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[ PMLA

Paranoid Interpretation, Desire’s Nonobject,


and Nella Larsen’s Passing

brian carr

N ELLA LARSEN’S PASSING (1929) HAS OCCASIONED A GREAT


deal of paranoid interpretation, in large part because the novel
is about nothing. I use nothing in the sense of no thing or a non-
object, both of which are irreducible to the familiar meaning of nothing as
inconsequential or strictly nonexistent.1 In the framework of paranoid in-
terpretation, desire and knowledge imaginarily coincide with an object
such that everything, imagined to include nothing, becomes something.
Paranoid interpretation is less a property of Passing than a transactional
dynamic between the novel and the critical work on it, a dynamic activated
in large part by many critics’ “hateloving” attachment to Passing’s central
character, Irene Redfield.2 Reading Irene’s interpretations of her life as
paranoid delusions, many critics have an inverted and corrective invest-
ment in her. As if to resolve yet sustain Irene’s wild interpretations, the
contemporary scholarly archive on Passing is virtually unified in its belief
that her paranoid apprehensions can be submitted to a proper reading that
will furnish the positive knowledge Irene systematically misses.
Critics are not strictly wrong in their characterization of Irene as, in
Deborah E. McDowell’s words, “clearly deluded” (xxvi). And yet, the fact
that many critics work to procure for themselves the clarity they need to as-
sign paranoid delusion to Irene leads one to wonder, how “deluded” are the
Brian Carr is a PhD candidate in the critics? If paranoia, through delusion, converts nothing into something, the
Program in Literature at Duke Univer- bulk of the critical work on Passing is in reach of paranoia, since the work,
sity. He is writing a dissertation on race,
too, impulsively confounds something with nothing, truth with what at best
sexuality, and interpretation under and
can be only half told, desire with what Kaja Silverman aptly calls its “im-
following United States slavery. His
work on various topics has appeared in
possible nonobject” (39).3 Critics often find that Irene’s delusional mental-
Cultural Critique, GLQ, Angelaki, Mod- ity and Larsen’s manifest text of racial passing and heterosexual jealousy
ern Fiction Studies, and Camera Obscura. collaborate to occlude a latent homosexuality, which neither Larsen nor

282 [ © 2004 by the modern language association of america ]

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119.2 ] Brian Carr 283

Irene can avow. While keeping the problematic of something in Passing, for the novel’s characters
racial passing in view, I follow the critical turn to- and readers.
ward reading homosexuality in Passing to the ex-
tent that this turn itself is beset by paranoia. It
There Is Paranoia, and Then There
would be difficult not to arrive at homosexuality
Is Paranoia
when thinking about paranoia and vice versa,
since, as we will see, homosexuality and paranoia Unhinging interpretation from paranoia is no
have long been conceptual bedfellows. easy work. In his study of Daniel Paul Schreber,
There is doubtless an interpretive fit be- Freud famously questions the extent to which his
tween the critical disclosure of latent homosex- own, admittedly preformed theory of paranoia
uality and manifest racial and heterosexual and delusion might itself be delusional and, con-
delusion, but this fit is too tight for desire—or versely, whether Schreber’s delusions might be
what Joan Copjec calls “realtight.” Understand- true (“Psycho-analytic Notes” 465–66). Lacan
ing desire as coextensive with—but secreted advances Freud’s query, hypothesizing a “para-
in—language leads one to positivize and oblit- noiac principle of human knowledge” and stating
erate all externality (in Copjec, the Lacanian flatly that there are “paranoid affinities between
real), to “construct a reality that is realtight, all knowledge of objects as such” (“Freudian
that is no longer self-external” (Read 14). In Thing” 130, Seminar III 39). I want to address a
such a latent-manifest reading of Passing, where set of connections Freud draws among paranoia,
everything is present but some things are veiled, homosexuality, and interpretation, since his ac-
we perform realtight closure (the refusal of ex- count, directly or indirectly, has supplied critics
ternality) in the style of interpretive disclosure. with the armature for understanding Irene’s (re-
Annulling externality by relying on an analogi- pressed) homosexuality and (manifest) delusion.
cal model of meaning, such as the one implied I work to a large degree from Lacan’s theoriza-
by the pair latent/manifest, we find ourselves tion of desire and paranoia, since both concepts
obliged to decode secret correspondences. are salient preoccupations in Passing and its
Contrary to standard logics of racial passing, scholarly archive and because through Lacan we
which practically always rely on a latent-manifest can foreground the central problem: what is the
reductionism, Larsen’s Passing obliquely ap- relation of desire to paranoid interpretation?
proaches the closure-disclosure duo. Less preoc- In my usage, paranoid interpretation is an
cupied with how something passes for something almost imperceptible hermeneutic reflex that
else, Passing doggedly pursues how nothing disavows the fact that knowledge and desire are
“passes” for something. The novel allows us to at once enabled and limited by their support: a
focus on the ways knowledge and desire are sus- nonobject. Silverman offers a serviceable expla-
tained by their lack of a nonobject that would nation of the relations among desire, its nonob-
complete or satisfy them, on how routine under- ject, and signification. She argues that the loss
standings of race and sexuality tend toward para- in being that language induces in the subject,
noid interpretive closure, and on why we want to being’s aphanisis or fading, “gives rise to an un-
substantialize everything as if there were no noth- satisfiable urge to symbolize what we have lost.
ing. Instead of making something out of nothing The je ne sais quoi which each of us thereafter
or disavowing the factor of nothing—this being lacks, to which all of our acts of signification
paranoid reading’s method—we might read this will never be adequate, represents less an ob-
nothing-something dyad more actively, paying ject than a nonobject: the impossible nonobject
attention to the function of nothing and to the of desire” (39; emphasis added). In my defini-
procedures by which it becomes incarnated as tion of the phenomenon, paranoid interpretation

