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This remarkable book by the well-knownsemiologist Teresa de Lauretis begins with anintroduction that looks at the past, but also atthe present and the uture. The main thesis

o the book rehabilitates the Freudian theoryo the death drive, a theory that is hardly ac-cepted by mainstream psychoanalytic circles.But so many other themes and hypothesesare included inFreuds Drivethat the book de-mands careul reading. The author discussesthe Freudian theory o drives, with long quo-tations revised rom the Standard Edition.She also spans rom the present time to myth-

ical time and illustrates the transitions romFreuds thinking to issues debated today.The overall aim oFreuds Drive is to

refect on the relevance o Freuds theory odrives or the history oour present (p. 1).The dualism o the lie drive and the deathdrive is part o Freuds legacy; however, herewe have a revisionist view o the Freudiantheory as put orth by Jean Laplanche, thegist o which is to take a deeper look at thedeath drive. It is symptomatic o our timestimes marked by interminable wars. Writtenat this particular moment in time, the book isan indication o de Lauretiss ability to under-

stand the present.One surprise is the act that Freuds clas-sic work Inhibition, Symptom, Anxiety is notmentioned, as it would have shed light on deLauretiss theory o trauma. Even so, Freudstheory on trauma is rightly considered hereas being an internal oreign bodyactingthere like a computer virus in a database(p.7). Trauma reveals how the role o the un-conscious installs a duality that is impossibleto avoid. De Lauretis deends Freuds theo-ries notwithstanding his ubiquitous ambigui-ties and his persistent biologism. At the sametime she is attentive to other psychoanalytic

sources that clariy Freuds ideas.Freuds Drive is written in the language

o semiotics where text and signiers call orthe inclusion o some major historical per-sonalities who help in making psychoanalytictheories better understood. Michel Foucault ismentioned, but also Paul de Man and JacquesLacan. In Chapter Two the author ocuses onFoucault, who amously reduces the Freudiandrives to power relations. Foucault is openlyanti-Freudian in that he does not recognize theexistence o unconscious drives. For Foucaultsexuality is constructed (p.40); so much sothat he considers Freuds theories o the drives

as his last bastion to be protected against thedangers o a ree sexuality. Freud is a naturalist,

a positivist o sorts, who takes sexuality liter-ally, whereas Foucault presents us with a the-ory o power and sexuality in the ootsteps oNietzsche. Although their terminologies areopposed, de Lauretis writes: Far rom be-ing mutually exclusive, Foucaults and Freudstheories are both necessary to articulate thepsychosocial phenomenon o sexuality in itscomplexity only together can they outline amaterialist theory o the sexual subject (p.43).It is the old dilemma: nature against culture.Freud is a biologist and Foucault is a culturaldeterminist or whom the unconscious is not athematizable entity; as a concept it is not need-ed to understand sexuality or even the worldat large. Yet Freud recognizes the social con-ventions o civilization, and or him too Thereis nothing innate in sexuality as such (p.45).

This is an interesting but debatable conclusionthat allows de Lauretis to compare Freud andFoucault without completely rejecting either.

In act Foucaults somato-power is sim-ilar, or de Lauretis, to Freuds drive. She saysincisively: It is only insoar as we are bodiesthat we can become subjects, and conversely,only insoar as we become subjects that weacquire a sexed and raced body (p.53). Withthis conclusion the author proceeds to discussthe role o the drives according to Freud andLaplanche, particularly in the latters Life andDeath in Psychoanalysis.

Chapter Three, entitled The Queer

Space o the Drive, explores why Freud callsthe drive a rontier concept. Paradoxical as itmay sound, the drive is partially mental andpartially somatic. In this in-between territorymany things can happen, and one o them isthe ading o the subject. Following this traino thought, de Lauretis extends Freuds theoryo the drive to cultural objects, such as literarytexts and lms, and introduces the transitionrom abstraction (Freuds theories) to con-creteness so as to emphasize the cultural milieuin which we are living. Film narratives conrmthe social constructions and the ideologicaltrends that make them a combination o anta-

sies, desires, and identications. Spectators arecaught up in a web o images, oten sublimi-nal, thanks to which multiple codes present tothem dierent interpretations.

The chapter opens with the statementthat The theory o drives has been possi-bly the most contested area in the whole opsychoanalytic theory, and the main pointo contestation is the location o the drive(p.58). Moreover, the theory o the drives isincomplete, as Freud himsel admitted. As toLaplanche, he theorizes that the inant body istraumatized by the unmasterable excitationdue to the maternal care o the inant, who has

neither ego nor language, so that sexuality isan eect o primal seduction (p.53). From this

repression the unconscious and a body-ego,which is both social and psychic, are born.

