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tion) only in cases where the text has been published in one of the three volumes that have
currently appeared. Other works will be cited from the Garnier editions. Of the Essay on the
Origin of Languages, which we cite from the 1817 Bélin edition, I indicate, for the sake of
convenience, only the numbers of the chapters.
3.Rêveries. Septième Promenade (Pléiade I, pp. îo66–67 [pp. 144–45]. Italics added. It may
be objected that the animal represents a natural life even more animated than the plant, but
one can only deal with it dead. “The study of animals is nothing without anatomy” (p. îo68)
[p. 146].
4.Ibid. Without looking for a principle of reading there, I refer, out of curiosity and from
among many other possible examples, to what Karl Abraham says of the Cyclops, of the fear
of being blind, of the eye, of the sun, of masturbation etc. in Oeuvres complètes, tr. Ilse
Barande [and E. Grin (Payot, 1965) ] II, pp. 18 f. Let us recall that in a sequence of Egyptian
mythology, Seth, helper of Thoth (god of writing here considered as a brother of Osiris), kills
Osiris by trickery (cf. Vandier, op. cit., p. 46) . Writing, auxiliary and suppletory, kills the
father and light in the same gesture (Cf. supra, p. 101, 328–29 n. 31).
5. “‘Little one’ was my name; ‘Mama’ was hers; and we always remained ‘Little one’ and
‘Mama,’ even when advancing years had almost obliterated the difference between us. I find
that these two names give a wonderfully good idea of the tone of our inter-course, of the
simplicity of our manners, and, above all, of the mutual relation of our hearts. For me she was
the tenderest of mothers, who never sought her own pleasure, but always what was best for
me; and if sensuality entered at all into her attachment for me, it did not alter its character, but
only rendered it more enchanting, and intoxicated me with the delight of having a young and
pretty mamma whom it was delightful to me to caress—I say caress in the strictest sense of
the word, for it never occurred to her to be sparing of kisses and the tenderest caresses of a
mother, and it certainly never entered my mind to abuse them. It will be objected that, in the
end, we had relations of a different character; I admit it, but I must wait a little—I cannot say
all at once” (p. 106) [p. 109]. Let us add this sentence from Georges Bataille: “I am myself the
‘little one,’ I have only a hidden place” (Le petit [2d edition (Paris, 1963), p. 9] ) .
6.This passage is often cited, but has it ever been analyzed for itself? The Pléiade editors of
the Confessions, Gagnebin and Raymond, are no doubt right in being cautious, as they are,
systematically and inevitbaly, of what they call psychiatry (note p. 1281. This same note
checks off very usefully all the texts where Rousseau recalls his “follies” or “extravagances.”)
But this caution is not legitimate, it seems to me, except to the extent that it concerns the
abuse—which has hitherto no doubt been confounded with the use—of psychoanalytic
reading, and where it does not prescribe the duplication of the usual commentary which has
rendered this kind of text most often unreadable. We must distinguish here between, on the
one hand, the often hasty and careless, but often also enlightening, analyses by Dr. René
Laforgue (“Etude sur J.-J. Rousseau,” in Revue française de psychanalyse, I, ii [1927], pp.
370 f.; and
Psychopathologie de l’échec [1944], [Paris], pp. 114 f.), which moreover do not
consider the texts I have just cited, and, on the other hand, an interpretation which would take
into more rigorous account, at least in principle, the teachings of psychoanalysis. That is one
of the directions in which Jean Starobinski’s fine and careful analyses are engaged. Thus, in
L’oeil vivant, the sentence that has given us pause is reinscribed within an entire series of
examples of analogous substitution, borrowed mostly from the Nouvelle Héloise; this one for
example, among other “erotic fetishes”: “All the parts of your scattered dress present to my
ardent imagination those of your body that they conceal. This delicate headdress which sets
off the large blond curls which it pretends to cover; this happy bodice shawl against which at
least once I shall not have to complain; this elegant and simple gown which displays so well
the taste of the wearer; these dainty slippers that a supple foot fills so easily; this corset so
slender which touches and embraces . . . what an enchanting form . . . in front two gentle
curves . . . oh voluptuous sight . . . the whalebone has yielded to the force of the impression . .
. delicious imprints, let me kiss you a thousand times!” (p. 147 [tr. Judith H. McDowell
(University Park and London, 1968), pp. 122-23].
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But do the singularity of these substitutions and the articulation of these displacements hold
the attention of the interpreter? I wonder if, too concerned with reacting against a reductionist,
causalist, dissociative psychology, Starobinski does not in general give too much credit to a
totalitarian psychoanalysis of the phenomenological or existentialist style. Such a
psychoanalysis, diffusing sexuality in the totality of behavior, perhaps risks blurring the
cleavages, the differences, the displacements, the fixations of all sorts that structure that
totality. Do the place or the places of sexuality not disappear in the analysis of global
behavior, as Starobinski recommends: “Erotic behavior is not a fragmentary given; it is the
manifestation of a total individual, and it is as such that it ought to be analyzed. Whether it is
to neglect it or to make it a privileged subject of study, one cannot limit exhibitionism to the
sexual ‘sphere’: the entire personality is revealed there, with some of its fundamental
‘existential choices.’ « (La transparence et l’obstacle, pp. 21 o—i I. A note refers us to the
Phénoménologie de la perception of [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty [(Paris, 1945);
Phenomenology of Perception, tr. Colin Smith (New York, 1965n). And does one not, in this
way, risk determining the pathological in a very classic manner, as “excess” thought within
“existential” categories: “In, the perspective of a global analysis, it will appear that certain
primary givens of consciousness constitute at the same time the source of Rousseau’s
speculative thought, and the source of his follly. But these given-sources are not morbid by
them-selves. It is only because they are lived in an excessive manner, that the malady declares
itself and is developed. . . . The morbid development will realize the caricatural placing in
evidence of a fundamental ‘existential’ question that consciousness was not able to dominate”
(p. 253)
7.Page 165 [p. 171].
8.In these celebrated pages of the first Book of the Confessions, Rousseau compares the first
experiences of reading (“secret and ill-chosen reading”) to the first discoveries of auto-
eroticism. Not that the “filthy and licentious [books]” encouraged him in it. Quite the
contrary. “Chance aided my modest disposition so well, that I was more than thirty years old
before I set eyes upon any of those dangerous books which a fine lady finds inconvenient