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Part of Image, Crypt, Interpretation/ Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue
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D
eciphering a symbol consists of divided halves
of pre-symbolic unity re-assemblying into a
whole (syn-ballein). In the psychoanalytical
sense, the split of this original unity yields the possi
bility of an emergence of the Unconscious. Nicolas
Abraham and Maria Torok wrote:
Psychoanalytical listening consists of a special way of
treating language. Whereas normally we are given mean
ings, the analyst is given symbols. Symbols are data that
are missing an as yet undetermined part [...]. The special
aim of psychoanalytical listening is to find the symbol’s
complement, recovering it from indeterminacy. From the
beginning of psychoanalysis to the present, theoretical ef
forts have been aimed at finding rules that will permit ut to
find the unknown missing complement, in other words, the
fragment that “symbolizes with” —or, we might say, that
"cosymbolizes". 1
If we were to treat thus understood "psychoanalyti
cal listening” as a simple model, based on analogy, of
all sorts of interpretations of the narrative text - liter
ary, film and painterly -then the task of the readerspectator would consist of an identification of the
concealed contents of the story (hidden deeper than
its open and easily denoted theme), rendered dialectic
by textual representation “interiorised” in it in such a
way as if it were the patient’s memory; it would also
involve striving towards the establishment of source
truth, the “primeval scene”, the genuine “theme”, the
penetration “to the end” of its sense, etc. The difficul
ty of this task consists, however, of the fact that, as we
found out in another study by Abraham, the symbol is
the outcome of a covert operation.
So, originally, any symbol is a metaphor. It is the re
pression of its metaphoric origin that makes the symbol.
Naturally, repression from the very onset as
sumes a repression instrument. When, subsequent
ly, the two parts are linked again the symbol ceases
to be a symbol.
Interpretation, therefore, does not consist only
of revealing the concealed (“repressed”) contents. A
condition for its effectiveness - and this is often for
gotten - is to take into account also the instrument of
repression.
The symbol is thus a dual metaphor of that,
which is cut off and of the process of cutting as
such. When we listen to the patient and treat his
comments as symbolic we embark upon the rec
reation of the cut off part together with the mo
ment of cutting (an introjection of the repressed )
and the creation, on the level of the word, of new
integrity.2
197
WOJCIECH MICHERA
Image, Crypt,
Interpretation
This is not all, nor is it the entire difficulty that
can be posed by the interpreted story (of a patient). It
also happens that listening encounters a discourse,
which, apparently, does not wish to take part in the
quest for a co-symbol and rejects all attempts at
supplementation. This resembles a situation when
a puzzle totally conceals the discourse, much too
dense for deciphering in the course of ordinary lis
tening, or when the discourse does not lead to any
sort of co-symbol or puzzle. 3
Metaphorisation does not succeed when instead of
symbols the analyst receives in the interpreted narra
tion “true enigmas”. They come into being as a result
of shattering the traditional topic structure of the sym
bol, i.e. when its second half - originally unclear and
absent, and now thanks to analysis recovered (as the
sought signifié) - becomes once again split apart; when
the line of the split transfers deep into the recesses of
the symbol, creating a “false”, “artificial” unconscious
ness that cannot be named and metaphorised, a pros
thetic installed in the split “Ego”. This is precisely the
“crypt” and its “effect”.
*
The concept of the “crypt” was proposed in the
1960s by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Tôrôk, French
psychoanalysts of Hungarian descent, who in a highly
original fashion developed the thoughts of Sândor
Ferenczi, student and collaborator of Sigmund Freud.
4 The “crypt effect” was also described by Jacques Der
rida in Fors, a copious preface to a book by Abraham
and Tôrôk: Cryptonymie. Le verbier de l’homme aux
loups. 5
In the interpretation proposed by Derrida the
“crypt” is one of those conceits that serve probing the
boundaries of metaphysical spatial logic. A s the readers
of his successive books know such figures as: “supple
ment”, tympanum, hymen, pharmakon, khora, parergon,
parages, “invagination”, etc. ..., in a model-like man
ner (but rather emulating the graphic models of “im
Wojciech Michera • IMAGE, CRYPT, INTERPRETATION
possible figures”) deconstructed the simple antithesis
of the interior and exterior comprehended “rationally”
as cohesive, homogeneous, and symmetrical wholes. 6
With their assistance Derrida constructed paradoxical
topographies, in which this simple schematisation un
expectedly lost its transparency and revealed the “vio
lence” inscribed within it - it “grew wild” and gained
aporetic properties. In this la cartographie impossible,
to cite Derrida, or atopy, the boundary between those
two spheres shifted. In a classical interpretation, the
frame (e.g. of a painting) tightly “closes” the interior,
guaranteeing distinctness and intact original identity;
at the same time - from the perspective of this inte
rior - it “does not exist”. Derrida claimed that such a
simple structure is impossible since total separation of
the interior and the exterior is also unfeasible: in the
text/image the cognitive (referential) aspect is always
joined by a performative force, making it impossible to
conclusively close the frames. This is the reason why
the “edge”, conceived as an indispensable condition
for “completing” the identity of the interior, becomes
in the latter an irremovable “fold” of the exterior, un
dermining its completeness.
