ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to explore some of the implications, for psychoanalysis and for the reading of literature, of the ways in which the words "know", "think", and "feel" are used in English. The central text is Shakespeare's Othello, which seems to author, in an important sense, to be about the thresholds between these words, what it is possible to "know" without being "aware" of. Though Iago's first words in the play—indeed, the first words of the play— are a disclaimer of knowledge, "Tush, never tell me", he protests to Roderigo that he knew nothing of Othello's marriage. In the final act, Othello reveals to Emilia that her husband is the source of the—as she knows, false—information. Her response is an immediate recognition of what she should have realized before and an appalled sense of guilt that she did not speak out earlier.
