Chapter IV: Where Have You Been? Where Are You Going?—
Traversing of the Perverse Fantasy and an Ethical Possibility
After reconfiguring what Rubians have been, the manifest contents of and the latent cause of their perversion, I will go on to explore where they are going—the ethical way to tackle the hitherto problematized psychical structure in the community and its patriarchy. Dealing with the Ruby perversion has its own importance and necessity; it aids to illumine and actualize an ethical possibility hinted at by Morrison in Paradise, particularly in the depiction of the Ruby residents’
responses to the terrifying and terrorist gang violence. The representation of the nine Rubians’
assault on the Convent women bears witness to the tragic and horrific result that the perverse mentality and the associated narcissism and xenophobia can lead to. The novel therefore in a sense features as a strong and severe criticism of the exclusionist and essentialist logic of the patriarchal and communal institution in Ruby (and at a broader level, African American communities). Nevertheless, Morrison does not plainly indict the Ruby fathers for murder and put them in the stock of guilt or evil because by doing so, she will end up resembling those under her criticism.
1On the contrary, Morrison is concerned with the metamorphosis of perversion and with the ethical agency that Rubians can lay claim to.
As mentioned in Chapter I, the ethical force in Paradise finds its mouthpiece in Lone, who interprets “the convenient mass disappearance of the victims” after the gang violence as that
“God had given Ruby a second chance” (303). While the mysterious vanishing of the Convent women appears to be an easy way-out for Rubians, it also provokes their re-examination of the question of what they have done and why they have done so and prompts them to mull over what they will be in the future to come. Put differently, with the disappearance of the Convent women, Morrison does not, like some of the Ruby residents have done, attempt to “sanitiz[e] out of
1
A blind and gratuitous accusation of the Ruby fathers and people as the persecutors may only run the risk of
demonizing them and thus exercise another kind of exclusionism and essentialism. This can explain why Morrison
in no where punishes the Ruby patriarchy and community with her pen in Paradise but takes a more ambivalent
stance toward the gang violence.
existence” the reality of the committed atrocity and hence acquit these people of womanslaughter (298). Instead, as Pat intimates, “[a]lthough the evidence of the assault was invisible, the consequences were not” (299). The group homicide undeniably stimulates Ruby people to perceive differently and encounter the incompleteness of the patriarchy, the community, and of themselves, triggering the rumination over the significance and possibility of negotiating with the big Other and the others. The opportunity of re-thinking of themselves, of where they have been and where they are going, and of their treatment of the lack in the Other, is the very second chance offered to these people. The ethical duty they bear right now is to work through the perverse mentality and thereby achieve an ethical subjectivity.
The key to how to make the most of the second chance, I contend, consists in the proper
bargain with the big Other over the question of desire. Since the perversion in Ruby stands side
by side with the predominance of the perverse fantasy, namely, the disavowal of the lack in the
community and patriarchy in the service of the jouissance of the big Other, the way to reposition
Ruby is to paralyze the Other’s jouissance and bring into play the Other’s desire. The possibility
of carrying out the task, I argue, pivots upon what Lacan calls la traversée du fantasm, usually
rendered in English as the traversing or going beyond of fantasy and functioning to suspend the
jouissance produced in one’s fantasmatic work. In the previous analysis, the perverse fantasy in
Ruby functions to cover its inherent splitting and sustains its unity and integrity; the effort to go
beyond this fantasy then has to aim at a deflation of the whole and an exposure of the hole in the
patriarchy and community. Indeed, Morrison’s Paradise implies at least two interconnected
means of traversing of the perverse fantasy concerning the wholeness of the Symbolic domain in
Ruby: the interpretation of desire and the knowledge of the Real. The two fantasy-traversing
approaches are of great importance in that both of them actualize the Lacanian psychoanalytic
ethics on subjectivity. While one is centered upon the question of desire which is fundamental
and essential to Lacanian psychoanalysis and helps to achieve what Lacan asks of the desiring
subject, the other certainly corresponds to what Alenka Zupančič terms as the “ethics of the
Real,” which “is not an ethics oriented toward the Real, but an attempt to rethink ethics by
recognizing and acknowledging the dimension of the [Lacanian] Real […] as it is already operative in ethics” (4). As a result, in this chapter, based on the two models of traversing of fantasy, I will come to examine how Ruby people can and should negotiate with the strangers to and in themselves.
Deflation of the Whole, Exposure of the Hole
The first step to hinder the perverse fantasy in Ruby from working pivots upon its residents’
re-cognition of the lack, the incompleteness and incoherence, of the Other. As I have specified in Chapter II, the Ruby perversion finds its expression in many ways: the constant misconception of the relation with the Other as still (“encore”) unseparated (e.g., the decoration of Ruby as Haven, the inheritance of the blood purity regulation), the resulting disavowal of the lacuna in the community and patriarchy, and the dedication to the completion of Other qua Law and the fulfillment of the Other’s jouissance.
2The solution to the pervasion of perversion in Ruby consists in the transformation of its psychical structure and hence requires a variety of operations—the separation from the Other, the initiation of the metonymic movement of both the subject’s desire and the Other’s desire, and the knowledge of the Real dimension—to render the task of metamorphosis possible. All these techniques aim at one and the same target: the deflation of the whole of the Other and exposition of the indelible hole in the structure of Symbolic, thus contributing to traversing the perverse fantasy prevailing in the Ruby patriarchy and community and ultimately putting desire into work.
The knowledge of the inherent disintegration and incompleteness of the Other corresponds to the Lacanian hystericized subjectivity, whose realization is conditioned by what Lacan in Seminar XI refers to as “separation” (213). The division called for here is that between the self and the Other. Only when the separation from the Other is completed can the subject leave the
2
“Encore” is the title of Lacan’s Seminar XX. With the playful juxtaposition of the homonyms “encore,” which
means “again” or “still,” and “en-corpse,” whose literal significance is “in-body,” Lacan suggests that “[j]ouissance
of the Other” is “of the body [en-corpse] of the Other who symbolizes the Other” (S20 4). Borrowing from Lacan, I
argue that the indistinction between the pervert and the Other is an encore relation: they are still (“encore”)
unseparated in terms of psychosomatic (“encore” again) connection.
domain of perversion and sails for the league of being a neurotic, desiring subject.
