Place, or/of the fetish

Already, in “Fetishism,” the fetish will have taken place, will have arisen. That is, before we even start reading Freud’s description of fetishism, his Beschreibung des Fetischismus (GW, 316 [see the end of this post for citation information and abbreviations]), the fetish will have come up: there were fetishes, and they dominated a number of men. Freud is sure of this, even though his title (and not just his title, as we shall see) announces that in 1927, and despite even the extended discussion in the Three Essays and other places, it still remains for him to place the fetish clearly in psychoanalytic discourse, to show how the fetish takes place in psychoanalysis. Freud is sure, he announces it, despite this disappointment: "In the last few years I have had the opportunity of studying analytically a number of men whose object-choice was dominated by a fetish" (SE, 152; GW, 311). He has had this opportunity, this chance laid out (Gelegenheit) before him and, somewhere before this essay, has taken it up and studied it. Analytically. That is, in the manner that takes its proper place in the discourse of psychoanalysis, that takes place in the place of psychoanalysis. Surely, Freud announces, the fetish has been studied analytically: there has been no opportunity for him in which the fetish would not have been studied in analysis, studied in a way that is not proper to psychoanalysis, that does not make it come up right inside 19 Berggasse (a place, let us note, that is not too far away from, and thus is next to or beside the Schmerlingplatz—and thus the Rathaus and the Justizpalast). So then, here, the fetish has arisen for him, Freud asserts it, there.

That Freud begins his description asserting he has studied the fetish he has not yet theorized or described—this might seem to us so compelling that we are ready to expect it will come up again. We might almost be sure, in other words, that in the laying out of the Beschreibung, the fetish having taken place will take place again. That, in elaborating this announcement that the fetish has taken place, in the position or place of elaboration, Freud will make it arise again. That he will make this rise up out of his language, from down below or at his side—as if someone did not believe him and he were raising up his weapon in a counter-attack. Or perhaps, to put it in a less forceful way, we might expect Freud will again allow this announcement another chance to arise. That he will lay out the space in which it can appear once more—as if he were summoning or calling it up, compelling it, craftily. That, as if he were some sort of conjurer, one who split up reality with tricks and slight of hand, he will make us believe again that that which we have not seen has, indeed, happened. All this is to say we might expect his psychoanalytic description will have to show us once more that which it is announcing it is certain has taken place. As if Freud both had given into doubt and forsaken belief in what he was saying, and still preserved his belief in it.

And yet, almost in the same space as this expectation, right next to our readiness to expect all this, there is a possibility (we hesitate to call it an expectation as well) that the fetish will not have come up—again, or even, as Freud announces it, already. In other words, we cannot be so ready to expect what we expect, we cannot be so sure, since in expecting the fetish to come up again we are saying precisely that Freud is not so sure about the fetish and its having come up. As if he were expecting what we expect about him, he begins to seem like he always will have said something different, heading us off, oscillating (as he will soon say another man—one of the two brothers who had lost their father, SE, 156; GW, 316—indeed oscillates, schwankte) between the place in which we expect him and another place in which he is saying that the fetish will never come up.

Thus, in almost the same place as his first sentence (in the next two, three, or four sentences, depending on the German or English version we are reading) Freud seems to expect us, and hints the fetish is something that we should not expect to come up in analysis. “There is no need to expect that these people came to analysis on account of their fetish,” he says (SE, 152; GW, 311). He means, in short, that we need not expect that analysis will directly address the patient and his fetish. This is so not only because the fetish will have readily up in analysis, as Freud might confidently assert, but that, precisely as he indeed asserts this, uncertain and unsure, he also asserts that the fetish will only be indirectly or incidentally addressed by analysis—such that in analysis we cannot clearly say if it came up. To assert this a little more forcefully (though merely to repeat Freud’s language): Freud says that we really need not expect fetishists will be, insofar as they are fetishists, patients—and thus we need not expect that the fetish will come up in analysis. Indeed, though these people, these Männern, these Personen have obviously been patients in analysis, Freud seems uncertain about this and never throughout the entire Beschreibung actually calls them patients, Kranken or Patienten. So in almost same space as his assertion that the fetish will surely come up in analysis, he is also marking them as mere adherents, as devotees (hangers-on, Anhängern) of the fetish, and saying that they have not come to analysis for what analysis is for, like a patient would. For, he continues, these people—Freud has studied this, no doubt, es wird wohl—are not feeling the fetish as a symptom of suffering, as a Leidenssymptom, even though they recognize the fetish as an abnormality. And he thereby announces that, for the purposes of our Beschreibung here, analysis is first and foremost something for dealing with suffering patients:

There is no need to expect that these people [Personen] came to analysis on account of their fetish. For though no doubt a fetish is recognized [der Fetisch wird wohl … erkannt] by its adherents [Anhängern] as an abnormality, it is seldom felt by them as the symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering [ein Leidenssymptom] (SE, 152; GW, 311).

Analysis is for what analysis addresses—namely, suffering—and these men will be patients insofar as analysis will address their suffering. But this means that insofar as these men will not have come to analysis for their Leidenssymptom—specifically insofar as they have come to analysis feeling happy or satisfied (zufrieden) about their fetish—analysis proper will not, except incidentally or in a subsidiary way, have provided the space in which it came up. So Freud continues:

…it is seldom felt by them as the symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering. Usually they are quite satisfied with it, or even praise the way in which it eases their erotic life. As a rule, therefore, the fetish made its appearance […] as a subsidiary finding [eines Nebenbefundes] (SE, 152; GW, 311).

The fetish will have been a subsidiary finding—something that came to light incidentally, as another translator renders eines Nebenbefundes (F 95). Insofar as analysis addresses the fetish, the taking place of the fetish will only be an incident of analysis, a chance happening next to or beside (neben) its work of addressing suffering. And therefore the fetish will perhaps not arise, will not take place, as all English translations of Freud have added to the German, in analysis: “As a rule, therefore, the fetish made its appearance in analysis as a subsidiary finding,” the Standard Edition says (SE, 152, which merely copies Riviere [R, 204]; so too Frankland [F, 95]: “As a rule, then, their fetish came to light only incidentally during analysis,” which admits more of our stress on the incidental, but still interpolates “analysis” unnecessarily, still trying to show where the incident occurred). These are sentences that, attentive to Freud’s oscillations, we cannot yet cite wholly—translations between two places to which we cannot lend much credence. For we are seeing that in question in Freud’s words—where “in analysis” does not appear or, perhaps, even play a part, as we will see momentarily: Der Fetisch spielte also in der Regel die Rolle eines Nebenbefundes (SE, 152; GW, 311)—in question in these words is precisely the place where the fetish takes place: the subsidiary finding seems to be, precisely because it is subsidiary, exactly that which analysis did not address, something that perhaps takes place when analysis occurs but only takes place beside its proper place and proper concerns (even if analysis tries to address this place, to take place in its place). Both beside and besides analysis, can we then make Freud say that the fetish arises in analysis? Can we make this arise, when we might hear him differently? Perhaps we are seeing another reason why there is no need to expect that these people came to analysis on account of their fetish? Perhaps Freud is saying, not that we need not expect what will surely take place in analysis (despite what it usually addresses), but that, because the fetish will take place only beside analysis, only next to it, incidentally, we need not expect what will never take place? Namely, that that these people, insofar as they are fetishists, will ever come to analysis properly, will ever take their place in analysis properly, such that their fetish could properly arise? There is no need to expect—man braucht nicht zu erwarten: but, Freud makes us ask, who needed to expect this other than those who expected that the fetish would take place or arise again in analysis?

To be continued...

Note: This is from a paper I wrote for a class on Freud, taught by Diana Fuss. I’m citing the three English translations of this essay (by Joan Riviere, James Strachey [in a revised version of Riviere’s work], and the New Penguin version by Graham Frankland) while following the Standard Edition as close as possible, as well as the German. I use the following abbreviations: GW, “Fetischismus” in Gesammelte Werke. Bd. XIV, Werke aus den Jahren 1925-1931. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1991. p. 311-317; R, “Fetishism,” tr. Joan Riviere. In Sexuality and the Psyhology of Love. ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963. 204-209; SE, “Fetishism,” ed. and tr. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXI. London: Hogarth, 1961. p. 153-7; F, “Fetishism,” tr. Graham Frankland. in The Unconscious. ed. Adam Phillips. London: Penguin, 2002. 93-100. I’ll also be more freely quoting from “The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense,” in the Standard Edition (cited above), Volume XXIII, 271-278, and “Die Ichspaltung im Abwehrvorgang,” in Gesammelte Werke, (cited above) Bd. XVII, 59-62.

