Psychoanalysis and Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness Essay -- Heart Da

Psychoanalysis and The warmheartedness of Darkness In Lacanian psychoanalysis, impressive stories is essential to the analysands (re)cognition of trauma. Julia Kristeva refers to the analysands narrative as an instance of borderline neurotic discourse which gives the analyst the photograph of something alogical, unstitched, and chaotic (42). She then explores the entertainment (jouissance) that the analysand experiences in the course of Lacans talking cure. For the analysand, the pleasure is in the relation The analyst is struck by a original maniacal eroticization of speech, as if the patient were clinging to it, gulping it down, sucking on it, delighting in all the aspects of an oral eroticization and a narcissistic safety belt which this benignant of non-communicative, exhibitionistic, and fortifying use of speech entails (42). This notion of pleasure-in-telling serves both as a quest of departure in my reading of Marlows narrative--his own talking cure--and as a means of interrogating the pleasure-in-reading within the narratological economy of desire. In his Freudian interpretation of the Heart of Darkness, Peter abide asserts that we must ask what motivates Marlows retellings--of his own and Kurtzs mortal adventures (239). Brooks concludes that the primary motivation is Marlows search for some kernel of essential pith at the core of Kurtzs tale. Reading in a Lacanian register, I reason instead that the search for subject matter plays a secondary role to the telling of the tale itself. Indeed, as Slavoj Zizek notes, symptoms have no meaning outside the context of the recreated scene of trauma The analysis produces the truth, i.e., the signifying frame which gives to the symptoms their symbolic place and meaning... ...tial meaning of being in the world were revealed and every trauma were laid bare, in that location would be no questions left to ask and no stories left to tell. By not revealing the heart of darkness--which Lacan would argue can never be revealed--Conrad leaves the necessary space for desire in the narrative. Thus, the narratological economy of desire is maintained. kit and boodle Cited Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge Harvard UP, 1984. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. unexampled York Dover, 1990. Kristeva, Julia. Within the Microcosm of The Talking Cure. Interpreting Lacan. Eds. Joseph Smith and William Kerrigan. New Haven Yale UP, 1983. Zizek, Slavoj. The rectitude Arises from Misrecognition. Lacan and the Subject of Language. Eds. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher. New York Routledge, 1991.