ABSTRACT
The first text I propose to investigate is Freud’s essay on the uncanny. A relatively exhaustive and satisfactory reading of this seminal (or perhaps ‘disseminai’) paper cannot be attempted here. Such a reading would have to explore a wide range of problems, beginning with that of situating the essay, both within the development of Freud’s thought in general, and in particular with regard to the particular perspectives opened by Freud’s move ‘Beyond the Pleasure-Principle, ’ a text written at the same time as the Uncanny and related to it in various fundamental respects. Jacques Derrida has already indicated certain of the main lines which such an investigation would have to take, placing particular emphasis upon the significance of the Todestrieb (Death-drive) and the Wiederholungszwang (Repetition-Compulsion) for Freud’s approach to art and literature. 1 This line of inquiry has been pursued by Hélène Cixous in a recent article, ‘La fiction et ses fantômes, ’ 2 which represents one of the first attempts to read Freud’s text not simply in terms of its conceptual content but also with regard to its rhetorical and stylistic movement. Whether or not one accepts the major premise of Hélène Cixous’ reading: that Freud’s text is to be regarded as itself an example of the uncanny: ‘moins comme un discours que comme un étrange roman théorique’ 3 the alert reader will hardly remain insensitive to the peculiar merging of subject-matter and discourse in Freud’s essay. Yet this merging does not simply fulfill the exigencies of theoretical discourse, the adaequatio intellectus et rei, since here the ‘adequacy’ 352of discourse and object tends as much to dislocate the discourse as to locate the object.