Like a language

I want to go over something pretty basic here. One of the objections constantly levied against structuralism is that it treats things as languages when it should treat the things as things. It is generally a legitimate frustration with the oddness of the founding structuralist gesture, which is to say that the thing being investigated is a language, or is structured like a language, or can be understood as a language, or comprehended by using the insights from linguistics, etc. etc. etc.

The criticisms (whether they come from phenomenologists, post-structuralists, or post-post-structuralists) claim that this simplifies the thing in question, and ultimately just projects upon the thing the very terms in which it is being analyzed.

The concern is legitimate, as I said, because it wonders at an analogy being taken so seriously and worked out to the fantastic length and intricacy involved in structural interpretations like those of Lévi-Strauss. But what it fails to understand is that the main term in the analogy, language, has to be understood differently if the analogy is to make any sense.

In other words, the critics of structuralism think they know what language is when they hear the phrase, x can be understood like a language. But the structuralist emphasizes that language, when considered as a structure, looks nothing like what they are imagining.

Language for the structuralist is more like a logic ("structure" is the name for this type of logic, or rather logic working in this way), and as such already doesn't have to be made up of words used in speech, or even something like a grammar (insofar as we think we know what "words," "speech," and "grammar" are when considered independently of the logic in which, according to the structuralist, they are merely minimal units or relations between of these units). So you can't object to a structuralist by saying that x or y doesn't exhibit any features of a language--by saying that it isn't something, for example, that is determined by a culture, or exhibiting conscious organization. For if it involves something like a logic, it will have already worked something like a language.

That is, if the thing has a logic in the way that it also participates, say, in dialectic, it will have worked like a language. "Logic," in other words, is helpfully understood in a pseudo-Hegelian way here. Lévi-Strauss himself articulates the commensurability between structure and dialectic in the famous last chapter of The Savage Mind, in a hugely influential attack on Sartre's fascinating (and too neglected) Critique of Dialectical Reason. In doing so, he is making the case that structural logic is immanent to the being of things in the way Sartre (rightly) says it it is in Hegel and Marx.

It is only after this that he overturns Sartre's notion of dialectical reason, grounding it in what Sartre calls analytic reason, ultimately leading him to conclusions which are more familiar, and which involves further qualifying the way this logic or structure works. Sartre says:

[Scientific, Analytic] Reason is the mind as an empty unifier... Dialectical Reason transcends the level of methodology; it states what a sector of the universe, or, perhaps, the whole universe is. It does not merely direct research, or even pre-judge the mode of appearance of objects. Dialectical Reason legislates, it defines what the world (human or total) must be like for dialectical knowledge to be possible; it simultaneously elucidates the movement of the real and that of our thoughts, and it elucidates the one by the other... It is therefore, both a type of rationality and the transcendence of all types of rationality. The certainty of always being able to transcend replaces the empty detachment of formal rationality: the ever present possibility of unifying becomes the permanent necessity for man of totalising and being totalised, and for the world of being an ever broader, developing totalisation.
-Critique of Dialectical Reason, 20

In short, dialectical reason does not remain one-sided: it is speculative, and therefore not a function of the understanding. Lévi-Strauss replies simply that:

all reason is dialectical... since dialectical reason seems to me like analytical reason in action; but then the distinction between the two forms of reason which is the basis of Sartre's enterprise would become pointless.
-The Savage Mind, 251

If we understand the logic established by dialectical reason's "legislation," or, in Sartre's terms, the totalizations, as the crucial thing, it does seem legitimate to say that analytical reason can establish them just as much as dialectical reason, if we add something to the former.

