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The Return of Negation: The Doppelgänger in Freud's "The 'Uncanny'"
Author(s): Dimitris Vardoulakis

Source: SubStance, Vol. 35, No. 2, Issue 110: Nothing (2006), pp. 100-116
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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The Return of Negation:
The Doppelgaingerin
Freud's "The'Uncanny'"
Dimitris Vardoulakis
The Doppelgaingeras a motif arose within German Romanticism

andbecamea canonicalthemein "Gothic"literature.Thetermwas coined
by JeanPaul in his novel Siebenkiis, published in 1796. Authors such as
E.T.A.Hoffmannand EdgarAlan Poe exemplify the originarynarratives
of the motif and theme of the Doppelgainger.1 Doppelgaingercharacters
tend to be associatedwith evil and the demonic; thus one can infer that
the Doppelginger presents a notion of the subject/subjectivitythat is
defective, disjunct, split, threatening,spectral. With the rise of psycho-
analysis,such epithets are takento indicate a tendency toward a sense of
failureor loss in the self.Thereafter,the Doppelgaingerhas been commonly
viewed as an aberration,the stencil of a symptomatologyof the self. In
what follows I will challenge such a Doppelginger as the constructof a
content-basedunderstandingof fictionalmotifs and themes, couched in
psychoanalyticterminology.To this end, I will re-evaluatethe history of
the relationbetween the Doppelginger and psychoanalysis.
Admittedly,psychological symptoms or forms of subjective failure
can be inferredin the literaryinstances of the Doppelgainger.However,
the Doppelgaingerretainsthe potentialto be articulatedin positive terms.
Butthis can only come to lightby questioningthe unproblematicequating
of content- either as the plot of the story,or as the historyof a self - with
a stable and retrievableorigin. When the notion of origin is no longer a
simple "content," then the Doppelgaingercan be allowed to make a
contributiontoward an ontology of the subject.The subjectiveontology
that the Doppelginger introduces should not be seen as positing an
originary substance or essence. On the contrary,its formal openness
allows for its own interruption. At the same time, that openness is
impossible without the interruption.The Doppelginger, then, is a form
of relationality that is not only a condition of possibility, but also a
reflectionof and on thatcondition.In this way,the Doppelgangeris aligned
to a notion of modernity as interruption.2
? Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin System, 2006

100 SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006
Doppelginger in Freud's"The'Uncanny'" 101
This paper will concentrateon two pivotal moments in the history

of the Doppelginger: a presentationof the functionof subjectivityin Jean
Paul'sconceptionof the Doppelgaingerwill be followedby an extrapolation
of subjectivityin Freud's1919 article"The'Uncanny'."JeanPaul coined
the word Doppelgainger,partlyin response to transcendentalphilosophy.
Freud's paper on the uncanny remains singularly influential in
discussionsof the Doppelgainger.3 The argumentwill unfoldin two stages.
First,it will be shown that the earlyDoppelgiingerrejecteda conception
of the self that would lead to forms of absolutism.Rejectingabsolutism
leads to a subject conceived in terms of excess--an excess of limits that
undoes any explication of subjectivityin terms of sharp demarcations.
Second, this excess will be found in the marginsof Freud'stext, in a long
footnote often noted in the secondary literature,but whose import for
the conception of the subject has hardly been presented. Subjectivity
will be shown to be a function of relationalitythat is chiasmic. And the
chiasmus of the subjectwill be excessive, linkingJeanPaul'sand Freud's
projects.The mediating term that will facilitatethe link is negation, the
nothing of subjectivity.
Negation and the Doppelgiinger

When FreudconfrontsDora with the supposition that she had been
in love with her fatherfrom an earlyage, she replies that she has no such
recollection.And she immediatelyembarkson the anecdote of a young
cousin of hers whom she visited shortly after her parents had had a
quarrel.The cousin whispered to Dora that she hated her mother and
that when her mother died she would marry her father. Such an
association,as Freudgleans the story,has no otherfunctionthan to affirm
his originalsupposition. "Thereis no such thing at all as an unconscious
'No'," contends Freud.And he elaboratesa page later:"The'No' uttered
by a patientaftera repressedthoughthas been presentedto his conscious
perceptionfor the firsttime does no more than registerthe existenceof a
repression"(Dora8:92, 93). In sum, repressionknows of no negation.The
unconsciousdoes not have "No"in its vocabulary.Thusnegationbecomes
a catalystfor drawing a topography of the ego.
Negation offers a way of approachingFreud'spaperon the uncanny.
Thisis obvious fromthe word dasUnheimliche itself, since "theprefix'un'
in
is the tokenof repression,"as Freudsays "TheUncanny"(368).Further,
in a shortpaper thatFreudwrote in the mid-1920s,negationis a hallmark
of thanatos,4and this directly links negation to the "return of the
repressed."The "returnof the repressed"which, accordingto Freud,is
SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