According to Laplanche sexuality is notinnate, it comes rom the other and takes theplace o unconscious antasies long beorelanguage and the ormation o the ego. Thenewborn is born prematurely as LodewijkBolk thesis o oetalization states, and it isthereore at the mercy o the other, o mes-sages to which the inant cannot give mean-ing; these messages are thereore repressedto orm the unconscious. For Laplanche, deLauretis writes, psychoanalysis is a practiceo translation rom the drive to psychic entity(p. 65). The drive is indeed a psychic entityand not, as in Freud, a somatic process.

The mind is in a virtual space, not real-ly localized. The drives thereore are in a no-

mans-land, like in a buer zone, between themental and the somatic. The drive is a tropein de Lauretiss language, thus it is the mostambiguous o Freuds terms. Laplanche isless materialistic than Freud, who de Lauretiscalls an old-ashioned materialist, not radi-cal enough, who, ater having dissociated thedrive rom the biological and the physiologi-cal, returns to the biological.

Freuds biologism is evident when hestates that the living organism really wantsto die. According to de Lauretis, Eros and thedeath drive are tropes caught in a paradoxicalsituation. Still, the idea o the death drive is a

radical intuition, which or Laplanche is atheoretical exigency explaining compulsion(p.77). For him, theorizing the death drive is astructural necessity on Freuds part, consider-ing his biologism, even though the drive doesnot stand or the death o the physical organ-ism: Laplanches anti-biologism places thedeath drivethe result o repressionin thepsychic domain.

Ultimately, Laplanche thinks that thereis only one sexual drive that maniests it-sel as death drive and Eros, and de Lauretissees the role o the drive as a consequence oLaplanches theory o the traumatic. For de

Lauretis the transition rom trauma to theprimary process is a orm o writing, and thedeath drive is a virtual space that suspendsthe certainty o cognition. She writes: Myreading o Freuds drive oers no programme[sic], no ethical position, no polemic, onlyqueer gures o passing in the uninhabitedspace between mind and matter (p.87).

While keeping in mind this program,de Lauretis explores the topos o death inDjuna Barness novelNightwoodand in DavidCronenbergs lm eXistenZthe novel waswritten in 1936; the lm released in 1999. Thelm speaks in the present tense in terms o

virtual reality and biotechnology. De Lauretisdwells on it in order to recover Freuds

BOOK REVIEWS

Freuds Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film Marcella Tarozzi GOLDSMITH, PhD

Freuds Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film(Language, Discourse, Society)

by Teresa De Lauretis

Palgrave Macmillan, 208 pp.,$29.95, 2010

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BOOK REVIEWS

persistent doubt about the inhuman thathunts human reality. EXistenZ, named atera virtual reality game, is an allegory o crea-tive destruction in which Eros and the deathdrive (which are not biological entities) gohand in hand. The director, who clearly has ataste or the horrid and catastrophic narrative,makes clear that the lm is a series o violentmetamorphoses lled with the exceptional,the abnormal, the abject (p.91). The new be-comes the norm, but creativity is linked todeath and destructionan idea shared by psy-choanalysis. This is a lm that shows that theorganic is really something articial.

A summary o Cronenbergs lm woulddemand a long description; suce to say thatthe inorganic technology and the protagonistsorm a game within a game within a game,a mirror construction (p.104). Sexuality orboth Freud and Cronenberg is a unction oantasy, not one o anatomy or biology (p.

107) to the point that in this lm erotic anta-sies are repeated death wishes, so that the lmhas no real end and leaves the door open toendless repetition. De Lauretis speaks here oa drive towards the inorganic. Her thesis isperhaps too strong; yet the material body haslost its relevance and nature too has becomearticial, with the consequence that reality isvirtual, no longer material.

These considerations bring the author totouch upon economic theories and politics.In act, de Lauretis draws a parallel betweenFreud and the economist Joseph Schumpeter,who discusses creative destruction in an

economy that shows a cyclic tendency to-ward crisis and then recovery. By extension,she adds: Freudssomber theory o psychictendency towards the inorganic may also berelevant to our current technological environ-ment and perhaps useul to read new culturalproducts such as gender, sexuality and theirrepresentations (p.99).