This is the other crucial aspect of structure, which is that it is not a logic that can be taken over by consciousness:

Linguistics thus presents us with a dialectical and totalizing entity but one outside (or beneath) consciousness and will. Language, and unreflecting totalization, is human reason which has its reasons and of which man knows nothing.
-The Savage Mind, 252

This, then, is the usual claim which we recognize in structuralism, and to which the objections usually are directed, since it makes the subject a mere function of "language." Thus, Levi-Strauss' immediate response:

And if it is is objected that it is so only for a subject who internalizes it on the basis of linguistic theory, my reply is that this way out must be refused, for this subject is one who speaks: for the same light which reveals the nature of language to him also reveals to him that it was so when he did not know it, for he already made himself understood, and that it will remain so tomorrow without since his discourse never was and never will be the result of a conscious totalization of linguistic laws.
-Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 252

But notice that such claims about language only make sense when we understand the more basic claim that "language" here is fundamentally like a logic. Thus the structure gets its non-internalized character because it is a logic immanent to things, not just because it is so determining (which is nearly always read as constraining) of the subject's role. The fact that the subject is a function of language here does not have to do with how determining the structure is, but how language is a logic. It is only in this sense that we can really understand why such a language resists internalization: for even if it were internalized, made conscious, it would still only be operative or produce effects because it was a logic. In short, making it conscious doesn't matter. The logic matters. And it is in this sense that the analytic reason can, when active, produce dialectic effects of totalization, because in that instance this only means what is always the case is indeed the case: the logic, the structure, is producing effects.

Let me just say that this fact complicates dismissals of poststructuralism as well as structuralism which rely upon the fact that, in absence of a deconstruction of something, one falls back upon structures and thereby remains within a certain cultural, linguistic sphere, or just involves deconstructing "cultural" structures--as if all taint of structuralism had to be removed. Such things are said of Foucault, Derrida, and even Lacan (leading to a move away from the tensions between the symbolic and the imaginary and a sole focus on the symbolic and the real). All of this is complicated if the critic understands that in each case language as a structure means something different than language--especially if we take language in its Heideggerian sense. By this I don't just mean that it is made up of binaries, either (though of course this is involved). I mean that it is a logic in the sense I explained earlier, and one which Lévi-Strauss is not so quick to immediately call "cultural" (that is, unless we reconsider our notion of that latter term).

Problems

One interesting thing that I find deconstructionists do is reduce differance to an epistemological problem. This is so in both de Man and Spivak, though they both well know that this epistemological problem is also an ontological problem. Or rather, they know it isn't even that, since it is a pre- or post-ontological problem. In each case, we're trying to say that we've hit a sort of epistemological problem that is deeper than any epistemological problem, but actually can best be characterized or envisioned epistemologically, in an manner analogous to how we can deconstruct metaphysics by looking at philosophical texts--which at first sight looks absurd. Thus, it is the question of "epistemology," in quotes, or doubled, different. And in the case of texts, it is the question of how much, in each case, we are to provisionally generalize textuality. The latter question is the real one being interrogated, I think, in these issues regarding "epistemology," and insofar as it still remains interrogated, is not exactly a mistake or misinterpretation of Derrida. The real issue is whether transferring the problem of generalizing textuality--which I'll repeat, is the fundamental problem deconstruction faces--encourages us to dissolve the problem and presume it solved. (I'll mention that in my view de Man does indeed do this, to the extent that he almost does misinterpret Derrida by virtue of this alone, while Spivak doesn't.) Derrida often sticks to texts precisely for this reason. Whether his resulting insistence on the problems of textuality really does encounter that problem, well, that's a another (and indeed pressing) question. But unless one understands that this is what Derrida is up to, his reading of texts of philosophy will seem very odd, not unlike how Heidegger's reading of texts from the tradition (the most amazing of which is, of course, the book on Kant) will also seem odd. I think, however, a legitimate objection would be to why this process of reading went on so continually and so consistently, almost as if expanding the amount of reading in philosophy and its nearest neighbors would indeed insist on the problem of textuality (even though his claim is always that these texts are singular). In this case that other question I spoke of just now (the "pressing question" of how far an insistence on the problem of textuality encounters the problem, which is not unrelated to the problem of transferring the problem of textuality, as one can see in Spivak, who than rather going de Man's route does this), indeed arises.