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Banville and Lacan: the Matter of Emotions in the Infinities Banville E Lacan: a Questão Das Emoções Em the Infinities

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Banville and Lacan: the Matter of Emotions in the Infinities Banville E Lacan: a Questão Das Emoções Em the Infinities ABEI Journal — The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, v.22, n.1, 2020, p. 147-158 Banville and Lacan: The Matter of Emotions in The Infinities Banville e Lacan: A Questão das Emoções em The Infinities Hedwig Schwall Abstract: Both Banville and Lacan are Freudian interpreters of the postmodern world. Both replace the classic physical-metaphysical dichotomy with a focus on the materiality of communication in an emophysical world. Both chart the ways in which libidinal streams combine parts of the self and link the self with other people and objects. These interactions take place in three bandwidths of perception, which are re-arranged by the uncanny object a. This ‘object’ reawakens the affects of the unconscious which infuse the identity formations with new energy. In this article we look briefly at how the object a is realised in The Book of Evidence, Ghosts and Eclipse to focus on how it works in The Infinities, especially in the relations between Adam Godley junior and senior, Helen and Hermes. Keywords: Banville and Lacan; emotions; The Infinities; Object a; Scopic drive; the libidinal Real Resumo: Banville e Lacan são intérpretes freudianos do mundo pós-moderno. Ambos substituem a dicotomia físico-metafísica clássica pelo foco na materialidade da comunicação em um mundo emofísico. Ambos traçam a diferentes maneiras pelas quais os fluxos libidinais combinam partes do eu e vinculam o eu a outras pessoas e objetos. Essas interações ocorrem em três larguras de banda da percepção, que são reorganizadas pelo objeto misterioso a. Esse “objeto” desperta os afetos do inconsciente que infundem as formações identitárias com nova energia. Neste artigo, veremos brevemente como o objeto a é percebido em The Book of Evidence, Ghosts e Eclipse, a fim de focar em como ele funciona em The Infinities, especialmente nas relações entre Adam Godley Júnior e Sênior, Helen e Hermes. Palavras-chave: Banville e Lacan; emoções; The Infinities; objeto a; pulsão escópica; o real libidinal. Introduction If Flaubert’s ideal was to write a novel about nothing, Banville gets pretty close to it – maybe most so in Ghosts, in Eclipse and in The Infinities.1 All three are books about air, about mood changes between characters. All three show how perception is steered by different aspects of a self which are reshuffled by a fascinating object (a painting, a daughter, a formula which seems to offer a magical kind of hermeneutics). In this sense Banville’s work offers a curious parallel to Lacan’s thought. The psychoanalyst distinguishes three aspects of perception which constitute the psychic system: the affects of the unconscious, the emotions of the subconscious ego and the suprapersonal frames of reference of one’s culture and family. These three bandwidths of perception, the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic, are condensed by the fascinating object which Lacan calls “object a”, an object causing desire. ISSN 1518-0581 | eISSN 2595-8127 | DOI 10.37389/abei.v22i1.3854 147 Received: 4 May 2020 | Accepted: 4 June 2020 ABEI Journal — The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, v.22, n.1, 2020, p. 147-158 Likewise, Banville’s characters are no “in-dividuals” but beehives of RIS activity. As a result, both the analyst and the novelist avoid the classic dichotomies between inner and outer world, between material and emotional phenomena. In this introduction I want to first show how Lacan and Banville’s views converge and illustrate briefly how the RIS system works in The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, and Eclipse. The body of this article will focus on Banville’s The Infinities and Lacan’s Seminar XI (on the concept of object a) and comments thereon. Banville and Lacan: converging interests We could summarize the parallels between Banville and Lacan in four main points: the authentic self is a matter of constantly adjusted ‘equilibido’; this can only be reached via language; and though this self and its models always retain an aspect of unknowability, the speaking self can transcend itself to reach some ‘impure metaphysics’. First there is the regular change of one’s inner makeup. This self-questioning is part of the main aim of a Lacanian analysis: to help people find their own desire as distinct from that which others want one to do.2 A self is a living thing, a never-ending interaction of the unconscious, (pre)consciousness and culture, and as all three aspects change constantly each person must always search for a new equilibrium, an ‘equilibido’ – the very thing Banville’s so-called solipsists are looking for. Second, both are confessed Freudians, Banville reluctantly, Lacan radically so, as he set himself the task to reread Freud, translating his work into postmodern