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vitiates desire by operating with the belief that noid interpretation is marked principally by the
signification can capture adequately this nonob- effort to expose the nonobject in its radiant actu-
ject and by rigidly regarding it as a substantial ality. A second form of paranoia, which is more
object available to be had and known. squarely positioned as a psychosis, entails less
Literary scholars are perhaps most familiar the subject’s striving toward an object beyond
with the description of “paranoid reading” of- signification than by this object’s lack of differ-
fered by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s pathbreaking entiation from the subject.5 We might read these
essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Read- two paranoias alongside Lacan’s maxim that the
ing; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think word is the murder of the thing.6 Paranoid inter-
This Introduction Is about You.” Sedgwick tracks pretation is a hermeneutic effort to preserve
the genesis of a myopic paranoia in politicized meaning against loss—to imagine that the thing
hermeneutics, which has come to “seem entirely is accessible despite its murder—and could be
coextensive with critical theoretical inquiry, understood, in another idiom, as the denial of
rather than being viewed as one kind of cognitive/ the nature of translation. In the second paranoia,
affective theoretical practice among other, alter- the word is not murderous enough, so that the
native kinds” (6). For Sedgwick, a “seeming faith thing erupts in the domain of the word. While
in exposure” is one of the most unyielding fea- these paranoias are different—at times they are
tures of the “paranoid impulse” (17). She suggests inverted forms of each other—they share a cru-
that this interpretive “faith in exposure”—which cial feature. Whether the word’s murder of the
is actually a redecorated faith in ideological “de- thing is denied, disavowed, refused, or fore-
mystification”—is crippled by two of its main stalled, both paranoias threaten to vitrify knowl-
presumptions: that what the critic exposes is not edge and desire, since the subject’s desire and
already known and that exposing what may be in- knowledge persist only if the thing is killed.
evident has a clear political purchase. Irene’s and her critics’ reading practices are
Taking Sedgwick as my point of departure, I typically on the side of the first paranoia, where
argue that Passing and its scholarship require us paranoid interpretation is more formative than
to push the connection between faith and para- deformative of meaning and desire. But the crit-
noia further. If by definition faith necessitates a ics of Irene’s delusional mentality anxiously take
gap between itself and an inevident object, then refuge in the formative paranoia as a way of
paranoid interpretation spoils faith by filling this staving off its maddening, senseless counterpart:
gap with a positive object. Paranoid interpreta- the other paranoia, more deformative, which es-
tion aims at exposure, but, by magically pushing pecially threatens the subject’s distance from the
beyond signification to the real thing or non- thing. One might resolve this problem by declar-
object, it inevitably violates faith.4 Paranoid in- ing that paranoid interpretation is a redundancy
terpretative procedures do not just overreveal, and that interpreting paranoid interpretation only
discover what is already evident or known, or augments the paranoia in question. While there
ride too high on the political utility of their expo- can be no unconditional distinction between
sures. They want to reveal what cannot be re- paranoid delusion and interpretation, I submit
vealed, what by definition persists in its opacity, that to attend to the factor of nothing—which
but instead they unwittingly expose the fact that paranoid interpretation cannot avow—is to intro-
the nonobject is inimical to critical exposure. duce an internal difference in paranoid interpre-
Paranoid interpretation of the sort increas- tation’s method. Delusion and the interpretation
ingly grabbing the attention of literary critics is of it arrive on the scene together and are at times
not reducible to other, more clinically defined indistinguishable, but the degree to which they
forms of paranoia. To put it schematically, para- are identical depends on what we are reading for.

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From Historicism to the Nonobject with their chance encounter. Irene has been
shopping, and to escape the heat she takes a taxi
At the opening of Passing, Irene Redfield has
to the white-only Drayton hotel café. After Irene
been going through her mail and finally arrives
is seated, she begins staring at Clare, although
at the last letter in her “little pile.” “After her
Irene does not yet know at whom she is looking.
other ordinary and clearly directed letters,” this
Suddenly, she finds Clare is staring back. Clare’s
one “seemed out of place and alien”; it has
return stare prompts Irene’s paranoia, which
“something mysterious and slightly furtive
continues to escalate: “Feeling her colour
about it.” More than this, the letter is a “sly
heighten under the continued inspection, she slid
thing which bore no return address to betray the
her eyes down. What, she wondered, could be
sender.” It is not Irene’s lack of knowledge
the reason for such persistent attention?” (149).
about the sender that makes the letter “out of
Irene suspects she has broken some social
place and alien,” since the narrator abruptly
code: “Had she, in her haste in the taxi, put her
states Irene knew “immediately . . . who its
sender was”—her childhood friend Clare Ken- hat on backwards? Guardedly she felt at it. No.
dry. The letter seems perturbing, even before it . . . Something wrong with her dress? She shot a
is opened, because of the “attitude towards dan- glance over it. Perfectly all right. What was it?”
ger” Irene is “sure the letter’s contents would (149). In paranoia’s mentality, the answer is def-
reveal.” Clare’s attitude toward danger takes its initely something. After she surveys possible
epistemological toll on Irene, for she is “wholly reasons for the stare and still finds it unjustified,
unable to comprehend” it (143). “there [rises] in Irene a small inner disturbance,
Between coming across the letter and open- odious and hatefully familiar” (150). This fa-
ing it, Irene remembers an occasion when, as a miliar inner disturbance concerns the possibility
young girl, Clare stole money for a dress, know- of racial detection, since Irene is passing for
ing “well enough that it was unsafe” to do so. white in the Drayton rooftop café. At this point
Irene recalls that “even in those days,” there was Irene does not know that the staring woman,
“nothing sacrificial in Clare Kendry’s idea of Clare, is neither entirely white nor unfamiliar.
life, no allegiance beyond her own immediate As the scene is progressively overwritten by
desire.” Although on reading the letter Irene Irene’s paranoid response, Clare comes over
“saw at once . . . what she expected,” the con- to Irene’s table, announces she knows Irene, and
tent of the letter does not seem to warrant the appears to break this paranoid circuitry. Irene
prior description of the letter’s alien quality or scans her memories and Clare’s features and fi-
Irene’s daydream that supposedly confirms just nally realizes it is Clare.
how “selfish, and cold, and hard” Clare is (144). While Irene seems at last to discern who was
All we get in the letter is the articulation of looking and why, the scene makes palpable the
Clare’s desire, her “extravagantly phrased wish impossibility of adequate recognition: What is
to see [Irene] again” (145). really going on? Why and at what is Clare look-
Clare’s letter reminds Irene of the last time ing? Even our interpretive effort to read Irene’s
they accidentally met in Chicago. In the twelve struggle with the what of “What was it?” as de-
years before that meeting, Clare and Irene were creasingly paranoid—where Irene first thinks of
out of touch, in part because Clare had been per- social improprieties and then comes to the real
manently passing for white. Clare’s invocation issue, that she is passing—is undercut when we
of “that time in Chicago” incites feelings of “hu- learn that Clare stares for another reason. Irene’s
miliation, resentment, and rage” in Irene, feel- inability to superintend the operative forms of
ings that set Passing’s narrative in motion (145). misrecognition in this scene leads her to turn in-
Chapter 2, which moves back in time, begins ward and recollect the events of the day. During

