Freud's Trace
Hamutal Shapira
An art work by Susan Hiller (2005) named “The Curiosities of Sigmund Freud” captures an interesting ‘bodily trace’, left by Freud. This is part of a wider set made up of 9 Iris giclée prints on Japanese hand-made paper, based on eight uncatalogued (and unpublished ) glass slides from the Freud Museum in London and a letter written by Freud [1]
I will relate to this fragment of the letter.
A mark (of the body) Freud insists highlighting, and Hiller, in her artistic brilliancy, re-finds, and brings out to light.
On August 9, 1882, Freud writes Marta Bernays, his fiancé at that time, a letter. In this letter we can see Freud circles two ink blots around this:
'Here the pen fell out of my hand and inscribed these secret signs. I beg your forgiveness and ask that you not trouble yourself with an interpretation'.
What is this ׳bodily mark׳?
An object falling from a hand, making 2 marks, which Freud, and then Hiller, encircle, expose, un - cover.
Some thoughts-
A pen can fall. Fail. Freud insists on un-covering this ‘failure’, insists on leaving this trace. Is he introducing a formation of the unconscious? (Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901).
Freud is very straightforward: “I beg … ask that you not trouble yourself with an interpretation ...”.
Negation? Desire for silence?
It seems that Freud is touching upon something of the real. This is a ‘slip of the pen’, literally. Something that has to do with exposing a bit of real, baring it, not covering it with sense. Suspending meaning.
Freud, already in 1882, is betting on jouissance,
“What doesn't lie is jouissance, the jouissance of the speaking body”.[2]
How to understand these ‘secret signs’ he calls them, which stain the letter as well as the precious handmade paper of Hiller’s prints?
Is it about Lacan’s stain (or spot), that which is out of place in the picture and therefore draws attention to the screen – the unnoticed but essential support of the gaze as it differentiates itself from looking? [3]
Or,
Can we say it resonates Lacan saying in Seminar XX [4]:
“What is the speaking body? Ah, that's a mystery".
References
[1] Hiller, S. (2005), http://www.susanhiller.org/otherworks/curiosities_freud.html
[2] Miller, J.-A. (2014), The Unconscious and the Speaking Body, Presentation for the theme for the Xth Congress of the WAP in Rio de Janeiro.
[3] Lacan, J. (1977), Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Hogarth, pp. 97-100.
[4] Lacan, J. (1988), Seminar XX, Encore, Norton, p. 131.