Psychoanalysis and Courtly Love Author(S): ELLIE RAGLAND Reviewed Work(S): Source: Arthuriana, Vol

Home , Lack (manque), Sexual Feeling

Psychoanalysis and Courtly Love Author(s): ELLIE RAGLAND Reviewed work(s): Source: Arthuriana, Vol. 5, No. 1 (SPRING 1995), pp. 1-20 Published by: Scriptorium Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869092 . Accessed: 02/11/2011 16:15

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http://www.jstor.org Psychoanalysis and Courtly Love

ELLIE RAGLAND

Lacan Jacques argued that courtly love worked against the repressive on a effect of language jouissance, thereby circumventing structural sexes an non-rapport between the and proving that ethics of desire can govern social practice if the admission of lack governs the debates and ritualsin play. (ER)

Psychoanalysis can hat psychoanalysis contribute to Medieval Studies? What can students ofArthurian chivalry learn from contemporary psychoanalytic can a return to us investigations? What courtly love tell about psychoanalysis, or about courtly love, for thatmatter? And what have the spiritual, the poetic to current new as and the sexual do with the development of the Middle Ages' returns to as set it problems ofmeaning and being forthbefore Descartes sounded to essence the death knell any possible study of in knowledge? Put another way, can us the 'newMiddle Ages' help rethink 'developmental' views of history by new - - to adding axioms i.e., knowledge of what constitutes structure what is a already known? Can reconsideration of medieval thought and practices to a worst excesses contribute anything re-evaluation of the of Cartesian rationalism and its twin sister (or brother), the contemporary discourse of new Science, the God whose truth is located in the 'they say of scientific discourse? new to By the Middle Ages,' I refer the practice that has grown up within to - - terms the past decade of referring the object studied theMiddle Ages in or of methodology, particularly to books written edited by such scholars as Stephen Nichols and Lee Patterson.1 In 'The (Im)Possibility of the Middle to Ages,' the preface his doctoral dissertation (1994), Richard Glezer describes new as a Stephen Nichols' Medievalism' post-structuralist critique of traditional or formalist criticisms whose assumptions are humanist. Nichols seeks to define a women 'truer' picture of medieval and men, Glezer says, by explaining that was a their chaotic universe limited by 'technology' made up of documents and in terms manuscripts that framed their period of absolute meanings.2 Glezer argues that such post-structuralist critics, interested only in context, context comes to a foreclose any investigation of how the be. Making leap from

ARTHURIANA 5.1 (1995) I 2 ARTHURIANA

to zero from to dismiss infinity which, then, becomes the ground base which cause critics refuse to consider problems of along with problems of origin, such of that the grounds of knowledge might well lie outside the actuality not or representation: 'By acknowledging the Otherside of knowledge the new on underside of knowledge, the Medievalism focuses only half the equation. or concern is Much like the old philology the old historicism, itsprimary with is in in theway inwhich knowledge represented, both images and texts, rather are than with the ways in which such representations themselves modes of critics to knowing (Glezer, vi). Even like Lee Patterson who try work with the an to a problem of outside referent return, nonetheless, plurality of worlds' as a moment argument, taking theMiddle Ages mythical of origin which is, a true then, imaginarized into supposedly picture, while any consideration of a is what possible truth in knowledge might be dismissed (Glezer, vii). The late French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, now famous for his to a at contributions rethinking of epistemology and ontology, arrived the an over an conclusion that knowledge itself constitutes imaginary facade an traumata ordering of impasses he named the Veal,' order of made up of seemingly contradictory material which is, nonetheless, truth-functional. The at to on 'real' functions points of impasse impose discontinuities the seeming consistencies of thought and being, thereby inserting another kind of knowledge in is to what generally taken be knowledge qua unified whole. More precisely, Lacan referred to courtly love in several of his Seminars, most in particularly Seminar vu, The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis (1959-1960), but in in errent also Encore, Seminary^ (1972-1973) and Seminar xxi, Les non-dupes (1973-1974) where he said that love is courtly love, given, if you will, the a one mathematical impossibility of symmetrical rapport of plus one in the man a couple of and woman.3 That is, opposites do not merge into synthesis. cannot Even themagic of love, then, make One out of two who are structured an in asymmetry. And courtly love was, in Lacan's view of it, the greatest admission in the history ofWestern love practices of the non-rapport at the heart of sexual relations. Yet, in admitting the impasse between the sexes, this not on or on practice, paradoxically, did give up love, desire. In Encore (1972-1973) Lacan says that courdy love appeared at the point when homosexual amusement had fallen into a supreme decadence, not - inseparable from the political degeneration of the feudal system the feudal an system being, in any case, impossible dream' (Encore, 79). But this is not a or deprecation of homosexual love desire, for Lacan praises hommosexuelle love in same as a the Seminar the supreme love of The Woman, love that keeps an essence are a alive of the feminine. These ideas of piece with the axiom he sexes advanced inEncore, that the non-rapport between the gives rise to culture.4 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 3

means Iwould suggest that Lacan carefully chose theword d -cadence,which the the a falling away from the object he named das Ding, only Good, supreme material' Good, where Kleinians have situated themythic body of themother a from Melanie (5. VII, 106). Lacan gives different description of das Ding Klein:

a is at the level of the initial Das Ding is primordial functionwhich located It is establishmentof thegravitation of theunconscious Vorstellungen.... precisely a as we shift into discourse thatdas Ding, theThing, is resolved into series of at effects.... You will not be surprised ifI tellyou that the levelof theVorstellungen, not. It its theThing is not nothing, but literally,is is characterized by absence, its strangeness (S. VII, 62-63).

