncer-
tainty
of the Blanchotian disaster. There
are,
we
know,
two kinds of void:
the creative void from which all
possibilities spring,
and the
terrifying
void
that is never
actualized,
that
pulls away
from
being
but does not leave
being
alone. Freud
speaks
of
death,
and in
speaking
of
it,
cannot
help
but
speak
of that which functions as the
former,
a creative void. Destruction
always
finds itself subordinated to
creation,
death to life. This is not to
criticize Freud for
presenting
an
incomplete,
a
duplicitous,
or
manipulative
account of the death drive. It is rather to see Freud
caught
up
in
passion.
As
Steven Shaviro writes in Passion and Excess:
Blanchot, Bataille,
and
Literary
Theory:
In the throes of
passion
no less than in those of
dying
(and
dying,
too,
is a
passion),
I am not the same
person
I was.
Indeed,
I am not
quite
a
"person,"
an individual or a
subject,
at all.
(113)
As
any subject caught up
in
passion, losing
itself without the
power
to do
so,
Freud tries to
speak;
but what
emerges
is not the
presence
of
death,
or
of
anything,
but a
problematic
silence. For all his
speaking,
Freud is still
silent on
death, but,
as Andrew Bush
writes,
this "silence is not
necessarily
silent;
rather it is troubled
by
an
unending uninterrupted
murmur..."
(76).
We
may
see in Freud the
struggle, through speaking,
to make death
ap-
pear,
the
impossible attempt,
as in
suicide,
to make the "I"
finally
abandon
itself and be invested
by
the
power
of abandonment. As Steven Shaviro
observes:
Passion demands infinite
self-abandonment,
and I
loyally
abandon
every-
thing
that is mine to
it;
but as
long
as I am
strong enough
to abandon
everything
to
it,
as
long
as "I" remain the one who does the
abandoning,
I
remain too weak to abandon
myself.
(130)
Freud's inevitable error marks not a failure of his
project
but the
very
engagement
of the
project
with an
impossible question.
The loss of self in
the
non-experience
of
dying,
the
impossibility
of
mastery
and
presence,
the
infinite
passivity
of
passion
and of
dying-as-passion
all
keep
Freud's
project
from
reaching
a
completion
in which it can declare itself at an end.
The desire to arrest death in order to exercise one's will over it
is,
of
course,
SubStance
#78,
1995
Blanchot and Freud 113
114 Alan Bourassa
interpretable
as another
strategy
of
libido,
the
putting together
of more
complex
structures that
encompass greater
and
greater regions
of
reality,
but it
may
also be
interpreted
as a
passion
that draws on the
infinity
of
passivity.
The
inability
to
speak coupled
with the
impossibility
of remain-
ing
silent leads Freud's
project
into the
paradoxical
murmuring
silence that
characterizes the Blanchotian
subject's
encounter with
passion, passion
that renders it
nonsubjective,
steals its
possibility
of
speaking
and of
remaining
silent. Some of the
key concepts
of
Beyond
the Pleasure
Principle
are marked
by
the
duplicitous
nature of
dying: presence, mastery, repeti-
tion,
far from
having any
clear
relationship
to
dying,
are thrown into
paradox by
the encounter.
Repetition
and the Eternal Return
In the Fort-Da
game
that Freud elaborates in
Beyond
the Pleasure Prin-
ciple
there is a clear
relationship
drawn between the act of
repetition,
the
absence and
hoped-for presence
of the
mother,
and the aim of
mastery.
Freud's
grandson,
who has
accomplished
the
"great
cultural achievement"
of instinctual
renunciation,
repeats
a
game
(two
games, actually,
the first
consisting
of
throwing away objects
and
saying "gone"
and the second of
throwing
and
retrieving
a
spool
and
saying "gone"
and
"there")
in which
Freud sees a
problematic relationship
with the
pleasure principle.
Freud
asks
why
a child would
repeat
an
experience
in
play-the disappearance
of
the mother-that could not have caused it
any pleasure
in
reality.
He
speculates
that the child's desire
may
be to master the
painful
situation
through repetition, gaining
a
symbolic
power
over a
process
in which he
is,
in his
everyday
life,
powerless.
We see in this
story,
first the value
placed upon
an
illusory presence.
To
gain mastery,
in Freud's
interpretation
of the Fort-Da
game,
is to render
present.
And if
presence
is not
possible,
as in the earlier version of the
game,
which involved
only
the
throwing away
of
objects, presence
will be
replaced by
an
illusory mastery
that still functions as
presence: presence
of
will,
of
power,
of
possibility.
