the lacanian subject and grotesque desires: between oedipal violation and narcissistic closure

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 56, No. 1, 1996

THE LACANIAN SUBJECT AND GROTESQUE DESIRES: BETWEEN OEDIPAL VIOLATION AND NARCISSISTIC CLOSURE

Yuan Yuan

The grotesque in either literature or art has often been critiqued in terms of deformation, disfiguration, and decenterment by various critics and scholars in the past. I notice that all these attributes that describe the grotesque in fact expose exactly the nature of the Lacanian subject. Within this context, I argue that the grotesque is central to the structure of the Lacanian subject because its very de/formation initiates a process toward the grotesque: ex-centric, split, and decentered. It seems that the Lacan- ian subject is established in such a way as to disembody itself, demon- strating the symptoms of the hysteria: impossibility of a unified being. This proposed return of and to the grotesque, as a way to uncover the unconscious of Lacan's discourse on the subject, is configured in terms of symbolic desires and the cultural unconscious. In the present critique, Lacanian psychoanalysis is conceived as both a critical approach to and the subject matter of the grotesque. That is to say, Lacanian discourse informs a site of dialogue between theory of the grotesque and practice of the grotesque.

After examining the disfiguration of the Lacanian subject, I will situate the discourse of the grotesque within the context of the Lacanian model of symbolic signification. Specifically, I will explore the issues pertinent to the grotesque desires and subject de/formation of Quentin Compson in Wil- liam Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood." By interrogating the dialectic interactions between social violation and personal aggressivity, I expose the "unconscious" of the grotesque in terms of Narcissistic desires within the oedipal principle as a return to the repressed.

Yuan Yuan, Ph.D., is affiliated with the Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, California State University San Marcos.

Address correspondence to Yuan Yuan, California State University San Marcos, College of Arts and Sciences, San Marcos, CA 92096-0001.

35 0002-9548/9~0300-0035509.S0,'1 @ T 996 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

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THE LACANIAN SUBJECT AND SYMBOLIC DESIRES: THE DISCOURSE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Lacanian subject, constitutionally enigmatic and elusive, emerges as a locus of complicated structures and entangled relationships. According to his structural paradigm, Lacan situates the subject in three different orders: the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. I argue that the phenomenon of the grotesque occurs in both the imaginary and the symbolic stages of the subject formation. The emergence of the Lacanian subject in effect signifies an allegorical figuration of identity in difference. That is to say, subjectification does not necessarily mean identification in Lacanian terms; instead, it designates the distance between the signifier and the signified. In short, I identify the grotesque as an intrinsic structure essential to the con- figuration of the Lacanian subject; and I locate the symbolic order as a realm that generates the grotesque subject in the process of representation.

Lacan's seminal essay "The Mirror Stage as the Formative of the Function of the '1'" initiates the notion of a paradoxical process of unification and separation for the relationship between self and the other. The mirror stage is based on the hypothesis of a dialectic object, "both me and other than me," both real and unreal, both presence and absence, identification and alienation. Eventually in the mirror relation is constructed a gap, a paradox, a duality of self and the other, in fact, a fissure in the subject.

The mirror stage initiates an illusory relationship because it signifies, as Lacan states in his essay "The Mirror Stage," "a transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image," and "man projects himself, with the phantoms that dominate him" (p. 2). The phantom in the imaginary resembles the position of a ghost which, residing in a space of fantasy, seduces and controls by the principle of absence: a game of fort- da, to paraphrase Freud here. Thus, the imaginary consists of the dimension of images and fantasies, indicative of perceptual con/fusions of the self and the other that open the way for the child to anticipate the illusion of a unified body that he objectively lacks. So the imaginary, Lacan argues, constitutes the place of misrecognition where the other, the image reflected in the mirror, is introjected as the totality of the self in a narcissistic identification. And this imaginary identification implies a narcissistic quest for the reflected self-image that figures as the object of desires, but what eludes him is actually himself that the mirror never gives back. The quest for the other is in turn transformed into a quest for the self, a narcissistic return to the impossibility of a unified being. In other words, the grotesque subject is structured in the dialectics between the narcissistic desires for a symbiotic closure with the other and the impossible reunification with the other.