But what does Lacan mean by das Ding, the Freudian Thing he calls the as a characterized truth? In 1959-1960, he described theThing series of effects, course Miller by its absence. In his of 1994-1995, Jacques-Alain recently pointed of the and the a once he out that Lacan dropped the concepts Thing object to his o inEncore as a began develop logic jouissance qualitative meaning system in and to the of equal and equivalent, scope complexity, quantitative system Miller's conclusion is of a with his clarification representational meaning.5 piece not of Lacan from 1981 on, to the effect that individuals do enjoy4 in language which, rather, cancels out the immediacy of pleasurable jouissance, installing - - absence loss and lack as existing places in knowledge. to a his return to Consistent with his return Freud via logic of the real, and causes of the relation of the Aristotle's impasses in thinking the structural to the invention of love to an universal the particular, Lacan attributed courtly - - a heroic effort an art, an artifice, he says to circumvent necessary impasse - - the sexual difference between the sexes.The impasse at issue built up around an the in structure as a of thewhole makes equivalence between universal logic or and or all (on themasculine side of sexuation psychic sexual identification) as a of the not-all the feminine side of the particular logic (on sexuation). of the *reaT a of is Thus, the impasse thatmarks the order by logic paradoxes - - the third term of the difference itself that is, the sexual difference out of to that which culture itself arises in interpretations of and accommodations difference. At the moment when the feudal system collapsed, Lacan says 'something no he there is no was longer working forWoman {Encore, 79). Moreover, says, at in the invention of love. Put thesis-antithesis-synthesis logic work courdy as as other another way, the concept of thesis-antithesis is asymmetrical any a is taken for thewhole imaginary opposition wherein totalizing misperception even American works on the of the picture, such that the legal system imaginary innocent versus versus bad. And the principle of guilty, good jury supposes 4 ARTHURIANA some structural third term of dialectical synthesis, the judge functioning as that the the ultimately the 'fourth party' of theName-of-the-Father, is, law, true one who decides in the final moment, or breaks an impasse. A dialectics is two to be found, rather, in the paradoxical impasses of the realwhere antitheses, to It is that the truth for example, give rise this synthesis: appearance envelopes of the 'real.'And such a structure is precisely that of courtly lovewhich Lacan ... described as a meteor [which] has remained enigmatic (Encore-,79). ... was This 'meteor [which] has remained enigmatic replaced, he says, by owes to - theCartesian scientific discourse that nothing theAntique soul that were not of Socrates wherein being, meaning, teaching, loving, and desiring compartmentalized into false categories of public <&-affection and private contrast to affection. Psychoanalysis, in the alleged rationalisms of contemporary one a science, owes much to the Antique soul. In psychoanalysis, talks into so to void, for nothing, speak. But, paradoxically, this 'talking for nothing' turns out to a - be talking for something unexpected for the pure loss ofwords. not means But this loss is innocent. For losing words losing thejouissance that a o firstwelded them together in compacity fixions that delineate being in a fixed sets of identifications made up of the coalescence of density of words (thesymbolic), the indelibilityof images(the imaginary),and theunremitting presence of libidinal effects (the real):

The functionof thesefixions isnothing less than that of filling up theplace a on of central void (S[0]) in knowledge. Thus, they take the character of as ones are not immutability. Insofar the fictions that define being finally separable from the real of the body, 'fiction does not mean untrue, then, but sense not rather, fixation in the of Freud's Fixierung. It is surprising that the to or question of the ages has been ask where being thought, divided into come ontology and epistemology in philosophy, from. Contemporary studies in source in or a cognition locate the of being genetic codes, neural synapses, to yet be found 'seat of thought' in the brain. To was circumscribe theplace of ultimate knowledge, of'divine' knowledge, the focus ofmedieval philosophy, rhetoric, and theology. Is it in heaven? Insofar as a cause one knowledge had where the spiritual and intellectual joined in - supreme Godhead, the person who attained the highest plane manifesting - the immanence of spiritwithin mind disdained the lowly base of the flesh. The of love is all more insofar as phenomenon courtly the astounding then, it Woman as the cause a pinpointed around which system of thought circles. Even ifthe of in was love system thought question poetry, courtly love emerged PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 5

era was in an when the baseness of the flesh inseparable from the concept of as a sin. But the idea ofWoman cause is, nonetheless, paradoxical one. to an a In courtly love,Woman is elevated the position of Ideal, feminine essence,' if you will, who serves as mans cause, at least as the cause of love concerns poetry. But the cause is paradoxical because it the ineradicability of at center loss the of knowledge, being and body. Moreover, this void is to constituted in response the partial drives whose demand forjouissance follows the loss of objects associated with themother's body (or primary Other) in the cut. experience of the Concretely speaking, then, the void in being will always or a be inseparable from the problem of the existence inexistence of feminine or essence. In this structural view of what gives rise to the soul 'substance' of a cultural myths, progressivist theory of History would be false. The 'truth' Lacan finds in the system of courtly love is,moreover, an intellectual and ethical over concern cause ever triumph the decline of with since Nominalism won in one the day forWestern thought the seventeenth century. Courtly love was, in sense might suggest,well advance of contemporary 'scientific' thought in the that not only was mind not opposed to body, but the flesh, the spirit, and the were a mean mind interwoven in serious practice that prefigures the Borro unit by which Lacan formalized the topological shape of the mind/body linkage. to new on To allow you consider the possibility that Lacan may have shed light some the meaning of the practice of courtly love, and that that practice has to a connection psychoanalytic theory, I shall offer simple schematization of meant structure. what Lacan by a In the third period of his teaching, Lacan introduced new geometry via to mathematical topology which enabled him formalize the linkage ofmeaning to on an being. Conscious thought depends imaginary order veil of semblances which obscures the join between the symbolic order of words and the corporal real of the drives. That is, theworld of the visible triggers associative thoughts to as an - (i.e.ywords linked images), functioning ever-moving thus, present - and seemingly full picture show. That the world of the visible is structured even or as around partial, invisible, yet palpable, real objects entities, such the or an most gaze the voice, is not idea people would entertain. The picture is to usually taken be the thing itself. As Jacques-Alain Miller has shown, Lacan took this structuration of the - - as a sense subject qua object response of the real universal.^ To make of us as this proposition, let take these four notions together, does Miller in 'La a en anza Topolog la Ense de Lacan': structure, metaphor, the real and the or J In Encore Lacan Thing {das Ding la chose) replaced Freud's second topic (id, ego, superego) with the Borromean unit of the imaginary, symbolic, and 6 ARTHURIANA

