Double Trouble: The Doppelgänger from Romanticism to Postmodernism 2019050180, 9780367441449, 9781003007920

Citation preview

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Double Trouble

The double, doppelgänger, is mostly understood as a peculiar figure that emerged in nineteenth-​century Romantic and gothic literature. Far from being a merely esoteric entity, however, this book argues that the double, although it mostly goes unnoticed, is a widespread phenomenon that has significant influence on our lives. It is an inherent key element of human subjectivity whose functions, forms, and effects have not yet gained the serious consideration they merit. Drawing on literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, and combining a personal story with theoretical interventions, Double Trouble develops a novel understanding of the double and human subjectivity in the last two centuries. It begins with the singular and narcissistic double of Romanticism and gradually moves to the multiple doubles implicated by Postmodernism. The double is what defies unicity and opens up the subject to multiplicity. Consequently, it  gradually emerges as a bridge between the I and the Other, identity and difference, philosophy and literature, theory and praxis. Eran Dorfman is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University, and a former Directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. He is the author of Foundations of the Everyday: Shock, Deferral, Repetition (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014); Learning to See the World Anew: Merleau-​Ponty Facing the Lacanian Mirror (Phaenomenologica series, Springer, 2007, in French); and the co-​editor of Sexuality and Psychoanalysis: Philosophical Criticisms (Leuven University Press, 2010).

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Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory

California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels Exiled from Eden Katarzyna Nowak-​McNeice Narrative Reliability, Racial Conflicts and Ideology in the Modern Novel Marta Puxan-​Oliva Agamben’s Political Ontology of Nudity in Literature and Art Frances Restuccia Conceptualisation and Exposition A Theory of Character Construction Lina Varotsi Knots Post-​Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film Jean-​Michel  Rabaté Double Trouble The Doppelgänger from Romanticism to Postmodernism Eran Dorfman Literary Twinship from Shakespeare to the Age of Cloning Wieland Schwanebeck For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​literature/​series/​LITCRITANDCULT

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Double Trouble The Doppelgänger from Romanticism to Postmodernism Eran Dorfman

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First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Eran Dorfman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Dorfman, Eran, author. Title: Double trouble : the doppelgänger from romanticism to postmodernism / Eran Dorfman. Other titles: Doppelgänger from romanticism to postmodernism Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Literary criticism and cultural theory | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019050180 | ISBN 9780367441449 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003007920 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Doppelgängers. | Doubles in literature. | Split self in literature. | Other (Philosophy) in literature. | Difference (Philosophy) | Identity (Psychology) | Psychoanalysis and literature. Classification: LCC PN56.D67 D6775 2020 | DDC 809/.927–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050180 ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​44144-​9  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​00792-​0  (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

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In memory of my father, Baruch Moshe Dorfman (1945–​2016)

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Contents

Acknowledgments  Introduction 

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1 The Double That Takes My Breath Away 

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2 The Shadow’s Gaze 

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3 The Double’s Lesson of Love 

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4 Islands of Doubles 

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”: From the Personal to the Collective Double 

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Bibliography  Index 

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Acknowledgments

This book is the fruit of a collective effort. For more than three years I  met on a weekly basis with my incredibly talented research assistants to discuss the theme of the double. Without this privileged collaboration, the book would not have received its present form, and this for essential reasons. The double, I  propose, is what defies one’s uniqueness, paving the way to inner and outer multiplicity. Accordingly, the double is not a personal invention, reflecting one’s narcissism in the form of writing. The double is rather a bridge between me and the Other, and in the course of this work I was honored to find ways into five concrete Others who helped me to bypass numerous obstacles, and to whom I  am infinitely indebted: Hod Halevi, Eviatar Kopenhagen, Marina Mayorski, Guy Shapira, and Maya Shvalbo. This book is also theirs. Philipp Weber read the manuscript and contributed significantly to its accuracy. Duane Davis, Uri Eran, Tal Giladi, Arik Glasner, Martin Hershenzon, and Paul North read parts of the book and made some helpful suggestions. Throughout the years I  have been lucky enough to discuss various topics related to the double with the following inspiring persons: Yochai Ataria, Nadav Avruch, Georg W. Bertram, Aïm Deüelle Lüski, Eyal Dotan, Lea Dovev, Joshua Durban, Eran Eizenhamer, Amir Eshel, Jonathan Gold, Hélène L’Heuillet, Amir Harash, Dani Issler, Michèle Kahan, Adam Kaplan, Hagi Kenaan, Boaz M.  Levin, Elissa Marder, Elise Marrou, Iris Milner, Amir Naveh, Daniel Oksenberg, Tchelet Ram, Maurice Samuels, Galili Shahar, and Philippe Van Haute. Special thanks go to Liran Razinsky, who initiated me into the secret of the double. I also discussed this theme in various seminars I gave at

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Acknowledgments  ix Tel Aviv University, in which I received precious feedback from my committed students. I am grateful to Pamela J. Bruton, whose attentive copyediting contributed significantly to the clarity and fluidity of the text. Lastly, I  thank Jennifer Abbott from Routledge for the immediate confidence she expressed in this book, and Mitchell Manners for the smooth collaboration during the production process. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 732/​14, 872/​17).

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Introduction

Some people came to tell me I had a double hanging out there in the world. This news overwhelmed me so much that without further ado I ordered the informers to get this double and kill it. After they left, I was relieved for a while, knowing the problem was about to be solved, but all of a sudden I  felt a burning regret, understanding what a horrible mistake I  had made. In the first rush of emotion I  had considered my double as my enemy, but now I  realized how much I  actually needed him. For he was not my foe but my friend: my true friend, my true me –​he who, unnoticed, had always docilely accompanied me. How could I  have treated him with such ungrateful cruelty? Infinite sadness took hold of me, together with the deep desire to undo the crime –​but how? Profoundly shaken and perplexed I woke up. It was only a dream. But I felt it was much more than that. For many years I tried to elude this dream, this murderous desire combined with intimate affection toward my double, but now it’s time I listen to it. Who is this double? And what is it in my double –​in me –​that provokes such contradictory feelings? This book is an attempt to retrieve and understand the double –​my double, but also the double as a central figure in human life. The double, doppelgänger, is usually understood as a peculiar figure that emerged in nineteenth-​century Romantic and gothic literature, reappearing time and again in books, films, and other cultural manifestations. Far from being a merely esoteric entity, however, in this book I argue that the double is a widespread phenomenon that has significant influence on our lives although it mostly goes unnoticed. It is an inherent key element of human subjectivity whose functions, forms, and effects have not yet gained the serious consideration they merit.

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2 Introduction Although my dream dates back more than 20 years, I have come to investigate the double almost accidently. I  was writing a book about the everyday as the repetitive structure of life,1 inquiring how repetition can be other than dull and repressive. To sketch such a possibility I  discussed a series of images by the artist Cindy Sherman. Sherman is known for photographing herself under different identities, staging repetitive figures and scenes that are both banal and eventful, familiar and strange. Her work fascinated me in its refusal to choose between the ordinary and the extraordinary, and yet it was only later that I understood the deeper motive for my fascination: these images were all doubles of each other, doubles of an absent original, namely, Sherman herself. The repetition in time, which was the theme of my book, suddenly betrayed its intimate link with repetition in space, the repetition of the double. Thereafter I continued to work on temporality, but I repeatedly ended up encountering doubles. These doubles, however, were very different from Sherman’s playful figures, since they were, rather, split from each other and consequently became powerless and miserable. I began to realize that the crucial thing about the double, which may also be the solution to my dream, is to reconcile it with the pretentious original. These two are actually doubles of each other, and the question is how to make them complement rather than contradict and fight each other. The figure of the double suddenly became an object of urgent inquiry, and I  plunged into the vast literary and theoretical works on the double, as well as the numerous films that feature doubles. But I couldn’t find a way to organize these materials into a book. After more than a year of research, the answer came from an unexpected and painful event: my father suddenly fell ill with cancer and soon thereafter died. I saw his brutal death as a sign, and when a few months later I was invited to give a paper at a conference about breathlessness, I knew I had to write about the lack of air from which my father finally died. This lack of air was not incidental: the double is often described as strangling the original, preventing him or her from living, and I had a strong feeling that starting from this aspect of the double would

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Introduction  3 lead me to the right path not only to understand the double but also how to make friends with it. Things started to become clearer, but I  still needed to find the exact relationship between the personal and the theoretical aspects of this work. The double comes to challenge any attempt at full control and clear boundaries between the inside and the outside, the I and the not-​I. As such, it cannot be captured by orthodox academic writing that attempts to constrain it with well-​defined concepts. I  therefore decided to double the book itself, with each chapter beginning with a personal story and an original analysis of a literary work, followed by a theoretical intervention. In this way I  tried to give the double its appropriate treatment, since it is neither a purely irrational force nor an academically rationalized figure. Rather, the double moves between these poles, defying their exclusivity but also, if applied correctly, connecting them to each other. This book is therefore a personal and intellectual quest for what I  call multiple identity, namely, an identity that accepts the double as an integral part of itself. Why, then, multiple and not double identity? The answer is that the double is never a singular entity. Although it may appear so initially, the double is not simply an alter ego, a similar Other with which I somehow need to cope. The double is much more and much less than that. It incarnates the inevitable remainder and opaque element of singular subjectivity and stable self-​identity, connecting them to other beings and identities. The double is what defies unicity and opens up the subject to multiplicity, since it reveals that the boundaries between I and world, I and Other, I and me, are far from being clear.2 This book proposes moving beyond the initial repulsion the double provokes to allow a better understanding of one’s inner and outer multiplicity. Indeed, in Romantic and gothic literature the double often took the form of a more or less exact copy of the self, and in my dream, too, I found I had a double. But this is already a form of defense, a desperate attempt to declare that one is the original and that the double is merely a double, namely, a pretender that needs to clear the stage. This is the most superficial form of the double, but the double can also take other shapes and forms, and

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4 Introduction I trace them in the following pages and discover other possibilities to confront and live with one’s double(s). One of the aims of this book is to broaden the common understanding of the double without losing its specificity. Every chapter will therefore focus on a different form and function of the double while linking it to others. My purpose, however, is not to provide a catalogue of doubles but to present a movement, gradually progressing from the “one” to the “many,” that is, from a dual relationship with one’s double to a complex relationship with one’s inner and outer multiplicity. Thus, the first two chapters focus on nineteenth-​century stories from the doppelgänger tradition in which the protagonist fatally encounters an intimidating double; whereas the next two chapters present more contemporary works with multiple doubles that, rather than threaten the “original,” transform it and extend its boundaries. In this way I hope to conserve a notion of the subject, on the one hand, while introducing multiplicity into it, on the other. Subjectivity has traditionally been conceived of as autonomous and self-​identical. Poststructuralist theories that seek to “overcome” the subject challenge this conception, while phenomenological and psychoanalytic theories have defended it, although they stress the interdependence between subject and world. The figure of the double serves as an intermediary between these conflicting demands, allowing us to salvage a notion of subjectivity while revealing its inherent multiplicity. The double defies the uniqueness and singularity of the subject, but it is also attached to the subject as one of its variants –​otherwise, it would not be a double. The double is therefore an intermediary not only between the one and the many but also between theories that seem to contradict each other. To respect the nature of the double and its resistance to theory, I will not provide in this introduction a detailed survey of the vast existing literature on the theme.3 Rather, I will refer to it sporadically throughout this book according to the relevant aspects discussed in the chapters. However, some methodological remarks should be made here. The main fields that have studied the double are psychoanalysis, literary theory, cultural

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Introduction  5 studies, and film studies. I propose, though, that the double is a latent key concept in philosophy as well, often disguised under different names such as alter ego or simply Other. The present book draws on these various theories and methodologies in an attempt to constitute an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for understanding the double and the nature of subjectivity. Rather than imposing a unified and fixed account on the various forms of the double, I  propose to follow the organic development of the double in its different guises and moments: from its simplest advent as a threatening specter to the complex array of doubles that secretly underlies human life. This movement from the one to the many is also the movement from Romanticism to Postmodernism. As mentioned earlier, the first two chapters of this book will focus on stories from the Romantic tradition whereas the following two chapters will evolve from novels that can be characterized as postmodern. I do not pretend to give a full historical account of the double in literature from the nineteenth century onward; rather, in each chapter I will draw on one literary work which embodies a crucial aspect of the double. Certainly, my conceptualization takes into account the historical and social circumstances of the double, especially in the second and fourth chapters. However, the development of this book is more thematic than historical, and this is due to the very nature of the double. The double defies linear time and forces us to recall the circular time of ancient cultures. In many respects, the postmodern double with which I end the book reconnects us to the premodern double, finally coming full circle in all the meanings of the term. The first chapter begins with the story of my father’s death from a lack of air, a lack that I characterize as no less mental than physical. Something or someone blocked his breath: an interior double. I investigate this double through Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Horla” (1887), about a man who faces a mysterious creature that takes over his breath, his willpower, and finally his life. I  claim that this creature is a negative double, whose purpose is to defy the protagonist’s rejection of alterity. The negative double is an invisible and dark entity, in contrast to the positive double, which is visible and has concrete traits. However, these two types of double complement each other,

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6 Introduction both stemming from the endeavor to deny alterity, lack, and self-​fragmentation. To understand this denial, I focus on the notion of narcissism, drawing on psychoanalysis and, in particular, Freud, Rank, Lacan, and Klein. Rather than simple self-​love, narcissism is a struggle to withdraw libido from the dangerous outside and direct it back to oneself. This necessitates a split of oneself into two, as happened to Narcissus, who fell so madly in love with his mirror image that he jumped into the water to unite with it in death. The double is the result of an interior split, which is, however, a structural element of subjectivity. The question is how to process this split such that the destructive forces it involves will not take over. Whereas the double arises initially from a narcissistic struggle, it can also become a bridge to the Other through a work of intersubjective symbolization. This work of symbolization is the role of psychoanalysis but also of literature and any form of writing, including the present book. In the second chapter I further pursue the idea of the double as an intermediary between the I and the Other, focusing on the question of the gaze as moving between light and darkness. I analyze “The Shadow” (1847), a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a learned man who sends his shadow to observe a mysterious woman in a house across the street. The shadow enters the house but returns only many years later, in the form of a rich gentleman. He tells the learned man that the woman he saw was none other than Poetry, from whom the shadow learned the secret of the gaze. The shadow uses it, however, to blackmail people and gain their money and respect, whereas the learned man refuses the gaze of others and looks only for essence. I  claim that the conflict between the man and his shadow signifies a split between essence and appearance, that is, two forms of sight. The result of the split is the gradual transformation of the learned man himself into a shadow. I draw on Hegel’s dialectic of Lord and Bondsman and Sartre’s theory of the gaze to show that a duplication of the self is an intrinsic aspect of human subjectivity. The Lord and the Bondsman incarnate internal elements of the self that have been split and now need to be reintegrated. This is possible

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Introduction  7 through extending the enclosing limits of the subject toward an external entity, which, in the story, is embodied by Poetry. Poetry encompasses both the realm of image and the realm of essence and as such can serve as a bridge not only between internal elements within oneself but also between the I and the Other, subject and world. I further develop this bridging option through the theories of Levinas and Kristeva. Levinas sees the subject as rooted in primordial and anonymous existence (the il y a), while aiming at self-​transcendence through an encounter with the Other. I claim that these poles –​pure anonymity and pure alterity –​converge in the feminine figure of Poetry. This figure is better understood in light of Kristeva’s notions of the semiotic and the abject. Poetry is revealed as radical otherness, at the same time that it incarnates anonymous drives that transgress the clear boundaries between the I and the not-​I. In the third chapter I make a step into the twentieth century, moving from the notion of a split self to an active process of self-​doubling. This process, I claim, is necessary in order to overcome narcissism and access love. I analyze Marguerite Duras’s novel The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964), about a young woman who is brutally abandoned by her fiancé. After ten years of monotonous and arid life, she suddenly finds her fiancé’s double, who in turn falls in love with her. Rather than wishing to realize this old/​new love in a conventional way, she asks him to maintain his affair with another woman and allow her to watch them from a distance. A fascinating web of doubles is gradually created, bringing the notion of multiple identity to the edge of madness. I examine this array of doubles through Kierkegaard’s notion of shadow-​existence, a primordial and playful field of possibilities that should be activated in later life to allow one to truly love another person. The love affair actualizes a concrete possibility, a particular lover, but it simultaneously connects it to all other possibilities that mark its alternative doubles. For Kierkegaard, to love a man or a woman is to love multiple doubles encompassed in one’s lover and in oneself. It is this combination of the one and the many that allows a true relationship with the Other. I further develop this idea in light

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8 Introduction of Nietzsche’s notion of the Eternal Return and Freud’s conceptualization of the death drive, and I end the chapter with a discussion on multiplicity in Deleuze. The double can serve as a bridge to otherness, maintaining the balance between the one and the many. It is, however, difficult to achieve this balance, and in the fourth chapter I discuss this difficulty, situating it in contemporary historical and social circumstances. I  propose a reading of Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility of an Island (2005), whose protagonist, Daniel1, laments his selfish personality and his inability to love. This inability, moreover, is perpetuated by a series of clones who live in a dystopic world. The novel thus brings us back to the problem of narcissism and the denial of otherness, but it also presents a series of doubles. This series is the key to overcoming narcissism, and indeed, it is finally Daniel25 who manages to exit his self-​imprisonment and regain love by giving up his pretension to unicity. I thus interpret the novel as a quest for an island that would nonetheless be populated, a self that would recognize its inner and outer multiplicity. I draw on Baudrillard and Agamben to examine this possibility in light of the contemporary social and economic environment and finally turn to a modern version of Robinson Crusoe by Michel Tournier, entitled Friday (1967). This Robinson chooses to remain on the island even when a ship comes to rescue him, since he understands that the island is not –​that he is not –​only one. To conclude the book, I  consider the significance of the double in an age of identity politics. The double unveils the interdependency not only between me and the Other but also between different social and political groups. The personal drama of love and hate provoked by the double can serve as a model to understand the broader convolutions in which peoples and social groups are enmeshed. I consider the bilateral complex relationship that binds together Israelis and Palestinians. These two peoples are actually doubles of each other, and I use Sartre’s text Anti-​Semite and Jew, as well as Girard’s theory of the surrogate victim, to show that rival groups need each other to define themselves, yet they refuse to admit that this is so.

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Introduction  9 To explore the possibility of individuals and groups admitting their interdependence, I end the book with a discussion of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. Freud claims that Moses was not Hebrew but Egyptian and that moreover he was assassinated by the Hebrew people and replaced by a double with an identical name. Freud bases Judaism and monotheism upon duplication and violence, but a closer reading in the text reveals that this duplication and violence also characterize Freud’s own circumstances in 1938. Freud thus presents himself as a double of Moses, undermining the unicity and authority of the father of monotheism. Yet something much more precious is achieved: namely, Moses’s ability to survive through his doubles. And with Moses it is also Freud himself who is granted the gift of survival given by his doubles. Freud ends his life encompassing Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian doubles, apparently foes of each other but secretly inseparable friends, guaranteeing him love and immortality.

Notes 1 Eran Dorfman, Foundations of the Everyday: Shock, Deferral, Repetition (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014). 2 To a large extent I adopt Dimitris Vardoulakis’s proposal that the double carries with it an ontology of resistance to presence; but whereas his endeavor is to uncover this ontology, subjecting both literature and psychoanalysis to philosophy, my approach to the double is closer to that of Carl F. Keppler. Thus, the double, both in literature and in real life, initiates one into the secret of multiplicity, revealing the interdependency between the I  and the not-​ I. This initiation, however, is a long and painstaking process that cannot be summarized or replaced by a well-​defined ontology. See Dimitris Vardoulakis, The Doppelganger: Literature’s Philosophy (New  York: Fordham University Press, 2010); Carl F.  Keppler, The Literature of the Second Self (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972). 3 The secondary literature on the doppelgänger is rather vast and goes in different directions. Following are the major works I refer to in this book: Otto Rank, The Double: A Psychoanalytical Study, trans. Harry Tucker Jr. (1925; London: Maresfield Library, 1989); Ralph Tymms, Doubles in Literary Psychology (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1949); Marianne Wain, “The Double in Romantic Narrative: A Preliminary Study,” Germanic Review 36, no. 4 (1961):

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10 Introduction 257–​268; Claire Rosenfield, “The Shadow Within: The Conscious and Unconscious Use of the Double,” Daedalus 92, no. 2 (1963): 326–​344; Masao Miyoshi, The Divided Self: A Perspective on the Literature of the Victorians (New York: New York University Press, 1969); Robert Rogers, A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970); Keppler, Literature of the Second Self; Clément Rosset, The Real and Its Double, trans. Chris Turner (1976; Chicago: Seagull Books, 2012); Clifford Hallam,“The Double as Incomplete Self: Toward a Definition of Doppelgänger,” in Fearful Symmetry: Doubles and Doubling in Literature and Film. Papers from the Fifth Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film, ed. Eugene Crook (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1981), 1–​31; Karl Miller, Doubles: Studies in Literary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); John Herdman, The Double in Nineteenth-​Century Fiction (London: Macmillan Press, 1990); Gordon E. Slethaug, The Play of the Double in Postmodern American Fiction (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993); Andrew J. Webber, The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Friedrich Kittler, “Romanticism –​ Psychoanalysis  –​Film: A History of the Double,” in Literature Media: Information Systems, ed. John Johnston (Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1997), 85–​100; Vardoulakis, Doppelganger.

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1 T  he Double That Takes My Breath Away

“I have no air”: my father kept pronouncing these words over and over again for more than two hours, sometimes murmuring and sometimes shouting them out. Only three weeks earlier he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and that morning he was hospitalized because of severe weakness. Toward the evening he suddenly started to feel stifled, and no matter how much oxygen he was given, his breathlessness only further persisted. The doctor finally took me and my sister aside and told us that the only way to ease our father’s suffering was to give him a morphine inhalation, the side effect of which would be, however, a further suppression of respiration. Devastated by our father’s cries for help we agreed to this procedure, and one hour later we witnessed with tears our father’s last breath –​a peaceful one at last. “I have no air” were therefore my father’s last words, which haunted me for months and which I will never forget. But I felt that beyond their immediate expression of an urgent need, they also contained a secret message, a testimony but also a will, articulated through a heartbreaking lament. Rather than expose here my father’s biography, I wish to better understand his strange and difficult testimony. Why didn’t he have air? The clue, I  suggest, is a certain link between physical breathlessness –​having no air –​and mental breathlessness, an idea that I will try to elucidate. Breathing is first of all an engagement with the environment, taking air in and letting it out in a constant exchange. Second, it is passive and automatic, not necessitating one’s intervention. Third, breathing is mostly invisible, and in normal conditions I  don’t see the air I  inhale and exhale. These three

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12  The Double That Takes My Breath Away features  –​exchange with the outside, passivity, invisibility  –​ make breath something much less trivial than it might at first seem. Breath can be considered as a quasi-​passive and invisible diaphragm, a threshold between the inside and the outside, with all the problematics such a condition involves. In this sense, breath may become a focal point for investigating one’s identity: who breathes? But also: what is breathed, inhaled, and exhaled? These questions link breath with the figure of the double, which stands, too, at the threshold of the I and the not-​I. Both breath and the double challenge and transgress the clear boundaries of the subject, yet both remain invisible until something goes awry: breathlessness in the first case and the appearance of a threatening double in the second. In the same way that breath quietly takes place and announces itself only when there is a problem, so we secretly have doubles that show themselves during times of emergency, yet often in a distorted way. The double flourished in nineteenth-​century Romantic and gothic literature for reasons on which I will elaborate in the next chapter. For the purposes of this chapter, however, it is sufficient to note that the double was used to represent an undesired element or trait of the protagonist, such as immorality, greed, or sexual desire. This element is projected outside onto an external figure, which is identical or attached to the protagonist (mirror image, shadow, etc.). But this figure, the double, gradually takes over and finally destroys the protagonist through a last-​moment introjection, in which the undesired element returns to the latter at the moment of death. This mechanism of projection and introjection is equally at work in certain types of breathlessness: something in breathing –​taking the air in and letting it out –​appears to be unpleasant or unwished for, forcing one to find a double to assume this activity, only to finally be annihilated by the double. To understand the meaning of breathlessness and the involvement of the double in it, in this chapter I will examine Guy de Maupassant’s 1887 short story entitled “The Horla.”1 “The Horla” is constructed as the diary of a wealthy single man living on a big estate near Rouen. Nothing much seems to happen in his life, and yet he is very satisfied with it. Here are the

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  13 first lines of the story: “May 8. What a wonderful day! I spent all morning stretched out on the grass in front of my house, beneath the huge plane tree that completely covers, shelters, and shades the lawn” (6). The diarist poses himself as a laid-​back man, with: “profound and delicate roots that attach a man to the land where his ancestors were born and died, […] to what one should think and what one should eat, […] to the smells of the earth, of the villages, of the air itself” (6). Indeed, it is an idyllic and organic life with an easy and effortless breath thanks to the sweet air that seems to have suffused this place from time immemorial and freely enters the lungs of its inhabitants. All the diarist has to do is simply to continue a long chain of tradition and affiliation, to which he has nothing much to add except his mere presence on the soil, under the peaceful shadow of the ancient tree. He is therefore very happy, and when he sees on the river a long line of boats with different flags, he is even more pleased and salutes a magnificent Brazilian three-​master. But this pastoral picture soon changes when a sudden, feverish illness lowers the spirit of the diarist and makes him ask: “Where do these mysterious influences come from that change our happiness into despondency and our confidence into distress? You might say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Powers, from whose mysterious closeness we suffer” (6). The air that seemed to innocently enter the lungs thus suddenly turns into a potential danger, since breath brings with it various forces that are all external and invisible. The air now is no longer sweet and pure but rather takes on a character opposite to that of the soil: whereas the latter is solid, stable, and rooted, the air is amorphous and mobile –​two traits the diarist seems to particularly dislike. The diarist’s illness soon worsens and the dislike now becomes nothing less than death anxiety. He is convinced that someone is trying to kill him in his sleep, or, more exactly, to strangle him: I sleep –​for a long time –​two or three hours –​then a dream –​ no –​a nightmare grips me. I am fully aware that I am lying down and sleeping … I feel it and I know it … and I also feel that someone is approaching me, looking at me, feeling

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14  The Double That Takes My Breath Away me, is climbing into my bed, kneeling on my chest, taking my neck in his hands and squeezing … squeezing … with all his strength, to strangle me. […] I try, with terrible efforts, gasping for breath, to turn over, to throw off this being that is crushing me and suffocating me –​I can’t! (6–​7) This “someone” who tries to strangle the diarist remains at this point an imaginary character: a nightmare figure that tries to stop him from breathing. Once the nightmare is over, this stranger/​strangler disappears and breath and sleep are again allowed, as if this battle for air was after all won by the diarist, who can at last breathe on his own with no fear or anxiety. Who could it be that scares the diarist so much? What is the cause of his anxiety attacks? It is too soon to answer these questions, but we know for certain that breath is central here. As I noted earlier, breathing lets the outside in and the inside out in a continuous trade, and the fragility of this process is revealed in anxiety. Breath becomes the focal point of anxiety precisely because it is natural, neutral, and transparent. Breath blurs agency, which makes it a central theme also in Buddhist non-​ self meditation (anatta). Anxiety attacks stem from what is both feared and desired, that is, the loss of control, the immersion of the I in something else, a zone in which the distinction between the I and the not-​I is no longer maintainable. This zone is hinted at by another element in the diarist’s nightmares: darkness. In the same way that breath incarnates a danger because of the invisibility of the air and its unknown origin in the external world, darkness equally threatens one’s control of the situation through the restriction of sight. This restriction culminates in sleep, a sort of inner darkness where the eyes must be shut, and conscious surveillance must be diminished in order to give way to invisible forces and uncontrollable dreams. Indeed, once the cracks in the I appear, it is difficult to ignore them, and it is even more difficult to restrict anxiety attacks to specific times and places. Thus, the diarist starts to suffer from these attacks not only during the night but during the day as well. He then decides that he needs to get away from his ancestors’ estate for a while and travel to Mont-​Saint-​Michel.

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  15 This journey, surprisingly, cures him of his illness, but even there he must face the threat of the invisible. He climbs up to the magnificent abbey on the top of the hill, and viewing the majestic scenery, he expresses to the local monk his envy of the happiness that must result from living in such a place. The monk, however, doesn’t seem to share this enthusiasm and oddly answers: “It is very windy, Monsieur.” He then continues: “Look, here is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature, which knocks men down, […] here is the wind that kills, whistles, groans, howls –​ have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists” (9). The innocent, sweet air of the diarist’s estate in the beginning of the story becomes here a powerful wind that can destroy everything in its path and yet is for the most part invisible and uncontrolled. Wind, then, is a metaphor for a physical power that has an element of the spiritual in all senses of the term. In both Arabic and Hebrew the word for wind also means ghost, and the Old English gast, the origin of the word ghost, means breath. The air hides in itself death and destruction, and breath is therefore a diaphragm not only between the outside and the inside but also between life and death. Breath is the constant source of life, but this source, like everything that is organic, also contains a self-​destructive element that lurks in every corner and threatens to make the organic inorganic again. This is why no journey can save the diarist from this inner threat, and two days after his return the attacks recur: Last night, I felt someone squatting over me, who, with his mouth over mine, was drinking in my life through my lips. Yes, he was sucking it in from my throat, just like a leech. Then he rose, sated, and I  woke up, so wounded, broken, and annihilated, that I could no longer move. (10) Life is taken away by a vampire or a ghost, but who is this ghost? The diarist discovers that it not only takes his breath and sucks his blood in his imagination but also, and more simply, drinks the water from a bottle on his table in the real world. This discovery makes him wonder –​at last –​whether this ghost is none other than himself: “So I was a sleepwalker, then, and was living, without knowing it, this double mysterious life,

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16  The Double That Takes My Breath Away which makes us suspect that there are two beings inside us, or that a foreign being, unknowable and invisible, animates our captive body when our soul is dulled” (10). This actually is the only moment of truth and sincerity in the story, the diarist daring to acknowledge the doubling of the I.  He is no longer the master of the house, the master of his body, soul, and breath. In him is hidden another, invisible I, a revelation that changes not only the content but also the form of his language: “Who? Me? Me without a doubt? It could only be me?” (10, translation modified), he cries, as if to declare that the I or, rather, the “Me without a doubt” must be put, from now on, into question. No sovereign autonomy of the self or the I is possible, no matter how many Cartesian meditations the diarist may try to practice. Yet the truth is too dreadful to maintain, and so the diarist decides to travel again to escape this inner ghost. This decision, though, is not a simple escape, since it stems from the diarist’s deep understanding that he is dependent upon others, upon the outside. He suddenly realizes that it is precisely the negation of this dependence that leads to the appearance of the double: “When we are alone for a long time, we people the void with phantoms” (11). It is only when he is deprived of others, remaining in his isolated and apparently autarkic estate, that the attacks occur. Home shows its dangerous, uncanny, unheimlich aspect when one tries to deny otherness and use home as a protection against it. Otherness is a part of being alive, as we’ve seen with the phenomenon of breath, and no one can escape it. The appearance of the threatening double, as I earlier claimed, is only the externalization of the internal doubles each one of us secretly encompasses, doubles that are agents of the inherent alterity within one’s subjectivity. It is the refusal to acknowledge and embrace alterity that leads to its projection outside, but rather than make one the master of the house, this projection only further strengthens alterity until it becomes monstrous. This point is further stressed when, arriving in Paris, the diarist attends a dinner party and meets there a doctor who belongs to the Nancy School, where hypnosis and suggestion were practiced at the end of the nineteenth century and much

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  17 influenced the young Sigmund Freud. The diarist is very skeptical about the technique of suggestion and more generally about the possibility of being controlled from the outside, and to prove the truth of his method the doctor performs a terrifying experiment. He hypnotizes the diarist’s cousin and asks the diarist to sit behind her. He then orders her to look in a “mirror,” which is actually nothing but a simple visiting card, and to describe what her cousin does. She answers correctly: he is taking a photograph from his pocket and looking at it. And who is in the photograph? Once again she is right: the diarist himself. This scene presents a false mirror (the visiting card) and a true photograph, but the false seems to be more accurate than the true, since through it the cousin sees the interior nature of the diarist: his narcissism, for sure, but also his tendency to remain at the surface of things, not understanding their deeper nature. It is paradoxically the fear of the invading exterior that makes him cling to the external contours of phenomena, for example, to his photography. These contours seem to reassure him of a clear boundary between the inside and the outside and reinforce his stable and well-​defined identity. Yet the fear comes not only from the outside but also from the inside, or more exactly from the inability to clearly distinguish between the two, which leads to an inevitably unstable identity. This is why he is extremely troubled by his cousin’s further obedience to the hypnotizer, and at the conclusion of the experiment, he states: “We are appallingly subject to the influence of our surroundings. I will return to my house next week” (15–​16). Rather than learning the lesson of the interdependency between the outside and the inside, the diarist quickly sets up borders again, wishing to return home, where, he thinks, he will be safe from external powers. He then forgets what he himself earlier understood –​namely, that loneliness would only accentuate his inner instability. It is the illusion and fantasy of pure selfhood that brings most of his sufferings. But this fantasy can lead only to further anxiety attacks, which now expand well beyond breath, taking over his “true” and “authentic” will, exactly as the hypnotizer took over the will of his cousin: “I am lost. Someone possesses my soul and governs it. Someone

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18  The Double That Takes My Breath Away controls all my actions, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am nothing inside, nothing but a slave spectator, terrified of all the things I do” (18). Rather than understanding the inner nature of this creature, that it is a part of himself, his double, the diarist does everything he can to externalize it, deciding that it has come from another planet or simply from Rio de Janeiro –​anywhere but from himself. And finally he “discovers” the true nature of this creature and moreover its name: the Horla. The Horla is everything that is outside the here and now: hors-​là. But its almighty power stems precisely from the combination of the hors and the là, the outside and the inside. The Horla, as the Freudian uncanny, is the hidden, most profound and secret here and now. As such it is negated as what belongs to oneself, remaining intimately close and extremely strange, drawing its power from both internal and external sources. Consequently, the diarist admires the Horla at the same time that he is terrified by it and plans to kill it. But first of all he must see it, which leads him to a paradox: wishing to see what cannot be seen in principle. He believes that sight and intellectual knowledge can conquer the Horla, but this attitude only reinforces its control over him, since gradually all the invisible and uncontrollable aspects of existence –​from breath to sleep and finally willpower –​are rejected from the self and from the là. The diarist cannot accept anything that is not clearly graspable, and he therefore gradually rids himself of his inner forces, which, unknowingly, he gives to his double, the Horla. One day, however, he does manage to see the Horla, the invisible; or at least that is what he declares. In a scene that stands in an opposed symmetry to his cousin’s hypnotic session, he looks at a “real” mirror, but once more, the true and the false get confused: Everything there was clear as in full daylight, but I  could not see myself in my mirror –​it was empty, clear, profound, full of light! My image was not inside it … yet I myself was facing it! I could see the large clear glass from top to bottom. I  looked at it with terrified eyes, but dared not move forward. I  did not dare to make any movement, fully aware

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  19 that he was there, but that he would escape me again, he whose imperceptible body had devoured my reflection. (22) What had been discovered in the mirror? Only the eclipse of the external I, that is, the disappearance of the material surface and its replacement by an invisible spirituality, the space of the ghost, of wind, of breath: the space of breathlessness, of breath taken away by someone else. The Horla appears as the other side of the external mirror figure and is not some all-​powerful creature but simply the emptiness of the self, the void upon which every stable identity is created. The message of this scene is clear, but the diarist insists on not listening. Instead, as is common in contemporary politics, he decides to build a wall against the imaginary invader, planning to catch and kill the Horla by installing iron shutters and an iron door in his room. Then, when he thinks the Horla has entered, he locks the room and sets fire to the house, watching the flames from a nearby field, with only modest remorse for the trapped servants, whom he completely forgot. He finally goes to Rouen and seems satisfied with his destructive action until suddenly a doubt comes to gnaw at him: what if the Horla wasn’t dead? He then starts to wonder if the Horla is capable of what he calls “premature destruction” and realizes that since it is stronger than the human, the Horla will die only at its own chosen hour. Which leads him to the strange conclusion that ends the story: “No … no … of course not … of course he is not dead… So then –​it’s me, it’s me I have to kill!” (24). This ending is quite perplexing. Until the very last paragraph it was always a question of self-​control, of the attempt to remain the master of the house, whereas the end reveals that the real master is none other than death. Is death the ultimate limit and conclusion of the wish to rule the world? The only power one has over death is to receive it at a chosen time, as the Horla is able to do, and the diarist’s suicide therefore has two motives: first, to attain control over one’s death and, second, to end the Horla’s life, thus secretly avowing that the Horla is a part of himself. The diarist manages to identify partially with the Horla (“it’s me”) and reintegrate his double into himself, but only in a negative way, through self-​annihilation.

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20  The Double That Takes My Breath Away Breath, as we saw, is the medium through which the outside and the inside, the hors and the là, encounter each other. Whereas in the beginning of the story the Horla takes the diarist’s breath away, it soon steals his willpower and becomes a stubborn force that leads him to his death. This is the path he traveled: breathlessness–​loss of desire–​death. It may look linear, but as a matter of fact all three elements are closely intertwined. The refusal of exteriority, otherness, and heteronomy is a refusal of life, desire, and breath. The exact order of these refusals and the way they are expressed and felt in one’s life are less important than understanding the inevitable destruction to which they will necessarily lead. “The Horla” is therefore one of the strongest examples of the Doppelgänger literature at the same time that it is an exception to its rule. For it does not focus on one particular desire that is projected onto a double but rather exposes the very structure of desire as such, breath being nothing but the desire for life. The structure of desire necessitates objects in the external world, and, like breath, desire is insatiable by definition, thus shaking one’s control over oneself and the world. It is only in death that one becomes fully oneself, with no breath, no desire, and no exteriority. “I have no air.” I started this chapter with these words of my father and I would like to conclude this part with them. Breath is on the threshold between the inside and the outside, between free will and the demands of reality, between life and death. One cannot control breath, but one may be tempted to do so or, rather, be tempted to control it by giving it up: not physically but mentally or ontologically by refusing to acknowledge the border, the zone of uncertainty that characterizes human life. And indeed, my father looked for clarity where it could not be found, adhering to stiff dogmas while secretly admitting they can do no good. Someone else governed his life precisely because of his futile attempt to control life. In this way he resembled the diarist, wishing to overcontrol reality and himself only to confront a secret power that would eventually annihilate him. My father had an invisible double, an external armor which perhaps helped him in some moments but finally turned on him in the

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  21 form of a tumor, a result of an inner mutation that choked him to death. It is this double that I take with me as an encoded message that I am trying to decipher here, one that I will have to decipher over and over again my entire life. For the difficulty in accepting the invisible, the ghost, the uncontrollable aspect of life was not only my father’s share but is also mine, and probably every human being’s. Each one of us has doubles, internal–​external forces that are part of what it is to be human, and the question is not how to surmount or avoid them but rather how to accept them so that they become a part of breath rather than its enemy. My father’s message was pronounced in a few repetitive words, and I have tried to translate them here in my writing. And indeed, the diarist of “The Horla” wrote his diary not only as an attempt to fight breathlessness but also as a means to understand it, doubling himself this time in a conscious and creative way. Therefore, in his good moments he managed to breathe in writing and through writing. His words breathe not only his sorrow and agony but also his joy. This, perhaps, is not so much the diarist’s testimony but Maupassant’s: words can serve to control breath, life, and death, thus becoming a “bad” double, but words can also breathe freely, live, and die, presenting the option of a “good” double. This is another message I take from my father: do not write against life or death, but write in, through, and with both of them together. Death, the absolute master, will eventually come in terminal breathlessness, but breath and breathlessness are parts of this zone between life and death, the inside and the outside. We may call this zone human life, that is, speaking and writing life to which no clear boundaries can be set.

THEORETICAL INTERVENTION Both my father and the diarist of “The Horla” were very much preoccupied with the question of control: control of the outside, the inside, and the relationship between the two. They wished to master themselves and their environment, yet this wish eventually led to their suffocation. Someone or something took over

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22  The Double That Takes My Breath Away their lives, a double that gradually seized control of their bodies and souls until their very last breath. Where could this double have come from? The obvious answer is “from within,” but this is too simple. What permits in the first place the appearance of a double, this externalization of an inner element? And what mechanisms does it involve? Because of the highly emotional, stifling, and finally psychotic atmosphere of “The Horla,”2 I wish to analyze it now with the help of psychoanalytical theory, focusing on the notions of narcissism and death drive. It is important to note that far from the common understanding of narcissism as self-​indulgence or simply selfishness, the psychoanalytical articulation of the term is much broader.3 Narcissism can actually take on many forms, and more than self-​love, it presents a difficulty in fully acknowledging the separate existence of others and one’s dependency on them, resulting in a withdrawal into one’s own sphere. The double, then, comes not only to incarnate this difficulty but also to pave a way out of it, signaling the impossibility of an autarkic existence and the need to accept otherness. Indeed, narcissism and the double go hand in hand, as can be seen already in Ovid’s version of the myth of Narcissus, the handsome youth who was unable to love anyone until he saw an image of a beautiful boy in a lake. Alas, this beloved was nothing but his own reflected image, and the realization of this painful truth led Narcissus to jump into the water, uniting with his self-​image if not in love then at least in death.4 Narcissus’s double in the water thus acts in two phases: first it rescues him from his inability to love, but it can give love only to rob it from him, finally leading to his destruction.

Primary Narcissism and the Birth of the Double Is any form of narcissism doomed to fail? Let us first examine Freud’s elaborate work on this theme. There are actually various forms of narcissism according to him, most of which endure throughout our lives. However, one of them, the most primitive one, should be abandoned in early childhood, and Freud calls it primary narcissism. To begin with, all psychic energy is invested in the baby herself and not in other objects. This energy is guided by the pleasure

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  23 principle, and only the inner realm is perceived as pleasurable and loved, whereas the outside remains insignificant, provoking indifference.5 But things become more complicated when the baby perceives something pleasurable outside, for instance, milk, or something unpleasurable inside, such as pain or hunger. She therefore introjects the pleasurable object inside, making it a part of herself, or projects the unpleasurable feeling outside, attributing it to someone or something else. In this way a “pure pleasure-​ ego” is formed, with binary oppositions between inside/​outside, pleasure/​unpleasure, and finally love/​hate.6 Primary narcissism is thus far from being a passive state but is rather a continuous and laborious process of introjection and projection. This explains why it cannot subsist for long. Sooner or later the baby must realize that many desired objects are to be found only outside and, inversely, that many painful feelings are unavoidable and are part of what it is to be a human subject. In other words, one must understand the unavoidable negotiation between the inside and the outside, with all the pain and the pleasure it involves. It is only then that one can abandon primary narcissism, addressing desire and love to things that are other than oneself. Yet the fantasy of “pure pleasure-​ego” is too strong to give way. The residue of primary narcissism remains with us all our lives, as can be shown when a loved object turns to disappoint us. We then often transform our love to hostility, regressing to the archaic state in which the outside is either hated or simply ignored.7 With these first insights in mind let us examine narcissism as it is presented in “The Horla.” The diarist seems at first to be in a pure state of primary narcissism, enthusiastically declaring how happy he is in his self-​sufficient realm. Then he sees a line of boats passing; a Brazilian three-​master in particular gives him a great sense of pleasure. He thus salutes the boat, but very soon thereafter his attacks begin. He eventually becomes convinced that the Horla was hiding in the boat and interpreted his gesture as an invitation to invade his estate, his body, and finally his soul. This hypothesis, which initially may sound superstitious, actually makes sense if we examine it in the light of primary narcissism. The pleasure the diarist took in seeing the vessel made him introject it inside himself, since he cannot allow something

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24  The Double That Takes My Breath Away pleasurable to lie outside his estate. But he soon discovers its exteriority, and the question is what prevents him from peacefully enjoying it inside him. It is difficult to answer this since rather than directly face the threat of the outside, the diarist becomes only further entrenched in primary narcissism, treating every sign of exteriority with either indifference, hatred, suspicion, or envy. More than that, there isn’t any expression in the story of affection or empathy, let alone love. The diarist doesn’t feel any positive emotion toward other people, and at the end of the story he even carelessly causes the death of his servants without much remorse. Indeed, affection and love presuppose a differentiation between self and others, but also a certain violation of this differentiation, making the love object both one’s own and Other. The diarist can love only himself, and his illness bursts out when he understands that this self contains otherness. He finds this revelation so unbearable that he feels choked and strangled by the Horla: the air that he breathes is contaminated since it comes from the outside, such that he cannot inhale but only exhale, emptying himself of his air, his will, and finally his life. This excessive exhalation is what Freud calls projection, the diarist attributing his contaminated inner parts to an outside figure that is him and not him: namely, the Horla.

The Double as a Narcissistic Compromise The Horla is the diarist’s double, resulting from a desperate attempt to externalize what he believes does not belong to the self, owing to his inability to bypass primary narcissism. The double therefore incarnates a failed narcissistic attempt to purify the inside of the outside. This, at any rate, is one of the central theses promoted by Otto Rank, Freud’s disciple, in his 1914 book Der Doppelgänger (The Double).8 The trigger to this book was a German film from the preceding year, entitled The Student of Prague,9 which takes place in 1820 in a gothic Prague. It tells the story of a young student falling in love with a wealthy countess who disregards him because of his poverty. He is in total despair when an old cunning man, apparently the devil, enters his room and proposes to give him a

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  25 hundred thousand guilders if the student allows him to take an object of his choice from the room. The student cannot believe his ears: what could be of such value in his miserable, wretched room? He happily signs the contract, after which the devil invites him to look at the large mirror leaning against the wall, and the student is amazed to see his own image getting out of the mirror and walking away with the devil. He tries at first to dismiss this loss and he rejoices in the money that allows him to address the countess, but the mirror image soon starts to haunt him. It gradually takes over his actions and invades his house until the desperate student has no other choice but to shoot his double, just to discover that it is himself that he has killed. The film bears many similarities with “The Horla,” combining the desire for domination, an obsession with a haunting self-​image, and a tragic suicide. In addition, both the story and the film begin with an innocent act of letting in or letting out an element that is eventually transformed into the double: the salute to the Brazilian three-​master in one and the sale of the mirror image in the other. Something in the exchange between the inside and the outside –​this exchange that I have described through the process of breathing  –​goes awry in both cases, emptying the self and leaving it in a narcissistic yet haunted state. Following Freud, Rank conceives of narcissism not as an idle state but as an active attempt to find a compromise between the need for love and the fear of the outside. Loving oneself is a way to hold the stick at both ends: to have love but turn it only toward oneself.10 But Rank observes that this compromise must fail since something in us “seems to resist exclusive self-​love.”11 Each one of us has thus two contradictory tendencies: an inclination toward narcissism and a defense against it, and the turbulent drama of the double comes to express this contradiction. Hence, the student of Prague does not simply sell his mirror image to the devil but, as in the famous legend of Faust, sells something deeper: not his soul but his need for others. The mirror image incarnates the way other people look at me and my attempts to please them. By giving away his mirror image the student hopes to win the countess’s heart without exposing himself in his weakness. But as soon as the sale is completed,

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26  The Double That Takes My Breath Away his double won’t allow him to realize his love for the countess, since love necessitates an acknowledgment of need. The desired power that narcissism is supposed to give is converted into extreme weakness, since the one who is nourished by the outside, the one who breathes, is not oneself but one’s double. The double is thus not simply a different me or an alter ego, but the element in me that needs the outside. It is this element that I  try, on the one hand, to conserve, in order to love, and, on the other hand, to keep away, in order to protect myself against the dangerous outside. This is why Rank links the conflict between the need for love and the defense against love to “a powerful consciousness of guilt” projected upon the double.12 This guilt remains obscure in Rank and I suggest that it stems from the shame I feel because of my need for others. If I try to get rid of this shame and guilt and project it upon a double, I  only empty out my powers. I  let the double act upon objects in the world and engage with them, as happened to both the student of Prague and Maupassant’s diarist, who remained perhaps in their “pure” private sphere, yet an arid and impotent one. If until now the double has been understood in relation to love and the need for others, Rank adds a complementary factor  –​ namely, death. According to him, ancient cultures promoted the figure of the double as a guarantee of a second life, a protection against death.13 One was conceived to be only the double of an earlier incarnation, and after one’s death other doubles would come to extend one’s existence for eternity. The double is related to the understanding of one’s transience, something that cannot be tolerated by the unconscious, such that this figure is a narcissistic attempt to maintain one’s existence. But this protection against death has been transformed in modernity into an announcement of death, for reasons I  will discuss later in this book. The double would live on after my death and might therefore be a reassuring figure, but it might also precipitate my death, as the end of “The Horla” so powerfully demonstrates. What Rank doesn’t explain is what makes the double friend or foe to begin with, and whether any narcissistic attempt to protect oneself from the dangers of the outside is doomed to fail.