102 DimitrisVardoulakis
one of the characteristicsof the Doppelgainger,may then be paraphrased

as the "returnof negation."Thesearethe confrontations,in consciousness,
of what the unconscious cannot deny. Negation does not merely signify
an area of resistance where the conscious self is unable to exercise
judgement, nor does it merely construct an excluded zone in the
topographyof the ego. Rather,through ambiguousexpression,negation
facilitatesrelationsbetween the differentregions of the ego's topography.
Theexerciseof consciousness,then,is a functionof excess- consciousness
is a response to the challengeoffered by the ego's limits, the fluidity that
partakesof the components of the ego, through the use of language.
Negation played a crucialrole in the invention of the Doppelganger
as well. Here a detour to the mid-1790sis needed. The last five years of
the eighteenth century see not only the first flowering of the Romantic
movement,and the coinageof the wordDoppelgangerin JeanPaul'snovel
Siebenkiis,sbut also the overnightappearanceof Fichteat the centerstage
of philosophy.Everybodywas influenced by him, and without Fichte it
is hard to imagine what Schelling, Hegel, the Schlegels, Novalis, and
even H1lderlin,would have produced. Fichte'sinfluenceon JeanPaul is
directlyrelatedto the conceptionof the Doppelganger: Paul produced a
pamphlet called ClavisFichtiana--thekey or cipher to Fichte--in which
the "divided subject"is articulatedin terms of Fichteanphilosophy.
It would take too long to fully explicate Jean Paul's short but
complicatedpamphlet-only an outline can be presented here.6Fichte's
absolute ego is the accentuation of the transcendental subject of
Kantianism. For Fichte, apperception does not simply accompany
representations;moreover,immediate self-consciousnessis an axiom of
cognition.This is expressed in the firstprincipleof the Wissenschaftslehre
by saying that the I posits itself absolutely.Further,the second principle
asserts that the I also posits the not-I,that is, it negates itself. Out of a
continual positing and counter-positing,the self limits itself, and this
provides Fichte with a way of escaping the purely logical relationsthat
construe the absolute ego (Fichte, 1: 91-122 ). This point is important:
Fichteannegation is purely rational,solely a function of reason--unlike
Hegelian negation which is an interplay of subject and object, an
actualizationof the spirit.
The Fichteanposition can be summarizedby sayingthat the absolute
ego has an immediatecognitionof itself within reason,or the self reflects
itself.Withinthis space of reason,the negationof the I is a logicalnecessity
that re-affirms the originary positing. In other words, within this
unconscious realm, the I cannot truly say "No" to itself; it is merely