3As Lacan reminds, the word “to separate” originates from the Latin “[s]eparare, which originally means
“se parare” and “se parer” and can be extended to the “s’engendrer, the to be engendered” (S11 214). With the extension, Lacan asserts that to separate the subject and the Other is to have “a lack engendered” (215). That is, the subject has to admit and retain the ineluctable hole in the Symbolic universe. On the other hand, since the locus of lack is also known as what desire aims at, the preservation of the hole in the Other also means the continuation of the Other’s desire. In separation, the subject can never figure out what the Other really wants and thus keep his/her search for the answer to the Other’s desire. The supposed object to satisfy the Other’s want is the Lacanian objet petit a, the object-cause of desire. Since the Other’s desire appears enigmatic and unanswerable and the objet petit a can never be found, the subject will keep looking for the way to gratify the Other’s desire and at the same time maintain the lack in the Other. This way, what the Other wants is put into an endless metonymic process and the lacuna in the Symbolic will never be claimed to be filled up.
Put differently, the achievement of separation coincides with an on-going movement of the Other’s desire. As Lacan asserts, “desire is a metonymy” (“The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious” 439; emphasis original). Whenever the subject tries to gratify the Other’s desire through a certain object, the object will immediately lose its satisfying ability and hence the fulfillment of desire is postponed. The mechanism of desire is thus conditioned by the perpetual impossibility of consummation and consumption (both are “consommation” in French); the signifier that answers the question of desire in the signifying chain is always already lost.
However, this is not saying that the work of desire should be in a state of ennui. Desire is still possible and active owing to the support from an imaginary and elusive object, objet petit a, functioning as a lure and disguising itself as the key to the problem of insatiability but in fact can
3
As Evans notes, the purpose of Lacanian analytic treatment is to “‘hystericize’ the analysand,” to postpone both
the desire of the subject and of the Other (An Introductory Dictionary 79). Yet, this is not saying that whoever is not
a hysteric is not a subject. Rather, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, no matter which position—neurosis, perversion, or
psychosis—is taken, one is always already a subject and has to take the responsibility for the question of desire and
jouissance.
never be accessed. In this way, with the initiation of desirousness in the Other, the subject ceases serving as the object-instrument of the Other’s jouissance, with perversion transposed into hysteria.
In the meanwhile, the revival of the Other’s desire in separation is accompanied by the birth of the subject’s desire. At the moment of the division of the subject-Other dyad arises the actualization of the classical Lacanian thesis that “man’s desire is the Other’s desire [le désir de l’homme est le désir de l’Autre].” Here the polysemy and polyvalency of the French preposition
“de” offers at least two consequential and interconnected ways of understandings. In the first place, the “de” can be understood as “of” and then the formula reads that the subject’s desire is the Other’s desire, suggesting that the subject identifies his/her desire with the Other’s desire. On the other hand, “de” can be understood as “for”; the formulation specifies that the subject desires for the Other’s desire, namely, (s)he wants to be the object of the Other’s desire. As Fink explains,
“the Other’s desire begins to function as the cause of the [subject]’s desire. […] it is the [Other’s]
very desirousness that the [subject] finds desirable” and the Other’s desire now becomes the objet petit a, the object-cause that sets in motion the subject’s desire (The Lacanian Subject 59).
The two readings of the “de” in the Lacanian formula on desire recalls “the Other’s question [la question de l’Autre],” that of “Chè Vuoi?” inquired by the hysteric of the Other, which transforms “What does the Other want” into “What does he want from me?” (“Subversion of the Subject” 690). Again, the French “de” enriches and multiplies the interpretation of “la question de l’Autre”: in hysteria, the question asked of (“de”) the Other is in fact the question from (“de”) the Other; the query and quest for desire is therefore a response to what the Other asks of the subject. More importantly, while the pervert looks upon him-/herself as the answer to the Other’s question about desire, the hysteric-neurotic through the everlasting questioning puts off the consummation of the meaning of the Other’s desire and the subject’s desire, thus defending both the self and the Other from the attainment of jouissance.
4That is, as the combination of the two
4
The consummation of meaning is the moment when jouissance is fully realized; after all, jouissance is
“jouis-sens” (coming-meaning).
interpretations of the Lacanian thesis on desire specifies, in taking the Other’s desire as his/her own, the subject comes to work for the continuation of the metonymic movement of desire, i.e., for desirousness. This way, the infinite deferment of the consummation of the Other’s desire becomes the topmost aim and the object-cause of the subject’s desire. Or, put differently, aligned with the connection between desire and lack, the hysterical-neurotic subjectivity is characterized with the “juxtaposition, overlapping, or coincidence of two lacks”, i.e., that of the subject’s desire and of the Other’s desire (The Lacanian Subject 53).
5The position of the double-lack is reincarnated by the objet petit a, which, as the object-cause of desire, steers the unstoppable streetcar named desire, simultaneously carrying the passengers of the subject and the Other.
Understood with its dividing effect, the mechanism of separation corresponds to the castration proper, which takes place at the third time of the Oedipus complex and refers to the castration of the child’s assumption of him-/herself as the imaginary phallus that completes the mOther’s desire. In this phase, the Symbolic father intervenes and breaks the mother-child unity via signifying the desire of the mother (le désir de la mère) with the Name of the Father (le Nom du Père). With the superimposition of the Name of the Father over the desire of the mother comes the animation of the signifying chain. As Fink illumines, functioning as the paternal function or paternal metaphor, le Nom du Père serves as “a ‘second’ signifier, S
2,” first signifying the mother’s desire which “is retroactively symbolized or transformed into a ‘first’ signifier (S
1)”
and then generally working as “the signifier of the Other’s desire” (The Lacanian Subject 57).
The importance of launching the signifying work consists in that since S
2can never fully represent S
1, the process of signification will keep producing a certain gap that introduces another signifier in decoding S
1and S
2. This way, meaning will never be fully actualized or reified; lack will constantly remain in the course of signification and hence desire continues.
5
As Fink reminds, the intersection of the lack of the two parties concerned here is not a “lack of lack,” which in
fact characterizes perversion (The Lacanian Subject 59). While the pervert sweats to jam up the lack in the Other
and causes the lack of lack, the hysteric suspends the whole of the Other and him-/herself with the incessant asking
and deferment of meaning.
