Oedipus as Figure
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Much of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s work turns on the recognition of mimesis - both in the sense of social or psychological imitation, and in the sense of artistic and especially theatrical representation - as the fundamental element of experience, language and thought. Without any intrinsic identity or essence, we are what and who we are only in so far as we take on roles which are themselves borrowed, copied or devised. The critical aspect of Lacoue-Labarthe’s project, then, involves an argument with the repeated philosophical gesture - most obvious in Plato - to banish the mimetic moment in order to reinstate the regime of the genuine or the authentic. In modern philosophy it is above all speculative idealism - the effort to overcome the Kantian distinction between appearance and things-in-themselves - that has pursued an anti-mimetic agenda. Lacoue-Labarthe’s sustained critique of this great speculative temptation provides the context for his relatively early essay ‘Oedipus as figure’, just as it continues to shape much of his recent work on Hšlderlin and Heidegger. first delivered as a lecture to Brown University (Providence) in November 1983, ‘Oedipus as figure’ provides an exceptionally concise overview of several of Lacoue-Labarthe’s persistent concerns. Excluded from the translation of Lacoue-Labarthe’s L’Imitation des modernes (Galille, Paris, 1986), it is published here in English for the first time. 

It is probable, or at the very least plausible, that Western humanity now models itself on two figures or types - two ‘examples’, if you like. They appear to be antagonistic (or are at least supported by antagonistic discourses), but their antagonism also binds together, and founds, their kinship, as each of these figures or types claims to provide an exclusive representation of humanity as such.

The first of these figures is the older and obviously the more powerful in terms of its social, political and historical effects: the figure of the worker, in the sense in which it was expressly designated and thematized by Ernst Junger, but also in the sense that it is supported by the entire social metaphysics of the nineteenth century, and especially by the thought of Marx in its entirety. Under its influence or impact, the essence of humanity - humanitas - recognizes itself, understands itself and tries to realize itself as the subject of production (the modern poiesis) in general or as the subject of energy in the strict sense: energy that is applied and put to work. In this figure, ‘man’ is represented as worker.

The second figure is less obvious, even though its figural or mythical determination is no less clear. This does not mean that its effects are less powerful, but it does mean that, thanks to a structural necessity, they are concealed: they are inscribed in the element of history and politics (but not society) in a less immediately readable manner. They have a kind of ‘infra’ or ‘hypo’ (‘sub’) status, and therefore pertain more clearly to the order of the subjectum in general. I refer, of course, to the figure of Oedipus in the sense that, ever since Freud, ‘Oedipus’ has been the name of desire, and in the sense that the figure of Oedipus represents the subject of desire. Which necessarily means: desire as subject. Desire is not the opposite of labour in the same way that consumption is the opposite of production. That crude opposition has had its day. But the fact that desire, like production, is consumed may mean that desire itself is a form of production or energy. It was probably a mistake to speak of a libidinal economy. I do not know if that was enough to reach the unique root from which the antagonism between desiring man and working man springs, or should spring. And nor do I know if we now have, given the current state of affairs, the ability to find that root. I would, however, like to take a step in that direction. Just a step, or in other words a very first step.

Heidegger has the distinction of having begun to deconstruct the figure of the Worker.1 In doing so, he began to deconstruct the figural in general, or to deconstruct everything that modern ontology elevated to the rank of Gestalt, figure or type, when, abandoning its claim to be an onto-theology, it transformed itself into an onto-anthropology or, as I have suggested elsewhere, an onto-typology.2 This figure or type is, making due allowance for the reversal of transcendence into ‘rescendence’ (the expression is Heidegger’s) that we can observe in Feuerbach and Marx as well as Nietzsche, a strict equivalent to the Platonic idea. The figure or Gestalt of the Worker is understood by Heidegger as being one of the modes in which the essence of technology is deployed, or in other words as one of the modes of Ge-stell. The word designates the unity of coming together of all the modes of Stellen, ‘formulating’ or ‘(re)presenting’ in general, from Vorstellung to Gestalt. It therefore designates being in its last envoi.

No such deconstruction of the figure of Oedipus has been attempted. It is usually ignored as a figure and viewed solely as a structure. The deconstruction of the Oedipal structure was and is still necessary. Just as it was necessary for the Freudian interpretation of the myth to be rigorously delineated. And yet it is perhaps just as necessary to look at the very simple, almost anodyne, gesture whereby Freud appropriates a mythical name and erects it into a concept, a schema or, as I believe, a figure. After all, that gesture is no more innocent that the gesture whereby Nietzsche decides to make Zarathustra the figure of the Will to Power (and the spokesman for the Eternal Return). And it is all the less innocent in that Nietzsche is never very far behind Freud. The question I would like to raise is therefore as follows: what necessity was Freud obeying when he turned to Oedipus and elevated him to the rank of figure? Just what was it that this mythical or post-mythical figure supported that made Freud think of appropriating it?

Freud himself is quite explicit about the many good reasons for recognizing the history or prehistory of desire in the myth. He also makes it perfectly clear that the mythical in general has to be resolutely taken into account. On the other hand, he never takes the trouble to re-examine the apparent spontaneity of his major gesture: subsuming everything to do with his discovery under the name of Oedipus and thus making that name the emblem of psychoanalysis itself because that name can be regarded as the name of the very subject of the unconscious.

And yet the gesture was not without its consequences. The suspicion - or rather the hypothesis - I would like to put forward is therefore this, and it can be formulated without too many precautions: the reason why Oedipus has become a figure in this way is that Oedipus could take on the status of a figure. A figure is not simply what it signifies or what we say it means. A figure is a figure only because it imposes itself as such and because it can have that position, or in other words the position of an idea that has been inverted or reversed. A figure necessarily has an ontological status in the metaphysical sense of that term. To put it in different terms: the fact that Oedipus is a figure is none of Freud’s doing, or not just Freud’s doing. It is the result of an ontology that pre-exists Freud, and that may also provide a support for what he always described as the fortuitous outcome of pure research.

back