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Why does a [[Letter ]] always arrive at its Destination?Slavoj [[Zizek]].[[Lacan]].com.

Why, indeed? Why could it not — sometimes, at least — also fail to reach it? (1) Far from attesting a refined [[theoretical ]] sensitivity, this Derridean reaction to the famous closing [[statement ]] of Lacan's "[[Seminar ]] on 'The [[Purloined Letter]]' (2) rather exhibits what we could call a primordial response of common [[sense]]: what if a letter does not reach its destination? Isn't it always possible for a letter to go astray?(3)

I. [[Imaginary ]] mis/recognition

In a first approach, a letter which always arrives at its destination points at the [[logic ]] of [[recognition]]/misrecognition (reconnaissance/méconnaissancemé[[connaissance]]) elaborated in detail by Louis [[Althusser ]] and his followers (e.g. Michel Pêcheux)(4): the logic by means of which one mis/recognizes oneself as the addressee of [[ideological ]] [[interpellation]]. This [[illusion ]] constitutive of the ideological [[order ]] could be succinctly rendered by paraphrasing a [[formula ]] of Barbara Johnson: "A letter always arrives at its destination since its destination is wherever it arrives." (5) Its underlying [[mechanism ]] was elaborated by Pêcheux apropos of [[jokes ]] of the type: "Daddy was [[born ]] in Manchester, Mummy in Bristol, and I in [[London]]: strange that the [[three ]] of us should have met!(6) In short, if we look at the [[process ]] backwards, from its [[contingent ]] result, the fact that events took precisely this turn could not but appear as [[uncanny]], concealing some fateful [[meaning ]] — as if some mysterious hand took care that the letter arrived at its destination, i.e., that my [[father ]] and my [[mother ]] met….

[[Notes]]1. Jacques [[Derrida]], "The Purveyor of [[Truth]]" The Post Card: From [[Socrates ]] to [[Freud ]] and Beyond, Chicago: [[University ]] of Chicago Press, 1987.

2. [[Jacques Lacan]], "Seminar on [[The Purloined Letter]]," in The Purloined Poe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

3. Since this recourse to common sense takes [[place ]] more often than one might suspect, systematically even, within the [[deconstruction]], one is tempted to put forward the [[thesis ]] that the very fundamental gesture of deconstruction is in a radical sense common sensical. There is, namely, an unmistakable ring of common sense in the deconstructivist [[insistence ]] upon the [[impossibility ]] to establish a clear-cut [[difference ]] between empirical and [[transcendental]], [[outside ]] and [[inside]], [[representation ]] and [[presence]], [[writing ]] and voice…, in its impulsive demonstration of how the Outside always-already smears over the Inside, of how writing is constitutive of [[voice]], and so forth — as if deconstructivism is ultimately wrapping up common sensical insights into an intricate [[jargon]]. Therein consists perhaps one of the hitherto overlooked reasons for its unforeseen success in the USA, the land of common sense par excellence.

4. Michel Pêcheux, [[Language]], Semantics and [[Ideology]], London: MacMillan, 1982.

6. Jacques Lacan, "[[Intervention ]] on [[Transference]]" in In [[Dora]]'s [[Case]], ed. by Charles Bernheimer and Claire Cahan, London: Virago Press, 1985.

From: [[Lacan.com]].