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the staring, Irene’s “mind returned to her own af- noia takes shape by disproportionately locating
fairs. She had settled, definitely, the problem of jouissance on the side of Clare.8
the proper one of two frocks for the bridge party Irene is unable to resist Clare’s “having
that night” (149). “Settled,” “definitely,” “prob- way,” despite often feeling repelled by it. For ex-
lem,” and “proper” betray how much Irene is ample, she regularly vows not to read Clare’s let-
committed to orderliness and propriety, espe- ters, only to do so eventually. Irene repeatedly
cially since all such terms are telescoped into wonders why she promises to meet Clare: “Why
“the bridge party that night,” an indication of in the world had she made such a promise?”
Irene’s status among the black bourgeoisie. (163). Her frustration building, Irene, the narra-
Yet even in Irene’s inward turn, an element tor says, “was through with Clare Kendry” (165).
cannot be settled. She recalls with frustration her Later, Irene plans to reject Clare “definitely”:
failure to find and purchase a book her son Ted “She meant to tell Clare Kendry at once, and
wants: “Why was it that almost invariably he definitely, that it was no use . . .” (193). Breaking
wanted something that was difficult or impossi- into the sentence, the narrator states, “But that
ble to get? Like his father. For ever wanting was as far as she got in her rehearsal” (194).
something that he couldn’t have” (148). Passing Irene is plagued by the gap between rehearsal
at once foregrounds an equivalency between and execution, desire and the impossible nonob-
consumption and desire and intimates that they ject, or jouissance. Much of the criticism on Pass-
both aim at an impossible nonobject. Readers ing avoids this gap, as does Irene, and prefers
will remember that Brian, Ted’s father and instead to speak of Irene’s conflicted social posi-
Irene’s husband, longs to move to Brazil. For tioning in the relatively new northern black mid-
Irene, the character and the object of Ted’s and dle class. While this gap surely takes on particular
Brian’s wants are the same. The boy and his fa- contextual and historical aspects, it is hardly de-
termined or exhausted by them. Racial passing is
ther “invariably” want “something” that is not
indeed a practice with regional and historical vari-
only difficult but “impossible to get.” It is not
ations, as much as it is a thematic in a long literary
that the characters want nothing (in every sense)
tradition, but it also stands, in Passing, as a figure
but that the things they want, which may be im-
for the action of desire. In the novel, passing is at
possible to acquire, are secondary incarnations of
once transhistorical and historical, as Clare’s
desire’s nonobject—what they really cannot get.
“having way,” a name for desire, is both a kind of
Although we get a certain kind of satisfac-
transhistorical principle and a requisite feature of
tion in objects, we still tend to believe in what
her racial passing in a determinate social order.
Bruce Fink calls “a better satisfaction, a satisfac-
Irene tends toward a jealous hatred of Clare,
tion that would never fail us, never come up short,
stemming from her belief that Clare gets to have
never disappoint us” (35). Jouissance is one name
it both ways, that passing enables Clare to close
for this supposedly better, consistent satisfaction.
the gap between desire and jouissance (the non-
But desire and jouissance are antagonistic, since
object). Irene insistently wants to strip Clare of
desire is founded on the loss of jouissance as ab- this “having way,” and she first proceeds by ren-
solute pleasure.7 While we believe in jouissance, dering passing a bounded, contextual, historical,
we feel we lack it and sometimes think others and even impossible phenomenon. She seems to
have special access to it. For Irene, Clare has the believe that “environment,” “background,” and
privilege of jouissance, enjoys more, has not the “familiar” might severely constrain passing
“sacrificed” anything. Clare is even said to have a and Clare:
“having way with her,” and she often “tease[s]”
Irene away from sober and directed intentions She wished to find out about this hazardous busi-
(153, 201). Irene’s increasingly persecutory para- ness of “passing,” this breaking away from all

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119.2 ] Brian Carr 287

that was familiar and friendly to take one’s the end of the “proscription on free individual
chances in another environment. . . . What, for travel” (8). Passing negotiates the pleasures and
example, one did about background, how one ac- dangers of this new sexual-racial order, and the
counted for oneself. And how one felt when one deviations from convention that haunt the novel
came into contact with other Negroes. (157)
are partially explicable through the reframing of
long-standing questions of race, family, sexual-
Clare jettisons this understanding altogether,
ity, and mobility that were operative under slavery.
pronouncing that passing is “such a frightfully
Passing’s narrative is thus unquestionably
easy thing to do. If one’s the type, all that’s
conditioned by history, but this is different from
needed is a little nerve” (emphasis added).
saying the novel simply expresses or reflects its
“Nerve” is not a determinate set of descriptions
historical moment or context. Irene’s struggle
about how Clare passes but is rather a decontex-
with desire and interpretation, for instance, so
tualized, unverifiable principle. Irene insists,
thoroughly subtends the narrative that it is im-
“What about background? Family I mean.
possible to draw any sharp distinction between
Surely you can’t just drop down on people from
her context and her mentality. Discussing Helga
nowhere and expect them to receive you with
Crane in Larsen’s Quicksand, Hazel Carby cau-
open arms, can you?” Clare returns with “Al-
tions against reducing Helga’s alienation to her
most. . . . You’d be surprised, ’Rene” (158).
In espousing the notion that people are mentality, since her alienation “was not just in
bound to context, to tradition, to their race, and her head but was produced by existing forms of
to their family as race, Irene seems to hold an social relations and therefore subject to elimina-
anachronistic view of such terms that is unduly tion only by a change in those social relations”
continuous with slavery. But Irene is perhaps (169). Carby’s anti-idealism seems indubitable
less naive on this topic than she appears. Her enough, but it would be unsatisfactory to believe
convictions attach less to her anachronistic per- that some determinate context could eradicate
spective than to why she invokes them: because antagonism or alienation. History is no mere “act
she believes all too much in Clare’s exemption of thought” (170), but neither is it a bounded ex-
from contextual constraint. The questions of ternality: the subject is of history but is not reduc-
history and context are crucial to Passing’s nar- ible to or determined by it. Historicism—while
rative, since in many ways the novel registers not alone in this—usually holds “social rela-
a new relative mobility for some African Amer- tions” and history responsible for the subject’s
icans that departs significantly from United alienation, but too often it finds a character, like
States slavery, wherein “blackness” was almost Irene, on whom it pins interpretive problems that
entirely synonymous with a subclass position. exceed historicism’s conceptual reach.
The (postemancipation) urban milieu, which is
often associated with anomic subjectivities and
Paranoid Interpretation and
new kinship arrangements, is fundamental to
Homosexuality
Clare’s ability to “drop down on people.”
As Angela Davis explains, in the 1920s and Now we can begin to track the ways in which
1930s, “[f]or the first time in the history of the much contemporary critical work on Passing
African presence in North America, masses of aims to supplement Irene’s misreading and Lar-
black women and men were in a position to make sen’s coded but decipherable text with the critic’s
autonomous decisions regarding the sexual part- claim to radical social critique. This position has
nerships into which they entered” (4). Of obvious been fueled by Deborah E. McDowell’s land-
import to racial passing was the rush of post- mark analysis, which finds that Irene represses a
emancipation northern migration that followed desire for Clare and that Passing, homologically,

