Depression and the logic of separation: situating Pierre Fédida’s ‘La Relique et le travail du deuil’ (The relic and the work of mourning)

Abstract

This article introduces the work of psychoanalyst Pierre Fédida on the work of mourning, separation and depression. Fédida’s work is first examined in relation to works by Freud, Lagache, Mannoni and Laplanche. After explaining the importance of anthropology in the conceptualization of mourning, attention is then directed to clinical interpretation illustrated by Georges Rodenbach (Bruges-la-morte) and Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles). Attention is drawn to the role of substitutive formations, leading to an understanding of the mobility of psychic life such that the presence of unanalyzable psychotic kernels suggests not only limits to analytic experience but a corresponding presence in culture, too. From this, certain suggestions on temporality and depression - living the impossible death - lead, to a question relating to the renovation of cultural histories and studies. What should be the issue - visual culture, or a philosophical anthropology of culture and visuality where crisis and resistance become forms of the unanalyzability of the time of the other?