Powers of Horror; An Essay on Abjection

SOMETHING TO BE SCARED OF 37
analysis (the more so as analysis is <strong>of</strong>ten undertaken on the level
<strong>of</strong> the imaginary and even <strong>of</strong> the superego), the processes <strong>of</strong>
condensation that oversee phobic work. In order to deal with
such processes, it would be necessary to revive the work <strong>of</strong>
introjection as well as to pay particular attention to displace-
ments and condensations within the signifying chain.
On the other hand, taking that metaphoricalness into account
would amount to considering the phobic person as a subject
in want <strong>of</strong> metaphoricalness. Incapable <strong>of</strong> producing metaphors
by means <strong>of</strong> signs alone, he produces them in the very material
<strong>of</strong> drives—and it turns out that the only rhetoric <strong>of</strong> which he
is capable is that <strong>of</strong> affect, and it is projected, as <strong>of</strong>ten as not,
by means <strong>of</strong> images. It will then fall upon analysis to give back
a memory, hence a language, to the unnamable and namable
states <strong>of</strong> fear, while emphasizing the former, which make up
what is most unapproachable in the unconscious. It will also
fall upon it, within the same temporality and the same logic,
to make the analysand see the void upon which rests the play
with the signifier and primary processes. Such a void and the
arbitrariness <strong>of</strong> that play are the truest equivalents <strong>of</strong> fear. But
does it not amount to diverting the analytic process towards
literature, or even stylistics? Is this not asking the analyst to be
rhetorical, to "write" instead <strong>of</strong> "interpreting"? Does this not
also imply holding up a fetishist screen, that <strong>of</strong> the word, before
a dissolving fear?
The fetishist episode peculiar to the unfolding <strong>of</strong> phobia is
well known. It is perhaps unavoidable that, when a subject
confronts the factitiousness <strong>of</strong> object relation, when he stands
at the place <strong>of</strong> the want that founds it, the fetish becomes a life
preserver, temporary and slippery, but nonetheless indispen-
sable. But is not exactly language our ultimate and inseparable
fetish? <strong>An</strong>d language, precisely, is based on fetishist denial
("I know that, but just the same," "the sign is not the thing,
but just the same," etc.) and defines us in our essence as speaking
beings. Because <strong>of</strong> its founding status, the fetishism <strong>of</strong> "lan-
guage" is perhaps the only one that is unanalyzable.
One might then view writing, or art in general, not as the
only treatment but as the only "know-how" where phobia is