Freud’s Drive Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film Teresa de Lauretis 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page i Language, Discourse, Society Series Editors: Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley Selected published titles: Teresa de Lauretis FREUD’S DRIVE Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film Mark Nash SCREEN THEORY CULTURE Richard Robinson NARRATIVES OF THE EUROPEAN BORDER A History of Nowhere Lyndsey Stonebridge THE WRITING OF ANXIETY Imaging Wartime in Mid-Century British Culture Ashley Tauchert ROMANCING JANE AUSTEN Narrative, Realism and the Possibility of a Happy Ending Reena Dube SATYAJIT RAY’S THE CHESS PLAYERS AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY Culture, Labour and the Value of Alterity John Anthony Tercier THE CONTEMPORARY DEATHBED The Ultimate Rush Erica Sheen and Lorna Hutson LITERATURE, POLITICS AND LAW IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Denise Riley THE FORCE OF LANGUAGE Geoff Gilbert BEFORE MODERNISM WAS Modern History and the Constituency of Writing Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley (editors) THE LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, SOCIETY READER Michael O’Pray FILM, FORM AND PHANTASY Adrian Stokes and Film Aesthetics James A. Snead, edited by Kara Keeling, Colin MacCabe and Cornel West RACIST TRACES AND OTHER WRITINGS European Pedigrees/African Contagions Patrizia Lombardo CITIES, WORDS AND IMAGES 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page ii Colin MacCabe JAMES JOYCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORD Second edition Moustapha Safouan SPEECH OR DEATH? Language as Social Order: a Psychoanalytic Study Jean-Jacques Lecercle DELEUZE AND LANGUAGE Piers Gray, edited by Colin MacCabe and Victoria Rothschild STALIN ON LINGUISTICS AND OTHER ESSAYS Geoffrey Ward STATUTES OF LIBERTY The New York School of Poets Moustapha Safouan JACQUES LACAN AND THE QUESTION OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TRAINING (Translated and introduced by Jacqueline Rose) Stanley Shostak THE DEATH OF LIFE The Legacy of Molecular Biology Elizabeth Cowie REPRESENTING THE WOMAN Cinema and Psychoanalysis Raymond Tallis NOT SAUSSURE A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory Laura Mulvey VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES Ian Hunter CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT The Emergence of Literary Education Language, Discourse, Society Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71482–2 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page iii Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film Teresa de Lauretis 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page iv © Teresa de Lauretis 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–52478–1 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–52478–8 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data De Lauretis, Teresa. Freud’s drive : psychoanalysis, literature and film / Teresa de Lauretis. p. cm.—(Language, discourse, society) Includes index. ISBN 0–230–52478–8 (alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures – Psychological aspects. 2. Psychoanalysis and motion pictures. 3. Sex in motion pictures. 4. Literature – Psychology. 5. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. I. Title. PN1995D3575 2008 809Ј.93353—dc22 2008011107 10987654321 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page v per Simo This page intentionally left blank 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page vii Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: Death @ Work 1 Reflections for the end of a century 1 Psychoanalysis, literature, cinema 9 1 Basic Instincts: An Illustrated Guide to Freud’s Theory of Drives 20 Fetishism 35 Melancholia 36 2 The Stubborn Drive: Foucault, Freud, Fanon 39 Trieb and bio-pouvoir 46 Implantation 53 3 The Queer Space of the Drive: Rereading Freud with Laplanche 58 The drive as trope 59 The drive and the ego 65 The death drive 74 4 Becoming Inorganic: Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, Virtuality and the Death Drive 88 Creative destruction 92 Repetition, refraction 108 Coda 112 5 The Odor of Memory: On Reading Djuna Barnes with Freud 114 The psyche as text 114 Djuna Barnes and Nightwood 121 ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ 127 vii 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page viii viii Contents Nightwood beyond the pleasure principle 136 Figures of translation 145 Afterwards 151 Notes 153 Bibliography 177 Index of Names and Titles 183 Index of Terms 188 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page ix Acknowledgements This book was completed with the aid of a fellowship from the Institute for Humanities Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the support of my colleagues and students in the History of Consciousness doctoral programme. In particular, I thank Gail Hershatter, former director of IHR; Gary Lease, former department chair, for granting me course relief; my colleagues for excusing my absences from meetings during the final revision of the typescript; Sheila Peuse, former department man- ager, for her ever-resourceful friendship; and my students for making me think beyond my thoughts. I also wish to thank Kathy Durcan and John Thompson of Humanities Academic Services and Jay Olson of Information Technology Services for their invaluable help throughout my years at UCSC, and Cheryl Van de Veer for her kind assistance in preparing the typescript. The research resulting in the book was presented in lectures, seminars, and keynote addresses between 2000 and 2007. I wish to thank the indi- viduals and/or the institutions who invited me: in 2000, Carla Freccero and Jody Green for the conference ‘New Technologies of Gender’, Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz; in 2001, Anu Koivunen for the conference ‘Affective Encounters’, University of Turku, Finland; Antonia Ulrich for the Hochschüle der Künste and das Arsenal, Berlin, Germany; the Joan Carlisle Irving Lecture Series, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; in 2002, Valeria Viganó for the Casa delle Letterature, Rome, Italy; Giulia Colaizzi for the University of Valencia, Spain; in 2003, Chris Connery for the Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz; Luz Calvo for the English Department, Ohio State University; Grazia Menechella for the Comparative Literature Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Sara Goodman for the Fifth European Conference on Feminist Research, University of Lund, Sweden; in 2004, Gabriele Jähnert for the Gender Studies colloquium, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; Cristina Peñamarin Beristain for the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain; in 2005, Ulrika Dahl for the Salon Copacabana, Stockholm, Sweden; Griselda Pollock for CentreCATH, University of Leeds, UK; Ulla Haselstein for the Fraenkel Lecture, John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany; Pascale Molinier and Eléonore Lépinard for the conference ‘Epistémologies du genre’, MAGE/CNRS, Conservatoire ix 9780230_524781_01_prex.qxd 20-3-08 06:43 PM Page x x Acknowledgements National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France; in 2006, Namascar Shaktini for the symposium ‘Post-Trauma’, Florida Atlantic University; in 2007, Liana Borghi for the doctoral seminar, Facoltà di Lettere, Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy. I am especially grateful to Professors Inger Lövkrona, Erik Hedling, Anna Lena Lindberg, Eva Österberg, and Catharina Stenqvist at the University of Lund for nominating me for the Ph. D. honoris causa awarded me in 2005. For reading chapter drafts at various stages and sharing with me their thoughts or writings on psychoanalysis, I thank Christophe Dejours, John Fletcher, Carla Freccero, David Marriott, Pascale Molinier, Leo Bersani, Tim Dean, Lee Edelman, Paola Mieli, Jerry Miller and Beatriz Preciado. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jean Laplanche