Interpretation of Desire
Along the line of thought, it is reasonable to argue that the main way to traverse the fantasy of the Symbolic universe as complete and coherent, to separate from the big Other, and thus to transpose the subject of perversion into the position neurosis is to put what the Other wants under the movement of signifying chain, i.e., under endless interpretation. As Safouan clarifies, Lacan’s Seminar VI, Desire and Its Interpretation, concludes with the thesis that “desire is its interpretation” (92). Precisely, the subject has to interpret the Other’s desire without reifying its content and to keep open the answer to the enigmatic and oracular desire. In other words, in regarding the Other’s desirousness—the continuation of desire and the deferment of its fulfillment—as the object of his/her desire, the subject comes to subjectify the Other’s desire.
With the activation of the Other’s desire through its interpretation, it is possible to suspend the Other’s jouissance and thus the subject can differentiate him-/herself from the zone of the Other’s jouissance and transfers from the domain of perversion to that of hysterical neurosis.
More importantly, the Other’s question concerning desire is also the subject’s question about desire; this way, interpretation has to take into account the subject’s desire and, in Fink’s phrase, serves to “subjectify the otherness” (The Lacanian Subject 68). In putting the Other’s desire into question, the subject also encounters the question of his/her desire; under the guise of a question asked by the Other, “What does the Other want from me?” is also a question concerning the subject’s desire. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the analysand-subject has first to identify with the question posed by the analyst, who stands in the position of the big Other and plays the role of what Lacan calls “the subject supposed to know” (“le sujet supposé savoir”)—the one who is believed to possess the answer to the patients’ question about desire and thus start the mechanism of transference—and then come to work on his/her own question about desire.
6Only in this way will the task of interpretation of desire be fulfilled.
6
Since Seminar XVII, Lacan has begun to work on the formula of four discourses, one of which concerned here is
the analyst’s discourse. In the matheme on the analyst’s position in treatment, Lacan puts objet petit a on the upper
left-hand position of agent “with S
2below it” and thereby designates that with “the unconscious knowledge” about
analysand’s symptom-formation the analyst serves as their object-cause of desire (S20 13; Fink, “The Master
Signifier and the Four Discourses” 38).
In Paradise, what provokes the interpretation of desire in Ruby, the subsequent separation from the communal and patriarchal Other, and the suspension of the perverse fantasy is paradoxically the gang violence. Though originally aimed at the service of the Other’s jouissance, the death strike imposed upon the Convent women unexpectedly backfires. It coincidently breaks the exclusionism and essentialism of Ruby and gives rise to, at least partially, the metamorphosis of its mentality from perversion to neurosis. As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, Pat holds that “[a]lthough the evidence of the assault was invisible, the consequences were not.” One of the essential consequences is Deacon Morgan’s sea change: he starts to separate himself from Steward and to develop the “long remorse […] at having become what the Old Fathers cursed:
the kind of man who set himself up to judge, rout and even destroy the needy, the defenseless, the different” (302). In the end, Deacon goes to Richard Misner’s place and tells three stories, each of which concentrates respectively upon the childhood shared with and undivided from Steward, the extramarital affair with Connie (though he never specifies her identity to in the narration) and the true cause that accounts for the exodus led by the Old Fathers.
7After narrating the first two confessions, Deacon “then started on another story, with which he discloses that his grandfather, Zechariah, “had a twin, and before he change his name, they were known as Coffee [Zechariah] and Tea” (302). When fortune comes to one of them, the twins “seemed as pleased as everybody else”; if misfortune falls, they were “equally affronted and humiliated” (302). The identity between the twins continues until “[o]ne day, years later, when [Coffee] and his twin” were coerced by “some whitemen […] to dance […] with a pistol”
(302). While Tea submits and “accommodated the whites, even though he was a grown man, older than they were,” Coffee refuses to do so and “took a bullet in his foot instead”; “From that moment they weren’t brothers anymore” (302). Indeed, the story told by Deacon reveals the splitting of Coffee and Tea and his disagreement with Big Papa in terms of the silence to and the
7
In this regard, Paradise is an obverse of Foucault’s thesis on the will to knowledge (la volonté de savoir) and the
discursive production of truth about sexuality in The History of Sexuality: An Introduction: while psychoanalysis, in
Foucault’s understanding, is a continuation and transformation of the confession system in Christianity, in the novel
confession functions as psychoanalytic practice that evokes the flow of desire.
separation from his brother. Yet, it also demonstrates that Deacon begins to re-evaluate the position of Zechariah in the event. As Deacon relates, “I always thought Coffee—Big Papa—was wrong […] Wrong in what he did to his brother. Tea was his twin, after all. Now I’m less sure.
I’m thinking Coffee was right because he saw something in Tea […] that shamed him” (303).
Where Deacon’s re-interpretation of the forefathers of the Ruby community attests to the division from the Other and illustrate the deflation of the potency of patriarchy consists not so much in the criticism of Big Papa as in the “less sure” and the “I’m thinking” about the pre-Haven/Ruby past. In other words, it is the indecision with respect to the evaluation of Zechariah’s segregation of himself from his twin brother that attains the on-going process of assessment of meaning. If Deacon blindly sticks to each side of the polarity of right and wrong, then he, in identifying with Big Papa and internalizing him as the model of superego, may sink into either the position of masochism, which is haunted with shame, or that of sadism, which projects the contemptible feeling onto others. In addition, in the confession Deacon also comes to recognize the incompleteness of the Other embodied by Zechariah: “Coffee couldn’t take [the shame]. Not because he was ashamed of his twin, but because the shame was in himself. It scared him. So he went off and never spoke to his brother again. Not one word. […] I’m saying he never said another word to him and wouldn’t allow anybody else to call his name” (303).
Insofar as shame can be properly understood as the bar or split that goes across the subjectivity, the narration of “the shame [that] was in [Zechariah] himself” and “scared him” truly indicates Deacon’s recognition of the inexorable lack in the patriarchal Other represented by the Big Papa.
What is interesting to bear in mind is that Deacon’s confession to Richard Misner suggests his willingness to initiate an analytic treatment, which designates the commencement of the shift from his perverse position into a neurotic one.