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  27 To sum up Rank’s proposal, the double represents a narcissistic endeavor to protect oneself from both love and death. These two paradoxes are actually one, since getting out of yourself by loving someone is experienced in primary narcissism as a threat to life. The external world is dangerous, and the double is a means to attenuate the risk. Yet the repressed must return, and the double eventually reveals the fatal consequences of narcissism.14 Rank justly connects love and death, but missing in his theory is an account of the transformation of the double from a narcissistic protection to a deadly danger. To further understand the mechanisms behind the double, I shall first turn to Jacques Lacan’s development of narcissism through what he calls the mirror stage and then draw on Freud and Melanie Klein to elaborate on the relationship between narcissism and the death drive.

Paranoiac Knowledge and the Mirror Stage On the evening of 18 April 1931, Huguette Duflos, a famous actress in her forties, was on her way to her dressing room to prepare for a show at the Parisian Saint-​Georges theater when an unknown woman around her age approached her and asked if she was indeed Madame Duflos. When the actress affirmed it was she, the woman pulled out a knife and tried to stab her. The actress skilfully managed to defend herself and was only lightly wounded, whereas her aggressor was arrested. After a couple of weeks in prison the woman, a worker in a post office, was hospitalized at the Sainte-​Anne psychiatric hospital, where she was treated on a daily basis by a young and still-​unknown doctor named Jacques Lacan. A year and a half later she became known under the pseudonym Aimée (beloved), the heroine of Lacan’s PhD thesis on paranoiac psychosis.15 Why did Aimée wish to kill the actress? Lacan draws on Freudian and existentialist theories to propose that Aimée’s psychosis had a logic of its own, involving social and personal factors. Thus, she was not simply haunted and repelled by the actress but was equally attracted to her, conceiving of her as an ideal: “The same image that represents her ideal is also the object of her hatred.”16 In fact, Aimée showed signs of hostility

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28  The Double That Takes My Breath Away and paranoia toward many other free-​spirited women. These were not envied for personal traits but were rather “doublets, triplets and successive ‘prints’ of a prototype,”17 exactly the same prototype she dreamed of becoming. By attacking the actress, her double, Aimée equally attacked herself, and Lacan characterizes her illness as a self-​punishment paranoia.18 Although Aimée’s case may sound unique, Lacan soon discovered that we actually all share the same mixed attitude toward our ideal. A year after he defended his thesis, he started his own analysis and became more acquainted with psychoanalytic theory. One of Freud’s basic discoveries, called the crystal principle, is that pathology only shows in sharper lines what remains invisible in “normal” human existence.19 Lacan uses this principle to deduce from the case of Aimée a fundamental element in any human subject as such, which he calls “paranoiac knowledge.” To understand what paranoiac knowledge is and how we are all affected by it, let us turn to Lacan’s classic article from 1949 on the mirror stage.20 This stage, attributed to the baby aged 6–​18  months, has a decisive role in the creation of the ontological structure of the subject. The helpless baby is still totally dependent on others, but by recognizing her body’s reflection in the mirror and identifying with it, she suddenly gains an unprecedented power. She takes this external image, which looks unique, complete, and autonomous, as her own and in this way thinks to overcome her primordial lack and total dependency on others. But this image, according to Lacan, is only a mirage: a mere representation of the baby. On the one hand, the mirror stage is a necessary step for the baby to unify her sensations of a fragmented body and give herself a solid identity and self-​ control. But on the other hand, it has an alienating effect, which will mark the entire life of the subject,21 since the baby identifies only with her external image, that is, the way she is perceived by others. The baby attempts to overcome her dependency on others, but in fact this dependency is only accentuated, since the mirror image, as we already saw, shows the way others perceive me and my need for their gaze.

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  29 So who is this Other in the mirror? It is not a complete stranger but rather a double of myself: a double with which I identify, yet which remains only a double, that is, permeated with otherness. This leads Lacan to declare that the mirror stage “decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into being mediated by the other’s desire.”22 No matter how hard I try to be this double I see in the mirror, it is still not me, which only makes me further desire to be it –​alas, in vain. From here stem both the attraction and the aversion toward the double, as well as the general paranoid atmosphere that surrounds our wishes concerning others and ourselves. We now better understand why narcissism involves feelings of persecution and aggression with regard to the double. Whereas Rank saw the double as a narcissistic attempt to resolve the tension between the inside and the outside, for Lacan the double is a crucial element in one’s identity, constituted through a process of identification. And indeed, when Narcissus was born, his mother asked the prophet Tiresias if he would have a long life, and the prophet succinctly replied, “if he shall himself not know.”23 Seeing oneself in the mirror is a form of knowledge that involves both self-​identity and a desire for otherness. Narcissus did not simply desire himself but desired himself as Other, understanding his true nature to be always outside. The double incarnates the dependence of any self-​identity upon otherness, and Lacan therefore stresses that the recognition (reconnaissance) of the subject’s mirror image is equally and necessarily a misrecognition (méconnaissance). Indeed, the mirror image is exterior and alienating, and yet it remains indispensable for the self-​constitution of the subject and her world. Without a double, there is no original, that is, no self. This paradoxical situation evokes aggression not only toward oneself (as cases of anorexia and self-​mutilation show) but also toward other people with whom I identify throughout my life and whom I constitute as partial doubles of myself, as we saw in the case of Aimée. The first identification with my mirror image launches a series of further identifications, such that the distinction between me, my specular image, and others is hardly tenable. It is precisely these unclear boundaries that further

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30  The Double That Takes My Breath Away accentuate anxiety and aggressiveness, as Maupassant’s story so beautifully shows.24 Persecution and aggression are thus inherent elements of subjectivity, and the figure of the double incarnates the ambivalence with which I treat both myself and others. More than Rank’s, Lacan’s theory shows that the double is not an esoteric phenomenon, as Romantic or gothic literature might have us believe, but a necessary element in the structure of (modern) subjectivity; it is a mixture of recognition and misrecognition we all share. I  inherently have a double within myself: a narcissistic image that is both the condition of my identity and a threat to it. To return to Maupassant, can we say that the Horla is the mirror image of the diarist, his double, playing the same role the actress played for Aimée? Not exactly. First, the Horla cannot be seen and therefore it is not a mirror image or any positive reflection. Second, it does not seem to represent anything ideal but rather everything that is dark and demonic. To better understand what and who the Horla is, let us recall the scene in which the diarist is horrified by the eclipse of his own mirror image. Curiously, he declares that he has seen the Horla, yet what he actually sees is the absence of himself in the mirror. This scene is, moreover, a variation of the hypnosis session, in which the diarist looks at his own photo while his cousin sees him through a visiting card, making him puzzle over what his true image is. The diarist likes to watch his external image, which reassures him of the clear boundaries between the outside and the inside, whereas the Horla destabilizes this assurance. The Horla is therefore not the mirror image itself but its emptiness. It shows how thin and hollow is the envelope that wraps a weak, chaotic, and unstable self. This understanding dramatically disturbs the distinction between the inside and the outside, the end of the body and the beginning of the world.25 It is this emptiness, these gaps and this upheaval of distinctions, that the diarist tries to hide from himself, yet no desire, breath, or life is possible without them. To acknowledge inner emptiness, gaps, and unclear distinctions,  one must first surmount primary narcissism, but Lacan’s notion of narcissism is slightly different from Freud’s. Whereas in Freud there is a sharp distinction between the

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  31 “good” inside and the “bad” outside, the mirror stage nuances this dichotomy through the baby’s identification with an external image. Paradoxically, to get rid of the outside one needs to locate oneself through an image that only the outside can supply. It is through the mirror stage that one receives a clear external envelope upon which to introject good objects and from which to expel the bad ones. The mirror stage therefore results in a located primary narcissism. This located narcissism also helps us understand the natural inclination against narcissism evoked by Rank. One is simultaneously enchanted by and hostile toward the narcissistic internal–​ external I, the inner–​outer double that one sees in the mirror. Indeed, these feelings are often projected upon other objects and persons, as in the case of the diarist or Aimée; but they stem from the narcissistic drama of an identification that covers a deep inadequacy between inner fragmentation and external holistic image. The mirror image and the double which results from it are the necessary starting point of subjectivity. There is no way to avoid them, and the challenge is rather to move from the I or the ego toward the much more complicated and multilayered figure of what Lacan refers to as “the subject.” We will never become full subjects, since, on the one hand, we are structurally and ontologically attached to our narcissistic mirror image in the realm of the imaginary, and, on the other hand, we have a fundamental inner lack and fragmentation that cannot be surmounted. But through what Lacan calls the symbolic order we may embark upon the road leading to subjectivity. This road consists of a dynamic movement of signification, trying to fill in gaps that can never be fully filled, thus making this road infinite. The symbolic order is different from the imaginary order of the mirror stage first and foremost in that it acknowledges negativity –​that is, the emptiness, gaps, and unclear boundaries that the mirror image hides. Whereas this image presents the illusion of a pure presence with no holes or rifts, the symbolic order is based upon the constant movement between being and nothingness. Highly influenced by the new science of cybernetics that flourished in the fifties, Lacan was fascinated by the possibility

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32  The Double That Takes My Breath Away of representing words and images through chains of only two symbols: 1 and 0.  This system, in which data is encoded and processed, results in chains like 1100011010100, a play with being and nothingness that allows infinite creation.26 This is not to say that images are not built upon infinite variations of components but only that they hide this aspect of their creation. The imaginary and the symbolic do not contradict but complement each other, the first providing static identities and fantasies that should be renewed and transformed in the movement of signification. This movement, as is shown by Ferdinand de Saussure and other linguists, is based upon the difference between signifier and signified, that is, the inability to fully grasp reality.27 It is not despite but rather thanks to the barrier between signifier and signified –​with all the absences, holes, and fragments it conveys –​that the movement of signification can be launched in the first place. To fully explain the symbolic order I would need to go into much more detail. But doing so would only take us farther away from Maupassant, since what characterizes his protagonist is precisely the blockage in the imaginary and his inability to recognize the 0, that is, the negativity and alterity that are hidden behind the mirror image. Indeed, the drama of “The Horla,” as with many other nineteenth-​century stories of the double, is a drama of narcissistic self-​image that does not allow the protagonist to see beyond the duality of oneself and one’s image. These stories are about the denial of the movement of signification in an attempt to adhere to one’s static wholeness. It is therefore only in the following chapters that the symbolic order will gain more weight. For the meantime we must confine ourselves to the capacities of our protagonist.

Negative and Positive Doubles It is time to draw some conclusions from the discussion so far. We saw that the Horla stands for one’s inherent defense against narcissism, incarnating a secret avowal of inner otherness. It is the opposite of the beautiful narcissistic mirror image, and its aim is to remind the diarist of the emptiness and self-​fragmentation underlying this image. I  therefore propose to call this type of

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  33 double a negative double, which stands in opposition to the positive double incarnated by the mirror image. The negative double does not have characteristics of its own and is the result of self-​fragmentation and emptiness projected upon an invisible entity. The positive double, too, is the result of projection, yet not of emptiness but of the ideal self-​image, as in the case of Aimée. Therefore, the negative double repudiates the mirror image, whereas the positive double prolongs it, but both these doubles belong to the imaginary rather than the symbolic realm. The imaginary character of the negative and positive doubles makes them present a binary option: one can admire or hate them, obey them or slay them, but one cannot engage with them outside this stifling system. In the same way that the diarist did not and could not communicate with the Horla, so Aimée did not try to talk with the actress or become friends with her, but only admired and envied her from a distance and then tried to kill her. This is also the case with the student of Prague, whose mirror image –​his positive double –​haunts him with no words or symbols.28 Both the negative and the positive doubles form a dual and destructive relationship with the protagonist, since the singularity of the image –​or its negation –​cannot be opened up to the multiplicity of language, its words and symbols.29 This one-​on-​one confrontation has the nature of an either/​or, and from the moment it is launched, the protagonist is doomed, since it is a confrontation between a total power that is imaginary and an extreme weakness that is real. Even though the positive double may at first appear more attractive and innocent than the negative double, it, too, soon usurps the protagonist’s power, who is left with nothing but self-​ fragmentation and a desire to be filled by the double’s power. The difference between the two is that the negative double is threatening from the outset, since it comes to repudiate the mirror image. Its real object of attack is the positive double, with which the protagonist has identified. The protagonist tries to maintain his or her holistic identity –​which is nothing but armor –​alas, in vain, and this double, too, soon assumes power and control. These two doubles result from a narcissistic projection, and although they take different forms, the consequences

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34  The Double That Takes My Breath Away are similar. The negative double attacks the protagonist’s inner, positive double, whereas the positive double empties out so much of the protagonist’s identity that the protagonist himself becomes the negative double –​that is, empty, invisible, and finally crazy or dead.30 The negative double has nothing to say and rather comes as a warning against the imaginary. And yet, the diarist won’t listen. He cleaves to his positive double –​namely, the holistic mirror image that is him and not him. The more the Horla threatens the diarist’s positive double, trying to caution him against the trap of self-​image, the more the diarist defends himself and takes refuge in logic and science, denying everything that cannot positively be seen or tested. But aren’t logic and science a part of the symbolic order? The diarist actually presents a very complex attitude toward them. It is, after all, the rational doctor from the Nancy School who initiates him into the mysteries of suggestion, evoking in him both great attraction and repulsion. Later on, he reads a book by a “doctor of philosophy and theogony” in which he learns about the existence of invisible creatures,31 and finally it is no other than the Revue du monde scientifique that informs him of a collective madness syndrome in Rio de Janeiro, to which he attributes his own madness, developing the thesis that the Horla originates from the Brazilian three-​master.32 Science does nothing for the diarist but reveal its and his own limits, its and his own impotence vis-​à-​vis the invisible and unknown. This impotence is equally acknowledged by the monk of Mont-​Saint-​ Michel, the representative of Christianity, another symbolic authority that is helpless when it comes to explaining Nature. Both concurrent symbolic authorities, science and religion, admit the limits of positivity. In other words, they admit the 0 upon which the 1 depends. This avowal of limits could have helped the diarist to give up his positive double and the pretension of controlling reality, but instead, he projects every evidence of negativity upon his negative double, the Horla, who therefore becomes ever stronger. In other terms, the diarist uses the symbolic order not to challenge the imaginary and its doubles but rather to strengthen and rigidify it. He looks for presence, positivity, and stability and

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  35 therefore finds himself in a binary world: no longer chains of combined 0s and 1s but rather an either/​or situation: science or madness; purified breath or breathlessness; life or death. Everything that contains 0 is projected upon the Horla, but a world with only 1s is an arid, stifling, and lifeless world. This brings us to the end of the story and the inevitable death that the blockage in narcissism imposes upon the diarist. The positive double in the mirror image is supposed to play the role of my proxy in the external world, but it is intimately linked to the negative double and the world of death: the world of ghost, wind, and breath, the constant movement between inhalation and exhalation, being and nothingness. As Rank argues, this had been the function of the double in ancient culture, in which the totem or religious icon had been conceived as an extension of the self that protected it from harm and secured its immortality.33 But modernity brought with it the era of individualism and rationality, such that science is conceived as a means to overcome the invisible, the dark, and eventually death itself. The problem is, as we have seen, that this attempt to delete the 0 from the symbolic chain makes room only for narcissistic fantasies of wholeness and immortality, leading one to become trapped in what Lacan calls “the chain of dead desire,”34 incarnated by the negative double. Indeed, desire is an attempt to satisfy a need, but if all needs are projected upon a double, an external image, it becomes the desire of the Other. The famous Lacanian affirmation that the desire of the subject is the desire of the Other35 can be interpreted in various ways; but for our purposes here, let us be content with desire not as directed to the Other, but as belonging to the Other, the Other as such, that is, someone else. Desire is never mine, and the  mirror stage launches a constant race after my desire since it locates it outside me. The more I try to please my ideal in the mirror, the more I feel this desire to be dead, since it brings no satisfaction. I thus end up feeling myself dead as well, deprived of any real desire: my double has taken up life and left me with only death. To avoid self-​ emptiness and feelings of inner death, the diarist, despite his conscious efforts not to, gradually yields his positive double to his negative one. Feeling his desire to be dead,

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36  The Double That Takes My Breath Away he assigns this morbid desire to the Horla, who now desires instead of him. To put it the other way around, the Horla comes to warn the diarist that his desire is not his, that it stems from an imaginary ideal. Had the diarist heard the message, had he understood the vacuity behind his mirror image, he might have tried to surmount his primal narcissism. But he is so fearful of death, emptiness, and alterity that he plans to kill the Horla –​ that is, to annihilate the nothing, the nothing that is inside him and that finally forces him to kill himself. The diarist cannot stand any expression of nothingness, and over the “small” moments of negativity in which his weakness is revealed to him, such as breath and desire, he finally prefers the “big” and radical negativity of death, first burning his house down and then killing himself.36 Death, real or imaginary, is the inevitable result of the attempt to remain in primary narcissism. The fantasy of “pure pleasure-​ ego” soon betrays the impurity of the ego, which, owing to the series of identifications it undergoes, can never fully be itself. The double, be it positive as in The Student of Prague or negative as in Maupassant, comes to signal this necessary impurity. The result in both cases is, however, not an understanding of the need to bypass the imaginary order but rather a further lingering in it that leads to violent suicide. How can one explain this inclination toward self-​ annihilation? Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage and the aggressiveness that comes with it has given us important insights in this regard. Whereas Rank described aggressiveness in general terms, attributing it to feelings of guilt, Lacan adds the dimension of identification and the gap between the external, imaginary image, on the one hand, and inner feelings of self-​fragmentation, on the other. But violence is not only the result of the mirror stage but also its cause. The inner self-​ fragmentation already encompasses destructive impulses, and trying to overcome them through the total mirror image only accentuates destructiveness through the desire of the Other. To better understand these two forces, desire and destructiveness, it will be useful to return to Freud, who chose the Greek terms Eros and Thanatos as alternative names for the life drive and the death drive.

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  37

Death Drive and Destructive Narcissism Freud discusses the phenomenon of the double in his 1919 “The Uncanny” (“Das Unheimliche”).37 In one of the footnotes to the paper he recounts a personal anecdote taking place in a wagon-​ lit, “when a more than usually violent jolt of the train swung back the door of the adjoining washing-​cabinet, and an elderly gentleman in a dressing-​gown and a travelling cap came in.”38 Freud jumped up to warn the old man of his mistake but almost immediately realized that this man was none other than himself, or, more exactly, his mirror image reflected on the cabinet’s door. Freud characterizes this incident as uncanny, but curiously he attributes this feeling not to the misrecognition itself –​seeing himself as Other  –​but rather to the instinctive dislike he felt toward the old man, his double. It is indeed rare to see ourselves from the outside. Although we daily look at ourselves in the mirror, as well as in photos and videos, we still remain inside ourselves, only trying to imagine how others perceive us. Meeting your double, on the contrary, means to be, for a short while, outside yourself, other than yourself. The uncanny feeling thus relates to a mixture of familiarity and strangeness, since seeing yourself from the outside reveals a hidden secret you have already known very well. It is as if you were forced to enter into the mirror stage for a second time, with an already-​stable identity, just to find out that this identity is totally different from what you felt it was. Thus, similarly to Maupassant’s diarist, who looked in the mirror and saw nothing, so Freud realized that the image of the old man was not himself, and this is why he felt an instinctive dislike toward it. The uncanny involves a revelation of the negativity behind any positive image and identity. This negativity provokes in its turn feelings of hostility and aggressiveness, and this not only because of the gap between the holistic image and the fragmented interior, as Lacan argues. Rather, the mirror image covers up a primordial negativity that has already been there beforehand. The role of the mirror stage is to appease and channel this negativity, solidifying a clear identity and setting boundaries, but negativity is always there in the background, waiting for the right moment to burst out.

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38  The Double That Takes My Breath Away A year after the publication of The Uncanny, Freud further pursued his investigation of negativity, relating it to the notorious death drive.39 To explain where this drive comes from, he evokes a mythological scene that is no other than the creation of life itself. But contrary to the story of Genesis and other creation stories, to live for the first time was far from paradisial, since life means a huge and unprecedented tension that needs to be eliminated: “In this way the first drive came into being: the drive to return to the inanimate state.”40 The death drive, Thanatos, is thus the most primordial drive. It is not evil in itself, since its tendency toward annihilation stems only from the wish to return to the peaceful, inanimate state from which we all came. Yet fortunately enough, Thanatos is not the only drive, having a rival with which it is in constant dialogue: the life drive, Eros. Moreover, Freud affirms that the death drive is an invisible power that cannot be found in a pure state or function on its own. Rather, it rides upon the activities of the life drive, manifesting itself in destructive behaviors toward oneself and others.41 This development in psychoanalytical theory has consequences for the notion of primary narcissism, and it is worthwhile to examine these briefly. Whereas in Rank narcissism involved a fear of two external dangers, love and death, these now become two opposite drives that play a major role in narcissism. In 1923 Freud famously divided the psyche into three agents: id, ego, and superego, which are created successively. Primary narcissism is now attributed to the id alone, being the most primitive reservoir of energy both libidinal and destructive. The id is looking for objects to invest or annihilate indiscriminately and does not know the difference between the outside and the inside. It is only when the ego is formed and gains force (in Lacanian terms: after the mirror stage) that this distinction is made, the ego trying to rein in libido by pulling it back from objects toward itself. In this way the ego becomes a sort of love object in a secondary narcissism, desexualizing all objects in order to remain the sole target of libido.42 The difference between this secondary narcissism and the previous notion of primary narcissism is that the ego is not only a subject but also an object: an object of both self-​love

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  39 and self-​hatred. This hatred comes from the death drive, which is constantly looking for libidinal objects to annihilate, combining the destructive energy of the id with the judgmental gaze of the superego. Therefore, the huge love object that the ego has become is now the main target of attack. This is the paradox of the ego: it wishes to be loved by investing itself with libido, but love is always counterbalanced by the death drive’s hatred. If the ego is stuck in this narcissistic state and neglects the external world, it eventually finds itself hated by the superego, which attempts to kill it.43 Indeed, this is the case of the diarist who could love no one but himself. The Horla can be understood as a sort of persecuting superego that aims the death drive at the diarist’s ego, erasing his mirror image and finally destroying him completely. The story presents an extreme case of narcissism, but it is important to remember that each one of us experiences something of it and the self-​hatred it implies. Self-​hatred is revealed not only in uncanny events of seeing ourselves from the outside and feeling hostility but also in various self-​destructive behaviors that contradict our presumed self-​love. The ego’s attempts at self-​love can be easily transformed into self-​hatred, and this tendency becomes pathological when one refuses to admit one’s dependency upon others, wishing to love no one but oneself. This line of thought was further pursued by Melanie Klein and her school. If the death drive is at work from the outset, and if its activity is blind, it is reasonable to assume that it attacks the self as much as external objects. To prevent self-​ attack, the baby engages itself in an active work of splitting: not only between itself and objects but also between parts of itself, as well as between parts of objects. For in this way the death drive can invade only isolated fragments of psychic life and not the entire psyche. According to Klein, the death drive creates a constant state of annihilation anxiety, and the baby regulates this anxiety by designating specific parts to be split and annihilated. Thus, some of the death drive is projected upon an external persecutor, and some of it remains inside and is transformed into an aggression against this persecutor.44 Klein calls this primitive stage of splits and attacks the “paranoid-​schizoid position,” and if the baby does not manage

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40  The Double That Takes My Breath Away to outgrow it, life becomes an unbearable burden. The role of psychoanalysis is to undo the split through a work of fusion. This, I suggest, is analogous to the way Lacan proposes to tackle the imaginary through the symbolic chains of signification and the variations of 1 and 0. The 1 and 0 should not exclude each other but rather create signifying combinations of meaning. A “healthy” subject would know how to combine 1 and 0 to move between life and death, love and hatred, attraction and aggression, rather than sink into one of these extremes. The diarist, on the contrary, wished to have only life, love, and attraction, sharply splitting the 1 from the 0, trying to maintain pure love inside and pure hatred outside –​alas, in vain. Herbert Rosenfeld, one of Klein’s disciples, describes a case of a patient who, exactly like the diarist, has anxiety attacks at night. He then dreams about “a very powerful arrogant man who was nine feet tall and who insisted that he had to be absolutely obeyed.”45 This giant man, according to Rosenfeld, is the omnipotent, destructive part of the patient that was split off from himself. The Horla could therefore be this split-​off part, yet the Horla –​precisely as a negative double and the representative of the death drive –​can perhaps be imagined but certainly cannot be seen. Only the effects of its action are visible since its essence is pure nothingness.

Psychoanalysis and Its Doubles Kleinian psychoanalysis aims to make the patient accept a more complex relationship with reality and external objects, gradually passing from a state in which parts of the self and world are split off from each other to an integrated and fused state. But seen from another perspective, the analyst posits herself as the patient’s double precisely to show him his own negated, projected, and introjected doubles that haunt him. The analyst may start as a haunting double herself, provoking violence in the patient, but gradually she becomes a friendly one, helping the patient discover, retrieve, and neutralize his various doubles. This is equally true with regard to Lacanian psychoanalysis: the analyst serves as a mirror upon which the patient projects her doubles and ego ideals. But this is a stubbornly silent mirror

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  41 that serves as a negative double, refusing to collaborate with the patient’s imaginary projections. The analyst says nothing and, in this way, makes the patient finally discover that the mirror image is only her alienated form.46 Only then can the patient realize the complicated dynamics of 1 and 0, life and death, and access the symbolic order. Hence, psychoanalytical praxis itself makes extensive use of the double and the diverse mechanisms it involves. Psychoanalysis not only analyzes the double but also actively produces negative and positive doubles. The double initially serves as a warning against the fantasy of a self-​enclosed psychic realm, and the role of psychoanalysis is to undo the split and make the patient reintegrate her doubles into herself. But the double is the product not only of a split but also of a dynamic and playful work of doubling and duplication. This work will be unfolded gradually in the following chapters, but it is already manifest here through the symbolic force of psychoanalysis; this does not simply remain with one static double but rather actively produces multiple doubles. The analyst may become the patient herself but also her father, mother, daughter, lover, and so on. Every one of these figures might be a narcissistic projection, but it is a part of a signifying process that constantly moves between these figures. In this way the patient realizes not only her need for the outside and the different doubles it comprises but also her own inner multiplicity: a multiplicity that is neither a chaotic self-​fragmentation nor a rigid totality, but a field of play between the diverse figures that constitute the I. Now, the same work of symbolization as active doubling is also the task of literature and more generally of writing. It is no coincidence that the protagonist of “The Horla” writes a diary, trying to echo his repressed feelings of having an inner double.47 The diary is the most extreme case of self-​doubling in writing, but every instance of writing is in fact such an act. When I  write, I  use language to express myself, going toward the external world and back inside, taking in and letting out air, words, ideas, and desires. I am therefore no longer alone, even if I am writing all by myself. These words are part of me, a part that I created but in a certain sense a part that no longer belongs to me. I spread my doubles everywhere.

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42  The Double That Takes My Breath Away In his influential book The Literature of the Second Self, Carl F. Keppler claims that all stories of the double are forms of Bildungsroman, that is, stories of formation and initiation. However, he adds that most often the formation is not directed to the protagonist –​who is blind and deaf to the warnings of the double –​but rather to the reader.48 In this chapter I have tried to be this reader, but also the writer, since one always writes to oneself. I  tried to read and write the role of the double in Maupassant but also in the life of my father. I tried to see what and who was his Horla, and whether the tumor that finally suffocated him was nothing but the last form of a negative double that accompanied him throughout his life. Here I must stop, breathe, and then take a step farther. For it is too easy to find the doubles of others, especially when they are dead. The endeavor of trying to analyze my father’s life risks turning into a narcissistic position in its turn. It is more difficult to look inside and ask what and who are my own doubles and how I can read and write them, thus letting them express themselves without succumbing to their destructive forces. This will be the challenge of the following chapters. Notes 1 Guy de Maupassant, The Horla, trans. Charlotte Mandell (1887; New  York: Melville House, 2005). Hereafter, page numbers will be given in parentheses in the text. For a detailed analysis of this text with regard to the theme of the double, see Tymms, Doubles in Literary Psychology, 96–​97; Antonia Fonyi, “Le Horla: Double indéterminé,” in Le Double: Chamisso, Dostoïevski, Maupassant, Nabokov, ed. Jean Bessière (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1995), 91–​ 141; Johann Jung, “Du paradoxe identitaire au double transitionnel: ‘Le Horla’ de Guy de Maupassant,” Revue française de psychanalyse 74, no. 2 (2010): 507–​519. 2 The first version of the story, published in 1885, was entitled “Lettre d’un fou” and composed as a letter of confession written by the protagonist to his doctor in a mental clinic. See Guy de Maupassant, “Letter from a Madman,” in The Horla,  45–​57. 3 For a detailed account of narcissism from a philosophical point of view, see Pleshette DeArmitt, The Right to Narcissism: A Case for an Im-​Possible Self-​Love (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 4 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A.  D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 61–​66.

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  43 5 Sigmund Freud, “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes” (1915), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953–​ 1974), 14:134–​ 135. Freud formulated similar narcissistic processes in other papers from that period. See Sigmund Freud, “On Narcissism” (1914), in Standard Edition, 14:67–​102; Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), in Standard Edition, 14:237–​258. 6 Sigmund Freud, “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes,” 135–​137. 7 Ibid., 136–​140. 8 Rank, The Double. This, in fact, was the first book ever to be dedicated to the theme of the double. 9 Friedrich Kittler (“Romanticism  –​Psychoanalysis  –​Film”) sees Rank’s analysis of the film as a significant shift in the history of the double: from nineteenth-​century Romantic literature to cinema and psychoanalysis in the twentieth century. A similar claim was raised by Tzvetan Todorov, for whom psychoanalysis replaced literature as the instance that can treat the doppelgänger. See Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (1970; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 160–​161. For a discussion on the various approaches to the doppelgänger in literature, see Vardoulakis, Doppelgänger,  7–​10. 10 Rank, The Double,  71–​74. 11 Ibid., 73. 12 Ibid., 76. 13 Ibid., 84–​85. A  similar idea is developed in Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return; or, Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R.  Trask (1949; New  York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959). I will return to this theme in the fourth chapter through a discussion of Baudrillard’s theory of the symbolic exchange as involving death and the role of the double in it. 14 Rank, The Double, 86. 15 Jacques Lacan, De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité (1932; Paris: Seuil, 1975). 16 Ibid., 253. 17 Ibid. (my translation). It must be added that Aimée felt envy and paranoia equally toward celebrated men. See ibid., 165. 18 Ibid., 247–​254. 19 See Philippe Van Haute and Thomas Geyskens, A Non-​Oedipal Psychoanalysis? A  Clinical Anthropology of Hysteria in the Works of Freud and Lacan (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012),  17–​18. 20 Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function” (1949), in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (1966; New York: W. W. Norton, 2007),  75–​81.

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44  The Double That Takes My Breath Away 1 Ibid., 78. 2 22 Ibid., 79. 23 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 61. 24 Lacan further develops these themes in his 1948 “Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis.” Aggressiveness, according to this text, is derived from the mirror stage and is “linked to the narcissistic relationship and to the structures of systematic misrecognition and objectification that characterize ego formation” (94). 25 Liran Razinsky analyzes “The Horla” in this fashion, drawing on Didier Anzieu’s theory of the skin ego. See Liran Razinsky, “ ‘Rien qu’un spectateur’: Image de soi, corporalité et sentiment d’existence dans ‘Le Horla,’ ” Studi francesi 180 LX, 3 (2016): 435–​ 446. Interestingly enough, Aimée was none other than Anzieu’s mother, Marguerite. 26 Jacques Lacan, Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953–​1954, Book 1 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. John Forrester (1975; New  York: W. W.  Norton, 1991); Jacques Lacan, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–​ 1955, Book 2 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (1978; New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). 27 Jacques Lacan, “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason since Freud” (1957), in Écrits, 412–​441. 28 They communicate only once in the film. The student plays cards, and after he beats everyone, he remains alone, when suddenly his double appears and asks whether he dares to play against him too. The student accepts the challenge, loses, and then runs away in panic. 29 Indeed, Aimée had multiple doubles, but with each one of them she had an imaginary dual relationship. It is only in the third chapter of the present book that we will encounter a multiplicity of doubles that overcome the binary opposition of a dual relationship. 30 To these two doubles I  shall add in the epilogue a third type of double, which is located between the two: namely, the opposite double. This double is often a monster that stands in opposition to the beautiful mirror image, but it has positive traits and it is not the negation of the entire imaginary order. 31 Maupassant, The Horla,  30–​31. 32 Ibid., 33. The diarist tries to behave as a scientist himself, performing experiments to discover where the Horla comes from. These experiments, however, fail, since the Horla is not a subject of the positivist logic of science. 33 Rank, The Double, 77–​86. See also Sigmund Freud, “Totem and Taboo” (1913), in Standard Edition, 13:1–​161. 34 Lacan, “Instance of the Letter,” 431. See also the graph of desire, in which desire crosses the symbolic chain, in Jacques Lacan,

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The Double That Takes My Breath Away  45 “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious” (1960), in Écrits, 671–​702. 35 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Book 11 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. Alan Sheridan (1973; New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 235–​236. 36 On the distinction between “small” and “big” or “radical” negativity, see Dorfman, Foundations of the Everyday,  55–​56. 37 Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (1919), in Standard Edition, 17:217–​256. Freud discusses the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann and locates in it three mechanisms related to the double: doubling of the self (Ich-​Verdopplung), dividing of the self (Ich-​Teilung), and interchanging of the self (Ich-​Vertauschung) (ibid., 233–​234). To a large extent he repeats in this paper his former insights regarding narcissism, but he adds that the transformation of the double from a protective to a threatening and uncanny figure lies precisely in the surmounting of primary narcissism. A  new critical agency gradually appears in the psyche, which he calls here conscience, later to become the superego. This agency already marks an inner division or split (Spaltung) between the I  and its double, which is the perfect creature the I once thought it was (ibid., 234–​235). This implies that the double is more primordial than the I, the latter being actually nothing but the pale double of the former. For a detailed analysis of Freud’s text in relation to the double, see Vardoulakis, Doppelgänger, 37–​53; Rogers, The Double in Literature,  26–​29. 38 Freud, “Uncanny,” 248. 39 Sigmund Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), in Standard Edition, 18:1–​64. 40 Ibid., 38 (translation modified). 41 Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id” (1923), in Standard Edition, 19:46. See also André Green, “The Death Drive, Negative Narcissism and the Disobjectalising Function,” in The Work of the Negative, trans. Andrew Weller (London: Free Association Books, 1999),  81–​88. 42 Freud, “The Ego and the Id,” 46. 43 Ibid.,  56–​57. 44 Melanie Klein, “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms” (1946), in Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946–​ 1963 (New  York: Free Press, 1975), 1–​24. See also Herbert Rosenfeld, “A Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts: An Investigation into the Aggressive Aspects of Narcissism,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 52 (1971): 169–​178. 45 Rosenfeld, “Clinical Approach,” 176. 46 According to Lacan’s biographer, he saw Aimée as his own double rather than the other way around. This puts into question his

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46  The Double That Takes My Breath Away ability at this pre-​psychoanalytic phase of his career to expose and neutralize the position of the double by making himself the negative rather than the positive double of his patients. See Élisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan, trans. Barbara Bray (1993; New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 47. 47 Aimée, too, was a prolific writer, and one of the reasons for her psychotic outbreak was publishers’ rejection of her two novels, one of which featured a protagonist named Aimée. 48 Keppler, Literature of the Second Self, 195.

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2 The Shadow’s Gaze

When my turn came to say farewell to my father at his funeral, I  chose to read some lines from Rilke’s Ninth Elegy. It begins with a simple question: why be human rather than a plant? Why yearn and suffer rather than passively exist? This is Rilke’s answer: [B]‌ecause being here is much, and because all this that’s here, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely concerns us. Us the most fleeting of all. Just once, everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too, once. And never again. But this, having been once, though only once, having been of the earth –​seems irrevocable.1 I then related these lines to my father, who had always tried to truly be here, to live a full life, to be “of the earth.” I finished by saying that this constant endeavor to live will always remain with me as his heritage. But when I recall and write these words today, they sound a bit strange. After all, not even 24 hours had passed since my father cried out, “I have no air,” and I had already transformed his negative, horrible words into a positive heritage. I don’t think I lied or tried to say nice words as people do at funerals. I believe my father was truly eager to live, only he did not know how. His double –​an inner entity that he somehow split from himself  –​defeated him, stifled him to death, first mentally and then physically. His will, as I interpreted it in the previous chapter, evokes the need for air, whereas his heritage is the wish to live. The question, however, is how to fulfill my

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48  The Shadow’s Gaze father’s will and preserve his heritage without falling victim to his destiny of brutal suffocation. The weeks and months after the funeral were a time for mourning but also for introspection. Indeed, it had been easy for me to maintain a distance from my father while he was alive, to tell myself how different we were from each other. But I’ve always secretly suspected that in a certain sense my father was my double, and I now needed to look at my own life and my own doubles to see what forces play in me and act upon a life I had naively considered to be exclusively mine. Where should I begin? Perhaps with my high school years, the gradual entering into adult life. In most films and books this period is depicted as filled with impulses, hormones, and crazy deeds, but mine was hardly marked by any passionate storm. I docilely followed the herd, as did most of my classmates. My high school was a reputable, semiprivate one in Jerusalem, to which only competitive, ambitious, but also privileged pupils were admitted. During my first year there I  was quite happy, especially since, unlike my junior high, there was no physical violence. But I  soon started to feel another sort of violence, far subtler. Everywhere I looked I saw walls: the walls of conformism, indifference, and self-​sufficiency. There was something arid and even dead not only in the classroom atmosphere but also and even more so in the way we treated each other. And I, too, gradually started to build walls around myself, as if to distance myself from this death, only to find that it had gained a firm place inside me with stifling feelings of loneliness and isolation. True life was absent, as Arthur Rimbaud famously lamented, and rather than trying to go out and look for true life, I took refuge in myself and the fantasy of a better life in a vague future elsewhere. Something essential was missing in those years, something that was still nameless at the time but that today I would call passion or libido. We heard rumors about kids from other classes already engaging in sexual activity, and we were both jealous and afraid. Afraid of what? Probably of our bodies, bodies that remained strangers to us, as did anything that might expose or shake our own strangeness. Any sign of otherness –​social,

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The Shadow’s Gaze  49 racial, sexual, but also intellectual –​immediately fell victim to our sarcastic remarks. But we secretly felt that the real others, the real strangers, were no other than ourselves. We, Jerusalem’s most privileged children, belonged to a community of strangers in the world. Yet we refused to admit that, trying to cover up the emptiness with a cynicism that was nothing but another expression of conformism. I  don’t remember any rebellious or courageous acts performed by myself or by any of my classmates. We just docilely and passively waited for these years to pass, hoping that sooner or later we would arrive at a more stimulating and lively environment. When I  began my obligatory military service, I  thought I had finally found a better place to express myself and be with others. But although people seemed much nicer, the army discipline was hardly conducive to sexual or intellectual liberation, and I  soon started to feel again the inner death and a stifling “something-​missing” feeling. I wanted to live a full life with no strict boundaries between work and leisure, day and night, intellect and body, but where should I find it? Once again I plunged into the inner world of fantasy, listening over and over again to The Smiths with their urgent questions I couldn’t answer: “And when you want to live how do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to know?” Finally came my university years –​which still endure –​and the sudden and almost surprising passion I found in the world of knowledge. Every philosopher, writer, or poet seemed to reveal a profound secret about life, and I imbibed their words with insatiable thirst. Moreover, this passion was not only intellectual. I finally dared to make my coming out, met my first boyfriend, and thought I had finally arrived at a place that offered me this unique mixture of intellectual, spiritual, and bodily engagement. But despite this blissful joy one thing still disturbed me: some of the professors didn’t seem very fascinated by what they taught. They were, rather, professional –​that is, they conceived of their teaching as their work rather than vocation –​but this professionalism made them look, at least in my eyes, quite worn and dried out. I  asked myself what had happened to their initial passion, if there ever was one, and how they had

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50  The Shadow’s Gaze become so disenchanted with the world of knowledge. I had the impression that something had gone awry in their lives; that they had somehow become the shadow of what they used to be or wished to become. Convinced of my own vocation as a scholar and teacher, I swore to myself that I would never let this happen to me. But I think that this vow stemmed from a frightening doubt: What if they were right and I was wrong? What if my sudden revelation of life was only a temporary mask hiding the same inner death? Had I  not jumped too fast over the walls of my inner world toward the presumable fullness of the outside, leaving behind someone or something that would sooner or later come to take revenge? Years passed in which I  struggled, and mostly succeeded, to maintain my passion for knowledge. I  finished my PhD in Paris, and upon my return to Israel started to teach at a small university. Yet teaching turned to be much more complicated than I had assumed it would be. I recall with unease a seminar I  gave in which I  was talking enthusiastically about Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-​Ponty, only to encounter the indifferent gazes of my students. What went wrong? There was something missing in my teaching, something I  couldn’t quite discern. It wasn’t exactly passion but an ability to create contact and trust not only with my students but also with myself. I realized that I had started to use theory as a sphere of its own, detached from what is commonly called “real life.” What had happened to me? Could it be that I had become this professional professor that I always swore I would never become? Although I conceived of my life as quite full, deep inside me I still felt that something was missing, and difficult as it might be, I now needed to find out what that was. To investigate this missing thing, I will rely in this chapter on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale from 1847 named “The Shadow.”2 The story recounts the deeds of a learned man who, too, probably sensed that something was missing in his life and therefore decided to travel and explore the hot lands of the south: the lands of passion according to the Romantic tradition. However, once he arrives there he discovers that the sun burns so hot that he must remain inside the entire day. Only by night

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The Shadow’s Gaze  51 can he go out, but even then he prefers to remain on his balcony, watching the lively scenery of locals filling the street with their merry or sorrowful deeds. One thing, however, resists his eager eyes: the house opposite to his remains dark and still. Who lives there? The beautiful flowers on its balcony, surviving the unbearable sunlight, hint of a mysterious presence, which is revealed one night, when the man suddenly wakes up to a wonderful light radiating from the house. He is astonished to see the flowers turning into colorful flames and among them appears a young woman, an incarnation of beauty, from whom emanates a dazzling light. The man does not have time to do or say much since the spectacle soon vanishes, with only soft music still being heard from the inner room of the house. Was it a dream or reality? The strange house now becomes an obsession for him. He is eager to learn more about it, but weirdly enough he cannot find its entrance. One evening as he sits on his balcony staring, as always, at the house, an idea suddenly crosses his mind: “I think my shadow is the only living thing to be seen opposite” (385, translation modified). He then decides to set free his shadow, and asks it to enter the house and then return to tell what it has seen. The shadow obeys this wish, yet it does not come back. A split occurs between the man and his shadow, a split that would have fatal consequences for the man. We thus find in this story the same split between original and double that we found in “The Horla,” but the motives for the split are different. Whereas Maupassant’s diarist refused until the very end to admit his intimate link with his double, the learned man is fully aware of this link. He initiates the split himself, even if it is in the hope that the shadow would eventually return. Moreover, he is not exactly narcissistic. Rather, he is truly interested in others but is afraid or does not know how to find access to them. He thinks that by letting go of his shadow he would better see the world. This story, hence, does not present the drama of passive breath, that is, the constant, imperceptible negotiation between the inside and the outside, but rather of active vision. Indeed, Maupassant’s diarist, too, wished to see the world, but only to

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52  The Shadow’s Gaze better protect himself against the passivity and invisibility of breath, night, and all that which lies outside without clearly distinguishing itself from the inside. He did not care for anything or anyone but himself, and the Horla came to warn him that refusing to acknowledge and let in alterity would lead to a lack of air. The role of the shadow, on the other hand, is to see what seems to be beyond normal sight. The learned man is not afraid of passivity but rather attempts to find means to better access the world around him. The next morning the man is surprised and vexed to find that his shadow has not come back. However, he soon grows a new shadow, returns to his homeland in the north, and continues with his quiet life of study and writing, about which we don’t hear much. Many years pass, when one day someone knocks on his door: an extremely thin, well-​dressed man, whom he does not recognize until this stranger cries: “Don’t you know your old Shadow?” (386). From this point on the story gradually shifts from the personality of the learned man to that of the shadow, and this is no coincidence, since the shadow holds with it –​or rather him, since he gradually becomes human  –​a special power of sight. This sight is related to the shadow’s constant preoccupation with recognition: not a recognition of essence but of appearance. Thus, he is extremely sensible to his image and invests much effort in improving it while diminishing the image of others. One of the first things he does when he visits the man is to step on his new shadow, to express his superiority over it. Moreover, the goal of his visit to the learned man is to redeem his freedom with the money he has gained, the same money that allowed him to acquire expensive and apparently dignified garments. The learned man is not interested in the shadow’s money and willingly gives him (it) his freedom, but he reminds him that he still owes him something else: namely, the story of what he saw in the house to which he was sent. Who lived there? The shadow reveals that it was no other than Poetry herself. The man, ever more excited, is keen to get some details: “Tell me, Tell Me!” he eagerly cries, but the shadow refuses to answer before the man changes his tone and asks more respectfully: “And what didst thou see?” Only then comes the surprising answer: “Everything,

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The Shadow’s Gaze  53 […] for I  saw and know everything” (388). The man strives for more, but the shadow agrees to say only these peculiar yet elusive words: I tell you I have been there, and so you will easily understand that I saw everything that was to be seen. […] I learned to understand my inner being and the relation in which I stood to Poetry. Yes, when I was with you I did not think of these things; but you know that whenever the sun rises or sets I am wonderfully great. In the moonshine I was almost more noticeable than you yourself. I  did not then understand my inward being; in the ante-​room it was revealed to me. I became a man! I came out ripe. But you were no longer in the warm countries. I was ashamed to go about as a man in the state I was then in; I required boots, clothes, and all that human varnish by which a man is known. (389) The shadow has become a man in a process similar to Adam and Eve’s experience of eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil only to become ashamed of their nakedness. But what exactly is the knowledge he acquired? On the one hand, he discovered his inner nature as a relative of Poetry, but on the other hand, he became extremely preoccupied with his self-​image and the gaze of others upon him. The shadow, for instance, retrospectively understands he was superior to his master, but only because he was taller and more visible than him. In other words, the process of initiation that he underwent in the house of Poetry led him, not to a knowledge of creativity or literature, but to a deep understanding of what it means to be seen and the secret of appearance. How could Poetry lead to the superficiality of appearance? One of Poetry’s most fervent opponents was Plato. At the end of The Republic the poets are expelled from the ideal state so that the philosophers can reign without challenge, and the desire for image and matter is transformed into a spiritual desire for the Idea. Now, the learned man was attracted not only to the spiritual aspect of Poetry but also to her images, and it is this undesired desire that made him split and expel from himself a part that could gain access to Poetry. What he really wanted was

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54  The Shadow’s Gaze to be the man from Plato’s allegory of the cave, who escapes and goes out into the open. At first this man is unable to look at the sun and can merely see its reflection in ponds and lakes. Only after he gets used to the bright light can he raise his eyes and see the ultimate source of Truth. But the sun of the south remains too strong for the learned man. Poetry, on the other hand, offers him a wonderful light that seems to be much more fit for his eyes, and he wishes with all his heart to explore its origin and further encounter it. Torn between his eagerness for the beauty of images and perhaps also his sexual desire for the woman, on the one hand, and his wish for Ideal Truth, on the other, he decides to get rid of his shadow. In this way he probably wishes to have his cake and eat it through the shadow, but the result is a split between a man of Idea and Essence and a shadow of Image and Appearance. The split, however, does no good for either of them. The shadow, despite his master’s quest for beauty, does not find any beauty in Poetry. What he sees in her is only images, and he thus acquires unique visual capacities, seeing everywhere around him appearance rather than essence. This leads him to a gloomy conclusion: “I saw what nobody saw and what nobody ought to see. On the whole it is a despicable world: I would not be a man if it were not commonly supposed that it is something to be one” (389). The shadow deduces that the nature of humans is evil, but curiously he doesn’t mention any specific content of the evils he sees in others. I therefore suggest that what he sees is nothing but their being seen as such: the appearance and image with which they try to cover a secret. But this secret is empty, revealing nothing but the darkness, nudity, and vacuity that lie below the surface of wealth, decency, and good manners. We are all evil, pretenders, liars, and cheaters, not because we did something wrong, but because we have a double life: an apparent life and an invisible one. Again, the invisible life is not full of deeds and actions that we try to hide, but on the contrary, it is completely void. What appearance covers is only emptiness, as revealed in another famous story of Andersen’s, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