Such paradoxical spatiality is characteristic also for
the model of human subjectivity constructed by Abra
ham and Tôrôk; hence Derrida’s interest in the con
cept of the crypt, which he tried to describe by using,
i.a. the titular fors.
Since the French noun: for (plural: fors) is a greatly
ambiguous word, and difficult to translate to boot, let
us precede the quotation from Derrida with several
explanations. This spatial description is affiliated with
the Latin forum, i.e. a public square in Rome, the site
of court trials - it denotes a “justice tribunal”. This is
why the literary expression: le for intérieur (derived,
historically speaking, from old legal terminology refer
ring to Church jurisdiction) described an inner, most
personal “tribunal of consciousness”, sui generis con
science. On the other hand, the interesting etymology
of this word going back to the Indo-European language
(*dhuer, *dwer) discloses its specifically “penetrating”
sense (thus rendering it slightly similar to the Greek
krinein: to “separate”, to ”judge”, hence: ’’crisis” and
“critic”). Suffice to recall that the Latin verb: forare
means: “to perforate” (hence: “perforation”) and foris
means: “door”, adverb - “on the outside”, just as foris
signifies: “outside the door” (or from an opposite per
spective: “go outside the door”, as in the Evangelical
summons by Jesus: Lazare, veni foras —Lazarus, come
forth). This is, therefore, the origin of the English: for
eign, the Italian: fuori, or the French: hors, dehors as
well as the noun: forest, forêt referring to outer, “alien”
space, etc. Hence in French the form: fors (the plural)
is an archaic preposition, which means: “without”,
“ with the exception of“, “while preserving”.
Interestingly, this is also the etymology of the
Polish words: drzwi (doors) and dwór (outside). Not by
accident is the second used in the expression “outside”
(na dworze). It also signifies, as we know, a building
(manor house: dwór, dworek, dworzec), which makes it
possible to sometimes use the Old Polish fora ze dwora
(get outside), with dwór meaning the interior. It also
exists as podwórze and podwórzec (courtyard) or even
dwór królewski (royal court), i.e. courtyard, patio or
open space but inside a certain closed area. Already
in our times, dworzec (station) is a place, which albeit
localised within urban space opens up the town from
the inside, thus making possible communication with
the outside world.
With the assistance of the multi-meaning fors contrasted with the French hors (“outside”, “on the
outside”), or le tribunal de la conscience - Derrida at
tempted to situate the paradoxical space of the “crypt”
in the construction of the subject. A t the onset, how
ever, he sketched its place in the architectural model
(I cite this fragment while translating for as dwór)7 :
Constructing a system of partitions, with their inner
and outer surfaces, the cryptic enclave produces a cleft in
space, in the assembled system of various places, in the
architectonics of the open square within space, itself de
limited by a generalized closure in the forum. Within this
forum, space where the free circulation and exchange of
objects and speeches can occur, the crypt constructs an
other, more inward forum [...]: sealed and thus internal to
itself, a secret interior within the public square, but, by the
same token, outside it, external to the interior. Whatever
one might write upon them, the crypt’s parietal surfaces do
not simply separate an inner forum [un for interior] from
an outer forum [un for extérieur]. The inner forum is
(a) safe, an outcast inside the inside. This is the condition,
and the stratagem, of the cryptic enclave’s ability to isolate,
to protect, to shelter from any penetration, from anything
that can filter in from them outside along with air, light,
or sounds, along with the eye or the ear, the gesture or
the spoken word. Caulked or padded along its inner parti
tion, with cement or concrete on the other side the cryptic
safe protects from the outside the very secret of its clandes
tine inclusion or its internal exclusion. 8
198
The “crypt” thus denotes an inner split of the in
terior, which in this fashion ceases being a simple sup
plement of the exterior. It constitutes a concealed core
of this topical structure, preserving certain features of
alienness in relation to the interior, whose part it is.