compelled to admit that it is logical to say "No."The problem with this

position is that nothing can be excluded or separatedfrom the absolute
I. This is Jacobi'sargumentin his polemic with Fichte,when he accuses
Fichteof construingthe absoluteI as a substanceand thereforeas a God,
since the nothing has not only logical but also ontological implications
("Jacobito Fichte").7 And it is this point that spurs Novalis, when he
questions whether Fichte could account for feeling-i.e. feeling that is
not absolutized(see his FichteStudies).JeanPaulmakes a similarpoint:in
his ClavisFichtianathe Doppelginger, so far as it exemplifiesthe Fichtean
absolute I, is shown to be able to feel only absolutely,to have absolute
moods. The Doppelginger laments its enclosurein the absolutespace of
reason where it persists totally alone, with "nothing around me and
withoutme nothingotherthannothing"(Clavis,1056).Absoluteloneliness
is the price that the Fichtean ego has to pay-although this can be
generalized to include not only loneliness but any feeling that can be
absolutized.
However,JeanPaulgoes a step further.TheClavisalsooffersa positive
articulation of the absolute ego, or rather a re-articulation that is
augmentedby the "idealfinitudeof the infinitude"of the ego (1021).The
infinitudeof reasonis retainedas the inherentundecidabilityof language.
In more contemporary parlance, this is the impossibility of finding a
determinate relation between signifier and signified. In Jean Paul's
formulation,"eachimage and each significationmust also be something
in addition,namely also itself a primordialimage and a thing, which one
can repeatedly depict and signify and so forth" (1024). However, this
infinity is premised on finitude, on particularity.It is claimed that the
Doppelgaingeritself composed the Clavis,and with this act of writing, it
has managed to situate itself and to emphasizes its corporeality.This is
the meaningof the reversalat the core of the Doppelgainger'ssubjectivity:
the presentationof the infinite through the finite. In other words, Jean
Paul does not expunge the nothing from subjectivity;rather,he develops
a notion of the subject that must go through the transcendental
conception of the abstractI. But this very passage and the resistances
encountered therein are experienced as particular and individuating
feelings, overcoming abstraction and reversing the relational priority
between infiniteand finite.The nothing,as a site of resistance,is repeated,
but not as a logical or ontological quality, but as that which makes
interpretationpossible through the excess of meaning.
Therefore,what the Doppelgainger'scritiqueof loneliness rejectsis a
conception of the absolute ego as a self that is 1) immediately self-
SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

conscious, 2) cannot say "No" regarding its content, and 3) admits of

absolute feelings. Further,what this critiquemakes possible is a notion
of subjective difference that is not underpinned by subjective identity.
Thus we have a subject that is individuated but not purely singular-a
conscious subjectableto makejudgements,to use Freud'sformulationin
"Negation"(441). In other words, the reversal enacted by the Doppel-
ganger is all about a type of subjectiverelationality,not about what the
subjectis relatedto. It is about the how,not the what.
I contend that thereis an affinitybetween the Doppelganger'sformal
relationalityas it unfolds in the reversaldescribed in the Clavis,and the
Freudian"uncanny."The startingpoint of the comparisonis the nothing.
Thepossibilityof negationis linkedto the possibilityof meaning.Negation
makes interpretationpossible. And this possibilitydepends on the limits
that negation draws. Just as the topography of Fichte'sabsolute self is
inauguratedwith the not-I,in the same manner negation draws the line
between conscious and unconscious in Freud. Meaning becomes a
functionof the negotiationbetweenthose regions.Thereversalperformed
by the Doppelgangercounteractsabsolutismby making"excessive"what
seeks to become absolute. Excess undoes occlusion. The limits of the
conceptual immediacy producing the absolute I are exceeded through
meaning'sdependence on particularity.And the absolutismof feelings is
exceeded by the formalismof relationalitythat does not depend on the
split between interiority and exteriority.By enacting the reversal, the
Doppelganger is in excess of both aspects of absolutism. The upshot is
that the nothinghas been transformed.The nothingno longerdraws sharp
limits. Instead, the excessive nothingof the Doppelganger constantly
transgresseslimits. (Itscompulsionis its insistenceon transgression.)Freud
in
presentsthe formalrelationalityof this reversal the form of a chiasmus,
found in a long footnotein the article"The'Uncanny'."Thegreatvalue of
this chiasmus is that a positive articulation of subjectivity is thereby
made possible. There is an ontology of the subject. The Doppelganger
will no longer be the harbingerof abjectloss and failure.
Before turning to Freud, let's look at Andrew J. Webber's1996 The
Doppelgiinger: DoubleVisionsin German On theone hand,Webber's
Literature.
book is the most cogent investigation of the Doppelganger in German
literature.He provides incisive analysesof chosen texts, usuallyapplying
psychoanalytictheory,and occasionallyturning to philosophy. I would
agreeespeciallywith his emphasis on the Doppelganger'sdialecticbeing
non-teleological,which leads to a narrativeof interruptionsand "frozen
moments"(5-6,10).On the otherhand, Webberplacestoo much emphasis

Doppelgangerin Freud's"The'Uncanny"' 105
on the loss suffered by the Doppelganger subject. His reading of