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“passes” itself off as a novel of heterosexuality potentialities, available only to the critic’s ca-
and racial passing when it is really about proto- pacity for resurrection and actualization—a per-
lesbian longing. In her definitive introduction to vasive critical position indeed. But even if one
the one-volume collection of Larsen’s Passing accepts the textual evidence for this homosexu-
and Quicksand, McDowell argues, “Irene is ality, does its critical disclosure actually reveal
clearly deluded about her motives, her racial loy- something (or some thing)? Particularly when
alty, her class, and her distinctness from Clare,” the argument hangs on race as a cryptogram for
but the “narrative suggests that her most glaring homosexuality, the critic’s discovery here pre-
delusion concerns her feelings for Clare.” Pass- supposes that sexuality is some repressed thing
ing is only “superficially . . . an account of over and against which various displacements
Clare’s passing for white,” while “underneath operate in the novel (Irene’s jealousy, the narra-
the safety of that surface is the more dangerous tive of racial passing, and so on). But what if this
story—though not named explicitly—of Irene’s sexuality is permanently opaque, such that to
awakening sexual desire for Clare” (xxvi). find it is to see only its figural production or re-
David L. Blackmore reiterates the point fraction and not its beaming and unmediated lit-
about Irene: “Irene has disguised her anxieties erality? In our readiness to discover that Passing
about sexuality by concentrating on issues of is “about” sexuality, we do not queer the novel.
race” (482). He too extends this logic to the In fact, we just keep trying to set it straight.
novel at large: “Focusing ostensibly on Clare’s Much of this critical predicament is built
racial duplicity, the novel can ‘pass’ as a text ex- into queer literary scholarship’s love affair with a
clusively about racial identity when in fact it is special form of paranoid interpretation: sympto-
just as fundamentally concerned with same-sex matic reading. Queer literary work has been re-
desire” (476). McDowell and Blackmore believe, markably adroit at reading symptomatically, yet
relative to Passing at least, that race screens sex- the superior marksmanship of such interpreta-
uality—race “mask[s] . . . the deeper, more un- tions too often relies on the critic’s capacity to see
settling issues of sexuality” (McDowell xxviii). homosexuality “come out” as a symptom in the
The scholarly attention to sexuality in Pass- text under investigation. In this way, the analytic
ing tends toward this functionalist depth-and- for understanding homosexuality is so wedded to
surface model, allowing the critic to uncover the cultural operation and logic of homosexuality
Passing’s “double burial” and the “radical impli- that the dazzle of some queer hermeneutics is the
cations” of the “erotic subplot . . . hidden beneath effect of their procedural use of a theory that
[Passing’s] safe and orderly cover” (xxx). For finds not only what the theory already knows but
Blackmore, “Irene misinterprets both the [nov- also the morphology of the theory itself. When a
el’s] events themselves and her own reactions to queer hermeneutic is nearly indistinguishable in
them” (475). Were Irene to escape her deluded structure from the cultural logic of homosexual-
mentality and live her “lesbian relationship,” she ity, the queer project finds itself complicit with
would perform the truly “radical act,” in turn the homophobic imperative to read for homosex-
“throwing to the wind the patriarchal system uality. Homophobia and the critical reading of
which both protects her position and demands homosexuality often share an interpretive im-
her sexual and emotional repression” (480). Ulti- pulse to identify homosexuality’s flare-up, the
mately, Passing “destroys the radical alternatives betraying gesture, outbreak, or textual symptom.
it seems to advocate” by killing Clare in the final Despite Freud’s many useful insights into
scene and preventing a homosexual union (482). paranoia, especially his questioning of the dis-
On this model, the novel destroys and tinction between interpretation and delusion, his
buries various elements, which then live on as and our critics’ symptomatic reading of paranoia