Forum is part of social space that may be, for example,
delineated with ordinary cartographic methods, but
the crypt, that external dwór, cannot be either mapped
or discovered (even when magnified). All classical
topo-logies, -graphies, -nymies come across an insur
mountable obstacle, i.e. the sort that simply cannot be
Wojciech Michera • IMAGE, CRYPT, INTERPRETATION
overcome. This is “non-place” (non-lieu), which is not
situated somewhere (here or there), but (I would be in
clined to say that in the manner of trompe I’oeil or fata
morgana) it exists exclusively as deformation.
*
Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok were inter
ested primarily in the “cryptonymic” (a-semantic,
“anasemic”) aspect of language that does not serve the
transmission of meanings but their concealment. This
conception attaches key significance to a reinterpre
tation of two conceits well known to psychoanalysis:
introjection and incorporation, describing the relation
between the outer world of the subject and surround
ing reality.
The first was introduced into the language of psy
choanalysis by Sandor Ferenczi in 1909 while defin
ing introjection (i.e. “projection to the interior”) as a
mechanism enabling the extension onto the outer
world of the originally auto-erotic involvement by
including objects of the outer world into the Ego. 9
To put it differently, this time in the words of Freud:
Love is initially auto-narcissistIc and subsequently
encompasses objects incorporated into the expand
ed “Ego” . 10 Introjection was usually identified with
incorporation (or it was perceived as an earlier stage of
the same process), which in Mourning and Melancholia
(1915) Freud described as an economic response to
the loss of an object of love, with which the Ego wishes
to identify itself. 11 In the opinion of Abraham and
Torok, however, it is necessary to radically differenti
ate or even counter the two concepts since each brings
totally different consequences. I n t r o j e c t i o n is
to correspond to “normal” mourning, while i n c o r p o r a t i o n is the “illness of mourning”, which ap
pears whenever introjection for some reason fails.
Incorporation intends to recover, in secret and through
magic, an object: it acts suddenly, fantasmically, some
times in a hallucinatory manner, resembling plunder
of sorts. It emerges, however, always along the border
line of introjection and pretends to be it so under the
illusion of “ordinary” concealment that it may obliter
ate the trace of hiding the incorporated object.
In the process of i n t r o j e c t i o n I ultimately
recognize and accept the actual death of the deceased
(or the loss of a person, object or animal close to me)
and do not identify it with my death; this is to say I
still love him/it but only as a well-integrated particle of
myself. Loss is compensated by recollection enhancing
the Ego, i.e. memorisation, the assimilation of certain
values or, as Freud put it, “’identification”. According
to Judith Butler: This identification is not simply momen
tary or occasional, but becomes a new structure of iden
tity; in effect, the other becomes part of the Ego through
the permanent internalization of the other’s attributes. 12
Essentially, it is even possible to define the Ego as a
199
system of numerous introjections attained slowly, dur
ing a whole lifetime, in a laborious process of succes
sive internalisations, adaptations, and assimilations of
assorted successively lost objects of love (and even in
the process of an anticipation of “possible deaths”).
Introjection is the reason why such partings (for the
child the first loss is the withdrawing mother), even if
painful, become bearable. 13
Meanwhile, i n c o r p o r a t i o n is a neurotic
obstacle for introjection, a response submerged in mel
ancholy: the subject does not come to terms with the
loss because the lost object fulfilled the function of a
mediator with his inner world. He thus tries to fantasmically and magically dominate the object of desire
since, enclosed in the crypt, who becomes a “living
dead” or, to use an expression coined by Maria Tôrôk,
le cadaver exquis. Derrida thus wrote:
The inhabitant of a crypt is always a living dead, a
dead entity we are perfectly willing to keep alive, but
as dead, one we are willing to keep as long as we keep
it, within us, intact in any way save as living.
