Locked-Up Bodies, Locked-Up Souls: Freud, Nancy, Jelinek

Taking as his point of departure Sigmund Freud’s famous remark on the extension of the psyche, in the first part of the article the author develops the idea of the relation between “soul,” body and space in the psychoanalytical tradition. In doing so, he refers to the interpretation given to Freud’s remark by Jean-Luc Nancy. Crucially modifying Nancy’s perspective and moving back to the psychoanalytic tradition, the author develops a general notion of das Unbehagen im Raum – the discomfort felt in space. In the second part, the author deepens this analysis by looking at a certain desperate strategy of confronting this discomfort – a strategy adopted by the protagonist of The Piano Teacher, a novel by Elfriede Jelinek.

Taking as his point of departure Sigmund Freud’s famous remark on the extension of the psyche, in the first part of the article the author develops the idea of the relation between “soul,” body and space in the psychoanalytical tradition. In doing so, he refers to the interpretation given to Freud’s remark by Jean-Luc Nancy. Crucially modifying Nancy’s perspective and moving back to the psychoanalytic tradition, the author develops a general notion of das Unbehagen im Raum – the discomfort felt in space. In the second part, the author deepens this analysis by looking at a certain desperate strategy of confronting this discomfort – a strategy adopted by the protagonist of The Piano Teacher, a novel by Elfriede Jelinek.