structure as That are real, thereby defining topological. is,mind and body in a Borromean - joined logic that the knot formalizes (107-123). These orders - are language, the image, and the real of the libido (or the drives) knotted a names together by the signifier of 'fourth party' that Lacan the order of the or sinthome (the knot, the paternal metaphor).8 This 'fourth party' arises from term structure the third for sexual difference around which develops, interpreting a or the difference in terms of plus minus value.? That symbolic order authority a is frequently associated with signifier for the Father's Name comes, in part, from the fact thatman's being is first confused with his having the anatomical an symbol for difference, imaginary fact which is interpreted in the symbolic at one remove from the mother who is identified first and foremost with the 'real' of the drives. to Paradoxically, this confusion gives rise the structure feminists have described as the That the male patriarchy is, conflates 'having' the sign of to to true difference with his being the point of taking his opinions be and just. one - tout- What might call masculine discourse the logic of the is structured as an identification with difference away from the sameness of the feminine, a rise to as a difference which gives the social distance from das Ding. Given that in on an the feminine position knowledge relies acceptance that something - one lacks in knowledge the logic of the pas-tout- wonders how the divide two can answers between such positions be bridged? The given by contemporary on a feminists rely,generally speaking, master/slave view of themasculine and on as the feminine, rather than any consideration of them different positions in knowledge. Lacan that the is taught difference bridged by love which is operationalized by the agency of metaphor. That is, the function of substitution gives rise to the of the possibility social, the possibility of exchange. Substituting another means beloved for the first lost objects, objects associated with the mother, a as men taking distance from das Ding- from the sexual Thing. Insofar take Woman as an of equivalent themother, Woman isdefacto associated with das - Ding. In Lacan's teaching the object-c/Z -of-desire be it attributed to a man or a woman - is on the of always side the feminine. Although the sexual object' or choice may be male female, the object in the fantasy that causes desire is a of to montage details linked the real of the sexual body which has, sorrowfully, into been exiled the law of language. We firstdesire at the level of the breast, the feces, the voice, the gaze.We first love certain images, words and effects of the 'real' that coalesce to excite desire and idealization. We love what we desire, in other words, and desire what we we love. And what first love is the familiar. But love is not compatible with PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 7

as or desire insofar each subject desires what defines him her in the unconscious. men Men are defined as insofar as they substitute away from the real of das woman Ding, away from the real of the drives associated with qua mother. women are as women as to men And defined insofar they respond the exile of a from primary jouissance into the prisonhouse of language. Although themother is equated with Woman because she first signifies the as drives which Freud described silent,' Lacan named the first object that to - signifiesdifference children comparing their bodies within the predominant - or function of the visual the phallus phallic signifier.While littlegirls confront to a the problem of trying link valorization of themasculine in society with the an are mystery of anatomical difference, litde boys (except thosewho psychotic) are - rather quickly exiled from the jouissance of the Thing the 'real' of the feminine which commands sexuality by its linkwith the primordial objects cause-of- tsut. Yet, one's first connection to the 'real' is not, as Miller says, one can at something leave behind. The principle the base of causality, then, is the sexual cause which derives from a fundamental identification with an at a. not irreducible kernel the heart of being: the object Discontinuity, come continuity, is the law which produces the effects that from causes, Miller argues, thus explaining what David Hume, typical of idealist philosophers, to in an anterior creative to sought understand positing imagination, prior the can a functioning of reason, which solve the problem ofwhether, for example, tree has fallen in a forest ifone has not heard the tree fall.10One's cause, Miller one not a argues, is concretely structured by what desires, by comparative one cannot one not seen or or imagination. And desire what has heard touched. not essence The tree's existence is the problem, then, but the Lacan called to as an a as cause jouissance that gives rise oneself object which exists the of which one is oneself the effect. us to on This brings the Lacanian idea of the 'real'whose basic truths bear s - a - Lacan most important matheme the object which marks the point of as a an limit in originary attachments. Insofar the object denotes absence and an in it is or imagined consistency the drives, recognized (i.e., recognized as an at known again object of value) the point where the sexual first inscribed as at a on itself Eros the site of loss. And paradoxically, it is the basis of this - - experience of loss thatWoman qua mother site of the primordial drives is as a a taken guarantee ofwholeness, goodness, truth, solidity, trust, continuity, woman as principle of the 'natural.' One might say that this iswhy 'counts' all or a not nothing. In the symbolic, counting begins with differential, with the on an absoluteness of sameness. Yet, paradoxically, it is the grounds of a assumption that the other, the beloved, is constant that individuals function 8 ARTHURIANA

as were as - not - were in the social if they whole, if continuity discontinuity the fundamental law of being.11 as to a Insofar metaphor is thefunction that makes it possible repeat in context one of minimal difference by the substitution of thing for another, Lacan brings the temporal dimension into the psychic (tychic) domain. By to zs constant referring das Ding the against which variables multiply, he is able to was situate the dimension of space in being. Yet, it only in isolating the cause as (and the structure) of psychosis that Lacan discovered space and time dimensions of being, for in psychosis the temporal dimension is absent. Psychosis is a outcome a or likely when child is thejouissance object of his her mother's to an fantasy In response omnipresent mother or an omniabsent one, this fails to a no an subject symbolize lack-in-being. Consequently, loss of imagined of the occurs consistency Other for this child. Later, this subject cannot barter the of primary objects satisfaction, always already lost for other subjects, in the dialectic between desire and jouissance which circumscribe the social by laws' of exchange and reciprocity.The social order is thus constituted only insofar as a loses the illusion that he or she subject lacks nothing.