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The Shadow’s Gaze  55 The shadow thus does not look for appearances as such but for the gap between appearance and the emptiness it covers. People are nothing but the sum of their images in the eyes of others, and every presumed essence for him is a lie. This does not mean that he vehemently condemns the realm of appearance and image. On the contrary, he admits that he wished to become human only because it is seen as good to be a man. The shadow simultaneously despises and follows public opinion, one’s gaze. He feels superior to others but is also eager to please them and gain their respect. His understanding of the secret of the gaze and the force it gives to the one daring to use it relentlessly actually makes him very powerful. He therefore starts to exploit people, threatening to expose the gap between their appearance of fullness and their essence of emptiness. People begin to fear him but also, surprisingly, to love him. They give him not only money but also respect, making him a gentleman both wealthy and worthy. They want the shadow to become one of them, a liar like themselves, so that he will not expose the lie. The shadow has thus acquired the knowledge of being seen and appearance, leaving the man with the realm of essences, which he tries to see around him but without exposing himself to either the sun or the gaze of the other. The split between the two is therefore the split between two aspects of sight: the shadow’s gaze is reactive, always looking for its own image in the eyes of the other, whereas the man’s gaze is perhaps more simple and direct, but since it eludes any aspect of being seen it becomes blind to reality. Whereas we might think that someone like the learned man who aims merely to see should be stronger than someone obsessed with being seen, the story teaches us that the contrary is true. After the shadow leaves the man’s house, the man returns to his routine of studying and writing, but something in the way people look at him changes, and when the shadow comes again to visit him after a year, the man admits the failure of his attitude: “Ah! […] I am writing about the true, the good, and the beautiful; but nobody cares to hear anything of the kind: I am quite in despair, for I take that to heart” (390). So when you don’t want to be seen, surprisingly enough nobody wants to see you or hear from you. On first reading the

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56  The Shadow’s Gaze learned man may seem a humble person, marginalized because of his shyness and poor self-​marketing abilities. But when we look at things more closely, we realize the learned man is neither modest nor arrogant but rather blind: to appearance, but also to materiality, sensual desire, and otherness. He attempts to be a pure spirit but therefore loses touch with reality. The split has deprived the learned man of both worlds: the world of appearance but also the world of essence, since these two worlds should remain connected in order to have value. A  gaze of pure essence is as blind and arid as a gaze of pure appearance. And indeed, not just the man suffers from the split but also the shadow. The shadow, we are told, barely has a heart; he cannot truly love or feel anything other than envy and the desire for power and respect. Ignoring appearances as the man and knowing nothing but appearances as the shadow lead to the same sterility of the soul. The man therefore becomes increasingly weak and the shadow tries to persuade him to join him on a journey, of which he will pay all the expenses if the man agrees to serve as his shadow. The shadow wishes to undo the split between origin and shadow, but not in order to blur the hierarchies between them but, on the contrary, to switch roles and become the master of his former master. The man refuses at first, but the general indifference to his studies makes him ever more ill, and people start to tell him that he looks like a shadow. Terrified by this transformation, he finally accepts the shadow’s offer, hoping to be healed in the baths, the destination of the journey. The two hence go on the road with this strange inversion: “The Shadow was master now, and the master was shadow” (390). When they arrive at the baths they meet there a princess, who wishes to heal her sight, which is curiously too sharp. In this sense she and the shadow, the master of appearances, would make a perfect couple, and indeed she is immediately attracted to him, realizing that the illness he wishes to cure is the lack of a shadow. Yet when she confronts him with this insight, he tells her she has probably been cured of her own illness, since he does have a shadow, namely, the learned man. The princess is somehow convinced by this strange story and falls in love with the shadow, who, however, does not seem to

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The Shadow’s Gaze  57 fall in love in return, since he doesn’t have a real heart. Rather, he notices the new way she looks at him and understands the power this opportunity could give him. Yet before the princess agrees to marry the shadow, she wants to know if he has a well-​ grounded knowledge. Indeed, the shadow claimed that he had learned from Poetry everything there is to know, but this knowledge is that of appearance, whereas the princess now wishes to see if he knows something about essence. She asks him a difficult question, and the puzzled shadow finally calls upon the learned man, who docilely waits at the threshold of the room. The man, presented as a shadow, converses with the princess, who is extremely impressed, since the person she has fallen in love with must be very special to have such a clever shadow. She is now ready to marry the shadow, whom she takes for a prince, and both of them eagerly anticipate their future reign over her kingdom. The shadow’s transformation into a man is now almost complete, and the only obstacle is still his lack of a real shadow. He thus proposes that the man permanently become his shadow, but this is too much for the man, who refuses this ultimate surrender of his position, if not as a master at least as a human being. He threatens to expose the shadow and reveal his real identity, but who would believe him now? The shadow calls the guards, who throw the man into jail, and on that very evening the wedding takes place. The story ends with these lines: “That was a wedding! The Princess and the Shadow stepped out on the balcony to show themselves and receive another cheer. The learned man heard nothing of all this festivity, for he had already been executed” (395). Although Andersen’s story depicts the split as exterior, presenting the man and the shadow as two distinct individuals, it is clear that this cautionary tale tries to warn us against an interior split.3 The learned man, as every man and woman, has two aspects: spiritual and material. The man and his shadow are doubles of each other, two sides of the same coin, only that one has been projected outside to dramatize and exteriorize an inner conflict. Therefore, it would be misleading to see the learned man as an innocent, humble, and shy person, running away from appearance and

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58  The Shadow’s Gaze falling victim to the cruelty of this world. We all have a shadow, a material aspect with all sorts of needs and desires, but we tend to hide it. To return to Rilke’s demand to be here fully, to be of the earth, I now understand it as a call to be here both body and soul, whereas the split creates two unembodied beings. Vision should not be detached from touch, that is, from one’s body. It is, however, frightening to engage in a vision that remains in touch with touch, a touching vision. For it necessitates a loss of control, accepting to touch and be touched by the gazes and bodies of others, as well as by one’s own impulses and emotions. It forces one to depart from the peaceful yet sterile realm of the detached subject, the same realm in which Maupassant’s diarist, too, imprisoned himself. This is probably why it is so tempting to split life between theory and practice, vision and touch, but also work and leisure, such that these spheres remain well protected. But when you start to split things, you risk losing your shadow and yourself, which provokes a feeling of “something missing,” the same feeling I had all my life. It is therefore time to dare to give a name to this “something missing” I have felt from my early youth: my shadow. Sometime in the past I rejected the shadow. How did this happen? I wished to touch but didn’t dare to, wanted to see but was afraid of how people would look back at me. I  therefore didn’t find access to people’s hearts and bodies, probably looking for them in the wrong places. And then –​but when was it? –​I noticed my shadow could do all that for me and sent it away to discover the world in the hope it would come back and tell me what it found. Yet from that moment on things went awry. How would I regain my shadow and reconnect the different spheres in me? The crucial moment in the story is the revelation of Poetry, which becomes a fantasy and obsession for the learned man. It is a fantasy of exquisite light that would be truer than that of the sun, not only because it is softer but also and more than anything because he thinks it is meant for his eyes only, unlike the sun, which lights up the entire earth. He fantasizes about unique and dazzling creation, the dream of every writing person. Yet the wisdom of Poetry consists precisely in taking universal words and images and then, through

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The Shadow’s Gaze  59 writing, giving them a particular expression. Poetry is neither universal nor unique, neither external nor internal, but serves as a bridge between the different realms. Poetry can thus also connect the man and his shadow. Indeed, its presence in the story already represents progress, in comparison to the stifling world of “The Horla,” where the diarist’s narcissism wouldn’t allow him to even imagine a realm lying outside his private estate. But Poetry doesn’t realize its potential and remains a rather negative force in “The Shadow.” It is a mysterious and obscure figure, a fantasy that leads only to the split between the man and his shadow rather than helping to reconcile it. It is probably this same fantasy of private and safe light, with no risk or real alterity, that had made me split between essence and appearance, trying to purify myself from the threatening world. It is a fantasy of uniqueness and unicity, of personal creation that would nonetheless be universal. But paradoxically it led me to the creation of a shadow and a double that blocked any access to the real world. I have struggled to get rid of this fantasy, but its temptation is still very strong. To understand this fantasy and its consequences, but also the ways to transform it into a bridge between me and the world, me and others, me and myself, I propose the following theoretical intervention.

THEORETICAL INTERVENTION To regain the shadow and reunite the different spheres within oneself, we should try to better understand what the shadow stands for. The shadow is one of the emblematic figures of the double in nineteenth-​century literature, and we find its prototype in Adelbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl (1814), the story of the man who lost his shadow.4 This story quickly became popular all over Europe, since, I suggest, it incarnated the sense of loss so central to Romanticism. Does this mean that Romanticism lost its shadow? This hypothesis is reinforced if we recall that the Romantic movement arose as a reaction to eighteenth-​century Enlightenment, which sought to rationalize the world and chase away its shadows.5 Yet a world without shadows would be a

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60  The Shadow’s Gaze dazzling world of pure light and pure spirit, with no place for any object, body, or darkness. Yet even if Romanticism has lost its shadow, it has equally found it: found it as lost. The light of rationalism aimed to eradicate the shadow, but what it actually did was to expose it, since shadows are not afraid of light; on the contrary, they need light to show themselves. Romanticism captured this paradoxical nature of the shadow and therefore both mourned its loss and warned against its overexposure. The spontaneous, invisible shadow, a shadow that was one’s integral part, docilely following one’s steps and maintaining one’s wholeness, was conceived as lost forever. A new shadow now saw the light of day: an enlightened, independent shadow, but therefore irremediably split from oneself. This is why Romanticism often expresses two emotions in particular –​longing and horror: longing for wholeness, that is, an innocent self that would live in harmony with the good old shadow; and horror facing the arrival of a new demonic shadow. Andersen’s story thus goes beyond Peter Schlemihl, since it tells the story of not only how the shadow was lost but also how it acquired new life. The shadow, as the repressed, always returns, wishing to usurp the place of the subject, such that a struggle for life and death eventually takes place between them. Whereas the shadow in Peter Schlemihl remained a negative double, similar to the Horla, the shadow in Andersen’s story gradually becomes an elaborate character, presented almost as a real subject. It/​he is therefore not only a negation of the self, the residue of narcissistic processes as we saw in the previous chapter, but also a positive double. Indeed, Andersen’s shadow is a narcissistic projection of the protagonist’s ideal image, but it is only a partial ideal: an ideal that opposes other aspects of the learned man, and as such it is somehow split from him and gains a life of its own. To better understand the role of the shadow in the constitution of subjectivity and self-​identity, I  propose to analyze it with philosophical tools.6 I will begin with Hegel’s dialectic of Lord and Bondsman as a prototype of the split between the two parts of consciousness. I  will then move to Sartre’s prolongation of this dialectic with his analysis of the gaze. These two

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The Shadow’s Gaze  61 philosophers will help us understand the creation of the shadow and its role. However, to understand how Poetry provokes the split between the man and his shadow but may also lead to their reconciliation, I will draw on Levinas’s early theory combined with Kristeva’s notion of abjection.

The Shadow: From Bondsman to Lord I have described Romanticism as a reaction to Enlightenment, but there was in fact another, philosophical reaction to it through what is known as German Idealism.7 The three main philosophers of this movement –​J. G. Fichte, F. W. J. Schelling, and G. W. F. Hegel –​continued a line of thought that started with Immanuel Kant in his search for the limits of consciousness. Kant’s critical method stressed the mutual dependence between subject and object. The subject is the one who constitutes the object, and yet it constitutes the object precisely as distinct from the subject.8 Indeed, this combination of intimacy and alterity already implies a certain doubling of the subject in the object; however, Kant instead stressed an unattainable region of the “thing-​in-​itself,” acknowledging a mysterious gap between perception and what lies beyond it. For Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, this region had to be overcome. According to them, the human being comprises everything there is to know, such that the I gains an absolute power over itself and the world, making the problem of the double apparently obsolete.9 However, the I soon discovers its need for the Other, be it within oneself or outside it, and the two consequently form together a complex relationship.10 I do not intend to give a detailed description of German Idealism; rather, I wish to point to the inherent tension it holds between the yearning for unicity and unity (between one and oneself, one and the world/​nature)11 and the inevitable mediation presented by the figure of the not-​I (in Schelling) or the Other (in Hegel). This mediation and otherness, I  suggest, is incarnated by the figure of the double as an instance that may be internal in reality but is felt and perceived as external. The double defies the one, the unique, the unified; yet the double is not some residue to surmount or get rid of, as the German

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62  The Shadow’s Gaze Idealists tended to depict it, but rather an inevitable counter-​ process of duplication, a recurrent and obstinate shadow that must accompany any light. Roughly speaking, German Idealism and Romanticism are both similar and remote. They share the same concerns but present opposite diagnoses. Both aim to achieve unity –​with the self and with the world conceived as Nature –​but whereas the former is rather optimistic, presenting absolute knowledge as being within reach, the latter melancholically laments the impossibility of unity.12 Unity becomes for Romanticism an impossible ideal that is always located elsewhere, be it in a fantasized past, precarious emotional states, or mysterious experiences of the Sublime.13 If we examine one of the most famous paintings of German Romanticism, Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, we may note that as sublime as the wanderer’s experience might be, we, the observers, can see only his back, which hides from us the full scenery. In other words, the painting presents both the unity of and the split between Subject and World. The wanderer serves as an intermediary between us and the world, us and ourselves, an obstacle that is simultaneously a source of identification. As such he is nothing but our double, an incarnation of the inevitable mediation each one of us encompasses. He is an ideal to be admired for his vision and hated for not letting us assume his omnipotent position. German Idealism, yet, proposes to overcome the wanderer, this shadow that prevents one from attaining unity. Hegel’s 1807 famous dialectic of Lord and Bondsman,14 which is a part of a greater search for absolute knowledge, is an exemplary case of this attempt. According to Hegel, when consciousness encounters another consciousness, it enters with it into a life-​and-​death struggle in which the winning party becomes the Lord, and the losing, the Bondsman. The key to victory in this struggle is accepting to die or, more precisely, not fearing death, the Lord being the one who despises life whereas the Bondsman remains attached to it. Therefore, the Lord controls the Bondsman, who becomes his source of life, supplying him with the fruits of the soil. The Bondsman works and thereby gains knowledge about the world

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The Shadow’s Gaze  63 and how to produce objects in and from it; but this soon creates a strange inversion: the Lord becomes completely dependent on the Bondsman, whereas the Bondsman, through his work and attachment to life, gains mastery and power.15 Let us now try to locate this dialectic in Andersen’s story. In the beginning the learned man and his shadow are united in a state that is analogous to Hegel’s descriptions of simple consciousness: unaware of others it goes out in the world to look for its truth. To seek the truth the learned man undertakes a journey to the south, where the light is brighter. Yet when he arrives there, he encounters a first barrier, a limitation upon his power of sight by the too-​strong sunlight. Then a second limitation presents itself, with the revelation of Poetry and the dazzling light emanating from her figure. The learned man desires this woman and wishes to possess her, yet he does not even know how to access her house. It is this unsatisfied desire, the wish to obtain an impossible object, that makes him discover otherness, and it is precisely at that moment that the idea to let go of his shadow comes to his mind. Andersen thus proposes that the encounter with another consciousness is not neutral or arbitrary but involves some dimension of desire.16 The man desires the woman and is so frustrated by this desire that he splits himself in two. Indeed, many interpreters see the struggle for life and death not as between two consciousnesses but as between two parts within one consciousness,17 which perfectly fits Andersen’s story. Yet contrary to Hegel, the struggle in the story is not merely dual but already involves a third party over which the two parts compete.18 We now better understand the motivation for the struggle, which is not only otherness as such but otherness involving frustrated desire. The double is created upon a feeling of lack and limitation, and the struggle for life and death is an inner drama that both leads to the split and stems from it, as the story shows. By letting go of his shadow, the man declares that he has not succumbed to his desire and has won the battle. It is therefore an act of both courage and cowardice. It is an act of courage since the man gives up his interest in worldly creatures, that is, in life. He declares that life interests him only theoretically since he doesn’t need his shadow as the correlate of his materiality

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64  The Shadow’s Gaze and the desires it involves. But it is also a coward’s act, made in a moment of frustration, when the man decides to give up his object of desire –​that is, the world as desired. Andersen shows us that the Lord is not simply unafraid of death; for in a certain sense he is afraid of life and its earthy needs. From the moment the split takes place, the moment he triumphs over his shadow, the learned man focuses his interest on purely spiritual truth and not on material objects, which now become the share of the shadow alone. The shadow is therefore devoted not only to the world of appearance but also to the world of matter, with all the needs and desires it carries with it. He is attached to life by his tendency to follow and obey, precisely because he doesn’t have any independent existence without others. The truth of the shadow is dependence, but he understands this only after the split and his three-​week stay at the house of Poetry. It is no coincidence that he exits the house in the most dependent way: naked and ashamed, hiding under the gown of a cake-​woman. At first he goes out only by night, as did the learned man, but whereas the latter liked to watch without touching, the shadow stretches himself tall upon the walls to scratch his back. He thus makes himself big while leaning on something, a combination that summarizes the secret of dependence. He soon discovers his ability to look everywhere and observe people’s deepest secrets, yet he is not interested in people per se but rather in the goods he may gain from them. He accumulates objects and luxurious clothes, until he decides to return to his Lord and ask for his freedom. Indeed, a Bondsman could redeem his freedom from his Lord for a certain amount of money, but this offer is not only an act of freedom but actually the beginning of the inversion between the Lord and the Bondsman. Moreover, the refusal of the learned man to receive anything from the shadow is only another step in this direction. He wishes to maintain his superiority, his position as a Lord who refuses to acknowledge his dependence on the shadow and the world of matter, but this deprives him of any satisfaction and makes him ever weaker and poorer. For Hegel both the Lord and the Bondsman should eventually understand their mutual dependence and their belongingness to

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The Shadow’s Gaze  65 each other. But a consciousness that comprises these two elements without integrating them is an unhappy consciousness, and it remains so until it finds a means to reconcile its split parts. Hegel’s solution is to turn to a third figure, the priest, who allows unhappy consciousness –​split, doubled, and estranged –​ to move toward the unity of Reason.19 Hegel’s full dialectic is beyond the scope of the present book, and for our purposes it suffices to note that both the Lord and the Bondsman need to acknowledge their mutual dependence within the split and the unhappiness it brings. Only then can they turn to a mediating figure that would permit the reconciliation of consciousness with itself. Now, contrary to the learned man, the shadow acknowledges his dependence from the outset. And yet, this acknowledgment leads not to a deeper understanding of mediation but, on the contrary, to a wish to feel the man’s need for him in return. The learned man, however, refuses to admit any need, save his wish to acquire the knowledge of Poetry, a kind of material spirituality upon which the shadow can give only a partial perspective. During the shadow’s second visit the learned man is obliged to confess his despair over the total lack of interest he receives from people. The shadow replies, “You don’t understand the world, and you’re getting ill” (390). and he is right, since the learned man has no direct access to the world. He needs the mediation of the shadow, yet he refuses to acknowledge the material part of spirituality, and his work therefore becomes sterile. In this sense the shadow’s offer to take him to the baths is not simply humiliating and cruel but may also be seen as an attempt to make the man realize what dependence upon others means. Both the shadow and the learned man secretly or overtly understand their dependence, but they project it upon the other in what gradually becomes a second life-​and-​death struggle. From the moment they take the journey to the baths the inversion of roles is accelerated, the man serving as the shadow’s shadow and then using his spiritual wisdom to help the shadow be accepted by the princess. But until the very end the man doesn’t reflect on his own role as a shadow, and he rebels only when the shadow wishes to officialize the inversion and make it

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66  The Shadow’s Gaze public. Even then, the man justifies his outrage by stating that the inversion of roles “would be cheating the whole country and the Princess too” (394) rather than by expressing any feelings of hurt or humiliation. Until his very last breath the man is interested in Truth and not in matter, remaining blind to the danger of his rebellion at that stage and thus finding himself thrown into jail and finally executed. This is his paradox: he, who became Lord thanks to his indifference to life during the battle for life and death, finally dies at the hands of his Bondsman because of this very same indifference.20 He finally loses the fight since his detachment from life gradually made him dead even while he was still alive. Certainly, he never becomes a true shadow, a true Bondsman. He maintains his superiority and denial of any earthly need, but what was his gain, dying alone, humiliated, and unrecognized?

The Secret of the Gaze The end of Hegel’s dialectic of Lord and Bondsman suggests that it is rather the latter who holds the secret of dependence. It is therefore in him that the key to the reconciliation of consciousness with itself can be found. The shadow, however, gradually rejects his status as a Bondsman and aims to become a Lord like the learned man. The shadow is the agent of dependence, but it seems very difficult to truly accept this position as an inherent part of oneself. To better understand this difficulty, let us examine what a human shadow stands for. My shadow is a dark reflection of my body resulting from a blocked passage of light. It thereby reveals my body as an obstacle: something that stands out and pierces the infinite light around me. The shadow is the visual projection of my body as an opaque mass of matter; a superfluous object in the world of light; an obscure reminder of my corporeal existence. It is not my lived body but the representation of its external contours with no expression or inner details. This is why in popular culture the shadow often stands for a source of shame: it is the dark and evil side I try to hide although eventually one exposes it to light. At the same time, as the story of Peter Schlemihl shows, my shadow may also stand

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The Shadow’s Gaze  67 for a source of pride: no matter how poor and miserable I am, I have at least one docile servant who lawfully accompanies me wherever I  go and reminds me that I  exist. As long as I  live, I have a body and a shadow, both proving me to be something in the world: something that matters. In this sense, the impersonal and crude traits of the shadow can turn from drawback to advantage: the shadow hides my inner sensations, allowing me to maintain a homogeneous and unified image upon which I can project whatever trait I wish to show to the world. Therefore, the split in Andersen’s story is not between shame (the shadow) and pride (the learned man) but rather between the entire realm of shame/​pride –​the realm of appearance –​and another realm. I previously called this other realm essence, but I also argued that essence should not be split from appearance; otherwise, it becomes sterile and detached. The learned man is a scholar and what he is interested in is pure theory. The word “theory” is derived from the Greek theoria, “vision,” yet it is an intellectual rather than practical vision. The learned man is keen to observe, but he wishes neither to be seen nor to touch. He negates his embodied existence and would like to become a pure and almighty spirit. Indeed, from the very beginning of the story, long before the split, the man adopts a voyeuristic position, remaining in control and not willing to expose himself to the too-​intense sunlight. Whereas in the north the faint light would not draw a very sharp shadow, the sun of the south doesn’t allow him to hide his body from himself and from others, and he therefore decides to remain inside and watch the world from a safe distance. But we already know that this attempt is challenged by the opaque vision of the opposite house and the enlightening woman who lives there. The man suddenly feels the desire to touch and enter the house, and it is precisely this desire that risks exposing him to the world of shame/​pride, such that he asks the shadow to enter the house in his place. On the literal level the man lets go of his shadow, but on a deeper level he detaches himself not only from the world of appearance  –​of shame and pride  –​but also from the world of others and the desire it involves. He wishes to watch the world and write books about it, but he lacks the courage to go

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68  The Shadow’s Gaze down, encounter other people’s gaze, search for the entrance to their houses, and go inside. Therefore, his vision cannot penetrate anything and becomes theoretical and detached. From the moment the split takes place his situation becomes even worse since he seems to lose sight of things. He describes the world but nobody is interested in these descriptions, since it is not a lived world, a world of flesh and bone, but a theoretical construction. The story, however, doesn’t attempt to teach us that truth and essence are obsolete values in a world of appearance, since this evaluation is already the result of the split between the man and his shadow. The question is not whether soul and essence are superior to body and appearance but rather how to avoid the split between them in the first place. To better understand this possibility, let us turn to Sartre’s notion of the gaze, developed in his 1943 Being and Nothingness.21 Sartre describes a scene in the first person in which I  am secretly peering at a spectacle through a keyhole when suddenly I hear someone coming: I’m caught in the act of looking. Before this moment of exposure, I am all alone and “there is no self to inhabit my consciousness.”22 I am completely immersed in the situation such that “I am my acts” in “a pure mode of losing myself in the world.” Wrenched from my immersion in the spectacle, awoken from the world of dreams, I  become aware of myself only when I notice that someone is looking at me. But this means that “I am conscious of myself as escaping myself,” that is, as dependent upon the gaze of others.23 Without the Other I would never know myself and would be only pure consciousness of the world. I therefore feel ashamed, not so much because I got caught watching, but because I now realize my dependence on others and their gaze upon me. At the same time, I  may also feel proud: proud that I  exist and that others take pains to look at me; proud of my ability to finally say “I.” Shame and pride are thus two faces of the same coin, the coin of appearance but also of existence: existence that is enabled and exposed through appearance. Sartre conceives of shame and pride (together with fear) as the fundamental feelings evoked by the Other’s gaze. However, there is another possibility when facing this gaze: that is, to simply refuse and ignore it, as does the learned man. Sartre gives

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The Shadow’s Gaze  69 an illuminating description of this possibility in an early short story entitled “Erostratus,” which begins with the line “You really have to see men from above.”24 Like the learned man, Sartre’s protagonist enjoys sitting on his balcony and watching others from a safe and superior place. He hates humanity but strangely enough fancies watching people –​watching them and fantasizing about killing them. In Sartre’s world one has to choose: watch or be watched. It is a binary system of activity and passivity, relating to two broader attitudes: sadism, desire, hate, and indifference, on the one hand; and masochism, seduction, love, and language, on the other. In the first attitude, to which belongs the active gaze, I wish to annihilate the other. In the second, I try to attract the Other with my passive being seen, but in this way I let myself be annihilated. These two options are very present in Andersen’s story. The learned man surely likes to watch and does not wish to be watched. Moreover, he traveled to the south probably to see the world in brighter light. But the story also reveals the impasse created by this attitude: the man’s inability both to get out during the day and to observe the interior of the opposite house by night. His confusion grows when he sees (or was it a dream?) the dazzling woman who incarnates everything he would like to see but cannot. When he notices that his shadow can enter the house, he lets it go, not only to make it see the house for him but also to get rid of his own aspect of being seen. For Sartre, my shadow –​he uses this term metaphorically –​ is “my being as it is written in and by the Other’s freedom.”25 I cannot control or fully grasp the way others see me, and no matter how much I wear pretty clothes and makeup, the Other still has the freedom to look at me and constitute me at her wish. My shadow is the part in me that I cannot see, the part that is constituted only by the Other’s gaze. It therefore opens up in me “the dimension of the unrevealed”26 or the “unrevealed Me.”27 The learned man, keen to reveal everything, cannot bear the presence of the unrevealed, and by letting go of his shadow he has a double gain. First, he transforms his passive, being-​ seen element into an active and seeing one, making the observed shadow into an observing agent. Second, he frees himself from

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70  The Shadow’s Gaze this element and, with it, from the anxiety the unrevealed provokes in him and the need to succumb to the Other and feel shame, pride, or fear.28 The shadow, on the other hand, holds the secret of the unrevealed, but curiously enough he uses it not to observe himself but to watch and blackmail other people. He consequently becomes rich and powerful, but the price he must pay is his inability to love. Love, according to Sartre, is possible only if one accepts the gaze of the Other upon oneself. Even when the shadow meets the princess, it is only in her eyes that he sees love. He recognizes immediately this emotion through his ability to see the unrevealed, but he soon translates the love of the other into a wish to control and possess her. The shadow, the holder of the secret of the gaze, is paradoxically unable to fully accept the gaze of the Other. His passive origins won’t allow him to endorse his own passivity, and he is constantly eager to locate it within others, especially his former master. He is a shadow that has been let go and gradually becomes a Lord, thus revealing the impasse of both Hegelian and Sartrean dialectics, since when the two parts remain disconnected, they cannot achieve love or happiness. In Hegel, as we have seen, the dialectic does not stop here, since the Lord and the Bondsman need to find a synthesis, a mediation through a third party. Alone they cannot access Truth and self-​knowledge. Sartre, however, proposes no mediation between the seer and the seen, the active and the passive, and for him the solution consists merely of being aware of one’s existential situation and avoiding the fall into what he calls bad faith.29 Nonetheless, as we have already seen, there is one figure in the story that incarnates the possibility of mediation, being both the reason for the split and the key to its solution: namely, Poetry. Poetry sets the highest limit to sight, presenting something that cannot be clearly discerned and controlled. In many ways Poetry is the unrevealed, the most secret dimension of oneself, the blind spot in every one of us. Poetry comes from the outside, from language, and yet in it one can find one’s deepest wishes and essence. It is simultaneously the strangest and the most intimate element in each one of us, if we only dare to

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The Shadow’s Gaze  71 listen to it without fearing to lose our minds, as happened to the sailors who listened to the Sirens according to the Odyssey. This mysterious, inner–​ outer dimension both attracts and repulses the learned man, who wishes to reveal the unrevealed, and once he understands this paradox, he releases his shadow. The shadow, on the other hand, feels at home in the house of Poetry and discovers their common nature. For Poetry, as the unrevealed, reigns in the kingdom of images and appearances. These images are simultaneously particular and universal, connecting me to others, me to myself, body to soul, appearance to essence. But the shadow, too, finally misses the truth of Poetry, learning the secret of the image but ignoring its deeper layers, namely, its affective and creative parts, which are essential to both truth and love. Both the man and the shadow are deeply transformed by Poetry, yet both also completely miss her nature and remain at a level of shallow fascination. They touch upon the unrevealed but cannot transform it into a real knowledge of otherness. The unrevealed as a dimension of otherness will stand at the center of the rest of this chapter. Following Levinas and Kristeva, I will explore the possibility of a new kind of light: dark and bright, strange(r) and familiar.

The Impossible Escape from Being Emmanuel Levinas is well known for his ethics of otherness, but this ethics is actually rooted in a more primordial, anonymous, and dark world that he depicts in his early writings from the 1940s. He calls this realm the il y a (there is) and gives the example of insomnia, the inability to sleep that makes me feel surrounded by a timeless and impersonal environment. I try to let go and fall asleep, alas in vain, which provokes a “consciousness that it will never finish,” a “[v]‌igilance without an end,” and a sense of “immortality from which one cannot escape.”30 Rather than death anxiety, the il y a incites a fear of endless, yet empty existence. Who hasn’t known the horrible nocturnal experience of infinite hum? Compulsive and trifling thoughts attack my mind and won’t let go; the sound of the air conditioner from an adjacent building drives me crazy; the loud TV

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72  The Shadow’s Gaze set of the neighbors next door keeps emitting pseudocheerful yet unrecognizable sounds, coming from another world which is nonetheless mine. When will all this end? The darkness and passivity of night push one closer to the il y a, and indeed, in both “The Horla” and “The Shadow,” as well as many other doppelgänger stories, night plays a significant role. The diarist of “The Horla” is afraid to fall asleep since during this time he is no longer in control of himself or reality and is therefore exposed to atrocious nightmares. The figure of the Horla, as a negative double, comes to threaten the world of light, sight, and clear shapes, showing the dark and empty side of the I. In Levinas’s terms, the Horla is the representative of the il y a, that which precedes every human subjectivity. The more the diarist tries to elude and control it, the more the il y a announces itself, leaving no other option for him but to kill himself, for only death frees one from endless darkness. The learned man, on the other hand, likes the softness of the night, and it is also by night that Poetry is revealed to him. Poetry, in fact, bears a similarity to the Horla, since both stem from the dark il y a. Poetry is mysterious and inaccessible, appearing only at night, but unlike the Horla, she isn’t the darkness itself. Rather, a circle of alluring light surrounds her figure and makes her appear bright and shining. She might be a hallucination, but she is not a nightmare; rather, she is a fantastic, sweet, and soft entity. I will soon return to the light of Poetry, but let us linger for a while on the darkness of the il y a, the completely anonymous and neutral realm that can never be purely perceived as such. Indeed, in insomnia we get closer to this Being without beings, Existence without existents, but its opaque and impersonal nature resists any real penetration. Moreover, rather than approach the il y a, we are instinctively pushed to escape it to rescue our subjectivity. We fancy, not blurred backgrounds, but rather distinct objects that we can manipulate to reassure ourselves that we are still the masters of the house and not its shadow. The experience of insomnia is so unpleasant, threatening to abolish our personal identity and stable world, that we have a natural aversion to it. However, no matter how much we try to mask and hide from ourselves the il y a, we are doomed to it as human beings,

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The Shadow’s Gaze  73 and Levinas calls this irrevocable attachment hypostasis. The hypostasis is the ongoing event of subjectivity appearing in the background of the il y a, the binding link between me and my existence.31 Indeed, before the hypostasis there was nothing and no one, only pure existence without existents. The hypostasis is already a rupture of the anonymous il y a; it constitutes subjectivity as the appropriation of general existence by the personal. A new agency sees the day: the I, who lives in the present. Yet the present, contrary to its etymology, is not initially a gift but rather a burden that unsettles my presumed ownership and “masculinity.” The present urges me to constantly take care of myself, to be occupied with myself precisely since I am not a pure spirit. I necessarily have a body that needs food and shelter, and being alive in this world means to accept its materiality. The hypostasis therefore frees me from pure anonymity, but it simultaneously demarcates me as matter, such that I can never be completely free.32 The unavoidable materiality of the subject may seem evident and banal, but according to Levinas it has severe consequences, doubling me into two: the free I and the material self. Levinas goes so far as to characterize the material self as “a viscous, stupid, heavy double,” and he adds: “My being doubles with a having; I  am encumbered by myself.”33 We cannot avoid thinking here again of Maupassant’s diarist, who attempted to conceive of himself as a pure spirit, negating his body and with it any exteriority: his need for air, food, but also love. The Horla came to remind him not only of his dependency upon the external world but also that it is within himself that his dark double resides, a familiar stranger belonging to the opaque generality of the il y a. The learned man, too, conceives of himself as exclusively spiritual, but the shadow is not a negative double. Rather, the shadow takes the hypostasis to the extreme, being constantly occupied with his materiality and that of others. Both the diarist and the learned man try to distance themselves from the material needs of their bodies. But according to Levinas, the I is a captive of its body, which is the necessary price of hypostasis, that is, of being a concrete existent rather than anonymous existence. The body gives me a unique form, but it also carries with it a certain anonymity. It is a piece of

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74  The Shadow’s Gaze matter that I never chose and to which I am chained until the end of my life. Whereas for a philosopher of embodiment such as Merleau-​Ponty the body is the key to my connection with others, since we are all parts of the Flesh,34 Levinas characterizes the material captivity of the I as “tragic solitude.”35 The diarist and the learned man seem to affirm Levinas’s position, since they are both extremely solitary persons, and yet this solitude is not imposed but rather chosen by them to protect themselves from the threatening environment. One of Levinas’s earliest writings is entitled “On Escape,” which anticipates his notion of Being or Existence as evil. The revelation of Being is described as an experience of revolt, when one suddenly understands the impossibility of escaping the game of life and therefore feels the acute need to break free of it.36 What makes Being so horrifying is its endlessness, as Levinas says elsewhere: “Being is evil not because it is finite but because it is without limits.”37 Being belongs to the realm of the il y a, the anonymous and general existence that precedes and conditions my subjectivity. As such it is a “bad infinity,”38 a monstrous darkness that swallows the I, making me feel all alone, with no one present in this world, not even myself. I therefore try to escape solitude, occupying myself with objects and goods, but for Levinas the only way to overcome the evil of the il y a is to turn toward the Other as infinite. The Other is not general or anonymous; it is a subject that shows me its face precisely as something I cannot grasp or possess. According to Levinas’s later theory, the best way to know someone is to ignore the color of their eyes.39 The face is what cannot be seen; it is what transcends me and my capacities of perception, and if I dare to accept this and welcome the Other, a new door is opened up for me: the door to Infinity, in which I would no longer be lonely. The Other incarnates a possibility for a different form of hypostasis, one that is no longer concerned with matter and the il y a but with transcendence and a spiritual event. This event makes me something different from what I am, precisely since I dare to welcome what I am radically not: namely, the Infinity of the Other.40 I do not wish to fully analyze here Levinas’s complex theory. Rather, I want to emphasize a crucial yet often-​ignored point,

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The Shadow’s Gaze  75 namely, that he speaks of two infinities: a bad one, amounting to the il y a, and a good one, belonging to the realm of the Other. Levinas explicitly evokes this distinction only once in his writings,41 but I  believe it is central to his thought. My claim is that although they are different, these two infinities do not exclude each other but rather depend on each other. They stand as two limits of the world of light, and the figure in our story that represents the link between them –​between the realm of the il y a and the realm of the Other –​is Poetry. In his early writings Levinas conceives of the Other as feminine, an assertion that provoked all sorts of criticism.42 However, he later stressed that the feminine is not necessarily a woman but an aspect or an element contained in each one of us, whether we be a man or a woman.43 The feminine is our anti-​ phallic, dark, undefined, and mysterious aspect. The word “feminine” in Hebrew, nekevah, is derived from nekev, “hole.” This does not mean that the feminine is an emptiness waiting to be filled and penetrated by the male. On the contrary, the feminine is an undefined space that can never be filled. It is perhaps the Origin of the World (the title of Gustave Courbet’s painting), yet this origin has no clear beginning or end. Levinas thus uses a physiological metaphor, and yet he describes the encounter with the Other in spiritual and quasi-​ theological terms, even when he comes to portray the phenomenon of the caress or of Eros.44 The materiality of the il y a is something that should eventually be surmounted, and this is for me the real problem in Levinas’s theory, since it misses the link between body and soul, matter and spirit, thus falling victim to the same mistake committed by the learned man in “The Shadow.” By adopting a complementary theory that is both semiotic and psychoanalytical, I propose not to abandon Levinas but rather to deepen his insights and discover the doubles he hides.

The Abject Origins of Poetry Let us turn, then, to Julia Kristeva and her theory of abjection, developed in her 1980 Powers of Horror.45 The first chapter in this book is entitled “Approaching Abjection,” as if to say that,

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76  The Shadow’s Gaze as with the il y a, we can only get closer to it but never fully attain it. The abject shows itself when the subject returns to its boundless origins. Echoing terms we encountered in Levinas, Kristeva speaks of a revolt and collapse of meaning, since the abject disobeys the superego’s rules of the game. The abject is therefore banished from the I, and yet it “does not cease challenging its master.”46 So what is the abject? No positive answer can be given: “Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either. A  ‘something’ that I  do not recognize as a thing.”47 Kristeva gives the example of a corpse, the summit of abjection, since in confronting a dead body “I am the border of my condition as a living being.”48 This border is precisely what challenges all borders, revealing the opaque matter from which the body stems and to which it belongs until and beyond its death. The material boundlessness of the abject makes Kristeva situate it within the realm of the maternal. Whereas in Lacanian psychoanalysis the father is responsible for the Law and with it all rules and limits, the abject comes to defy these. It is a threat to the clear limits of the subject that goes back to the first months of a baby’s life and her tight connection with the mother, unable to clearly separate herself from her. The abject is related to the feeling of being swallowed and invaded by something that is neither me nor an object: a sort of interiorized womb, it contains me, permits my existence, but I  must also resist it in order to become an individual. These traits of the abject bring it close to the il y a: a dark, anonymous realm from which I stem and which I try to resist all my life without being able to escape it. But whereas the il y a is an existential or ontological term, therefore allowing Levinas to finally abandon it in favor of the “good” infinity of the Other, Kristeva’s psychoanalytical standpoint makes her insist on the necessity of the abject. She thus conceives of it as the crucial yet negated dimension of each one of us to which we should remain attuned. In other words, she insists on the need to approach the abject, whereas for Levinas the il y a is an existential problem that should eventually be solved.49 For both Levinas and Kristeva, however, everyday life consists in setting seemingly clear boundaries around well-​ defined objects, living in a world of light that hides and rejects a dark

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The Shadow’s Gaze  77 dimension. This hidden dimension is incarnated in Andersen’s story not so much by the shadow –​who is ashamed of his dark origins and uses them only as a means to gain more power in the world of light  –​but rather by Poetry. She appears to the learned man as if in a dream, something between reality and hallucination, a dark boundlessness that is somehow circled by light. She comes to remind him of the origin of the truth he is looking for, an origin that is soft and beautiful but also opaque and ungraspable: a limit to his knowledge. This is why Poetry becomes an obsession for him: not only because she is desirable but also because of her abjection. She is perhaps not abject herself, but she makes the learned man realize something about his own abject origins: the obscure bases of his seemingly clear knowledge; his fragile body, without which his soul could not survive; his secret desires that he obscures with nice and well-​ordered words. Kristeva’s work in the seventies consisted in uncovering what she calls the semiotic order that is hidden beneath the symbolic sphere.50 Whereas the symbolic is the sphere of logic, order, and meaning, the semiotic is the preverbal dimension that is nonetheless a part of language. The semiotic is where rhythm, prosody, and rhyme reign. These come from the baby’s cries and gestures in the first months of life. They are not mute but full of content: impulses that seek to be discharged. When language comes, it imposes order on the semiotic, but language must remain in touch with its semiotic origins to conserve its energies and creativity. For Kristeva, writing, and especially poetic writing, is the realm where the meeting between the semiotic and the symbolic culminates, since it combines the form and force of the semiotic with the content and order of the symbolic. In this way are created poems that are both powerful and meaningful.51 There is an intimate link between the semiotic and the abject, both referring to the first months of one’s life and the maternal sphere of impulses and drives that precede law and order. Poetry in Andersen’s story belongs to this sphere, but it is important to note that she is not purely semiotic or abject but rather connects the diverse realms and uses them to achieve her power, beauty, and truth. She is semiotic and symbolic, abject and appealing, partial and whole. She is an ideal of perfection, but one that

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78  The Shadow’s Gaze necessitates the difficult work of approaching one’s primordial origins. It is this complexity of Poetry that enables her to connect the two infinities that remained irreconcilable in Levinas: the il y a and the Other. On the one hand, Poetry stands for the boundless origins of subjectivity, appearing at night as what precedes and conditions any light. But on the other hand, she is someone and not anonymous. She might be a hallucination, and yet she has a face that the learned man is compelled to welcome. The face, according to Levinas, cannot be seen with one’s eyes, and indeed, the learned man could “see” Poetry only with his eyes half shut, and as soon as he jumped out of bed and opened his eyes wide, she disappeared, with only soft music still being heard. Music does not present any words or visions and as such it belongs to the realm of the semiotic alone.52 Rather than understanding the need to go toward the semiotic, the man tries to use his eyes to see again the face of Poetry, alas in vain. The infinity of Poetry –​ both as an Other and as il y a, abject or semiotic –​calls for a different sight, one that the man once accidently touched upon but thereafter blocked access to.53 We now better understand why the shadow says he is a relative of Poetry. Their common nature lies not only in image and appearance, as I earlier argued, but also in the realm that connects the well-​defined words and objects to their indefinite origin in the il y a and the semiotic. The shadow knows the secret of hypostasis and does not hide it from himself, at least not initially. But he also knows the secret of the abject, the undefined aspect that underlies all visible and well-​defined objects. This is why the shadow says that he became human in the house of Poetry, that is, was born there as a human. And the first thing he does after he exits the house is to hide himself under the skirt of a cake-​woman, where he still feels at home, in the abject “origin of the world.” The shadow, not respecting any limit, can therefore reach every place he wants and reveal the darkest secrets of others. These, as I have stressed, are not concrete secrets, since they go back to a more primordial secret: the horrible, disgusting, and limitless muddiness that hides itself behind, below, and inside every object and subject in this world. But whereas Poetry is a

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The Shadow’s Gaze  79 mixture of “bad” and “good” infinities, the shadow sees only the first of these two. He does not have access to the Other, and he himself is not a real Other, since he receives his shape and status only from his fine clothes. Deep inside, he remains anonymous and generic. He is a negative double that managed to become a positive double, but still not an Other. What does it mean to stop being a double and become an Other? First and foremost, it means to start seeing others as they really are, that is, infinite, inaccessible beings. The shadow sees others only as doubles, abject forms, empty shadows. This gives him great power over them, but he gradually succumbs to the very same fear of the abject that he locates in others. He, too, is ashamed of his origins and does everything he can to conceal them and to be acknowledged as a real man. He becomes obsessed with the learned man precisely because his former master is the only one who knows his secret. The shadow attempts to seduce him to become a shadow like him and give up his pretension of truth. He offers him money but also tries to humiliate him. But one cannot humiliate someone who is a stranger to the world of shame and pride. The only way to make the learned man anonymous and material, to make him abject, is to kill him, make him become a corpse, and with this slaughter the story ends, leaving us to wonder what the shadow will now become. The learned man, from the moment he lets go of his shadow, refuses to be either horrified by the il y a or fascinated by the materiality that is attached to it. But at the same time he, too, remains blind to otherness. The revelation of Poetry could have opened him to both infinities: that of the il y a, matter and embodiment, and that of the Other as separate from him. But like Odysseus, the emblem of Enlightenment,54 the learned man wishes to benefit from the song of the Sirens without paying the price of madness, the lack of clear boundaries. He wishes to penetrate the impenetrable, to violate something that must remain inaccessible, and he therefore sends his shadow to enter the house, only to lose him as well as Poetry forever. Without the bad infinity to which the shadow is attached, the learned man cannot access either infinity, and begins to lose his power.