This is, Abraham and Tôrôk claimed, refoulement
conservateur. Unspeakable mourning creates inside
the subject un caveau secret. Dans la crypte repose,
vivant, reconstitué à partir de souvenirs de mots, d’images
et d’affects, le contenu objectai de la perte, en tant que
personne complète, avec sa propre topique, ainsi que les
moments traumatiques - effectifs ou supposés - qui avai
ent rendu l’introjection impraticable. 14 The incorporated
object becomes included by the cryptophoric subject in
the domain of the subconscious, but at the same time,
in the manner of a parasite or a hardened cyst, it is
excluded from the system of introjections creating the
Ego, the sphere of the activity of any sort of a “tribunal
of conscience“, which would want to conduct coor
dination and resolve emergent contradictions. Der
rida wrote that this boundary (between introjection
and incorporation) is necessary for the localisation
of the crypt, since it encircles within the Ego (the
introjection system) a cryptic enclave as allogenic in
corporation space.
The basically important fact is that i n t r o j e c t i o n speaks, names, enters into a dialogue, is ren
dered dialectic (symbolised) by its representations, and
thus is subjected to ordinary psychoanalysis. Words re
place that, which is lost - they represent lost presence.
This is progressing, fragmentary substitution, clearly
visible in the model-like sequence of the development
of a child: from a mouth full of the mother’s breast, via
the “empty mouth” to the subsequent cries and sobs
and a mouth full of words replacing the mother’s ab
sence. Introjection is, therefore, “satisfaction”, “com
munion” or the “’world of the empty mouth” signify
ing self-understanding in the face of experienced lack.
Wojciech Michera • IMAGE, CRYPT, INTERPRETATION
This also holds true for mourning: words simultane
ously denote the object of desire and shift it, perform
the withdrawal of emotional involvement, the libido.
Butler wrote: This displacement from the original object
is an essentially metaphorical activity in which words “fig
ure" the absence and surpass it. 15
Meanwhile, i n c o r p o r a t i o n appears at the
moment when the “emptiness of the mouth” in vain
summons introjective words; when it becomes impos
sible to replace the lost object with words (because
this would reveal, for example, some sort of a shame
ful secret of this ideal). If the subject is incapable of
self-satiation with words (metaphors) it embarks upon
more radical activity: it absorbs the imagined thing, a
fantasm, an object-fetish, isolating it far from the con
scious part of the Ego, enclosing it in the crypt. In
corporation is, therefore, a de-metaphorisation of the
word: by annulling its figurative meanings it preserves
the loss of an object as radically unnamable, in this
way guarding its secret. Words, however, which have
been deprived of their metaphorical carrying capacity
do not simply return to literal meaning; they continue
to act, performing a fantasmatic destruction of the
language itself and neutralising it as an instrument of
presentableness. 16
The crypt, declared Derrida, is lieu de silence. If in
corporation is heard, then it is only to silence all suspi
cion or revert attention from the incorporated object.
Incorporation thus differs from introjection primarily
due to the use to which language is put or the possibil
ity of deciphering it. Cryptonymy turns out to be to
“cryptology”: burial in a crypt or, to put it differently,
ciphering (Crypter, cest chiffrer - Derrida).
That what is to be read is un texte crypté on the
walls of the crypt, a cipher on a crypt. The wall,
however, is not the first - the material of which it
is built constitutes the text. The cipher makes it
impossible to be deciphered on the surface of the
wall. 17
This is why an object “buried in a crypt” does not
succumb to ordinary analysis. The reason does not
lie in the fact that the crypt is localised somewhere
very deep, but in the material out of which it had been
built, i.e. language. The crypt is not a metaphor of or
dinary unconsciousness (the interior of external con
sciousness) but “false” or “artificial” unconsciousness,
which not only conceals something but also hides the
very fact of concealment, i.e. creates a linguistic op
position to the efforts of the analyst. The crypt is lin
guistic space. It speaks just like the unconscious, imi
tating normal introjection, but in this way leaves that
inner non-place, which is not subjected to any sort of
symbolisation, excluded and untouched (sauf). It is,
therefore, impossible to simply open it, break the seal
200
and read the name because this would be a transfor
mation of the crypt into an ordinary grave, le cadaver
exquis into a “dearly departed”, and incorporation into
introjection; this is, after all, of what the set trap con
sists ...
*
In the conception devised by Abraham and Tôrôk
the “crypt effect” has much in common with what
these two researchers call: l’effet de fantôme - in both
cases it signifies the psychic structures of incorpora
tion, radically “decentralising” ; in both instances the
concept of the “secret” assumes special status. As in
the case of the “living dead”, the phantom too cannot
be integrated with the rest of the psychic life of the Ego
- it puts up resistance and produces traumatic cracks.
