Maurice Couturier :
"Like Maxim Shrayer, I apologize for entering the debate about the death of the
author with a reference to my own works, specifically my essays "Nabokov ou la
tyrannie de l'auteur" (Paris: le Seuil, 1993) and "La Figure de l'auteur"
(Paris: le Seuil, 1995). Some of you may remember Brian McHale's bitter
criticism of my essay of the subject in "Nabokov Studies" (Volume 2, 1995)
entitled "The Great (Textual) Communicator, or, Blindness and Insight". to
which I responded only recently in "NOL". excerpts:" ...Barthes’s theoretical views changed considerably throughout his life, as
did Genette’s, which shifted from narratology to aesthetics...I grant
McHale that even the most unsophisticated critic is unconsciously tapping some
interpretative grid, but this does not imply that all sophisticated critics
should be content with applying known hermeneutics. If literary criticism
and literary theory are to serve not only pedagogical but epistemological and
aesthetic functions, their practitioners must be capable of breaking new ground
and of contributing in their own fashion to the hermeneutic venture....Nabokov’s
opinions on literature are so strong that many of his exegetes have felt the
need to stick to a kind of criticism he himself practiced or would have
sanctioned; and they have refrained from venturing into more daring interpretive
realms, psychoanalysis for instance." What, then, would be McHale's reaction to
my psychoanalytic study of Nabokov's novels, "Nabokov ou la cruauté du désir"
(Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2004) which is not author-centered?"
JM: Scholars
whose articles and books aren't directly mentioned when the same, or
similar themes as those they explore, are being discussed are wise to
call the attention of the Nab-L. We
may forget sometimes that the Nab-list is a "Forum," where
misunderstandings, pertinent information and ideas can be clarified and
enlarged.
My first acquaintance with Couturier's
psychoanalytic reading of Nabokov came from Nabokov Studies,
vol.9,2005 ("Narcisism and Demand in Lolita") but I made
no progress because I discovered early on that we'd departed
from different psychoanalytic perspectives or propositions.*
Any argumentation on my part (favourable or
conflictive), concerning "narcisism and demand" would therefore
be rendered pointless by the lack of any common ground - but I'm
sure other scholars familiar with Freud and Lacan weren't hampered to
proceed, as I'd been by my professional limitations (there are
wide theoretical schisms and chasms in
psychoanalysis...)
I wish I could find a way to contribute to
maintain open Couturier's particular inroads
into Nabokov, since his initiative is truly ground-breaking and
daringly innovative, judging from the articles I'm able to read.
Although I haven't had access to the original
article on "la cruauté du désir", there is a review of it, by
Jacqueline Hamrit, that's been published in 2007/2008 Nabokov
Studies,vol.11. The same perspective on "lack", as the one found in
his 2005 article, seems to be present ( JH writes: "The first
chapter, titled "Loss," starts with the assumption that loss is ar the origin of
desire because it creates a feeling of lack... Although loss is at the core of
Nabokov's oeuvre as it is connected to the loss of childhood and/or native
country..." Later on she adds, in relation to "Aphanisis,"
that Lacan's revision of Jones's term, indicative of "the
disappearance of desire," would admit that aphanisis is "a necessary
condition of the existence of the desiring subject..." However I
think that Lacan had already changed any such theories
about "lack", "loss" and "desire" as early as 1958, in
his seminar on "Hamlet." In addition, he kept constantly
refining them away from any pragmatic concept
of "loss" as representative of a definite object or emotional
state that can be identified or located in time and space (such as the
explicit loss of "homeland and childhood") ** Contrary to psychoanalytic theories, novels, as they
appear in print, are exempt of change and in them an author retains
his "authorship" and gets his last laugh at the readers. As I see it, a reader's
(or a critic's) interpretations must be transient because
they suffer a destiny that is similar to scientific and non-scientific
theorizations, always on the move, marked by shifting
paradigms...
........................................................................................................
*For example, on page 20
Couturier concludes that "Need and demand are therefore the open and
identifiable manifestations of desire, as a lack of being."(p.20) He lists
the needs he relates to desire as the "need for food, for clothing, for
reproduction, for pleasure..." Freud's
words "Wunsch" and "Begierde" were apparently considered to
be synonimous, as it also happens with Lacan's "desire" and "demand"
(like Barthes's, Lacan's views changed throughout his life and his posterior
distinction between "desire" and "need/demand" is the one I apply
as a tool to understand psychoanalytic theories related
to "lack").
** - Couturier apparently agrees with this
shift, judging from what JH wrote in her review: " In the following chapter,
'Need,' Couturier opposes desire, which is the desire of the other, to need,
which tends to narcissistic satisfaction." and from Ch.5, when his revised
version of his Lolita article is brought up, since we are informed
that this chapter "also studies the notion of drive as opposed to
desire..."