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is itself structurally paranoid. Freud defines para- desire, learn[ing] how to read what is inarticula-
noia as a response to one’s latent homosexuality ble in cultural statements” (Read 14). Reading
and thus understands various delusions as so what is inarticulable is not customary symp-
many defenses against homosexuality.9 Freud tomatology, since to be literate in desire is to rec-
claims that repressed homosexuality is espe- ognize that the reading of the textual symptom
cially pronounced in “delusional jealousy,” a does not reveal a thing or a substance. The symp-
form of paranoia wherein the subject transfers a tom is its own kind of substance, not the cover for
same-sex desire onto a member of the opposite a substance or the sum objectification of a mean-
sex, usually the paranoiac’s heterosexual partner, ing. In its most ubiquitous form, symptomatic
who becomes less the object and more the bearer reading holds dear to a vulgar latent-manifest,
of the paranoiac’s desire. The delusional para- analogical model of meaning in which the critic’s
noiac (here, male) invests in the negating formu- vocation is to reestablish the lost correspon-
lation “Indeed I do not love him, she loves him!” dences between the superstructural symptom and
(“Certain Neurotic Mechanisms” 152). Paranoia its meaning-granting base. The problem we en-
is the symptomatic form that repressed homosex- counter in interpreting paranoia is that paranoid
uality takes, and, correlatively, a symptomatic phenomena (not symptoms, exactly) are inter-
reading of paranoia reveals this homosexuality.10 preted according to a preformed theory stating
Judith Butler directly engages paranoia and that paranoia is always caused by or evidence of
Passing in terms of Freud’s analysis, which is repressed homosexuality. The singularity of psy-
notionally more useful than some critics’ conjec- choanalysis consists in not making this move, in
tural tagging of Irene as paranoid. Butler re- not reading the symptom according to a guide-
writes Freud’s formula to suit Passing: “I, Irene, book that purports to know in advance the mean-
do not love her, Clare: he, Brian, does!” (180). ing of every symptom. Just as there can never be a
While Irene’s “jealousy may well be routed book of dream “symbols,” there can never be a
along a conventional heterosexual narrative,” symptom template outlining the meaning of
Butler claims one should not “foreclose the inter- symptoms under all—or even most—conditions.
pretation that a lesbian passion runs that course.” It is not clear, either, that the symptom
Following Freud, Butler shows that “Irene passes should be approached as a message. In later work,
her desire for Clare through Brian” (179). But- Lacan introduces the term sinthome to designate
ler’s analysis, even with its more developed theo- his conceptual shift away from the symptom as a
rization of paranoia, still relies too heavily on a signifier or metaphor to the sinthome as pure
conventional tropology of apparent heterosexual jouissance, unanalyzable and absolutely consti-
delusional jealousy and of less evident, but now tutive of subjectivity. The sinthome points to the
exposed, “lesbian passion.” The above readings crucial fact that psychoanalysis does not en-
of Irene’s paranoia are paranoid insofar as the deavor to obliterate symptoms per se. Because the
analysis of homosexuality and delusional jeal- subject is structurally reliant on (neurotic) symp-
ousy is no less closed or conventional than toms, the dissolution of all symptoms risks the
Irene’s heterosexual love-and-jealousy plot. subject’s decomposition. Reading desire involves
Reading symptomatically, indeed normatively, reading for that which supports both the subject
these theoretical analyses arrive at homosexual- and the symptom: desire’s nonobject or jouis-
ity by taking in reverse the same paranoid route sance, which prevents the absolute realization of
Irene is said to take. desire in language and yet opens the possibility of
The possibility of a reading practice that is desire by generating its metonymic movement.
not strictly paranoid requires, as Copjec puts it in This is not to say that people do not, in any sense,
a different context, that we “become literate in want objects or that we should not read for these

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objects. It is simply to say that these objects and Paranoia beyond Understanding
our ability to read for them are predicated on the
The realtight connection between paranoia and
intervallic relation between desire and language.
homosexuality consists in the narcissism that
If paranoia involves a special relation to de-
Freud believes structures both of them. It is no
sire’s nonobject—if it is, among other things, an
surprise that he should say that paranoiacs “love
effort to make of this nonobject an object—Pass-
their delusion as they love themselves” (“Draft
ing insistently foregrounds the impossibility of
H” 113); loving oneself or another on the model
objects (be they things, object choices, or com-
of oneself is a classic understanding of homo-
modities). In one scene, Irene, explaining why
sexuality. While paranoia is fundamentally tied
she has no desire to pass for white, cuts right to
to narcissism in the work of Lacan, he came to
this issue: “You see, Clare, I’ve everything I want.
disband any a priori connection between homo-
Except, perhaps, a little more money” (160).
sexuality and paranoia.12 Paranoia, for Lacan,
Wanting nothing but perhaps some money, Irene
conditions the structure of knowledge in gen-
again betrays the way desire outstrips any empiri- eral. It issues from the ego’s imaginary for-
cal object. As Slavoj Žižek claims, “[M]oney’s mation and is structurally integral to the ego’s
original role is to function as the impossible rivalry, jealousy, and identificatory alienation.
equivalent for that which has no price, for desire Ultimately, Lacan locates a “paranoiac principle
itself” (17). Desire has no price because the sub- of human knowledge” in the field of egoic ag-
ject comes at a cost, paying what Lacan calls the gressivity (“The Freudian Thing” 130).
“price of a castration” to accede (within a limit) In introducing paranoia at the root of the
to meaning, knowledge, and desire (Seminar XX ego, Lacan transvalues paranoia: from its consti-
115). Desire is priceless, since it is “based on no tutive form “develops the triad of other people,
being” (126), and the lack in being required for ego, and object” (“Aggressiveness” 21). This
the operation of desire cannot be bought back. paranoia is generative, a “primordial manifesta-
Irene’s desire for wealth has no end in sight, tion of communication” (Seminar III 39), which
given that it is not simply a need but a desire. grants one the provisional ability to make dis-
Thorstein Veblen claimed, “[T]he desire for tinctions. Paranoia is sometimes discussed in
wealth can scarcely be satiated in any individual Lacanian theory as a purely imaginary phenom-
instance,” and, furthermore, the “satiation of the enon proper to the ego and vision and not, for
. . . general desire for wealth is [also] out of the example, to the subject and language.13 Lacan
question.” Since this desire is founded not on a seems to describe speech as the overcoming of
“want of subsistence or of physical comfort” but imaginary (paranoid) knowledge, jealousy, and
on a “race for reputability on the basis of an in- aggressivity, since speech is “always a pact, an
vidious comparison,” Veblen decides that “no agreement, people get on with one another, they
approach to a definitive attainment is possible” agree—this is yours, this is mine, this is this,
(21). Veblen knew that to conceptualize desire that is that” (39–40). But this is not the final
only in terms of what it is “for” is to miss the word, since paranoid knowledge traverses the
fact that desire will never stop there. Desire’s imaginary-symbolic distinction: “the aggressive
object cannot be made fully positive, nor can character of primitive competition leaves its
desire be distilled into something it is really mark on every type of discourse about the small
after, since it is after an impossible nonobject.11 other, about the Other as third party, about the
As Irene reveals, she does not want anything, object” (40). The onset of language, and hence
except that she wants something (money) that the emergence of the subject, introduces desire
is in itself nothing. For enough to be enough, and an alienation all its own, which does not
Passing demonstrates there must be more. squelch the paranoid structure of the ego as

