Robbe-Grillet in the light of Lacan

 This is a general title that I am going to use for what I hope will be a series of posts concerning my recent thinking about Robbe-Grillet. Why now? you may ask. Well in September 2022 I attended a conference on R-G to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth in Brest, Brittany. The event had attracted scholars from various countries, some of them like me, old-stagers from previous conferences, and some new faces, an encouraging aspect for future scholarly work on this important novelist, cineast and essayist.We had the added attraction of R-G's wife, Catherine who attended every session, sitting in the front row and paying close attention to the proceedings. So much for the context that has prompted this series. The Actes of the conference will be published shortly, an event which may result in some attention being given to R-G's work; since his death in 2008, most publications have been edited versions of interviews he gave to various people in the last decade of his life., notably Roger-Michel Allemand's Entretiens complices and Benoît Peeters' Alain Robbe-Grillet: Réinventer le roman. Entretiens inédits.

In my presentation, I focussed on Lacan`s concept of jouissance as displayed/hidden by R-G in his repeated use of a gap or a hole which he attempted to cover over. A similar structure can be find in incidents involving doppelganger; and in his last major novel, La Reprise, repetition in various forms operates to provide jouissance for the author/narrator. I indicated, during the presentation, that some questions had to be left for a future work. I have not formed a complete plan, but I will be guided by the following questions:

The first major question, which I think R-G answers in part as early as Pour un nouveau roman, is answered by R-G's focus on the creation of the work itself, shifting away from a Balzacian depiction of reality. My question focuses more tightly on trying to explain what is going on when so many other artists in all disciplines are pursuing the same line. I think that the usual recourse to "influence" is weak and insufficient. Flaubert, Verlaine and Rimbaud, the "Art for Art's sake" movement, impressionism, cubism, Schonberg, Stravinsky: each in his own way was responding to aspects of their world that could not be approached through earlier means.

The three numbered questions represent my attempt to bring some kind of cohesion to my research. More broadly, I am looking to spell out the dominant ideology that individuals are reacting against, whether consciously or unconsciously.

This is the prologue.