This line o reasoning leads to the thand last chapter o the book in which deLauretis gives a Freudian interpretation oBarness Nightwood. The book narrates aninterminable, discontinuous and intertextualdark journey where literature and psychoanal-

ysis go hand in hand to explicate a commonset o tropes. For Freud, literature and the artsin general were objects o study, useul to un-ravel and conrm his own ideas about the un-conscious. However, this is not de Lauretissbelie. She sees a common, deeper groundlinking Freud and literature. She writes: It ismy contention that the infuence o literaryormis responsible or Freuds conceptiono the psyche as text (p.117). And a text is anopen book. This is pure Derrida, and it is sur-prising that not once does de Lauretis men-tion Derridas idea that everything is text.

De Lauretis sees a coincidence in the act

thatNightwoodwas written in the historicallytraumatic 1920s, the same decade in which

Freud publishedBeyond the Pleasure Principle(1920). She speculates that Barnes knew oFreuds theory o the psyche, since her bookshows an homology between psyche andtext with regard to their ormal modes o oper-ation: primary and secondary processes in thepsyche, rhetoric and grammar (or narrative)in the text (p.129). The psyche itsel is a text.The reason de Lauretis choosesNightwoodisbecause it conrms her thesis that sexuality istrauma and enigma, both death drive and liedrive.Nightwoodis more than a narrative, it islled with lengthy monologues written in agural and obscure, archaic style.

The novel narrates the relationship be-tween two women, Nora and Robin, thatends in a disaster caused by jealousy. Here thenight is a literary topos, a primal antasy thatbrings traumatic sexuality and abject degrada-tion; the night is a topos that cannot be con-

trolled, repressed or regulated. The disordero the night is put into evidence, and throughit Nora will recognize the power o the past.

Nightwoodends in a shocking and enigmaticwayin high drama, due to the radical alter-ity o the night. Robin is caught in a lurid andobscene scene with a dog that shows that herdrive is uncontrolled because o her unach-

ieved symbolization (p.137). But the causeo the trauma cannot be identied. We knowonly its eects. Robin is a creature o the nightclose to animality; inhuman, beyond mean-ing. The nihilism oNightwoodcorresponds tothe silence o the death drive.

Freuds Driveends with some considera-tions about ction that exists in the mode ononreerentiality as dreams and antasies do, ina space akin to what Freud names psychic re-ality. What ction is to literature, antasy is topsychic reality (p.146). De Lauretis adds: Theinterweaving o rhetoric and grammar (narra-tive) in the writing o a text makes the gu-

ration o literary writing the nearest approxi-mation to the agency o the unconscious, while

narrative construction is the work o the con-scious ego. Her thesis is that there is an anitybetween the nonhuman structures o language(phonemes, morphemes) and the reedom olanguage when it acilitates the irruption o theprimary process (p.147). However, this ree-dom is caught in the unreedom o the un-conscious. De Lauretis claims that there is acoimplication o psychoanalysis and literatureevident in Freuds work, in the ounding mo-ment o psychoanalysis (ibidem). This is deLauretiss strong thesis, similar to her thesis thatlanguage is nonhuman, even though to speakand to write is the prerogative o being human.

Given the present state o the world,which is trauma itsel, reading Barness

Nightwood now helps us to understandwhere and why we nd ourselves in whatcould be called, without exaggeration, anepochal predicament. z

REFERENCESBarnes, Djuna. Ladies Almanack. New York, NY: New

York University Press, 1992.------.Nightwood. New York: New Directions, 1961.De Man, Paul.Allegories of Reading. New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1979.Derrida, Jacques.Freud and the Scene of Writing. In

Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago:Chicago University Press, 1978.

Field, Andrew. Djuna:The Formidable Miss Barnes.

Austin, TX: University o Texas Press, 1985.Foucault, Michel. Dits et crits. 1954-1988. Edited by Daniel

Deert and Franois Ewald. 4 volumes. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.------. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.

M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972.Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete

Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated and Edited byJames Strachey. 24 volumes. London: Hogarth Press, 1953-74.

Jackobson, Roman and Morris Halle.Fundamentals ofLanguage. The Hague: Mouton, 1956.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. London: Tavistock, 1977.------. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pyscho-analysis.

Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by AlanScheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

Laplanche, Jean. Essays on Otherness. Edited by JohnFletcher. London: Routledge, 1999.

------. Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. Translated andEdited by Jerey Mehlman. Baltimore, MD. The JohnsHopkins University Press, 1976.

------.New Foundations for Psychoanalysis. Translated byDavid Macey. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

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