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80  The Shadow’s Gaze We therefore seem to return to the same impasse time and again. Poetry could be a way out, a means of reconciliation between the different parts of the I, but both the learned man and the shadow see only one of her aspects. They ignore the complexity of otherness: otherness that is material and anonymous, on the one hand, and spiritual and personal, on the other. They thus remain doubles of each other in the same dual and destructive relationship that we explored in the previous chapter. Poetry remains only a potential rescue in the story, and it is rather we, the readers, who must discover how to attain it. We have gone a long way with Andersen’s story, and it is time to return to the beginning of this chapter and the more existential questions about the split, its motivations and its possible resolution. Hegel taught us that a certain split within oneself is a necessary step toward knowledge. His solution was to turn to a third figure that would mediate the torn aspects within oneself. In Sartre, however, no such mediation is possible. For him, the split is one’s existential condition of being in the world as watching or being watched, since according to him one cannot be both. It would be easy to dismiss Sartre’s either/​or picture, but the story shows the truth of his assertion. Indeed, this truth should be overcome, but it must first be acknowledged, understood, and worked through. To explain how this might happen I presented Levinas and Kristeva not so much as theoreticians of otherness but of its preconditions in the il y a, the abject, and the semiotic. These are necessary elements if we wish to bypass any pretension of possessing autarkic knowledge, and it is only by getting closer to their infinite though difficult nature that one might also access the infinite world of the Other, of which Poetry is an illuminating example. In both stories we have encountered so far we found a split self that led to two doubles: in Maupassant a negative double and in Andersen a positive one. But whereas the split remained passive in Maupassant  –​the diarist finding himself one day facing a monstrous creature  –​in Andersen the split is active, and as such it presents a certain recognition of the necessity of the double. It is in the face of otherness that the learned man decides to let go of his shadow; but he does this as a protection

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The Shadow’s Gaze  81 against otherness rather than as a real acknowledgment of it, in the mistaken belief that this is the only way he can access Poetry. The key for this access, I will claim, is to move from the double as a result of a split to a double as actively created in a process of self-​duplication and doubling. Only in this way can one no longer negate alterity but, rather, manage to access and welcome it. After two stories of a split self and an imprisonment in haunting interior spheres, it is time to see how the double may lead to a different contact with others and with oneself. We will now turn to the sphere where the body and soul, matter and spirit, inevitably cross each other and cannot be kept separate. This is the sphere of love, and I now wish to examine the role the double plays in it. I must try to understand the double no longer as what shuts me down and haunts me, but as what opens me up to both the infinity of the other and my own infinity: the infinite doubles that constitute any identity. Notes 1 Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, trans. J.  B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (1923; London: Hogarth Press, 1968), 83 (translation modified). 2 Hans Christian Andersen, “The Shadow,” in The Complete Fairy Tales, trans. Susannah Mary Paull, rev. Craigie Jessie Kinmond and William Alexander (1847; Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1997), 383–​395. Hereafter, page numbers will be given in parentheses in the text. 3 Generally speaking, there are three approaches to this question in nineteenth-​century literature: the double is presented as a part of the “original” that takes a different form, as in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; is presented as distinctly external to it, as in Jean Paul (e.g., Siebenkäs) and Hoffmann (e.g., The Devil’s Elixirs); or is located in an intermediate zone, creating a frightful ambiguity, as in “The Shadow,” Poe’s William Wilson, and Dostoevsky’s The Double. See Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886; Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); Jean Paul, Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces: Or the Married Life, Death, and Wedding of the Advocate of the Poor, Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkäs, trans. Edward Henry Noel (1796–​1797; Boston: James Munroe and Co., 1845); E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs, trans. Ronald Taylor (1815;

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82  The Shadow’s Gaze London: John Calder, 1963); Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson,” in Selected Tales, ed. David Van Leer (1839; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 66–​83; Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Double, trans. Constance Garnett (1846; New  York: Dover Publications, 1997). Twentieth-​century and contemporary literature often play on this theme, moving from one kind of double to another as if to challenge our premises, as in Saramago’s The Double, Palahniuk’s Fight Club, or finally Nabokov’s Despair, which is almost a parody on this theme, as well as Roth’s Operation Shylock. See Jose Saramago, The Double, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (2002; Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2004); Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (1996; New  York: W. W.  Norton, 2005); Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (1936; New  York: Vintage International, 1989); Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession (New  York: Simon & Schuster, 1993). This distinction between inner and outer double is linked to the difference between splitting and doubling or duplication. See Miyoshi who distinguishes between division and duplication: Miyoshi, Divided Self, xii. 4 Adalbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl, trans. Leopold von Loewenstein-​Wertheim (1813; London: Calder & Boyars, 1957). The character of Peter Schlemihl appeared again the following year in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story “A New Year’s Eve Adventure,” in which a man gives up his mirror image; E.  T. A.  Hoffmann, “A New Year’s Eve Adventure,” in The Best Tales of Hoffmann, trans. Alfred Packer, ed. E.  F. Bleiler (1815; New  York: Dover Publications, 1967), 104–​129. Peter Schlemihl is equally alluded to in Andersen’s “The Shadow” when the learned man, obsessed with his uniqueness, is embarrassed by the loss of his shadow merely because he feared that people would think he was imitating the famous tale of the man who lost his shadow (Andersen, “Shadow,” 385). For a survey of the figure of the double in nineteenth-​century literature, see Wain, “The Double in Romantic Narrative”; Rosenfield, “Shadow Within”; Webber, Doppelgänger; and Herdman, Double in Nineteenth-​Century Fiction. For specific comparison and analysis of Peter Schlemihl and “The Shadow,” see Herdman, Double in Nineteenth-​Century Fiction,  41–​46. 5 See Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), esp.  21–​ 45. The relations between Romanticism and Enlightenment are, of course, more complicated than what I can sketch here. For further elaboration, see, for example, the distinction made by Beiser: Hence the romantics never broke the Enlightenment’s ideal of a complete explanation of all of nature. They did, however, transform the paradigm of explanation: to understand an event is not to explain it as the result of prior events in time

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The Shadow’s Gaze  83 but to see it as a necessary part of a whole. Their paradigm is thus holistic rather than mechanistic. (Frederick C. Beiser, “The Enlightenment and Idealism,” in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 35) 6 Another perspective which I  will not be able to develop here is Jung’s notion of “the shadow” as an archetype that includes the dark aspects of personality. See Carl Gustav Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, trans. R.  F. C.  Hull (1951; New  York: Pantheon Books, 1959), 8–​ 10. Ursula Le Guin, for instance, takes such a position, analyzing the shadow in Andersen’s story as a complex representation of evil that each one of us, and especially children, should admit. See Ursula K.  Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow,” in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Susan Wood (1979; New  York: HarperCollins, 1993), 54–​67. Jon Cech refers, although briefly, to Le Guin’s reading of “The Shadow” and suggests that admitting the shadow is a necessary step specifically for the artist. See Jon Cech, “Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Stories: Secrets, Swans and Shadows,” in Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Hans Christian Andersen, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House, 2005),  47–​48. 7 Beiser, “Enlightenment and Idealism,” 18. 8 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W.  Wood (1781; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 9 “The starting point of absolute idealism is a rejection of all forms of dualism, because these make it impossible to explain the correspondence between the subject and object involved in knowledge.” Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–​1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 371. See also Matthew C.  Altman, “Introduction: What Is German Idealism?,” in The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 6. 10 See, for example, Fichte’s notion of the “not-​I” (Nicht-​Ich), which functions as a necessary opposite to the “absolute I” (Absolute Ich); and Schelling’s notion of “Nature” (Natur) as opposed to the “Self” (Ich). Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (1794–​1795; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 102–​105; F.  W. J.  Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath (1800; Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 5–​12. 11 F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (1809; Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 27–​29.

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84  The Shadow’s Gaze 12 According to Romanticism, the resolution of the oppositions is always paradoxical; the oppositions strive for unity while they are maintaining themselves as such (Slethaug, Play of the Double, 11–​12). 13 Some historians understand German Idealism and Romanticism as part of the same movement, while others maintain the difference between the two. Beiser, for example, asserts that “the early romantics were the true founders of absolute idealism” (German Idealism, viii). Frank, on the other hand, argues that: [t]‌he early Romantics also speak often (using the terminology of that time) of the Absolute or the unconditioned, but they were of the opinion that we could not grasp the Absolute or the unconditioned in thought, to say nothing of being able to arrive at it in reality. (Manfred Frank, The Philosophical Foundations of Early German Romanticism, trans. Elizabeth Millán-​Zaibert [1997; New York: State University of New York Press, 2008], 24) Moreover, as my discussion on Kierkegaard in the next chapter will show, there were other voices at the time that looked for a compromise between unicity and unity. 14 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (1807; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 111–​119. 15 Ibid., 117. It is interesting to note that this idea of violent drama between the isolated I and the Other –​which rules almost all the history of philosophy  –​pertains perhaps only to masculinity’s sphere and point of view. Luce Irigaray, for example, suggests that femininity is inherently double and therefore also peaceful: Woman “touches herself” all the time, and moreover no one can forbid her to do so, for her genitals are formed of two lips in continuous contact. Thus, within herself, she is already two –​but not divisible into one(s) –​that caress each other. (Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke [1977; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985], 24) 16 Judith Butler sees the desire as the driving force in Hegel’s dialectics and as the most essential concept for Hegel’s legacy in French thought. Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-​Century France (New  York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 17 See John McDowell, “The Apperceptive I and the Empirical Self: Towards a Heterodox Reading of ‘Lordship and Bondage’ in

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The Shadow’s Gaze  85 Hegel’s Phenomenology,” in Hegel: New Directions, ed. Katerina Deligiorgi (London: Routledge, 2006), 33–​ 48; Joseph C. Flay, Hegel’s Quest for Certainty (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 86. Hegel himself affirms that the external doubling of consciousness into Lord and Bondsman is soon internalized in what he famously calls unhappy consciousness: [T]he duplication which formerly was divided between two individuals, the lord and the bondsman, is now lodged in one. The duplication of self-​consciousness within itself, which is essential in the Notion of Spirit, is thus here before us, but not yet in its unity: the Unhappy Consciousness is the consciousness of self as a dual-​natured, merely contradictory being. (Phenomenology of Spirit, 126) 18 The accent of desire in Hegel’s dialectic of Lord and Bondsman is introduced by Kojève, who was highly influential on Lacan, among others. As we saw in the previous chapter, Lacan’s mirror stage is precisely the scene in which both identity and otherness are discovered as rooted in desire: desire for the Other and of the Other. But Poetry is already an invitation to the symbolic realm, and as such, she transcends the imaginary order. See Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H.  Nichols Jr., ed. Allan Bloom (1947; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), esp. 6. 19 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 136–​138. 20 In Hegel, on the contrary, neither the Lord nor the Bondman should die, precisely in order for the movement of consciousness’s knowledge to continue. 21 Jean-​Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E.  Barnes (1943; New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 252–​302. 22 Ibid., 259. 23 Ibid. 24 Jean-​Paul Sartre, “Erostratus,” in The Wall, trans. Lloyd Alexander (1939; New York: New Directions, 1969), 41. A similar position is held by Meursault, the protagonist of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, trans. Matthew Ward (1942; New York: Vintage, 1989). 25 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 262. 26 Ibid., 268 (emphasis in the original). 27 Ibid., 282. 28 Indeed, the learned man wanted the shadow to return and tell him what he saw, but this only shows his wish to control his aspect of being seen, making it come and go at his command. 29 For a criticism on Sartre’s too-​sharp distinction between seer and seen, see Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible,

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86  The Shadow’s Gaze trans. Alphonso Lingis (1964; Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 50–​104, 130–​155; Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts, esp. 84. 30 Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen (1947; Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 48. 31 “The event by which the existent contracts its existence I  call hypostasis” (ibid., 43). 32 Ibid., 55. 33 Ibid., 56. 34 Merleau-​Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 130–​155. 35 Levinas, Time and the Other, 57. 36 Emmanuel Levinas, On Escape, trans. Bettina Bergo (1935; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 52–​53. 37 Levinas, Time and the Other, 51. 38 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (1961; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 158–​159. 39 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen (1982; Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 85–​86. 40 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 184–​219. 41 See Rudi Visker, Truth and Singularity: Taking Foucault into Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1999), 237. Visker proposes that although the distinction is between a “bad” infinity and an infinity without an adjective, it is clear that the latter is characterized by Levinas as “good.” 42 A lot has been written about Levinas’s gender bias, the most recent treatment of which is Simon Critchley’s The Problem with Levinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-​ Chevallier (1949; London: Jonathan Cape, 2009); Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas” (1967), in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 2001), 97–​ 192; Luce Irigaray, “The Fecundity of the Caress,” in An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (1983; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 185–​217. 43 Levinas, Ethics and Infinity,  68–​69. 44 Levinas, Time and the Other, 84–​90; Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 256–​266. 45 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (1980; New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 46 Ibid., 2. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., 3. 49 On the similarity between Levinas and Kristeva, see Tina Chanter, “Kristeva and Levinas: Abjection and the Feminine,” Studies in Practical Philosophy 4, no. 1 (2004): 54–​70.

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The Shadow’s Gaze  87 50 Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (1974; New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 51 Ibid.,  57–​67. 52 Ibid., 24. 53 On the obliqueness of sight in Levinas, see Hagi Kenaan, The Ethics of Visuality: Levinas and the Contemporary Gaze, trans. Batya Stein (2008; London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). 54 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W.  Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (1944; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 35–​62.

8

3 The Double’s Lesson of Love

I will never forget the summer of 1998: the summer of love, the summer of S, the summer of Lol. For years I was convinced it had taught me what love is, but it’s time to retrace the facts, return to that summer, and somehow reactivate it. It is time to understand what love really is. S and I went that summer to Paris to improve our French at the Sorbonne. S was my first boyfriend, and although we split several months before that summer, we remained best friends. Actually, I was still very much attached to him, more than I was willing to admit. The plan was to spend three months in Paris, but my secret plan was to regain S’s love. Each of us had a sublet apartment, but mine would not be available immediately. S had proposed that I stay at his place for a few days, and this offer quite excited me. Would this be the beginning of an old-​new  story? On the way from Charles de Gaulle airport to the city center, the sexual tension between us grew, and when we got inside his apartment, we found ourselves in a passionate storm. The next day I woke up in his bed and realized I was caught inside a story the nature of which was unclear to me. S behaved as if nothing had happened. No words of love were heard. The fervent night we spent seemed for him to be a matter of momentary impulse and not a lasting emotion. But something in me was trembling, hoping for the impossible to happen. At about the same time a Parisian friend offered me Marguerite Duras’s novel The Ravishing of Lol Stein.1 My French was still a bit shaky, but I was curious about the book and started to read it slowly. The first few pages were particularly difficult, since I was confronted by not one but two foreign languages: French

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  89 and Duras. I had never before encountered such writing (feminine? Nouveau Roman? It is impossible to classify Duras) and was both fascinated and irritated by it. The novel tells the story of Lol, a fragile yet obstinate young woman from the imaginary town of S. Tahla. It begins with an unforgettable event, a primal scene that took place ten years before the present time of narration: a ball attended by Lol and her handsome fiancé, Michael Richardson. The couple are happily dancing, dreaming about their future together, when the last two guests of the ball make their entrance: an older, mysterious, thin woman and her young daughter. The older woman immediately attracts the attention of Michael, who seems to be completely entranced; he approaches her and, after hesitating, invites her to dance. Lol, curiously, doesn’t appear worried or anxious but, rather, “transported in the presence of this change” (6). She watches the new couple dance for what seems to be an eternity, remaining all evening at the back of the room and not taking her eyes off them. But why doesn’t Lol disrupt this dance and remind Michael of their love and engagement? I was profoundly disturbed by Lol’s behavior, wishing her to react, to wake up and stop the couple from falling in love. Whereas I  was troubled, Lol seemed to enjoy this betrayal, staring, enchanted, at the couple, taking part in this new love that was being born in front of her. Indeed, this scene was too overwhelming for me, too close to something I tried to elude. Going back to my own story, I started to feel an increasing frustration with my relationship with S, especially after I finally moved to a place of my own. This move signified for S the beginning of his new Parisian adventures. “I’d like to find a summer love,” he nonchalantly confessed to me, not realizing how painful it was for me to hear these words. Nonetheless, I swallowed my pride, unable to express a question and a wish I secretly knew the answer to: “couldn’t I be your summer love?” I was therefore both too close to Lol and too remote from her: paralyzed like her but not at all enchanted by the prospect of S’s new love story. Lol presented a possibility I could not even begin to imagine: that of willingly accepting the end of her story and the beginning of her lover’s new affair. But this new affair

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90  The Double’s Lesson of Love was also hers. She remained so immersed in the couple’s dance that she could not envisage her imminent separation from them. She was therefore willing to give up her love but only on the condition of gaining it back differently, through the spectacle of the dance. The night, however, had to end eventually, and when dawn came and the orchestra finally left, the new couple –​or rather triangle –​needed to wake up from their dream and regain the reality that waited outside the ballroom. Only then did an immense pain hit Lol, who started to shout, begging the couple to remain, to continue dancing, to prolong their ecstatic night together. And when they finally exited the ballroom and Lol’s view, she collapsed. I must admit I  was rather relieved by this new turn of the story. Or more exactly, I was reassured to see that Lol suffered too, such that my own suffering found its justification. I actually lived a double life, since S didn’t seem to be aware of my emotions, and I kept them to myself for fear of being rejected. But the growing gap between my misery and his happiness, my blind yearning for the old love and his eager search for a new summer love, finally led me to explode. One day he phoned and cheerfully recounted his recent activities, and I  found myself telling him stupid, hurtful things that made him hang up in anger. And there I was, grasping the silent handset, all by myself in the middle of Paris. What have I done? Why was I so cruel? I couldn’t stand S’s happiness and was horrified by the thought of seeing him with a new guy. I  was compelled to reveal my sorrow but had to admit that my love was lost and begin, at last, to mourn it. Lol, too, mourned and suffered for several weeks after the night of the ball, until one evening she went outside and started to follow the first man she saw on the street. The man was curious about this beautiful, lost young woman, and when he realized she was the famous Lol, whose story had quickly spread in town, he phoned her mother to take her home. Soon after, without even seeing her again, he asked for her hand in marriage, and consequently, “[o]‌ne day in October Lol Stein found herself married to Jean Bedford” (21). How to understand this hasty marriage? Lol, for sure, neither looked for nor found a new love story. On the contrary, it was

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  91 essential for her to follow the first man she saw and then passively marry him, as if to declare that from now on she would split her objective life from her emotional life, a split that, as in the case of Andersen’s “The Shadow,” soon dries both parts up. She and her new husband move to a remote city, where she has three children and leads a peaceful and monotonous life. Ten eventless years pass, and then her husband is offered a job back in S.  Tahla. He hesitates, wondering if this return will cause harm to Lol, but she convinces him that she has perfectly recovered from the painful memories of the past. Back in S. Tahla, in the same house where she grew up, everything seems at first to repeat the same rigidity of Lol’s life so far, but one day she notices a couple passing near the house, looking at it attentively, and talking about the people who live there. She doesn’t hear much of the conversation, only these words: “Dead maybe” (Morte peut-​être), words that could refer only to her. The man then kisses the woman and they go away. Lol is profoundly shaken by this seemingly trivial incident, so much so that after ten years this sleeping beauty finally wakes up. It’s time for her to go looking for the man and the woman who approached her house and then disappeared. Who were they? It would have been perfect if they were Michael and the mysterious woman from the ball, but Duras is a very subtle writer. The woman Lol saw was instead another “survivor” of the ball, Tatiana, a friend who had stood next to her and caressed her hand while she watched her fiancé dance with the other woman; whereas the man, Tatiana’s lover, was someone Lol had never seen before. What moves Lol so much, hence, is not the possibility of finding her lost fiancé. Rather, in this couple she recognizes a certain resemblance to Michael and the older woman, a resemblance that is not physical but of a different order. Lol needs to explore this strange similarity, this substitution of the original couple. She, who never went out beforehand, now takes to walking for hours in the streets of S. Tahla, looking for couples in love, for lovers, for her lovers. And she eventually finds them. At this point in the story Lol’s adventures intrigued me to an ever-​greater extent. I realized she had something very important to teach me regarding similarity and substitution, and I tried to

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92  The Double’s Lesson of Love listen to her lesson. Although I was still rather depressed by my own loss, I decided one evening that it was time for me to try to move on and to go out, as Lol did, looking for a substitution for S. After all, I lived in the Marais, the fashionable gay quarter of Paris, filled with bars and guys waiting to replace S in my life. And if Lol could look for a substitute, why shouldn’t I? After much hesitation I gathered all the courage and energy I could find and went out for the first time in quite a while. I wandered in the alleys of the Marais, looking into all the cheerful bars, without being able to make up my mind to enter one of them. All men looked the same to me  –​uniform, banal, common  –​ whereas I  was searching for someone special and unique, someone whom, in my fantasy, I would recognize immediately. Finally, after exhausting myself with walking and watching the undifferentiated masses, I  saw, inside a bar, a person who immediately attracted my attention. There was something so sweet, alive, and familiar about him; here is my man! I moved closer and was on the verge of stepping in when suddenly, to my great horror, I realized it was none other than S himself, who was excitedly talking with another guy, both sharing the enthusiasm that only new couples know. I froze in place and didn’t know what to do. S didn’t seem to notice me, and after a couple of seconds that seemed an eternity, I found myself literally running away from the place, feeling incredibly miserable. My attempt to get out of my house, out of myself, out of S, had failed, and I returned home completely devastated. But luckily enough, I was not entirely alone there; someone had faithfully waited for me in the apartment, namely, Lol. And only then did I realize that I was completely wrong. I was wrong since I  didn’t actually want to forget S.  I  was looking for his substitute but wanted it to resemble him as much as possible, to be S himself, which indeed it actually was. I was wrong because rather than love S, I wanted to possess him. I was not willing to set him free, to let him live his own independent life. Rather, I planned to meet his imaginary double who would somehow obey my wishes like a golem. But golems exist only in fairy tales, and even there they finally rebel. Indeed, how strong is our secret wish to possess and control our loved ones!

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  93 It was Lol who taught me how to resist this wish, and this by finding real doubles: doubles and not copies. In one of her strolls in S.  Tahla, she suddenly notices what would soon be her  new summer love: the man she saw with Tatiana in front of her house. She follows him for a long time, fascinated by the way he looks at every single woman on the street, and this, she thinks, not out of a sexist male attitude but, on the contrary, as an expression of his profound lack, the same lack she recognized in her fiancé. The new lover, like Michael, always demands more and is never satisfied with only one person. For most of us this trait may seem appalling, but for Lol it is instead a sign of intimate acquaintance with multiplicity, and it is this sign that she had been looking for ever since the ball. She follows this man, Jacques, imagining he was having for a few seconds each of the women, then rejecting them, mourning each and every loss, mourning one alone, the one who did not yet exist but who, if she did, would be capable of making him, at the last minute, stand up the woman among a thousand others who was about to come, come toward Lol V. Stein, the woman Lol was waiting for with him. (47–​48) What a beautiful, cruel, perverted, and accurate observation! Each time he looks at a woman the man experiences a painful feeling of loss, not only because of the impossibility of being with her but also, more profoundly, because there exists no woman who can encompass all women in the world. Such a woman would free him from the pain of choosing only one of them, opening up an infinite field of possibilities which would somehow also be actual. Could Lol be this all-​encompassing  woman? But Lol had learned her lesson. She had once made the mistake of pretending to be this unique woman by becoming engaged to Michael. Her mistake consisted of wishing him to actually reject these thousand women rather than welcome them; of wishing herself to supplant all other women rather than let them remain in him, in herself, in the world. The night of the ball had opened

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94  The Double’s Lesson of Love Lol’s eyes, and I tried to learn her difficult lesson: setting free the loved ones precisely in order to love them. Lol, then, continues to follow the man secretly, until she sees the woman they were both waiting for, Tatiana, who joins her lover and enters with him a notorious hotel-​by-​the-​hour. Lol recognizes this hotel, where she used to go with Michael, and she now hides in the adjacent rye field to watch the lovers from a distance. She thus reproduces the scene at the ball, where she watched the couple dancing, but she also reproduces her love affair with Michael. By doubling Michael with Jacques and herself with Tatiana, she manages not only to watch the lovers but also to watch herself. She feels included in the scene rather than a mere spectator, especially since she carefully chose a pair of doubles who know that they are doubles: They are neither happy nor unhappy. Their union is constructed upon indifference [insensibilité], in a way which is general and which they apprehend moment by moment, a union from which all preference is excluded. They are together, two trains which meet and pass, around them the landscape, sensuous and lushly green, is the same, they see it, they are not alone. One can come to terms with them. (51) This is an extraordinary description of  –​what? Not of love, but of a couple’s harmony that receives its force by avoiding any cliché of finding “the second half,” the chosen person. Both lovers know that there is no such thing as eternal love. They agree to meet only for a short while, like two trains passing each other, and then move on. This agreement, however, makes every encounter unique, since rather than a monotonous journey on the same train, it becomes a brief meeting of two passing trains from which they must derive the most pleasure possible. They know that other trains await them, but they are not in a hurry, since these other trains are not better or worse, and the landscape around them is the same. They know that everything is equal, which enables them both to be together with each other and to be open to the outside. They have an intimacy that allows room for others, for a thousand other men and women who can share their affair, one of whom

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  95 is Lol. They keep the window open, as if to invite others to come to terms with them, and it is through this window that Lol shares their affair. To join the couple, however, it is not enough for Lol to watch them through the window. Throughout the novel, from the famous ball until the very last lines, not only numerous windows are opened and closed but also doors, giving various types of access to people’s presumably private spheres. It is as if Duras tried to respond to André Gide’s famous plea: “Families, I  hate you! Shut-​in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.”2 In this novel all homes, doors, and windows are practically or potentially wide open, and no one possesses anyone forever. Whereas the learned man in Andersen’s story could only observe the opposite house and never enter or touch it, Duras rehabilitates the gaze’s capacity to touch and blurs the distinction between the senses, alternating between windows (vision) and doors (touch). And indeed, one of the problems of the ballroom was that it had only doors and no windows, thus constituting a too-​isolated scene.3 Windows and doors, gazes and touches, continuously change roles in the novel, and consequently, after Lol spends the evening watching the lovers through their room’s window, she decides to look for a door. She finds out Tatiana’s address, but before she enters the house she observes it several times from the outside, to familiarize herself with it. Then finally comes the time to cross the threshold. Tatiana and her husband live in a spacious house, but they are not quite alone in it, having a regular visitor, a colleague of the husband’s. This man is none other than Tatiana’s lover, Jacques. Lol chooses a moment when all three are in the house and rings the bell at the gate. Tatiana goes out to the terrace to see who has come to visit without notice; she recognizes Lol and cries, “Lola, is that really you?” She runs toward her old friend, whom she has not seen for ten years, while her husband and her lover go out too and watch the two women, who now approach them. It is precisely at this moment that Lol’s gaze is put into action, turning toward Jacques: “Lol, her head on Tatiana’s shoulder, sees him: he almost lost his balance, he turned his head away. She was not mistaken” (65).

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96  The Double’s Lesson of Love Lol’s gaze found what it looked for, and it was so powerful that it overwhelmed the man and made him turn his head away. Like Michael ten years before, influenced by the mysterious woman at the ball, the new man is severely shaken by the look of this woman, whom he sees for the first time, without knowing she has already seen him. But the gaze alone is not enough: not because it is inferior to the touch but because the novel seeks to undermine the sharp distinction between the senses and show their interdependence. It is only when Lol comes close to the lover and is introduced to him that his real identity is revealed both to Lol and to us, the readers. Who is he? The novel takes an especially slow and choppy rhythm when it comes to depict the dramatic moment when Lol finally arrives at the terrace with Tatiana: “Arm in arm, they ascend the terrace steps. Tatiana introduces Pierre Beugner, her husband, to Lol, and Jacques Hold, a friend of theirs –​the distance is covered –​me” (65). What? The narrator is actually the lover? I  remember how amazed and puzzled I was to read these lines, which I had to read over and over again to grasp them. The supposedly objective narrator who has meticulously described Lol’s thoughts and visions, who has entered into her head and seemed to totally identify with her –​this narrator is now revealed as Lol’s object of love and Tatiana’s lover. The traditional neutrality of the narrator’s position was suddenly broken and I  was jolted by it, as if it told me something extremely important about what it means to truly narrate, to transgress the supposedly clear limits between objectivity and subjectivity, adopting a gaze both impartial and in love. The narrator, Jacques, amazed me with his ability (through Duras’s mediation) not only to enter into Lol’s past and literally attend the famous ball but also to see and describe her gaze upon him. Contrary to Sartre’s theory, according to which one can only see or be seen but not see oneself be seen, Jacques succeeds in attaining access to Lol, to the unrevealed: the way she looks at him. However, as he often declares, he invents these thoughts and visions, which has led some critics to accuse him (or, rather, Duras) of trying to know Lol better than she herself does.4 But rather than controlling and manipulating Lol,

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  97 I believe Jacques has learned from her the lesson of love, which is the profound secret of the double. He thus gradually becomes her double, identifying with her so much that he finally can see and feel what she sees and feels.5 Jacques is thus not only Michael’s double but also Lol’s. Contrary to most doppelgänger stories in nineteenth-​century literature (contrary to what we saw, for example, in Maupassant, Andersen, and others), the figure of the double in Duras is freed from the well-​defined, dual relationship of an original and a double.6 It shows that once you start to double (rather than split) yourself, you can no longer limit and fix this process to only one figure. Learning the secret of the double opens you up to multiplicity, and Lol, Jacques, and Tatiana acknowledge the multitude of men and women who are hidden in every individual person. They accept the need to switch trains and therefore reject any idea of possession, either of oneself or of the other. Every double is both equal and unique, and the challenge is to see this multiplicity within one person rather than frenetically run from one person to another. But it takes Jacques quite some time to truly become Lol’s double. Lol invites Tatiana, her husband, and Jacques to visit her a few days later, for what would become a very dramatic evening. All sorts of couples and triangles are formed and deformed during that evening; all sorts of windows and doors are opened and closed, serving as a means to watch, penetrate, and transform the other and oneself. At first, Tatiana and Jacques want to hear about the famous ball and what has remained of Lol’s love for Michael, but as the evening progresses Jacques understands that the ball was not a simple scene of betrayal. Rather, it was a scene in which “love had changed hands, identity, one error had been exchanged for another” (92). The night of the ball was a scene of love, an initiation into the secret of love, which is equally the secret of the double. Love turns out to consist of a fundamental yet necessary error: namely, to see the loved one, but also oneself, as a singular person rather than a multiplicity or even an infinity of people. This is why, when asked about Michael’s transformation during the ball, Lol succinctly replies: “Seeing that he had changed, he had to

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98  The Double’s Lesson of Love leave” (93). Love changes and transforms, forcing one to leave first oneself and then, although this might take much longer, the belief in well-​defined boundaries and distinct identities. Indeed, Michael had left not only himself but also Lol, but this in favor of the indefinite number of women and men offered to him by the mysterious woman. In other words, he merged the realm of the “one” with the realm of the “many.” This transformation had ravished Lol, because she witnessed the magnificent infinity created before her eyes, but it had also shocked her, since she saw her own emptiness, pretending to be “one” and then remaining with nothing. This emptiness, however, is only the first step, since it allows other people, other doubles, to come and populate her. For ten years Lol tried again to pretend to be “one,” rigidly following the same routine, and it is only when she saw Jacques and Tatiana near her house and heard them say she was “dead maybe” that she woke up. She understood that she might be dead inside, but this death, if fully acknowledged, could be transformed from a self-​ destructive force into a means to accommodate others. It is an emptiness full of possibilities that Lol can now fill with doubles and allow true love to take place. This emptiness also explains Lol’s curious habit of lying about both trivial and significant details regarding her love life. She is lying not to hide some profound truth but to declare that love necessarily involves a “retreat of clarity” (99), and Jacques now wishes to join this retreat. He wishes to leave himself and enter Lol’s emptiness: “I want to be a part of this lie which she has forged. Let her bear me with her, […] let her consume and crush me with the rest” (97). As the evening unfolds, Jacques’s transformation becomes manifest, and he reverts to speaking of himself in the third person, as if he has become a stranger to himself. But he still doesn’t know what is yet to come. Tatiana urges Lol to explain her mysterious behavior, to tell the secret she hides, and Lol finally confesses that she is filled with happiness because she met someone a few days earlier. Tatiana and her husband are very moved by this confession, but Jacques remains silent, becoming extremely anxious. Is this “someone” Lol has met he himself or is it someone else? Tatiana and her husband leave, but Jacques,

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  99 on edge, remains with Lol: “I feel I am going to fall. I can sense my body growing weak, some sort of level is rising, drowning the blood, my heart is of silt, goes soft, turns to sludge, is going to sleep. Who could she have met in my place?” (101, my emphasis). Jacques knows that even if this someone is himself, it is not precisely him. It is his double, someone who replaces him, in all senses of the word. It is not a specific person, but the very essence of the double; it is the need to constantly substitute oneself, to be constantly replaced. Hence, even when Lol reassures him that it was indeed he whom she met, his feeling of powerlessness only increases, since he realizes the huge price this love would require from him. Lol is uttering his name, Jacques Hold, and coming from her lips he realizes for the first time the emptiness behind his and any nominal identity: “Lol’s virginity uttering that name! Who, except her, Lol V. Stein, the so-​ called Lol V. Stein, had noticed the inconsistency of the belief in that person so named. […] She has plucked me, taken me from the nest. For the first time my name, pronounced, names nothing” (103). Jacques discovers through Lol the nothing, his own nothing as well as that of others, a nothing that is nonetheless filled and covered with names, identities, persons, all simultaneously false and true, a realization that brings him to the edge of madness. For now he can be whoever he wishes to be or, more precisely, whoever Lol wishes him to be, becoming “the eternal Richardson” who encompasses much more than only one person: [W]e will be mingled with him, willy-​nilly, all together, we shall no longer be able to recognize one from the other, neither before, nor after, nor during, we shall lose sight of one another, forget our names, in this way we shall die for having forgotten  –​piece by piece, moment by moment, name by name –​death. (103) The nothing is brought by death, but it is a death which is a part of life itself and not external to it. Death stands at the basis of every identity, making it a lie, which can be uncovered only by love: love –​the biggest lie of all, since there is no reason to love

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100  The Double’s Lesson of Love one person rather than another. But love is also the biggest truth, since it gives the lovers access to their nothingness; it enables them to undergo a transformation, change trains, and realize the possibility of comprising a thousand women and men inside and outside them. Despite his immense confusion, Jacques still tries to retain his old ideas about love, thinking that Lol offers him a “normal” relationship. He promises her that he will stop seeing Tatiana, but his loving words, to his great surprise, make Lol beg him to maintain his relationship with Tatiana and allow her to watch them from a distance. At first, Jacques is horrified by this voyeuristic desire, by this “pathological” inability to experience straightforward love. Yet he does not condemn her, and this, in my eyes, is what makes his love for Lol so extraordinary. He truly loves her and therefore accepts her as she is, even though it will mean being with her only through the mediation of Tatiana and probably a thousand other women. More than that, he understands that Lol wishes to love in a way that involves not possession but participation. She chose him precisely because he is capable of this kind of love, a capacity she has found in his eyes, in his gaze upon other women. He always wants more, always lacks something, recognizing, like her, the impossibility of loving only one person. But Lol wishes to realize this idea not only in theory but also in practice, to double herself with another person, Tatiana, and watch her make love with Jacques over and over again. Through this process of identificatory participation Lol becomes both Jacques and Tatiana, without claiming any real ownership upon their love, knowing that ownership and love are contradictory terms. Jacques is completely hers and completely free, and so are Tatiana and, finally, Lol herself. Yet, let us not forget: although the night of the ball taught Lol the secret of the double, it remains a traumatizing secret. Her choice to constitute a new love triangle therefore stems not only from her initiation into the secret of love but also from a compulsion to repeat. She wishes to reproduce the ball over and over again to better understand it, resurrecting her traumatic past, which still haunts her.7 Lol thus presents a mixture of truth and confusion, lucidity and madness, and I believe

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  101 I was so attached to her 20 years ago precisely because of this mixture. When I  read the novel today, I  still find myself identifying with Lol, but also, and much more than before, with Jacques Hold, who learns from her the secret of love. For even his surname implies his capacity to contain: both this secret and Lol. Indeed, it is easier to identify with Jacques since he cannot be accused of being mentally ill. On the contrary, he is a member of the medical profession, and yet he is not Lol’s doctor and has no pretensions to cure her. He rather wishes to become her, even if this would entail madness.8 What does Jacques find in Lol? He probably recognizes in her a secret he already knows, a secret we all know, yet in a different form. Jacques and Tatiana have arrived at the same secret as Lol but through opposite paths: “they by doing, saying, by trying and failing, by going away and coming back, by lying, losing, winning, advancing, by coming back again, and she, Lol, by doing nothing” (51–​52). Jacques, like Tatiana, had changed so many trains that he learned to recognize their similarity, whereas Lol took only one train, Michael’s, but it was enough for her to learn the lesson. Jacques is too full of experience, whereas Lol is innocent and empty, and it is probably this emptiness that allows him to truly fall in love with her. He can fill her with himself, but also with a thousand other women (and men) who will all be able to be her, double her. This might sound narcissistic and manipulative, but Jacques manages both to fill Lol and to be filled with her, with her emptiness, such that their identities cease to be clearly distinguished. Jacques willingly obeys every one of Lol’s strange wishes, even when they threaten to destroy him. He agrees to meet Tatiana in the hotel, and when he notices Lol hiding in the field outside, he feels “something between terror and disbelief, horror and pleasure” (110), but he is immediately calmed when his gaze crosses Lol’s –​they are together. Unlike the gaze of Andersen’s learned man, Lol’s gaze is participative, and she manages to be simultaneously in the field outside the hotel and inside the hotel room. She is with Jacques and Tatiana, allowing the game of doubles to take place, Jacques becoming Lol, Tatiana becoming Lol, Jacques

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102  The Double’s Lesson of Love becoming Michael, and finally Tatiana becoming the mysterious woman from the ball but also a thousand other women. Tatiana becomes “a vaguely defined woman in the arms of a man” (113), not in a reifying way but in a loving way, since both Tatiana and Jacques are transformed into general and all-​encompassing human beings. Jacques is therefore surprised to hear himself saying to Tatiana for the first time that he loves her, that she is his life –​words that are both true and false. For these words, and Tatiana is quite aware of this, are not addressed to her or to Lol or to any other specific woman. They are, rather, addressed to an infinity of women (and men) hidden in one body that is in the arms of another body, which hides in its turn an infinity of men (and women). How can the story further evolve after this explosion of identities? Well, it cannot; it can only repeat itself in variations, since once you learn the secret of love, the secret of multiplicity, the secret of the double(s), you can do nothing but endlessly reiterate this process of transformation into nothingness and infinity. The novel, however, goes on. Another intimate meeting of Jacques and Lol takes place, then another dinner party, and finally Lol and Jacques take a trip to the town where the ball took place ten years earlier. They wish to revisit the crime scene, the primal scene of Lol’s trauma, but when they enter the ballroom they discover nothing. For by that time the ball itself has become the double of an infinite number of other balls and events. The transformation is now complete: all events, men, and women become doubles and substitutes for each other. But what remains? After returning from the trip, Jacques goes to meet Tatiana at the hotel while Lol waits for them in the rye field, which gives us the impression that there is no way out, and Lol, Jacques, and Tatiana are condemned to eternally repeat this triangular scene; but surprisingly enough, Lol falls asleep, as if to say she was tired of these trains and she now wished to get off and perhaps simply walk home. The end of the novel remains open, and in an earlier version an ambulance comes to take Lol, who has become mad, away.9 Duras comments in an interview that Lol’s character is inspired by a woman she met at a New Year’s Eve ball at a psychiatric hospital. This woman amazed her with her empty rigidity,

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  103 attempting so hard to imitate normality that she did not look normal at all.10 My interpretation, however, is slightly different: Lol imitates everyone since she is everyone, and yet she is no one; she lets herself be filled with the nothingness we all share, and Jacques, who loves her, acquiesces to becoming this empty multiplicity, to fully realize for her, with her, the loving secret of the double. My movement from the summer of 1998 to that of 2018, when I  am writing these lines, is the movement from the “one” to the “many.” The scene in which I saw S with his summer love, together with my reading of the novel, was an initiation into the secret of multiplicity. But to fully understand this secret I needed to acknowledge first my inner emptiness, a difficult process which took much longer than that incident at the bar. It was easy to accuse S of avidity for other guys, but it was –​and still is –​more painstaking to look inside and realize that the rigid armor of a self-​contained person, of a well-​defined Eran, needed to be given up to let others come in. I do not believe, however, that it is possible or even desirable to fully give up myself. If there is something I did not quite understand 20  years ago, and that only now I  have begun to grasp, it is that love does not entail a constant change of trains, either inside or outside. I  am not obliged to move hectically from one person to another as Jacques and Tatiana used to do before meeting Lol. True love means entering into the nothingness of oneself and of the other, but nothingness means, not total destruction, but rather a ravishing. I  need to be carried away to make room for and allow the inner and outer doubles to show themselves. It is paradoxically by mourning the fantasy of one beloved person that I may finally find him or her, together with the thousand men and women we each contain.

THEORETICAL INTERVENTION Duras’s novel opens up new perspectives for understanding the double: no longer as single but as multiple. To a large extent this idea extends Levinas’s notion of the Other as infinite, but

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104  The Double’s Lesson of Love the double is not completely an Other. Rather, it is a meeting point between internal and external multiplicity, which culminates in love. The following theoretical intervention aims to further elucidate the double as giving access to oneself and to the Other, serving as a bridge between them. I  will begin with Kierkegaard’s theory of love and repetition, continue with the multiplicity implied in Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, and conclude with Deleuze’s notion of multiple doubles. As in the previous chapters, my aim is not to grasp fully the different theories at stake but rather to extract from them some elements that permit a better understanding of the double. More particularly, I  will attempt to discern a movement from the “one” to the “many,” movement the double might block but also launch, provided that it is no longer a single double but multiple ones.

Kierkegaard: The Main Shoot Comes Last In September 1840 the 27-​year-​old Søren Kierkegaard proposed to Regine Olsen, with whom he had fallen in love three years earlier. Regine willingly accepted his proposal, and yet, only a year later, Kierkegaard broke their engagement, along with Regine’s heart. The problem, he tried to explain, was that the Idea of Olsen overshadowed her concrete existence. He therefore could not stand the prospect of marrying her, with the gray and everyday existence it would imply. Kierkegaard’s ending of the engagement bears many similarities to Lol’s story, both presenting a brutally abandoned woman. But whereas Michael broke off his engagement in favor of a mysterious older woman, Kierkegaard did so in favor of Regine herself –​yet not the actual woman but her Idea. This Idea, this all-​encompassing ideal, played the same role for Kierkegaard as the mysterious woman played for Michael, standing as a mature incarnation of Femininity. Moreover, Regine, like Lol, initially sank into despair, and she, too, eventually recovered and married another man. But unlike Lol, at least as far as we know, she experienced many happy years of marriage without any wish to repeat the heartbreaking scene of abandonment.11

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  105 This is why I will focus here not on Regine but on Kierkegaard, who, moreover, thinks less about his abandoned fiancée and more about himself.12 He is trying to understand the reasons for his impaired capacity to love and the means to repair it. Although Kierkegaard discusses this issue in various of his writings, the most relevant text for our purposes is the 1843 book entitled Repetition,13 since it features the figure of the double as a solution to the problem of love. Duras has taught us that when it comes to love, the double cannot be singular but must be plural or multiple. It is no longer a question of a negative or a positive double that threatens one’s narcissism and illusions of grandeur, as was the case with Maupassant’s diarist and Andersen’s learned man. Rather, multiple doubles now play an active role, serving as a bridge between me and myself and me and the Other. This active work of self-​doubling is also at play in Kierkegaard, who creates several doubles of himself in Repetition. First, he publishes the text (as he does with other texts from the same period) under a pseudonym, choosing to speak here in the name of Constantine Constantinus, probably in an attempt to introduce constancy and stability into the rather chaotic world of the doubles. Second, the narrator meets a young man who, exactly like Kierkegaard himself, falls so desperately in love with a woman that this overwhelming love prevents him from marrying her. And finally, as we will see later, the narrator finds himself sinking into a world of not only one double but multiple doubles, which he calls “shadow-​existence.” An array of doubles is thus gradually created with unclear boundaries between author, narrator, and protagonists. If the double is a repetition of oneself in space, Kierkegaard links the double also to repetition in time, which stands at the center of his text. The narrator attempts, in vain, to initiate the young man into the secret of repetition to correct what he sees as his fatal mistake: namely, “that he stood at the end instead of at the beginning.”14 To explain this enigmatic assertion, Kierkegaard contrasts recollection and repetition. In recollection, one thinks of the past, for instance the moment when one fell in love, and is paralyzed by the impossibility of recapturing this tremendous feeling, which overshadows the present. It is

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106  The Double’s Lesson of Love as if love began and ended almost at one and the same time, since the initial shock of the first encounter is so strong that any further contact can be only its pale and degraded image. One therefore becomes melancholic, seeking, in vain, to regain the happiness of the past.15 Contrary to melancholic recollection, repetition looks not at the past but at the present moment, being assured of its sustainable existence since it will be repeated in the future: “genuine repetition is recollected forward. Repetition, therefore, if it is possible, makes a person happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy.”16 This sounds very promising, but how does one “recollect forward,” engage in the happiness of repetition, and overcome the painful loss of the past? The narrator himself is dubitative whether such a happy repetition is possible. He therefore decides to perform an experiment and journeys to Berlin, where he had experienced happy moments and where he now tries to repeat his past deeds. Alas, the experiment fails, since everywhere the narrator goes in Berlin seems changed and lost forever. He thus declares the inexistence of repetition, and yet, he knows that there is one place in which repetition is still possible. This place is not located in “real” life but in the arts, and especially in the theater, where one goes “like a double to see and hear himself and to split himself up into every possible variation of himself, and nevertheless in such a way that every variation is still himself.”17 In a crucial paragraph he explains his theory of repetition, which goes back to a very young age when imagination was the chief ruler, and the self was nothing but a multiplicity of doubles: In such a self-​vision of the imagination, the individual is not an actual shape but a shadow, or, more correctly, the actual shape is invisibly present and therefore is not satisfied to cast one shadow, but the individual has a variety of shadows, all of which resemble him and which momentarily have equal status as being himself. As yet the personality is not discerned, and its energy is betokened only in the passion of possibility, for the same thing happens in the spiritual life as with many plants –​the main shoot comes last.18

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  107 In this early primitive state –​a sort of Lacanian multiple-​mirror stage –​numerous shadows are cast by the actual shape: numerous and not one, since the actual shape is only invisibly present. Neither this shape nor any one of the shadows can claim to be truer than the other. Sooner or later one must overcome this state and engage in actual life; but it is crucial to give full rein to this free play of shadows and doubles before the main shoot appears and declares the others obsolete and illusory.19 The artificial experience of theater thus resurrects a natural multiplicity that had been active at an early age but was later repressed in favor of a “main shoot,” that is, one possibility that has taken over the others and has claimed to be the “true” self. How does this solve the riddle of repetition? By remaining long enough in the primitive state where the possible and the actual are not yet distinguished from each other, one can have an infinite number of experiences and take on an infinite number of personalities both internal and external. When later in life these events occur and these personalities are actualized, they are perceived, not as completely new and shocking, but as a repetition of something that had already been experienced even if only in the imagination. In this way the anxiety of losing the happiness of the moment is dramatically attenuated, since the present is only a repetition of the past and as such can be repeated in the future. Every event is a well-​known visitor from the past that may come and go without demanding to endure eternally. We now better understand what it means to repeat instead of recollect: nothing is lost since everything has already been lived in the “shadow-​existence,” and these shadows docilely wait for the right time to resurrect and repeat themselves. The key to genuine repetition is thus, first, to experience the shadow-​existence long enough at a young age and, second, to remain in touch with it, so that repetition can be an ongoing process, from the past to the present and from the present to the future.20 Kierkegaard therefore inverts the relationship between original and double. In the beginning the self was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep; only shadows, without a unifying source, existed. Then came a force that said,

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108  The Double’s Lesson of Love “Let there be Self,” making the main shoot appear, which now dominates the shadowy creatures that preceded it. The shadow-​ existence is the predecessor of the self, and as such it can be a threat to the main shoot, making one create a narcissistic negative or positive double against which one fights in vain. But if one manages to bypass narcissism, the shadow-​existence may become an opportunity, a playful state in which everything is both potential and actual. To put it differently, as long as one remains in a self-​enclosed narcissism, each love –​but also each otherness  –​is understood to be a danger to the main shoot and thus must be warded off; but if one overcomes the fear of the outside and the demand for unicity, love and otherness are perceived as an invitation to reactivate the shadow-​existence and repeat one of its possibilities. This also reveals the true reason for Kierkegaard’s breaking of his engagement: not merely out of fear of losing his ideal conception of Regine Olsen but also and especially out of fear of losing his own self-​image. Love threatens only the narcissistic main shoot, and after having succumbed to his own narcissism, Kierkegaard attempts to fight and conquer it, even if it is too late. As we have already seen in Rank and Freud, love necessitates a certain loss of the self, and by seeing the self no longer as origin but merely as a secondary phenomenon, Kierkegaard hopes he can undo his loss, overcome his pretentious main shoot, and access love. To do so, he not only develops a theory of love based on repeating one’s doubles but also actively doubles himself first through Constantine, then through the young man, and finally through various other doubles, as we will soon see. He is therefore in a position similar to that of Jacques, who narrates Lol’s deeds and gradually becomes her double precisely in order to love her. By narrating, inventing, and creating one’s doubles, a true way out of the self is opened up.21 However, these various doubles remain only literary creatures, and the question is how to retrieve the shadow-​existence not only through writing but also in real time and real life. The only actual place in Repetition that gives access to this state is the theater, precisely because it is located somewhere between reality and fantasy. Let us have a closer look at what happens there to Constantine.

