ABSTRACT
The introduction sets out the methodological framework for the book, using Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1878) as starting point. It moves from Hardy’s novel to an investigation of form and formlessness in relation to subject formation which, through fascination, sets up the insectile as other within. It uses Derrida to conceptualise the ‘insectile subjectile’ and further develops this concept in relation to Lacan’s work and proposes the Möbius strip, Lacan’s topographical model of the subject, as conceptualisation of the insectile in its twists and turns toward and away from form. The introduction proceeds through a close reading of Lacan’s Seminar X (1962–1963), in which the psychodrama of subject formation plays itself out entomologically and argues that we need to put Lacan into relation with Deleuze and Guattari to interrogate the processes of becoming-insect. Derrida helps structure the ‘scandal’ of this encounter through his concept of the countersignature, which does not seek consensus, as well as by way of his ‘parasitical’ process of reading, writing and interpretation. The introduction finishes with a return to Hardy and a discussion of the scene of fascination, using Freud, Lacan, Roger Caillois and Maurice Blanchot’s writings on said scene. It proposes a reading of a collage from Max Ernst’s surrealist ‘novel’ Une Semaine de Bonté (1934) to, once more, demonstrate the connections between un/forms of subjectivity, the insectile and fascination.
