APPROPRIATION AND COUNTER-APPROPRIATION - eCommons

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APPROPRIATION AND COUNTER-APPROPRIATION:
TEE CASE OF ROQUENTIN
A Thesis
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
by
James Dennis LeBlanc
August 1984
*/^~-L-K^
APPROPRIATION AND COUNTER-APPROPRIATION:
THE CASE OF POQUENTIN
James Dennis LeBlanc, Ph*D«
Cornell University 1984
As the title suggests, there are two principle
aspects of this dissertation* The first concerns a par
ticular notion of appropriation} as well as its reverse,
what is terned in this study ,fcounter-appropriation.M
This first aspect consists of theoretical considerations
and draws on a body of information which permits the use
of a kind of ontologicai psychoanalysis* The second
aspect of this study is an application of these theoreti
cal views to the character of Roquentin, the existential-
ly—ill protagonist in Jean-Paul Sartre's novel, LA H^§??«
On the whole, the discourse and behavior of Sartre1 s char
acter are used to both illustrate and confirm the various
facets of the psychoanalytic structure that is proposed in
this text — a dissertation which is, therefore, a study
of both theory and literature*
In the first section, the focus is on a particular
moment in La. Nausée: Roquentin's narration of his inabil
ity to pick up a piece of paper which lies on the ground
in front of his hotel* His documentation of bis usual
fondness for handling, staring at, destroying, and even
bringing the trash to his mouth is explicated in ^reat de
tail*
The main thrust of the second chapter is towards a
reading of Freud against Sartre. although Sartre sees his
own work as fundamentally opposed to that of Freud, the
positions of the two theorists are used here in a comple
mentary fashion to support a certain notion of desire that
is appropriâtive in nature. Sartre1s L'Etre et le géant»
Lacan1 s "Signification du phallus, 11 Laplanchefs Vje e_l
mort e_n. psychanalyse and several of Freud9 s works are
y
cons idered»
The third and final chapter of this study reveals the
importance of Roquentin's interest in handling discarded
scraps of paper, and his recent inability to engage in
this activity, in relation to the rest of the novel. The
concept of apropriation, which is introduced in the pre
ceding chapter, is extended to include "counter-appropria-
tion#" In addition, the idea of a "playful" attitude is
introduced and Juxtaposed with Sartre's esprit de sérjLeux
in an effort to analyze and explain the nature of Roquen-
tin's nausea.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Jim LeBlanc was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on
April 3, 1953» He spent eighteen years in central New
England, with his educational pursuits often running sec
ond to his interest in carrying a football through a mass
of large, angry bodies or trying to hit a baseball on to
the roof of his math teacher 1s house beyond the Left field
fence. Not having had much success at either athletic
venture, he decided to abandon this particular path to
sell-fulfillment after graduating from Cashing Academy in
1971.
Ris undergraduate college days were spent mostly
along the road marked "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll,"
which was quite a popular thoroughfare at the time. It
was not until he had tried six different majors, dropped
out of school, and worked in a brake shoe factory in in
ner-city Boston that he decided that hunting truth in an
academic world might be a rewarding quest. He finally
graduated from Miami University ( the one in Ohio, not the
one in Florida) in 1977 with a B«A« in French. He went to
graduate school immediately and earned his M.A. from the
same institution in 1979.