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The symbolic in Lacan consists of the realm of language and culture, the locale and locus of signifiers. Nothing, especially the human subject, is ever present in its original place according to Lacan. In "Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud," Lacan makes this point dismal but clear: "Man only deludes himself when he believes his true place is at their axis, which is nowhere" (p. 166). The moment the subject is absorbed into the symbolic system of representation, it is structured elsewhere by the metaphorical and metonymic process under the sliding power of the signifiers. Hence, the Lacanian subject is characterized by its ex-centric position, which disperses the self and renders the identity non- identical to itself. Lacan argues in "The Subject and the Other: Aphanisis":

The subject appears first in the Other, in so far as the first signifier, the unary signifier, emerges in the field of the Other and represents the subject for another signifier, which other signifier has as its effect the aphanisis of the subject. Hence the division of the subject--when the subject appears somewhere as meaning, he is manifested elsewhere as "fading," as disappearance (p. 218).

I locate the symbolic order defined by the linguistic structure as the site where the grotesque is generated because it is this symbolic structure that violently deforms, decenters, and disfigures the subject into a grotesque one. In other words, Lacanian symboli.c order formulates the grotesque deformation of the subject by the structural effect of linguistic system. "This structural distance between the subject and his own desire," Fredric Jam- eson remarks in "Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan," "wil l then serve as the enabling mechanism for the Lacanian typology of the neuroses and perver- sions" (p. 367).

The grotesque, generally, is characterized by a structure of incom- patibility: the incongruous elements, mutually exclusive, are structured simultaneously present to signify the disjunction and disintegration of the subject. Accordingly, the symbolic signification exemplifies a paradoxical process of identification and dismemberment: the very symbolic system that is supposed to represent the subject eventually abolishes, displaces, and disfigures it. In The Seminars of Jacques Lacan--Book II, Lacan argues: "The death instinct is only the mask of the symbolic order . . . . The symbolic order is simultaneously non-being and insisting to be . . ." (p. 326). This paradox central to the symbolic order leads to the contradictory ef- fects of unreconcilable desires that terminate the unified subject. �9 Eventually, both the imaginary and the symbolic extrapolations of the subject demonstrate the constant sliding of the indeterminate relationship of the subject to itself, a perpetual displacement and decenterment. It is less an instance of identification than a process of disembodiment and era-

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sure, revealing the ultimate paradox of the grotesque: the impossibility to be. Actually, the transferring from the imaginary into the symbolic precipi- tates a transformation from a metaphorical world of mirror into a metonymic world of language: an allegorical transfiguration of identity in difference. In short, the grotesque subject in Lacan is characterized by disembodiment, disjunction, and decenterment.

The Lacanian scheme of the symbolic--the truth of the symbolic--is decided between the structures of language and the unconscious of the culture--the law of the patriarchal culture. The phallus functions as the original signifier, or the signifier of the signifiers, to repeat Derrida here, that occupies the central position to regulate the discourse of the subject and formulate the desires of the subject. In "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet," Lacan remarks: "This is the starting point: through his relationship to the signifier, the subject is deprived of something of himself, of his very life, which has assumed the value of that which binds him to the signifier. The phallus is our term for the signifier of his alienation in signification" (p. 28).

It is by introducing the subject into the symbolic system that the grotesque desires are installed and programmed. The intrusion of the signifier into the human psyche formulates a new dimension that conditions the human desires in relation to this signifier. The formation of the grotesque desires finds its expression in a specific signifier, i.e., the phallus, that functions as the mark of identification for the subject. In his "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'," Lacan insists: "If what Freud discovered and rediscovers with a perpetually increasing sense of shock has a meaning, it is that the displacement of the signifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their refusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate . . . . everything that might be considered the stuff of psychology . . . . will fol- low the path of the signifier" (p. 338).

