To Be and Not to Be: Hamlet’s Identity. Lacan’s Errors and His Disappointing Interpretation of Shakespeare

Autori

  • Giovanni Bottiroli Università degli Studi di Bergamo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/11512

Parole chiave:

Hamlet, Lacan, Desire, Identity, Modal Revolution

Abstract

Hamlet’s desire must be examined in relation to the desire to be, that is the desire for identity: this is the claim upheld in this study. Consequently, the article begins by making a distinction between the desire to be and the desire to have: this distinction was expressed in a new way by Freud, but was never adequately developed either by Freud himself or by Lacan. Therefore, the desire to be has remained prisoner of the Oedipus complex, even in Lacan’s reformulation in which it basically proves to be the desire to be the Phallus.

Yet the desire to be must be understood starting from the “modal revolution” introduced by Heidegger, and this allows us to appreciate the more innovative thesis in Freud’s essay, “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921). Identity is a relationship that may be considered to be a coincidence or a non-coincidence with oneself: in the latter case, we will refer to an “overcoming identity.” As a result, philosophy, the theory of the subject and the theory of literature are called upon to investigate the modes of identity.

From the perspective of the modes of being, Hamlet is analyzed here starting from his refusal to subordinate his own identity to the role of avenger. His desire oversteps the borders of neurosis and melancholy, in which it had traditionally been imprisoned (also by Lacan). Hamlet is a hero of non-coincidence: he goes beyond the models that appear to him to be inadequate and attempts to construct a flexible identity. Adopting the mask of madness, he has the opportunity to display his linguistic creativity. This does not deny that Hamlet is a tormented hero: the shadow of his father and the lust of his mother are obstacles to the desire for identity.

This interpretation is only delineated in the last pages of the article. It is first necessary to show that the limitations of Lacan’s interpretation derive from a narrow conception of the Symbolic and the desire to be for which Lacan never acknowledges creative possibilities. The Lacanian notion of “lack” is a logical and epistemological obstacle that prevents the development of the logic of flexibility and the nonof “non-coincidence.”

Riferimenti bibliografici

Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Translated by George A. Kennedy, Oxford UP, 1991.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. 1946. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton UP, 1953.

Black, Max. “Metaphor.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 55, 1954, pp. 273–94.

Blanchot, Maurice. The infinite conversation. 1974. Translated by Susan Hanson, U of Minnesota P, 1993.

---. “Literature and the right to death.” 1948. The Work of Fire, translated by Lydia Davis, Stanford UP, 1995, pp. 300–44.

Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers, 1990, pp. xi–xviii.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Seven Nights. Translated by E. Weinberger, New Directions, 2009.

---. The Total Library: Non-fiction, 1922-1986. Translated by E. Allen, S. Jill Levine, E. Weinberger, edited by E. Weinberger, Penguin, 2000.

Bottiroli, Giovanni. Che cos’è la teoria della letteratura. Fondamenti e problemi. Einaudi, 2006.

---. “Liberatore e incatenato: le aporie di Dioniso (e del dionisiaco) da Euripide a Nietzsche”. Enthymema, n. 14, 2016, pp. 51-81.

---. La ragione flessibile. Modi d’essere e stili di pensiero. Bollati Boringhieri, 2013.

---. Retorica. L’intelligenza figurale nell’arte e nella filosofia. Bollati Boringhieri, 1991.

---. “What is alive and what is dead in Jakobson. From codes to styles”. Roman Jakobson, linguistica e poetica, a cura di Edoardo Esposito, Stefania Sini e Marina Castagneto, Ledizioni, 2018, pp. 213-20.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Three Musketeers. 1844. Translated by Richard Pevear, Viking Penguin, 2006.

Euripides, Medea. Translated by Augusta Webster, Macmillan and Co., 1868.

Faulkner, William. Sartoris. 1929. New American Library, 1983.

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1857. Edited by Claudine Gothot-Mersch, Garnier, 1990.

