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

Psychoanalysis and The breast of Darkness In Lacanian psychoanalysis, weighty 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 slump of something alogical, unstitched, and chaotic (42). She then explores the pastime (jouissance) that the analysand experiences in the course of Lacans talking cure. For the analysand, the pleasure is in the telling The analyst is struck by a certain(a) 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 charitable of non-communicative, exhibitionistic, and fortifying use of speech entails (42). This notion of pleasure-in-telling serves both as a plosive of departure in my reading of Marlows narrative--his own talking cure--and as a means of interrogating th e pleasure-in-reading within the narratological economy of desire. In his Freudian interpretation of the Heart of Darkness, Peter put up 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 signification at the core of Kurtzs tale. Reading in a Lacanian register, I palisade instead that the search for heart plays a secondary role to the telling of the tale itself. Indeed, as Slavoj Zizek notes, symptoms have no meaning outside the condition 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, at that place 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 rev ealed--Conrad leaves the necessary space for desire in the narrative. Thus, the narratological economy of desire is maintained. whole shebang Cited Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge Harvard UP, 1984. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. reinvigorated 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 loyalty Arises from Misrecognition. Lacan and the Subject of Language. Eds. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher. New York Routledge, 1991.