As with the relation to
dying,
the relation to
presence
remains both attractive and unrealizable. Blanchot muses:
(to die):
a far off
legend,
an ancient word that evoked
nothing,
if not the
dreamy thought
that there was an unknown
modality
of time. To arrive at
presence,
to
die,
two
equally
enchanted
expressions. (Step/Not
18)
SubStance
#78,
1995
Alan Bourassa
114
Blanchot and Freud 115
Even the act of
repetition
is no
guarantee
of
presence.
It is in
fact,
as in the
eternal
return,
exactly
what holds
presence
and
mastery
at
bay.
Whether it
is in the form that Deleuze
elaborates-repetition
as an
independent
power,
still
functioning
as
power,
that overcomes the
pleasure principle-
or in the form of
repetition
as
un-power, repetition
works counter to
any
realization of
mastery.
The writer who writes about this
repetition
is not
thereby
protected
from
it,
cannot
keep
it at a
safe, scientific or
analytical
distance.
Writing
is itself
caught up
in this
repetition. "Accomplishment"
is
vain because it
only
takes
place
in a
present
rendered
empty by
the eternal
return.
Repetition
is not the
repetition
of the
present
moment,
but a move-
ment that forever
puts
to the side the
present
moment or makes it the
placeless place
between a
past
that can never be
grasped
and a future that
never arrives. Blanchot writes:
[I]f
I have lived it an infinite number of
times,
if I am called
upon
to relive it
an infinite number of
times,
I am there at
my
table for
eternity
and to write
it
eternally:
all is
present
in this
unique
instant that
repeats
itself,
and there
is
nothing
but this
repetition
of
Being
in its Same. But Nietzsche came
very
quickly
to the
thought
that there was no one at his
table,
neither
present
in
the
Being
of the Same. The affirmation of the Eternal Return had
provoked
either
temporal
ruin,
leaving nothing
else to think but
dispersion
as
thought
...
or,
perhaps
even more
decisive,
the ruin of the
present
alone,
henceforth
stricken with
prohibition
and,
with
it,
the
unitary
root of the whole torn out.
As if the
repetition
of the Return had no other function than to
put
in
parentheses,
in
putting
the
present
in
parentheses,
the number 1 or the
word
Being, compelling thereby
an alteration that neither our
language
nor
our
logic
can admit.
(Step/Not
29-30)
Along
with
presence,
the
repetition
annihilates
any possibility
of a
selfhood or
identity
that
grounds
itself in this moment of
presence,
on "the
continuities of
past
and
future,
of
memory
and
anticipation"
(Shaviro 147).
Blanchot writes:
(Even
in the law of the Eternal
Return,
the
past
could not
repeat
the future
as the future would
repeat
the
past.
The
repetition
of the
past
as the future
frees for a
completely
different
modality-which
one would call
prophetic.
In the
past,
what is
given
as
repetition
of the future does not
give
the future
as
repetition
of the
past. Dissymmetry
is at work in
repetition
itself.
(Step/Not
42)
Returning
for a moment to Freud and the Fort-Da
game,
I am not
claiming
that this
game
is not as Freud
says
it is.
Symbolization
as an exercise of
power
is not difficult to
understand,
especially
in the case of a child whose
power
is limited. There is little
question
that the
ego,
in
trying
to
gain
control of a
situation,
would
employ
a kind of
repetition
as
rehearsal,
SubStance #78, 1995
Blanchot and Freud 115
116 Alan Bourassa
repetition
as
drama,
repetition
as delusion or obsession that would allow it
to confront
painful
situations. The
patient
in
therapy
who is
struggling
with a traumatic neurosis is the victim of a
repetition
that forces the
ego
to
relive the
repressed
scene of its most traumatic crisis in order to somehow
master it. "He is
obliged
to
repeat
the
repressed
material as a
contemporary
experience
instead
of,
as the
physician
would
prefer
to
see,
remembering
it
as
something belonging
to the
past" (Beyond
19).
Although
at the level of
the
ego
we are
operating by
a definite set of laws-that
repetition implies
a
drive for
mastery,
that
remembering
is the
opposite
of
repression,
that
there is a
way
to
stop
the vain
repetition
of the traumatic moment-the
ego,
the
self,
is
precisely
what is shattered
by
a
repetition,
a
passion,
a
death that comes from the outside.
Something happens.
We do not know
whence this
something
derives,
where it
goes,
or even to whom it
happens.
This
something,
which Blanchot calls "the
limit-experience"
or "the dis-
aster,"
does not touch the self: "1' am not threatened
by
it,
but
spared,
left
aside. It is in this
way
that I am threatened"
(Disaster 1).
He describes it
again
in The
Infinite
Conversation:
The self has never been the
subject
of this
experience.