8When he “crossed and made his way to Richard Misner’s house,” the fantasy concerning the wholeness of the Other in perversion is also crossed (300; emphases added). Here the Reverend Misner seemingly plays the role of a Lacanian
8
Nevertheless, this is not saying that through confession, Deacon immediately becomes a neurotic subject. After all,
perversion is a structural question; the entrance into an analytic and interpretative relation is merely the first step,
with other efforts needed.
analyst and functions to be the subject supposed to know. When Deacon “knocked on the door”
of Richard’s house and expresses that “I need to speak to you, Reverend,” the analytic relation certainly get started (301). In the conversation in which “Richard [merely] listened intently, interrupting once to offer cool water,” Deacon builds up a narrative that verbalizes his experience and desire. Before the dialogue with Misner, Deacon “had never consulted with or taken into his confidence any man. All of his intimate conversations had been wordless ones with his brother or brandishing ones with male companions”; that is to say, he has never confronted and worked out the problem concerning desire since disavowal of the lack is the usual measure that is taken (301). With “words [that] came out like ingots pulled from the fire by an apprentice blacksmith,”
Deacon now comes to articulate in speech his questions on desire, no matter they are the constant or newly-formed ones (301). Speaking out his personal history, Deacon is no more “unable to
‘progress’ properly” but begins to make up “linear narrative of origins” that touches upon the
“fundamental” cause of the building of the Haven community.
9Yet, in the illumination of the “true” reason responsible for why “Coffee began to plan a new life elsewhere” is hidden a deeper conflict regarding the lost unity with Steward. That is, Deacon’s recount addressing the gap between Zechariah and his twin brother in fact serves to cover the discrepancy between himself and Steward and the hole in the Ruby patriarchy that bourgeons in and after the massacre. Originally, the Morgan twins are like “two children on a beach offering [themselves] a shell formed like an S” and the image S apparently recalls the imaginary wholeness preceding the emergence of the split subjectivity (301). Nevertheless, when the twins come to enact the task of persecution, the homogeneity and accord that used to exist between them begin to diverge. At the very moment Steward is going to pull the trigger and shoot into Connie’s head, Deacon “lifts his hand to halt his brother’s and discovers who, between them, is the stronger man” (289). Later, expounding the reason that drives them to the Covent to
9
I put in quotation marks “fundamental” here and the “true” at the beginning of the next paragraph to show
Deacon’s narration is no more than his fantasy over the past. For a more detailed discussion, please see the
following discussion on page 117-18. As for the metamorphosis from being “unable to ‘progress’ properly” to the
fabrication of “linear narrative of origins,” which reveals the structural difference between perversion and (hysterical)
neurosis, please refer to Chapter II 53.
murder its inhabitants, the twin brothers split in terms of their opinions. When Steward relates that “[t]he evil is in the house,” Deacon immediately rejoins that “[m]y brother is lying. This is our doing. Ours alone. And we bear the responsibility”; then, “[f]or the first time in twenty-one years the twins looked each other dead in the eyes” (291). Both the discordance about whether to shoot Connie or not and the disagreement over who holds the responsibility for the ferocious woamnslaugther reflect the same thing(s): the splitting between Deacon and Steward, the breaking of the “shell formed like an S” into the barred S, and consequently the rise of lack in the patriarchal Other of Ruby. As a result, after the event, “what [Deacon] felt […] was exotic to a twin—an incompleteness, a muffled solitude, which took away appetite, sleep and sound”
(300-01; emphases added). Disconnected from Steward for the first time, Deacon comes to experience non-wholeness, and, in a sense, aphanisis—the disappearance of the subject, the very moment of the splitting of the subject; in consequence, symptoms emerge, marking the turning point of the conversion from perversion to neurosis and the approaching shift of the Ruby mentality.
In other words, in the confessional story-telling, the very person who “couldn’t take [the shame] […] because the shame was in himself [and because] [i]t scared him” is Deacon himself.
The narrative focused upon the feud between Coffee and Tea is no more than a cover and reflection of the estrangement between the Morgan twins. In this regard, Deacon behaves as an obsessional neurotic, who, as Žižek clarifies, “lies in the guise of truth”: “while at the level of factual accuracy his statements are always true, he uses this factual accuracy to dissimulate the truth about his desire” (The Plague 36; emphases original). What Deacon’s “factual lies,” i.e., the representation of the story about the conflict between Coffee and Tea, the time shared with Steward, and the extra-martial love affair with Connie, disguise is “the truth about his desire”:
the unprecedented dissensus between himself and his twin brother and the resulting anxiety over
the broken identity. The digression, the “lies in the guise of truth,” in the course of confession
clearly implies the advent of repression and negation of the truth respecting desire, both of which
manifest the dawn of neurosis in Deacon.
While Deacon’s verbalization and repression of desire apparently show the inception of the psychical transformation into neurosis, they do not necessarily mean a thorough and complete dissolution of perversion. As I have emphasized, Deacon’s reflection upon the “fundamental”
and the “true” reason that motivates the Big Papa’s exodus and home-building is not all that reliable. His relation of the disparity between Coffee and Tea can be understood as no more than his own version, or, to be more precise, his fantasy on the causation of Haven. As Žižek explicates, “narrative as such emerges in order to resolve some fundamental antagonism by rearranging its terms into a temporal succession” (The Plagues 10-11). If Deacon adheres to his fantasmatic understanding of the genesis of Haven and the relation between Coffee and Twin, he will not truly depart from the zone of perversion. Thus, the traversing of the perverse fantasy should not end up with the story-telling of the past but necessitates other works. Thus, as Deacon himself acknowledges, though he may not know where and how, “I got a long way to go” (303).