Hoffmann'sSandmanthroughFreudis mediatedby a pervasivenotion of
loss (123-127,145-147).The ontologicalpreconditionfor such a notion of
loss is a rift between reality and fantasy: In the Sandman,the "reader
remains split between the lure of a fantasy world [seen] through the
looking-glass and more realist inclinations" (129). This split between
realityand fantasyin the discussionof the Sandman is, accordingto Webber,
indebted to Hel6ne Cixous.8However, Cixous uses Freud'sdistinction
between reality and fantasy in "The'Uncanny'"to deconstruct Freud's
attempts to sustain such a distinction. Webber,on the contrary,makes
this distinctionthe lynchpinof his extrapolationof the Doppelganger.As
stated in the opening paragraphof Webber'sbook, the Doppelganger
"representsthe subject as more or less pathologicallydivided between
reality and fantasy" (1). The problem, of course, is that a fictional
character is always already both real and fantastic. Thus the loss of
reality ascribed to the pathology of the Doppelganger is given an
ontological twist: the subjectnow becomes "profoundlyrelative"(5). It
is too easy to speak about loss vis-a-vis the Doppelganger,and criticism
cannot gain much by insisting on the distinction between reality and
fantasy.The dialectic of loss can be overcome with an insistence on the
ontology of the subjectthat the Doppelgangerpresents-an ontology of
the relationsestablishedby and with the subject.The possibilityof such
a positive articulationof the Doppelganger can be retained;it must be
retainedif criticismis not to be become a lament.
ChiasmicSubjectivity
In orderto relateJeanPaul'sDoppelgangerto Freud'sontology of the
subject, we must insist on the formal relationalityof this ontology. The
subjectcannotbe given in terms of content--it can neitherbe reduced to
pure content,nor divorcedfrom content.Relationalityenablesus to think
the subject without recourse to content. At first glance, Freud would
seem to be moving away from the forms of absolutismthat content gives
rise to. Neil Hertz quotes Freud'sown summary of Beyondthe Pleasure
Principle in "The Uncanny": "whatever reminds us of this inner
'compulsion to repeat'is perceived as uncanny" ("Uncanny,"361) and
then makes his own observation: "The feeling of the uncanny would
seem to be generatedby being reminded of the repetition compulsion,
not by being reminded of whatever it is that is repeated. The becoming
aware of the process is felt as eerie, not the becoming aware of some
particularitem in the unconscious"(Hertz,101).The uncanny,then, is a

feeling in its process of becoming, and is not reducible to the what-to

some specific content. Freudhas also said as much by denying that the
uncanny is a "positivefeeling,"or a feeling that arises from objects, and
hence is not be related to aestheticbeauty ("Uncanny,"339).
However, it would be precipitous to conclude that the Freudian
structure of subjectivity and its uncanny feeling can be unproblem-
atically squared with the critique of loneliness. Freud equivocates. In
BeyondthePleasurePrinciplehe attemptsto equatethe compulsionto repeat
with biological causes, and thus to derive an empirical teleology. This
return to content is attested in the essay on "The'Uncanny'"as well:
The fact that an agency of this kind [conscience, Gewissen] exists,
which is able to treat the rest of the ego like an object--the fact, that
is, that man is capable of self-observation -renders it possible to
invest the old idea of a "double" with a new meaning and to ascribe
a number of things to it-above all those things which seem to self-
criticism to belong to the old surmounted narcissism of earliest
times. (357)
Despite having avoided the idealist abstractionof the ego, the ego is still
absolutized.The ideal self is at the centerof an infiniteregressgenerated
by an endless mirroring of scientific fact and fantasy-an uncanny
moment par excellence.9 A single quality-empirical content-is
attributable both to the ego's observation of itself, and to the ego's
connection to the outside. But if there is to be a supervening part of the
ego, such as conscience, it can neither be solely enclosed in the inside,
making a figment of the subject, nor can it be solely fastened on the
outside, since such an observing subject would lack conscience.
Conscience has to include an apprehensionboth of the outside and the
inside. However,consciencecannotdistinguishbetweenthe two different
contents in a single moment or act without producing more content-a
furtherself-apprehension.This in turnwould requirea furtherobserving
ego to supervene on it, a further self-apprehension- and so on. The
upshot is an infinite number of consciences-not a "double" but a
multiple personality.As long as content is the common denominatorof
all subjectivefunctions, it is not possible to circumvent this regress.
Leavingaside the tenabilityof such a conception, the Doppelganger
as it has been explicated is incommensurable with it. The numerical
value of the charactersor splits within one characteris totally irrelevant
to JeanPaul'sconception of the Doppelganger.Instead, what mattersis
the type of subjectiverelationalityestablished.The "returnof negation"
cannot be a return of content-the Doppelginger is not a genetic
explanationof the self. However, Freud'sinsistenceon narcissismas the