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Now that he is "educated," he has decided to leave
truth to her private bath, at least if she is to be found
secluded within the walls of the university. HLe intends
to engage in non—academic ventures» He is fully aware
that in so doing he might never catch a glimpse of Diana
— but he won't be devoured by his own hounds either.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank my parents for their endless support,
and also Pat Gill for preserving my sense of humor during
the writing of this work* John Weigel, Russ Reising, and
Cliff Hallam all deserve credit for teaching me the impor
tance of literature and philosophy. I also wish to thank
Jane Gallop* Peggy Kamuf Neil Hertz and especially Rich
t
ard Klein» without whose advice and instruction this dis
sertation would never have come to be»
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS • . • . • . . iv
Phftpt?r a&£&
INTRODUCTION 1
I. THE SCRAPS OF PAPER • • • • . . . . . . • . . .. 7
II. TO HAVE AND TO BE • • . . . 76
III. TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY 152
CONCLUSION 246
BIBLIOGRAPHY 250
##
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INTRODUCTION
"Je l'ai» la saleté» la Nausée*" 1 The nausea in Sar
tre's novel is something Roquentin !>as • or so the protago
nist maintains early on in his Journal* Later in the
text, however» we read: "La Nausée ne m'a pas quitté et
je ne crois pas qu'elle nie quittera de sitôt; nais je ne
la subis plusf ce n'est plus une maladie ni une quinte
passagère: c'est moi*"2 "La Nausée • • • c'est moi"; the
nausea in Sartre's novel is something Roquentin i_s_* It is
this interrelation of having and being and Roquentin 1s
shifting awareness of the roles of these two predicative
modes that will concern us in the following pages* Lô.
flausee. we shall maintain, is a novel about appropriation
— appropriation of material objects, appropriation of the
world one experiences, appropriation of oneself* More
over, this desire for possession is founded on a desire
for being — not just any being, of course, but a specific
notion of being (one which, unfortunately, is unattaina
ble)* This desired ontological status is what Sartre
terms elsewhere the ep-soi-pour-soi• the in-itseIf-for-it-
self* Consciousness seeks the kind of solid, inmutable
1 Jean-Paul Sartre, La Causée (Paris: Sallimard, 1938), p.
32*
2 Ibid*» p. 161.
-1-
-2-
being of the in-itself — the being of a stone, for exam
ple — while at the same time wishing to remain the con-
tinuous creator» the free foundation of its existence: be-
ing-for-itself• It is towards this end that an individual
engages in appropriative behavior.
In an effort to elucidate this concept of appropria
tion and its role in Roquentin's diary» we shall need to
focus both on theoretical considerations and on Roquen
tin's discourse itself. Regarding the latter» we shall
see that one moment» in particular» in Roquentin's text
seems to contain the entire universe of the writer's ap-
propriative behavior» and functions as a dense» microcosm-
ic kernel of psychological factors that serve to inform
his journalistic project as a whole. For this reason» we
shall spend considerable time examining this crucial point
in the text: Roquentin's description of his pastime of
picking up scraps of paper from the street» followed imme
diately by his recounting of his recent inability to pick
up a particular sheet of paper. Later we shall turn our
attention to the ramifications of our discoveries as they
apply to other points in the text. In conjunction with
this aspect of our inquiry» we shall need to establish a
certain theoretical groundwork on which to base our con
clusions. We shall draw from both the theoretical works
of Sartre ( LLEÎXÊ. ê± 1^- PeW*» for "the most part) and from
Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory (Bache-
-3-
lard, Lapianche, Lacan)* Although Sartre often claims to
be in severe opposition to Freud, «re hope to show that the
systems of the two thinkers can be utilized in a comple
mentary fashion, in spite of their occasionally glaring
points of contention» Sartre's ontological considerations
may be made to serve as a beneficial tool for the clarifi
cation and elaboration of Freud's psychoanalytic theories,
just as Freud's point of view will be shown to provide an
interesting perspective from which to extend and highlight
the phenomenological conclusions of Sartre1s work.
Thus, the scope of the following study will be two-
dimensional: ( 1 ) ,,£*e tenter une psychanalyse des çhos-
e^,«3 as Sartre describes what he calls "la psychanalyse
existentielle," and (2) to propose a psychoanalytic read
ing of Roquentin's existential anxiety and of the factors
which contribute to its arising and ultimate resolution in
the mind of Sartre's protagonist.
Roquentin announces early on that his Journalistic
project will be an attempt to organize his day-to-day
life. In fact, he states his resolution with the first
words of the "feuillet sans date": "Le mieux serait d'éc
rire les événements au jour le jour . .. surtout les
3 Jean-Paul Sartre, J^jgtre e_£ le n.jaflt (Paris: Gallimard,
1943), p. 690. Sartre attributes this notion of a phe
nomenological psychoanalysis, quite rightly, to Bache
lard.