The situations, however, are not identical. The first
was the outcome of failed mourning - the “alien” is
incorporated into the crypt of the Ego; the second has
a different etiology - the Ego encounters a “phantom”
arriving from the unconsciousness of the “other”.
An excellent literary example of this difference is
Shakespearean Hamlet. Without doubt, the problem
of the Danish prince does not consist of the fact that
he was unable to come to terms with the loss of his
father and preserved him in his inner crypt as a “living
dead” (subsequently enabling him to act secretly and
as if autonomously). Shakespeare did not write about
Hamlet’s crypt and his melancholy but, in the opinion
of Abraham, about the secret, which the father took
to his grave and which is now assumed by Hamlet. It
is the children’s or descendants’ lot to objectify these buried
tombs through diverse species of ghosts. 18
The appearance of the Father’s ghost at the start of
the play objectifies the son’s awareness-unawareness [la
science-nescience]. Awareness-unawareness of what?
Of his own uneasiness due to a circumstance not to be
doubted: the late King must have taken a secret with him
to the grave. Does the ghost appear in order to lift the state
of unawareness? If that were the case, the ghost’s objec
tification would have no more object than Hamlet’s own
dubious “madness of doubt”. A ghost returns to haunt with
the intent of lying; its would-be “revelations" are false by
nature. 19
This is a hypothesis that for four centuries has been
ignored by the spectators and critics of Hamlet: the
“secret” disclosed by the ghost of old Hamlet contain
ing the injunction to seek revenge is a trap. Actually,
it conceals yet another, true secret of the shame borne
by the father about which nothing can be said and of
which the son is unaware but which leaves behind a
certain trace. This is why the sui generis psychoana
lytical investigation conducted by the young Hamlet,
summed up in a theatrical reconstruction-repetition
Wojciech Michera • IMAGE, CRYPT, INTERPRETATION
based on the confession of the ghost, is doomed to fail.
The revealed “’truth” only calms that unease of igno
rance, whose concretisation is the appearance of the
Ghost.
The phantom, according to the interpretation
proposed by Abraham and Torok, is a phenomenon
existing in a trans-generational dimension (one could
say: a transsexual one, since it resembles a quotation
although accepted together with the error or gap con
tained in the original); it consists of the presence in
the living Ego of a deceased ancestor, albeit as a car
rier of his trauma; the Ego is unaware of this presence
despite the fact that it is the cause of his disturbances.
Naturally, this has nothing in common with spiritual
ism. It is a fact that the phantom, whatever its form, is
nothing but the invention of the living. Yes, an invention
in the sense that the phantom is meant to objectify, even
if under the guise of individual or collective hallucinations
the gap flacune], the concealment of some part of a loved
one’s life produced in us.... Consequently, what haunts are
not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of
others. 20
The “phantom effect” thus introduces an even
more radical” heterogeneity, because it assumed a
“heterocryptical” topos that does not concern the bur
ial of an alien object in one’s crypt but the encounter
of the Ego and an object arriving from the crypt of an
other unconsciousness (the corpse buried in the other).
Both “my” crypt, the effect of incorporation and the
absorption of an alien object, which I do not want to
lose, and the Phantom haunting me set into motion
strategies drawing attention away from their secret.
The law of the phantom obligates to remain ignorant.
The phantom is a formation of the unconscious,
which was never conscious and thus fulfils a func
tion different than repression; nonetheless, it returns
periodically and resembles a trauma that never actu
ally took place. According to Abraham, it works like
a ventriloquist, like a stranger within the subject’s mental
topography. Abraham mentioned: (...) by their gratui
tousness in relation to the subject they create the impres
sion of surrealistic flights of fancy or of oulipo-like verbal
feats. This is why the phantom is never experienced
by the subject as something real, and in the course
of analysis can only give rise to constructions with all
their attendant uncertainties. 21 This construction is dif
ficult because the phantom resists “interpretation”,
words capable of integrating themselves with the
subconscious, i.e. libidinal introjection. The words,
with whose assistance the phantom returns, i.e. those
to which the child once paid attention when one of
the parents uttered them, do not constitute a source
of the phantom’s statement, but an interval in that,
which is tellable. This interval, accepted by the sub
ject (since, as we have said, it is not the effect of its
repression) and blocking the path towards introjec201
tion, becomes for him the same sort of a wound that
it was for his ancestor.