Courtly Love set forth - Having these basic principles of Lacanian psychoanalysis structure, das and the real - I can return to a Ding, metaphor, consideration of courtly love as a that combines the practice spiritual (structure), the sexual (dasDing), and the artistic (metaphor), around the 'real' of the sexual non-rapport. As a social construct to seeking circumvent the impasse between the sexes, courtly an love, paradoxically, gives eloquent testimonial to an eternal (i.e., structural) is no a problem: there ratio for natural harmony between the sexes.What Lacan in his use to proposed of topology explain the intertwined structure of mind and is an body nothing less than analysis of the sexual difference at the heart of cultural practices. There is no Multi-Culturalism in Lacan, only the myriad practices arising out of a in sexuation. is a non-rapport Nor thereHistory with capital 'H,' only the order to over a symbolic practices that try build bridges non-rapport that defines a set out a culture around of impasses arising of structural lack constituted in thewake of the effects to one s traumatizing caused by trying link sexuality to one's and on are not same body being. When itdawns boys that they the as themother who first resonated for them at the level of'the same as' in the 'real' of the must a drives, they interpret (i.e., symbolize) difference, the perception ofwhich wounds themasculine or illusion of bodily integrity wholeness already taken on in successive mirror moments. on a phase When itdawns girl that the PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 9

standard of social value circulates around the boy whose only visible difference from her is the male sexual organ, she too must symbolize this fact in the sexes to imaginary and real. The problem for both is how symbolize (i.e., an 'interpret') anatomical fact found in images of the body and described by an words. The resultant symbolization constitutes the 'real' of sexual feeling in to a even as eroticism particular singular subject, the erotic is shot through with impasses of interdiction and trauma. to to In the third period of his teaching, from 1974 1981,Lacan began develop as an a his theory of the subject object qua response of the 'real,' jouissance an object whose supreme value lies in being loved, basically affair of the drives. men women are Yet, real and real lost in the substitutive lies of metaphor by the of one which they skirt around insistent urgings metonymy that might name the call to connection, which is a call to re-connection. Moreover, love to bears the burden of joining the real of the drives the lack-in-being from which desire first arises. But, one may well ask,what is love? Love is the demand in for the nothing (rien), Jacques Alain Miller said his Course of 1993-1994.12 Nothing, that is, but the visible signs that he calls 'divine details' elsewhere, details that let the other person know he or she is seen, fed, heard, valued as a jouissance object in the drives.^ Yet, this is terribly difficult precisely because men this 'nothing' is given (or not) in the field of the drives which trouble and concern women because they the body in itsmultiform sexuality,marked as it is by primordial interdictions. not or nature at It is justman's woman's animal that is stake here, then, but non the jouissance which, paradoxically, is constituted around the 'real' of returns dialectical jouissance that into the symbolic order of 'intellectual' savoir to connaissance an excess - bring the discomforting of of another kind of not most treatments knowledge. It is surprising that cultural of the body give rise to various genres of the comic. Ccourtly love is admirable precisely because it refuses the comic dimension in thematter of Eros versus Thanatos. an In article published in 1975, 'Matrice,' Jacques Alain Miller argued that one all Lacans work circles around central principle: that truth has a name a a structure. because it has place and And Lacan claimed that courtly love name isolated both the and structure of this place, central to the human, never or although it had been formalized before in philosophy, theology an even psychoanalysis. Indeed, courtly love remains enigma today. Lacan says a can that courtly love spoke ofWoman in way that, I would add, only be taken as 'feminist,' ifyou accept my definition of feminism. The feminism at concerns a issue each woman's grappling with the problem of finding signifier to valorize her (in)existence as Woman because she enters the field of IO ARTHURIANA

sexes as is not an signification for both mother. Anet mother' adequate signifier to representWomans being, given that mother' is identified with the silence an of the drives and the logic of sameness, attributes that have the properties of are not absolute and, thus, easily countable within the logic of dialectical to thinking which assigns value oppositionally. Trying make of the mother's - an - a to body itself ensemble of drive objects signifier,Melanie Klein failed are not or understand that people in and of themselves good bad objects, a a anymore than is breast. Bad object' effects come, rather, from negative or can to a experience of the voice the gaze which give rise rejection of the other qua global object of satisfaction. Lacan taught that the truth named in courtly love is thatWoman substitutes name to for the lost object denoted by the object a, the he gave thejouissance is over that left after the operation of language has anesthetized jouissance, moments a thereby evacuating experiential of pleasure. There is remainder of - jouissance, however, that dwells in thewisps of image, sound, corporal effect traces resonate concrete a i.e., that fromwithin the palpability of literally empty o in place. A small bit jouissance remains memory, sustained by fantasy.The in as as in is not an or object sought love, well fantasy, actual person object, then, but the annullment of a void that is to be found in the field of the (partial) drives. And Lacan says, in further praise of the invention of courtly was not as love, that all the talk about love justwords, but words insofar they a or must constitute compacity density of being that be decomposed if any true - learning any apprehension of the truth of the 'real'- is to occur. Most talk ismaster discourse talk based on the of unconscious denial desire fueling it. In i = i. as this discourse of narcissistic pomposity, In courdy love, inmedieval was on a rhetoric, the discourse fixed question towhich the answers were not apparent. Indeed, the lack of a pat answer was essential to the belief in the value of at ongoing questioning. Although contemporary knowledge laughs such modes of a thinking, calling them neo-scholastic circularities, theymiss one fundamental point. Whether speaks to know what God is, or what love is, one into a even speaks void of not-knowing, ifcertain pre-determined answers are awkwardly placed in conclusion. Like onto as themoralizing endings tacked great novels (such Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses), the advanced knowledge' contained in the courdy debates on love lies in not as their dismissing the 'real' from their questioning, does contemporary science, thus setting the standard for contemporary debate by to having already concluded that the 'real' has nothing do with knowing, thereby the of a Lacan's foreclosing possibility question. concept of advancing in an nor a knowledge' is neither enlightenment concept, positivistic one, insofar PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE ll

as - rise any advance in knowledge about the truth i.e., knowledge that gives to an or - must account operational law axiom ultimately take of jouissance. on Most such debates run ashoal the impasses of Zeno's paradox. Even Aristotle means can lacked the of proving how points of limit be established except to erect within actual time. Twentieth-century topology enabled Lacan a differential clinical categories within the realm of logic that demonstrates intersect to Lacan was how meaning and being produce knowledge. concerned over to answer one of the pressing questions that has troubled thinkers the centuries: To what does the referent referwhen its object is invisible? Indeed, cannot as a or without psychoanalysis function viable theory practice answering is at this question. What, within (or beyond) the visible object, aimed when to be the but turns the object appears thing targeted, upon greater proximity, are in to a to ashes? Einstein taught that phsycial phenomena relative reference fixed point. Jacques-Alain Miller has taken up the work ofQuine, and other to to a - is analytic philosophers, say thatwords refer void.1^ But and this the - a structure. key the void has In Seminar vu, Lacan says:

vase ... as an to the existence of Now if you consider the object made represent ... thevoid at the center of the realwhich is called theThing, thisvoid presents .... onn itselfas a nihil, as a nothing The introduction of this signifierfa which ex .... is thevase, is already thewhole notion of the creation nihilo [which] finds as itselfcoextensive with the exact situation of theThing such (146-47). vase as or But what is theThing? Is it the signifier, the hole around which not a the vase is fashioned? It is,Lacan says, theThing which is signifier, and as around which all the human is defined, even justwhat the human is escapes Einstein's of us' (150). Lacan's topology of the real parallels law physics. Meaning to is relative in reference to a fixed point: das Ding. Fantasies seek fill up lack, an interior a of we cycling rapidly through void, causing quickening feeling call affect. In other words, jouissance is the goal that unveils the headless subject moments one Lacan describes as the caput mortuum of the signifier, in when so on - or not. feels intimately seen, heard, cherished, rejected, and i.e., valued erotic that love It is precisely thematerial effect of jouissance courtly sought - to to capture and sustain by elevating the Freudian Thing- the sexual Thing thedialectical dignity of a signifier.Indeed, this is thedefinition Lacan will her maternal function give of sublimation. Woman, usually circumscribed by as cause within the drives is, in courtly love, celebrated the primordial object of as a - is an desire. Insofar jouissance is, for Lacan, meaning system that - on a organization of connaissance par with representational knowledge (savoir), cause each person's true resides in the real of the fleshwhere being fed equals and bear on control being cared for in the oral drive, where spending wasting 12 ARTHURIANA

from the anal arising drive, where being heard brings the invocatory drive into and seen constitutes existence play, being within the scopic drive. The subject is in as an truly play object of surplus value whose worth goes up and down within thc of the drives. Here on women jouissance the burden placed isnothing less than the implicit demand thatWoman replace the inexistence of a feminine a a essence, supplying guarantee of consistency and continuity insofar as she is as a unified - is the of - a imagined being semblance such fromwithin disparate set of partial functions. When Lacan speaks of the inexistence ofWoman (JbA),he means that no no law of no can ideological solidity, language, grounding in social contracts, compensate for the loss from which the drives issue in a circuitous effort to return to an oneness imagined originary place of and unity,which turns out to an be actual void place created by the loss ofjouissance that first gave rise to the for meant to fill literal holes quest objects up created by the loss of objects. In an - this sense, the voice is object sought in theOther be it a person, a radio - or a television to fill a concrete up lack-in-being by soothing and reassuring, and thus quelling, anxiety. went to Courdy love straight the point of the drives, Lacan said. The trouv res or as Picasso not troubadours, said of himself, did seek: they found. They knew what theywere lookingfor and heeded theirknowledge that the value of life lies in la chose.The troubadours knew that can only love of the feminine mitigate the caused a central loss. - suffering by Underlying all knowledge quests and this is a structural - Lacan topological theory locates the human cause par the one thatmoves back and forth as excellence, jouissance affects surrounding castration to identification with the local (a lack-in-being), universal language conventions Lacan called the or - 'reality principle' the phallic signifier i.e., - the in to the limits of the of to language power capacity language quell the anxiety that arises from a central void, (S[0j), a void that is in us. It is at that that have Lacan point myths arisen, argued, throughout recorded history, to the void outside in project theologies, philosophies, folk tales, conventional wisdom, and so on. At each of the that a - points map seeming unity of the subject itself a - in the a temporal pulsion 'real,' symbolic and imaginary, central illusion is in that there is an of play: object constancy, underlying questions or doubts. Yet, Woman cannot be this not object, only because the (partial) drives are not constant, but also because Woman represents the principle that gives rise to via set the social the law of limits by the taboo that constructs the social around a the the is a paradox: Good, only good, forbidden object. Lacan showed two faces to the incest taboo: the social as an implicit law against psychosis in PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 13

are never so which the drives dialecticized into signifiers and must, themselves, as a try to substitute for themselves distance from das Ding (which, by definition, cannot do); and the Law of the Father which defines the social they ' paradoxically as a to not... creates itself limit jouissance. 'Thou shalt the lack that begets the to desire that gives rise exchange.1* a an one Thus, the object denotes empty place filled by whatever invests a to omis jouissance in. In the nth century, practice of love began emerge that to sustained desire (as opposed the hurried crudeness of lust) around the figure ofWoman whose desirability was elevated to the level of the supreme Good. went concurrent This practice against the debasement ofwoman, along with to the flesh, challenging superego tendencies of cultures relegate sexual desire to secrecy and degradation. Lacan argued that the practice of courtly love as a challenged the stasis that Freud first defined the silence of the drives, stasis at as which functions, the limit, the death drive. Clarifying Freud here, Lacan as to described the 'death drive' repeated attachments the superego interdictions no against pleasure. But there is superego agency { la Freud) in Lacan, only to the fixative power of language repress the erotic call of jouissance. to a By raising Eros social Ideal, courtly love challenged the private pain of cloistered jouissance that rules the lives of many 'would-be' subjects of desire. was was And Lacan amazed. Freud had thought that repression repression of the drives. Lacan discovered this paradox: language represses jouissance. Yet one must name in to torture things order escape the unimitigated of living in one sees the unrepresented, unnamed 'real' o(jouissance that in its pure form one cannot in autism.1^ Moreover, be cured of repression just by knowing that a - language kills jouissance, leaving only little remainder Lacan called it surplus - excess a value in fantasy.Yet this that Lacan named the object links the body to to a an language, thereby joining themind the body. As such, the object is - not or effect of the 'real'- the sexual Thing and, thus, is dialecticized dialecticizable. xx ... a In S minaire Lacan says that 'courdy love is completely refined to we fashion supplement the absence of the sexual rapport by feigning that are the ones who put up the obstacle [to it]' (65). Miller has clarified this a none as concept of feigning rapport where there is in his description of love two the gift of presence itself.The infant's demand for love has dimensions, - - then, that of need the demand for food, for the breast and the demand for the 'almost nothing' of the look, the voice, the touch. In short, the demand for love is the demand for the presence of the object thatMiller describes in his as Course of 1993-1994 {Done) the demand for 'nothing, almost nothing.' 14 ARTHURIANA

