JAN KOTT
R elations of symbo lic n egation
a. utter nega tion of its sexual Other by " I"-Mouth .
b. compl ete negation o f the sex of "Yo u / the Other" by "1" –
Mo uth.
589
In
certain works of Freud
(On the Mechanism of Paranoia, 1911 ;
R epression,
191 5;
The Loss of R eality in N euroses and Psychoses,
1925)
"viscissitudes and devia tions" are often analyzed-o ne could say in
anticipation o f structuralism-as permuta tions of sign s in a symbolic
algebra. Inversion is, already in
191 5
(long before Merl eau-Ponty),
shown by Freud
to
be the displ acement of the Look and of the Obj ect of
the Look :
a) The subj ect regards
hislher own sex
b ) The su bj ect regards
as alien obj ect
(voyeurism )
The subj ect's sex
ben eath th e gaze
of the subj ect
c) The subj ects sex
as ben ea th th e
gaze of th e Other
(exhibitioni sm )
In
our triangul ar schema exhibitionism is the sex of "Me-as–
Other " which loo ks a t/ articulates the Mouth .
In
voyeurism it is the sex
of "Yo u / the Other" which looks at/ articul a tes the "I" -Mouth . As in
Freud the proj ection s of the libido can be presented as transforma tions
of discourse
(d.
Freud 's presentation of the transformations of the bas ic
homosexual wish underl ying p aranoia - " I (a man )
love him"
-in
On
the Mechanism of Paranoia ).
Delirium, then , is the p rofound displace–
ment of the three verti ces o f our sexual triangle, with the reversal o f its
rela tion s.
Repression , or exi stenti al denial, is the symbo li c identifi ca tion o f
the vertex of " You / the Other" with that o f the " IL " The Anus isn 't
marked fo r sex. "You " (masculine or feminine) reduced to the Hole, to
" It," is degraded and deperson alized. Among the Trobrianders the
most serious in sult is
" ikaye pwala,"
literally, "h e screws shit" (Mali–
nowski ). The reduction of " I" -Mouth to the Anu s is a t the same time
correla tive and opposed to the reduction of "You / the Other"
to
the
Ho le. According
to
Freud the first identifica tion refl ects masochistic
tendencies, the second , sadi sti c tendencies.
The deep structure of the sexual triangle doesn 't translate itself
directl y through lingui sti c signs but nevertheless the signs are encoded
there. The opera tional va lue of the tri angle is in gras ping of rela tio ns
and p ermuta tions, but it is not merely a di agram. I beli eve one can use
