Review of Nicholas Ray's TRAGEDY AND OTHERNESS more

Reviews Works cited Butleh, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London and New York: Verso. Lacapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins U.P. Rostan, Kimberly. 2006 "Reading Traumatlcally and Representing the Real in Collective Suffering". College Literatures* 12}: 172-183. Received: 14 July 2011 166 liscelanea: a journal of english and american studies 44 (2011): pp. 161-166 ISSN: 1137-6368 TRAGEDY AND OTHERNESS: SOPHOCLES, SHAKESPEARE, PSYCHOANALYSIS Nicholas Ray Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 2009. (by Jose Angel Garcia Landa. Universidad de Zaragoza) garciala@unizar.es Tragedy and psychoanalysis have always been at work within each other —with major tragedies explicitly inspiring Freud's work, and with psychoanalysis waiting to unravel the conflict between next of kin in the works of classical tragedians like Sophocles or Shakespeare. Nicholas Ray writes from within die field of psychoanalytic criticism— a little askew, though, as the approach he favors is broadly that of Jean Laplanche, and he casts a critical gaze on the Freudian concepts and on Freud's account of the self. The Oedipus, notably, is here an object of interrogation, rather than a psychical process which is taken for granted. Ray stresses the complexity of the process by which self relates to other in both tragedies and psychoanalysis, a complexity which may be foreclosed by Freud's own formulations. Or perhaps by an overly strict adherence to them. One significant point in his argument is Freud's early formulation, and then abandonment, of the 'seduction theory' —i.e., Freud came to believe that neurotic symptoms did not originate in an actual traumatic childhood episode, furthering instead the view that such traumatic episodes were retroactively created fantasies. This was a crucial step for Freudian psychoanalysis to take, all die more so from the point of view of psychoanalytical poetics, since the psychic material came to be treated as being analogous to fiction. These fantasies are grounded, according to standard Freudianism, on a universal and deterministic process of sexualization. The development of the Oedipal theory coincides with Freud's use of Sophocles miscelanea: a journal of english and american studies 44 (2011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368 Reviews and then Shakespeare as illustrations. Ray's book sets out to reexamine the relationship between the theory and the texts, to reread the texts askew from the Freudian view, watching the blind spots of Freud's reading, and to challenge Freud's totalizing and deterministic view of sexuality and fantasy. This is an interesting project in many senses, not just as a critical revaluation of Freudian criticism or a new examination of tragedies by Sophocles and Shakespeare —it also provides suggestive insights for a theory of retrospection and of retroactive effects— what Freud called Nacbtrciglicbkeit. Ray's reexamination of psychoanalysis is indebted to Laplanehe's critique of the Oedipus: according to Laplanche, Freud's account of psychosexual development is misleadingly endogenous and deterministic and does not make sufficient allowance for otherness, for die unexpectedness and contingency of die encounter with externality and die other. Freud's Copernican revolution of the human subject was also Copernican in a limited sense, that is, it did not consider die possibility that there might be no center whatsoever for the psyche. In his poststructuralist version of psychoanalysis, the self is radically dc-centered, and this calls for a rewriting of the Oedipus. In abandoning die theory of seduction, and die role it gave to exogenous elements in the constitution of die self, Freud was conniving with the subject's tendency to mask his heteronomy, his dependence on the intervention of die other. Laplanche insists on the fundamental otherness of the messages received by the infant: otherness in the sense diat they are fundamentally misunderstood, coining as dicy come from an unassimilatcd adult world, and otherness because of their lack of transparency to the adults, die senders, as unconscious elements are involved in any message. Therefore Laplanche goes back to die seduction hypothesis with a difference —any interaction between die child and die adult world contains a potential for the element of retroactive traumatism that Freud had identified in his eady formulation of the seduction hypothesis. And die subject, and his unconscious, are structured around diese unassimilatcd or insufficiently symbolised elements —all of which is Laplanehe's own version of the Lacanian tenet that the unconscious is not so much within die subject as 'between' subjects. These psychoanalytic models would of course benefit from an integration with a tiieory of social interaction, and of die social constitution of die subject understood as an interiorized system of relationships —which was in part R.D. Laing's contribution— although I am not aware of any sustained and satisfactory integration of psychoanalytic work with, say, Goffman's symbolic interactionalism. Riding on the back of Laplanehe's theory of the role of alterity in the constitution of the subject, the self-stated aim of the book