On the other hand, the silence between Deacon and Steward may serve as a fetish that
retains the structure of perversion. As the story on Coffee and Tea reveals, after the event that
ends up with “shame […] in himself,” Zechariah, who metaphorically refers to Deacon in the
story, subsequently remains silent to his twin brother. The muteness between the twin brothers
tantalizingly allures an understanding of them as divided, whereas the separation is not a fully
realized one and may only lead to perversion. Here speechlessness functions to be not so much a
symptom which masks the underlying longing for unity as a fetish that serves as an easy way out
by denying the irrevocably lost integrity. As Žižek brilliantly intimates, “an object can function
as the symptom (of a repressed desire) and almost simultaneously as a fetish (embodying the
belief which we officially renounce) […] which enables [one] to (pretend to) accept reality ‘the
way it is’ (On Belief 14-15). Based upon this argument, it is reasonable to posit that while silence
and speechlessness may signal one’s (self-)prohibition of the desire to speak to someone else or
the fear of failing to speak well, they can also operate a fetish that enacts the coexistent
admission and disavowal of the traumatic reality. With reticence, one is able to “pretend to accept
[the] reality” of inability of communication. That is, what silence reveals is the inability to name
and represent the trauma of splitting and then anticipates the self-exclusion and -isolation which corresponds to the perverse mentality inherited and prevalent in Ruby. Hence “thinking Coffee was right,” Deacon can be understood to defend his denial with reticence of the splitting from Steward and then wander on the border between perversion and neurosis.
At this moment, Misner, who seemingly serves as the mouthpiece of Morrison in the novel, intrudes and unravels the deadlock by saying: “Lack of words […] Lack of forgiveness. Lack of love. To lose a brother is a hard thing. To choose to lose one, well, that’s worse than the original shame, wouldn’t you say?” (303). Here Misner completes the task assigned to the analyst in Lacanian psychoanalysis: interpretation of the analysand’s desire, which, as Žižek elaborates,
“aims to bring about the effect of truth apropos of a particular formation of the unconscious (a dream, a symptom […]” and in which “the subject is expected ‘recognize’ himself in the signification proposed by the interpreter […] in order to subjective this signification” (The Plague 35). And the validity of the work of interpretation, as Žižek continues, has to be
“measured by this ‘effect of truth,’ by the extent to which it affects the subjective position of the analysand (stir up memories of hitherto deeply repressed traumatic encounters, provokes violent resistance…)” (The Plague 35-36; emphases original). Examined from this perspective, Misner apparently succeeds in “affect[ing] the subjective position of the analysand”: with the question
“wouldn’t you say,” which operates as Lacan’s “full speech” and arouses the desire of the analysand, the interpreter-analyst here brings the patient to the encounter his truth of desire.
Exposed to the kernel concerning the question of desire, Deacon “looked down at his feet for a long time. […] Finally he raised his head and said: ‘I got a long way to go, Reverend’” (Paradise 303). The “I got long way to go” as the reply to Misner’s question clearly shows Deacon’s recognition of the interminability of the path that has to been taken so as to properly deal with the enigma about desire.
The road Deacon has to take is also suggested in Misner’s interpretative work. In linking
“[l]ack of words” up with “[l]ack of forgiveness” and “[l]ack of love,” the interpreter-analyst
patently reveals the Lacanian thesis that lack, namely, the Real, can be better negotiated with
only when it is put in words. As Lacan puts, “[t]he letter kills, but we learn this from the letter itself”; as Fink elucidates, the letter “kills the [R]eal which was [logically, if not chronologically]
before the letter, before words, before language” and therefore negates (verneinen) the lack (“Position of the Unconscious” 719; The Lacanian Subject 24). In other words, symbolization, though not totally successful [“pas-tout réussit”], domesticates the traumatic Real (S20 58). The disintegration and reticence between Deacon and Steward certainly connote the lacuna between the twin brothers; thus, only with verbalization of the gap in-between can Deacon come to work out the separation with his twin brother. “Lack of words” is merely, in Kristeva’s term, a “denial of negation”: since words serve to negate the Real, silence, the inability to verbalize, somewhat bears resemble to the “denial of the signifier” and the “denial of the father’s function” as well (Black Sun 43, 45).
10Put differently, the method to suspend the perverse mentality is to symbolize the lack between the two New Fathers.
11The latter part of Richard’s response to Deacon’s confession elucidates another way to turn away from perversion. If the identity of Deacon and Steward corresponds to the logical moment of the integrity of the self and the Other, then “[t]o lose a brother” connotes the inception of separation.
12It is true that the division between the twin brothers, between the self and the Other, is “a hard thing”: at this moment, the subject begins to encounter the almost unanswerable enigma of the Other’s desire. Yet, “[t]o choose to lose one,” as Richard adds, “that’s worse than the original shame” (emphases added). If Deacon chooses to exclude himself from Steward, the
10
In Kristeva’s usage, “denial” is synonymous with “disavowal.” In perversion, the “denial of the father’s function”
and the will to make the Other qua Law exist may at first glance look mutually exclusive but are in fact corresponding to each other. When the pervert claims to enact the paternal function, (s)he merely puts into effect the fantasmatic understanding of the Law, i.e., via superego; the exertion of the Law through its substitute in fact supplicants the Name of the Father and hence, as Kristeva argues, disavows “the father’s function.”
11
It seems more can be said about the correlation between “lack of words” and “lack of forgiveness”/“lack of love”;
yet, for the scope of the thesis, I will leave aside this issue.
12
The prototype that explains the separation between the self and the Other is the Lacanian frustration. As I have
mentioned in Chapter II, frustration in Lacanian psychoanalysis refers to the first time of the Oedipux complex, aka
the preoedipal phase, which is characterized with the Imaginary lack/castration of a Real object by the Symbolic
mother (the mOther). In this stage of psychosexual development, when the child’s biological need is not
immediately satisfied and simultaneously the demand for love is frustrated, the mark of lack is imprinted. This way,
the child starts to feel that the mOther desires for something other than him-/herself and initiates his/her
self-identification as the imaginary phallus that completes the mOther’s desire.
history of reticence and splitting between Coffee and Tea will repeat itself; the intraracial and even intra-familial segregation and the failure of entrance into the position of neurosis are quite likely to happen again. On the other hand, in deciding to be dissociated from Steward, Deacon will “become what the Old Fathers cursed.” Since the Haven community/comm-unity arises from the urgency and necessity of living through the material jeopardy and psychological trauma, the scattering of its residents “would have frightened [Zechariah].”