The Lacanian subject informs the grotesque figuration because his very being is centered on a signifier, which by its absent nature vacates the subject. The subject as such undergoes a paradoxical dispossession ef- fected by the symbolic system that is designated to mark his presence. In other words, the subject in Lacan's discourse becomes a subject of the lack. The mark of the subject is virtually reduced to nothing other than the singularity of its absence. The real, to repeat Lacan here, is really the impossible. Eventually, the subject position, or lack of the subject, hysterizes him. This hysterization characterizes the Lacanian subject as the grotesque because the structure of absence determines the very presence of its being. In another context, Slavoj Zizek also attempts to reconceive the cognition of the subject in terms of nothingness. In his book The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek says: "It is through the mediation of this nothing that the subject constitutes himself in the very act of his misrecognition" (p. 193).


Lacan's symbolic order is founded and sustained by the mythology of phallus--phallocentric. The subject is interpellated to the dominant signifier, the phallus. So the subject is localized in a specific position of depen- dence on a signifier issued from the symbolic order, and his desires are structured to be dependent on the desires of the other, the phallus in this case. According to Lacan, the other resides in the territory of the unconscious, as he repeated obsessively in various contexts that "the discourse of the unconscious is the discourse of the other." And the other constitutes the locus of truth--the unconscious of the culture. The cultural unconscious configured in terms of phallic mythology constitutes the apocryphal text that ultimately determines the subject's desires and actions. It is the cultural unconscious in terms of the symbolic order that fabricates and imposes the demand on the individual. It is the phallus that initiates desires and subsequently shapes desires for the subject.

Lacan insists that the phallus, instead of being a concrete organ, emerges as a representation and a simulacrum, based on a discourse of absence. The phallus, under every circumstance, is reminiscent of a dead father, a ghost in fact. In "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet," Lacan reminds us, "One cannot strike the phallus, because the phallus, even the real phallus, is a ghost' (p..50). This enigmatic ghost, the very embodiment of the cultural unconscious, is configured in terms of the symbolic order by Lacan in this context. The subject finds himself continuously shadowed by a ghost which, powerful even though invisible, possesses the absolute authority to dictate his action. Hence, it is relation to the other, the ghost, the dead father, and the structural absence, that the subject finds its justifica- tion of existence or, paradoxically, the very erasure of its presence. In other words, the subject assumes the role of a dead ghost in the game of identification. In his book On the Grotesque: Strategy of Contradiction in Art and Literature, Geoffrey Gait Harpham argues that the grotesque is associated with the "cryptic, something underground, of burial, the grotesche--the underground cave" (p. 27). I believe Harpham's ideas of the grotesque can be used to uncover the Lacanian subject as the "cryptic."

Hence, the real subject in Lacan's discourse, I believe, is in effect the phallus, the signifier of all signifiers, the despotic signifier of immateriality. By its mere power of absence, the phallic ghost generates grotesque subject and grotesque desires in a process of repressive desublimation.

The symbolic order is established with a structural priority--the oedipal complex that functions as the primal presence of truth. The subject orga- nized by oedipalization is inevitably neurotic and perverse according to Deleuze and Guattari as they argued in Anti-Oedipus. The symbolic terri- torializes desires within the fixed framework of oedipal structure and through the rule of a despotic signifier, the phallus. Therefore, the subject produced in this oedipal structure is subjugated, subjected, and subjectivized.

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In "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet," Lacan states: "In the desires of obsessional neurotics we have already encountered the impossible as the object of desire . . . . The very structure at the basis of desire always lends a note of impossibility to the object of human desire. What characterizes the obsessional neurotic in particular is that he emphasizes the confrontation with this impossibility. In other words, he sets everything up so that the object of desire becomes the signifier of this impossibility" (36). Hence, the grotesque subject is obsessed with, in fact, the objectless desires. Within this symbolic structure, desires are configured in such a way that they are not realizable. The subject, in this case, as the designated object of desires, becomes the impossible--the paradoxical designification of the grotesque.