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  109 Curiously, it is not the actors on the stage that permit him to enter into the shadow-​existence but the very architecture and settings of the place, making him sink into what reminds us of the dark il y a or the maternal womb:22 “Everywhere I looked there was mainly emptiness. Before me the vast space of the theater changed into the belly of the whale in which Jonah sat; the noise in the gallery was like the motion of the monster’s viscera.”23 In this huge uterus, this abject environment, the narrator suddenly has a revelation, returning to the shadow-​existence of his childhood24 and meeting there a feminine entity that is neither his exact double nor the double of Regine, but a hybrid creature, a combination of the two: My unforgettable nursemaid, you fleeting nymph who lived in the brook that ran past my father’s farm and always helpfully shared our childish games […], you who did not age as I grew older, you quiet nymph to whom I turned once again […]. You, my happier self, you fleeting life that lives in the brook running past my father’s farm, where I lie stretched out as if my body were an abandoned hiking stick, but I am rescued and released in the plaintive purling!  –​Thus did I lie in my theater box, discarded like a swimmer’s clothing, stretched out by the stream of laughter and unrestraint and applause that ceaselessly foamed by me.25 This is a most remarkable description of repetition involving the figure of the double: a double of both Kierkegaard and Regine, an imaginary, indefinite creature, who is both a nursemaid and a nymph; a woman who is also a man and who never grows old, reminding us of Andersen’s figure of Poetry. This creature is actually not only one double but a multiplicity of possibilities that can coexist in the shadow-​existence without contradicting each other. Together they constitute the “happier self” that can appear only when the main shoot retreats and vanishes, even if only for a short while. This repetition, this retreat to the shadow-​existence, is, however, only the first step. When Constantine wakes up from his hallucination, he immediately notices another double, this time a real one: a young woman who, like him, has returned to the

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110  The Double’s Lesson of Love theater over and over again. This is a woman with whom he can fall in love because she, too, knows the secret of repetition. But curiously enough, he does not approach her and is content with looking at her. Constantine cannot transform potentiality into actuality out of fear that it would ruin the charm of repetition. It is as if repetition existed for him only in well-​protected spheres such as books and theaters. So I  repeat my question: what about real life? Isn’t the shadow-​existence supposed to constantly accompany one in the background, so that when one finally encounters the loved one, it is a reassuring repetition rather than a frightful event? If we return to Lol, we know that she, too, likes to watch her doubles from afar, but not only this. The novel skillfully plays between windows and doors, vision and touch, virtuality and reality, each one of these poles depending on the other.26 In this way Lol encounters and invents various doubles, gradually accessing a zone remindful of the shadow-​existence.27 However, we should also recall that it is only through the traumatic ball and her fiancé’s betrayal that Lol was initiated into the secret of the double. It is this loss, this emptiness, that allows her to connect with the shadow-​existence and multiply her doubles. Now, Kierkegaard, too, lost his fiancée, even if it was he himself who had caused this loss. The experience of loss, the emptying of the self, damages the main shoot, but this damage can also open up access to the shadow-​existence. This is the key to real love, combining loss and retrieval, painful recollection and happy repetition: “anyone who has not experienced this [melancholic] mood at the very beginning in his own love has never loved. But he must have a second mood alongside it.”28 The entrance into the shadow-​existence involves yearning for the past, as we have seen in the description of the nursemaid, and one must resist the temptation to sink into a nostalgic mood that longs for the lost “happier self” without resurrecting and repeating it in the present. This is also the key to overcoming the impasse of Romanticism that locates happiness only in the past: every encounter, new and overwhelming as it might seem, only repeats a more primordial encounter, rooted in the depths of childhood; but this repetition should enable one to reinforce

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  111 and vitalize one’s acts in the present rather than nostalgically turn the gaze toward the past. To accept the loss of the past and its promise for the present, one needs to have a “second mood” alongside nostalgia and melancholy, and Kierkegaard names it irony. This concept stood at the center of his doctoral dissertation from 1841, which focused on Socrates, the greatest ironist of all.29 Kierkegaard defines irony as an “infinite absolute negativity,” an attitude in which actuality loses its validity, including the actuality of the ironic person herself.30 Irony negates, not this or that phenomenon, but actual existence as such, and this is why it is infinite.31 It opens up the infinity of possibilities, making one free, while still holding one in the present. Irony doesn’t abandon actuality altogether; rather, it destroys the burdening history that prevents one from being truly free. The ironic person is therefore free from recollection, which is the first condition for being able to truly love according to Kierkegaard. But aren’t love and irony two contradictory terms? Whereas in his doctoral thesis, written before he ended his engagement, irony remained a negative force, in Repetition Kierkegaard adds to it a positive aspect. Irony becomes a force that maintains the right balance between potentiality and actuality. While practicing irony, the lover can transform recollection into repetition and death into life.32 The actual moment is too burdened by history, with all the losses and aches of the past, and irony comes to free actuality from this limiting aspect. Rather than remaining imprisoned in the past, one can now regain the infinite field of possibilities. Irony is thus anything but cynicism, as one might wrongly suppose, since its negativity is creative and life-​giving, removing from the present only its unnecessary elements. Through irony one returns to the shadow-​existence to find there the right doubles to echo the present moment and prolong it backward and forward in time. Indeed, the present becomes only doubling and repetition, but this new status makes it infinitely full. To access irony, one needs elasticity and a “vow of silence,”33 since only in this way can one maintain the right distance from the present, the main shoot, and discover its potential doubles.34 The task of irony is extremely delicate, since rather

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112  The Double’s Lesson of Love than destroying the main shoot, it doubles it, making the self and the loved one unstable and unactual and yet truer and more real than before. To acquire irony, therefore, one has to be very skillful, knowing how to maintain the equilibrium between the main shoot and the shadow-​existence, not falling into either the rigidity of the first or the madness of the second.35 One must have a stable and an elastic self, such that negativity can be introduced without annihilating it completely. It is this combination that the narrator of Repetition does not find in himself, and upon his return from Berlin he declares that “repetition is too transcendent for me. I can circumnavigate myself, but I cannot rise above myself. I cannot find the Archimedean point.”36 Irony and repetition require a fixed point from which to ascend, a main shoot both solid and fluid that allows self-​transcendence without losing oneself. But who is capable of this task? If we examine how Lol repeats the night of the ball, we are tempted to say that she is a true ironic. But does she have a stable self or rather an empty one? Isn’t she torn between the rigidity of her main shoot and the total fluidity of the shadow-​existence? It is hard to answer since we never get Lol’s own point of view but rather her lover’s, Jacques Hold, who identifies with her, doubles her, and invents her thoughts. It is, finally, the man who is the real subject, even in a novel written by a woman. But this man goes through a process of feminization, accomplishing the vocation of his surname as a caring person, a holder. He serves as Lol’s nursemaid,37 a hybrid creature that is both male and female.38 Yet unlike Kierkegaard’s nursemaid, he is not an imaginary entity but a real person (i.e., within the novel): he is a living double. This makes Jacques a most interesting case, and probably the true ironic character of the novel, capable of love and repetition. Whereas Kierkegaard’s narrator remains a narcissistic spectator, Jacques dares to act in the world, making love to Tatiana and finally to Lol while seeing both as doubles of each other and of himself. But Jacques is not a purely active agent but also a passive observer, or more accurately, he manages to overcome the dichotomy between vision and touch, theory and praxis. Indeed,

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  113 Kierkegaard’s narrator relates the ability to repeat and maintain irony to the position of the observer, who circumnavigates life, the world, oneself, and others. Moreover, whereas Lol has mainly observed others and rarely herself, Jacques doesn’t set clear boundaries between himself and Lol, which gives him an exceptional capacity for sight. Kierkegaard’s narrator adds a temporal aspect to observation, since one should look not only at the present but also and especially at the future: “The person who has not circumnavigated life before beginning to live will never live.”39 This kind of circumnavigation stems from the shadow-​ existence, where one explores all possibilities  –​deeds, emotions, personalities  –​so that once they are realized, they are not perceived as new but as an ironic repetition. However, real observation cannot be effected once and for all but, as irony, should become a constant endeavor. Observation introduces ironic negativity and distance into actuality and thus keeps in touch with the latent possibilities it encompasses. Curiously, the narrator characterizes this ability to observe as feminine in the sense that it lets the world penetrate the observer: So I  am by nature: with the first shudder of presentiment, my soul has simultaneously run through all the consequences, which frequently take a long time to appear in actuality. Presentiment’s concentration is never forgotten. I believe that an observer should be so constituted, but if he is so constituted, he is also sure to suffer exceedingly. The first moment may overwhelm him almost to the point of swooning, but as he turns pale the idea impregnates him, and from now on he has investigative rapport with actuality.40 This description is remindful of Jacques’s transformation during the first evening in Lol’s house, when he almost faints, gradually understanding her, letting himself be impregnated by her, be feminized by her, become her. Not only is the shock of love an overwhelming emotion in the present and a circumnavigation of the future, but it is also and more than anything a transformation of attitude. One is initiated into the secret of love,

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114  The Double’s Lesson of Love transcending the actuality of both the lover and the loved one and attaining their Idea, that is, the realm of possibilities. The Idea, however, must remain attached to actuality rather than replace it. It is not a Platonic, bright Idea that overshadows actuality, as it was for Andersen’s learned man. Rather, it is a shadow-​existence that encircles the main shoot to make it infinitely larger than it actually is. Every actuality, every self, and every deed are only main shoots that hide a multiplicity of shoots in time and space, and the difficult task of the ironic observer is to discern this invisible multiplicity without detaching herself from the visible actuality. She needs to use the negative force of irony, to go through a certain loss of actuality, in order to understand what hides beneath this loss, the deeper levels of actuality that connect it to potentiality. It is, therefore, extremely difficult to become a real observer, and both Kierkegaard’s narrator, Constantine, and his double, the young man, admit their failure to do so. In a series of letters the young man sends to Constantine, he compares himself to Job, the man who lost his family, his health, and his goods. After his loss, Job sat among the ashes, the ruins of his former world, scraping his skin with a piece of broken pottery and complaining of his bad fortune, which he did not merit. The young man, too, laments his loss, although it was brought about only by himself. But rather than simply waiting to be healed and compensated by God as Job finally was, the redemption he hopes for is curiously not to regain love but to lose it completely. It is only when he hears that the young woman has married that he can access genuine repetition and recover from his sorrow: “I am myself again. This ‘self’ that someone else would not pick up off the street I have once again. The split that was in my being is healed; I am unified again.”41 It is thus the complete loss of love that unifies the young man with himself. Only by giving up actuality can he access repetition, returning to the shadow-​existence and undoing the split and the illusion of an isolated self. But again, the problem is that the shadow-​existence, irony, observation, and finally love are not understood to be possible in real life. Only when he has no actuality to long for can the young man regain the field of possibilities, yet it is an arid and solitary one.

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  115 It is no coincidence that Repetition ends with a letter from Constantine to “the real reader of this book,” in which he admits that the young man was his invention. This avowal places the figure of the double in the realm of writing and literature, since only these may allow access to the shadow-​existence in a well-​protected sphere.42 Observing oneself simultaneously as actuality and possibility is too difficult in real life. Yet in a last surprising act, the narrator affirms the primacy of literature over life, placing himself as a “vanishing person” in relation to the young man, his literary double, “just like a midwife in relation to the child she has delivered.”43 The act of creation and writing is a feminine act, referring to the figure of Poetry as an agent of the shadow-​existence that can introduce negativity and irony into the present moment and make it fuller, richer, more poetic. But this figure, as we have learned from Andersen, should not be isolated from life. Poetry, literature, and writing are, rather, an invitation to discover otherness, and this discovery cannot be confined to self-​enclosed spheres. Poetry is feminine but also masculine, receptive but also active, observing but also touching. It is indeed tempting to become one’s own midwife, narcissistically creating one’s doubles. The challenge, however, is to deliver oneself through delivering others and vice versa. Jacques might be only a literary figure, but he serves as a model of this loving and observing irony that actively produces doubles to access the Other. I propose now to examine another such figure: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

Nietzsche: The Eternal Return of the Doubles Lol spent ten years in a foreign town named U. Bridge before she could go back to her hometown –​ten years of insignificant life before she could regain the strength to return to the cycle of repetition. Zarathustra spent ten years in his cave on the mountain  –​ten years of eventless life before he could go down to the polis and incite people to acquire the secret of the Eternal Return. These ten years were a necessary bridge for both Lol and Zarathustra, but this bridge is only the beginning of the road. From the moment he descends from his cave, Zarathustra lives a nomadic life, wandering from town to town, through

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116  The Double’s Lesson of Love seas and forests, professing his wisdom to a rather reluctant audience, until he finally returns to his cave. There, with only his faithful animals by his side, he can confront the consequences of the Eternal Return: not only in theory but in flesh and bone. This experience is described in the famous chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra entitled “The Convalescent,” which begins, not surprisingly, with Zarathustra’s act of self-​ duplication: “One morning not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang from his bed like a madman, screamed with a terrifying voice and behaved as though someone else were lying on his bed, who did not want to get up.”44 Indeed, someone else was lying on his bed: namely, Zarathustra’s self, or “main shoot,” that had been abandoned to let him enter into the primordial zone where no stable self can be discerned. This zone, which Kierkegaard names the shadow-​ existence, is called by Nietzsche the Eternal Return, and we now need to examine this term and the light it throws on the diverse notions we have encountered so far. The Eternal Return is evoked time and again by Zarathustra throughout the book without giving many details except that it is an “abysmal thought” (abgründliche Gedanken). Now, abysmal, as abgründlich, means groundless or bottomless. It is this lack of ground that equally characterizes Kierkegaard’s shadow-​existence, where no main shoot stands in the center or at the bottom of infinite shadows and doubles. Giving up the ground and jumping into this realm is therefore an extremely frightening and dangerous experience, and this is why Zarathustra, even after leaving his double in his bed, invests huge effort in summoning what I characterize as the shadow-​ existence: “Up, abysmal thought, out of my depths! I am your rooster and dawn, you sleepy worm: up! Up!”45 The image of the worm reveals an abject aspect that remained implicit in Kierkegaard and Duras. For in this zone of shadows one loses the clear boundaries between the inside and the outside, revealing the interpenetration of the two. This revelation is so overwhelming for Zarathustra that when the worm finally appears, he cannot stand the sight of it and collapses: “Hail to me! Here now! Give me your hand  –​ha! Let go! Haha!  –​ Nausea, nausea, nausea –​oh no!”46

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  117 Most commentators see nausea (Ekel) as a reaction to the undesired aspect of the Eternal Return: if everything must repeat itself over and over again, then not only the grandeur of humans will repeat itself but also their pettiness, or “the small human being” in Zarathustra’s words.47 But is it the pettiness of others that scares Zarathustra or rather his own? It is precisely the lack of distinction between the various categories –​great and small, me and the Other –​that provokes Zarathustra’s horror: “Naked I  once saw them both, the greatest human and the smallest human: all too similar to one another –​all too human still even the greatest one!”48 One needs to be naked to discover the similarity between the great and the small, which are nothing but doubles of each other. But once this secret is revealed, it is difficult to avoid it. Even if one puts on expensive clothes, as Andersen’s shadow did, one can no longer hide from oneself the abject matter of the naked flesh, common to all humans.49 But whereas we have seen so far that the abject is always related to states of indefiniteness and unclear boundaries, Nietzsche introduces another dimension to it: repetition.50 To better understand the abject aspect of repetition, I propose to further investigate the place of repetition within the realm of the doubles. In The Gay Science Nietzsche speaks of the Eternal Return as a hypothetical gesture in which one accepts living one’s life “once again and innumerable times again.”51 The Eternal Return here is commonly understood as an affirmation of life through the wish to repeat every moment of it over and over forever.52 Zarathustra, however, is skeptical about the actual recurrence of all things. After his attack of nausea, he falls ill for seven days, an illness that is simultaneously a convalescence after being initiated into the secret of the Eternal Return. At the end of this week his animals sing for him the song of the Eternal Return: “that all things recur eternally and we ourselves along with them, and that we have already been here times eternal and all things along with us.”53 But Zarathustra won’t listen, knowing that the animals are wrong. They are wrong in thinking that nothing present is lost because it will return. Zarathustra, as well as Kierkegaard and Lol, know that nothing present is lost precisely because it has

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118  The Double’s Lesson of Love already been lost. Everything has already happened, but not actually; the present is therefore nothing but an actualization of possibilities that were somehow lived, forgotten, and now return. This may lead one to happiness but also to pain, since it entails the primacy of potentiality over actuality and an upheaval of our basic attachment to what exists. To accept the Eternal Return is to give up any attempt to control and prolong the concrete and actual world, subordinating it to an immense field of possibilities.54 This explains the abject character of the Eternal Return: every well-​defined actuality, every person and thing, hides an immense field of possibilities that do not know any boundary between the I and the not-​I, the beautiful and the ugly, the alive and the dead. This is why the corpse, as Kristeva notes,55 provokes the strongest feeling of abjection, showing the potential death and decay that lies in each one of us and that will necessarily arrive and repeat itself. The abject aspect of repetition becomes clearer if we consider the intimate link between the Eternal Return as repetition in time and the double as repetition in space. The positive double is an incarnation in space of another I, standing for something I am, I was, or I would like to be.56 This is a potential I, a possibility of myself located in the past, the present, or the future. This potential I is then conceived of as a threat by the actual I and is therefore rejected, with the negative double being the most radical denial of every potentiality whatsoever. Yet, actuality that negates its roots in potentiality cannot endure, and one ends up annihilating oneself, as happened to Maupassant’s diarist. To accept the Eternal Return is to accept not only one double but an infinite number of doubles, infinite possibilities of the self, of the world, and of the Other, a most difficult task that no human being can fully accomplish. To conclude, there are two kinds of repetition: the first, evoked by the animals, denies loss and wishes to retrieve and master actuality. The second is the Eternal Return, in which one sees actuality as only a repetition of potentiality. To access the Eternal Return, one must acknowledge the arbitrariness and transience of oneself and the world, which therefore lose their clear boundaries. Only then can one open oneself up

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  119 to the infinite possibilities that repeat themselves  –​not independently of actuality but through it. In Nietzsche, however, only one figure manages to fully access the Eternal Return: the Overman. We, normal human beings, have too strong a tendency to repeat the actuality of the past rather than its potentiality. We are doing something, having something, and wanting this something to repeat itself over and over again. Is this a natural tendency? And how might it be transformed into the Eternal Return?

The Eternal Return versus the Compulsion to Repeat To address these questions, it will be useful to return to Freud and his essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” in which he discusses the place of repetition in human life. He enumerates various cases of repetition in which one compulsively repeats a painful and traumatic event from the past, and wonders how this corresponds to the pleasure principle. He suggests that the compulsion to repeat features a desperate attempt to master the original traumatic event.57 However, he is not content with this explanation, since repetition cannot always be related to a concrete trauma. He therefore takes a step further and proposes, as we have already seen, that the appearance of life itself constitutes the most primordial trauma, because of the unprecedented amount of energy it entails. Freud conceives of energy as something wild and dangerous that needs to be bound and discharged as soon as possible to protect the organism from its devastating consequences. Every new event necessitates repetitive attempts to bind it, but even if one lives an eventless life, as Lol tried to do, one cannot avoid the compulsion to repeat, since trauma is something structural that is a part of what it means to be alive. The organic element in every living creature wishes to return to an inorganic, peaceful state, and at the origin of Life stands Death: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.58 This explains why Jacques can understand Lol: indeed, he himself did not suffer from any concrete trauma, at least as far as we know; but he can understand Lol’s trauma precisely as a human being who has an inherent compulsion to repeat. Through his identification with Lol he

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120  The Double’s Lesson of Love finds an external expression of an internal, tacit, and invisible traumatic element in himself, an element that has waited for the right moment to burst out. But this external expression is already a transformation of the compulsion to repeat, which, through love, becomes something that not only lingers on the past but also proceeds toward the future. Indeed, Freud sees the compulsion to repeat as a manifestation of the death drive, but he equally mentions a “good” and pleasurable repetition, which characterizes the world of the child. He gives the famous example of his grandson’s fort-​ da game, in which he cheerfully threw a toy under his bed and then pulled it back out, repeating and imitating according to Freud the daily departure of the mother and transforming it into a joyful game.59 Rather than mourning the loss, the child uses it as a source of play, understanding that the disappearance and reappearance of the toy (and of the mother) have an equal value. This is why children love repetition whereas adults despise it: adults are too fearful of the negativity revealed by repetition, but consequently, they end up trapped in a compulsion to repeat, trying to grab something rather than letting it go. Two temporalities are thus always in conflict: the temporality of the adult, which is linear and objective, and for which repetition replaces the impossible return; and that of the infant, which is circular and subjective, with no clear distinction between potentiality and actuality.60 It is only within this latter temporality that the Eternal Return is possible, since negativity is threatening only with regard to the actual world and not the potential one. The Overman accepts negativity and thus becomes a child again, always in the present and never in the resentment of the lost past. He or she is free of the compulsion to repeat precisely because they accept the Eternal Return as it is: what returns, or what one returns to, is not only death, as in Freud, but all possibilities that precede any actuality. These possibilities are the shadows and doubles of actual life, and the Overman manages not to prefer any one of them over the other but to accept them as they come. It is this notion of repetition that does full justice to the Eternal Return presented in The Gay Science. To live every moment “once

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  121 more and innumerable times more” could have meant a compulsion to repeat, but its profound meaning is to accept actuality in its arbitrariness and hence not to favor any moment more than another. Every moment, every actuality, is a main shoot, but this shoot covers a plurality of shoots that are no less true, and one should accept repeating any one of them precisely in order not to compulsively repeat only one of them. We may probably never fully attain the Eternal Return, but we can embark on the road or the bridge that leads to it, a bridge that love, among other forces, can construct. If we return to Lol, we may note that she is already walking on this bridge. The Eternal Return for her is the ability to resurrect her fiancé, but not the actual one. It is the ability to understand that Michael is an Idea that contains a thousand other men –​and a thousand other women. Jacques is one of these avatars, who is initiated, in his turn, into the secret of repetition. After overcoming his first nausea, Jacques manages to give up his main shoot and resurrect all his doubles that have waited inside him. However, and this is crucial, he cannot do this on his own. He is holding Lol, but she is also holding and supporting him. Love must be mutual, the lover allowing the other and him-​or herself to give up the repetition of the main shoot and return to the primordial shadow-​existence with all its doubles. Whereas Nietzsche and Kierkegaard believe that the drama of the double is internal, Lol teaches us that it must involve real others. Indeed, Lol may lack a strong main shoot, and she is therefore easily susceptible to the compulsion to repeat, trying to compensate for her lack by rigidly repeating her habits as she did for ten years in U. Bridge. But when she returns to S. Tahla and finds Jacques, she manages to give up her compulsive repetition and, above all, to allow him to join her in the shadow-​existence and become someone else. What attracts her to him, I propose, is that he incarnates the Kierkegaardian ideal of a strong-​enough-​yet-​not-​too-​strong main shoot. This allows him to contain her but also lose himself in her, to become her, become a woman, a thousand women who are all potential, all lost, and therefore all retrieved, as long as they do not pretend to be actual. They are all available for Jacques in the joint shadow-​ existence he creates with Lol.

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Deleuze’s Two Forms of Doubles To conclude this chapter, I wish to briefly examine the notion of the double as formulated by one of the most passionate thinkers of multiplicity: Gilles Deleuze. “Multiplicity is the affirmation of unity; becoming is the affirmation of being.”61 We are no longer stranger to these words, and yet what happens to the main shoot or the narcissistic double in this process of becoming? To better understand Deleuze’s enterprise and how it differs from what I propose in this book, let us examine first how he conceives of the Eternal Return and the role the double plays in it. Deleuze sees the Eternal Return as what brings one back to innocence, which is the “truth of Multiplicity.”62 Innocence consists of an equality of possibilities with no preference, expectation, or guilt. These possibilities become actual when a die is thrown over and over again, and the repetitive arbitrariness of the result of the throw frees one from the anxiety and guilt that stem from choosing. Zarathustra says that he loves the one who is ashamed when the dice fall to his fortune,63 not because this result is inferior to others, but because rejoicing at the lowest number affirms the equality of all results. Zarathustra’s attraction to decline results not from a strange perversion but from the need to counterbalance the natural tendency to prefer “success.” One should affirm all deeds whatsoever, and especially those considered negative by society, since in this way the “main shoot,” one’s self-​image, has to give way to the multiplicity of oneself and the world: “I love the one whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going under.”64 This “going under” allows one to pass from the “one” to the “many,” and yet it is extremely difficult to do so. Whereas innocence is the primordial state of the human, as children’s playful repetition proves, Deleuze stresses that the adult feels guilty of actuality. This guilt stems from our belief in free will that can control reality, yet free will is nothing but an illusion: “We split the will in two, inventing a neutral subject endowed with free will to which we give the capacity to act and refrain from action.”65

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  123 This split (dédoublement) is a bad duplication through the invention of the modern subject, supposedly neutral and freely deciding what to do and what not to do. It is a split between, on the one hand, a multiplicity of desires with no actual objects attached to them and, on the other hand, a rigid subject who tries, in vain, to control itself and the world. We thus return to the first chapter of the present book and the advent of the double in an attempt to master reality. But this double is now revealed to be none other than the modern subject itself (“main shoot”), whereas the original is the indefinite multiplicity that is still potential (“shadow-​existence”). Moreover, this illusion of free subjectivity can be revealed not only in extreme cases of losing one’s mind but also in each act we do, since it is secretly accompanied by anxiety and guilt: Was this the right thing to do? And am I the one who has done it? These feelings of guilt and anxiety lead to fatal consequences. We become, in Deleuze’s words, “bad players,”66 focusing on the content –​the result of the throw –​and not on the form –​the playful movement of the hand. We thus lose the joy of the play, thinking that the result stems from our free action and trying to block the way to other results. We become reactive, and instead of concentrating on the act of throwing, we look at other results and other players and try to defend ourselves from them. One actuality triumphs and negates its rivals, but this triumph is very short-​lived and opens the way to negating existence as such. We reject more and more parts of existence: everything that does not fit our concrete actuality, everything that contradicts the illusion of free will. But life, then, becomes ever more stifling, with resentment, reactivity, guilt, and anxiety taking the place of playful joy. The most dangerous consequence of this process is nihilism, in the literal sense of the term, depriving existence not only of large parts of the world but also of large parts of ourselves, as happened to Maupassant’s diarist, who ended up suiciding. Deleuze proposes an original way to regain the Eternal Return: namely, through being reactive to reactivity or nihilist toward nihilism. To overcome narrow actuality and recover the multiplicity of possibilities, one should use the same nihilistic logic, yet this time directed toward the pretentious modern subject

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124  The Double’s Lesson of Love and its supposedly free will. Only in this way can one access the Eternal Return.67 In the same way that Kierkegaard’s irony negates the negative aspects of actuality, its burdening history that prevents one from being free, so Deleuze proposes directing negativity toward one’s negative forces to free one from them. In Kierkegaardian terms, the main shoot attacks the other, potential shoots and pretends to be the only one. One therefore needs to use irony to fight the main shoot and open up access to the shadow-​ existence. But Deleuze adds here an important aspect: the main shoot is not peacefully and harmoniously created once and for all. It is, rather, the result of a constant struggle between various shadows and shoots, responding to various external and internal pressures. One constantly eliminates possibilities, shadows, and shoots to protect the main shoot, but this endless fight leaves one with an arid life that wastes its energy on fighting the infinite richness of life rather than joining it. Against the rigid modern subject, the main shoot that is nothing but a secondary double –​reactive and nihilist toward everything that transcends it –​Deleuze proposes to recuperate the multiplicity of the Eternal Return. This repetition in time discovers a profound repetition in space, with multiple doubles, multiple possibilities that are available in every given moment, yet under the condition that we see them only as doubles of each other, with no original. The shadow-​existence is prior to the main shoot, but this shadow-​existence does not belong to the past but exists and needs to be regained over and over in the present. Deleuze’s entire philosophy, with and without Guattari, is devoted to promoting multiplicity and the force of becoming, and this against a stiff notion of the subject and the familial structures that enable it. This is a call to move from a narcissistic and self-​enclosed double to multiple doubles. But here I  locate the problem with Deleuze’s philosophy, for it does not connect these two forms of doubles. Rather, it conceives of them as two opposite options between which one needs to choose: either a rigid structure of a modern subject or a fluid apparatus of potentialities, with no bridge or spectrum between them.

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  125 Thus, in Deleuze and Guattari’s book on Kafka we find series of doubles that overcome the tendency to direct desire toward actual objects. Desire is a primordial power that precedes the illusionary free will, and to regain its force one needs to understand that objects are nothing but obstacles to desire, something that blocks its force rather than letting it freely flow. By duplicating and multiplying the subject, these obstacles are removed since rather than a subject that desires an object, we now have multiple subjects going in multiple directions without fixating on any of them.68 But is this multiplication a literary technique or something that can be achieved in real life?69 If we consider Duras, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, we can see that in all three the “one” is not simply abandoned in favor of the “many.” Rather, there is a tension and a movement between these poles, tension and movement that are inherent parts of human subjectivity. The question, therefore, is not how to get rid of narcissism but how to introduce multiplicity into it. Moreover, the impossibility of removing the narcissism of the “one” stems not only from ontological and psychological reasons but also from historical and sociological ones. The culture of narcissism and individualism is well anchored in the social and economic reality of late capitalism. Indeed, it is tempting to consider the movement from the narcissistic double to the multiple doubles as analogous to the movement from Romanticism to Postmodernism. But this would be wrong not only because Romanticism itself contains multiplicity, as we have seen with Kierkegaard, but also because multiplicity is not an ideal of its own. Indeed, in Postmodernism multiplicity no longer poses a problem, and yet it doesn’t merely serve as a means to open oneself to alterity. Rather, consumerist society understands multiplicity as a means of further possession and accumulation. One wishes to possess multiple objects and goods, together with multiple personas, as exemplified by Doppelgänger Week on social-​networking sites. It is as if the idea of the double no longer scares us. But do we have access to the negativity that underlies multiplicity or do we simply elude it? The double, even in its multiple form, seems to have become a means to prolong the narcissistic self. I therefore propose to reexamine in the next

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126  The Double’s Lesson of Love chapter the various forms of the double we have encountered so far, situating them in a historical and social context. Notes 1 Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein, trans. Richard Seaver (1964; New York: Pantheon Books, 1986). Hereafter, page numbers will be given in parentheses in the text. I slightly modified the translation in some places. 2 André Gide, Fruits of the Earth, trans. Dorothy Bussy (1897; London: Penguin Books, 1988), 58. Translation modified. 3 In a short essay dedicated to the novel, Jacques Lacan discusses the function of the gaze in the ball and its effects as the story unfolds. See Jacques Lacan, “Homage to Marguerite Duras,” in Writing and Psychoanalysis: A Reader, ed. John Lechte (1965; London: Arnold, 1996), 136–​142. 4 See, e.g., Laurie Edson, “Knowing Lol: Duras, Epistemology and Gendered Mediation,” SubStance 21, no. 2 (1991): 17–​31. 5 While studies of the figure of the double mainly focus on male characters, Charlotte Goodman offers a notable examination of this figure among female protagonists in Bildungsromane written by women novelists. It is not another woman who plays the role of the double in these works but rather the protagonist’s brother. In this way, claims Goodman, the novelists wish to emphasize the ways in which society limits the full development of women by rigidly differentiating the gender roles. See Charlotte Goodman, “The Lost Brother, the Twin: Women Novelists and the Male-​ Female Double Bildungsroman,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 17, no. 1 (1983): 28–​43. Duras, on the other hand, not only challenges the gender distinction but almost makes it obsolete with the help of the double. 6 It is noteworthy that even in Romantic literature, especially in E. T. A. Hoffmann, we sometimes see the proliferation of the dual rivalry such that an array of doubles is gradually created. 7 For a detailed analysis of traumatic models in Duras, see Eran Dorfman, “Duras vs. Duras: Traumatic Memory and the Question of Deferred Retroaction,” in Democracy, Dialogue and Memory, ed. Idit Alphandary and Leszek Koczanowicz (London: Routledge, 2019), 140–​152. 8 The affiliation of doubling with female madness can also be found in André Breton’s surrealist novel Nadja (trans. Richard Howard [1928; New York: Grove Press, 1960]). However, while Jacques is willing to become Lol at the price of insanity, Breton appropriates Nadja’s madness, seeing in her an embodiment of Surrealism itself.

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  127 Ultimately, Breton clearly delineates between himself and his muse, merely staying in the role of an observer of the mad woman. Susan Suleiman points out that the core difference between the two works is derived from the gender politics of the authors. It is not Jacques who writes the mad woman, but Duras who writes them both, well aware of being a woman writer. See Susan R. Suleiman, “Love Stories: Woman, Madness, and Narrative,” in Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and Avant-​ Garde (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 88–​118. 9 Cf. Annalisa Bertoni, “Finitude et infinitude dans la genèse du Ravissement de Lol V. Stein,” in Les Archives de Marguerite Duras, ed. Sylvie Loignon (Grenoble: UGA Éditions, 2012), 213–​225. 10 Marguerite Duras, “Marguerite Duras à propos du ‘Ravissement de Lol V. Stein,’ ” interview by Pierre Dumayet, Lectures pour tous, INA, 15 April 1964, video, 13:36, accessed 17 September 2019, www.ina.fr/​ v ideo/​ I 04257861/​ m arguerite-​ d uras-​ a -​ p ropos-​ d u-​ ravissement-​de-​lol-​v-​video.html. 11 See James Daniel Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 8–​ 14. On Kierkegaard’s notion of love, see Sharon Krishek, Kierkegaard on Faith and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 12 It is in Either/​Or (1843), in a section entitled “Silhouettes,” that Kierkegaard gives voice to various abandoned women. See Søren Kierkegaard, Either/​Or, pt. 1, vol. 3 of Kierkegaard’s Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V.  Hong and Edna H.  Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 165–​216. 13 Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition (1843), in Fear and Trembling /​ Repetition, vol. 6 of Kierkegaard’s Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 125–​231. Two famous books by Kierkegaard that were written the same year try to propose solutions to the problem of love: Fear and Trembling and Either/​Or. See Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in Fear and Trembling /​Repetition, 1–​124. For a detailed analysis of repetition in Kierkegaard, see Niels Nymann Eriksen, Kierkegaard’s Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000). For an analysis of repetition with regard to Paul de Man’s idea of repetition, see Arne Melberg, “Repetition (In the Kierkegaardian Sense of the Term),” Diacritics 20, no. 3 (1990): 71–​87. 14 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 137. 15 Julia Kristeva reads Duras in this melancholic vein, perceiving Tatiana Karl as Lol’s double as a part of the latter’s nostalgic quest for the archaic, death-​bearing symbiosis with the mother. See Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (1987; New York: Columbia University Press, 1989),

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128  The Double’s Lesson of Love 219–​259. I  believe that Duras offers a Kierkegaardian repetition rather than recollection and that we can find other examples that better correspond to melancholic recollection. This is the case, for instance, in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo. The protagonist of the film tries to retrieve his lost beloved one through a relationship with her “double,” just to discover that he cannot save either of them, repeating the same loss time and again. 16 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 131. 17 Ibid., 154. 18 Ibid. 19 But this shadow-​existence also demands satisfaction, and it is never beneficial to a person if this does not have time to live out its life, whereas on the other hand it is tragic or comic if the individual makes the mistake of living out his life in it. (Ibid., 154–​155) 20 This element of repetition had a crucial influence on Heidegger, but for him there is no such thing as “shadow-​existence” but rather an empty field of possibilities of which one is reminded through death anxiety. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward S. Robinson (1927; New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 434–​439. 21 It is not only Lol and Jacques who experience their love through doubling: the text itself encompasses a chain of textual doubles. The Vice-​Consul, which was published two years after Lol, brings back the character of the enigmatic woman from the ball, Anne-​Marie Stretter, who would appear once more as a main character in the 1973  “texte-​théâtre-​film” India Song. Thus, Duras introduces us not only to the doubling of her texts in the different mediums of theater and cinema but also to an intertextuality within her oeuvre, which becomes her own shadow-​ existence. See Marguerite Duras, The Vice-​Consul, trans. Eileen Ellenbogen (1966; New York: Pantheon, 1968); India Song, trans. Barbara Bray (1973; New York: Grove Press, 1976). For further examination of the intertextuality in Duras as a deconstructive strategy, see Susan D. Cohen, Women and Discourse in the Fiction of Marguerite Duras: Love, Legends, Language (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), 56–​102. 22 This immersive aspect has been examined especially in relation to cinema and the regression to an infantile state that it involves. See Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti (1977; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). 23 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 166.

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  129 24 Although it is not clear when exactly the shadow-​existence takes place, it certainly belongs to early childhood: In the days of childhood, we had such enormous categories that they now almost make us dizzy, we clipped out of a piece of paper a man and a woman who were man and woman in general in a more rigorous sense than Adam and Eve were. (Ibid., 158) 5 Ibid., 166. 2 26 Hélène Cixous and Michel Foucault point out that the intertwining of sight and touch is a major characteristic of Duras’s writing. The gaze is interrupted time and again by the touch, which itself produces the visible. Cixous treats Duras as a “blind” writer who operates within her unconscious, until “[a]‌ll of a sudden she sees [… a]nd it’s that ‘all of a sudden’ that allows her to write.” See Hélène Cixous, “On Marguerite Duras, with Michel Foucault,” in White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text and Politics, ed. Susan Sellers, trans. Suzanne Dow (1975; Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008), 164 (emphasis in the original). 27 Duras herself is no stranger to the idea of shadows. In an interview included in the published edition of Le camion (The Lorry, 1977), Duras treats her writing as an implementation of pain, as a process in which a “dark shadow” (ombre noir) within her bursts onto the blank page. See Marguerite Duras, Le Camion: Suivi de Entretien avec Michelle Porte (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1977), 124. 28 Duras, Le Camion, 137. 29 Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, vol. 2 of Kierkegaard’s Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (1841; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 30 Ibid., 259. 31 Ibid., 261. 32 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 137. 33 Ibid., 145. 34 It is remarkable to note that these descriptions anticipate Edmund Husserl’s concept of epoché  –​suspension of judgment  –​a term borrowed from the ancient Greek Pyrrhonist school. The epoché introduces negativity into reality in order to circumscribe the phenomenon through the method of free variation and to discover its full richness in time and space. 35 In Concept of Irony Kierkegaard defines irony itself as a “divine madness” (261). 36 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 186.

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130  The Double’s Lesson of Love 37 We know that he is of the medical profession, but we never learn whether he is a doctor or a nurse, Duras intentionally keeping this ambiguity. 38 The gradual feminization of Jacques and his play with identities echo Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory developed in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990)  and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (London: Routledge, 1993). 39 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 132. 40 Ibid., 146. 41 Ibid., 220. 42 The narrator affirms that he depicted his double as a young poet since “for him [as a poet] the repetition is the raising of his consciousness to the second power” (ibid., 229). 43 Ibid., 230. 44 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro, ed. Adrian Del Caro and Robert B.  Pippin (1883–​1885; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 173. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 174. 47 Ibid., 176–​ 177. See Paul S.  Loeb, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 10, 103, 109; Douglas Burnham and Martin Jesinghausen, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 131. 48 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 177. 49 The same horrifying discovery is also the lot of the protagonist of Sartre’s novel Nausea, who suddenly witnesses the world transforming itself into a “black, knotty mass, entirely beastly,” such that he himself becomes “soft, weak, obscene.” See Jean-​Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander (1938; New  York: New Directions, 1964), 127–​128. 50 Kierkegaard, too, implicitly makes this link between the abject and repetition. Contrary to the experience of the theater, where the shadow-​existence is described in a positive manner, the narrator Constantine recounts a horrible experience in which everyone and everything became one huge body. This happened during the long ride from Copenhagen to Berlin in an express coach: During those thirty-​six hours, we six people sitting inside the carriage were so worked together into one body that I got a notion of what happened to the Wise Men of Gotham, who after having sat together a long time could not recognize their own legs. Hoping at least to remain a limb on a lesser body, I chose a seat in the forward compartment. That was

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The Double’s Lesson of Love  131 a change. Everything, however, repeated itself. The postilion blew his horn. I  shut my eyes, surrendered to despair, and thought the thoughts I usually think on such occasions: God knows if you can endure it, if you actually will get to Berlin, and in that case if you will ever be human again, able to disengage yourself in the singleness of isolation, or if you will carry a memory of your being a limb on a larger body. (Kierkegaard, Repetition, 151) However, on his return journey something changes, and it is precisely the abject character of the journey that permits a “good” repetition: Long live the stagecoach horn! It is the instrument for me for many reasons, and chiefly because one can never be certain of wheedling the same notes from this horn. A  coach horn has infinite possibilities, and the person who puts it to his mouth and puts his wisdom into it can never be guilty of a repetition. (Ibid., 175) 51 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro (1882; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 194. 52 See Lawrence J. Hatab, Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence (New York: Routledge, 2005), 6, 9; Eric Oger, “The Eternal Return as Crucial Test,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 14 (1977): 13. 53 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 178. 54 Winfried Menninghaus sees the Eternal Return as a “rumination” that aims to transform disgust (Ekel) into pleasure: “This figure of an immanent transformation of disgust into a ‘fountain of pleasure’ is likewise the physiological cipher of eternal return. For in both cases, pleasure in return is the prominent sign –​rather: the only one  –​of affirmation.” Winfried Menninghaus, Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb (1999; Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 173. 55 Kristeva, Powers of Horror,  3–​4. 56 According to Freud (“On Narcissism,” 90), narcissistic love is directed to what one is, was, or would like to be or to someone who was once a part of oneself. The advent of the double, as well as of narcissistic love, is thus always related to a repetition in time. 57 Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” 15–​16. 58 Ibid., 38.

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132  The Double’s Lesson of Love 9 Ibid.,  4–​5. 5 60 For an analysis of the two forms of repetition in Freud in comparison to Kierkegaard, see Hans W. Loewald, “Some Considerations on Repetition and Repetition Compulsion,” International Journal of Psycho-​analysis 52 (1971): 59–​66. 61 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (1962; New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 24. 62 Ibid., 22. 63 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 8. 64 Ibid. 65 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 23. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid.,  68–​71. 68 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (1975; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 53–​63. See also their Anti-​Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurky, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (1972; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (1980; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 69 Deleuze discusses this question in “Literature and Life,” focusing on the therapeutic force of literature: [T]he writer as such is not a patient but rather a physician, the physician of himself and of the world. The world is the set of symptoms whose illness merges with man. Literature then appears as an enterprise of health. (Gilles Deleuze, “Literature and Life,” trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Critical Inquiry 23, no. 2 (1997): 228)

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4 Islands of Doubles

I am writing these lines in a Parisian café. It is summer but the weather is gloomy. The busy street is filled with shops selling all the goods that Western consumer culture can offer. It is the sales period and the discount percentages are highlighted with bright colors on the shop windows. Despite the hectic movement there is a feeling of emptiness and the heart yearns for more. Why have I  come here? I  had hoped to find the needed inspiration for writing this book, but now the notorious Parisian spleen is taking over. Until the age of 21 Paris was only an abstract name for me, not a real place. Then my sister proposed that we travel there as tourists, and I agreed without any presentiment of the implications that this visit would have for my life. We arrived at our hotel late at night, and the next morning we studied a map and planned a long itinerary to the Louvre by foot. After ten minutes of walking along the grand boulevard we arrived at the Place de la République. We continued along the wide sidewalks when all of a sudden, I  noticed inside a café two young men engaged in an intense conversation. They were leaning toward each other slightly, their gazes meeting at a point between them; it was a fascinating tableau of intimacy, trust, and passion. I was extremely touched by this scene, feeling an electric shock passing all through my veins, transforming my body from within. This incidental scene lasted only a few seconds, and although I could have watched it forever, I soon had to hide my emotion and go on with our touristy itinerary. And yet, this spectacle determined much of my later life. I don’t recall in detail the rest of that short visit to Paris, but after returning to Tel Aviv, I began to study French; and when I finished my master’s degree, it was

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134  Islands of Doubles obvious to me that rather than applying for a PhD program at a prestigious American university, as most of the good grads did, I would study in Paris. I was constantly searching for one thing: that lost moment of intimate contact that had marked me so deeply. Have I found it? Yes and no, as may be true for many fantasies that one tries to fulfill in reality. But more than 20 years after that primal scene, sitting in this Parisian café and looking out at the gloomy street, I  must admit the failure of my original search. For I was not looking for real and lasting contact as a part of life but rather for an island that would protect me from life. The two men I saw in the café were fantastic creatures that overshadowed any real encounter I later had. I cannot even recall their faces, only a frozen impression of their concentrated, fixed gazes, similar to those I saw years later in Chris Marker’s film La jetée. What struck me so much about them was their intimate contact that made them so real. They were both similar and different, and it is this combination that made them so close and yet respectful of the distance between them. They were doubles of each other: not completely the same, not completely other, but rather in between, and between them glowed a beautiful arch that bridged them. I therefore wanted to know them, be them, be their double, have them as my doubles. But whereas they respected each other’s distance, I did not respect it, wishing to smash it, get inside their image, and appropriate it. I transformed them into my positive, narcissistic doubles, such that rather than enriching my reality they overshadowed it, forming an isolated zone to which I had no access. This was the paradox: the fantasy of the real somehow prevented me from accessing it, since every reality paled in comparison to this fantasy. This fantasy of the real  –​the real as opposite to reality –​is still at work in me right now, provoking this feeling of spleen. The street, the shops, the people all betray the real in both senses of the word “betray”: they reveal the real while being untrue to it, or rather, they reveal the real as untrue to the Idea of the real. The real should be connected to reality while introducing a certain fantasy into it, but if we remain satisfied with fantasy

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Islands of Doubles  135 alone, we end up with an artificial imitation of the real, detaching it from reality. Rather than imitation, the real involves a doubling: a combination of closeness and distance, similarity and difference, the same combination the two men I saw managed to maintain, respecting their inability to fully grasp each other. It is this respect, this true notion of doubling, that disappears in the detached fantasy of the real. How to overcome this fantasy? The answer lies first and foremost in understanding that it is not something I invented myself; rather, this fantasy is a cultural construct, as the Parisian street in front of me so powerfully illustrates. Indeed, in the oeuvre of Marguerite Duras I  found the real precisely since her protagonists dare to connect with each other on the basis of their lacks and absences, becoming respectful doubles of each other. But the problem is that these protagonists themselves might become an aesthetic fantasy. There is  something very concentrated, pure, ideal in all their gazes and words. This is the force of literature, but it is also what threatens to detach it from contemporary reality in the age of late capitalism. Let us imagine Lol today: What would she do? Would she use social media to communicate her situation? Would she find other models of identification in her favorite TV series? These questions sound absurd since Duras’s characters remain atemporal, serving as ideal –​too-​ideal –​figures of love. This is why I turn now to the opposite pole of contemporary French literature, where we find the writings of Michel Houellebecq. This author is haunted by the question of fantasy versus reality, constantly alternating between his wish to love and his inability to do so in the arid reality he depicts. Houellebecq’s protagonists always feel they are deprived of something they locate in others, toward whom they feel a mixture of hostility and attraction, which we will need to decipher. These others, I  propose, are actually the protagonists’ doubles, becoming a constant source of fantasy. But it is a destructive fantasy, since it prevents these characters from understanding what real doubles mean.1 The double may provide access to reality, as we have seen in the previous chapter, but it may also imprison one in a narcissistic fantasy, as we have seen in the first two chapters of this book. Houellebecq’s writings mostly feature the narcissistic type

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136  Islands of Doubles of doubles, but in one of his novels he manages to launch a movement toward the other type. This novel is The Possibility of an Island,2 which introduces a series of dystopic doubles, teaching us something highly important about the place of the double in contemporary Western society. As the title of the novel suggests, these doubles all inhabit an island, an isolated sphere protected from the sea of life. Perhaps by following the protagonist and his doubles, we may be able to understand the (im) possibility of this island and learn how to jump into the deep water of the real. “I’ve always lived as though I were in a hotel” (277), deplores Daniel, who is referred to in the novel as Daniel1, since in fact a series of Daniels follows him after his death. The novel, then, presents two worlds: our contemporary world, which is the world of Daniel1, and the dystopic, futuristic world of the neohumans. Every new incarnation of Daniel1 has only one goal in life, which is to read his ancestor’s life story and write a commentary on it. Other than that, they have nothing much to do, being restricted to a limited space, protected by an electronic fence from the semi-​inhabitable environment outside. This residence used to be Daniel1’s mansion in the south of Spain, and his incarnations lead lives of dull repetition there. They confront no risk or adventure whatsoever and merely wait for the arrival of the Future Ones, who will redeem them by making the world real again: a home rather than a precarious island. To understand how the world has become so dull, we need to go back to the life of Daniel1. He characterizes himself as a clown –​he is, in fact, a comedian –​a vocation that was revealed to him at the age of 17 while staying with his sister at an all-​ inclusive resort. He quickly discovered that it was not really all-​ inclusive, with all sorts of lacks and shortages bothering him so much that he presented a humorous sketch about them to the bored residents of the resort. From that moment on, Daniel1’s principal occupation in life is to detect and describe the gap between fantasy (the “all-​inclusive”) and reality, trying to make fun of it while it secretly gnaws at him from within. For the existence of this gap doesn’t allow him to lead a happy life.