13Therefore, the Big Papa puts down the mysterious “Beware the Furrow of His Brow” as the cautionary messages that remind the Haven residents and their descendents of the danger of disbanding, of the lack (furrow) of the unity of the communal Other (his brow). From this perspective, if Deacon does
“choose to lose” Steward, he then betrays the paternal Law set up by Zechariah, ending up being
“worse than” what the paternal function aims at.
14All in all, “the long way to go” is the war that Deacon and, since the depiction of the Ruby twins is symbolic of the status quo of the community, Ruby people have to fight—to mend the lack through symbolization and choose to be united with the communal brothers and sisters—provided the psychical structure of perversion is to be overcome.
In addition to Deacon’s confessional narrative, in Ruby another event takes place, signaling the dawn of the conversion of the community into neurosis. As Lone observes, “the young people had changed [the Oven] words again. No longer were they calling themselves Be the Furrow of His Brow. The graffiti on the hood of the Oven now was ‘We Are the Furrow of His Brow’” (298). Here the replacement of the original words “Beware the Furrow of His Brow”
with the new phrase “We Are the Furrow of His Brow” indicates the young Ruby people’s
13
In this reading, Deacon’s grandfather is both right and wrong in terms of his separation from Tea: Zechariah is certainly wrong “in what he did to his brother” but right in feeling that “the shame was in himself.” Yet, if the inscribed “Beware of the Furrow of His Brow” is a reminder of the risk of scattering, it does not necessarily demand exclusionism. It is the treatment of the bewaring of the lack in the communal Other as an absolutist imperative that gives rise to the totalitarianism in Ruby
14
As Fink specifies, Lacan’s Seminar XIX is entitled “… ou pire,” which means “… or worse” and is connected
with “… ou père” by Lacan himself. With the alternative between “pire” and “père,” the worse and the father, Lacan
proposes that even though the paternal function is to some extent fallacious and always has its lack, the repudiation
of the Symbolic Law will have a worse outcome—the loss of communicative and signifying potential granted by
language, i.e., “the incidence of psychosis” (A Clinical Introduction 111).
reinterpretation of the Other’s desire transmitted through the inscribed messages at the Oven. In light of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the new messages drawn on the Oven function as the S
2and come to signify those imprinted by the Big Papa, regressively making them the S
1. With the superimposition of “We Are the Furrow of His Brow” over “Beware the Furrow of His Brow,”
the Ruby youths metaphorize and then interpret the words that represent Old Fathers’ desire, thereby putting into work the signifying chain and the paternal function.
More importantly, the substitution of the new messages for the old ones may run the risk of reiterating perversion if these superimposing signifiers, the S
2, are treated the univocal interpretation of the supereimposed messages, the S1. This way, “We Are the Furrow of His Brow” merely becomes a certain fetish that fills up the “the broken link of the symbolic chain”
and stiffens the meaning of S
1. Nevertheless, the newly-formed words are “graffiti”; being potentially replaceable, they will invite the further movement of the signifying chain to interpret the status of Rubians’ being in relation to “the Furrow of His Brow” and to the Other’s desire expressed through the written Law. That is, unlike the New Fathers’ tautological interpretation that leaves no space for the movement of signifiers and consequently reifies the Symbolic Law, the drawn “We Are” suggests the possibility of being erased and displaced. These graffitied words will not become a new fetish that ossifies the meaning of the Other’s desire and then leads to “lack of lack.” On the contrary, they promise the continuation of signification and metaphorization, so to speak, the paternal function.
As a matter of fact, it is the on-going and dynamic operation of the Symbolic universe that the Old Fathers’ written Law of desire intends to pass on to their descendents. As Pat reflects,
“Beware the Furrow of His Brow” are “[m]ore than a rule” but “[a] conundrum” which is designed “to have multiple meanings […] but slyly not identifying the understood proper noun [n]or specifying what the Furrow might cause to happen to whom” (emphases added). Here Pat’s understanding of these oracular words hits the point: what resounds in the mysterious, inscribed words is not so much the Other’s demand as the Other’s desire. Acting as “[m]ore than a rule,”
so to speak, more than being the superego, the messages therefore cannot be treated as their own
explanation and submitted to the New Fathers’ manipulation that (mis-)interprets and reifies the significance of the Law. By contrast, they are the Other’s desire, the enigma and oracle that put into work the incessant functioning of the paternal function and produce “multiple meanings”
without reducing any turn of interpretation as the finalized answer to the “conundrum” left by the Old Fathers. In the same logic, in the “not identifying” and the “nor specifying,” the Old Fathers in fact desire and advocate that the interpreters should not settle down with respect to who should perform the action “Beware” and “what the Furrow might cause to happen and or whom.”
Whoever accepts the interpellation of the Law and turns into the subject of desire and takes on the duty to “Beware the Furrow of His Brow” is not asked to identify and then disavow the presence of the Furrow. Instead, the required task is to make constant and ceaseless the interpretative work and maintain the multiplicity of signification by not anchoring the locus of the lack/furrow in the Other/His Brow and by deflating the wholeness of meaning produced in the signifying process.
It is true that interpretation-verbalization of desire initiates the movement of the signifying chain and the operation of the paternal function. Also, it gives momentum and impetus to the mechanism of separation that is required to cope with perversion. The three cases discussed here—Deacon’s re-evaluation of the Big Papa, the analytic treatment started by Richard Misner working on the lost unity between the Morgan twin brothers, and the substitution of “We Are the Furrow of His Brow” for “Beware the Furrow of His Brow”—all illustrate how interpretation of desire helps to transform the mental structure predominant in the Ruby community. However, this only fulfills part of the psychoanalytic task of traversing the fantasy that the Other is whole and integral. Its better exertion still requires something more: the knowledge of the Real.
The Ethical Knowledge of the Real
What underlies the desire as an on-going and dynamic process that always puts off the
consummation of jouissance and jouis-sens is the knowledge of the Real. The success of the
continuation of the interpretative work is grounded in the recognition of the not-all [“past-tout”]
characteristic of verbalization of desire and of the corollary of the unrepresentable in the course of symbolization. To recognize/re-cognize the inescapable lack in the big Other is to know the dimension of the Real. In the perspective of Lacan, the Real refers to something that always already exists and ex-sists the Symbolic universe and plays the role of its discontents and dis-contents.