is In courtly love the object-cause-o -desirc sublimated and elevated, without its o desire. In Lacan being drained of components jouissance and Encore, defined the sublime as 'themost elevated point of what is at the bottom or cause. In a ne va base' (18),which generally masks its implicitly admitting that et an pas naturellement entre leshommes lesfemmes,courdy love admits of obstacle. - Lacan calls it the dark-sided face of God the narcissistic Godhead that is or own fantasies. Descartes each subject qua object of his her While put God a. a at in brackets, Lacan placed God in the object petit Miller places the the site of Descartes's ergo, between the 1 think' and the 'I am,' supporting the as an drives that operate drive in language implicit demand: 'I ask you this, but what I'm really asking is this.' to a Courtly love, by daring work dialectically with non-dialectical impasse, most one ever was, in Lacan's words, 'truly the formidable thing has tried. But one on how does denounce thefeinte in it?Rather than being there, floating .... more the paradox that courtly love appeared in the feudal epoch [it is to note most interesting that] courtly love is, entirely, in the servile sense, for to the man, whose subject [sujette) is the Lady. [And this is] the only way withdraw himself with elegance from the absence of the sexual rapport' {Encore, Miller has written thematheme for sublimation thus:The feint or 65). " pretense or - - is masquerade enforme the object of desire supported by the symbol or an for castration lack. Courtly love, like psychoanalysis, admits that there is - - obstacle the real around which all language and desire circulate. Without or to being mystical catharist, Lacan says that coitus in suspense gives rise to in - poetry and desire. And this another paradox lies.The life feeling -Eros not or is fundamentally attachable to sexual acts their pleasures, but to the vu desirefor the object. In Seminar Lacan equates the practice of courtly love with the artistic technique of anamorphosis: that is, the extimacy of the object - - an cause-of-desire the Lady in courtly love marks the site of internal void cut into an constituted by themarks of'nothing' that infinityof time, creating out the lacks around which being ismade of themarks that inscribe themselves as cuts or traces of the real. These 'nothings' of marks build up the divine or details by which each particular subject later recognizes the objects he she desires. What the drive aims at in the dialectics of love and desire, in other are concrete words, the traits of ourselves. In this sense, the object (whose THE LADY embodiment is), is both interior (hidden in the fantasy) and - to anamorphotically exterior it. Courtly love pulls off the mask over what to underlies the quest for knowledge; wit, that language faces the challenge of accommodating the 'real' of the drives. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 15

The of the Miller is object quest, says, extimate, creating the effect of a 'distant interior.'The is the of or own subject object his her fantasy, themost cherished themaintenance of him- or as a object being herself the object of lost cause. One's lost cause not persists, then, only inwhat the fantasy hides, but in the belief in a be it of a or a 'beyond,' fantasized pleasure sacred chapel. this Indeed, 'sacredbeyond' is somethingpeople willingly die for.In joining the belief in a 'sacred to beyond' the 'sexual thing,' Lacan says he aims at its most at general term, its primitive subsistance (S. vu, 168). Miller calls this material a - the the on primitive gift don, symbol itselfof the exchange which social value turns -that defines love as 'the demand for nothing.' But, the - the of the drives - is that is nothing Thing which immediately consumed, be it a meal the hand of one scent a prepared by who cares, the of freshlywashed and ironedshirt, the goodnight kiss of thebedtime 'tuckingin ritual.The are 'nothings' ofjouissance the causes behind our monumental intellectual efforts to we we understand what know, how know, who we are (Miller, Done, June But we all stumble over how to value is 22,1994). what produced in the temporal moments of the drive. The value of the a or surplus object is, indeed, all nothing. The of love is a a Lady courtly semblance, then, representative of theThing around which the drives organize themselves in rituals that seek to mediate desire and control In the sense anxiety. that theThing, paradoxically, reveals a central The of is an void, Lady courtly love icon of something else: the effort of or art to cerner la evanescent as it one poetry chose, is. Perhaps need only call attention to the recent an discovery of actual black hole, by definition, invisible. It isknowable its by properties (the gasses surrounding it, intense gravity, speed, the distance between itsmass and what is heat, orbiting around it). Perhaps, masses say contemporary physicists, such are even the source of quasars, the I7 mysterious bright beacons of light discovered in this century. In the same not even the void at center way, by analogy, the of human knowledge isknowable the it. by properties surrounding Indeed, the agalma sought in courtly love is of a central to a proof positive lack that humans try fillwith positive jouissance, on which depends continual evacuation of negative jouissance. or From the nth century to the 12th 13th, an Ideal of la belle dame held sway as a so principle ofmorality around which behavior, loyalty,and on, was encoded was not or (5. VII, 145-146). The pivot marriage, monogamy motherhood, but an Erotics. The written to this belle dame poetry concerned grief, unhappy structure love, dissatisfaction; i.e., the of desire in its paradoxical feature where want and lack both dwell on the surface of aMoeb us form. Not surprisingly, the Mi Lady's value {La Domnei, Dom) often lay in her giving grace, clemency, to a mercy suffering (i.e., desiring) lover.Neo-Scholastic debates on love, the i6 ARTHURIANA