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Islands of Doubles  137 Every human relationship bores him immediately since he sees, like Andersen’s shadow, how ridiculous, pathetic, and miserable the others are. The only attraction he finds in life is women, but they must be eternally beautiful and young, a condition that precludes any long-​lasting relationship. He is twice divorced, and his only consolation and true friend is his dog, Fox. Fox, too, is reincarnated in the future world, and Daniel25, a future incarnation of Daniel1, explains that its role is to reintroduce love in a loveless world: “Through these dogs we pay homage to love, and to its possibility. What is a dog but a machine for loving?” (161). Only dogs love you independently of how you look and what you do, being capable of unconditional love. But isn’t it so because they accept reality as it is without fantasizing too much about it? The quest for the real and the quest for love are intimately intertwined, and the impossibility of one entails the impossibility of the other. This double impossibility stands at the center of the novel, which constantly moves between our world, entitled “the final period,” and the future world, which is loveless and unreal. The life story of Daniel1 is presented as an exemplary story of our world, in which love is still possible. It is precisely when Daniel1 is convinced he will never find love that he meets Esther: a young, beautiful, and sensual Spanish woman. He is so shaken by their encounter that he writes her a love poem, the first poem he has ever written (with rhyme and meter in the French original): At heart I have always known That I would find love And that this would be On the eve of my death. I have always been confident, I have not given up: Long before your presence, You were announced to me. So you will be the one, My real presence, I will be in the joy Of your nonfictional skin

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138  Islands of Doubles So soft to the caress, So light and so fine, Entity nondivine, Animal of tenderness. (157) According to the poem Esther can become an object of love only because she is an incarnation of a spiritual fantasy. She had been announced to Daniel1, and here he found her, the one and only: the real presence and the presence of the real. This love comes from above, as if from heaven, but once it is materialized on earth it ceases to be purely divine or spiritual and becomes also animal and carnal. It is not fictional or imaginary but real: the real, reconnecting fantasy with reality such that it transcends itself without losing itself. Yet the real comes with a high price, and the love of his life also announces to Daniel1 the approach of his death. Why is this so? Daniel1 is 47 when he meets the 22-​year-​ old Esther. But the age gap is not the main thing here. There is an inherent link in the novel between love and death, independently of how old you or your loved one are. Thus, immediately upon falling in love with Esther, Daniel1 understands that: “love makes you weak, and the weaker of the two is oppressed, tortured, and finally killed by the other, who in his or her turn oppresses, tortures, and kills without having evil intentions, without even getting pleasure from it, with complete indifference; that’s what men, normally, call love” (159). This cruel and pessimistic description of love stems in part from Daniel1’s anxiety about the inevitable decline of his body. Yet why cannot love be mutual, with the two bodies growing old together? “Unrequited love is a hemorrhage,” declares Daniel1, but he basically means that all love, sooner or later, becomes unrequited. In the same way that his former wife ceased to attract him when she aged, so now he is convinced that the young Esther, sooner or later, will find his body repulsive and abandon him for a younger and more attractive man. It is only a question of time until one of the partners wishes to leave. Real love necessitates eternity and stability, characteristics that are missing in our world, where each day the body deteriorates

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Islands of Doubles  139 toward its final destruction. Therefore, the body, while it is young and alive, always strives for more: It’s not weariness that puts an end to love, or rather it’s a weariness that is born of impatience, of the impatience of bodies who know they are condemned and want to live, who want, in the lapse of time granted them, to not pass up any chance, to miss no possibility, who want to use to the utmost that limited, declining, and mediocre lifetime that is theirs, and who consequently cannot love anyone, as all others appear limited, declining, and mediocre to them. (264) So even if the two bodies are still young, they cannot be satisfied with each other since they know how transient life is, and they will sooner or later turn toward other attractive bodies to maximize their gains while it is still possible. In other words, as we have seen in the previous chapter, every actuality hides multiple possibilities to be activated. But rather than understanding the potentiality behind a concrete actuality, a person who may encompass a thousand other persons, Daniel1 feels the urge to turn toward more and more actualities, more and more women. Multiplicity thus becomes an endless, tiresome, and desperate race for more. Let us recall that Michael’s and Jacques’s bodies, too, always strived for more, and yet, the latter managed to concentrate his overwhelming desire on Lol, precisely because he doubled her with Tatiana and a thousand other women. His desire led him to a concentrated multiplicity (although shared between Lol’s and Tatiana’s bodies), “changing trains” no longer actually but potentially. For Daniel1, however, this strategy is not possible. Although he is aware of multiplicity, he attributes it to the field of actuality alone, that is, to the concrete, seemingly available bodies that he sees around him. Everything for him therefore remains on the surface of actuality, within the shallow here and now. He does not wish to explore the possible behind the actual but the contrary: to make every possibility actual or “real.” Consequently, he is torn between a too-​rigid reality (beautiful bodies to be actualized immediately with no depth) and a too-​rigid fantasy (a beautiful

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140  Islands of Doubles body that would remain so forever), confusingly moving from one to the other. He demands a guarantee that the train he takes will remain bright and shining forever,3 but since decline and death are part of life, he soon comes to hate it altogether. The Possibility of an Island, however, is critical about Daniel1’s position and proposes another solution to the problem of multiplicity, presented through the future incarnations. These are created by the members of a sect envisaging a future world with no death or bodily decline. In the meantime, they take the DNA of every member, so that they can be resurrected one day, when death is conquered. The headquarters of this sect are located in the island of Lanzarote,4 a paradise in the Canaries, where Daniel1 arrives almost accidently, but he soon becomes very tempted by the promise of eternal life and joins the sect. It takes hundreds of years, but the day of resurrection finally arrives. The future Daniels are genetic doubles of their ancestor, but this is only a temporary solution since they still must eventually die, with every incarnation succeeding the former. Death is not yet overcome, and only the Future Ones will be immortal. Until then, the Daniels only comment on the life story of their ancestor in an attempt to preserve his heritage and prepare the way for the future immortal Daniel. The Daniels remain isolated on their “island” and communicate with the incarnations of other people only through the Internet, with no bodily contact with another creature save for Fox, the dog. Consequently, no human love or real experience is possible in this world. Although the Daniels live in a world apparently very different from that of their ancestor, they share with him the incapacity to love. Indeed, Daniel1 thinks he loves Esther, but this supposed love is confronted with his wish to possess her, a wish that cannot be fulfilled and brings him to despair when she announces that she is moving to New York. Moreover, her farewell party soon turns into a wild orgy lasting two whole days, with everyone having fun except for Daniel1. He drinks heavily and watches with envy, sadness, and disgust the free love –​or, rather, sex –​ between the young men and women. He finally realizes, with huge pain, that Esther is incapable of granting him love:

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Islands of Doubles  141 Esther did not like love, she did not want to be in love, she refused this feeling of exclusivity, of dependence, and her whole generation refused it with her. I was wandering among them like some kind of prehistoric monster with my romantic silliness, my attachments, my chains. […] They had succeeded, after decades of conditioning and effort, […] they had reached their goal: at no moment in their lives would they ever know love. They were free. (294–​295) Daniel1 condemns Esther, but it is he, rather than she, who is obsessed with the decline of his body, of any body, and with the alleged impossibility of love it entails. However, Esther and Daniel1 share one thing in common –​namely, their strong attachment to actuality. Both wish to fully exploit the present moment, but Esther does not attempt to freeze it like Daniel1, who confuses actuality with his fantasy of eternal love. At the end of the party Daniel1 is drunk and devastated, knowing that he will never see Esther again. He decides to devote himself to the writing of his life story, and then one morning, during his daily walk with Fox  –​the only creature he loves in the world and that loves him back –​the dog suddenly disappears. After a few hours of searching, he finds the body of the dog, who has been run over by a truck, probably driven by one of the locals, who did it to express hatred for the unsympathetic Daniel1 and his wealth. Daniel1’s heart is now completely broken. He finishes the writing of his life story, and having nothing to do and no one to love, he commits suicide. We are approaching the end of the novel but the story is not yet over. Something is still missing; something still needs to be understood. This is the task of Daniel25, the reader of the story who is therefore not only Daniel1’s double but also ours, the readers. And indeed, like us, Daniel25 feels an ever-​ growing suffocation and malaise as the story evolves, and when he comes to the sad end of his ancestor, he cannot remain indifferent. He wishes to better grasp what had made him commit suicide and what role love had played in it, and he therefore contacts Esther31, the incarnation of the original Esther. After some reluctance she finally confides that Daniel1 never lost his love for her ancestor. Until his very last day he kept sending

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142  Islands of Doubles her letters, to which, however, she never replied. And more strangely, the last letter he wrote to her, just before his suicide, was a happy one, declaring his absolute belief in their love and the possibility of resuming it. He concluded this letter with the following love poem: My life, my life, my very old one My first badly healed desire, My first crippled love, You had to return. It was necessary to know What is best in our lives, When two bodies play at happiness, Unite, reborn without end. Entered into complete dependency, I know the trembling of being, The hesitation to disappear, Sunlight upon the forest’s edge And love, where all is easy, Where all is given in the instant; There exists in the midst of time The possibility of an island. (377–378) This poem stands in contrast to the first one Daniel1 wrote to Esther. Whereas the earlier poem depicts her as a fantasy coming into life, his last poem is more realistic. The first strophe is a call from Daniel1 to his life, his desire (vœu, literally “wish”), and his love, three entities that, for him, become one. Indeed, it is described as crippled, almost gone, yet suddenly it returns. This return involves a learning of what is best in life, revealed in the second strophe as a repetitive encounter of two bodies that unite and are reborn endlessly. But this implies that these bodies accept death and resurrection, a negative aspect that comes in the third strophe and underscores the fragility of the process, the constant threat and temptation of disappearance. If one accepts this threat and this temptation without succumbing to them completely, a new possibility can open up: the possibility of an island.

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Islands of Doubles  143 Only at the end of his life can Daniel1 transform Esther, presented in the first poem as a gift from heaven, into something real, but this reality is conquered through the recognition of its ephemeral nature. In other words, the island of love becomes a real possibility only if one gives up the attempt to possess it, daring to leave it and come back to it, physically and mentally. It is as if the all-​inclusive resort from the beginning of the novel was revisited, but this time it really does include everything, precisely because it does not pretend to be eternal. A different kind of eternity sees the day, cyclical and nonlinear: the eternity of disappearance and reappearance, death and life, negativity and positivity, nourishing each other as in the fort-​da game. Perhaps only after the writing of this poem could Daniel1 commit suicide, accepting to disappear in order to reappear through his incarnations, which would continue the cycle of love. But the neohumans do not know what love is, which explains the tremendous effect the poem has on them: not only on Daniel25 but also on one of his closest Internet friends, Marie23. She decides to leave her residence in New York and wander out in the wild, giving up her “island” to look for a possibility of another island, namely Lanzarote, the source of the sect. She hopes to find there a community of neohumans who would nonetheless be real. “I don’t know exactly what awaits me,” she says to Daniel25 before she leaves, “but I know that I need to live more” (333). After some hesitation, Daniel25 decides to do the same, hoping they will meet in Lanzarote. He, too, feels that life should be fuller, that the lack of desire experienced in his residence does not reflect real life. He takes Fox, unlocks the gate, and for the first time in his life goes out into the open, looking for the possibility of a new island. He soon discovers what nature is, getting bitten by insects, feeling cold at night, smelling his own sweaty body, helping Fox to get rid of a tick. But despite –​or because of –​these brutal inconveniences, he feels happy at last, and even close to loving, the closest he has ever been. This happiness and this love are not directed to someone in particular but to the World, to Life, to Being: “I had attained innocence, in an absolute and nonconflictual state, I no longer had any plan, nor any objective, and my individuality dissolved

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144  Islands of Doubles into an indefinite series of days; I was happy” (392). Daniel25 seems to have learned the lesson of Lol, Zarathustra, and Deleuze. He gives up his individuality, the accumulative and linear entity which we call a “person,” in favor of the cyclic repetition of day and night. He realizes, in both senses of the term, the last poem of Daniel1, but he takes a step further, understanding that everything and everyone are doubles of each other, and one cannot be preferred over another. He therefore no longer desires to meet Marie23 in Lanzarote, as he had planned before, and is content with happiness and love that are global, nonindividualized, nonlinear. These feelings are put, however, to the test when he encounters the savages, the “normal” humans who have survived the catastrophic conditions of the dystopic environment. They treat Daniel25 as a god, but he remains indifferent to their admiration, and when they offer him a woman, he rejects her as an abject body. But then comes their revenge. In an uncanny repetition of the story of his ancestor, Daniel25 loses track of Fox and soon finds out that he was killed by the jealous, hateful wild humans. Only now, after he has lost everything he was attached to, can Daniel25 declare: “I now knew with certainty that I had known love, because I knew suffering” (408). Strangely enough, he does not mourn Fox but simply accepts the dog’s loss as a fact, since his love for the dog, too, is unpossessive, consenting to the necessity of death. When he gets close to the ocean and the supposed target of his journey, Lanzarote, he suddenly finds a letter in a bottle signed by Marie23, which recounts her journey from New  York to that area. Attached to the letter is a page from Aristophanes’s myth of love as it appears in Plato’s Symposium. According to this famous myth, love consists of finding the missing half, the chosen person who complements and makes one whole again. One should therefore look for this missing half, reunite with it, and together attain an “all-​inclusive” reality. But Daniel25, unlike his ancestor, vehemently rejects this notion of love, affirming that it “had intoxicated Western mankind, then mankind as a whole” (417). In other words, he gives up love for one person in favor of love for all persons, or for no person –​ which is basically the same thing for him.

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Islands of Doubles  145 When Daniel25 sees in the ocean a path of rocks that probably leads to Lanzarote he doesn’t even consider taking it. He prefers to remain in the monotonous sandy environment near the sea, with no animal or vegetal life around him. The only entertainment this area offers is numerous shallow excavations in the sand that remind him of little graves, and he makes a habit of randomly picking one of them and lying inside it for hours. His neohuman body can survive in these conditions for several decades, and he therefore does not need anyone or anything in particular. He simply wishes to remain where he is: “I was making my way toward a simple nothingness, a pure absence of content” (419–​420). Daniel25 thus finally ends his journey and probably his life in a routine similar to the one he left behind in his residence with no human contact; and yet, he is out there, in the real world. He has no goal. He has given up the possibility of being reincarnated time and again until the supposed Future Ones come. He has no hope for a future eternity, and it is precisely this departure from “the cycle of rebirths and deaths” (419) that allows him to join the eternity of the present with its cycle of day and night. He lives in the midst of eternity, repeating over and over again the very same day. But what about love and happiness? These are the final, puzzling lines of the novel: Happiness was not a possible horizon. The world had betrayed. My body belonged to me for only a brief lapse of time; I would never reach the goal I had been set. The future was empty; it was the mountain. My dreams were populated with emotional presences. I was, I was no longer. Life was real. (423) Although Daneil25 dared to jump into the world and accept its essential decline and negativity, it seems that he himself has finally become part of this negativity, with no positive way out. And still, he concludes that life was now real. What is so real about this empty life? The novel ends here but it is for us, the readers, to continue. We should listen to its message, namely, that the real can be achieved only through the annihilation of both fantasy

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146  Islands of Doubles and actuality. These realms should turn into nothingness, as happened to Daniel25, but this is only the first necessary step leading to their reconnection. An example may help us grasp this idea. I remember how moved I was as a child –​and still am today –​ when I  read and watched The Neverending Story.5 The book and film feature the magic realm of Fantasia, which is gradually being destroyed by the Nothing. This destruction stems from the split between fantasy and reality, and it can be undone only by Bastian, the child who is reading the story and is summoned into it. Bastian is so used to escaping his painful reality through books that he is terrified to realize that he is a real character in the story. He vehemently refuses to enter into Fantasia, since this would threaten the clear boundaries he has firmly set between fantasy and reality, books and life. The Nothing therefore continues to destroy Fantasia until the very last moment when Bastian accepts that he must enter into the book to regain both his actual life and his fantasy, two realms that are no longer separated from each other. The destruction of Fantasia was therefore a necessary step in regaining it through and with reality. In the same way, The Possibility of an Island stresses the need to dive into the deep water of the Nothing and give up fantasy just to retrieve it, albeit in a different guise. Daniel25’s life before and after his departure might seem objectively identical, but a vast ocean separates them. Outside the residence, he is no longer chained to the past and the future but is fully in the present. Even if the words “love” and “happiness” are not part of this life, it is not so much because he is unloving or unhappy; rather, these terms are too charged with the old fantasy promoted by Aristophanes, the fantasy of the all-​inclusive life and self, whereas Daniel25 wishes to live something much less pretentious that would nonetheless be his. This is Daniel25’s lesson to us, his readers who live hundreds of years before him, in an age of disenchantment. We, like him, might feel the world has betrayed us, yet this betrayal comes from the fantasy of an all-​inclusive life. Daniel25, as a double who knows he is a double, understands the equality of all things. Indeed, he takes this equality to the extreme, annihilating any

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Islands of Doubles  147 positive actuality and remaining in an empty world of pure potentiality. But perhaps he has no other choice, since he must overcome the powerful fantasy of his ancestor, who had been poisoned by shallow promises of love and happiness. The question is whether one can give up fantasy without abandoning it altogether. Is Daniel25’s new routine the end of his life or only a phase in his quest for the real? To return to the beginning of this chapter and the fantasy of the intimate gaze, I  do not believe I  need to give up this fantasy altogether. Rather, I  wish to challenge the idea, first, that this gaze belongs to someone in particular and, second, that finding this someone would guarantee the permanent presence of this gaze in my life. “I was, I was no longer,” says Daniel25, accepting the precariousness of identity and presence. This is the only way to avoid falling into the trap of possessive and accumulative “love.” But the temptation to possess, if not in reality then in fantasy, is ever so strong, and the lesson of Lol, Jacques, Kierkegaard, Zarathustra, Deleuze, and Daniel25 cannot be simply understood and acquired for good. Daniel25 chose to avoid the temptation through an abstract love in an isolated existence, but neither this choice nor Lol’s would fit most of us. The challenge we face is how to maintain a relationship with the Other and with oneself that is both abstract and real, universal and particular, multiple and unique. And the figure that can help us confront this challenge is the double as the agent of equality and multiplicity. The equality and multiplicity introduced by the double may, moreover, enable a contact with fantasy that would no longer contradict the real but rather complement it. The real is a mixture of potentiality and actuality, whereas fantasy adheres to a rigid set of possibilities that any realization would only damage. The double calls one to annihilate this fantasy, yet it can eventually be retrieved at the price of letting go of the main shoot: a frozen actuality that is nourished by a frozen fantasy. Fantasy itself is thus transformed from singular to multiple, becoming a part of actuality, a shadow-​existence that accompanies any light to make it brighter but also to enable its change. For it is not one person whom I love but a thousand persons, and it is not

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148  Islands of Doubles I who loves but a thousand I’s. A difficult lesson to learn that the double teaches us, over and over again.

THEORETICAL INTERVENTION The end of The Possibility of an Island has left us with perplexing insights. On the one hand, love has been revealed as a matter of multiplicity and potentiality, but on the other hand, Daniel25 could realize this love only by giving up all human relationships. He started his life imprisoned in his residence and escaped it only to arrive at another isolated environment, satisfied with the wide yet empty ocean in front of him. The aim of this theoretical intervention is to understand how the double may enable human relationships outside protected islands; or more exactly how it may connect these different islands, realizing the double’s vocation as a bridge between the inside and the outside, the I and the not-​I. In the previous chapter such a possibility has been found in the work of Marguerite Duras, with Lol’s initiation into the secret of love which is also the secret of the double. Whereas Lol is on the verge of madness, having a too-​fragile self or “main shoot,” Jacques, through the force of love, seems to become her double while maintaining his subjectivity. Lol and Jacques thus serve as models of love, yet they remain ideal figures, purified of any historical or social factors. This is why I have turned in this chapter to Houellebecq, who vividly presents the difficulty, in consumer society, of giving up the I in favor of multiple doubles. Whereas in Romantic and gothic literature the double comes as a surprise, an unexpected danger that appears out of the blue to the self-​assured protagonist, Houellebecq’s characters are shaken and destabilized from the outset. When they meet their doubles, they are thus merely surprised, as if they already knew they were not sovereign and unique subjects in the world. It is no longer a matter of an original suddenly threatened by its double, since this “original” recognizes that he or she has nothing original about them. In this sense, Daniel1’s futuristic doubles only emphasize what their ancestor already knows. This knowledge gives him

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Islands of Doubles  149 the force of irony and observation, which are the preliminary conditions for love according to Kierkegaard. However, irony and observation should be inherent parts of action, negating actuality while remaining attached to it. Daniel1’s irony and observation, on the other hand, are an expression of his disappointment with the fantasy of the “all-​inclusive.” This fantasy overshadows every actual event or encounter in his life, such that rather than seeing the different possibilities that are encompassed within actuality, he develops a binary vision of “all or nothing.” Even if actuality does match his fantasy on rare occasions, as happened with Esther, he believes that the gap between the two will soon show itself again, with time’s degrading effects either on him or on his lover. Daniel1 thus doesn’t have access to the field of potentiality, to the shadow-​existence which precedes actuality. He sees only the main shoot of himself and of others and compares it to an ideal main shoot, similarly to what happens in the mirror stage according to Lacan. Indeed, Daniel1 is quite aware that he is not this image, but rather than giving up the imaginary realm and accessing the symbolic order, he desperately clings to the ideal image of others as if to save him from himself and from the devastating effects of time. The mirror image is projected upon others who are supposed to fulfill his fantasy, and since they cannot do so for long, his irony becomes nothing but a form of nihilism. It is against this nihilism that Nietzsche has warned us; yet this nihilism characterizes not Daniel1 alone but an entire culture nourished by impossible fantasies. Daniel1’s doubles, on the other hand, have no fantasies, but also no desire, passion, or love, and even Daniel25 finally gives up any hope of achieving love in real life. Fantasy is a necessary element in human relationships as long as it is attached to actuality and nourishes it, connecting it to the shadow-​existence rather than blocking access to it. How can fantasy be transformed to become a connective force? And what role does the double play in this transformation?

The Double in the Age of Simulacra To answer these questions, it will be helpful to draw on a sociological theory that discusses the role of fantasy in contemporary

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150  Islands of Doubles Western society. Such a theory is developed by Jean Baudrillard, who claims in his Simulacra and Simulation (1981) that the real in our days has disappeared in favor of its imitation in the form of simulacra.6 Simulacra, however, have no real origin and are merely empty imitations of a fantasized real. The most famous example Baudrillard gives of this empty imitation is Disneyland, constituting a space that Baudrillard characterizes as “hyperreal,” that is, a fantasy of a real that does not exist. As a matter of fact, we have already encountered in the present book various simulacra. Lacan’s mirror stage, for example, is a simulacrum of a stable identity. The mirror image is an imitation not simply of the body but of an aspect of completeness and perfection that does not exist in reality. The baby identifies with this image, naively thinking that it is herself, but the image is only a mirage, thus making her, through this identification, a double with no original. The imaginary realm, as conceived by Lacan, consists of simulacra, fantasies of wholeness that provoke aggression and hostility because of the inevitable gap between these fantasies and the partial and disappointing reality.7 However, one cannot get rid of this imaginary in favor of “real,” “direct,” or “authentic” life. Rather, one has to enter into the symbolic order to introduce multiplicity and partiality into the static images, understanding the emptiness on the basis of simulacra. Thus, emptiness would no longer be distressing and paralyzing but would instead open up the possibility of creating and re-​creating one’s identity and world in a constant movement of becoming.8 Simulacra have always played a crucial role in the constitution of subjects and objects on both the personal and the social level, providing ideals that should be overcome to a certain degree without disappearing completely. But according to Baudrillard, what has changed in our times is the faith or, rather, lack of faith in simulacra: one now knows that they have no original, no reference, no reality behind them. And yet, this disbelief, rather than freeing one from the authority of the simulacra, only makes one desperately look for “better” simulacra. Daniel1’s frenetic search for beautiful bodies is a powerful example of this paradoxical situation. He knows that each desired body is a pure fantasy, an ephemeral envelope, but he never thinks to

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Islands of Doubles  151 look at what exists below or beyond the skin. No depth is to be found in his world, and the knowledge of their emptiness only brings the expiration date of simulacra closer in time, with every damage to the body, every crack in the skin, experienced as an unbearable threat to the wholeness of the simulacrum, bringing one down to the abyss of nothingness. In the age of simulacra one thus secretly or overtly knows that there are only doubles with no origin, and yet this does not open up any free play of multiple and multiplied doubles. Indeed, in the previous chapter we have seen several examples of such doubles, with Duras, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Deleuze9 presenting a multiplicity that puts into play potentiality and actuality. Baudrillard and Houellebecq, however, introduce a new type of multiplicity, which no longer connects potentiality with actuality but focuses only on actuality, moving from one body to another precisely because they are all equal and therefore exchangeable.10 The relation between multiplicity and unicity is thus reversed: whereas the shadow-​ existence is the multiple basis for the unique main shoot, giving it mobility and capacity for internal change, in the age of simulacra actuality loses its attachment to the potential field from which it stemmed. Unicity now precedes multiplicity, yet it is a unicity with no depth, and every main shoot is perceived and measured according to a singular fantasmatic image to which it conforms or not. And since most of the main shoots cannot correspond to this image, and surely not for a long time, they must be quickly given up and replaced inside and outside oneself. One changes not only lovers but also personalities, looks, and styles, constituting a multiplicity of main shoots with no shadow or background. Daniel1’s characterization of Esther and her generation can be better understood in this context: they know their bodies are ephemeral, and since they don’t find any origin or depth behind them, there is no reason for them to stick to only one body and one person. Daniel1’s desire to possess Esther does not stem from very different motives: since she perfectly fits his rigid idea of a “woman,” he immediately falls in love with her. But for how long? Even if she had not left him, sooner or later she would have gotten old, and then this “love” would have been revealed

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152  Islands of Doubles as nothing but the wish to realize and possess fantasy, the simulacrum of Esther rather than the real Esther. Certainly, at the end of his life, Daniel1 understands the vanity of his fantasy and the need to accept negativity precisely in order to access love. But this understanding leads him to suicide, that is, to the complete destruction of his main shoot, hoping that his future doubles will do what he did not manage to. Daniel25, on the other hand, seems to have escaped the world of simulacra. He goes out into the open and enters the real, where everything stands as it is, with no reference to fantasy. He discovers nature and learns to love it, but when he is offered a human woman, he is appalled. The abject aspect of this feminine body, her smell and look, makes her too Other for him –​but also too real. He prefers to remain with his cloned dog Fox, and when it is killed, he gives up human and neohuman society altogether. He thus ends up repeating the same annihilating act of his ancestor, except that rather than suiciding, he empties his world of both actuality and possibility. Daniel25, after all, is only the double of Daniel1, and since Daniel1 was the double of nothing, a pure simulacrum, Daniel25 doesn’t find any shadow-​existence, any other possibilities to return to and to actualize. This pessimistic end, however, should not discourage us. As we saw in Chapter 1, all stories of the double are of the genre of the Bildungsroman, that is, formation or coming-​of-​age stories. Therefore, although the protagonist of the novel is unable to understand the message of the double and ends up committing suicide, we, the readers, are the true target of the story. When I taught The Possibility of an Island in a seminar, one of the students burst into tears while expressing her disappointment with the end chosen by Daniel25. She said that she had had such high expectations for him; she really wanted him to overcome the destiny of his ancestor and join Marie23 in Lanzarote. In short, she wanted a happy ending for the novel, but when you are a double of a double of nothing, no happy ending is possible. More than that, the term “happy ending” itself is a simulacrum, a fantasy that has no equivalent in reality. The question is less what Daniel25 could have done than what this novel initiates us into. If Lol has initiated us into the secret of the loving doubles, here we are initiated into the secret of the

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Islands of Doubles  153 empty doubles: the double as a simulacrum. But how to combine and relate these two secrets, these two types of double? The answer may be found in Baudrillard’s early work that attempts to find an alternative regime to that of simulacra. The solution for him is to be found in tribal or traditional societies that knew how to maintain a symbolic exchange, that is, relationships based on valuable, rather than empty, subjects and objects. The key for symbolic exchange is the circulation of gifts and countergifts, that is, the ability to give and even squander rather than accumulate. The most extravagant example of carefree squandering is the potlatch, a gift-​giving feast held by indigenous societies in North America. Whereas in Western societies competition between people is a matter of accumulating goods, and the most powerful person is the richest one, tribal societies present a different form of competition: one indeed accumulates goods, but only to give them away as gifts, thus publicly establishing the power and prestige of the gift giver.11 This exchange system does not dissimulate negativity but on the contrary attributes to it a central role. One gives up what was laboriously gained in order to access what it signifies: power and prestige that are no longer linear and accumulative but circular and playful, since the gift is balanced by a countergift. It is a kind of fort-​da game, rejoicing in both the loss and the gain of goods, in a repetitive and cyclic regime that is alien to the progressive one we know in our economy. To use negativity as a motivating force, one needs to acknowledge death, and it is here that the double enters into the scene.12 As we have seen in Rank, the double can be used to help one confront the danger of death, and it is only in modernity that it has become the messenger of death. Baudrillard further develops this idea, tracing three phases in the evolution of the double: in the first, attributed to tribal or traditional societies, the double serves as a means to negotiate with death, giving up one’s unicity in favor of eternity. One is not unique but rather continues a chain of doubles that will proceed after one’s death, such that the body might be born, grow old, and die, but the spirit will be sustained through an archetype with which one identifies as one’s double.13 One is both this archetype and different from

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154  Islands of Doubles it, which makes it a double: not completely I, not completely Other, but a bridge between the two. Yet modernity brings with it a second form of double, whose role has changed “from a subtle exchange of death with the Other into the eternity of the Same.”14 The soul is no longer located outside, in the double with which one negotiates, but inside, and one now pretends to be unique and autonomous, which transforms the double into a haunting figure, announcing one’s death but also more broadly one’s dependence on the Other, as we have seen in the first chapter.15 To explain this idea, Baudrillard refers to Chamisso’s story Peter Schlemihl, about the man who lost his shadow. Peter Schlemihl does not simply lose his shadow but actually sells it, getting rid of it as what stands for his body and the death it would bring. This, Baudrillard claims, is not some esoteric story but a fable of our times: “We have all lost our real shadows, we no longer speak to them, and our bodies have left with them. To lose one’s shadow is already to forget one’s body.”16 With the shadow and the body we have also lost death, as the negativity that allows symbolic exchange. The problem is that we cannot simply “lose” our bodies or death, and they soon reappear as a remainder or residue, as we have also seen in “The Shadow.” Not only our capitalist economy but also our systems of communication attempt to get rid of the remainder, of what threatens wholeness and control, but the repressed must return. We try to adopt a skin “as closed and as smooth as possible, faultless, without orifice and ‘lacking’ nothing,” but we sooner or later face again our “porous skin, full of holes and orifices.”17 In Houellebecq’s terms, the “all inclusive” promised by the simulacrum of the perfect body sooner or later reveals that something is missing. Rather than acknowledging this negativity to allow a symbolic exchange, it is soon covered up with another false positivity, another simulacrum in an endless, frustrating process. To confront this frustration, we have now arrived at the verge of a third type of double, namely, the clone. Cloning creates an exact copy by using one’s DNA, and as such, the clone has no remainder: it is a pure copy. Baudrillard compares its logic to that of cancer, which reproduces the same cell over and over again in a way that will eventually destroy the system

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Islands of Doubles  155 since this logic does not recognize any limits, any need to cease reproduction.18 In this sense, Daniel25 gives a surprising answer to Baudrillard. He, who is a clone of Daniel1, does not hesitate to acknowledge the remainder, the gap between him and his ancestor, and he moreover decides to cease the chain of cloning. He does not wish to repeat the same life, and therefore, he goes out into the open, regains his body, and dares to confront death and finitude with no hope of redemption or reincarnation. It is thus paradoxically in the most extreme phase of the double, the double as an exact copy, that a resistance to this logic is established, together with a return to negativity as a constitutive power. Whereas Daniel1 looks for the real and encounters nothing but ephemeral simulacra, Daniel25 is born already as a simulacrum and therefore does not even know what the real could look like until he reads his ancestor’s last poem. This poem allows him to encounter negativity and, with it, potentiality, that is, other possibilities of himself that transcend his repetitive actuality. He thereby enters into a sort of shadow-​existence, but it is a rather empty one, since Daniel25 is a simulacrum of a simulacrum. His rebellion can be only partial, revealing the nothingness, death, and negativity that are hidden behind every simulacrum. But how to continue from here?

The Community of Doubles It is here that Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher who invested much effort in understanding the relationship between potentiality and actuality, may come to our aid. In The Coming Community (1990) he claims that the apparent superficiality of the spectacle (but also of simulacra)19 is not a catastrophe but rather an opportunity to arrive at a radically different social structure.20 Agamben gives the example of an old French commercial for Dim Stocking, in which several women dance in a choreography both harmonious and uncanny. The reason for this strangeness, he explains, is that every woman was originally filmed separately and only then was juxtaposed to the others in the edited version. The result is an image of women who are both detached and collective, unique and archetypal, concrete

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156  Islands of Doubles and unreal. Their individuality is subjected to the group, but the group in its turn is subjected to their individuality as an archetype of something in common. This group is thus a group of doubles: women with no individual depth, constituting together a simulacrum of femininity.21 The age of simulacra and spectacle thus gives up any pretension of depth, betraying from the outset the status of each person as a double or simulacrum. Whereas for Baudrillard this is something to deplore, for Agamben this is, rather, an opportunity: it is the first step in understanding that every singularity today –​as it has always been –​is what he calls “whatever singularity.”22 We are all “whatever singularities” in the sense that no specific trait defines us and distinguishes us from others except our “suchness,” that is, our way of being which cannot be described in language or image. No objective quality separates us from each other, and the commercial of Dim Stocking only reveals our common sameness, the same sameness that characterizes all Daniels, but also all Lols, Michaels, Jacques, and Regines. This does not mean that differences between individuals do not exist, only that they are secondary to a primordial similarity: we are all doubles of each other to begin with. This idea might sound abstract or contrary to common sense, but Agamben gives a more intuitive example when he says that we cannot make a list of the qualities of a person we love. If we try to do so, it is probably because we do not love them anymore; what makes us love someone is not this or that but their manner of being such as they are.23 The key to attaining this community to come, this community of whatever singularities, is to reveal the similarity behind difference, which goes hand in hand with Agamben’s idea of potentiality as a potentiality not to do. Whereas we tend to see potentiality as what should yet be actualized, Agamben rehabilitates a potentiality that resists actuality, and as such it is common to us all.24 The literary figure that incarnates this potentiality is Bartleby the Scrivener, the man who replied, “I would prefer not to,” whenever he was asked to do something.25 In The Coming Community Agamben brings together a variety of such figures or characters, all carrying with them a

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Islands of Doubles  157 fundamental negativity that the age of simulacra attempts to hide while actually betraying. In the coming community imagined by Agamben this negativity brings about a common suchness, a common “whatever,” an element of doubling which gives singularity a foundation rather than threatening it. Daniel25 could therefore be an honorable member of this coming community, and yet it is not clear how to pass from the negative potentiality, the potentiality to not be, to a positive potentiality, one that is a part of actuality and not simply its negation. To understand this, we need to better discern the movement from the single, narcissistic double to the multiplicity of doubles. Indeed, Agamben does not simply skip the sociological analysis of the narcissistic age of the simulacra and spectacle. On the contrary, he proposes to use the fragility and superficiality of the spectacle in order to break the narcissistic mirror image and, then, on the basis of its infinite shatters, rebuild a community based on multiplicity and duplicity. But The Possibility of an Island shows us that the individualism and narcissism of our times make us only further cling to simulacra, fragile as they might be. How, then, to use this fragility to break the mirror or at least turn it upside down?

The Two Narcissisms This question brings us back to the beginning of the book and the refusal of Maupassant’s diarist to see the radical negativity and alterity upon which his self-​ image is based. I  analyzed this refusal as stemming from his profound narcissism, and we are now in a position to nuance this analysis with the help of the different doubles and concepts we have encountered in these pages. Let us start with Levinas and his notion of the il y a, the dark and opaque existence that precedes and conditions our lives as existents. Levinas mentions two ways to escape the il y a: either through the world of light and knowledge or through earthly pleasures. We met the first option in Andersen’s learned man and the second in Daniel1. But the il y a, as we have seen in Kristeva, is not an abstract entity but the very matter that makes us what we are. It is what awaits us on the other side of the

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158  Islands of Doubles mirror, the inner texture of the flesh under our skin, simultaneously ours and not ours, us and not us. This primordial organic zone is invested with a death drive that only accentuates its abject aspect. Therefore, one tends to project it onto others to distance oneself from this threatening zone. Kristeva invites us to dare and approach the abject, and the question is how to overcome our instinctual aversion to it. Whereas the diarist and the learned man split themselves to avoid the threat of the abject, Lol is the first literary figure we have met who, through the traumatic night of the ball, understands the vacuity of unicity and the need no longer to split but rather to double herself as well as her lovers. She therefore constructs a love triangle that is both narcissistic and involves real otherness. It is narcissistic since she sees others not as they are but as doubles, either of herself or of her fiancé; and yet, through these doubles she manages not only to love and escape her self-​ enclosed world, populating it with so many possible doubles, but also to initiate Jacques into the secret of love. This love is thus both unique and universal, singular and multiple, what can be called “whatever love,” which involves the suchness of the lovers and therefore permits them to include in it a multiplicity of other women and men. Lol’s story teaches us that it is not a question of overcoming narcissism but of transforming it. For Kristeva, contrary to Freud and Lacan, the water in which Narcissus observes himself is never clear, since he sees not only his sleek envelope but also something of his abject interior.26 The relationship with one’s double necessarily involves an uncanny element, something that transgresses the frontiers between I  and Other. Therefore, the ability to love one’s double rather than attack it, understanding its intermediate position, is already the first step toward love. Freud conceives of love as narcissistic in the sense that we love what we are, what we were, or what we would like to be.27 The question, however, is what place one gives to the Other28 in such narcissism. In the case of Lol this place is not very clear, especially since her story is told from Jacques’s point of view. But Jacques, for sure, not only sees Lol as Other but also dares to become her, jumping toward the unknown on the verge of

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Islands of Doubles  159 madness. In this sense he makes the full Levinasian movement, but he also shows something that remained hidden in Levinas. For Jacques not only turns from the il y a to the Other but also connects the two realms through his becoming Lol’s double. On the initial level, he ceases to seek only pleasure, as he did with Tatiana prior to meeting Lol, and starts looking for the infinity of the Other that he sees in Lol’s face. But he does more than simply welcome Lol as radical Other; he actually becomes her, enters into her mind, such that she is both Other and his double. The double, I claim, is the necessary bridge between me and the Other, the implicit link in many theories of otherness. To truly love, one needs to overcome a narcissistic crisis, but one accomplishes this by addressing the Other, not as a deus ex machina, but as something that echoes one’s inner otherness and abject aspect. This was surely Daniel1’s error: he thought love would be a redemption from himself, from his aging, from his abject body and soul, from the emptiness of his main shoot. His narcissism did not allow him to overcome his aversion to his own abject aspect, and so he remained with the fantasmatic sleek mirror image: not of himself but of young women who became his narcissistic doubles. In the same way that we distinguished two types of doubles (single29 and multiple), we thus need to distinguish two sorts of narcissism: one that is superficial and unable to see beyond the mirror image and another that is more profound and primordial, since it accepts, although painfully, the dark abject aspect of oneself. In this narcissism, one recognizes the other side of the mirror, the thickness of the double(s), the “bad” infinity that unites us all and that is the condition and the first step toward the “good” infinity of love. As I argued in Chapter 2, the “bad” infinity of the il y a and the abject and the “good” infinity of the Other are interrelated, and only the acknowledgment of the first enables access to the second. In Kierkegaardian terms, it is by regaining one’s shadow-​existence (which is intimately linked to the abject il y a) that one can not only transform one’s main shoot but also integrate the Other in it and allow the Other to access his or her own shadow-​existence. Lol and Jacques, as any true lovers, thus become doubles, but not in an imaginary and fusional sense.

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160  Islands of Doubles They instead remain both doubles and Others: doubles of each other’s internal otherness. It is upon his decision to end his life that Daniel1 was close to this insight, but it was too late. Esther had already left, and besides, she was probably not the right person to double himself with, precisely because of her too-​young and too-​beautiful body, which might have kept her in superficial narcissism. To realize the secret of the double, we have seen, one needs to accept negativity and loss, two elements that seemed alien to  Esther. But why couldn’t Daniel25 take a step further and truly love Marie23 or at least go to the island of Lanzarote and join the neohumans there? Indeed, he did dare to exit his self-​enclosed residence in which he was attached only to the life story of his too-​identical –​superficially narcissistic –​double. But the only creature he managed to love was Fox, precisely because the dog would never force him to become something other than what he already was. No foreign shadow-​existence would be opened up by Fox, no need to become it, become its double. And the same goes for the human female he rejects with disgust: not simply because of her allure and smell, but because she reminds him of his primitive instincts, his own abject flesh that is his and Other, connecting him with all organic creatures. He thus chooses a self-​ enclosed life of repetition which resembles the negative potentiality developed by Agamben, yet he does not engage it in any play with actuality. Like his ancestor, he made the first step to overcome superficial narcissism but then got stuck, unable to reach the island of Lanzarote and the real Others who awaited him there.

Robinson Crusoe and the Possibility of Another Island How to accomplish this journey and go all the way from the first narcissism to the second, from the single double to multiple doubles allowing access to otherness? Another literary example may help us to understand this. One of the most famous modern figures of individuality and autarkic order is Robinson Crusoe.30 Finding himself on a desert island, he invests huge efforts in appropriating Nature and rebuilding the Western

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Islands of Doubles  161 civilization from which he has been excluded. Even when an Other arrives on the island –​namely, Friday –​nothing changes in Robinson’s attitude: he is the only master of the island and his work consists in taming and making it fit his own needs. The arrival of Friday is only an opportunity to reaffirm his mastery, involving not even a Hegelian or Sartrean struggle for life and death. Robinson does not know anything about the double and does not seem to be interested in questions of love or otherness. But the irony of fate eventually supplied Robinson with many doubles: namely, the diverse versions of him written thereafter, each depicting a slightly different Robinson and trying to challenge his excessive self-​assurance in the original novel. One of these Robinsons appears in Michel Tournier’s novel Friday (1967).31 This Robinson is at first very similar to his ancestor, trying to master the island and make it his own; yet something in him is profoundly different, as the novel gradually unfolds. At first he invests huge efforts in building a wooden boat to escape the island,32 but this enterprise finally fails and he consequently adopts a strange habit of going to “the mire,” a muddy zone on the shore, where he remains for hours, losing himself in the most abject matter of the island. He does this for several weeks, neglecting himself completely. He loses himself in pure matter, in the abject, in the il y a, touching the verge of madness: not through a real Other but through a primitive otherness which is equally sameness.33 This stage ends with a psychotic hallucination that brings him close to death, but at the last minute he recovers and, like his ancestor, begins a meticulous effort to gain mastery over the island. The first thing he does is to give it the feminine name of Speranza (Hope), thus affirming his masculinity as its contrast.34 The mire, however, does not disappear and constitutes a constant and appealing temptation, until he finds a substitute for it in a cavern that contains a cavity perfectly fitting his body. Adopting a fetal position, he stays in this earthy-​maternal womb for hours, returning there often.35 But one day he is horrified to realize that he was on the verge of ejaculating in this womb, which would have meant committing a dangerous incest with the island, his mother. He then decides to never go down to the cavern again. Rather than a mother, the island shall

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162  Islands of Doubles henceforth be his wife. He finds a parcel of soft soil with which he often “makes love,” astonished by the beautiful white flowers growing there as if from his sperm.36 This idyllic life of masculine mastery is brutally disrupted with the arrival of Friday. For Friday does not simply obey his master, as in the original story. That is, he obeys him technically, but his heart is elsewhere, and whenever he can, he returns to his idle activities, unable to understand Robinson’s attempts to discipline him. Robinson is profoundly disturbed by this carefree attitude.37 More than that, he observes orange flowers where his own white flowers used to grow on the lovemaking soil and is outraged when he surprises Friday in the middle of his “intercourse.”38 No matter how hard he beats him, a doubt comes into his mind: what if Friday is his double? One day Friday steals Robinson’s tobacco and sits in the cavern to tranquilly smoke a pipe, when he is suddenly discovered by his maser. In an act of despair he throws the pipe away, only to ignite the gunpowder Robinson had stored there, causing a huge explosion. Friday saves Robinson’s life at the last moment, but the island is ruined, and all the grain and goods cultivated and accumulated so meticulously are now gone.39 Strangely enough, this does not enrage Robinson but liberates him, as if he had participated in a ceremony of potlatch to understand the redemptive aspect of negativity and the vacuity of linear accumulation. Another possibility of an island is now opened up: the island as a realm of possibilities, a shadow-​existence with which his main shoot dares to engage in a constant dialogue. “There is always another island,”40 says the epigraph of the novel, which I take as a metaphor for the movement both within the I and between the I and the Other. The I is a desert island, but only as long as it restricts itself to a unique main shoot. Once negativity is revealed, once the main shoot explodes, other shoots can be found, other islands within and outside oneself. Deleuze, who was fond of desert islands,41 analyzes Friday as a novel about the loss of what he calls “the structure of the other.”42 The shipwreck deprives Robinson of the human community, but this loss, after being processed and mourned, finally leads him to retrieve “another island,” a double of the original.

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Islands of Doubles  163 Deleuze describes this double as a halo enveloping actuality. It is an element relating to the air rather than to the soil: not solid but vague, showing that every actuality is doubled by an airy possibility.43 Deleuze thus sees the double as opening up a field of possibilities, but the condition for this opening is the disappearance of the Other. For Deleuze, Other and double are two contradictory rather than complementary terms. But if this is so, how to explain the curious relationship that is established between Robinson and Friday? It is only after the explosion that the other island, the double island, fully appears to Robinson, and with it comes a new look at Friday, the key figure of the novel who gives it its title. Like Lol, Friday gradually becomes Robinson’s double in the full sense of the term, permitting him to overcome his narcissism and accept his inner and outer otherness, a shadow-​existence that is not only his. Therefore, Robinson not only becomes ever more interested in Friday but also begins to admire him and, I would even say, love him. This love is not sexual and does not bear the characteristics of the strange relationship Robinson had developed with the island. Yet the latter was not love but rather autoeroticism, a narcissistic lovemaking with himself. Loving someone is not necessarily desiring him or her sexually but desiring to become them, and it is this desire to become Friday that now powerfully fills Robinson. When a ship comes to the island, after almost 30  years of isolation, it is Friday rather than Robinson who is very excited. Robinson dislikes the vulgar and petty talk of the crew, and he is all the more shocked to realize that he is 50 years old, that is, an old person in terms of that period. Friday, on the other hand, immediately becomes friends with the crew and is fascinated by the ship’s machinery. Robinson decides to remain on the island with Friday, but the next morning he discovers to his horror that Friday has abandoned him and boarded the ship. It is just before dawn and the darkness further oppresses Robinson. He is now old and alone and decides to end his life in the best way he can imagine, that is, by returning to the heart of Speranza, to the cavern where the maternal cavity will contain and hold him until death comes.44

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164  Islands of Doubles Robinson, then, overwhelmed after Friday’s disappearance, wishes to submerge into the dark il y a and reunite with it. This wish has tempted him from the beginning of the novel, first with the mire, then the cave, and finally the soil, three narcissistic unions that ended with the explosion and the discovery of the second type of infinity through Friday. But without the Other as a double, Robinson loses access to this second infinity. He made it all the way from one infinity to the other, just to be abandoned at the end, and therefore sees no other option than to return to his roots. Unsure if he can access the cavern after the explosion, he finally finds a crevice that can serve as his final shelter and in which he can join Speranza. But when he approaches the crevice, he is astonished to see a human body coming out of it. It is Jaan, the Estonian cabin boy from the ship, who escaped it to join Robinson on the island. Robinson is saved, and in the last lines of the novel the sun rises and he can baptize the newcomer: Sunday, to celebrate the sun, who has saved him from his fate in the darkness.45 Friday bears many similarities with The Possibility of an Island: Robinson is appalled by the vulgar people from the ship in the same way that Daniel25 is disgusted by the savage humans; Robinson loses Friday and is alone, and likewise, Daniel25 loses Fox; and finally, Robinson decides to find a cavity in the ground that can be his grave, which is reminiscent of how Daniel25 used to lie for hours in the sandy holes and pretend he was dead. The main difference between the novels lies not in Robinson’s being finally saved but in Friday’s being not simply a dog or other animal. Rather, he is both an Other and a double. Although Robinson initially considers Friday to be an irrational creature that needs to be tamed to fit his rationalized regime, the explosion finally makes him see Friday in a different light: an Other whom he identifies with and tries to become. This is why when Jaan appears on the island he can so easily take on the role of Friday: not because Robinson is blind to the differences between the two, but because at this stage he already understands the “whatever singularity” of all people, the status of the double that we all share and that allows him to admit Jaan immediately to his nascent community of Speranza.