---. Madame Bovary. 1857. Translated by Alan Russell, Penguin Classics, 1950.

Freud, Sigmund. “A Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis.” 1917. Translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, vol. 17, Hogarth, 1955, pp. 135–44.

---. “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.” 1921. Translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, vol. 18, Hogarth, 1955, pp. 65–144.

---. “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes.” 1915. Translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, vol. 14, Hogarth, 1957, pp. 109–40.

---. The Interpretation of Dreams (First Part). 1899. Translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, vol. 4, Hogarth, 1953.

---. “Mourning and Melancholia.” 1917. Translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, vol. 14, Hogarth, 1957, pp. 237–58.

---. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. 1931. Translated by James Strachey, Standard Edition, vol. 22, Hogarth, 1964.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and time. 1927. Translated by Joan Stambaugh, State U of New York P, 2010.

---. Introduction to Metaphysics. 1935. Translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Yale UP, 2000.

---. “What is Metaphysics?” 1929. Pathmarks. Translated by William McNeill, Cambridge UP, 1998, pp. 82–96.

Jakobson, Roman. “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances.” 1956. Language in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, Harvard UP, 1987, pp. 95-114.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. 1781-87. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge UP, 1998.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.” 1953. Écrits (the First complete edition in english), translated by Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg, Norton & Company, 2006, pp. 197–268.

---. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Psychoses (1955-56). Translated by Russell Grigg, book III, Norton, 1993.

---. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Formations of the Unconscious (1957-58). Translated by Russell Grigg, book V, Polity, 2017.

---. Le séminaire. Livre VI. Le désir et son interprétation (1958-59), Editions de la Martinière et Le Champ Freudien Editeur, 2013.

---. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge (Encore) (1972-73). Translated by Bruce Fink, book XX, Norton, 1998.

Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Edited by Roger Woolhouse, Penguin Books, 1997.

Lotman, Ju. M. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Translated by Ann Shukman, Tauris, 2001.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848. Edited by Frederic L. Bender, Norton, 1988. Norton Critical Editions.

Miller, Jacques-Alain. “Pièces detachées.” La cause freudienne, nos. 60-61, 2005/2-3, pp. 151–72 and 129–53.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also sprach Zarathustra. 1883-85. Kritische Studienausgabe. Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari. De Gruyter, 1999.

---. Beyond good and evil. 1887. Edited by Adrian Del Caro. Stanford UP, 2014.

---. The Birth of Tragedy. 1872. Translated by Douglas Smith, Oxford UP, 2000.

---. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1883-85. Edited and translated by Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin. Cambridge UP, 2006.

---. Twilight of the Idols. 1888. Translated by Duncan Large. Orford UP, 2008.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Horace Gregory, Signet, 2001.

Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. 1913-27. Edited by Pierre Clarac and André Ferré, Gallimard, 1954.

---. “In the shadow of young girls in flower.” In Search of Lost Time, translated by Scott Moncrieff, edited and annotated by William C. Carter, vol. 2, Yale UP, 2013.

Recalcati, Massimo. Il complesso di Telemaco. Feltrinelli, 2013.

---. Cosa resta del padre? La paternità nell’epoca ipermoderna. Cortina, 2011.

---. Jacques Lacan. Desiderio, godimento e soggettivazione. Cortina, 2012.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. 1916. Translated by Wade Baskin. McGrow-Hill, 1966.

Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone. Translated by Francis Storr. Heinemann, 1962.

Pubblicato

18-07-2019

Come citare

Bottiroli, G. (2019). To Be and Not to Be: Hamlet’s Identity. Lacan’s Errors and His Disappointing Interpretation of Shakespeare. ENTHYMEMA, (23), 250–285. https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/11512

Fascicolo

Sezione

Saggi
Ricevuto 2019-04-07
Accettato 2019-07-16
Pubblicato 2019-07-18