OEDIPAL VIOLATION AND NARCISSISTIC QUEST: THE GROTESQUE DESIRES

The grotesque desires may be formulated and demonstrated in various ways, either in the form of oedipal violation of phallic authority, or in the form of narcissistic search for a grandiose self. In this paper, I locate the grotesque desires in a dialogic structure between oedipal violation of father's law and narcissistic quest for an omnipotent self. I believe both Quentin in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Hazel Motes in O'Connor's "Wise Blood" dramatize this tension between the desires for narcissistic identification and the will to reject the symbolic order. Hence, it is this dialogic structure of subjectification that determines the desires of the grotesque.

The grotesque desires are generally initiated by a fantasy of primal pater- nal figures who overpower the subject with a shadowy mass. That is to say, the grotesque identity is based on the projection of an archaic image of a "grand-father" that functions as the mark of identification for a grandiose self-image. In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectics of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious," Lacan says: "In fact, the image of the ideal Father is a phantasy of the neurotic . . . . The neurotic's wished-for Father is clearly the dead Father" (p. 321). All grotesque characters manage to iden- tiff/ with the symbolic father, I mean, the dead father in fact. "Neverthe- less," Lacan continues, "it is this whim that introduces the phantom of the Omnipotence, not of the subject, but of the Other in which his demand is installed" (p. 311). In other words, the failure of identification with the direct parent does not mean that the child grows up without an ego. On the contrary, his development depends on the archaic image of the parents fused with the grandiose self-image of omnipotence. I believe that this occurs in both cases of Quentin and Hazel because they all identify themselves with a ghost--the grandfather figure reminiscent of the imago and the cultural unconscious.


Instead of accepting his father as the model of identification, Quentin's ego is founded on an infantile fantasy of an omnipotent father figure, actually an imago of the grandfather embodying the symbolic code of the chiv- alric spirit that has been perpetuated as the mythology in the old South. His identity formation is precipitated regressively by anchoring his sense of self one generation beyond his direct father. His subject formation is achieved through the resurrection of and identification with the unconscious ghost of the past. In short, his identity is formed and configured in the cultural unconscious, just as his time is determined by the watch passed down to him by his grandfathers.

Hazel Motes's identification also goes beyond his direct parent. The memory of the dead father, especially his grandfather, has been repressed but never entirely erased. In his dreams, Hazel constantly sees himself as well as his grandfather in the coffin--the ghosts indeed. O'Connor writes in "Wise Blood": "His grandfather had been a circuit preacher, a waspish old man who had ridden over three counties--with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger" (p. 9). It was this "fanatic old man" who functions as the figure of identification, informing the ultimate imago of the cultural unconscious. And this identification subsequently determines his desires and his fate. "Bible was the only book he read" (p. 10). Bible, as the holy text, predicts the mission and meaning of his existence. Hazel believes that "there was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher" (p. 1 1).

Therefore, both Quentin and Hazel are possessed with the haunting memories of the ghosts of the past--the legends of the grandfathers in each case. Evidently, the grotesque characters are both obsessed with and de- formed by the cultural unconscious embodied by the figures of the grandfathers who provide them with the symbolic code and determine their symbolic desires. The ghost, in this case, occupies the position of the other who issues the orders. It is in relation to the other, to the symbolic authority, that the grotesque self emerges. Ironically, the other, the syknbolic system that is supposed to mark his presence, dispossesses him and transforms him into a ghost position: a subject of absence. The grotesque is precipitated when the self is obsessed with the other and eventually transformed into the other, indicative of a process of displacement. Eventually, the grotesque occurs in the failure of the negotiation between the individual and the codification system, between living persons and ghost narratives.