is "to endeavour to bear witness to the irreducible alterities which inhabit the three tragedies examined, and the specific ways in which they can be shown to resist the exigency of narcissistic closure to which Freud's thought becomes more, emphatically subject after die miscelanea; a journal of english and american studies 44 12011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368 Reviews formal repudiation of the seduction theory" (42). Ray defines, in passing, what a Laplanchian hermeneudes of art might be: a nonprogrammatic encounter with otherness, given tliat works of art or culture are prime examples of enigmitic otherness, indeterminate messages only partly controlled by the author, and which will produce undeterminable eff ects, unforeseen by the artist. "In other words, the site of cultural production is a reopening of the subject's originary relationship to the other" (44). And Freud's own production of psychoanalysis was partly derived from his encounter with the enigmatic alterity of Sophocles' and Shakespeare's tragedies. These texts {Oedipus Tymnnus, Julius Caesar, Hamlet) apparently narrate the protagonist's assumption of an identity, a centring of autonomous subjectivity: "Oedipus the fifth-century philosopher, Brutus the revolutionary libertarian, Hamlet the frustrated figure of an ostensibly modern severance from paternal law" (50). Ray seeks to identify in the tragedies themselves an originary de-centering at work, one which undermines the protagonist's status as an autonomous subject. These arc, moreover, tragedies about parricide, a subject central to Freud's account of ritual and psychic lite in Totem and Taboo, Parricide as a move necessary for the coming-into-being of the subject is ambivalent, and Ray further explores its intrinsic ambivalence, already prominent in Freud's analysis, widt an added emphasis on the role of pre-existing and external otherness in the constitution of the parricidal subject. That otherness is partly accounted for by "die contingent ideologies of die subject's surrounding culture" (53) —the trajectory of the subject is irreducible to an intrinsic fate. As an analyst, Freud identifies with Oedipus, Brutus, Hamlet —while Ray tries to dissociate himself from this identification and underlines those elements in die text which problematize the protagonist's autonomy, those "forces which threaten die self- presence that Freud is led to assign to the prima!, parricidal text" (55). Ray's reading of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus^ and of Freud's reading of die same, emphasizes the elements of enigmatic otherness in the mythical story. This alterity is not adequately addressed by Freud, who "remains blind to the troublingly enigmatic specificity of the tragedy" (59). Oedipus, an optimistic rationalist, relies on his own intellectual strength and minimizes the significance of the Sphinx's challenge —Freud does likewise, calling it a "riddle", whereas the story resonates with more troubling and enigmatic overtones. Ray notes, for instance, that Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, which first addresses die Oedipal theme, was written according to Freud as "a portion of my own self-analysis, my reaction to my father's death" (in Ray, 61). There is also a story told by Ernest Jones about a curious premonitory scene, in which Freud saw himself, like Oedipus, as a riddle solver, apparendy without realizing die unconscious irony of this identification. Oedipus' answer to the Sphinx was an answer to a riddle, but Ray notes that it should have been understood as an enigma, not a riddle. An enigma may require an answer, but miscelanea: a journal of english and american studies 44 (2011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368 Reviews "any response will be inadequate" (63) —and, moreover, die interpreter's relation to his answer is an enigma in its own right. Oedipus was associated with the fifth- century philosophers by Hegel and then by Jean-Joseph Goux {Oedipus, Philosopher), as die emblem of the new humanist paradigm which saw man as the measure of all tilings, a symbol of Western thought as a who!e> in fact. Goux notes that, contrary to Nietzsche, Hegel did not realize die troubling and ambivalent consequences that the tragic fate of Oedipus suggests for philosophy. Freud's notion of the unconscious comes to symbolize, too, the dark, pulsional, parrincestual nature of this move, and it is not by chance that "Freud discovers die unconscious and the Oedipal drives at the same time" (Goux in Ray: 75). Yet the reduction of fate to die unconscious, Freud's own answer to the Oedipal riddle, only has the effect "of displacing the riddle elsewhere, namely 'back' into the primordial constitution of the subject" (79). Freud's partial blindness in reading the Oedipus story discloses' for Ray "a great deal more about Sophocles' play and, in turn, about psychoanalysis than Freud was fully able to grasp" (83). Chapter Two of Tragedy and- Otherness is an excellent reading of Julius Caesar. The relationship to the Freudian project is, however, much more indirect—die play is 170 related via a comment by Harold Bloom to Freud's parricidal theory of ritual in Totem and Taboo. However, Freud's explicit references to diis tragedy are meager and