Lacan & The Purloined Letter PDF

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Summary

Notes for lecture on Jacques Lacan and The Purloined Letter (Edgar Allan Poe) by Dr Tania Roy....

Description

lacan and literature - poe - lituraterre  terre = earth - joyce symbolic, imaginary, real - interpretation and the poetic function - function and field of speech and language  “psychoanalytic experience has discovered in man the imperative of the Word … all reality has come to man and it is by his continued act that he maintains it.“ (écrits 106) the unconscious is structured as a language - “if you open a book of freud … you can be absolutely sure … through which one seeks for a way to handle the unconscious” (“on structure” 187) - “words are the only material of the unconscious” (187) - language, words, constitute the unconscious sign, signifier, unconscious - sign: represents something for someone - signifier: represents a subject for another signifier - lacan: “the unconscious is the condition of linguistics” - linguistics: “the unconscious is the condition of language” - lacan: “language is the condition of the unconscious” the purloined letter - purloined letter: allegory of the signifier - semantic repetition: repetition compulsion (freud)  transferring of the letter over and over: transference - what we know of the letter does not govern the story - the fact that the meaning of the letter eludes us - link to the turn of the screw? signifier: hiding in plain sight - signifier / signified: letter / spirit - heidegger and aletheia  “in hiding she offers herself to them most truly”  letter: face up / face down  the prefect and the hiding places indivisible - does not permit of partitions of an atom - partitive articles (de/du = some or any) - signifier: a symbol only of absence - hidden = missing from its place possession / holding of the letter - police do not “see” it

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the queen is caught in a paradoxical place

the letter - “look! between the cheeks of the fireplace, there’s the object already in reach of a hand the ravisher has but to extend.”...