I found Richard Serrano's article "Al-Sharif al-Taliq, Jacques Lacan, and the Poetics of Abbreviation," a little problematic because I wasn't sure exactly how his conception of the writer trying to conceal or cover "the original trauma of the poem" in Lacanian terms differed from the way poetry normally works. I also wasn't sure, moreover, how his employment of Lacan's theories differed from conventional literary interpretation.
He states that the trauma is an event that exists beyond or before language, behind the "accessible Symbolic Order," and that attempts to describe or relate trauma via language also, necessarily, obscure it. He writes, "Attempts to account for this moment - and, simultaneously, to hide it - result in language that constantly obscures the original trauma yet relentlessly points back to it" (141). So - if I'm understanding this right - if I attempted to relate via writing a traumatic experience, I would simultaneously obscure the original traumatic episode with imperfect language and, at the same time, still refer to it because it is the point of my writing.
But how does this differ from the way poetry normally works? Metaphors, similes, figures of speech, etc. all operate to point to an experience but, since they cannot perfectly render the experience for us, they could also be said to obscure said experience at the same time. And, of course, we measure a poet by how well he employs metaphors, similes, figures of speech, etc. which ties into Serrano's idea that the "cover up" functions as a mechanism for self-glorification for the poet. My point is, though, that you can get to his conclusion without having to resort to Lacanian theory or employ such terms as "trauma" or "psychoanalysis."
I just had a lot of "duh" moments as I was reading the article and I got the feeling that Serrano was hiding behind the buzz word "Lacan" whilst performing good, old-fashioned literary interpretation.
Psychoanalysis is passing by a crisis, because some of its notion were proved to false. One of the most astonishing examples of this is the thumb suction in babies, that used to be explained by many psychoanalytical theories, until the ecographies showed that fetuses do that before the are born, revealing that is just a biological human instinct.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Freud´s merit of discovering the unconsciousness is indisputable. Before him, human were defined as rational animals and not any part of the self was supposed to be out of the vigilance of reason.
Said that, I didn´t know what was Lacan doing with this poem, and, with all the respect that is still have for psychoanalysis, I think that the Lacanian view had not mucha to do if we read Serrano...