Heft - Institut für Theorie ith

31 N°- 14/15
The Figure of Two
Alenka Zupančič
The
Double
and Its
Relationship
to the
Real
There is a very singular and undoubtedly
very fascinating figure of the Two,
which has – among di≠erent figures of
the Two – a rather distinguished status,
due to the important role it has played
in art, especially in literature. This is the
figure of the double and, more broadly
speaking, of redoubling. In the following
discussion of this figure I will not
speak so much about its history and its
articulations in literature, but will rather
focus on its fundamental structure
and its philosophical implications. In
order to do this, I will engage in a dialog
with an author who has dedicated most
of his philosophical work to this topic,
albeit from a very specific critical perspective.
The author is Clément Rosset,
a very interesting figure of contemporary
French philosophy, although (and
strangely) not so well known and translated
outside France. I will be arguing
as much with Rosset as against him; for,
several irreconcilable di≠erences notwithstanding,
Rosset develops many
things which, in my conceptual space
(strongly curbed by the Lacanian theory),
resonate in a surprising way which
can be very productive to engage with.
To begin with we could say that
the double is not exactly a one, yet it also
does not constitute a two in the ordinary
sense of the term. It seems to be neither one, nor two.
Two identical bottles of beer are not doubles, as far as there is
place for both in the reality of, say, our refrigerator. And if we
think of it, the notion of a double presupposes not so much
the sameness of appearance or manifestation, as the sameness
of the time and place. The figure of the double involves
a duality or a two that compete for the same time and place
or simply for the same reality as structured by time and
space (for in reality, there is never place / time for both). It
seems that – to take the example of the entities called people
– we do not simply inhabit a certain place and move in space,
but also, and on a more fundamental level, carry our place
with us wherever we go. Even if we appear somewhere as
completely out of place, or at an utterly wrong time, we still
seem to be “ourselves” ontologically speaking – we are out of
place in relation to some symbolic configuration, but it
seems that we can never be out of place in the real; in the real
we are always at our place (and time), which is finally our
(only) real. At this level, we are either at our place, or else we
are not at all (we have no being). The double is precisely
what is threatening at this very ontological level, for it introduces
an “impossible” split into the very homogeneity of this
real, that is into the very homogeneity of being and its “taking
place.” We can get a good grip of what this means in the
following aphorism by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, a famous Polish
aphorist: “Who knows what Columbus might have discovered
had America not blocked his way!” This suggestion of a
double is a very ingenious one, for it suggests that reality
itself is the double which has most literally usurped (blocked)
the place of something else.
So, if the figure of the double implies something more
than one, it also implies something less than two: it is not about
two constituted ontological entities, but rather something
that induces a doubt into the (original) one as
ontological entity. Rosset is very right in pointing
out this characteristic of the double. He reverses
the standard diagnosis of Otto Rank who linked
the anxiety in the face of a double to our primordial
fear of death. We usually consider the reality
of the double to be “better” than ours – and in this
sense it can indeed seem that the double represents
an immortal instance in relation to the subject
(which is Rank’s thesis). However, the real
source of our anxiety is not simply our future
death, but above all our (present) non-reality and
non-existence. It would not be so hard to die if we
knew for sure that we have at least lived; but it is
precisely this life, as perishable as it is, that the
subject starts to doubt in the cases of “split personality”
or appearing of a double. In the ill-fated
couple in which I am united with a phantom other,
the real is not on my side, but rather on the side
of the phantom: it is not the other that redoubles
me, it is rather that I am the other’s double. 1 In
short, when my double appears, my present existence
(my being as such) appears as utmost uncertain.
Hence, and to repeat: the figure of the double
it is not about two constituted ontological entities,
but rather something that induces a doubt in the
(original) one as ontological entity.
Let this su∞ce as introduction, and let us
now first look more closely at Rosset and his arguments.
Rosset dedicated most of his philosophical
work to the theme best encapsulated in the title of
his central book Le réel et son double. In it, he
develops his arguments around the following fundamental
observation: the real always tends to
strike us as impossible to tolerate in some way –
too cruel and disagreeable, or else too simple and
idiotic. In our general relationship to the real he
thus recognizes an attitude that betrays both anxiety
and contempt (disregard): anxiety as to the
fact that the real is really only just what it is, and
the coextensive contempt for the real in its “idiotic”
simplicity and plainness. Hence a whole
number of strategies that aim at circumventing
the real, and replacing it with something else
which we then declare to be the actual, true real.
On the basis of numerous examples Rosset develops
a lucid and often amusing analysis of these
strategies, pointing at their common denominator,
which is the redoubling, or duplication of the
real, and the enthronement of its double.
First of all I would like to suggest that the
notion of the real and its redoubling that he presents
via di≠erent examples and their di≠erent
1 - See Clément Rosset, Le réel
et son double, Paris 1984, p. 91.
2 - This structure has been
analyzed exemplarily by Octave
Mannoni in his article “Je sais
bien mais quand même,” in:
Clefs pour l'Imaginaire ou l'Autre
scène, Paris 1969, pp. 9–33.
It is therefore quite curious that
there is no reference to him in
Rosset’s book.
3 - All translations from French in
this essay A. Z., Rosset, Le réel
(note 1), pp. 21f.
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