carte art same to arouse du tendre, the social of conversation, all had the goal: to as a cause. was cause an desire and keep it alive And Woman the of such an era womans was mere ethics in of feudalism when value that of object of exchange. Seeking in love what they had lost in jouissance, the troubadours seen as as might well be the feminists of their day, insofar feminism allows any to one positive function desire. There is only litde step between the elevation to of theDame and that of theVirgin Mary Holy Mother inCatholicism. But a not nor the step is crucial, for virgin mother does desire, inspire sexual desire. a She is the purified object of beatitude of the breast and the gaze, drained of to a all passion, of all hate, jealousy, fear, hope, reduced myth of pure love. Yet Woman does inspire desire which, in theMiddle Ages, gave rise not to a code of to a only moeurs, but also rhetoric enshrining the mystery that men at Woman incarnates for the limit point of her inaccessibility.When the lover is deprived of the sexual 'real,' he finds himself, Lacan says, back at the of desire a - point pure where he first encountered these gifts in paradox at the site of themother s which he is to renounce. body quickly required The Lady, the Domina, is, herself, the anamorphosis of the lost objects that dominate fantasies where are sewn seams images and words together in where love and desire intersect, oscillating around the central obstacles of prohibition, inhibition, or permission. The erects an love poetry surrounding the Lady inhuman partner, Lacan even a - notes, cruel partner. The anamorphotic aspect is You think she s this but she s - s (your greatest Blessing), really that she something Else. Lacan seems to have changed position between i960 and 1973, however. He wrote in The Ethics that love is of Pscychoanalysis courtly narcissistic, the feminine object voided of real being any substance, her real virtues of prudence, wisdom, etc., not extolled In he wrote being (150-151). 1973 that, given the sexual impasse, true the only possibility for love between men and women is in some form of love. Lacan no courtly By 1973 longer confused the object with the person, neither theman as lover nor thewoman as beloved. The feminine object had become what in the beloved ismore than or - - he she the agalma which is in terms of concrete traits approachable only organized around the partial drives, material that can arise from a man or a woman or (Dora's father's cigar smoke Frau K. 'sbeautiful white He no body). longer equated Feminine withWoman, - but with the identificatory position one takes toward the other lover or beloved. it is Indeed, precisely the valuing of love with which Umberto Eco at first Lacan.18 Eco writes as a was as a reproached that he, semiotician, known great critic of Lacan. came to one When Lacan Italy at point many years ago, Lacan PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 17

to In a decided, inEco's words, seduce' him. beguiling, soul-baring piece, Eco a reveals how Lacan, after long period of friendly conversations in Paris and to won Milan, unveiled Eco himself, unconsciously, unwittingly, having first Eco's heart in love. Umberto Eco and Lacan talked of everything but semiotics over came to - to a and psychoanalysis, and the years Eco love Lacan suppose to His kind of knowledge him. 'Histoire d'Amour' unveils just that. He abandoned his belief that Lacan was a charlatan, a shaman, a seducer of souls, on not the grounds of love, and the grounds of knowledge. as not Thus the genesis of the sexual Thing, Freud first unveiled it, is or materialist, evolutionary, chemical biological. Its foundations lie, rather, in an one's prochain, the Nebenmensch. Courtly love may well be artificial tries to as organization of the signifierwhich orient the conduit of the drive it an detours the object- vz##?-of-desire(S. vu, 181). The point of such ethics of eroticism is, rather, that Lacan demonstrates a certain truth: that desire is transgressive (5. vu, 182). And Lacan finds this ethics implicit in Freud's 'Three on - Essays the Theory of Sexuality' 1905) where the Vorlust pleasure in - to displeasure (waiting, suspension, interrupted love) points desire.1? But an It what is the goal in such ethics? is, Lacan maintains, the pleasure of the as to a other such, the supreme gift given the other, which is pleasure that commerce requires discipline. The hurried, tragi-comic rituals of ordinary sexual onto - transmute the negativity of the superego the lived substance the - name son quintessence of jouissance and Eros, the Plato gave the of poverty a can and necessity, goes a-begging. Such love only be ruled, then, by art, - to artifice by the attention detail and discipline that goes against the grain of the push for satisfaction (183). Lacan's point is that the incest taboo, necessary in order that the social realm is a It as an of of exchange exist, also taboo against desire. evolves edifice superego morality that fixes human desire in negative jouissance. The genius of courdy a means love was to have circumvented the law-against-desire by evolving of making the 'real' present.Why, then, if this practice worked for approximately was it not two centuries in England, France and Germany permanently answer was not institutionalized? Lacan's is that the sexual Thing then, and is not to attain - now, the object (S.vu, 158). One only tries theThing with its two one - implicit promise of becoming byway of the object. The Thing does not in are not stay in place since itdwells the drives which constant, moreover, is structure of the sexual Thing the fantasy turned inside out, the perversion. we The sorrow for sexed creatures is this: setde forhurried, hasty, unsatisfying, to inelegant jouissances in the haste of the drive declare itself satisfied. But the new out o even correct drive always makes moralities jouissance, politically i8 ARTHURIANA

ones. Whether the sexual imperative is heterosexual or homosexual makes no difference within Lacanian thinking. The point is, rather, thatjouissance is an imperative, the twin sister of the superego. The thin voice of evanescent desire is stifled.Culture settles, then, for the sadism of itsmoralities and for sublimated - art - desire for which responds to the drives, not to the unconscious.

The 'NewMiddle Ages' One cannot but wonder what lies in promise the wedding of courtly love to for the new psychoanalysis Middle Ages'? What would itmean to 'return' to a of love based on the chevalier's not - system revealing, his need' i.e.,jouissance but his castration This us once more to (his lack/desire)? leads Jacques-Alain Miller's Course of The he is 1993-1994. object, says, xhtfetish object. As such, it m is tonymie, based on a libidinal connection. This is,moreover, a connection - with the themark that leaves a cut in tout nothing' the of space, carving out lacks and an erotic trace simultaneously leaving of its libidinal impact. This makes of cause and effect one and the same.20 One could extrapolate from Miller's Course of March a 23, 1994 {Done), for example, more concrete of Lacan's ethics of desire. Between the understanding passivity of the object that Lacan on the feminine side of his places sexuation tables in place of the beloved, and the active of one's own we assumption desire, find the subject itsown connections to qua symbolic object, articulating theOedipal experience in the of the in relation to the apr s-coup drives, nothing much' Miller writes as the feint of courdy love: At this the drives could be said to combine the for point, demand something with taken as the for love, demand nothing (much),' in an ethics of desire. In the lover asks to be - courtly love, loved by showing himself as castrated the of the male. this iswhat Lacan meant opposite patriarchal Indeed, by the of the the signification phallus,' phallus representing desire, the want' that to a But points lack-in-being. desiring what? If imaginary love (Freud's is Verliebheii) quickly used and useless, ifjouissance is but a reductionist shadow of the passions in play in love and desire, what else is at stake?What did the in love In other Lady courtly represent? words, what is targeted in desire? Lacan said agalma: the Ladys soul, themore in her than her, the dark-sided face of God.21 Lacan stressed the dilemma of the human subject caught in the drives which do not a carry message.' Desire and jouissance cannot be conflated into one and the same thing named 'sexuality.' But the 'real' returns anyway in the in the the parole, spoken word, bearing jouissance effects repressed in the unconscious. These are 'messages' that have lost their code or theirdestinatoire. For desire is a signifier in the symbolic and a part of its cause remains in the disassociation o from the Lacan a. jouissance language, part called the object PSYCHOANALYSIS AND COURTLY LOVE 19

