Mind as Ruin: Balzac’s “Sarrasine”
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difference, however, is that while for Freud the unconscious is formed
from the repression of erotic desire during the Oedipal stage of development, for Balzac the unconscious is formed from a set of traumatic
historical events: the revolutions – 1789, but also 1830 – intended to
modernize and “nationalize” French consciousness by displacing Old
Regime/Catholic desires, sentiments and habits. For Balzac, modern
French consciousness emerges in its fragmented, modern state as it
crosses the historical and epistemic divide between old and new
France.
The following interpretation of “Sarrasine” will show that
while psychoanalysis has historically been one of the most popular
approaches to interpreting Balzac’s fiction, it may actually impede
understanding of his theory of post-revolutionary consciousness, encouraging readers to misrecognize the Catholic content of its internal
displacements. Modern desire, according to Balzac, is always underwritten by a residual religious desire, aspiration or mental habit, which
requires new hermeneutic tools – an archaeology of consciousness or
what Balzac called “moral archaeology” – in order to be perceived and
properly understood.
The numerous references to archaeology in La Comédie humaine have
not passed unnoticed by critics, even if, unlike Gautier, Mérimée or
Flaubert, Balzac never represented an ancient civilization in his fiction. Balzac’s interest in this discipline has been either noted or analysed in various critical works, such as Jeannine Guichardet’s Balzac,
“archéologue de Paris”. Yet contrary to these studies,
2 concerned either with the thematic and architectural dimensions of archaeology in
Balzac (Guichardet, for example, exhaustively catalogues archaic or
ruined edifices in Paris) or with the fragmentation and discontinuities
of Balzac’s writing as postmodernity avant la lettre (Barthes, Dällenbach), we propose to show Balzac’s use of archaeology and archaeological metaphor in theorizing fragmented and layered consciousness,
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2 See Philippe Bruneau, “Balzac et archéologie”, Année balzacienne, (1983), 15-50;
Nicole Mozet, “La mission du romancier ou la place du modèle archéologique dans la
formation de l’écriture balzacienne”, Année balzacienne, (1985), 221-8; Boris LyonCaen, Balzac et la comédie des signes, Paris, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes,
2006, pp. 31-33; Jeannine Guichardet, Balzac, “archéologue de Paris” (Paris: CDUSEDES, 1986).
121
difference, however, is that while for Freud the unconscious is formed
from the repression of erotic desire during the Oedipal stage of development, for Balzac the unconscious is formed from a set of traumatic
historical events: the revolutions – 1789, but also 1830 – intended to
modernize and “nationalize” French consciousness by displacing Old
Regime/Catholic desires, sentiments and habits. For Balzac, modern
French consciousness emerges in its fragmented, modern state as it
crosses the historical and epistemic divide between old and new
France.
The following interpretation of “Sarrasine” will show that
while psychoanalysis has historically been one of the most popular
approaches to interpreting Balzac’s fiction, it may actually impede
understanding of his theory of post-revolutionary consciousness, encouraging readers to misrecognize the Catholic content of its internal
displacements. Modern desire, according to Balzac, is always underwritten by a residual religious desire, aspiration or mental habit, which
requires new hermeneutic tools – an archaeology of consciousness or
what Balzac called “moral archaeology” – in order to be perceived and
properly understood.
The numerous references to archaeology in La Comédie humaine have
not passed unnoticed by critics, even if, unlike Gautier, Mérimée or
Flaubert, Balzac never represented an ancient civilization in his fiction. Balzac’s interest in this discipline has been either noted or analysed in various critical works, such as Jeannine Guichardet’s Balzac,
“archéologue de Paris”. Yet contrary to these studies,
2 concerned either with the thematic and architectural dimensions of archaeology in
Balzac (Guichardet, for example, exhaustively catalogues archaic or
ruined edifices in Paris) or with the fragmentation and discontinuities
of Balzac’s writing as postmodernity avant la lettre (Barthes, Dällenbach), we propose to show Balzac’s use of archaeology and archaeological metaphor in theorizing fragmented and layered consciousness,
___________________________
2 See Philippe Bruneau, “Balzac et archéologie”, Année balzacienne, (1983), 15-50;
Nicole Mozet, “La mission du romancier ou la place du modèle archéologique dans la
formation de l’écriture balzacienne”, Année balzacienne, (1985), 221-8; Boris LyonCaen, Balzac et la comédie des signes, Paris, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes,
2006, pp. 31-33; Jeannine Guichardet, Balzac, “archéologue de Paris” (Paris: CDUSEDES, 1986).