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much as it introduces a new relation: that of had seen nothing, heard nothing. She had no
paranoia to the subject of desire. facts or proofs. She was only making herself
Because Lacan avows the paranoid princi- unutterably wretched by an unfounded suspi-
ple of all knowledge, he can offer some guide- cion. It had been a case of looking for trouble
posts for interpreting paranoia in ways that do and finding it in good measure. Merely that.
(223; emphasis added)
not simply duplicate it. He is acutely critical of
analysts’ pride in “understanding” the para-
“Nothing,” thrice repeated, was or is “there” to
noiac’s delusions. As he says, when paranoia is
prove to Irene that she is “even half correct” in
submitted to a supposedly nonparanoid under-
her delusion. This is why Freud said that it is of
standing, “we ourselves feel that we are within
no use to argue “facts” with paranoiacs; they
reach of understanding. This is where the illu-
will believe all the same. Even though Irene
sion starts to emerge—since it’s a question of
“wanted to feel nothing, to think nothing” and
understanding, we understand. Well, no, pre-
to “believe that it was all a silly invention on her
cisely not” (21). When analysts “rush in to fill
part,” the narrator notes at the close of this sec-
the case with understanding,” they “miss the in-
tion: “Yet she could not. Not quite” (224).
terpretation that it’s appropriate to make or not
Irene’s paranoid interpretation of the situa-
to make.” This overzealous understanding is
tion with Clare and Brian is not based exclusively
“generally naively expressed in the expres-
on an empirical, evidentiary claim. She knows at
sion—This is what the subject meant.” To this
some level that her knowledge is founded on
statement Lacan asks, “How do you know?
nothing, but this does not render it meaningless.
What is certain is that he didn’t say it” (22).
To the contrary, as I have tried to show, interpreta-
The crucial distinction here is between un-
tion, desire, and knowledge have significance
derstanding and interpreting paranoid delusion.
only when predicated on a lack in being. If we
Understanding is the self-aggrandizing, no-less-
come to Passing and Irene to read for what they
paranoid version of approaching the delusion
do not know about themselves, then we have
through an intuited relation between the phe-
missed the point: we all partake of a bit of para-
nomena and a preformed theory; it is, at base, a
noia, confusing appearance and being, something
failure to listen or, in our case, read. Lacan coun-
and nothing, the things we demand and the thing
sels that to interpret, one does well to understand
we desire. Reading with this in mind, knowing
less (20). Interpretation, while never absolutely
that understanding does not move beyond delu-
free of understanding, does not aspire to depth,
sion but aspires to the same rigidity as delusion,
comprehensiveness, or exactitude. When critics
allows one to interpret paranoia without strictly
understand Irene’s belief that Brian and Clare
doubling its logic. While all paranoia is interpre-
are (romantically or sexually) involved as a clear
tive in some sense, not all interpretation is exactly
instance of Irene’s repressed homosexuality,
paranoid. Nonparanoid interpretation will not,
they never contend with the fundamental prob-
however, be more faithful to the facts. Rather, the
lem of paranoia: delusional knowledge is not
import of any interpretation consists in its produc-
necessarily empirically verifiable even for the
tion of symbolic effects beyond prior correspon-
paranoiac. As the narrator says, Irene not only
dences and smooth, realtight understandings.
“knew” her belief to be true, she even “knew
that she knew it” (234); and yet Irene knows that
“nothing” substantiates her belief: The Racial Gap, Enjoyment, and
Killing Desire
For, she reasoned, what was there, what had
there been, to show that she was even half cor- Of course, the scholarship that has turned to homo-
rect in her tormenting notion? Nothing. She sexuality in Passing claims a certain interpretive

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interruption. It has wanted to show how this sup- question of Clare conjures up the example of
posedly generic racial passing narrative is actu- Albert Hammond, since they are both likened to
ally a more troubling narrative of homoerotic dangerous desire. After Brian asserts how in-
desire. But if this turn from race to homosexuality tractable this desire is, Irene asks him why peo-
is conducted through a set of paranoid reading ple return obsessively to dangerous scenes of
practices propped on a prescripted understanding their desire. He admits he cannot answer the
of delusional jealousy, the question remains as to why of this desire that he claims is so recalci-
the status of race and racial passing in the novel. trant, and then, in a spectacularly disorienting
In assuming that sexuality is a more volatile cat- gesture, he simply states that if he knew why, he
egory than race in Passing, many critics have would “know what race is.”
missed that the novel’s presentation of desire cuts The reference to not knowing what race is
through race. appears to be a senseless twitch in an otherwise
Passing persistently overhauls the usual perfectly intelligible passage. Without some ap-
passing narrative in which either color tem- preciation of the negative relation of desire to
porarily loses its referential relation to bodies or the social and to identitarian understandings of
the problem of passing never moves beyond the “sexuality,” could we follow the eruption of
indeterminate figure of the “mulatto.” 14 In a pas- race in this dialogue? In claiming that if he
sage to which I have not seen any significant could answer the question of desire he would be
critical attention given, Brian and Irene discuss able to define race, Brian suggests that race is in
whether or not it is appropriate for Clare and principle an ontological category founded on a
Irene to continue seeing each other. Irene says it paranoid closure of the gap between desire (or
is not, since Clare’s white husband, John Bellew, knowledge) and the nonobject. Race does not
who does not know Clare’s racial past, has ex- present the question of the nonobject, it does not
pressed his hatred for African Americans. Irene ask why, and its ontological effects are achieved
queries Brian, “Curious, isn’t it, that knowing, on the condition of eradicating this question. If
as she does, his unqualified attitude, she still—,” Brian suggests he does not know what race is,
and Brian interrupts: this is because race is founded not on being but
on the paranoid conflation of being and appear-
“It’s always that way. Never known it to fail.
Remember Albert Hammond, how he used ance. Paranoid reading generally aims to dis-
to be for ever haunting Seventh Avenue, and close an object or meaning behind appearance,
Lenox Avenue, and the dancing-places, until but race is already a paranoid positivization of
some ‘shine’ took a shot at him for casting an being. Race has in advance achieved the satis-
eye towards his ‘sheba’? They always come faction Clare and Albert perpetually seek, where
back. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.” satisfaction is the obliteration of desire. In ef-
“But why?” Irene wanted to know. “Why?” fect, racialism moves to bleed desire from the
“If I knew that, I’d know what race is.” racialized subject.
“But wouldn’t you think that having got the
Passing proceeds to disintegrate racialism’s
thing, or things, they were after, and at such
logic by revealing the so-called color line, the
risk, they’d be satisfied? Or afraid?”
“Yes,” Brian agreed, “you certainly would external difference between white and black, to
think so. But, the fact remains, they aren’t. Not be the domestication of a greater rub: the gap in
satisfied, I mean.” (185; emphasis added) color, the split within race, for which the “line”
between races is a paranoid, substantializing
Before we turn to related discussions of race in shorthand. Should we think Irene and Clare are
Passing, consider Brian’s peculiar way of defin- united, even tenuously, by their race, we are told
ing—or failing to define—what race is. The they are “[a]ctually . . . strangers. Strangers in

