Writing dreaming

Abstract

What's in a name? Do names dream? Freud's `science of dreams' and its exploration of dreams in terms of a syntax of rebuses rather than as images implies that dreaming and writing must, at some point, cross paths. Some dreams, however, precipitate insistent and resistant patterns of writing which, like Freud's dream of Irma's injection, leave writing at a loss — lost for words in the face of aporetic moments such as Freud's (much-gazed at) `navel' of dreams. This study proposes to navigate through the navel of dream writing, by reconnecting Freud's work to Fliess, his former friend and colleague, and to the resistant poetics of `fleecing' — a non-orthogonal, anti-textual approach to writing. The science of dreams becomes, from this angle, an uncanny space where science and chance interact and exchange positions.