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Islands of Doubles  165 Although Robinson tries to control Jaan, changing his name, the new name he gives him is derived from the sun, or, in the French original, from Jupiter. This is not only the king of the gods but also the god of the sky: the infinite otherness above us. In this way Robinson tries to access Jaan, as an Other, by making him his double. On the one hand, Jaan belongs to the unknown infinity, but on the other hand, it is Robinson himself who gives him his name and words, in the same way that Jacques narrates Lol’s story. Robinson baptizes Jaan only to accentuate his dependence on him: Jaan literally saved Robinson’s life, not because he said or did something, but because his presence permitted Robinson to maintain contact with the field of possibilities. Through Jaan’s new possibility, new name, Robinson’s own field of possibilities is open again. Robinson thus needs a concrete Other. Before the arrival of Friday he tried to transform the island itself into his double under various forms: sister (the mire), mother (the cavern), and wife (the soil). The presence of a real human, however, allows a much broader access to multiplicity as a field of possibilities, with the various doubles contained in it. Without the Other this multiplicity cannot attain its full form but remains only as a negative potentiality, as we can see in Daniel25’s monotonous last days and Robinson’s wish to reunite with the island after Friday is gone. But what about the people from the ship? Why can’t they be both Others and doubles for Robinson? These people are considered by Robinson only as simulacra of Others. They all talk about things that seem absurd to him; they all set for themselves goals in which he no longer believes; and they all treat each other in a way very different from the symbolic exchange Robinson has learned from Friday, with its cyclic, aimless form.46 Friday himself is attracted to this world and decides to join it. Since he never belonged to it, he sees it only as a richer prolongation of his playful environment, and since he is alien to the thought of duration and possession, he is not concerned about Robinson staying alone on the island. But for Robinson the danger of returning to his old I, his old main shoot, is too great, and he therefore cannot stand these people from the “normal” world outside. He wishes to remain in the cyclic time

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166  Islands of Doubles of the island, in Speranza as the realm of the Eternal Return. And yet, again, he cannot remain there alone.

The Double as Seductive Force I have tried to analyze Speranza as a metaphor for the I, and the possibility of “another island” as a bridge to other islands, both internal and external. The double is the key figure to allow one to discover more islands, but time and again we see that to access the double, one needs to resist the stubborn main shoot as well as the various simulacra and fantasies it carries with it. To break down simulacra and fantasies one needs to find a Friday –​but also a Lol or a Marie23. And then –​what’s next? Is it possible to broaden the field of possibilities, the islands of doubles, beyond dual relationships? I will discuss this question in the epilogue to this book, but in the meantime it is important to notice the seduction involved in the double as a means to open up the field of possibilities. This seduction may rise first from a wish to possess and grasp someone or something we do not understand, someone or something that does not fit our well-​known actuality. The relationship with this entity may therefore be narcissistic to begin with, but then comes a crossroad: either the impossibility of fitting the Other into our world will make us abandon this relationship altogether, being perceived as too strange and abject; or it will further seduce us to put into question our main shoot, gradually allowing us to become the double of this Other –​letting us enter into the realm of love. Every true love story is perceived as a threat because it necessitates self-​transformation. One wishes to be recognized and loved, yet by someone who demands that we change our very idea of recognition and love. We must abandon our fantasy and simulacrum of love and dare to see the Other as it is, and yet, the only way to do so is through the double: the Other as a double, myself as a double, each double opening up a corresponding field of possibilities, such that I am no longer myself, but neither is the Other. Lol and Friday are two extreme examples of these seductive Others, whose field of possibilities is so strange to the Western

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Islands of Doubles  167 mind that they project to us both seduction and abjection: a wish to become them and a wish to escape the lack of boundaries they introduce. This, I suggest, is the double effect of literature as well: a mixture of seduction and abjection, a temptation we need both to accept and somehow to resist in order to survive. In this sense writing itself is a doubling, yet one with no original. It is a field of possibilities that is actualized in concrete words, yet words that do not refer to a stable main shoot. The common mistake is to see literature as a simulacrum and fantasy, as happened to Madame Bovary, who was so fascinated by the romantic novels she read that she could not be content with her own love life. The stories and novels I have examined in this book attempt to avoid this trap precisely through the figure of the double. The double is seductive; it gives erotic motivation to get closer, to conquer the fear of abjection. Yet once we get nearer, once we get inside, there is no longer a way out. Our main shoot is made fragile, together with the common fantasies and simulacra it contains. Indeed, at any moment we can close the book and return to our ordinary lives, but if we manage to enter the book and become its double, making it our double, an Other we try to access, a new field of possibilities will be opened up. With what concrete Others can we experience the doubling of literature? And for how long? There is no universal answer to these questions, which should be addressed and tested by each one of us through and with the multiple doubles and Others, which are all around us, waiting for us to notice them. Notes 1 This explains why Houellebecq may sometimes appear misogynist or racist, and I do not underestimate the difficulty that a woman or a Muslim may have in reading him. However, Houellebecq does not simply despise women and Muslims but is, rather, obsessed with them since they constitute his opposite doubles, a notion on which I will elaborate in the epilogue of this book. 2 Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island, trans. Gavin Bowd (2005; London: Phoenix, 2006). Hereafter, page numbers will be given in parentheses in the text. 3 This is also the case of Wilde’s Dorian Gray, which will be discussed in the epilogue of this book.

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168  Islands of Doubles 4 Houellebecq previously dedicated a novella to this touristy island. See Michel Houellebecq, Lanzarote, trans. Frank Wynne (2000; New York: Vintage Publishing, 2002). 5 Michael Ende, The Neverending Story, trans. Ralph Manheim (1979; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). 6 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (1981; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 7 It should be mentioned that as Klein and Kristeva show, fantasies of wholeness and violence are produced not only in the mirror stage but also during the semiotic phase that precedes it. 8 In his novella Aura, Carlos Fuentes depicts the falling in love of a young man with a young woman. The man gradually realizes the young woman to be a phantom of an extremely old lady, and himself to be a double of the latter’s late husband. It is through reading the late husband’s writings (symbolic) and seeing photos of him (imaginary) that the young man understands the secret of the double. He thus lets loose and makes love to the old lady herself, instead of to her young phantom. See Carlos Fuentes, Aura, trans. Lysander Kemp (1962; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965). 9 Deleuze is, moreover, well aware of the question of simulacra, and he analyzes their primacy already in relation to the Platonic idea. His discussion, however, is purely ontological and ignores the way Plato tries to rehabilitate the realm of Ideas for moral and social reasons precisely since it is threatened by the realm of simulacra. See Gilles Deleuze, “Plato and the Simulacrum,” in Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (1969; London: Athlone Press, 1990), 253–​265. 10 Gordon E. Slethaug also characterizes the double in postmodern literature as revealing the arbitrariness and nonlinear reality of Western society, focusing on the question of language. See Slethaug, Play of the Double,  30–​32. 11 Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (1976; London: Sage Publications, 1993), 1–​2, 35–​49. See also Marcel Mauss, The Gift, trans. Jane I.  Guyer (1925; Chicago: HAU Books, 2016). 12 Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, for example, features an unnamed protagonist who rebels against modernity’s consumerism through his double, who teaches him how to embrace negativity and accept death. 13 See Eliade’s succinct words: Men would thus have a tendency to become archetypal and paradigmatic. This tendency may well appear paradoxical, in the sense that the man of a traditional culture sees himself as real only to the extent that he ceases to be himself (for a modern

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Islands of Doubles  169 observer) and is satisfied with imitating and repeating the gestures of another. In other words, he sees himself as real, i.e., as “truly himself,” only, and precisely, insofar as he ceases to be so. (Myth of the Eternal Return, 34) 4 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 95. 1 15 Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange, 141. 16 Ibid., 142. 17 Ibid., 104–​105. Clément Rosset (The Real and Its Double) proposes in the same way that the double is constituted upon a remainder that needs to be abolished to allow a return to the “real,” yet he does not explain what this real would be like and how to attain it. 18 For a critique of “the culture of the copy,” which, however, goes in a different direction, see Hillel Schwartz, The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles (New  York: Zone Books, 2014). 19 Agamben refers to Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, but the argument can apply also to Baudrillard’s theory, since spectacle and simulacra share the same superficiality with no depth or reference. See Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-​Smith (1967; New York: Zone Books, 1995). 20 Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. Michael Hardt (1990; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). 21 Ibid.,  47–​50. 22 Ibid.,  1–​2. 23 Ibid., 2. Montaigne articulated a similar idea in his famous essay on friendship: “Because it was he, because it was I.” Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship” (1580), in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 139. 24 Giorgio Agamben, “On Potentiality,” in Potentialities, trans. Daniel Heller-​Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 177–​184. 25 Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (1853), in Great Short Works of Herman Melville (New  York: Perennial Classics, 2004), 39–​74. Bartleby, moreover, is nothing but the narrator’s double, a secret potentiality that the narrator splits from himself and that finally leads him to his death, a negative double that curiously does not rebel or attack the original but rather passively shows him a radical potentiality that he is blind to. See Keppler, Literature of the Second Self, 115–​120. 26 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 14–​15. See also Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. Leon S.  Roudiez (1983; New  York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 103–​121. 27 Freud, “On Narcissism,” 90. Freud actually mentions a second type of love, which is not narcissistic but “anaclitic,” based on the wish

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170  Islands of Doubles to lean on the lover who satisfies one’s needs. Yet it is difficult to understand in what way this type of love goes beyond narcissism. 28 As in other places in this book, I use the term “Other” not to designate an abstract symbolic entity as in Lacan but rather a concrete Other, which is nonetheless infinite and inaccessible by definition. 29 The single double refers to both the positive and the negative double. 30 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 31 Michel Tournier, Friday, or, The Other Island, trans. Norman Denny (1967; New York: Pantheon Books, 1969). 32 It is interesting to note that the boat’s name is Évasion, the same as the title of Levinas’s book on the instinctual aversion of Existence. 33 Tournier, Friday,  39–​41. 34 Ibid.,  47–​48. 35 Ibid., 97–​102. 36 Ibid., 119–​120, 128–​130. 37 Ibid., 144–​147. 38 Ibid., 166–​167. 39 Ibid., 174–​178. 40 Ibid., 5. 41 Gilles Deleuze, “Desert Islands,” in Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953–​1974, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Mike Taormina (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 9–​14. 42 Gilles Deleuze, “Michel Tournier and the World without Others,” in Logic of Sense, 301–​320. 43 Ibid., 312–​313, 317. 44 Tournier, Friday, 232–​233. 45 Ibid., 235. In the original French the boy is baptized Thursday (Jeudi) after Jupiter, the god of the sky. 46 Robinson is especially shocked by their resemblance to what he himself was like before, seeking to master and accumulate people and goods rather than understand the primordial equality of all entities: “Each was in search of something, some special acquisition, wealth or personal satisfaction; but why that thing more than another?” (ibid., 224). In this sense, these people could not be the Other he found in Friday: “That was what other people were: the possible obstinately passing for the real” (ibid., 220). For Deleuze this is a proof of Robinson’s rejection of the Other in favor of the double, but it is clear that these “other people” claimed their actuality without understanding the potentiality beneath it. As such, they were indeed others, but not Other as what opens up the infinite field of possibilities through the figure of the double.

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Epilogue “It’s Not Me, It’s You”: From the Personal to the Collective Double

This book is approaching its end, but I feel that the quest has not yet arrived at its destination. I started with the narcissistic endeavor to remain in one’s self-​enclosed sphere and gradually moved to the possibility of dwelling on multiple islands. Opening up to the world and its multiplicity, however, is not only an individual itinerary. Rather, it involves the sometimes painful recognition of one’s social, political, and cultural circumstances, which can no longer be warded off. I  have tried to give an account of these circumstances but have limited myself to the personal perspective. A  radical understanding of the double, however, necessitates taking another step, one toward the collective sphere, and it is now time to do so, even if my discussion here must remain brief. I have argued throughout this book that the double is the mediating force between me and the Other. A change of perspective from the personal to the collective does not mean that the former should be set aside. On the contrary, if the double can serve as a bridge between me and the Other, it can also connect the individual with the social sphere. In this way it allows a better understanding of how such mechanisms as duplication, identification, and projection operate not only between individuals but also between groups of people, thus challenging the premises of identity politics. As we have seen, the double is initially conceived of as an obstacle, a haunting figure that one attempts to fight and overcome, alas in vain. The transformation of the double from a foe into a friend can be achieved only through a laborious and continuous process of abandoning one’s narcissism and opening up to one’s inner and outer doubles. Indeed, personal suffering

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172  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” and a desire to transcend oneself might induce one to embark upon this way toward otherness. But what, if anything, would convince groups to undergo the same process? The postmodern promise of “liquidity” and effortless flow between identities and categories eventually led to the current rise of nationalism on the right and identity politics on the left. Indeed, groups are not yet readily willing to give up their hostility toward each other, and it is not by preaching to them how to define themselves that a change may occur. I therefore propose taking advantage of the double as mediating both between me and the Other and between different groups. My strategy will be to remain on the borderline between the personal and the collective spheres with the help of the double. Having been raised as an Israeli and a Jew, I carry with me a complex web of doubles which took me quite a while to become acquainted with and finally accept. By moving from individual identity to social identity and vice versa I hope that this acquaintance and coming to terms with can be generalized both in theory and in praxis.

The Opposite Double I live in Israel/​Palestine, the home of two Semitic peoples, one Jewish and the other Palestinian, who have been fighting each other for more than a hundred years. These two peoples, however, have many things in common: not only their beloved homeland but also their history, having suffered from a forced exile and a long-​lasting wish to return home. Could it be that Israeli Jews and Palestinians are actually doubles of each other? And if so, why is this dimension so forcefully denied by both parties? To understand this, I wish to elaborate on one type of double that has been mentioned so far only in passing: the opposite double. The opposite double is not to be confused with the negative double that we encountered in the first two chapters. Let us recall that the negative double has no traits whatsoever, and all it does is challenge the presumed positivity of the protagonist. The Horla is a negative double par excellence, coming to warn the diarist against his illusion of self-​sufficiency. The shadow in Andersen’s tale is also a negative double, but it gradually

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  173 becomes a positive one, emptying out the learned man of his human characteristics and turning him into a negative double: so negative that he had to be completely annihilated. The opposite double, on the other hand, has traits of its own, but these always stand in contrast and comparison to those of another entity. The two actually secretly share a fundamental quality that one of them, the presumed “original,” judges to be undesirable and therefore projects upon the other, thus constituting this Other as its opposite double. This projection aims to get rid of the unwanted quality, but this quality is often only imaginary and fantasized, such that it cannot simply be removed. As a result, the “original” becomes obsessed with it, saying repeatedly to its double, “it’s not me, it’s you.” This insistence, however, only proves that the former is no less “to blame” than the latter. A flagrant example of the opposite double is given in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).1 It is no surprise that this work was considered scandalous at the time, being accused of exhibiting a corrupt and decadent morality. It is as if the novel itself, together with its author, became the opposite doubles of “decent” Victorian society. The Victorians read it with great avidity while simultaneously condemning it, as if to purify themselves from their very own “immoral” deeds. What is it in Dorian Gray that incited such reactions? When the handsome Dorian sees his portrait painted to a marvel by a friend, he is astonished. Rather than being content with his reflected beauty, Dorian envies the painting since it will remain beautiful forever, whereas he will grow old and eventually lose his charm. He thus wishes the painting to grow old instead of him, a wish that is miraculously fulfilled. At first Dorian is thrilled with his unexpected luck, but a strange anxiety soon befalls him, and he becomes obsessed with the changes in the painting. He wishes, time and again, to see his “real” self rather than his unchanging, beautiful, yet deceptive appearance. Interestingly, the changes in the painting do not reflect his aging so much as his moral corruption, which gradually grows to monstrous dimensions. To counterbalance these changes, Dorian becomes very attached to his reflection in the mirror, falling in love with it precisely as Narcissus did with

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174  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” his reflection in the lake. The important thing for our purposes, however, is that although the painting and Dorian are at first identical, they gradually drift apart from each other, finally becoming complete opposites. The ugly and corrupt portrait is the opposite double of the handsome and innocent-​looking Dorian –​but who is the original in this case? After all, the portrait is far more authentic than Dorian himself, showing his inner nature, and it is precisely for this reason that it provokes in him extreme feelings of aggressiveness. Dorian moreover has two doubles: an identical yet false one in the mirror, at which he stares with admiration, and an opposite double in the picture, at which he looks with fascinated horror. These two doubles are in fact two poles between which each one of us moves: an idealized self and a monstrous self, yet none is truer than the other. As we saw with Lacan’s mirror stage, the idealized double is an inherent narcissistic element that can never vanish completely. The opposite double results from the tyrannical regime of the ideal double and is composed of all the traits that contrast and threaten this ideal. As such, it, too, cannot simply vanish. At the end of the novel, Dorian decides to get rid of his opposite double. He violently stabs the portrait, only to find out, like the protagonists of most nineteenth-​century doppelgänger tales, that it is he himself whom he has destroyed. When the servants enter his room, they find a dead body they do not recognize: Dorian had taken on the figure of the monstrous old man from the painting, whereas the latter had become beautiful again. The story thus reveals that the double does not necessarily have to be physically identical or even similar to its “origin”; it suffices that the two maintain a certain link, a common ground which can sometimes take the appearance of an opposition. The opposition is created only because of the too-​strong identification with the idealized double, the perfect mirror image which hides all the flaws, deficiencies, and chaos that are part of being human. This idealized image is often considered the “original,” but it is actually nothing but another double, whose origin does not exist. Rather than looking for an original, one needs to cope with these various doubles to open up to the multiplicity that underlies human existence.

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  175 Where do we find the opposite double in “real life”? On the personal level, the opposite double appears in what we sometimes call our nemesis, chosen precisely because of his or her similarity to us. As a matter of fact, we constitute this opposite double when we project upon someone something that is too unbearable for us. We repeatedly say, “it’s not me, it’s you,” but we secretly know that this is not the case. Such denial and projection may cause conflicts and misunderstandings, but whereas on the personal level there would be someone there to respond and say, “no, it’s not (only) me, it’s (also) you,” on the collective level things become more complicated. Here we no longer deal with personal conflicts but with hatred between groups of people, hatred that sometimes leads to racism and in extreme cases genocide.

The Semite and the Anti-​Semite as Doubles To better understand this, let us turn to a striking analysis of the opposite double by Sartre, given in his essay Anti-​Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate.2 Sartre wrote this essay in 1944, immediately upon the liberation of Paris, and before the extent of the extermination of Jews became known. Consequently, he presents the Jew less as a victim than as an active agent in a game: the game of doubles. Two other agents equally play in this game: the anti-​Semite and what Sartre calls “the democrat.” “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-​Semite would invent him.”3 This is Sartre’s provocative affirmation, which challenges the common view of the Jew as a mere obstacle in the eyes of the anti-​Semite. Drawing on his existential theory, he argues that the Jew is a crucial element in the anti-​Semite’s identity. Every identity and essence are empty to begin with, and the anti-​Semite attempts to escape this truth together with the burdening need to constantly shape and reshape one’s identity. Anti-​Semitism is therefore not a rational belief or something that one can argue against to convince the anti-​Semite of her mistake. Rather, it is a passion,4 that is, an affective attitude that protects one against one’s inner void. Since existence precedes essence, identity is never natural or full, and rather than admitting this negativity,

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176  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” the anti-​Semite chooses to project it upon the Jew, who paradoxically guarantees in this way the anti-​Semite’s wholeness and stability. Although Sartre does not use this term, it is clear that the Jew stands as the opposite double of the anti-​Semite, allowing the latter to feel herself “authentic.” The anti-​Semite will always be the “original,” and therefore, even if she is poor and marginal, she can feel superior and aristocratic with regard to the inferior Jew.5 But as in the case of Dorian Gray, the anti-​Semite secretly feels not only that the Jew is not so different from her but also that he holds her secret. Indeed, the Jew is often depicted by anti-​Semites as bearing extreme and unmistakable traits, but the purpose of these stereotypes is precisely to distinguish and contrast the Jew with the anti-​Semite. That a Jew can pass for an Aryan was an unbearable truth for the Nazis precisely because this would make the Jew too close to what he really was: their double. The Nazis looked with admiration into their mirrors and with horror at the Jews, but the temptation to kill the latter soon led to self-​destruction. The demonization of Jews (as well as gays, Romanies, the disabled, and other “dangerous” minorities)6 is nothing but a confirmation of this minority’s position as a double. Sartre never says why the Jews are the group chosen as an object of passion, but if we combine his insights with the notion of the opposite double, we can say that it is the multiple and unclear origin of the Jews that makes them an easy target. The diasporic Jew belongs to more than one identity or nation, in a somewhat similar way to today’s Muslims living in the West. The Jew incarnates a multiplicity, which threatens the anti-​Semite, unsure of her own identity. Multiplicity is always related to negativity: the possibility of not being only this or that. And this possibility, which is part of what it is to be human, is rejected by the anti-​Semite without making it disappear completely: the Jew must both disappear and remain precisely as that which should disappear, which makes anti-​Semitism a paradoxical attitude. It sets itself a goal that can be achieved only at the price of self-​ destruction, the price paid by Dorian Gray and so many other pretentious “originals.”

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  177 If all this is true regarding the anti-​Semite, what can be said about the democrat, whose equivalent today would be the humanist liberal? Surprisingly, according to Sartre, the democrat, too, wishes to annihilate the Jew. The democrat sees only the universal aspect of human beings and not their particularity. In this sense, for the democrat, everyone is a double, but lacking an original or distinction, and thereby the human need to differentiate oneself and belong to a group is denied.7 This endeavor should not be confused with Agamben’s idea of the “coming community,” since the latter admits differences, although subjecting them to the common “suchness” of the community members. The democrat, on the other hand, wishes to achieve a universal identity and a homogeneous society that hides the particular differences of its members. To take one step beyond Sartre, we should note that this attitude is often held by the privileged classes, who are ignorant of the reassuring aspects of clinging to a stable identity. The democrat’s ideal of a universal identity relies on social, economic, and cultural stability, and the question is, first, how to access such an identity when such stability no longer exists and, second, how to transform homogeneous universality into multiplicity. This is why Sartre finally turns to the Jew, who stands between these two extremes of a too-​rigid identity (national particularism) and an apparent lack of identity (liberal universalism). The Jew knows the secret of the double, and by entering into his or her head one can therefore find answers to the crucial question of individual and group identity.8 According to Sartre, as we saw in Chapter 2, one faces the gaze of the Other as one’s truth, since it is only the Other who can constitute one as a being-​in-​itself.9 The Jew, however, complicates this situation, since she incarnates “a doubling of the fundamental relationship with the Other.”10 The Jew is looked at: first as a human being and then as a Jew, and in both cases she serves as a model for comparison, counteridentification, jealousy, and hatred. Like everyone else, as a child the Jew passes through the mirror stage, identifying with her double. But the Jew is later forced to pass through a second mirror stage. In the first, she sees herself through the eyes of the Other and in this way acquires a solid-​enough identity. In the second mirror stage, she takes upon

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178  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” herself another external identity –​no longer as a human being but as a Jew. Indeed, the mirror stage is only the first identification of the child, preceding a chain of identifications that characterize her from then onward. However, these identifications are normally hidden or taken as “natural.” It is only when one belongs to a minority that the artificial aspect of identification is revealed. This might seem like a drawback, making the Jew an eternal victim; but it is actually also an advantage, giving the Jew the secret of the double, which can open her up to the secret of multiplicity. Whereas in the first mirror stage as a child it is my gaze that seems to launch the process, making me believe I am the master of my image, in the second mirror stage the gaze of the Other upon me is clearly revealed. I  am initially tempted to reject this gaze, but if I manage to take a further step, I may understand not only my dependency upon this gaze but also, and especially, its dependency upon me. For I am not only an Other but also a double: someone through whom the Other defines itself.11 Rather than using this knowledge to bypass the narcissistic clinging to the mirror image and see the truth behind it, the Jew, according to Sartre, tends to “purify” herself from the second mirror stage and cling only to the first. She thus projects her unflattering image onto other Jews: the “inferior” double looks for doubles even more inferior than itself, in a peculiar victim–​ perpetrator dynamic. In this way, however, the Jew becomes nothing but an anti-​Semite: “Each Jewish trait he detects is like a dagger thrust, for it seems to him that he finds it in himself, but out of reach, objective, incurable, and published to the world.”12 This description powerfully illustrates how the Jew sees other Jews as her doubles, thus assuming the position of the anti-​ Semite, who hates the Jews precisely because he secretly feels they resemble him. But the Jew cannot really deny her resemblance to her despised doubles, since they are too similar to her. She therefore needs to find another category within Jewishness –​ for example, gender, ethnicity (Ashkenazi, Mizrahi), or social status –​to denigrate.13 Admitting one’s status as a double is a task too difficult to achieve, and Sartre claims that many Jews

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  179 choose an “inauthentic” existence, escaping their situation as Jews.14 The Jew, as a double, could have found the right mediation between harsh particularism (the anti-​Semite) and blind universalism (the democrat). But the temptation to escape the truth of the double is too strong: the Jew is, after all, human, all too human. Sartre’s view is thus pessimistic: rather than reclaim her identity, the Jew, as a despised minority, as an opposite double, finally does nothing but find other opposite doubles among Jews. If we broaden the discussion and see the Jews as a model for other minority groups, we may better understand the problem of contemporary identity politics. Thus, minorities today do reclaim their identities, but this is done by extending or reversing the positions. In the best case the minority group turns to the major group and tells it: “it’s not me, it’s you who is monstrous.” In the worst case, as we saw earlier, it says so to other minority groups which it finds inferior to it. In both cases, however, the game of the opposite doubles is played without acknowledging the interdependency between them. Sartre teaches us that a minority group should not simply reject its status as an opposite double but rather expose its hidden premises. This can be done by acknowledging both the particular qualities of the group and its common ground with others. Yet why is it so difficult to do so?

The Monstrous Double in the Age of Sacrificial Crisis An interesting answer can be found in the work of René Girard, a historian, anthropologist, and literary critic. He suggests that the basic fear of human beings is not to be different from but rather to be equal to each other. Although equality is one of the humanistic ideals of Western society, Girard argues that equality is actually experienced as a threat, since it means that the individual has no value of her own, being identical to all others.15 Girard develops a complex theory of what he calls “mimetic desire,” according to which our initial desire is empty and we desire only on the basis of our identifications with our parents and peers.16 This theory resembles to a large degree Lacan’s mirror stage, but its accent is put on the collective level: “it

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180  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” is not the differences but the loss of them that gives rise to violence and chaos.”17 The group thus needs to find a means to restore differences, and this first and foremost through the act of sacrifice. A  scapegoat, or “surrogate victim,” is chosen and sacrificed by the group to discharge the violence provoked by the threat of equality. The sacrifice is a purifying violence, which is tamed and controlled through the ritual. It is a sort of collective catharsis that permits unanimity without the fear of total equality. This brings us back to the theme of the double: the surrogate victim is often an animal, which represents the group or one of its characteristics. It therefore serves as the double of the group members, combining both positive and negative aspects of the double: it is positive in the sense that it represents the society members, and it is negative in the sense that it is sacrificed. It is a gift given to the gods through a violent act that permits one to accept oneself and others as doubles without the fear of self-​annihilation. Through the act of sacrifice the group achieves what Girard calls “unanimity-​minus-​one,”18 that is, a combination of equality and differences. The “minus-​one” comes from the killing of the double, ensuring a collective identity that nonetheless reserves a place for negativity –​that is, differences. Does this mean that Jews are the surrogate victims of anti-​ Semites? Yes and no. Girard talks of a “sacrificial crisis” in which the victim is perceived as either too remote or too close to the group members. The group members start to sense what is supposed to remain implicit: the fact that they are all doubles of each other. They sacrifice something or someone that is too much of a double or not enough of a double. They therefore need to sacrifice more and more victims to try to purify the ghost of the double, enacting a chain of violence that may lead to the group’s self-​destruction.19 In a desperate attempt to break this dangerous chain, the group often identifies a “monstrous double,” which is supposed to be the source of all violence. The problem is that monsters tend to duplicate themselves, haunting the society in a phenomenon equivalent to hysteria, violently expressing the crisis of differences rather than resolving it.20 Girard does not talk about the present moment, but it is clear that at least since the Romantic era we live in a time of a global

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  181 sacrificial crisis, when the growing individualism encounters diminishing collective mechanisms that would guarantee one’s uniqueness. On this background it is clear that the Jew serves as the monstrous double of the anti-​Semite. Indeed, the Jew is too remote from and too close to the anti-​Semite, and therefore, she provokes an overwhelming anxiety about similitude. The Jew must be sacrificed, but this sacrifice is never enough, since the Jews, that is, the doubles, can never be truly eliminated. The fewer Jews remained in Europe during the Holocaust, the more fear and disgust they provoked in the eyes of the Nazis. The sacrificial crisis was at the heart of the Nazi regime, as it is in any fascist movement. It is therefore likely that if all Jews had been annihilated, another surrogate victim or monstrous double would have been invented, and the chain of violence would have continued. Girard does not propose any way out of the sacrificial crisis. For him, the fact that we are doubles of each other must remain the biggest secret of all, and any evocation of it leads only to further violence. Indeed, he mentions festivals and carnivals as a means to playfully admit the double, using masks and orgiastic elements to discharge the fear of similitude.21 Nevertheless, he does not explain how to use these to constitute a more inclusive society. Girard’s endeavor is more descriptive than prescriptive: for him, Western culture lives in an era of sacrificial crisis, and the researcher can only lament this without proposing solutions, and more than that, any exposure of the crisis would only enhance it. We have seen that for Sartre it is the Jew, as a double, who is summoned to find a solution to the crisis by adopting an intermediary position between particularism and universalism. Where can we find such a Jewish position? Contemporary Israeli Jews, for example, claim, instead, to be the “original,” finding other opposite or monstrous doubles in the figure of the Palestinians. To conclude this epilogue I propose to go further back in history and locate an intermediary position within a Jewish thinker we have already encountered. This, by no surprise, is Freud, who tried throughout his life to maintain the tension between the universal and the particular. Not only did he construct a general theory that he tried to apply to individuals, but also he himself

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182  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” belonged to both the European and the Jewish cultures. As such, he accepted becoming what I  call a lucid hero: a hero who is aware of his being only a double.

Freud and His Doubles: Toward a Lucid Hero Our Western culture prioritizes individualism and uniqueness and leaves no appropriate room for the double. This leads to a fear of similarity, which Girard characterizes as a sacrificial crisis, and the rise of the opposite or monstrous double. The changing social role of the double was briefly described in the first chapter of this book using Otto Rank’s theory, and it is worthwhile recalling it. According to Rank, in ancient cultures the double had guaranteed one’s immortality and love, and it is only in modernity that the double’s role has been inverted, becoming the forerunner of death and failed love. Modernity looks for the individual and unique rather than the similar and common, and hence the double can return only in its monstrous form. Is there a way to change this tendency and rehabilitate the social role of the double? I believe that an answer can be found in Freud, who, as we have already seen, was much concerned with his own doubles.22 Freud aims, on the one hand, to maintain the position of the individual, the subject of psychoanalysis, but on the other hand, he acknowledges the dangers of narcissism that the double comes to expose and accentuate. I propose that it is through the biblical figure of Moses that Freud tries to resolve this tension, conceiving of him as both a hero and a double.23 The hero, by definition, is someone who is unique, brave, and strong: anything but a double. Freud, however, reveals in his analysis of Moses that the hero, too, is nothing but a double: of his parents, his sons, his people, but also all the heroes, of whom he is but one link in a long chain. Moses and Monotheism was the last book Freud published, and many see it as his heritage and will.24 He argues in it that Moses, the father of the Jewish religion, was actually Egyptian and that, moreover, he was not the one who invented monotheism. To succinctly summarize Freud’s thesis, monotheism was introduced by the pharaoh Akhenaten. After his death,

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  183 polytheism was immediately restored, but one of Akhenaten’s followers, a man named Moses, sought to pursue monotheism further. He thus looked for people who would be willing to adopt it and found the Hebrews, who, because of their inferior status, agreed to leave Egypt and follow Moses and his God. Moses, however, was such a tyrannical leader that the Hebrews finally assassinated him and replaced his God with a volcano God named Jehovah. Years passed, and a new, Midianite leader whose name was also Moses was reminded of Moses’s tradition and sought a compromise between Jehovah and the ancient God of Moses. It is this compromise which led to Judaism as we know it today. It is not my intention to accept or reject Freud’s speculative proposal.25 Rather, I would like to point to the fact that although Freud speaks of two figures of Moses and of two Jewish Gods, nowhere in his book does he mention the word “double.” As such, the double is the repressed of the text, which nevertheless constitutes its secret motivation. In what follows I  will try to uncover the double and yet maintain its status as the unexposed. The double is necessarily a secret force, and my challenge, as it has been all along in this book, is to give it its rightful place: neither repressed nor overexposed. The double, as the repressed, returns over and over again in Freud’s text, and its first appearance is in the figure of its father, the thinker who conceived it, namely, Rank. In Freud’s depiction of Moses as a hero he draws on a book Rank published in 1909, entitled The Myth of the Birth of the Hero,26 which examines various mythological heroes, including Moses.27 Freud had previously been very close to Rank, who had been his disciple but who finally rebelled against him. At the end of his life Freud curiously chooses to return to this prodigal son, making an effort, however, to emphasize that it was he himself who incited Rank to write about the hero.28 Freud, so it seems, examines the traits of the hero not only to understand Moses but also and most of all to understand himself as a hero. This hypothesis is more nuanced than it might seem at first sight, since the question of the hero is soon revealed as a conflict between father and son and as a rebellion of the latter against the former. Let us read Freud’s definition of the hero, which

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184  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” he extracts from Rank: “A hero is someone who has had the courage to rebel against his father and has in the end victoriously overcome him.”29 According to Rank, the mythological hero is expelled from his noble home in his childhood and is raised by substitute parents from a lower class. Later, he returns to eliminate and take the place of the father who chased him away, thus regaining his status and proving his real origin. This drama, however, characterizes not just the hero but also each one of us, since as children we all have experienced what Rank and Freud call the “family romance.” The family romance comprises three main phases: the parents first seem perfect to the child; then they disappoint the child and provoke frustration and violence. Finally, to alleviate this tension, the child duplicates the parents in his or her imagination: the actual parents become only pale doubles of the original, lost parents. The child hence aims to overcome the malicious doubles to regain his or her “original” parents –​and in this way to become a hero(ine).30 The myth of the hero thus borrows its materials from the infantile imagination, but the important thing for our purposes is that the double plays a major role in both cases. The double allows us to distinguish between the “real” or “original” parents and the “false” or “derivative” ones. But this distinction itself is already fictitious and a part of a romance. For even when the hero achieves his goal, as presumably Oedipus did, he becomes nothing but the double of his father and follows the same fatal destiny. Although the hero is the prototype of the unique, Rank and Freud discover behind him a chain or a web of doubles. To return to Moses, who is supposed to be an archetypal hero, we can now better understand why Freud elaborates, not on his rebellion against his father,31 but rather on his murder by his sons, that is, his people. If the hero is only a double of his father, this at least has the advantage for the father that his sons, even if they eventually kill him, are nothing but his doubles. I  thus propose that Freud develops the thesis of the double Moses to better understand his own situation at the end of his life, since there were those who sought his death: not only the National Socialists but also his rebellious psychoanalytical sons, such as Rank.

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  185 Let us, then, retrace the chain of doubles as they appear in Moses and Monotheism. At first reading it seems that there is only one original in the book, namely, Moses the Egyptian, and one double, namely, Moses the Midianite. However, Freud affirms that Moses the Egyptian converted to monotheism in the wake of Akhenaten’s reforms, and so, if not a double, he is at least a follower and a son. More than that, Moses repeats not only the deeds of Akhenaten but also those of what Freud calls “the primitive father.” This is the tyrannical leader of the clan whom Freud depicted 25 years earlier in Totem and Taboo. In the same way that this father was assassinated by his sons, who were envious of his almighty power, so the cruel Moses was murdered by his people.32 Moses is therefore both a son and a father, a hero and a leader who is killed by his people and eventually replaced by a new hero, a new Moses. The interesting thing, however, is that his double takes his place and overcomes him just to identify with his heritage: the heritage of the double. Freud, by rewriting the myth of Moses, identifies with him and gradually becomes his double, both as a rebellious son and as a threatened father. Through Moses he tries to understand how to become a hero without being completely annihilated by his sons. His implicit answer lies in the double as an integral dimension of the hero: heroic as Freud might be, he would still remain a double of his father(s), but he would also be doubled by his sons. One can never definitely overcome one’s father, but this is not necessarily a drawback. For even if Freud were finally murdered, he would still survive through his doubles, who would continue his legacy and his dynasty despite their violence against him.33 I hence propose to read Freud’s Moses and Monotheism as dealing with the birth of the individual while introducing into it a dimension of duplication and multiplicity. Already the word “monotheism,” which is at the center of Freud’s book, implies unicity, the belief in one God; it is thus highly curious that the father of monotheism, Moses, is only a double who has doubles of his own. It stems from this that Freud’s endeavor is even greater than we first thought: to introduce not only the double into the individual but also multiplicity into monotheism.

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186  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” Thus, Freud quotes a scholar who claims that Pharaoh Akhenaten “is the first individual in human history.”34 The first thing Akhenaten did when adopting monotheism was to change his name, which had previously been Amenhotep IV. Becoming monotheist, Akhenaten tried to cancel the multiplicity of his dynasty (Amenhotep I, II, III, IV, …) and pretend to be unique and singular: a father but not a son, an original and not a double. This idea of a link between individualism and monotheism and the need to reintroduce multiplicity into them is further supported by Freud’s assertion that monotheism was partly the result of Egypt’s becoming a great empire, with many cultures and gods that needed to be unified under one God. It is tempting to relate this process to the emergence of the child from her primary narcissism. The child realizes that the world is much wider than her own narrow sphere, containing many objects that she still conceives of as a part of herself, her growing empire; but she also begins to sense the danger that these objects may introduce: the danger of the outside. It is in this moment, according to Freud’s later model of narcissism, that the ego is crystallized with clear boundaries between the inside and the outside. The ego becomes unique, but it consequently faces two external dangers that threaten it: death and love. Indeed, Freud wonders why the God of the Dead disappeared in the new monotheistic religion, and why neither Akhenaten nor Moses promised their believers the resurrection of the dead. But Freud’s question is very strange if we recall that he himself has taught us that the unconscious cannot bear the idea of​​ death. If one is unique, then one will necessarily perish: this is the price of individualism. So once there is only one leader without precedents and one God without competition, once there is no longer a place for multiplicity –​death becomes a complete annihilation of the individual. As such it must be repressed and rejected from the new religion. The same goes for love: Moses, the father of monotheism, who does not acknowledge multiplicity or duplication, becomes a loveless and cruel leader, as revealed by the massacre he ordered after the incident of the Golden Calf. As Rank shows, without the double there is no love, since the double is the means to transcend one’s ego and access the Other. It

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  187 is precisely the denial of the double and the consequent lack of love that finally led to the assassination of Moses by the Hebrew people, who could no longer stand his tyranny. Freud thus seeks to resolve the two problems of uniqueness –​ death and love  –​by reintroducing the repressed figure of the double. He thereby reveals the multiplicity behind monotheism and narcissism: the two beliefs in uniqueness. These beliefs are perhaps necessary for the development of societies and individuals, but if they don’t allow any room for the double, monotheism and narcissism soon lead to violence and self-​destruction, as Freud witnessed at the end of his life. Freud therefore retroactively duplicates Moses, as if to restore life and love in what he sees as a deadly and loveless leader who has left his people with a violent heritage. By disclosing to the Jewish people (but also to the Judeo-​Christian European culture) that their supposedly unique origin is actually multiple, he believes they might eventually attain true immortality and love. It seems clear that Freud does not depict the objective history of the Jewish people but the world in which he lived and which he tried to analyze and cure by reintroducing chains of doubles into it. Akhenaten might be the first individual in human history, but it is Freud’s contemporary culture of individualism and cruel monotheism that he addresses. The obstinacy of uniqueness and the secret fear of equality and lack of differences, as Girard shows, were as powerful in the 1930s as they are still today. Freud experienced this situation on the personal, political, but also the professional level: on the personal level he suffered from a malignant disease, with the existential anxiety it brought with it;35 on the political level, he saw how the Nazis took over Germany and then invaded Austria, making him feel like a foreign body in his beloved Vienna, the heart of Europe; and on the professional level, he worried about what would become of psychoanalysis after his death.36 In Moses and Monotheism, he tries to solve a multifold fear of annihilation by embedding Moses, but also himself, in a chain of doubles. He sees how his sons and what he thought were his people and culture come to kill him spiritually or physically; and to defend himself he tries to become a hero, yet one who does not deny his origins as a double. Freud thus aims to become a lucid hero.

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188  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” A hero, as we saw earlier, is “someone who has had the courage to rebel against his father and has in the end victoriously overcome him.” Admittedly, Freud “kills” his own Jewish father by distancing himself from his tradition and presenting Judaism as stemming from Egyptian culture and leading to Christian and European culture. However, it is no coincidence that in the 1930 introduction to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo  –​the book that promoted the thesis of the primitive father’s assassination  –​Freud writes that if someone were to ask him, “ ‘what is there left to you that is Jewish?’ he would reply: ‘A very great deal, and probably its very essence.’ ”37 This “very essence” is at the center of Moses and Monotheism, but it is a hybrid essence: Egyptian, Jewish, and European. In this way Freud, as a lucid hero, not only kills his father but also saves him, becoming his double to protect his heritage precisely by reshaping it retroactively. Freud adapts Judaism to the needs of his time, trying to show Europe that the Jews cannot be exterminated since Moses was only a link in a chain of doubles, like Jesus himself.38 To become a lucid hero, Freud must turn not only to his father but also to his sons. He speaks of his own work (das Werk, like das Kind) as something that is rebelling against him, something that is no longer under his control: an independent child, even a stranger.39 How to face, then, posteriority? Freud, aware of the imminence of his disappearance, addresses his future readers and tells them that even if he is forgotten, one day someone will come across his writings and will know that “there was someone in darker times who thought the same as you!”40 In other words, says Freud: you, the reader, are only my double. Perhaps you or your ancestors have killed me, but this only to guarantee my immortality: as every father, I  am invincible. Even though I am hated in the present, even though I will soon die, I will find love and eternity through you: “you –​hypocrite Reader –​my double –​my brother!”41 Was Freud truly a lucid hero, or have I tried to become his double and introduce this lucidity into him? The double is a savage, uncontrollable force, and the individual, if it wants to live and love, must admit its existence yet never completely possess it. It

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  189 is by addressing myself but also others that I may come to terms with my doubles: others who preceded me and others who will come after me. I started this book with the death of my father, and I end it with the understanding that doubles exist not only in space but also in time: they are our parents and our children, our friends and our foes, inside and outside ourselves. Accepting one’s doubles, however, cannot magically bring love and immortality on either the personal or the collective level, since this acceptance is a painstaking, never-​ending process. For how can one fully acknowledge one’s dependence on others and give up any pretension of uniqueness? It is true that contemporary Western culture does not allow such a radical resignation. Still, with the notion of the lucid hero, I  have tried to delineate a means to embark upon this way toward the double: a way that is not reserved only to literary figures like Lol, Jacques, or Daniel25, and not only to real individuals, but equally has manifestations on the political level. Surely enough, no collective entity would admit that it is a double of another, but collectivities are connected to each other through individuals. If these dared to challenge their own pretensions to being individual, as Freud himself did toward the end of his life, then far from arriving at fascism, we may achieve a society of multiplicity or multitude: a community which is always still to come. Notes 1 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891; London: Dover Publications, 1993). See also Rank, Double, 78. 2 Jean-​Paul Sartre, Anti-​ Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, trans. George J.  Becker (1946; New  York: Schocken Books, 1995). For a recent exhaustive analysis of this text, see Sarah Hammerschlag, The Figural Jew: Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 68–​116. See also Jonathan Judaken, Jean-​Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-​ antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). 3 Sartre, Anti-​Semite and Jew, 8. 4 Ibid., 7. 5 Ibid., 19.

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190  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” 6 As we will soon see with Girard, when a cycle of violence starts, it is very difficult to end it, and indeed, the Nazi violence quickly expanded to include these other minorities. 7 Ibid.,  39–​41. 8 It should be said, however, that this “head” is mostly the product of Sartre’s own imagination. In a certain sense, as Sartre himself later confessed, the Jew he depicted was his own double and mirror image, not only that of the anti-​Semite and the democrat. See Hammerschlag, Figural Jew, 68–​69, as well as Michael Walzer’s preface to the English translation of Anti-​Semite and Jew, v–​xxvi. 9 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 260–​269. 10 Sartre, Anti-​Semite and Jew, 56. 11 Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon show very clearly how men depend on women and white people on black ones, by attributing to them the easy category of the “Other.” My claim is that the true category concealed by the word “Other” is precisely the double. See Beauvoir, Second Sex; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles L. Markmann (1952; London: Pluto Press, 2008). 12 Sartre, Anti-​Semite and Jew, 74. 13 Sartre himself talks about the role of gender within Jewishness, borrowing from Wilhelm Stekel the case of a Jewish husband who is constantly aware and ashamed of the Jewishness of his wife. She therefore finds herself helpless in the face of his scornful gaze, since she can no longer deny her position as a double: As a young girl, she was proud; everybody admired her distinguished and assured manner. Now she trembles all the time for fear of making a mistake; she fears the criticism that she reads in the eyes of her husband…. At the least mishap, he might reproach her with acting Jewish. (Ibid., 75, emphasis in the original) 4 Ibid., 64–​102. 1 15 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 49–​50. 16 Ibid., 169–​190. 17 Ibid., 51. 18 Ibid., 246, 259. 19 Ibid.,  39–​49. 20 Ibid., 160–​ 166. In fact, for Girard, “doubles are always monstrous” (ibid., 162), since they uncover what Kristeva would call one’s abject origin, the lack of differences between me and myself, between me and the Other.

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Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You”  191 21 Ibid., 166–​ 168. See also Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). 22 See Freud, “Uncanny.” 23 Freud’s preoccupation with Moses began very early, when he repeatedly visited Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses at the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. In 1914 he anonymously published a paper on it, as if he had to keep secret his proximity to Moses, his ancestor and double. 24 Sigmund Freud, “Moses and Monotheism” (1939), in Standard Edition, 23:1–​138. 25 See Yosef H.  Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (1995, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Richard J. Bernstein, Freud and the Legacy of Moses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 26 Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth, trans. Gregory C.  Richter and E.  James Lieberman (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). 27 Freud actually made an anonymous contribution of several pages to this text, which were only later published separately under his own name. As in the case of Michelangelo’s sculpture in Rome, this anonymous contribution reveals Freud’s secret interest, if not particularly in Moses at least in the figure of the hero. The most famous hero on which Freud based his sexual theory was the Greek Oedipus, with the Hebrew/​Egyptian Moses waiting until the end of Freud’s life to appear explicitly. 28 Freud, “Moses and Monotheism,” 10. 29 Ibid., 12. 30 Indeed, the figure of the hero for Rank and Freud is always male, addressing the complex relationships between father and son, but I believe that these theories can be applied to other combinations within the family. As we saw in Chapter 3, the mechanisms of mirroring and identification are far from being restricted to a figure from the same sex. 31 Although the biblical Moses rebelled against the pharaoh and not his biological father, Freud explains that the myth underwent too many distortions for us to know who the “real” father was. 32 Ibid., 101. 33 This situation was indeed already presented in Totem and Taboo, with the sons who murdered the primitive father lamenting his

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192  Epilogue: “It’s Not Me, It’s You” loss, interiorizing him in their bodies, and eternalizing him in various ceremonies (Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” 141–​143). 34 Freud, “Moses and Monotheism,” 21. It is highly significant that Freud quotes this in English, as if to say that he is only the double of this quotation’s author, James Henry Breasted. 35 On Freud’s own death anxiety, see Liran Razinsky’s Freud, Psychoanalysis and Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 36 Yerushalmi takes a step further and claims that psychoanalysis is Jewish science, thus linking Freud’s professional and religious identity. See Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses, 96–​100. 37 Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” xv. 38 According to Edward Said, Freud challenged the Eurocentric bias by understanding his Jewish origins as mixed, both European and non-​European. See Edward Said, Freud and the Non-​European (London: Verso, 2003). 39 Freud, “Moses and Monotheism,” 104. 40 Ibid., 56. 41 Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, ed. Marthiel Matthews and Jackson Matthews, trans. Robert Lowell (1857; New  York: New Directions, 1963).