The ghost narratives of the past for both Quentin and Hazel configured in terms of the cultural unconscious articulate themselves in the forms of dead traditions, absent social orders, invalid cultural codes, or obsolete religious beliefs. Hence, absence, especially the presence of the absent

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phallic figures, functions as the structure of signification for the grotesque subjects. The subjectivity of both Quentin and Hazel Motes is de/formed through their reconfiguration and resurrection of Christ or anti-Christ in their unconscious. They are seeking themselves in the other--the ghost. And the other, according to Lacan, is ultimately a signifier, a linguistic construct, an empty position in the symbolic system. By reconstructing their grandfathers, both Quentin and Hazel are translating the ghost figures into holy texts. Eventually, both Quentin and Hazel become the objects of jouissance in the fossilized system of representation.

It is the symbolic structure formulated by the codes of the phallic authority that virtually determines the subject's conscious thought and unconscious desires. That is to say, the symbolic order demands the subject to decode his existence from a particular signifying system which, while de- fining his identity, displaces his life from really living his own. Instead, he is living a symbolic existence according to the symbolic order even though it is no longer valid. Through the mediation by the symbolic signification, the grotesque character reconfigures the universe according to the symbolic demand. Under these circumstances, his desires are not his anymore, but entirely programmed by the other--the phallic order. In "The Significa- tion of the Phallus," Lacan reminds us, "The fact that the phallus is a signifier means that it is in the place of the Other that the subject has access to it (p. 288).

In The Sound and the Fury, Quentin sadistically imposes a narrative for Caddie through his reconfiguration of the symbolic order in terms of the Southern traditional code of honor. That is, Quentin is reconceiving his sister's body according to the cultural code, the father's law, the phallic order of the old South. Apparently, his narrative of Caddie is based on the holy text of the past, i.e., the ghost narrative that constitutes for Quentin the absolute authority and truth. It is the other, the cultural unconscious in the form of the invisible ghosts of the past, that issues demand and controls his desires. Overdetermined by the Presbyterian doctrine, Quentin attempts to prove the truth of his desires by constructing the text of incest in his imaginary space. In this imaginary territory, Caddie becomes the fetish and cathected object of desires, reconfigured as the virginal urn with significant value to be preserved at all cost. Here, purity is not a natural category for Quentin, but a symbolic text composed by a pervert. It is the symbolic value of virginity conferred by the Southern culture that accounts for Quentin's grotesque desires for Caddie.

Hazel's prophetic vision is predetermined by the religious framework he ultimately desires to transgress and transcend. His world, like Quentin's, is conceived by a fanatic and obsessional neurotic who interprets everything through the symbolic order of religion. In effect, the symbolic order he violently rejects paradoxically structures his unconscious desires in terms


of the cultural unconscious. His desires are thus caught between the obsessional pursuit of and demonic denial of the grand signifier--the holy ghost of his grandfather. Ironically, Hazel endeavors to reject the entire symbolic system that his very being, desire, and mission are based on. His unconscious desires, determined by the cultural unconscious and the symbolic order, compel him toward the realization of the mission defined by the ghost of the past.

It is the absent text, the ultimate absence embodied by the dead grandfather, the ghost, that determines the fate and structures the desires of the grotesque subject. That is to say, his mission in life is to realize what has been inscribed by a ghost, and to prove the truth of the ghost narrative constructed by the dead grandfather. Both Quentin and Hazel are preoccupied with a vision and a mission to impose an order upon a meaningless universe. Under the command of the symbolic order, the grotesque character no longer chooses his object of desires; it is the symbolic order that determines the object of desires for him. His desires are prefigured in and by the other. Both Quentin and Hazel seek the impossible as their objects of desires, whether in terms of God or Hell. I agree with Malcolm Bowie's view when he says in his book Lacan: "That the unconscious is where the other performs his darkest deeds, as an occupying force of a fifth column or that the unconscious is otherness pure and simple, the 'other scene' by which our conscious thought and action are constantly shadowed" (p. 83).