Doppelgangerin Freud's"The'Uncanny'" 107
mechanism that provides the self with its subjectivityin terms of the
outside/insidedistinction,does preciselythat:it derivesthe Doppelganger
from a causal or teleological explanation; it generates a narrative of
origin."1
Thereare clearlytwo contraryforcesin the essay on "The'Uncanny'"
and it would be reductive to privilege either.But there are at least two
reasons- ultimatelyrelated- that demand this. On the one hand, what
is played out here are the differentFreudianversions of repression and
the rolesthereinof feeling and the castrationcomplex.On the otherhand,
the genetic explanationis still useful in providing a linear narrativethat
gives the self its singularity.However, such a singularitymust be related
to a site of plurality in order to avoid a regressive infinity based on
subjective identity. What the genetic explanation necessitates, by the
very threatto the subject,is preciselya re-inscriptionof the termsinvolved
here--one akinto JeanPaul'sreversal.An infinityof subjectivedifference.
Moreover,the threatfelt by the subjectas the process of its differentiation
is precisely felt as the uncanny.
Attending to the second point first-that is, the issue of retaininga
subjective singularity alongside an infinity that is not regressive-
requiresattentionto the movement of Freud'sargument and the way it
is interrupted,even re-worked,in the long, dense and enigmaticfootnote.
And to do so, it is crucialto show the context within which the footnote
appears. Freud starts his articleby identifying the uncanny as a feeling
of repulsion and distress which, however, is not aroused by intellectual
or cognitive uncertainty.11 He then moves on to a lexical investigation,
which includes Schelling'sdefinitionof the uncanny:"thatwhich ought
to have remained secret but has nevertheless come up." This is
accompanied by the observation that the uncanny is characterizedby
an inherent ambiguity,enabling it to coincide with its opposite. Freud
continues with a paraphraseof the Hoffmann tale of the "Sandman,"
which leads him to conclude that Nathaniel'socular anxiety is in reality
castrationanxiety.The mechanism of repressionhas been set in motion,
and Nathaniel'sobject cathexis is infinitelydisplaced, so that anyone he
loves is being destroyed.At this point Freudintroducesa "complication":
the objectthat has produced the uncanny must not be merelysomething
feared, but also related to an infantile wish. Thus primary narcissism
mediatesbetweenrepulsionand appeal,in the coincidenceof the opposites
cannyand uncanny.Fromhere on Freudadds details and examples to his
argument of the narcissistic origin of the uncanny. He invokes the
Doppelganger, primitive narcissism, the split between conscience and

the rest of the ego, the compulsion to repeat, and the animisticbelief in
the omnipotence of thoughts. The final section of the essay questions
whether the uncanny is a category proper to fiction or reality.
This precis shows the pivotal position of narcissism in Freud's
account. Narcissism is what facilitatesthe movement from infantileor
primitive wish to repression and fear-from the canny to the uncanny.
It is the sufficient and necessary cause that makes the genetic account
possible. It is the organizingprincipleof Freud'slinearparaphraseof the
Hoffmann tale. Finally,it gives the subjectits subjectivity,one governed
by a notion of identity between the subject and its ideationalcontent or
inner representations.
At a crucial point, however, just as he has drawn his conclusions
from the "Sandman,"Freudinserts his long footnote,which destabilizes
the teleologicalparaphraseof the tale. The footnote opens with a crucial
remark:"Thematerialelements in the poet's work of fantasy are not in
fact so wildly twisted, so that one could not reconstructtheir original
arrangement[or, as the last clause can also be translated:so that one
could not repeat their original construct]."12
Attention to the detail of Freud'sexpression is crucial.He does not
claim that there is a foundation on which Hoffmann has mechanically
constructed his story, and that a re-arrangementof the materialwould
render the foundation visible. First,this would deprive the uncanny of
its secret quality, since a secret dissolves the moment an iterative
foundationis found for it. Butmore importantly,the grammarand syntax
of the phrase do not permit such a reading. Three points will suffice:
First,there is a startlingevasiveness in Freud'sformulation.The absence
of proper names in the main clause and the impersonal constructionof
the subordinateclause arelinked by a double negative.Themoment that
extricationis called for and even seems announced in advance, Freud
has recourseto a circumlocutionthat itself needs extrication.This is not
merely a remark about Freud's intention; rather, it indicates precisely
what Freuddoes not intend-the secretthatorganizesbut does not found
the extrication to come, and which is betrayed in the linguistic
formulation.Thatthis extricationis unfoundedin the contextof the essay's
argumentis made clear by the final remarksof the footnote. These seek
on the one hand to relatethe extricationto the narcissismthat hovers in
the text above the footnote, and on the other hand, to relate the genetic
explanation offered by narcissism to Hoffmann's biography. Freud
initiallyhesitatesbefore a risk, and then at the end seeks to deny that he
has taken any risk at all. Second, the subjunctive of the subordinate
clause places the re-constructionin the realmof the possible. It would be