it is not us to But sublimation, repression, that allows rethink the relationship art to of language and knowledge. Freud named the four destinies of the drive as sublimation, reversal into the contrary, the return of the drive onto the or source person him- herself, and repression, locating the of the drive in as out in art nor sublimation. But, Lacan pointed Seminar wi, neither religion nor o science take account jouissance, the true source of what drives any knowledge quest. And he added: In any form of sublimation, the void will be determinative. Art organizes itself around this void. Religion avoids it.And an science rejects it, envisioning, rather, the ideal of absolute knowledge.' - - Psychoanalysis like the practice of courdy love aims at the place of the void a concrete at the point where itmakes hole in the signifier.What Lacan put was as into perspective that the subject, response of the 'real,' dwells there, between the object and the signifier.22 an Courtly love, in Lacan's estimation, gave the truth of psychoanalysis in was more art or enigmatic practice that than and Other than religion science. a In distant period called theMiddle Ages, this intellectual practice organized an own desire around the paradoxical object, object constituted around its at disappearance, the object that psychoanalysis finds the base of all material in the real:Woman. Today, in thismoment of contemporary intellectual lifewhere are into thinking, knowing, being, and loving parsed tiny positivistic one - ever more compartments, each separate from the other going steadily can one not a nowhere- how be interested in the meaning of practice that an trulymade of life art? UNIVERSIT DE PARIS VIII

Ellie Ragland isProfessor of English and Frenchat theUniversity of Missouri. Her publications includeJacques Lacan and thePhilosophy of Psychoanalysis (TheUniv, of IllinoisPress, 1986),Essays on thePleasures of Death: FromFreud to Lacan (Roudedge, 1995). She has coeditedLacan and theSubject of Language (Routledge,1991) and is editorof theNewsletter of theFreudian Field. Currently at teaching in the Department of Psychoanalysis the University of Paris viii (Saint a Denis), she is also writing doctoral dissertation in psychoanalysis on the theoretical and clinical distinction between hysteria in and feminine sexuality the masquerade.

NOTES

i StephenNichols, 'TheNew Medievalism: Tradition and Discontinuity inMedieval Culture,' The New Medievalism, ed. M. Brownlee, K. Brownlee, and S. Nichols (Baltimore:The JohnsHopkins Press, 1991), 1-28;Lee Patterson,Negotiating the Past: TheHistorical Understanding ofMedieval Literature (Madison: The University ofWisconsin Press, 1987). 20 A RT H URIANA

2 Richard Glezer, Preface to Invention, Instrumentalismand Sexuation in Chaucer and Lacan. Ph.D. dissertation inEnglish Literature (1994). 3 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book VII (1959-19 60): The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis, trans,by Dennis Porter, ed. by Jacques-AlainMiller (New York:W. W. Norton & Co., 1992); Le S minaire, Livre xx (1972-1973):Encore, textestablished by Jacques Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1975);Le S minaire, Livrera (1973-1974): Les non-dupes errent, Unedited seminar. 4 Ellie Ragland, 'How the fact that there is no sexual relation gives rise to culture,' ed. by Kareen Malone and Stephen Friedlander, Contemporary Psychoanalysis (forthcoming). 5 Jacques-Alain Miller, Silet. Unedited course given in the Department of Psychoanalysis,The University of Paris VIII, Saint-Denis (1994-5), January25,1995. r 6 Jacques-AlainMiller, R ponses du el, Unedited course given in theDepartment of Psychoanalysis atThe University of Paris VIII, Saint-Denis (1983-1984). 7 Jacques-AlainMiller, 'LaTopologia en laEnse anza de Lacan,'Mathemas I (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Manantial, 1987), 84-85. 8 Jacques Lacan, Le S minaire, Livre xxin(i975-i976): Le sinthome,unedited seminar. 9 Jacques Lacan, 'Le s minaire surLa Lettre vol e,'Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 54-61; See also Le S minaire, La relationdobjet, texte tabli par Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1994), ch. xrv. 10 et Jacques-Alain Miller, Cause Consentement, Unedited course given in the Department of Psychoanalysis at theUniversity of Paris vin-Saint Denis (1987 88). 11 to Jacques-AlainMiller, 'To Interpretthe Cause: From Freud Lacan,' Newsletter of nos. theFreudian Field, vol. 3, 1/2 (Spring/Fall 1989): 30-50. 12 course Jacques-Alain Miller, Donc, Unedited given in the Department of Psychoanalysis atThe University of Paris vin, Saint-Denis (1993-1994). course 13 Jacques-AlainMiller, Divine Details, Unedited given in theDepartment of Psychoanalysis atThe University of Paris VIII, Saint-Denis (1989). Much 14 Jacques-AlainMiller, 'Language: Ado About What?,' Lacan and theSubject ofLanguage, ed, by Ellie Ragland andMark Bracher (New York: Routledge, 1991). on 15 Ellie Ragland, Essays thePleasures ofDeath-. From Freud toLacan (New York: see on Routledge,i995), ch. 5 the ethics of psychoanalysis. 16 et trans, Rosine Robert Lefort,Birth of theOther, by L. Rodriguez, M. du Ry, L. Watson (Champaign, Illinois: The University of Illinois Press, 1994). 17 TimeMagazine, June 6,1994. 18 Interviewwith Umberto Eco,'Histoire d'Amour,' Ane: Le Magazine freudien (juin 1992): 13-14. 19 Sigmund Freud, 'TheThree Essays on Sexuality,' SE 7,123-245. 20 Jacques-AlainMiller, 'Matrice,' Ornicar?, no, 4 (1975): 3-8. 21 VIII Jacques Lacan, Le S minaire, Livre (1960-1961): Le Transfert,texte tabli par Jacques-AlainMiller (Paris: Seuil, 1991), ch. x. 22 n est Jean-Daniel Moussay, "La Sublimation pas en effetce qu'un vain peuple pense" in Une touchedu r el: essais sur la sublimation au sensde Freud et Lacan (Nice: Z'Editions, 1991), 48.