The ghost narratives in terms of the cultural unconscious define Quen- tin's obsession with the Southern tradition and Hazel's obsession with the religious order. These heritages of the past constitute the historical weight that they have to struggle with. Both strive for a perfect identification with the symbolic self designated by the dead father, for a synchrony with their ideal ego. Actually, what they are chasing is nothing less than a signifier in the symbolic order. Hence, the signifier that is installed in the unconscious programs desires and simultaneously escapes the conscious subject. That is to say, his desires, no longer his anymore, are prescribed, installed, and programmed by the symbolic order. For instance, Hazel's desires were entirely defined by the prophecy, the words of the dead ghost. He is obsessed with the signifier--Christ--which ultimately determines the subject as the grotesque--the impossibility of being Christ, although subsequently being dispossessed by it. In short, Hazel himself is transformed into another un- holy text written by the invisible ghost. I agree with what Victorian Ham- ilton says in Narcissism and Oedipus: The Children of Psychoanalysis: "Life turns into a tragedy when change is no longer possible. The neurotic lives out a representation--a picture fixed in t ime--of what went on be- fore. The tragedy in each case is the transformation of a life into an artifact" (pp. 116-11 7).

All grotesque characters tend to transgress the cultural code and chal-

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lenge the phallic authority, either by violating the father's law or defying the social order. It appears they are desperately seeking something that is absent from the social order; actually, what they are really looking for is their lost self. Both Quentin and Hazel are looking for their phallic power defined by the symbolic order. Accordingly, oedipal violation emerges in the subject in an aggressive action against the despotic signifier that both presents and represses him. Their oedipal situation is resolved in a paradoxical way because all grotesque characters begin by challenging the father's law, but end up exactly as predetermined by the law.

Resisting his father's cynical reason and despair over the Southern tradition, Quentin in The Sound and the Fury seems to be obsessed with the loss of the obsolete tradition of the South. Quentin's objection to his father's words discloses Quentin's oedipal desires to deny the law by con- testing the cultural taboo. He violates the law of the culture in his imaginary space by committing incest in his dreams, thereby condemning Caddie and himself into hell. He is compulsively repeating the dream in his mind: "If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us" (pp. 78-79). In fact, he is less concerned with his sister's body than with what it represents to him. He is more inter- ested in the "idea" of the incest, especially its condemnation, than its action. In this case, Quentin's desires seem to be structured by a paradox: he is determined by the very symbolic order that he attempts to violate.

Hazel in "Wise Blood" is also rejecting his father's Bible to challenge the absence of the religious order in the South. His oedipal drama is staged through his obsession as well as refutation of his grandfather, "the fanatic old man," the inescapable ghost of the past, the phallic authority. Hazel, however, is a priest despite himself. His violation of the symbolic order emerges as a paradox. He is attempting to violate the very phallic order that defines his mission, actions, and desires. He attempts to prove the absence of God to confirm his purity and innocence.

This oedipal fixation accounts for their respective blasphemous violation of all kinds of taboos, from imaginary incest to symbolic profanity. Both Quentin and Hazel attempt to overcome the sense of the guilt by an absurd assertion, motivated, in most cases, by the obsession with a grand signi- f ie r - the image of an omnipotent self to redeem the cosmic order. How- ever, this desire for atonement, although acting out in the imaginary, is actually structured in the symbolic domain, determined by the ultimate signification of the phallic mythology and the symbolic order. Instead of erasing the depressing authority figures, they have done no less than estab- lish their own symbolic power by desiring to be the phallus.

In the process of their quest for self, both Quentin and Hazel are deprived of something of themselves in the subject. Let's say, their very lives.


This vacuum in their existence accounts for their subsequent grotesque transformation--destabilized and decentered under the weight of the lack. In fact, what they are preoccupied with is not so much a social order (or lack of it) as their imaginary self, or to be more precise, their megalomaniac ego that is designated by the phallic order. Consequently, the oedipal drama of conscious violation of social code is overdetermined by the unconscious mythology of narcissistic desires that seek the shadowy self-image of omnipotence--the ultimate signifier perpetuated and perpe- trated in the symbolic system in the form of the cultural unconscious.