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200 Bibliography Oger, Eric. “The Eternal Return as Crucial Test.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 14 (1977): 13. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New  York: W. W.  Norton & Company, 2005. Paul, Jean. Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces: Or the Married Life, Death, and Wedding of the Advocate of the Poor, Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkäs. Translated by Edward Henry Noel. Boston, MA: James Munroe and Co., 1845. Poe, Edgar Allan. “William Wilson.” In Selected Tales. Edited by David Van Leer, 66–​83. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Rank, Otto. The Double: A Psychoanalytical Study. Translated by Harry Tucker Jr. London: Maresfield Library, 1989. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​ The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Translated by Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Razinsky, Liran. Freud, Psychoanalysis and Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​“ ‘Rien qu’un spectateur’: Image de soi, corporalité et sentiment d’existence dans ‘Le Horla,’ ” Studi francesi 180 LX, 3 (2016): 435–​446. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies. Translated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender. London: Hogarth Press, 1968. Rogers, Robert. A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1970. Rosenfield, Claire. “The Shadow Within: The Conscious and Unconscious Use of the Double.” Daedalus 92, no. 2 (1963): 326–​344. Rosenfeld, Herbert. “A Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts: An Investigation into the Aggressive Aspects of Narcissism.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 52 (1971): 169–​178. Rosset, Clément. The Real and Its Double. Translated by Chris Turner. Chicago, IL: Seagull Books, 2012. Roth, Philip. Operation Shylock: A Confession. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. Translated by Barbara Bray. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Said, Edward. Freud and the Non-​European. London: Verso, 2003. Saramago, Jose. The Double. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2004. Sartre, Jean-​Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.

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Index

abject/​abjection (Kristeva) 7, 75–​76, 79–​80, 109, 116–​118, 144, 152, 158–​161, 166–​167; and desire 77; and Eternal Return 118; fear of the 79; and the il y a 76; and narcissism 159; origin 190n20; and repetition 117, 130–​131n50; and seduction 167; and semiotic 77–​78; see also maternal; semiotic absence 30, 32, 135, 145 accumulation 64, 125, 144, 147, 153; linear 162; see also possession actuality 111, 113–​114, 118–​124, 139, 141, 147, 149, 151–​152, 155–​157, 160, 163, 166; and fantasy 141, 149; and the Idea 114; and possibility 115, 139, 149, 163; and potentiality 110–​111, 114, 118, 155, 170n46; and the real 145–​146; and the self 114; see also possibility; potentiality affirmation 117, 122, 131n54 Agamben, Giorgio 8, 155–​157, 160, 177; The Coming Community 155–​156; see also “suchness”; “whatever” aggression/​aggressiveness 37, 44n24, 150, 174; see also violence Aimée (Lacan) 27–​31, 33, 43n17, 44n25, 44n29, 45n46, 46n47; see also Lacan, Jacques air 11–​13, 15, 20, 24, 41, 47, 52, 73, 163; and death 15; and destruction 15; and soil 13, 163; and wind 15; see also wind Akhenaten (ancient Egyptian pharaoh) 182–​183, 185–​187 alter ago 3, 5, 26; see also ego; image; mirror

alterity 5–​7, 32, 36, 52, 59, 61, 81, 125, 157; inherent 16; and subjectivity 16; see also Other/​ otherness; stranger/​strangeness ancestor 13–​14, 136, 140–​141, 144, 147, 148, 152, 155, 160–​161, 188, 191n23; see also father Andersen, Hans Christian 6, 50, 54, 57, 60, 63–​64, 67, 69, 77, 80, 82n4, 83n6, 91, 95, 97, 101, 105, 109, 114–​115, 117, 137, 157, 172; “Emperor’s New Clothes” 54; see also “The shadow” annihilation 36, 38–​39, 145, 187; of the individual 186; of myself 69; of the other 69; self-​ 19, 36, 180; see also destruction; negativity anonymity 7, 72–​74, 78–​80 Anti-​Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of hate (Sartre) 8, 175–​179 anti-​Semite/​Anti-​Semitism 175–​181, 190n8; see also Sartre, Jean Paul anxiety 14, 17, 30, 39–​40, 70, 107, 138, 173; and breath 14; and choosing 122; death 13, 71, 128n20, 192n35; and guilt, 122–​123; about similitude 181; see also fear; horror Anzieu, Didier 44n25 appearance 52–​57, 64, 68, 71, 78, 173; and emptiness 55; and essence 6, 52, 54–​56, 59; and existence 68; and theory 67; see also seeing/​being-​seen; shame/​ pride archetype 83n6, 153, 156 Aristophanes 144, 146; see also love attraction 29, 34, 40, 122, 135, 137; see also love Aura (Fuentes) 168n8

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Index  203 author 105, 127n8, 135, 173; see also literature; reader; writing autoeroticism 163; see also narcissism baby 22, 28, 31, 39, 76–​77, 150 Bartleby, the Scrivener (Melville) 156 Baudrillard, Jean 8, 43n13, 149–​156; gifts and countergifts 153; “hyperreal” 150; Simulacra and Simulation 150 beauty 51, 54–​55, 77, 173 Beauvoir, Simone de 190n11 becoming 101–​103, 113, 124, 150, 158–​160, 163–​164, 166–​167; versus being 122; a woman 121 Being 71, 74, 143; versus becoming 122; without beings (Levinas) 72; and infinity 74; being-​in-​itself 177; and nothingness 31–​32, 35 Being and Nothingness (Sartre) 68, 190n9 Beiser, Frederick C. 82–​83n5, 83n9, 84n13 Bildungsroman 42, 126n5, 152 body 16, 23, 28, 49, 58, 60, 66, 68, 71, 73, 77, 81, 99, 102, 109, 133, 139, 155; abject 76, 144; afraid of 48; dead 76; and death 154; decline of the 138, 141; as ephemeral 151; feminine 152; forgetting the 154; fragmented 28; imperceptible 19; and love 142; and narcissism 160; neohuman 145; as obstacle 66; and others 74; body’s reflection 28; and repetition 142; and shadow 67, 154; and soul 16, 58, 75; and spirit 153; and world 30; see also flesh; matter boundaries 3, 12, 37, 49, 76, 98; between author, narrator and protagonists 105; between fantasy and reality 146; between the I and the not-​I 3, 7; between inside and outside 3, 17, 30, 116, 186; between intellect and body 49; unclear 31, 79, 167 breath/​breathing 5, 11–​14, 18–​20, 25, 30, 35–​36, 42, 51–​52; and anxiety 14; and desire 20; and the double 21; and ghost 15; between inside and outside 14–​15, 20–​21; between life and death 15, 20–​21; and otherness 16; and writing 21

breathlessness 2, 11–​12, 19–​21, 35; see also lack of air Breton, André 126n8 Buddhism 14 Butler, Judith 84n16, 130n38 Camus, Albert 85n24 cancer 2, 11, 154 capitalism 125, 154; and literature 135 Cech, Jon 83n6 Chamisso, Adelbert von 59, 154 childhood/​children 83n6, 110, 120, 122, 146, 184, 186; as doubles 189; and imagination 106–​107, 184; and repetition 120; and shadow-​existence  129n24 Christianity 9, 34, 187–​188 cinema 43n9, 128n21, 128n22 Cixous, Hélène 129n26 clone 8, 154–​155 collectivity: double in the collective sphere/​level 171–​172, 175, 189; Girard on 179–​180; and individuals 189 Coming Community, The see Agamben, Giorgio community: based on multiplicity and duplicity 157; coming (Agamben) 156–​157, 177, 189; of doubles 155; in Friday 162, 164; of neohumans 143; of strangers 49; of whatever singularities (Agamben) 156 compulsion to repeat (Freud) 100, 119–​121 consciousness 26, 62–​63, 65–​66, 68, 71, 85n20, 130n42; encounter with another 62–​63; limits of 61; pure 68; simple (Hegel) 63; and sleeping 14; split in 60; unhappy (Hegel) 65, 85n17 consumerism 168n12; Western consumer culture 133; consumerist society 125, 148 contact 50, 81, 84n15, 106, 134, 145; bodily 140; intimate 134 control 3, 20–​21, 28, 33, 62, 67, 70, 72, 85n28, 96, 118, 122–​123, 154; loss of 14, 58; and love 92; self-​ 19, 28; see also master/​mastery copy: and clone 154–​155; culture of the 169n18; versus double 93; of the self 3 corpse 76, 79, 118

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204 Index creation: of doubles 81, 105, 108; as feminine act 115; infinite 32; of life 38; personal and universal 59; of the subject 28; and writing 41, 58, 115 culture: ancient cultures 5, 26, 35, 182; Christian and European 182, 187–​188; consumer 133; Egyptian 188; Jewish 182, 187; popular 66; traditional 168n13; Western 181–​182, 189; see also society cybernetics 31 darkness 14, 54, 60, 72, 74, 107, 163–​164; see also night; sleep death/​dead 2, 5–​6, 19–​22, 24, 27, 34–​36, 38, 40–​41, 47–​48, 63, 66, 72, 76, 91, 98–​99, 120, 136, 138, 140, 142, 155, 161, 163, 168n12, 182, 186–​187, 189; and air 15; anxiety 13, 17, 128n20, 192n35; and body 154; acknowledge 153; cycle of rebirths and death 145; and the double 153; fear of 62, 64; and identity 99; inner 49–​50; and irony 111; and life 99, 119, 143; and love 27, 137–​138, 144; and nothing 99; and the Other 154; potential 118; see also death drive; immortality; suicide death drive 8, 22, 27, 36–​40, 120, 158; see also life drive Debord, Guy 169n19 Deleuze, Gilles 8, 104, 122–​125, 132n69, 144, 147, 151, 162, 163, 168n9; innocence 122; “Literature and Life” 132n69 dependence/​dependency 64–​66, 73, 165, 178, 189; inter-​ 4, 8, 9n2, 17, 96, 179; between Lord and Bondsman 63; and love 141–​142; on others 39, 68 Derrida, Jacques 86n42, 191n25 desire 23, 29–​30, 33, 35–​36, 41, 53, 56, 58, 64, 69, 77, 84n16, 85n17, 125, 139, 142, 149; and abjection 77; and breath 20; between consciousnesses 63; and destructiveness 36; for domination 25; graph of 44n34; for the Idea 53; and identification 179; lack/​loss of 20, 143; “mimetic” (Girard) 179; morbid 36; multiplicity of desires 123; of the

Other (Lacan) 29, 35–​36, 85n18; and otherness 29, 63; sensual 56; sexual 54; structure of 20; and symbolic chain 44n34; to become 163; to possess 151; to transcend oneself 172; voyeuristic 67, 100; see also passion destruction/​destructiveness 36, 38–​39; of the body 138–​139; self-​ 39, 176, 180, 187 dialectic of Lord and Bondsman see Hegel, G. W. F. difference: admitting 177; and equality 180; Girard on 179–​180, 187, 190n20; hiding 177; lack/​loss of 180, 187, 190n20; as negativity 180; similarity and 135, 156 disgust 78, 131n54, 140, 160, 164, 181 DNA 140, 154 doppelgänger see double Dostoevsky, Fyodor 82n3 Double, The (Der Doppelgänger) (Rank) 24, 189n1 double, the: in ancient culture 26, 35; and death 5, 12, 26, 153; creating a 59, 81, 108; and emptiness/​void/​nothing 6, 19, 152–​153; external/​outside/​outer 16, 26, 29, 31, 61, 82n3, 103, 121, 148, 171; as a friend or a foe 1, 9, 26, 171; groups as doubles 8–​9, 172; and immortality/​ eternity 9, 12, 26, 81; interior/​ internal/​inside/​inner 5, 6, 16, 26, 31, 41, 61, 82n3, 103, 121, 148, 171, 185; life 15, 54, 90; and literature/​writing 21, 41–​42, 108, 115, 128n21, 130n42, 141, 168n10, 169n25, 188; and love 9, 81, 92, 97–​98, 105, 148, 186; as mediation/​intermediary 4, 6, 61, 62, 172; monstrous 179–​182; 190n20; multiple/​multiplicity of/​ infinite/​chain of/​web of/​array of doubles 4–​5, 7–​8, 44n29, 81, 104–​106, 110, 116, 118, 124–​125, 126n6, 148, 151, 153, 157, 167, 172, 184–​185, 187–​188; narcissistic 22, 122, 124–​125, 134, 157, 160; negative 5, 32–​36, 40–​42, 46n46, 60, 72–​73, 79–​80, 105, 108, 118, 169n25, 170n29, 172–​173, 180; opposite 44n30,

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Index  205 167n1, 172–​176, 179, 181–​182; and the original 2, 29, 51, 81n3, 107, 150–​151, 162; and Other/​ otherness/​alterity 3, 6, 22, 79, 104–​105, 148, 154, 159, 163–​166, 170n46, 171, 178; positive 5, 32–​36, 41, 46n46, 60, 79, 80, 105, 108, 118, 134, 170n29, 173, 180; and repetition 105, 109, 117–​118; single or multiple/​plural 3–​5, 41, 97, 103–​105, 109, 159–​160; three phases in the evolution of (Baudrillard) 153–​154; two forms of (Deleuze) 122 doubling/​duplicating 9, 41, 61–​62, 81, 85n17, 94, 123, 125, 157, 171, 177, 185–​186; diary as self-​41; and love 128n21; with no original 167; and the real 135; and repetition 111; self-​ 6–​7, 41, 81, 105, 116; versus splitting 82n3, 158; and writing/​literature 167 dream 1, 13–​14, 40, 51, 69, 77, 90, 145 drive, death see death drive, life see life Duflos, Huguette see Aimée Duras, Marguerite 7, 88–​89, 91, 95–​97, 102–​103, 105, 116, 125, 126n5, 127n8, 128n21, 129n26, 130n37, 135, 148, 151; India Song 128n21; and Kristeva 127n15; The Lorry (Le camion) 129n27; and shadows 129n27; and traumatic models 126n7; The Vice-​Consul 128n21; see also The Ravishing of Lol Stein dynasty 185–​186 ego 31, 36, 38–​39, 186; formation of the 44n24; “pure pleasure-​ego” 23, 36; skin (Anzieu) 44n25 Eliade, Mircea 43n13, 168n13 emotion 24, 58, 60, 62, 70, 88, 90–​91, 113, 133 “Emperor’s New Clothes” see Andersen emptiness 19, 30–​34, 36, 49, 54–​55, 75, 99, 101, 109–​110, 133, 150–​151; and appearance 55; inner 30, 103; and possibilities 98; self-​ 35; see also negativity; void Enlightenment 59–​61, 79; and Romanticism 82n5

envy 15, 24, 43n17, 56, 140 equality 147, 180, 187; of all things 146; and difference 179–​180; primordial 170n46; as a threat 179 Eros 36, 38, 75 essence 6, 40, 42, 54–​57, 67–​68, 70–​71, 175; versus appearance/​ image 6–​7, 52, 54–​56, 59; existence precedes 175; hybrid 188 Eternal Return (Nietzsche) 8, 102, 104, 115–​121, 123–​124, 131n54, 166; as abject 118; and the compulsion to repeat 119; Deleuze on 122; of the doubles 115; and nausea 117; as repetition in time 118; and shadow-​existence 116 eternity 26, 89, 92, 107, 145, 188; cyclical and nonlinear 143; and love 138; of the Same (Baudrillard) 154; and unicity 153; see also infinity existence: and appearance 68; concrete 104; Existence as evil (Levinas) 74; Existence and existents (Levinas) 72, 157; “inauthentic” 179; and irony 111; isolated 147; negating 123; precedes essence (Sartre) 175 existentialism 27, 175 exteriority 20, 24, 57, 73 externalization 16, 22 fairy tale 50, 92 family romance (Rank and Freud) 184 Fanon, Frantz 190n11 fantasy 32, 35, 41, 48–​49, 58–​59, 62, 72, 92, 103, 134–​135, 137–​138, 142, 146–​147, 149–​150, 152, 166; and actuality 141, 149; annihilate 147; in contemporary Western society 149–​150; destructive 135; frozen 147; and literature 167; of love 166; narcissistic 135; of the real 134–​135, 150; and reality 135–​136, 139, 145–​146, 150; from singular to multiple 147 fascism 181, 189 father 2, 5, 11, 20–​21, 41–​42, 47–​48, 76, 109, 183, 188; double of the 184–​185; kill/​overcome 184–​185, 188; and monotheism 9, 182, 186; primitive (Freud) 185, 188, 191n33; and son 183, 185

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206 Index Faust (Goethe) 25 fear 14, 68, 70, 71, 181; of the abject 79; of actuality 110; of endless existence 71; of the outside 108; see also anxiety; horror femininity 75, 104, 109; feminization 112, 130n38; as inherently double 84n15; Levinas on 75; simulacrum of 156 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 61, 83n10 Fight Club (Palahniuk) 168n12 film 5, 24–​25, 43n9, 48, 128n15, 134, 146 flesh 68, 74, 158; abject 160; naked 117; see also body forgetting 92, 118, 122; death 99 Foucault, Michel 129n26 fragmentation 31–​33; self-​ 32–​33, 36, 41; see also split/​splitting Frank, Manfred 84n13 free will 122–​125 freedom 52, 64, 73; and irony 111; Other’s 69 Freud, Sigmund 6, 8–​9, 18, 22–​25, 28, 30, 36–​39, 44n32, 45n37, 108, 119–​121, 131n56, 158, 181–​189; “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” 119; crystal principle 28; doubling/​dividing/​interchanging of the self 45n37; fort-​da game 120, 143, 153; and hypnosis 16–​17; and Kierkegaard 132n60; Totem and Taboo 185, 188, 191n33; “The Uncanny” 37–​38 Friday (Tournier) 8, 160–​167 Friedrich, Caspar David 62 Fuentes, Carlos 168n8 gaze 6, 28, 39, 47, 50, 53, 55–​56, 58, 60, 66, 68, 95–​96, 100–​101, 111, 126n3, 133–​135, 178, 190n13; active 69; intimate 147; the Other’s 6, 53, 68–​70, 177; participative 101; secret of the 55; and touch 129n26 gender 178; and the figure of the double 126n5; and Jewishness 190n13; and Levinas 86n42; performativity (Butler) 130n38; politics 127n8 Genesis 38 German Idealism 61–​62, 83n9, 84n13; see also universality/​ universalism

ghost 15–​16, 19, 21, 35; of the double 180; see also phantom Gide, André 95 Girard, René 8, 179–​182, 187; “mimetic desire” 179; scapegoat 180; surrogate victim 8, 180–​181; “unanimity-​minus-​one”  180 God 114, 144, 165, 180, 185, 183, 186; see also monotheism; religion Goodman, Charlotte 126n5 Guattari, Félix 124–​125 guilt 26, 36, 122–​123 hallucination 72, 77–​78, 109, 161; see also illusion hatred/​hate 24, 27, 39, 40, 69, 175, 177; self-​ 39; see also hostility Hebrew: language 15, 75; people 9, 183, 187–​188; see also Judaism/​ Jewishness; Israel Hegel, G. W. F. 6, 60–​66, 70, 80, 84n16, 85n17, 85n20, 161; dialectic of Lord and Bondsman 6, 60–​66, 85n17; struggle for life and death 62–​63, 65–​66 Heidegger, Martin 50, 128n20 hero 184–​185, 188; chain of heroes 182; lucid 182, 187–​189; as male 191n30 history 172, 187; and irony 111, 124 Hitchcock, Alfred 128n15 Hoffmann, E. T. A. 45n37, 81n3, 82n4, 126n6 “The Horla” (Maupassant) 5, 12–​42, 44n25, 51, 59, 72 horror 60, 101, 174, 176; see also anxiety; fear hostility 23, 27, 37, 39, 135, 150, 172; see also hatred/​hate Houellebecq, Michel 8, 135, 148, 151, 154, 167n1, 168n4; Lanzarote 168n4; see also The Possibility of an Island Husserl, Edmund 50, 129n34; epoché 129n34 hypnosis 16, 30, 117 id 38–​39 Idea 53–​54, 104, 121, 134; and actuality 114; and concrete existence (Kierkegaard) 104; versus Image and Appearance 54; Platonic 114, 168n9

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Index  207 ideal 27–​28, 30, 33, 35–​36, 40, 60, 62, 77, 104, 108; partial 60 Idealism see German Idealism identification 28–​29, 31, 33, 36, 62, 96–​97, 101, 112, 119, 135, 150, 153, 164, 171, 174, 178, 191n30; chain of identifications 178; counter-​ 177; and desire 179; with the double 177 identity 2, 12, 30, 34, 37, 57, 72, 96, 98–​99, 101–​102, 147, 150, 175–​177, 179; collective/​group/​ social 172, 177, 180; and death 99; and double 29, 81; external 178; flow between identities 172; holistic 33; identity politics 8, 171–​172, 179; and love 97; of minorities 179; multiple 3, 7; and otherness 85n17; play with identities 130n38; self-​ 3, 29, 60; stable/​solid/​static/​nominal 28, 32, 99, 150, 177; universal 177; unstable 17; and void 19; see also individual; personality; self, the; subject/​subjectivity il y a (Levinas) 7, 71–​72, 73–​76, 79, 80, 109, 157, 159, 161, 164; and the abject 76; and the Other 78 illness 13, 15, 24, 56, 65, 101, 117 illusion 31, 114; of grandeur 105; of self-​sufficiency 172; see also hallucination image 22, 27–​28, 30–​32, 37, 52–​55, 58, 60, 67, 71, 78, 106, 134, 149, 150, 155–​156, 178; external 30–​31, 35–​37; versus Idea and Essence 7, 54; narcissistic 30, 32; self-​ 22, 25, 32–​34, 53, 108, 122, 157; see also mirror imaginary order (Lacan) 31–​34, 36, 40–​41, 44n30, 85n17, 149–​150, 168n8 imitation 103, 120, 135, 150 immortality 9, 35, 71, 140, 182, 187–​189; see also death impulse 48, 58, 77, 88; destructive 36 incarnation 26, 136–​138, 140–​141, 143 indifference 48, 50, 56, 66, 69, 138 individual 9, 57, 76, 85, 128n19, 156, 177, 179, 181, 187: and abject 76; and death 186; and the double 185, 188; the first 186–​187; in modernity 182; the multitude in 97; in psychoanalysis

182; as a shadow 106; and social/​ collective 171–​172, 189; see also identity; personality; self, the; subject/​subjectivity individualism/​individuality 35, 143–​144, 156–​157, 160, 181–​182, 187; culture of 125; and monotheism 186 infinity 31–​32, 71, 74, 79–​81, 93, 97–​98, 102, 164–​165; “bad” and “good” 74–​76, 79, 86n41, 159; of the Other 74, 103, 159; of personalities 107; of Poetry 78; of possibilities 111; the two infinities (Levinas) 78; of women/​men 102; see also eternity interdependency/​interdependence see dependence/​dependency intimacy 61, 70, 94, 133–​134; see also love introjection 12, 23, 40 inversion: between Lord and Bondsman 63–​64; between man and shadow 56, 65–​66; see also transformation invisibility 11–​12, 14–​15, 18, 21, 34, 52 Irigaray, Luce 84n15, 86n42 irony (Kierkegaard) 111–​115, 124, 149; as “divine madness” 129n35 isolation 48, 131n50, 163; see also loneliness Israel 8, 172, 181; see also Hebrew; Judaism/​Jewishness Jehovah 183 Jesus 188 Job (biblical figure) 114 Jonah (biblical figure) 109 Judaism/​Jewishness 9, 172, 175, 177–​179, 183, 188, 190n13; and multiplicity 176, 178; as opposite double 175–​176; as a surrogate victim 180; see also Hebrew; Israel Jung, Carl Gustav 83n6 Jupiter 165 Kafka, Franz 125 Kant, Immanuel 61; “thing-​in-​ itself” 61 Keppler, Carl F. 9n2, 9n3, 42, 169n25; Literature of the Second Self 42, 169n25

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208 Index Kierkegaard, Søren 7, 84n13, 104–​117, 121, 124–​125, 127n11, 127n12, 127n13, 128n15, 129n35, 130–​131n50, 147, 149, 151, 159; Concept of Irony 129n35; Either/​Or 127n12, 127n13; Fear and Trembling 127n13; and Freud 132n60 Kittler, Friedrich 43n9 Klein, Melanie 6, 27, 39–​40, 168n7; fusion 40; “paranoid-​schizoid position” 39 knowledge 49–​50, 53, 77, 80; absolute (German Idealism) 62 Kojève, Alexandre 85n17 Kristeva, Julia 7, 61, 71, 75–​80, 118, 157–​158, 168n7, 190n20; and Duras 127n15; and Levinas 78, 86n49; Powers of Horror 75; Tales of Love 169n26; see also abject/​abjection; maternal; semiotic La jetée (Marker) 134 Lacan, Jacques 6, 27–​32, 36, 38, 40, 44n24, 44n34, 45n46, 76, 85n17, 86n29, 107, 126n3, 149–​150, 158, 170n28, 174, 179; “the chain of dead desire” 35; “paranoiac knowledge” 27–​28; recognition (reconnaissance) and misrecognition (méconnaissance) 29; “the subject” 31 lack 31, 63, 93; of air 2, 5; of desire 143 language 33, 41, 69, 70, 89, 156; and the double 168n10; and semiotic 77; see also symbolic law 76–​77 Le Guin, Ursula 83n6 Levinas, Emmanuel 7, 61, 71–​76, 78, 80, 87n53, 103, 157, 159, 170n32; criticism of 75; hypostasis 73–​74, 78, 86n31; insomnia 71–​72; and gender 86n42; and Kristeva 78, 86n49; and Merleau-​Ponty 74; “On Escape” 74; phenomenon of the caress 75; “tragic solitude” 74 libido 6, 38–​39, 48; see also desire life drive (Freud) 36, 38; see also death drive light 54, 59–​60, 62–​63, 69, 71, 77–​78; and infinity 75; and

negative double 72; Poetry’s (“The Shadow”) 51, 54, 58, 63; and shadow 66; sunlight 51, 54, 58, 63, 67, 142 limit/​limitation 7, 19, 34, 61, 63, 74, 76, 78 literature 6, 41, 49, 53, 115, 167; and capitalism 135; doubling of 167; French 135; and life 115, 125; and multiplication 125; nineteenth-​century/​Romantic/​ Gothic 1, 3, 12, 30, 43n9, 59, 81n3, 82n4, 97, 126n6, 148; and otherness/​others 115, 167; postmodern 168n10; and psychoanalysis 43n9; and shadow-​ existence 115; as a simulacrum and fantasy 167; therapeutic force of 132n69; twentieth-​century and contemporary 82n3; see also narrative; reading; writing Literature of the Second Self see Keppler, Carl F. logic 34, 44n32, 77; see also rationalism/​rationality; science loneliness 17, 48, 74; see also isolation; Levinas, Emmanuel loss 59, 110, 114, 160 love 7–​8, 22–​27, 38–​40, 55–​56, 69–​71, 73, 88–​92, 94, 96–​100, 102–​103, 105–​106, 108, 113–​115, 121–​122, 127n11, 127n13, 135, 137–​149, 156, 158–​161, 163, 166–​167, 182, 186–​189; accumulative 147; “anaclitic” (Freud) 169n27; Aristophanes’s myth of 144; and the compulsion to repeat 120; and death 27, 137–​138, 144; and double 81, 92, 97–​98, 105, 108, 128n21, 148, 158, 186; eternal 94, 138, 141; and Eternal Return 121; falling in 56–​57, 89, 101, 104–​105, 110, 138, 141, 151, 168n8, 173; inability to 8, 22, 70, 105, 140; and irony 111, 149; making 100, 112, 162–​163; and multiplicity 104; narcissistic 131n56, 158; and negativity/​ nothingness 100, 103, 152; and possession/​ownership/​control 92, 100, 140, 147; and possibilities 98; and recollection 111; and repetition 104, 108, 112; self-​ 6,

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Index  209 22, 25, 38–​39; triangle 100, 158; see also intimacy; sex lucid hero 182, 187–​189 Madame Bovary (Flaubert) 167 madness 7, 34–​35, 79, 99–​102, 112, 116, 126n8, 148, 159, 161; female 126n8; and irony 129n35 main shoot (Kierkegaard) 104, 106–​112, 114, 116, 121–​124, 147–​149, 151–​152, 159, 162, 165–​167; see also actuality; possibility; potentiality; shadow-​existence Man, Paul de 127n13 Marker, Chris 134 master/​mastery 53–​54, 56–​57, 63, 160–​162; see also control materiality 56–​58, 63, 73, 75, 79, 80; see also matter maternal (Kristeva) 76–​77, 109, 161, 163; see also mother; semiotic; womb matter 53, 64–​66, 73, 75–​76, 81; see also body; flesh Maupassant, Guy de 5, 12, 21, 26, 30, 32, 36–​37, 42, 42n2, 51, 58, 73, 80, 97, 105, 118, 123, 157; see also “The Horla” melancholy 106, 110–​111, 128n15 memory see recollection Menninghaus, Winfried 131n54 Merleau-​Ponty, Maurice  50, 74 Michelangelo 191n23, 191n27 minority 178–​179, 190n6; and double 176; and major groups 179 mirror 17–​19, 25, 28–​31, 35, 37, 40, 157–​159, 173–​174, 176; image 6, 12, 18, 25, 28–​37, 39, 41, 44n30, 82n4, 149–​150, 157, 159, 174, 178; stage 27–​29, 31, 35–​38, 44n24, 85n17, 107, 149–​150, 159, 168n7, 174, 177–​179; see also reflection modernity 35, 154, 182; see also culture; society monotheism 9, 182, 185–​187; and individualism 186; and multiplicity 185; see also God; religion Montaigne, Michel de 169n23 Moses and Monotheism (Freud) 9, 182, 185, 187–​188

mother 76, 120, 127n15, 161, 165; see also maternal; semiotic; womb mourning 48, 93, 103, 120 movement of signification (Lacan) 31–​32 multiplicity 3–​4, 8, 9n2, 41, 93, 97, 102–​106, 114, 122–​125, 139–​140, 147–​148, 150–​151, 158, 165, 171, 174, 176–​178, 185–​187, 189; concentrated 139; of doubles 44n29, 106, 157; of language 33; and possibilities 109, 123, 165; and singularity/​unicity/​unity 3, 97, 103, 122, 151; and the subject 4, 97, 125; and theater 106–​107; see also plurality multitude see multiplicity music 51, 78 myth: of the hero 183–​184; of love (Aristophanes) 144; of Moses 185, 191n31; of Narcissus (Ovid) 22 Nabokov, Vladimir 82n3 Nadja (Breton) 126n8 nakedness/​nudity 53–​54, 64 Nancy School 16, 34 narcissism 6–​8, 17, 22, 25–​27, 29, 30–​32, 35, 37–​39, 41–​42, 42n3, 45n37, 51, 59, 60, 101, 105, 108, 112, 115, 122, 125, 135, 157–​160, 163, 171, 174, 178, 182, 186–​187; culture of 125; primary 22–​24, 27, 30, 36, 38, 45n37, 186; secondary 38; superficial and profound 159; see also self, the Narcissus 6, 22, 29, 158, 173 narrative/​narration 96, 108 narrator 96, 105–​106, 109, 112–​115, 169n25 Nature 15, 34, 61, 113, 160; as opposed to the “self” (Schelling) 83n10 nausea (Ekel) 116–​117, 121 Nazism 176, 181, 184, 187 negative double see double negativity 31–​32, 34, 36–​38, 40, 45n36, 111–​112, 115, 123–​124, 129n34, 145, 152–​155, 157, 160, 162, 168n12, 175, 180; ironic 111, 113; and multiplicity 125, 176; and positivity 143; in repetition 120; see also nothingness Neverending Story, The (Ende) 146

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210 Index Nietzsche, Friedrich 8, 104, 115–​ 119, 121, 125, 149, 151; “abysmal thought” 116; Gay Science 117, 120; Thus Spoke Zarathustra 116 night 50–​52, 64, 69, 72, 78; see also darkness; sleep nightmare 13, 72 nihilism 123–​124, 149 nostalgia 110–​111 nothing/​nothingness 35–​37, 40, 99, 102–​103, 145–​146, 151, 155; and being 31–​32; and love 100, 103; as ravishing 103; see also negativity; emptiness not-​I 12, 14, 118, 148; “not-​I” (German Idealism) 83n10, 61 Nouveau Roman 89 observation/​observer 112–​115, 149; ironic 114; see also seeing/​being-​ seen; sight; spectator; voyeurism obsession 51, 58, 77, 79, 173 Odyssey/​Odysseus  71, 79 Oedipus 184, 191n27 one, the: and the many 97–​98, 103–​104, 122; see also multiplicity Origin of the World (Courbet) 75 origin/​original 29, 77, 151, 173–​174; absent 2; and the double 3–​4, 29, 51, 81n3, 97, 107, 124, 148, 162; and femininity 75; multiple 176, 187; and shadow 56; unknown 14 Other/​otherness 3, 5–​8, 16, 20, 22, 24–​26, 28–​29, 35–​37, 48, 51–​52, 54–​56, 58, 61, 63–​64, 67–​71, 75–​76, 79–​81, 84n15, 103, 108, 115, 118, 147, 149, 152, 158–​161, 163, 165–​167, 170n46, 172–​173, 177, 186, 190n11; concrete 165, 167, 170n28; and death 154; desire of 29, 35, 63; and double 6, 8, 79, 104, 159, 163–​166, 170n46, 178; the face of the (Levinas) 74, 78; the gaze of the (Sartre) 70, 177–​178; and identity 85n17; and il y a (Levinas) 78; inner 32, 159, 163; infinity of the 74, 103, 159, 165; and literature 115, 167; and multiplicity 165; the Other (German Idealism) 61; “the structure of the other” (Deleuze) 162; see also alterity; stranger/​ strangeness Overman (Nietzsche) 119–​120 Ovid 22

painting 62, 173–​174 Palahniuk, Chuck 82n3, 168n12 Palestine 8, 172, 181 paranoia 27–​29 “paranoid-​schizoid position” see Klein, Melanie particularism: and universalism 58–​59, 71, 177, 179, 181; see also individual; individualism/​ individuality; German Idealism; universalism passion 48–​50, 88, 106, 133, 149, 175, 176; see also desire passivity 11–​12, 51–​52, 69–​70, 72, 91; and activity 69 past: loss of the 111; happiness of the 106; and possibilities 111; and present 105–​106, 107; and shadow-​existence  110 pathology 28, 39, 100 Paul, Jean 81n3 personality 106, 113, 144, 151; dark aspects of 83n6; infinite personalities 107; internal and external 107; see also identity; individual; self, the; subject/​ subjectivity Peter Schlemihl (Chamisso) 59–​60, 66, 82n4, 154; and The Shadow (Andersen) 82n4 phantom 16, 168n8; see also ghost Phenomenology 4 philosophy 5, 34, 49, 53, 60–​61, 74, 124, 155 photo/​photography 2, 17, 30, 37, 168 Picture of Dorian Gray, The see Wilde, Oscar Plato 53, 54, 114, 144, 168n9; allegory of the cave 54; Republic, The 53; Symposium 144 pleasure 23, 94, 101, 131n54, 138, 157, 159; principle (Freud) 22–​23, 119; “pure pleasure-​ego” see ego plurality 105, 121; see also multiplicity Poe, Edgar Allan 81n3 poem 77, 143–​144, 155; love 137, 142 Poetry 6–​7, 49, 52–​54, 57–​59, 61, 63, 65, 70–​72, 75, 77–​81, 85n17, 109, 115 positivity 34, 172; false 154; and negativity 143

12

Index  211 possession 95, 97, 125, 143, 147, 151, 165–​166, 188; and love 92, 140; versus participation 100; see also accumulation Possibility of an Island, The (Houellebecq) 8, 135–​167 possibility 7, 93, 98, 106–​108, 113, 118, 120, 124, 142–​143, 152, 155, 162, 165; and actuality 115, 149, 163; actualization of 7, 107, 118; and emptiness 98, 128n20; equality of possibilities 122; Heidegger on 128n20; and love 98; multiple/​infinite 109, 111, 119, 123–​124, 139; realm/​set/​ field of possibilities 111, 114, 118, 128n20, 147, 163, 165–​167; see also actuality; main shoot; potentiality; shadow-​existence Postmodernism/​postmodernity 5, 125, 172 Post-​structuralism  4 potentiality 59, 119–​121, 123–​124, 139, 147–​148, 151, 155–​156; and actuality 108, 110–​111, 114, 118, 155, 170n46; field of 149; negative 157, 160, 165; positive 157; see also actuality; main shoot; possibility; shadow-​existence potlatch 153, 162 presence 31, 34, 51, 59; of the real 138 present (time) 73, 105–​107, 111, 113; as actualization of possibilities 118; as doubling and repetition 111; and irony 111; and repetition 110 pride (Sartre) 67; see also shame/​pride primal scene 89, 102, 134 primary narcissism see narcissism “primitive father” see father projection 12, 16, 23–​24, 26, 31, 33–​35, 39–​41, 57, 60, 65, 149, 158, 171, 173, 175–​176, 178; and shadow 67; narcissistic 33; visual 66 pseudonym 27, 105 psyche 38–​39, 45n37 Psychoanalysis 4, 6, 22, 28, 38, 40, 41, 43n9, 75–​76, 182, 184, 187; as Jewish science 192n36; and literature 43n9

Rank, Otto 6, 9n3, 24–​27, 29–​31, 35–​36, 38, 108, 153, 182–​184, 186, 189n1; Myth of the Birth of the Hero (Rank) 183 rationalism/​rationality 34–​35, 59–​60; see also logic; science Ravishing of Lol Stein, The (Duras) 7, 88–​126 Razinsky, Liran 44n25 reactivity 55, 123–​124 reader 42, 80, 96, 115, 141, 145–​146, 152, 188; as double 188 reading 103, 136, 146; and writing 168n8; see also literature; writing real, the 136–​138, 143, 145–​147, 152, 155; and doubling 135; fantasized 150; “hyperreal” see Baudrillard; Idea of 134; and love 137; as opposite to reality 134–​135; and simulacra 150 reality 40, 51, 55–​56, 77, 137–​138, 143–​144; and fantasy 135–​136, 139, 146, 150; negativity in 129n34; as opposite to the real 134–​135; and virtuality 110 recognition 52; and misrecognition 30 recollection: and love 111; melancholic 106, 128n15; and repetition 105–​107, 111, 128n15 reflection 19, 22, 28, 37, 54, 173–​174; positive 30; and shadow 66; see also mirror religion 34–​35, n186; see also God; monotheism repetition 2, 104, 106–​108, 110, 112, 114–​115, 120–​121, 127n13, 130n42, 136, 142, 144, 153, 155, 160; and abject 117, 130–​131n50; and children 120, 122; compulsive 119, 121; de Man on 127n13; and double/​doubling 2, 105, 109, 111, 117–​118; Freud on 119; “good”/​happy 106, 120, 131n50; Heidegger on 128n20; and irony 112–​113; and love 104, 112; and recollection 105–​107, 111, 128n15; and shadow 107; and shadow-​existence 109; in time and in space 2, 105, 118, 124, 131n56; and theater/​books/​the arts 106, 110; two forms/​kinds of 118, 132n60; uncanny 144 Repetition (Kierkegaard) 105, 108, 111, 112, 115

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212 Index repressed, the 27, 60, 154, 183 reproduction 100, 155 resemblance 91–​92, 170n46, 178; see also similarity respect 6, 55–​56 Rilke, Rainer Maria 47, 58; Ninth Elegy 47 Rimbaud, Arthur 48 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) 8; see Friday; Tournier, Michel Romanticism 5, 50, 59–​62, 84n12, 110, 125, 180; and Enlightenment 82n5; and German Idealism 62, 84n13; and multiplicity 125 Rosenfeld, Herbert 40 Rosset, Clément 169n17 Roth, Philip 82n3 sacrificial crisis (Girard) 179, 180–​182 Said, Edward 192n38 Saramago, Jose 82n3 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 6, 8, 60, 66–​71, 80, 85n29, 96, 130n49, 161, 175–​179, 181; bad faith 70; Erostratus 69; Nausea 130n49 Saussure, Ferdinand de 32 Schelling, F. W. J. 61, 83n10 science 34–​35, 44n32; see also logic; rationalism/​rationality seduction 69, 166–​167; and abjection 167 seeing/​being-​seen 40, 51, 53–​55, 67, 69, 85n29, 96; see also appearance; observation/​ observer; Sartre, Jean-​Paul; sight; voyeurism; watching self, the 3, 6, 16, 18, 24, 30, 35, 39–​40, 45n37, 62, 107–​108, 112, 118, 173; and double 29, 106; emptiness of 19, 110; idealized and monstrous 174; illusion of 17, 114; loss of 108; material (Levinas) 73; multiplicity of 8; narcissistic 25, 125; negation of 60; and others 24; and shadow-​ existence 108; split 7, 80–​81; see also identity; individual; personality; subject/​subjectivity semiotic (Kristeva) 7, 77–​78, 80; and abject 77–​78; and mirror stage 168n7; and symbolic 77; see also maternal; mother; womb

Semite see anti-​Semite; Judaism/​ Jewishness sex 48–​49, 54, 140, 163; see also love shadow 6, 12, 47, 50–​60, 62–​71, 73, 77–​78, 80, 85n28, 106–​108, 117, 120, 124, 137, 151, 154, 172; and abject 78; for the artist 83n6; and body 67, 154; creation of 59, 61; dark/​evil/​demonic 60, 66, 83n6, 129n27; Duras on 129n27; existence see shadow-​existence; and il y a 78; infinite shadows 116; Jung on 83n6; and light 60; loss of 60, 82n4; and Other 79; as reflection 66; and repetition 107; as the repressed 60; and shame/​ pride 66–​67 “Shadow, The” (Andersen) 6, 50–​81, 82n4, 91, 154; and Peter Schlemihl (Chamisso) 82n4 shadow-​existence (Kierkegaard) 7, 105, 106–​108, 110, 113–​114, 121, 123–​124, 128n19, 128n20, 128n21, 147, 149, 151–​152, 155, 159–​160, 162–​163; and childhood 109, 129n24; and Eternal Return 116; and irony 111; and the main shoot 108, 112; and narcissism 108; and Poetry 115; reactivate 108; in real life 108; and repetition 109; and theater 109, 130n50; and writing/​literature 108, 115; see also main shoot; possibility; potentiality shame 26, 53, 64, 66 shame/​pride (Sartre) 67–​68, 70, 79 Sherman, Cindy 2 sight 6, 18, 52, 55–​56, 63, 68, 70, 78, 99, 113; and darkness 14; and negative double 72; obliqueness of 87n53; and touch 129n26; see also observation/​observer; seeing/​being-​seen; voyeurism similarity/​similitude 91, 101, 117, 175; behind difference 156; fear of 181–​182; primordial 156; see also resemblance simulacra/​simulacrum 150, 152–​155, 157, 166, 168n9; age of 149, 151, 156–​157; of femininity 156; and literature 167; of love 166; of Others 165; and the real 150; and spectacle 156

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Index  213 singularity 33, 157; and multiplicity/​ plurality 97, 103, 105; see also “whatever singularity”; see also uniqueness Sirens 71, 79 sleep 18, 72, 102; and darkness 14; inability to 71; see also darkness; night Slethaug, Gordon E. 168n10 society: consumer see consumerism; homogeneous 177; of multiplicity or multitude 189; neohuman 152; tribal/​traditional/​indigenous 153; Victorian 173; Western 136, 149–​150, 153, 168n10, 179; see also culture Socrates 111 solitude see Levinas, Emmanuel; loneliness soul 17, 23, 25, 56, 58, 68, 71, 77, 81, 113, 122, 154; and body 16, 58, 75; see also spirit spectacle (Baudrillard) 155–​157 spectator 18, 94; narcissistic 112; see also observation/​observer; sight spirit 15, 49, 53, 56–​57, 64, 67, 74, 81; and body 153; and matter 65, 75; pure 60, 73; see also soul spirituality 19, 75, 80; material 65 split/​splitting 6, 41, 47, 51, 53–​60, 62, 67–​68, 70, 80–​81, 91, 114, 122, 146, 158; active and passive 80; in consciousness 60, 65; Deleuze on 123; and the double/​ doubling/​duplication 45n37, 82n3, 97, 158; exterior and interior 57; Klein on 39; between man and shadow 61, 63–​64, 67–​68; see also fragmentation stability 105, 176–​177; and love 138 Stevenson, Robert Louis 81n3 stranger/​strangeness 2, 14, 18, 29, 37, 48–​49, 52, 70–​71, 73, 98, 155, 166, 198; see also alterity; Other/​ otherness struggle for life and death see Hegel, G. W. F. Student of Prague, The (Ewers) 24–​26, 33, 36 subject/​subjectivity 1, 3, 4–​5, 30–​31, 72–​74, 78, 96, 125, 148; and alterity 16; and duplication 6; as an illusion 123; modern

123–​124; and multiplicity 4, 125; and shadow 60; and split 6; see also identity; individual; personality; self, the Sublime see Kant, Immanuel; romanticism substitution 91–​92, 99, 102, 184 “suchness” (Agamben) 156; common 157, 177; of the lovers 158; see also “whatever” suggestion 16, 34 suicide 19, 25, 36, 72, 123, 141–​143, 152; see also death Suleiman, Susan 127n8 sunlight see light superego 38–​39, 45n37, 76 Surrealism 126n8 symbolic 170n28; chain 32, 35, 40, 44n34; exchange (Baudrillard) 43n13, 153–​154, 165; and imaginary 168n8; order 31–​34, 40–​41, 77, 85n17, 149–​150; and semiotic 77; symbolization 6, 41 temporality 2, 113, 120; see also time Thanatos see death drive theater 106–​108, 110, 128n21, 130n50 theogony (Hesiod) 34 theory 4, 50, 58, 67–​68, 112 Thus Spoke Zarathustra see Nietzsche time 5, 111, 114, 165, 189; see also temporality Todorov, Tzvetan 43n9 touch 58, 64, 67, 71, 96; and vision/​ sight/​observance/​gaze 58, 95, 110, 112, 129n26, 115; see also body Tournier, Michel 8, 161; see also Friday transcendence 74; self-​  7, 112 transformation 6, 56–​57, 100, 102, 113, 120, 171; and love 97–​98; self-​ 166; see also inversion trauma 100, 102, 110, 119–​120, 158; and Duras 126n7; primordial 119 tumor 21, 42; see also cancer uncanny 16, 18, 37, 39, 45n37, 144, 155, 158 “The Uncanny” (Freud) see Freud, Sigmund unconscious 26, 129n26, 186

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214 Index unicity 59, 61, 108, 153, 158, 185; and multiplicity 151; and unity 84n13; see also unity uniqueness 59, 82n4, 187, 189; see also singularity unity 61–​62, 65, 84n12, 85n17; and multiplicity 122; and unicity 84n13; see also unicity universality/​universalism 58–​59, 71, 177, 179, 181; see also German Idealism; wholeness unrevealed, the 69–​71, 96; and otherness 71 Vardoulakis, Dimitris 9n2 Vertigo (Hitchcock) 128n15 violence 9, 36, 40, 48, 84n15, 180–​181, 184–​185, 187; chain of 180–​181; cycle of 190n6; and loss of differences 180; Nazi 190n6; purifying 180; see also aggression/​ aggressiveness vision 51, 58, 62, 67–​68, 78; and touch 58, 95, 110, 112; see also seeing/​being-​seen; sight; spectator Visker, Rudi 86n41 void 54; and identity 19; one’s inner 175; see also emptiness voyeurism 67, 100; see also observation/​observer; seeing/​ being-​seen; sight; spectator

Wanderer above a Sea of Fog (Friedrich) 62 watching 64, 69, 94, 97; and being watched (Sartre) 80; see also seeing/​being-​seen Western culture see culture Western society see society “whatever” (Agamben) 157; “love” 158; “singularity” 156, 164; see also “suchness” wholeness 32, 35, 60, 154, 176; see also universality/​ universalism Wilde, Oscar 167n3, 173–​174; Picture of Dorian Gray, The 167n3, 173; Dorian Gray 176 will/​willpower 17–​18, 20, 24 wind 15, 19, 35; see also air womb 76, 161; maternal 109, 161 writing 6, 21, 41, 52, 55, 58–​59, 67, 103, 129n26, 132n69, 133, 136, 141, 188; and “dark shadow” 129n27; as doubling 115, 167; feminine 89, 115, 126–​127n8; and otherness 115; poetic 77; re-​ 185; and reading 42, 168n8; and shadow-​ existence 108; see also literature; reading Yerushalmi, Yosef H. 192n36