Sartre's second century

Temporality and the Death of Lucienne in Nausea 49
and Nothingness, Sartre repudiates these conceptions of the past by
describing the temporal structure of consciousness, and by describing the
past as an integral aspect of this structure. In Nausea, the repudiation of
these conceptions takes a different form. Rather than describing the
temporality of consciousness directly, Sartre has Roquentin illustrate this
temporality by way of his stream-of-consciousness reaction to the news of
Lucienne's murder.
Upon hearing of the fate of Lucienne, Roquentin admits to having a
desire to rape. He describes how this desire comes upon him: "A soft
criminal desire to rape catches me from behind." 9 Note how Sartre has
Roquentin emphasise this formulation of being taken "from behind":
[...] existence takes my thoughts from behind and gently expands from
behind; someone takes me from behind, they force me to think from
behind, therefore to be something, behind me [...] he runs, he runs like a
ferret, "from behind" from behind from behind [...]. 10
Sartre has Roquentin repeat the phrase "from behind" a total of thirteen
times in the space of a page and a half. Why does Sartre place such
emphasis on this formulation?
The reason can be found in Sartre's discussion of temporality in Being
and Nothingness. This formulation plays a very specific role in Sartre's
phenomenology of temporality. I give below three examples from Being
and Nothingness in which Sartre describes the past as an unavoidable
obligation that catches one "from behind":
[...] the past is precisely and only that ontological structure which obliges
me to be what I am from behind. 11
The past is given as a for-itself become in-itself [...]. It has become what it
was—behind me. 12
[...] the Past is an ontological law of the For-itself; that is, everything
which can be a For-itself must be back there behind itself [.. .]. 13
Sartre uses this imagery of being claimed "from behind" to describe our
relation to the past. The past is an ontological structure of consciousness
9
Nausea, 101.
10
Ibid., 102.
11
Being and Nothingness, 172.
12
Ibid., 174.
13
Ibid., 175.