The failure of their ludicrous efforts to coincide with the desired object results in an unbearable narcissistic wound they cannot overcome. Eventu- ally, the oedipal drama of violation exposes the hidden scene of narcissism, uncovering another apocryphal text written by a megalomaniac nar- cissist who fails to obtain the desired object--the omnipotent self. Therefore, it is not so much the loss of the social order as the decentering of the subject that outrages them. The loss of the desired object is introjected as the subject loss even if what is lost is an abstraction, an identification, or a tradition. The loss is related to what has been lost in himself, in relation to his ego.

Their narcissistic desires, precipitated by alienation, aim at reviving the lost symbiotic paradise with the mother's body. Both Quentin and Hazel unconsciously crave for mother in their dreams. Because of the oedipal structure, their return to the maternai body is achieved through a detour, via a discourse of displacement. Each finds for himself a substitute mother figure, actually a mirror figure, to confirm their imaginary self of omnipotence. Quentin found a mother figure in Caddie to replay the game of the lost empire of innocence while Hazel sought in Sabbath Lily Hawks a Madonna to reform the narcissistic closure of the (un)holy family. In each case, incestuous desires point to the narcissistic return to the symbiotic state. This fundamental lack of maturity is reflected in their single-minded obsession to repeat the initial germ of their trauma--the loss of a symbiotic universe--and to realize the impossible desires of omnipotence.

The ideal imago is established on the basis of the cultural unconscious. And this ideal imago, especially its phallic function in the process of identification, goes back to Lacan's symbolic order, which figures as the structur- ing principle for the subject. Thus, Hazel is not seeking God, but seeking himself in God. All his desires are codified, and his heroic action demon- strates his narcissistic gaze at the absent object--his identity.

The failure of coincidence between the desired object and the desire leads to the final aggressivity toward the self. In "Thought on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage," Kohut correctly points out: "Such suicides are in the main based on the loss of the libidinal cathexis of the self . . . . Charac-

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teristically, these suicides are preceded not by guilty feelings but by feelings of unbearable emptiness and deadness or by intense shame, i.e., by the signs of profound disturbance in the realm of the libidinal cathexis of the self" (p. 411).

8oth Quentin and Hazel are struggling under the burden of absence, either in terms of social order in the case of Quentin, or in terms of religious belief in the case of Hazel. Each is wrestling with an empty signifier that structures their quest and desires. It is the inner fissurenthe internalized absence--that finally drives them to the edge of insanity. This vacuum, or lack of identity, accounts for all their neurotic behaviors. In fact, both Quentin and Hazel are wrestling with an abstract and empty signifier that forever recedes and escapes them. It is the structure of the psychic gap, the inner fissure, the internalized distance between the self and the other--the reality of the impotent self and the image of the omnipotent ideal ego--that determines the final gesture of the grotesque and generates in both Quentin and Hazel a variety of grotesque symptoms, from neurotic paranoia to hysterical schizophrenia.

The omnipotent self is but an imaginary construct to cover up the realn the impotent body. But, the real is the impossible and unbearable, to paraphrase Lacan. Their desperate quest for the hallucinating object informs the narcissistic desires to anchor the missing and missed "1". This imaginary self both possesses and dispossesses them. Finally, the death instinct takes the form of an internal violence against the personal body. That is to say, the grotesque embodies an impossible desire that dismembers the desiring subject, a violent aggressivity against itself.

Neither Quentin nor Hazel can bear the narcissistic wound after they have failed to obtain the desired object--the omnipotent self. Their narcissistic outrage over the intrapersonal alienation turns inward violently against their bodies, and death perhaps becomes the only available alter- native to reconcile the fissure within the psychic space. The violent im- pulse toward the self results from the obsession with a symbolic desire that cannot be gratified, since the desire, being symbolic, is symbolically unre- alizable. Quentin commits suicide and Hazel sacrifices himself: both actions are accomplished under the grand illusion of crucifying the sacred self and redeeming the fallen world. Elimination of the body seems to be the only way to ease the impossible desire. Eventually, the grotesque desire is configured in such a way that it dismembers the subject itself.

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the lacanian subject and grotesque desires: between oedipal violation and narcissistic closure

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