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their ways and means of living. Strangers in their (224 –25). The wish that something “would re-
desires and ambitions. Strangers even in their ra- move Clare” signals Irene’s transformation from
cial consciousness. Between them the barrier taking pained enjoyment in Clare’s “having
was just as high, just as broad, and just as firm way” to experiencing the insufferable sense that
as if Clare did not run that strain of black Clare is the agent of Irene’s psychic bondage.
blood” (192; emphasis added). Long before ge- From this vantage, it is clear why Clare, with
neticists thought they had to illustrate that gene her “furtive comings and goings” and her appar-
frequencies differed more within a race than be- ent monopolizing of jouissance, should become
tween races, Passing foregrounds the fact that the target of Irene’s murderous wish.
(a) race is limited by an internal foreignness, a It is impossible to know for sure the circum-
stranger, an exception, that race cannot factor in. stances of Clare’s death. Does she fall from the
When Clare asks Irene why white urbanites window? Does she jump? Is she pushed? Who
are drawn to Harlem’s nightlife—“What do they pushes her? Clearly Irene wished for Clare’s re-
come for?”—Irene likens her to them: “Same moval and “wasn’t sorry” after Clare’s death
reason you’re here, to see Negroes” (198). The (239). Also certain is that Irene continually
narrator, seizing on a distinction between identi- strives to kill desire, first through paranoid inter-
fication with and formal membership in a race, pretive procedures and then through her wish for
claims, “Clare Kendry cared nothing for the Clare’s exit. On the one hand, Irene’s protomur-
race. She only belonged to it” (182). Although derous wish might imply that she kills Clare, as
Irene hazards an answer to the why of desire, critics often assume. On the other, Irene’s fan-
Clare again asks, just as Irene did of Brian, “But tasy of Clare’s removal suffuses the narration of
why?” Irene responds by saying that such people the events to such a degree that one is hard-
have “[v]arious motives. . . . A few purely and pressed to assign any such culpability to Irene.
frankly to enjoy themselves” (198). This ex- We are deprived of something here; indeed, the
change comes just after Clare is presented as the narrator claims both that Irene “never afterwards
“barrier” internal to the race, which shows up the allowed herself to remember” the events and that
ways in which race is the positivization of a gap, “[s]he had thought of nothing in that sudden mo-
the imaginary overcoming of an internal limit. ment of action” (239–40; emphasis added).
Not only does Irene inadvertently register this This is the first time in the novel that Irene
gap, noting Clare’s extimate relation to the race, thinks “of nothing.” It is not wholly unprece-
her answer to the why of desire is less an answer dented, though, since it is a stronger form of
than a tautology. Enjoyment does not answer Irene’s recognition that her knowledge of Brian
why, it only continues to deflect Irene’s question and Clare is based on nothing. What is singular
to Brian and Clare’s to Irene: why enjoy? about this occasion is that Irene comes to think of
Irene feels the other’s, especially Clare’s, “nothing” as a factor—a factor that cannot be in-
enjoyment as an obscene encroachment. Even cluded in any social set. The thought of the mur-
though Irene provisionally decides that Clare dered thing, of nothing, suggests itself to her in
and Brian are not having an affair, Clare’s “hav- this moment. To Irene, Clare’s death appears as a
ing way” is too taxing for Irene: “Though she flash of nothing, a disappearance, which is partly
had come almost to believe that there was noth- why this scene seems hurried to many critics.
ing but generous friendship between [Brian and Perhaps no one can—and there is no im-
Clare], she was very tired of Clare Kendry. She perative to—think of nothing’s factor for too
wanted to be free of her, and of her furtive com- long. It is appropriate, then, that nothing again
ings and goings. If something would only hap- becomes something for Irene. Even though we
pen, something that . . . would remove Clare” are led to believe that Clare is dead, Irene, alone