15In other words, while the Symbolic register serves as a fictional frame that intends to achieve and maintain consistence and coherence, the Real suggests the impossibility of the total symbolization and hence the incompleteness of the big Other. Owing to its inherent force of disintegration and disunification, the Real can be more specifically understood as, in Žižek’s term, the “antagonism as [R]eal” or “the [R]eal of antagonism, the unsymbolizable traumatic kernel that found expression in the same distortions of reality, the fantasized”
representations of the Real (The Sublime Object 161; “I Hear You with My Eyes” 115).
16With these descriptive phrases, Žižek clarifies that the Real refers to the irreducible dissensus and disharmony in the Symbolic world, simultaneously resisting and inviting symbolization. Yet, no matter the symbolization, the fantasmatic narrative of the antagonism of the Real, intends to cover or represent the inherent splitting, these representative attempts result in no more than a variety of distorted realities, or, in Žižek’s phrase, of the “distortions and/or dissimulations” of the unrepresentable (“I Hear You with My Eyes” 115). Or, understood, though in a diagonal way, through Lacan’s allegory, the relation between the Symbolic and the Real resembles the race between Achilles and the tortoise: “It is quiet clear that Achilles can only pass the tortoise—he cannot catch up with it” (S20 8; emphases added). That is, insofar as Achilles
“can only pass” but can never “catch up with” the tortoise, the Symbolic can merely (mis-)represent the Real and has its innate splitting reincarnated through various distorted
15
The two puns applied here indicate more clearly the ambivalent quality of the Real with regard to the Symbolic.
The Lacanian Real ex-sists (which means “out-stands”) in the field of the Symbolic and, with its specific status of ex-sistence, becomes the discontents (sources of disturbing the unity of the Symbolic) and dis-contents (the uncontained contents) of the Other. In other words, in its relation with the Symbolic, the Real is an “extimacy”
(extimité in its French original), a neologism coined by Lacan through the replacement of the “in-” in “intimacy”
with the prefix “ex-” and applied to designate the indistinction of the inside and outside of the Symbolic register.
16
However, it is noteworthy that the term “antagonism” should be treated as no more than a temporary description
of the lack in the Other. Resisting symbolization, the Real can therefore never be pinned down and all-said [tout dit].
narratives fantasizing about and (mis-)recognizing the Real, the way that things (just) fall apart.
17In this regard, the knowledge of the Real is intrinsic to going through the Ruby fantasy that the community and patriarchy are whole and univocal. Only when the indelible presence of the Real is recognized/re-cognized by Rubians can they cease disavowing the lack in the Other. In fact, throughout Paradise, Morrison constantly alludes to the impossibility of maintaining the wholeness of the Symbolic domain, hence the omnipresence of the antagonism of the Real. The first exemplification is the various versions made up by Ruby people about the cause, the process, and the result of the gang violence, whose death strike in fact shatters the closure of the patriarchy and community. In explaining to Misner what has in reality taken place, Pat discloses that there exists at least “two editions of the official story”—one about how the “nine men had gone to talk to and persuade the Convent women to leave or mend their ways,” and the other,
“the Fleetwood-Jury version,” relating that “five men had gone to evict the women; that four others—the authors—had gone to restrain or stop them” (296-97). Besides the two main versions, Pat has her own narrative that is “withheld from [Misner]”: “that nine 8-rocks murdered five harmless women (a) because the women were impure (not 8-rock); (b) because the women were unholy (fornicators at the least, abortionists at most); and (c) because they could—which was what being an 8-rock meant to them and was also what the ‘deal’ required” (297). Unsatisfied with the two editions offered by Pat, Richard comes to the other two Reverends in Ruby, Simon Cary and Senior Pulliam, to collect other information in order to build up an accurate account of the event. Nonetheless, “neither had decided on the meaning of the ending and therefore, had not been able to formulate a credible, sermonizable account of it,” thereby failing to “assuage Richard’s dissatisfaction” (297). Meanwhile, even Lone, the mindreader who “overheard the men at the Oven and […] knew what they really said,” cannot decide “whether the two women in the house were dead or just wounded” and “didn’t see anybody outside the house, living or dead”
17
Yet the point is not whether or not the Symbolic has found the exact representation of the Real; the truth about
the Real is that its complete depiction is a mission impossible. After all, the Real can be grasped as the Thing (das
Ding) that has been castrated and the Kantian Thing-in-itself whose original state can never be fully verbalized or
imagined. Put simply, every understanding of the Real is merely a fantasy, or, more precisely, a fantasmatic reality.
(297).
Certainly, Morrison’s depiction of the multiple fabrications of the gang violence would stimulate a postmodern reading that focuses much upon the indetermination of what has really taken place. However, what such an interpretative approach fails to notice is the very splitting of the Ruby citizens demonstrated in their different renditions, no matter based upon a closed or an open-ended rendering, of the same story. In this way, the accuracy of the account about the attack on the Convent women turns into a certain objet petit a rather than a factual answer. This unknowability of the true story arouses the desire of its listeners such as Misner, who is clearly unsatisfied with all the editions provided, to build up his/her own version and interpretation of the involved meaning and desire. In addition, it stimulates Rubians, being uncertain as to what really take place, to re-think about what they have done and to what extent they are involved in and should be guilty of the violence and the xenophobic mentality. Functioning as the objet petit a, the authenticity of the murder event propels Rubians’ desire of interpretation and interpretation of desire—the desire of interpretation of desire—to work, consequently engaging these people in a direct encounter with the Real, the lack in the symbolization of the unrepresentable reality.