Briefly, if the phantom haunting the Ego in some
way makes its presence known then it does so not to
confess the sins encumbering his heart or to get rid
of a traumatic (horrible and possibly shameful) secret,
but on the contrary, in order to “seal” it (to preserve
this “skeleton in the cupboard”, his silence, the gap in
the topography of his subjectivity). This is also why
the phantom in folk beliefs only objectifies the
metaphor, active in the subconscious, of burying
a shameful fact in an object. 22It is thus necessary
to treat with a great dose of suspicion the truthful
ness of ghosts, including those haunting us in stories:
they come not only to make it possible for the living to
learn about the secret concealed in the grave but, on
the contrary, by proposing false secrets to preserve it
only as the unutterable.
*
Introjection appears to be a good model of the text/
image subjected to classical interpretation (analysis),
striving towards revealing c o n c e a l e d meanings we recognise then that the work has been constructed
in accordance with the classical logic of the symbol,
and as a consequence we seek the missing (co-)symbolic supplement, i.e. strive towards the recreation of
the ‘’pre-symbolic”, “homogeneous” and “metaphori
cal” completeness of meaning. Is a text/image conceal
ing a crypt, and inside the latter - “endocryptic life”,
an incorporated cadaver (and even more so a phan
tom), possible? 23 Naturally, it is unnecessary to recall
that no text or image is a neurotic patient of Dr Freud
(even the author does not have to play this part - we
are not dealing with psycho-biographies). In this case,
the ”crypt” is a “mere metaphor” (in addition, second
ary in relation to the psychoanalytical metaphor). But
this is a productive metaphor if we include psychoana
lytical terminology into the interpretation procedure
so as to diagnose ”the illness”, which would summarise
the meaning of the analysed text; on the contrary, the
purpose should involve rather opening the text than
reducing its possible meanings. 24
Naturally, there comes to mind the question:
how to differentiate the cryptophoric (“cryptomi
metic”) text from the same classical story (Abraham
and Torok: deprived of what would the Wolf Man
not be the Wolf Man but a classic patient?) 25 One
could formulate this doubt slightly differently: since
the object encoded in the crypt (encrypte) is radically
illegible and each attempt at deciphering his “name”
means the necessity of falling into a cleverly devised
trap, then is incorporation a concept possessing any
sort of operational usefulness? 26 The task we are fac
ing does not consist of forcing the text to act in the
manner of an Egyptian mummy from a popular joke
Wojciech Michera • IMAGE, CRYPT, INTERPRETATION
and “confess” its real name; on the contrary, we are
concerned with taking into account this uncertainty,
the “cracks” in the meaning, the retention of the text
in its "strangeness” and significant nonsense. The
model of the ”cryptophoric” text/image presupposes
(differently than the model, which could be called
“semiophoric”) an essential compilation of its “topical
structure”, which as a consequence complicates the
cognitive structure: the work resists classical ques
tions about the “topic”, “message” and “sense”. We
would be dealing with an image that not only conceals
meaning (as an “ordinary” symbol) but also intermin
gles traces - the interpreted traces lose their cognitive
credibility (mimetic value).
The “crypt” (as a conception that essentially ex
pands the metaphoric of our understanding both of
literature and the visual arts) is a premise making it
possible to overcome a temptation typical for classical
interpretation, namely, to replace the radical ”hermeneutics” of the image (the absolute and irreducible 27
inaccessibility of its contents) with “hermeneutics”
offering hope for penetrating the interior in order to
decipher the text/image in a way resembling the one in
which, for instance, archaeologists opened the Coper
nicus crypt in Frombork, i.e. in order to identity the
deceased and prepare something resembling a definite
death certificate (does this activity not bear the marks
of some sort of enlightened exorcism?). As Professor
Jerzy Gąssowski (also my professor when I was a stu
dent of archaeology), who conducted this task, said in
a newspaper interview:
The research started with disinfecting the entry to
the crypt. The latter had been closed several decades
ago and its disinfection was indispensable so as not to
expose scientists entering it to any sort of danger.