indirect, and arguably Ray makes too much of them. Still, the chapter stands on its own right as an outstanding reading in the deeonstructivist mode. It is also an example of die way Ray combines psychoanalytic insights with historical and coutextualized readings —seeing Julius Caesar not merely as an instance of archetypal parricide, but as an intervention in die context of early modern debates on tyranny and kingship: "If die tyramms of die fifth century BC marks out the (albeit aporetie) vector of an inaugural subjectivity, the figure of the tyrant proleptically deconsecrated by early modern tragic drama is a measure of the subjectivity which the son? of the realm are constitutively denied: their liberty and autonomy is to be attained at the cost of rising up against die absolute Fadier, setting him on the 'scaffold' and cutting him off" (120). But was Caesar a tyrant, or is tyrannicide a legitimate step in any case? Following Ernest Schanzer's reading, Ray argues that "the tragedy works to hold open the very question of just what it is diat the assassination might mean" (122). The event itself was inherently ambiguous —die crux of the matter being that Julius Caesar was not yet a tyrant, although he seemed to be well on the way to becoming one. Therefore, his assassination could be described as tyrannicide only proleptically, and the doubt is cast as to whether die actions of his murderers were caught in a vicious circle, or a defectively self-fulfilling prophecy. Alterity enters the argument as follows: everywhere the play resists attempts to oversimplify the significance of miscelanea: a journal of english and american studies 44 (2011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368 Reviews Caesar's assassination (although there is no lack of one-sided views coming from many characters, notably the contrasting public speeches of Brutus and Antony). What is more, die play "refuses to be assimilated to the model of anachronistic back-projection whereby the present context of its composition would impose, in terms of its own epistenio logical purview, a single and identifiable meaning in the past it represents" (124). Caesar is a complex character, inherently contradictory in his actions and purposes, and the play preserves the enigmatic core of his otherness —which could only have been dissipated by the non-existent future which was cut short by the murder. And the conspirators' actions also had unintended consequences (notably the Civil War), different too from the ideal restoration of the Republic they invoked as their purpose. Once again, Ray's reading is finely attuned to the narrative interplay of prospectiou and retrospection. In this case, too, lie points out dial Freud's reading of this tragedy (to the extent that there is one) forecloses the play of difference, for example in die interpretation of Brutus' character. Brutus too is complex, divided within, hesitating between two father figures or ancestors, Caesar himself, perhaps, and (or, rather, or) the ancient Brutus who expelled Tarquin from Rome and instauratcd the Republic. Ray examines the way iu which Brutus' "double coinage" is manipulated by Cassius and others, and the way the paradox of die self cannot be solved here either: "The moment of centring, the accomplishment of selfhood, is equally and necessarily one ofdecenu-ing" (141), and so Brutus fashions himself as an inherently divided subject. The tragedy incorporates the double genealogy of Brutus with a greater tolerance for contradiction than is found in Plutarch —emphasizing the way Brutus is, like Rome, at war with himself, The difference between tyrannicide and tyranny is also deconstructed, as the logic of dicir actions drives the conspirators into mimicking die very gestures of "hermeneutic tyranny" they reject in the prospective tyrant. In formulating his seduction theory, Freud had to acknowledge that die original (now traumatic) event cannot be returned to its exact original state, as the Same —and Ray uses diis analogy to emphasize die element of otherness that the conspirators' deeds and their interpretations add to Caesar's self and actions. Perhaps Hillis Miller's conception of the performative would he a useful complement to Ray's perspective here: the conspirators try to define Caesar as a tyrant, etc., and they do not recognize the constitutive and performative element in their own portrayal of him, due to the inescapable prematurity of their deed. As to die play itself, in Ray's reading it systematically refuses to determine the meaning of the events it portrays: one could perhaps say that its own performative intervention in the events is a deliberate self-dismantling one: "Shakespeare's metadrama seems to say that the deed can be repeated, the scene reconstructed, the words spoken translated, but that this alone will not give us access to what die miscelfinea: a journal of english and american studies 44 (2011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368 Reviews scene means" (159). It might be added that this view holds a suggestive potential of implications for the staging, one could almost say the performative performance, of Shakespeare's play. The conspirators themselves imagine the future performances, but quite characteristically they assume their meaning will