Lacan, Kierkegaard And Repetition

Lacan, Kierkegaard, and Repetition
Author: Marcus Pound Quodlibet Journal: Volume 7 Number 2, April - June 2005 ISSN: 1526-6575

Summary: This paper explores the role of Kierkegaard in Lacan’s semiotic mediation of Freudian repetition. I argue that while Lacan explicitly draws upon Kierkegaard’s distinction between recollection and repetition, he misreads repetition. This has the effect ofclosing down what could be a potentially beneficial dialogue between theology and psychoanalysis. By attending to this point I hope to open up a space for that dialogue. When Lacan introduces the Freudian concept of repetition he generally invokes the name of Kierkegaard as well. This raises the question of the precise relation between Lacan and Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition. What are theirrespective understandings of this term? In what way does Kierkegaard help mediate Freudian repetition? Does Lacan do justice to Kierkegaard’s concept? What are the wider implications of this engagement between theology and psychoanalysis? This essay attempts to respond to those questions. My argument is quite simple. Kierkegaard’s distinction between repetition and recollection provides Lacan with auseful set of conceptual tools to help Lacan communicate and establish his own distinction between the imaginary and the symbolic within the wider philosophical/theological tradition. In doing so Lacan provides a psychoanalytic justification for Kierkegaard’s distinction. However, Lacan does not always do justice to Kierkegaard, misreading him in the manner that Freud misread religion. I suggestthat this has consequences for both Lacan’s critique of religion and the ensuing dialogue between theology and psychoanalysis. In discussing Kierkegaard, Lacan and repetition, it is not my intention to treat Lacan’s concept of repetition in its entirety, just those points where Lacan specifically relates repetition to Kierkegaard. To treat repetition in its entirety is worthy of an extended pieceand this paper should be viewed as a contribution to that task, a work in progress. I begin by explaining Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition. I then consider Lacan’s semiotic mediation of Kierkegaard. Finally I consider the implications of that reading in the light of Lacan’s critique of religion. Kierkegaard and Repetition The Kierkegaardian concept of repetition arises in the context ofself-development. Repetition concerns the ‘earnestness of existence’ (Kierkegaard, 1983, p. 131). In particular, it tries to resolve the dilemma of selfhood: how does one reconcile the fact that the self changes over time, yet maintains its apparent unity? As Kierkegaard says, in Greek terms this is ‘the relation between the Eleatics and Heraclitus’ (Kierkegaard, 1983, p. 148). Plato’s response was thedoctrine of recollection (Plato, 1981, p. 104): the soul is immortal; over the course of its life it has traversed the cosmos and hence knows everything. Therefore truth is a matter of recollection, finding out what we already know. In the doctrine of recollection the changing self is anchored in the eternal which can be immanently recollected. Kierkegaard’s contention with recollection is twofold.First, it amounts to an avoidance of time. In recollection one sneaks back out of life into the eternal and thus recollection refuses to acknowledge our temporality as an essential constitutive of being. Second, as a Christian, Kierkegaard contests any immanent anchoring of the self in recollected truth due to sin: sin introduces a break between God and man and so the truth is obscured, hence theChristian must rely on revelation in the form of the incarnation in which God becomes man and reveals the truth. To intuit the truth within is a Pagan idea. How then does repetition solve the problem of the contingent yet enduring sense of selfhood? In Kierkegaard’s book Repetition Constantin Constantius undertakes an experiment to see whether

repetition is possible by trying to repeat a...