If our intention is penetration of “cryptophoric”
books, paintings or films, then archaeological methods
applied to neutralise a similar risk - prepared for scien
tists by a literary/painterly Copernicus or Tutankha
men - are pointless since it is impossible to differenti
ate the “crypt” from its “effect”, the danger created
by it from its valuable contents sought by us, namely,
the cadaver-death. The only real thing is precisely
that hidden activity of the “curse” or the “’microbes”
breeding in the anasemic environment (an exemplary
illustration of this paradox are the studies carried out
by William of Baskerville on the second book of Aris
totle’s Poetics dealing with comedy - as we know, it was
dangerous both owing to its contents and the poison
protecting access to it and covering the pages of the
only existing copy). It is the deadly resistance put up
by the crypt (Derrida: la resistance interne du caveau),
its resilient matter or irremovable frame that could
prove to be the real stake in this research game, the
202
concealed name, the sought after Thing (La Chose).
That what is to be read is un texte crypté on the walls
of the crypt, a cipher on a crypt. The wall, however,
is not the first - the material of which it is built con
stitutes the text. The cipher makes it impossible to
be deciphered on the surface of the wall. 28
Derrida radicalised both the “crypt effect” and the
“phantoms”. In accordance with the conception pro
posed by Abraham if ghosts lie and cheat then they
should be subjected to suitable exorcisms, reintroduc
ing their secret into the order of things (even if this
is an extremely difficult task). For Derrida, however,
incorporation, the crypt and the phantom cease being
a symptom of psycho-pathology; in the same way, the
status of the secret concealed in the crypt or brought
by the phantom haunting the subject also changes.
There is no way to tame it, domesticate it in the stable
domain of ontology or express it in the language of
k n o w l e d g e (o n the wall of the crypt). All opera
tions serving its deciphering (the preparation of the
crypt for research) serve the process of concealing an
even greater mystery, namely, that there is no (other)
mystery (to be discovered as a primeval object to be
restored to knowledge). The only real thing is “endocryptic identification”, i.e. irreducible knowledge-non
knowledge, and endless construction work. 29
*
In order to identify the valuable cadaver it is neces
sary to localise its crypt; for this purpose we must iden
tify the boundary between introjection and incorpora
tion. This border, however, always appears at the end
of introjection, similar to it although always slightly
further, accessible not only as that word but merely as
its rhyme, deformation, shadow, trace of a trace... This
is precisely the death (lurking in the crypt) of the im
age.
Endnotes
1 Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Cryptonymie. Le
verbier de l’homme aux loups, Paris: Flammarion 1976, p.
230.
2 N. Abraham, L'unité duelle et le fantome, in: Nicolas
Abraham, Maria Torok, L'Écorce et le noyau, Flammarion:
Paris 1978, p. 394 [emphasis - W M.]. I explain the
concept of introjection slightly further on.
3 Abraham and Torok, Cryptonymie, op. cit., p. 230.
4 Their studies from the 1960s and 1970s were collected
in: L'Écorce et le noyau, supplemented by: Cryptonymie, a
“cryptonymic” reinterpretation of the famous case of the
Wolf Man. Sandor Ferenczi lived in 1873-1933; Nicolas
Abraham - in 1919-1975; Maria Torok - in 1926-1998.
5 Jacques Derrida, Fors: les mots anglés de Nicolas Abraham
et Maria Torok, in: Abraham and Torok, Cryptonymie,
op. cit., pp. 9-73.
6 See also, i.a. Derrida: O gramatologii (Warszawa 1999),
Marginesy filozofii (Warszawa 2002), La dissemination
(Paris 1972), Chora (Warszawa 1999), Prawda w malar-
Wojciech Michera • IMAGE, CRYPT, INTERPRETATION
stwie (Gdańsk 2003), Survivre and La loi du genre, in:
Parages (Paris1986).
7 Barbara Johnson translated for into the English simply as
forum; one should keep in mind, however, that the two
words (for and forum) appear together in Derrida's text
and have a different meaning (see: Derrida, Fors: The
English Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok,
transl. Barbara Johnson, in: N. Abraham and M. Torok,
The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, University
of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis l986, pp. XI-XLVIII).
8 Derrida, Fors, op. cit., pp. 12-13.
9 I quote after: M. Torok, Maladie du deuil et fantasme du
cadavre exquis, in: LÉcorce..., op. cit., p. 235.
10 S. Freud, Popędy i ich losy, in: Psychologia nieświadomości,
transl. R. Reszke, KR: Warszawa 2007, p. 74 (text from
1915).