The "I" will never
arrive at
it,
nor will the
individual,
this
particle
of dust that I
am,
nor even
the self of us all that is
supposed
to
represent
absolute self-consciousness.
Only
the
ignorance
that the I-who-dies would incarnate
by acceding
to the
space
where in
dying
it never dies in the first
person
as an "I" will reach it
... We
speak
as
though
this were an
experience,
and
yet
we can never
say
we have
undergone
it.
(209-210)
Freud,
as
therapist,
must deal with this double nature of
experience.
The
ego
will not be shored
up against
the limit
experience.
It is
swept away.
Swept away
and left aside in the same
movement,
always
and
endlessly
presiding
over its own
disappearance,
its own death that it can never reach.
In one of his most
powerfully disturbing images,
Blanchot
presents
us with
the
figure
of the
dying being
whose need for bread has
surpassed
all
thought
of survival:
In the
camp,
if... need sustains
everything, maintaining
an infinite relation
to life even if it be in the most
abject
manner ... if need consecrates life
through
an
egotism
without
ego-there
is also the
point
at which need no
longer helps
one to
live,
but is an
aggression against
the entire
person:
a
torment which
denudes,
an obsession of the whole
being whereby
the
being
is
utterly destroyed.
Dull,
extinguished eyes
burn
suddenly
with a
savage
gleam
for a shred of
bread,
"even if one is
perfectly
aware that death is a
few minutes
away"
and that there is no
longer any point
in nourishment.
This
gleam,
this brilliance does not illuminate
anything living
... In this
ultimate moment when
dying
is
exchanged
for the life of
bread, not,
any
longer,
in order to
satisfy
a need and still less in order to make bread
SubStance
#78,
1995
116 Alan Bourassa
Blanchot and Freud 117
desirable,
need-in need-also dies as
simple
need. And it
exalts,
it
glorifies-by making
it into
something
inhuman
(withdrawn
from all satis-
faction)-the
need of bread which has become an
empty
absolute where
henceforth we can all
only
ever lose ourselves.
(Disaster 83-84)
Fragmentary Writing:
In the
Non-Space
between Death and
Dying
What is Freud to do faced with such an
overwhelming
need,
an ex-
perience
that lies at the core of the most
personal experience yet
is
utterly
impersonal?
We cannot so
simply speak
of
remembering, reconstituting.
We
cannot,
in
fact,
speak
of
doing anything.
There is in the
quotidian,
the
everyday,
the same absolute need that makes the
eyes gleam savagely
for
the crust of bread. This need will be neither denied nor controlled nor even
channelled. It cannot be remembered-and
thereby
mastered-because it
is the
forgetting
that
simultaneously
makes
possible
our
being
in the world
and
pulls
the
ground
out from under us. Blanchot writes:
When we
perceive
that we
speak
because we are able to
forget,
we
perceive
that this
ability-to-forget
does not
belong solely
to the realm of
possibility.
On the one hand
forgetting
is a
capacity:
we are able to
forget
and,
thanks
to
this,
able to
live,
to
act,
to
work,
and to remember-to be
present:
we are
thus able to
speak usefully.
On the other
hand,
forgetting gets away,
it
escapes...
At the same time as we make use of
forgetting
as a
power,
the
capacity
to
forget
turns us over to a
forgetting
without
power,
to the move-
ment of that which
slips
and steals
away:
detour itself...
Forgetting,
death:
the unconditional detour.
(Infinite
195-196)
This is
precisely,
as we have
seen,
the double nature of death. It serves as
interval,
as
space,
as zero
point-all
functions in which it takes its
place
and indeed makes
possible
the world that exists-but it also
plunges
us
into the most uncreative of voids. Like
forgetfulness,
it steals
away,
it
gives
us
nothing
to
cling
to or to
speak
of
except
its own
impossibility.
Freud's
project
locates itself in a
non-space
between death and
dying,
the
ground
of
possibility
and the
impossible.
Writing always
in this
placeless place
Freud shares two essential
qualities
with
Blanchot,
writing
as
fragment
and the terror of life. Freud's
writing
is,
in the sense
employed by
Blanchot,
fragmentary
because it can
only begin
when
everything
has been
completed,
when
everything pos-
sible has been said and there remains
only
the
impossible.
The
fragmentary: writing belongs
to the
fragmentary
when all has been
said. There would have to have been exhaustion of the word and
by
the
word,
accomplishment
of all
(of presence
as
all)
as
logos,
in order that
fragmentary writing
could let itself be re-marked.
(Step/Not 42).
SubStance
#78,
1995
Blanchot and Freud 117
118 Alan Bourassa
The correct criticism of the
System
does not consist... in
finding
fault with
it,
or in
interpreting
it
insufficiently...
but rather in
rendering
it
invincible,
invulnerable to criticism
or,
as
they say,
inevitable.