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upstairs while everyone has run down to see for invasion by too much being and for the return, from
Clare’s “glorious body mutilated,” is overcome without, of psychotic phenomena like hallucinations. As
Lacan puts it in terms of language, “If the neurotic inhabits
by a question “so terrifying, so horrible, that she language, the psychotic is inhabited, possessed, by lan-
had had to grasp hold of the banister”: “What if guage” (Seminar III 250). Although paranoia is understood
Clare was not dead?” (240). Clare is both dead as a psychosis, it is to be distinguished from schizophrenia
and not dead, since she has turned to nothing, to or dementia praecox (Freud, “Psycho-analytic Notes” 461–
66; Lacan, Seminar III 17, 77).
death, but nothing insists from the dead—the 6
Lacan states that “the symbol first manifests itself as the
thing, in a sense undead, is not irrelevant simply killing of the thing, and this death results in the endless perpet-
because it is murdered. Thankfully, the problem uation of the subject’s desire” (“Function” 101). I use thing in
that Clare represents for Irene and for readers the sense Lacan describes in Seminar VII, in which he makes
much use of the German das Ding. In this context, he says,
never quite dies, which is why neither killing
“the Thing only presents itself to the extent that it becomes
Clare nor correcting Irene will solve the problem word” (54). Das Ding, which partakes of a Kantian problem-
of desire. Interpretation—good or bad, tame or atic (the thing in itself), is the “beyond-of-the-signified” (54).
wild—drives on. In its exploration of the prob- The thing is distinguished from things, and I sometimes use
nothing to designate this thing’s peculiar status. Nothing, the
lem of desire’s nonobject, Passing comes to
nonobject or thing forever lost, insists in its loss.
know something we frequently refuse to know: 7
The absolute pleasure of jouissance is also painful;
because knowledge is tethered to desire, we can- hence, in Lacan’s words, “jouissance is . . . suffering” (Sem-
not kill knowledge or possess it all, since there is inar VII 184).
8
no all—no full knowledge or permanently satis- There are internal differentiations in the psychoses re-
garding jouissance. As Dylan Evans notes, in paranoia
fiable desire. This means more and less for us.
jouissance “is located not in the subject’s own body [as in
schizophrenia] but in the Other” (17). While the Other gen-
erally designates the symbolic order, the paranoiac tends to
imagine the Other as some agency or person who lacks
nothing and hence enjoys everything, including the para-
Notes noiac, who is thereby persecuted by or made a plaything of
the Other.
I wish to thank Robyn Wiegman, Rachel Price, Jennifer 9
For Freud, paranoia is virtually unthinkable without ho-
Rhee, and especially Janice Radway for their astute readings
mosexuality: “homosexual impulses,” he says, are “frequently
of earlier drafts of this article.
(perhaps invariably) to be found in paranoia” (“Psycho-
1
This nothing stands outside existence but insists in analytic Notes” 464; emphasis added).
existence from this outside position. It has ex-sistence, a 10
In Lacan at least, all symptoms are, in principle, neu-
concept I take primarily from Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XX.
rotic forms and are not associated with paranoia (as one of
2
Lacan introduces his neologism, hainamoration, or the psychoses). I am arguing as if paranoia is a symptomatic
hateloving, to “overhaul the function of knowledge” and put form because Freud often treats paranoia symptomatically.
“hatred . . . in its proper place,” since “one knows nothing of This is partly because Freud sometimes understands para-
love without hate” (Seminar XX 91). noia and psychosis through repression and not foreclosure.
3
In Freud, paranoia, not delusion proper, is the illness. See Grigg on Lacan’s divergence from Freud here.
Paranoia involves a withdrawal of libidinal object cathexis, 11
Objet a, that part object between desire and jouis-
whereas delusion is a form of self-stabilization, however sance, is the name for the partial positivization of desire’s
limited, a way back to the world where there was a with- nonobject. Objet a is the object-cause of desire and largely
drawal from it. takes the conceptual place of das Ding in Lacan’s later
4
Paranoid interpretation goes astray when it conceives work. On the relation between desire and capitalist con-
of the real as beyond or fully external to signification. The sumption, Alenka Zupančič states, “[I]n participating in
real is best understood not as externally beyond signification ‘consumerist society,’ in accumulating more and more new
but as signification’s internal limitation. On the relation of objects of desire, we hide from the lack of the One true ob-
faith to paranoia, see Lacan, Seminar VII 54. ject which would satisfy us completely” (240). Zupančič
5
As a psychosis, paranoia operates primarily by foreclo- rightly goes on to argue, however, that the lost enjoyment
sure. Foreclosure produces an elementary failure whereby (“the One”) is the constitutive precondition for desire, so it
the subject does not experience the nagging lack that founds is not as if one should renounce all pleasure in things in the
the desiring subject; rather, foreclosure preps the psychotic name of honoring some lost real thing.

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12
Lacan says the pathogenic connection between homo- ———. “Psycho-analytic Notes upon an Auto-biographical
sexuality and paranoia was, when Freud made it, “surely Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides).”
fundamentally new,” but “as for knowing what this homo- 1911. Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers. Vol. 3. Trans.
sexuality is, at which point of subjective economy it acts, Alix Strachey and James Strachey. Ed. Ernest Jones.
how it occasions the psychosis—I believe I can testify that New York: Basic, 1959. 387–470.
. . . all the outlines we have contain the most imprecise, even Grigg, Russell. “From the Mechanism of Psychosis to the
the most contradictory approaches” (Seminar III 29–30). Universal Condition of the Symptom: On Foreclosure.”
13
See Copjec, “Anxiety,” for an early critique of this Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Ed. Danny
problem. Nobus. New York: Other, 1998. 48–74.
14
See Kawash for an interesting, more optimistic ac- Kawash, Samira. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hy-
count of the political efficacy of passing narratives. bridity, and Singularity in African American Narrative.
Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.
Lacan, Jacques. “Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis.” La-
can, Ecrits 10–30.
Works Cited ———. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York:
Blackmore, David L. “‘That Unreasonable Restless Feel- Norton, 2002.
ing’: The Homosexual Subtexts of Nella Larsen’s Pass- ———. “The Freudian Thing; or, The Meaning of the Re-
ing.” African American Review 26 (1992): 475–84. turn to Freud in Psychoanalysis.” Lacan, Ecrits 107–37.
Butler, Judith. “Passing, Queering: Nella Larsen’s Psychoan- ———. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in
alytic Challenge.” Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Psychoanalysis.” Lacan, Ecrits 31–106.
Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. 167–85. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psy-
Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence choses, 1955–1956. Trans. Russell Grigg. Ed. Jacques-
of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. Oxford: Oxford Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1993.
UP, 1987. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Eth-
Copjec, Joan. “The Anxiety of the Influencing Machine.” ics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960. Ed. Jacques-Alain
October 23 (1982): 43–59. Miller. Trans. Dennis Porter. New York: Norton, 1997.
———. Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore:
Cambridge: MIT P, 1994. On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowl-
Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Ger- edge, 1972–1973. Trans. Bruce Fink. Ed. Jacques Alain-
trude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Miller. New York: Norton, 1999.
New York: Vintage, 1998. Larsen, Nella. Passing. Larsen, Quicksand and Passing 137–
Evans, Dylan. “From Kantian Ethics to Mystical Experi- 242.
ence: An Exploration of Jouissance.” Key Concepts of ———. Quicksand and Passing. 1929. Ed. Deborah E. Mc-
Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Ed. Danny Nobus. New York: Dowell. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996.
Other, 1998. 1–28. McDowell, Deborah E. Introduction. Larsen, Quicksand
Fink, Bruce. “Knowledge and Jouissance.” Reading Semi- and Passing ix–xxxv.
nar XX: Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and Sedgwick. Eve Kosofsky. “Paranoid Reading and Repara-
Feminine Sexuality. Ed. Suzanne Barnard and Fink. New tive Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably
York: Norton, 2002. 21–45. Think This Introduction Is about You.” Novel Gazing:
Freud, Sigmund. “Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jeal- Queer Readings in Fiction. Ed. Sedgwick. Durham:
ousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality.” Sexuality and the Duke UP, 1997. 1–37.
Psychology of Love. Ed. Phillip Rieff. New York: Mac- Silverman, Kaja. World Spectators. Stanford: Stanford UP,
millan, 1963. 150–60. 2000.
———. “(Draft H): Paranoia.” The Origins of Psychoanaly- Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. 1899.
sis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts, and Notes: Toronto: Dover, 1994.
1887–1902. Trans. Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey. Žižek, Slavoj. On Belief. London: Routledge, 2001.
Ed. Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, and Ernst Kris. New Zupančič, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. London:
York: Basic, 1954. 109–15. Verso, 2000.

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