11 Sigmund Freud, Żałoba i melancholia, in: idem, Psychologia
nieświadomości, op. cit., pp. 147-159, see: p. 152. Cf.
idem, i.a. Psychologia zbiorowości, where “introjection” is
used in reference to melancholy (transl. R. Reszke, in:
Pisma społeczne, KR: Warszawa 1998, p. 89); Popędy i ich
losy (in: Psychologia nieświadomości, op. cit., p. 72); „Ja” i
„to” (ibid., p. 235 sqq.).
12 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge, New York
1990, p. 58.
13 See: Maria Yassa, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok The inner crypt, “Scandinavian psychoanalytic Review”
25, 2/2002, p. 7.
14 Abraham and Torok, Deuil ou mélancolie. Introjecter incorporer, in: LÉcorce..., op. cit., p. 266.
15 Butler, op. cit. p. 68.
16 See: Abraham and Torok, Deuil ou mélancolie, op. cit., p.
267.
17 Derrida, Fors, op. cit., p. 53.
18 Nicolas Abraham, Notules, in: LÉcorce et le noyau, op.
cit., p. 427. See also: Derrida, Fors, op. cit., note on p.
42.
19 Abraham, Le fantôme d’Hamlet, in: LÉcorce..., op. cit., p.
449.
20 Abraham, Notules, op. cit., p. 427. See also: Colin Davis,
Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms, “French Studies”
59,3/2005, pp. 373-379.
21 Abraham, Notules, pp. 449-50. See also: Torok, Histoire
de peur. Le symptôme phobique: retour du refoulé ou retour
du fantôme?, in: LÉcorce..., op. cit., p. 439.
22 Abraham, Notules, p. 427. The conception proposed by
Abraham and Torok encouraged researches studying
literature to seek in literary texts such deceitful phan
toms trying to conceal awkward family secrets uncon
sciously inherited by authors or narrators. Several exam
ples were discussed by Colin Davis, op. cit. Here,
however, this motif appears to be less essential.
23 Introjection and incorporation are concepts that, natu
rally, can be used (even without leaving the sphere of
the psychoanalytical discourse) for describing the rela
tion between the recipient and the work - if we recogni
ze the “patient” experiencing loss to be a reader, and a
book, a film or a painting to be the lost object (suffice to
recall the sorrow we experience each time when at the
end of a favourite book were are forced to say farewell to
its protagonists). In a normal situation, therefore, I
accept the fact that the story has come to an end and its
fictitious characters “really” do not exist; nonetheless,
”I” can “symbolically” identify with them and accept the
”lesson” taught by the work and thus enhance and
203
24
25
26
27
28
29
expand my inner world. Sometimes, however, there
appears a fantasmatic wish on the part of the subject to
absorb, take over and keep this “object of desire”, to
preserve it in the permanent shape of “the living dead”
- outside the entire system of introjection and beyond
the supervision of tribunal de la conscience (this situation
is excellently exemplified by Annie Wilkes, the lead
protagonist of Misery, a novel by Stephen King and a
motion picture by Rob Reiner (1990) - an obsessive
reader of romantic novels about Misery Chastaine,
Annie imprisons their author so as to make it impossible
for him to “kill off” her favourite character. In an ano
ther version, the heart of the matter would involve
“metalepsy” described by Gérard Genette, in this case
obliterating the boundary between the inner world of
the text and the empirical world).
See: Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, Semiotics and Art
History, “Art Bulletin” 73,2/1991, p. 197.
Abraham and Torok, Cryptonymie, op. cit., p. 232. The
term: cryptomimesis was proposed by Jodey Castricano in
the book: Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s
Ghost Writing, McGill-Queen's University Press:
Montréal: 2001.
This question was posed by Eugenio Donato in: Qui
Signe ‘Flaubert’?, “MLN” 98, 4/1983, p. 591.
See: Umberto Eco, Imię róży, transl. Adam Szymanowski,
PIW: Warszawa 1996.
Derrida, Fors, p. 53, emphasis - W. M. Let us recall upon
this occasion that according to Freud Nicholas
Copernicus decided to decentralize man's cosmological
place in the universe (Sigmund Freud, Eine Schwierigkeit
der Psychoanalyse, 1917).
Derrida expanded his science about phantoms and
“hauntology” comprehended as “different ontology” similarly as reflections about the Ghost in Hamlet - in:
Spectres de Marx: l’état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la
nouvelle Internationale, Galilée: Paris 1993. More on this
topic in my book: Piękna jako bestia (in print); the pre
sented text is an abbreviated and altered fragment.