be nonambiguous. The playwright knows otherwise. The Freudian connection comes almost as an afterthought to this chapter: in Totem and Taboo Freud assumes that die Primal Patriarch's murder is unequivocally an instance of tyrannicide, although a reactive performance of guilt will follow in die rituals developing from it. Ray makes Freud side with die conspirators in their tendentious denunciation of the tyrant —since Freud conceives of die archetypal patriarch as consistently tyrannical. But one wonders whether Freud, like Brutus, was not somewhat more ambivalent in his views on die patriarch, under die surface of his text. "Complex, not die same as itself from die outset, the event, like die experience of trauma, makes possible and necessary the deferred and constant returns to it of which Shakespeare's [or Freud's?] text-is only one of innumerable instances" (170). Ray finds significant diat Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was written in response to the deadi of Freud's own father. This book's reading of the protagonist's Oedipal conflict in Hamlet is well known, and it will therefore come as no surprise tiiat Ray's last chapter on Hamlet engages more directly widi Freud. While it examines die play from an interesting and original perspective, I find diat it is less suggestive and intense than the previous chapters on Oedipus Tyrannus and Julius Caesar. The main point is once again Freud's failure to adequately engage with otherness —in diis case "leaving increasingly unacknowledged the significance of parental desire in the constitution of die subject's psychic life" (174). Once again the historical context plays a role —praying for the dead being at die time a Cadiolic custom recendy banned under die new dispensations of the Church of England. The Ghost's call "Remember me!" ratiier than "Revenge!" should be interpreted in this connection, as well as Hamlet's general predicament, trapped in a mourning ritual without issue. This argument blends well widi Stephen Creenblatt's reading of Hamlet in Will in the World or in Hamlet in Purgatory. Ray's reading complexly engages the critical literature on Hamlet understood (mistakenly, he argues) as a modern subject; Ray emphasizes die imagery of audition and "poisoning dirough the ear" —as symbols ofexcessive remembrance. Polonius' injunctions to Laertes are reread here, paradoxically, as representing a quite modern self-fashioning, free from die excessive weight of fatherly instruction. There is no absolute freedom from the father in Hamlet, but it is only when Hamlet becomes more self-determined, like Laertes, diat he achieves a measure of freedom from the weight of paternal overdeterminadou, and is able to fulfil his mission. "Auto-fidelity must, in the final analysis, override fidelity to any of die miscelanea: a journal of english and american studios 44 (2011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368 Reviews father's foregoing precepts" (207). But, as shown by die example of Polonius, this autonomy from paternal authority is also elicited and enabled by the father himself. As noted before, one might argue that there is in Ray's Hamlet an element of self- portrayal —as regards this distancing from the psychoanalytic Father, the better to fulfil his mission and also fashion his own life path. An afterword insists that Freud's approach was not "mistaken" but rather caught up in the exigency of his own ipsocentric focus on the individual psyche, Ray, with Laplanche, emphasizes die role of unforeseen, multiple, and irreducible others in the constitution of the self. Attention to the role of otherness in the de-centered subject, he argues, should make psychoanalysis more aware of the multiple dimensions of the cultural field, and transform itself into a more de-centered, and more complex, inquiry into the structure and constitution of human subjects and their cultural artifacts. His book is an excellent contribution to this project. Works cited Freud, Sigmund. (1900) 1953-66. The Interpretation of Dreams. Vols. 4-5 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. James Strachey et al. Trans. Jarnes Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press/Institute of Psychology. —. (1912-1913} 1953-66b. Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. James Strachey et al. Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press/Institute of Psychology, 1953-66. 13.1-161. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Rev. ed. Garden City (NY): Doubled ay-Anchor. Goux, Jean-Joseph. 1993- Oedipus, Philosopher. Trans. Catherine Porte. Stanford, CA: Stanford U.P. Greenblatt, Stephen. 2002. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P. —. 2004. Will In the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, New York and London: Norton. Laino, R.D. 1960. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Laplanche, Jean. 2006. Problematiques VI: L'apres-coup. Paris: P.U.F, Schanzer, Ernest. 1955, "The Problem of Julius Caesar," Shakespeare Quarterly 6: 297-308. Miller, J. Hillis. 1990. Tropes, Parables, Performatives: Essays ■ on 20th Century Literature. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Received: 6 September 2011 miscelanea: a journal of english and american studies 44 (2011): pp. 167-173 ISSN: 1137-6368