thinking.3 This means that the focus is on language and literature. Indeed, for both Banville and Lacan, the unconscious is not an amorphous vague thing, but a matter to be filtered by language. “The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language”, says Banville (qt. in O’Connell, “Empathic Paradox” 430), which matches one of Lacan’s most insistently repeated lines, that the unconscious is structured like a language.4 Third, both the novelist and the psychoanalyst found their work on the unknowability of the world as Kant saw it: “Our knowledge … is grounded in objects that are not themselves grounded” (Ragland 201). If Banville is the Kleist of twenty-first century literature, Lacan has that role in psychoanalysis, in the sense that he describes the human subject as suspended ‘in an essential vacillation’ (Ragland 194) within the RIS system, between libidinal drives, provisional identifications and negotiation of one’s cultural forms. As a result, all understanding is partial and illusory. Fourth, both writers are interested in “impure metaphysics”. They take the impact of the libido seriously, and find how it palpably effects human beings and their familiars. As a result, Lacan reacts against Merleau-Ponty and the whole (Platonic) Western philosophical tradition, seeing the boundaries between the invisible and visible not so much as that between a metaphysical and physical beings, but between unconscious and conscious energies. This seems to be the case also for Banville: “a work of literature must … have a quality of the transcendent. I do not mean metaphysical transcendence, but a kind of heightening ... the artistic act is almost like the sexual act [where] … the Other …takes on a transcendent glow” (qt. O’Connell, “Empathic Paradox” 431). Lacan’s study of literature (whether Greek drama, de Sade, Joyce or Flemish mystics) also revealed to him that “The reality of the unconscious is sexual reality”.5 In what follows I hope to highlight how both Banville and Lacan’s focus on libidinal flows allows them to overcome the dichotomy between the empirical and the transcendent. In their focus on object a both morph metaphysics into a kind of ‘epi- or emophysics’, a frame of thinking which focuses on human emotions, revealing they have more nuance and wider scope than expected. 148 ABEI Journal — The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, v.22, n.1, 2020, p. 147-158 When talking about the RIS system Lacanians first of all distinguish between the two kinds of Real, the primordial real (R1) and the routine real (R2). As the routine real is the ‘habitual’, encrusted way of perceiving, this is what Lacan wants his analysands to break out of, as it means that the subject has lost touch with his roots, the primordial real, which are the libidinal forms developed in childhood. The same goes for Banville’s protagonists: Freddie Montgomery, Alex Cleave, and later Adam Godley (both father and son) in The Infinities are, like most Banvillean protagonists, transported to childhood experiences.6 The human being, according to Lacan, consists of the ‘I’ who is surrounded and directed by ‘others’ (family, peers) and by ‘the Other’. The Other is written with capital O as it cannot be assimilated by the consciousness; it denotes both the culture which is too vast and complex for the I to comprehend, and the transgenerational material which is the unarticulated unconscious memory of a family which feeds at least three generations. Roughly speaking the ‘transgenerational Other’ feeds the Real, the ‘others’ have a strong impact on the formation of the I’s Imaginary perception, while the ‘cultural Other’ constitutes the Symbolic make-up of the self. In terms of energies the Real organizes the libido in ‘drives’. These are strong impulses which bring libido, which Lacan calls “jouissance”, enjoyment – in the British tradition considered ‘affects’. As they are palpable while remaining under the radar of normal articulation they can be scary; they make themselves felt when the subject is ‘passive’ or off- guard, open to the unconscious via dreams and lapses, or via the object a. In the Imaginary mode of perception, the I is strong and active; its narcissistic outlook filters only appealing objects and projects images on its experiences which please the self and filter affects into more recognizable emotions. In the Symbolic mode the laws and terms further articulate emotions in a hierarchy of values. In the case of Freddie Montgomery, his ‘equilibido’ is profoundly disturbed: the Real hits him when he is captivated by a painting. His active, projecting Imaginary self is turned around: he is not looking at an ‘other’ who is equal or ‘similar’, but is looked at by some Other: “It was not just the woman's painted stare that watched me. Everything in the picture, that brooch, those gloves, the flocculent darkness at her back, every spot on the canvas was an eye fixed on me unblinkingly” (The Book of Evidence 79). Throughout Ghosts, Freddie tries to ‘repair’ the tear the Other has made in his self.
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