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Introduction
- University of Minnesota Press
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INTRODUCTION For instance, the belief that there is a magical bond between a wound and the weapon which caused it may be traced unaltered for thousands of years. If a Melanesian can obtain possession of the bow which caused his wound, he will keep it carefully in a cool place so as to reduce the inflammation of the wound. But if the bow was left in the enemy's possession, it will undoubtedly be hung up close to the fire so that the wound may become thoroughlyhot and inflamed. Freud, Totem and Taboo On the sidelines of German intellectual history—Geistesgeschichte —ghostbusters can find, tucked inside a supplement to "Documentary Reports," the inside view of vampirism as the work of the Weltgeist.1 Geist is Geist: the intellect or spirit is, in German, always also a ghost. Aberrations of Mourning explores a phantasmatic Geistesgeschichte not addressed within the traditional framework of theories and histories that emphasize only Oedipal structures . The study accordingly involves a reconsideration and reshifting of certain basic tenets which inform the way we read literature, philosophy, and, in turn, psychoanalysis itself. As such it suggests a reading of both reading and writing that would go beyond notions of patricidal writing which continue, to this day, to receive so much currency. In the ensuing chapters literary texts and their aesthetic and semiotic theories are read alongside the breakdown of mourning discernible throughout the name-bearing corpus. Since psychoanalytic hermeneutics, which remains inseparable from Freud's works, is the only context available for consideration of the place of aberrant mourningin a corpus, thiscriticalperspective will be invoked to 1 Aberrations ofMourning account for problems and peculiarities attending the interpretation at the same time that it is called to account for its own complicity in misinterpretations or misplacements of the corpse in question. Throughout this study it therefore proves necessary to interrupt readings of specific literary and philosophical tracts and, guided by the new blockages each course of aberrant mourning advances, to take yet another turn in what is ultimately, as Freud puts it, "the underworld of psychoanalysis.1 '2 In this way—and on the way—the precise contours, implications, and exclusions which the concept of mourning seeks to attain in psychoanalytic theory find a kind of archaeological desedimentation or deconstruction. In 'Transience" Freud declared mourning the central problem or riddle with which the psychologist must come to grips: "Mourning over the loss of something that we loved or admired, appears to the layman so natural, that he takes it for granted. To the psychologist, however, mourning is a vast riddle, one of those phenomena which can itself not be explained but to which other obscurities can be attributed."3 And yet, as Freud instructs in "Our Relation to Death," the practice of these inscrutable mourning rituals remains indispensable, since the mourner's own survival— indeed, the continuation and growth of culture—would be imperiled if the period of mourning, approximately two years in duration , did not come to some definite conclusion. Our first reaction upon the death of a loved one issues in the wish to die along with the departed. And yet already alongside this first spontaneous upsurge of solidarity, Freud adds, we also admire—and thus keep our distance from—the one who, in going on ahead, has accomplished a difficult feat. The original refusal to substitute for loss—which in turn reflects a deadlock brought on by sorrow's instant ambivalent supplementation—must itself find substitution ; otherwise, the survivor is condemned to live without taking risks, without life. As Freud concludes: without proper burialof its casualties, life can only become shallow and insubstantial, "like an American flirt." The unbearable intensity of grief arising from paralyzing contemplation of irreplaceable relations would have barred man from engaging in "attempts at mechanical flight, expeditions to distant lands, and experiments with explosive substances." The neurotic impasse reflects and reverses the outcome of its primal scene: the premier passing of a loved one. Unlike the slain 2 [54.196.27.171] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:18 GMT) Introduction enemy, who bears the sheer target of exteriority, the dead loved one covers two registers to the point of bringing confusion to the distinction between life and death. Since the dearly departed is at the same time other, he remains alien and inimical; but he also takes with him what he always reflected back or embodied: the most cherished extension and part of the survivor. Following the original departure of someone...