Doppelgiingerin Freud's"The'Uncanny"' 109
possible to perform such a repetition of what is original. This in turn

leads to the third point: the original arrangementis a potential, and not
something performed conclusively. The originalityof the arrangement
consists precisely in the possibilitiesthat it opens up, which function as
the conditions of the constructionof materiality-but not solely of the
material elements of the "Sandman." The emphasis is on the
constructability, and not on the construct. These three observations
alreadyindicate that Freud'sreconstructionwill be articulatedwithin a
structurethatpasses fromthe materialto the origin,but without equating
the latter with content. The implications for the Freudian system are
enormous, and this is not the place to present them. Rather,what is
relevant is that Freud secures a conception of infinity given through
finitude.
In this set up, repetition and subjectivityacquire a meaning that is
neither dependent on a logic of identity, as it will be shown forthwith,
nor- as will be shown later- on the notion of narcissismthatis operative
in the paper on "The 'Uncanny'." Repetition and subjectivity are co-
determined through a chiastic form of relationality.According to the
footnote, the split in Nathaniel's father-imago generates a series of
oppositions. In his childhood, there is his "good"father,and the "bad"
one, who is the Sandman or Coppelius. At the university, professor
Spalanzani corresponds to the former, while the optician Coppola
correspondsto the latter.Now, since the professorcreatedthe automaton
Olympia, it follows that there is an identity between Olympia and
Nathaniel. In actuality, Olympia is, in Freud's terms, a "dissociated
complexof Nathaniel'swhich confrontshim as a person."However,there
is a crucialcomplication.The fatherimage is not split merely in terms of
"good" and from the perspective of Nathaniel's castration
"bad"--or,
anxiety-his feminine and masculine attitudes towards his father. In
addition to this, the imago is also split between the mechanicaland the
ocular.In childhood,the mechanicalis representedby the "bad"Coppelius
who "hasscrewed off his [Nathaniel's]arms and legs as an experiment,"
while the "good" father, who intervenes to save Nathaniel's eyes,
represents the ocular. At the university, Coppola is the bad optician,
while the professoris the mechanicianwho createdOlympia/Nathaniel.
Surely,Freudis correctto say that "boththe mechanicianand the optician
were the fatherof Nathaniel (and of Olympia as well)." However, what
this chiasmus has produced is a destabilizationof identity.'3
Tobe sure, Freuddoes not seem to be awareof the destabilizingforce
of the chiasmus. Or, if he is aware, he strives to reduce that force by an
appeal to Hoffmann'sown life at the end of the footnote. Freudattempts