On the other hand, whilst the objet petit a is the “supposed object,” the supposed answer to
the unknowable, it also discloses the very locus that the Symbolic cannot easily domesticate. To
Rubians, certainly what really happens in the gang violence becomes their objet petit a; it also
exposes the fact that they are not unified. The portrait of the diversified ways of fantasizing about
the “reality” of the gang violence patently exhibits the dimension of the Real in Ruby: the
disunification of the patriarchy and community. Although motivated by the purpose to put the
blame of the assault upon some certain participants and hence to discriminate the guilty and the
innocent, the “two editions of the official story” brings about the dissensus among the paternal
leaders of Ruby. The once, at least at the superficial level, tightly-unified and connected 8-rock
families begin to fall apart and split into different camps; the claimed and imagined integrity
collapses. The discord among the New Fathers is equal to the disruption of the totality of the
patriarchal Other. Also, the identity of the Deacon and Steward, which, as I have proposed in
Chapter II, functions as an allegory of the state of being identical in Ruby, undergoes the most drastic change. As Pat notes, whereas the Morgan twins’ “distinguishing features were eroding (they gave up cigar and chaw at the same time) […] [and] they looked more alike than they probably had at birth,” “the inside difference was too deep for anyone to miss” (299). Indeed, the silence between the Morgan brothers, as I have demonstrated earlier in this chapter, shows the rift that emerges in the core of the Ruby patriarchy. The wordlessness and reticence that used to be the form of communication between Deacon and Steward right now bears testimony to the cleavage between them. What is of greater interest is that a crevice in the wall of the Symbolic can even be found in the love-object of the Morgan brothers. In the past, Deacon and Steward similarly salivate for “the nineteen Negro ladies” during their second Grand Tour and their wives, the Blackhorse sisters Soane (married to Deacon) and Dovey (married to Steward), resemble each other more than they do. Now, “[t]he sisters disagreed about what happened at the Convent,” in particular about who pulls the trigger and shoots Connie.
The discordance and disunification which “grow too deep for anyone to miss”, I argue, are not so much the aftermath of the Convent event as the epitome of the inherent splitting of Ruby.
In fact, before the event of womanslaughter, antagonism has permeated Ruby: from the feud
between the Morgans and the Fleetwoods and between the 8-rock families and Roger Best,
through the communal dispute or dissensus over the meaning of the mythical “Beware the
Furrow of His Brow,” over whether “Be the Furrow of His Brow” can replace the inherited
messages, over the significance of Pullian’s sermon on K.D. and Arnette’s wedding ceremony,
over who the Convent women really are (some think they are “stranger neighbors […] but
harmless,” others regard them as devils), to the split religious system (three preachers in charge
of three different pulpits—Reverend Pulliam at New Zion, Pastor Cary at Holy Redeemer, and
Richard Misner at Cavalry—all have exhibited that the will to “comm-unity” is at best a will and
the integration of the community is at most an illusion. It is these breaches in the community and
patriarchy that the Ruby male leaders and citizens aim to disavow, in the meantime ironically
disclosing and reinforcing the existence of the lack. What disavowal as a way of rejecting lack
and castration presupposes is the acknowledgement of the existence, no matter how early the admission takes place before the denial, of the Symbolic cut.
18What ensues after the terrorist project and action is nothing but an extended reincarnation of the antagonism that prevails in Ruby. Yet, the presence of antagonism of the Real does not suffice to transform the psychical structure of the community. Conversely, its residents have to actively recognize the impossibility of the non-hole-ness of the Other to accomplish an ethical subjectivity. What conditions the possibility of renouncing perversion and best cherishing
“second chance” is the knowledge and acknowledgment of the Real, the traversing of the fantasy of the disavowed wholeness of the Other. In treating the death of Jeff Fleetwood and Sweetie’s youngest child, Save-Marie, as “unacceptable [and] incomprehensible,” the Ruby citizens living
“in a town full of immortals” may still show an unawareness of the inexorable presence of the lack in the Symbolic universe (297, 298). Nevertheless, the fact that “four months later” these townspeople keep “chewing the problem, asking God for guidance if they were wrong: if white law should, contrary to everything they knew and believed, be permitted to deal with matters heretofore handled among and by them” demonstrates the commencement of these people’s acquisition of the knowledge of the Real (298). Only with the acceptance of irreducible difference to themselves (the value of the white law), their flaw and imperfection (the self-doubt about their responsibility in the Convent event), and the impossibility of immortality (the death of Save-Marie, and the forthcoming ones of Jeff and Sweetie’s other children) can Ruby people recognize the lack in the Other, the hole in the patriarchy and community, and even the splitting of themselves.
The best instantiation of the knowledge of the Real is perhaps the dialogue between Misner and Anna Best: when envisaging the future of Ruby, they relate that “You see a door; I see a window” (305). Here, the point is not that which vision can promise Ruby a better prospect.
18
Whether the admission of the lack in the Symbolic occurs or not further differentiates psychosis and perversion.
While perversion performs the task of serving as the object-instrument that bridges the gap in the big Other,
psychosis is in no way concerned with the Symbolic lack: without accepting the “forced choice” of entering the
Symbolic, there is no necessity for the psychotic subject to deal with the problem of wholeness of the Other.
Instead, in Richard’s statement that “That’s the difference between us. You see a door; I see a window” reverberates the proper ethical knowledge of the absolute “difference between us” and among human beings, and of the ex-sistence of the Real in relation to the Symbolic (305;
emphases added). In other words, since the lack in the Other can never be truly fulfilled, the Symbolic register remains inconsistent and incomplete and constantly maintains its operation.
Therefore, only when the knowledge of the inconsistence of the Symbolic Other is acquired can Rubians attain its ethical possibility.
Now with the knowledge of the Real, it is more possible to re-examine how Ruby could have dealt with with its “stranger neighbors,” the Convent women, and should negotiate the forthcoming racial others. Insomuch as the Real denotes the inherent splitting that ex-sists in the big Other and the subject constituted therein, the antagonism can be grasped as Freud’s the unheimlich, the uncanny or the unfamiliar, which is originally heimlich, homely and familiar to the subject and the Symbolic (“The ‘Uncanny’” 226). The ethical force of the Freudian thesis can be found in Kristeva’s argument, which derives from Freud’s observation of what is uncanny is originally canny. In Strangers to Ourselves, Kristeva argues that “[t]he foreigner is within me, hence we are all foreigners. If I am a foreigner, there are no foreigners” (192).
19In this logic, the detestable Convent women should be understood as Ruby’s exteriorization of the inner splitting;
the aversion to and denigration of the “stranger neighbors” are no more than fantasized narratives that are applied to cover the rift intrinsic to the community of the Ruby. Put differently, the true
“stranger neighbors” to Ruby people are Ruby people themselves: as Richard holds, “God,” i.e., the Other, and the others are “not a mystery. We are” (304). “These outrageously beautiful, flawed and proud people” as such are the mysterious and enigmatic strangers to themselves.
19
