Trauma, subjectivity and the psychic apparatus: a historical, epic and psychoanalytic reading

Abstract

In this article, we will address the issues of trauma and subjectivity in psychoanalysis to consider, with Lacan in Seminar XX, the theoretical proposal of a naming device specific to each person in their inalienable singularity – based on the formula of the unconscious as know-how with lalanguage, the notion of sinthome as something of the order of invention and the consideration of the “father” as a performative, pragmatic, and singular device of naming, capable of acquiring the status of a function capable of pluralization and of adequately confronting the helplessness of origin, in the name of a necessary coming of age. We will also address the theoretical model of the psychic apparatus as a “writing machine” and the idea of the death drive as “archival evil”, according to Derrida’s philosophical-deconstructionist reading of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Our goal is to compare these two theoretical proposals to investigate whether they are compatible with the possibility of an epic way out for the subject, beyond the commonly given possibilities of going it alone in the world – under the aegis of a subjective condition of pain and anguish – and taking refuge in the drama of the desperate appeal for protection to the figure of the flawed or insufficient father. We will make this comparison in an introductory manner – without the intention of exhausting the subject – by resorting to the notion of creativity, which, according to our understanding, permeates both Lacan’s notion of lalanguage and Derrida’s proposal of différance, both of which establish a model of language that tends to escape structuralist canons.