Then,
since
nothing
escapes
it because of its
omnipresent unity
and the
perfect
cohesion of
everything,
there remains no
place
for
fragmentary writing
unless it comes
into focus as the
impossible necessary:
as that which is written in the time
outside
time,
in the sheer
suspense
which without restraint breaks the seal
of
unity by, precisely,
not
breaking
it,
but
by leaving
it aside without this
abandon's ever
being
able to be known.
(Disaster 61)
Life as a Detour on the
Way
to Death
Freud has discovered this invulnerable
totality.
It is called
libido, and,
as we have
seen,
it stakes its claim over
everything,
even those movements
of
negativity
and loss that allow it to function. It is
clearly
not death that
Freud finds most
disturbing,
most
deviant,
most
inexplicable,
but life. For
Freud,
it is life that is the unconditional detour.
The attributes of life were at some time evoked in inanimate matter
by
the
action of a force of whose nature we can form no
conception...
It was still
an
easy
matter at that time for a
living
substance to
die;
the course of its life
was
probably only
a brief one... For a
long
time,
perhaps, living
substance
was
being constantly
created afresh and
easily dying,
till decisive external
influences altered in such a
way
as to
oblige
the still
surviving
substance to
diverge
even more
widely
from its
original
course of life and to make even
more
complicated
detours before
reaching
its aim of death.
(Beyond
46)
Blanchot, too,
sees in life the terror of a movement that threatens to steal
death from us.
[D]eath
is man's
possibility,
his
chance,
it is
through
death that the future of
a finished world is still there for
us;
death is man's
greatest hope,
his
only
hope
of
being
man. This is
why
existence is his
only
real dread...existence
frightens
him,
not because of death which could
put
an end to
it,
but
because it excludes
death,
because it is still there underneath
death,
a
presence
in the
depths
of
absence,
an inexorable
day
in which all
days
rise
and set. And there is no
question
that we are
preoccupied by dying.
But
why?
It is because when we
die,
we leave behind not
only
the world but
also death... and
my impending
death horrifies me because I see it as it is:
no
longer
death but the
impossibility
of
dying. (Orpheus
55)
It is not death that is
relentless,
but life. Life and
dying
are
equally impos-
sible,
equally incomplete.
If death offers an
ending,
a
goal
toward which
one
might
live,
which then fills that life with
meaning, dying
is that which
precisely
will not allow itself to be lived as an end. We see that
any
notion
SubStance
#78,
1995
118
Alan Bourassa
Blanchot and Freud 119
of
presence
is
finally destroyed by dying, by
the
disaster,
because
presence
itself takes on this
unspeakable
and
terrifying
otherness,
hiding
in the
recesses of absence like a
phantom.
This
life,
the life that
erupts
into in-
animate matter from the inconceivable
outside,
is no
longer
a safe haven
from death. Life is not the
unproblematic presence
in which we flee ab-
sence,
but is itself the force of the outside
folding
in to form
being.
For
psychoanalysis,
this inexorable life
provides
an insurmountable
difficulty.
The
very
movement that sustains the
ego,
that can
strengthen
it
against
the traumatic crises that threaten to overwhelm
it,
is the same
movement that threatens it, that acts from a
point
outside of it and with a
force that takes
up
the
ego
and renders it
imaginary,
like a child who
pretends
to be
driving
the car in which it is
only
a
passenger. Thinking,
after the
disaster,
will no
longer
allow itself to be an
instrument;
it will not
be directed to a
goal;
it will ensure
nothing. Thinking
will not
channel,
analyze
and direct the
passions. Thinking
itself becomes a
passion.
To think
endlessly,
the
way
one dies-this is
thinking
that
patience
in its
innocent
perseverance
seems to
impose.
And this endlessness
implies
not
gratuity
but
responsibility.
Whence the
repeated,
motionless
step
of the
speechless
unknown,
there at our
door,
on the threshold.
To think the
way
one dies: without
purpose,
without
power,
without
unity,
and
precisely,
without "the
way."
(Disaster 39)
It would be a
radically
different
psychoanalysis
that would take this
endless
thought
into it. Is
analysis
terminable? This
question
is
asked,
in
psychoanalysis, perhaps
out of the belief
that,
if
interminable,
an
analysis
simply
does not reach its
goal.
Blanchot,
on the
contrary, might
ask
whether there is a
goal
to be
reached,
and whether there is
any
connection
between
strategies
for
maintaining
a unified
ego,
and those movements
that are
beyond
the
ego,
that set it
aside,
render it
empty, exactly by
allowing
it to think itself the full and
present object
of
psychoanalysis.
Vanderbilt
University
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