to accommodatethe notion of subjectiveidentity in the short story to its

author'sown identity.However, if such a move to biographyis resisted,
then the full implications of Freud's chiasmus will come to the fore.
Repetitionwill be shown to be a functionof the chiasmus,having decisive
implications for the origin of identity. The chiasmus undermines the
originatorof identity.The identityof the "good"/ocularfatheras opposed
to the "bad"/mechanicalone in the firstseriesis refashionedin the second
series as "good"/mechanicaland "bad"/ocularfathers.This refashioning
is mediated by what the fathercreates--Nathaniel in the first series, and
Nathaniel/Olympiain the second. The fatherin the first series privileges
sight and its representationsin consciousness. Conversely,the second
series privileges determinism over representation.The identity of the
fatheras "good"or "bad"is always given via the offspring'sprivileging
either the deterministic or the representationalgenesis. However, no
strict causalityis thereby established, since it would be equally valid to
conceive of the offspring'sidentity as given by the father.The "good"/
ocular father generates Nathaniel in the first series, while the "good"/
mechanicalfathergeneratesNathaniel/Olympiain the second series.The
fathergenerates the son's identity,but, in an anachronismthat eschews
teleology, the son also createsthe father.
Freud's equivocations in the footnote about how the identity is
generated stems from an impetus to stabilizeidentity in the face of the
vertiginousmovements in Hoffmann'sstory.However,whereasthe given
identityis in each case secured,the identityof the giverof identityremains
unstable.Thus, if the giving of identity is viewed from the perspectiveof
its being given by the offspring,then it is easy to deduce who the "good"
and who the "bad"fatheris. Simultaneously,the identityof the offspring
remainsan open question,a slide from one position to the next, from the
"real"Nathaniel to the "fantastic"Nathaniel, from the "sane to the
"insane"Nathaniel,and from Nathanielto Olympia.The same effect can
be observed if the fatheris taken to be the giver of identity.In this case,
the offspring'sgiven identity is secured in both series--in the first series
it is Nathaniel, while in the second it is Nathaniel/Olympia. But the
identity of the father remains unstable, sliding from "real"father to
"fantastic"Coppelius, from the "rationalmechanic" Spalanzanito the
"optical sorcerer" Coppola, from the benign to the nefarious father.
Therefore,the origin of identity createsa chiasmus that underminesthe
origin's claim to be the source of a causality that secures identity. A
teleology that can only secureits effects,but not its causes, is no teleology
at all.

Doppelgaingerin Freud's"The'Uncanny'" 111
While Freud is attuned to the complexities that arise from the

"divisions of the father-imago,"as he calls them in the footnote, and
while he is also aware of the complexities that arise from the identity of
Nathaniel and Olympia, he nevertheless has not fully grasped the
implications of the chiasmus that he has suggested. The logic of the
chiasmus dictates that since neither conception of a single origin can be
given priority in the genesis of identity qua identity, the conception of
identity includes both. Or, more accurately,it does not include either,
since any single origin has been denied.
What this denial does here is to re-introduce negation. However,
negation is now transformed.It is no longer a negation of something, a
drawing of a line of exclusion. Rather,negation becomes a region-the
nothing region, the formal region of relationality-within which
subjectivityunfolds. Thus, the logic of the identity of the same has been
replaced by a logic that locates identity in terms of relational differ-
entiation. The meaning of repetition radically changes within the new
conception of identity. Repetition is no longer that material element
inherentin a cause,only to come to the forein the effect.WhenFreudsaid
in the first sentence of the footnote that the materialelements presented
in a fictional manner can be reconstructedor repeated (Freud'sword
was wiederherstellen), this should not be understoodas sayingthatidentity
can be recoveredfrom somethingsuppressed,thatit can be reconstituted
or recuperated.Rather,the repetition that subjective identity demands
is a productiveone, a wieder-herstellen. The product is new- singularityis
retained-but this new product is a repetitionto the extent that it springs
forth from an "originalarrangement."Origin is thus both formal (the
relationaldifferentialitythat allows for repetition),and productive,since
the repetitionis a product.
I would contend that this differentialorigin is what gives the identity
of the Doppelgainger.Further,it gives an ontology of the subject.This has
definiteimplicationsforconceptionsof the Doppelgaingerthatemphasize
loss as its essential feature.The logic that would have ascribed a notion
of loss in the chiasmus of subjectiverelationsin the "Sandman"would
have operated somewhat as follows: in the two series of the divided
father-imago,the identity that remainsunstable is that of the giver-the
identity of the origin. The first move in the logic of loss would have been
to point out that this instability is impossible to erase, given that the
move from cause to effect would foreverbe lacking.The lack resides in
the fact that the connection between the exteriorityof the mechanical
and the interiority of the representational ocular can never be fully

reconciled.The second move would be to explicate this abysmal loss as

an endless reflexivity,a subject standing between mirrors,in a mise-en-
abymethat destabilizesany meaning given to or by the subject.Finally,it
would have been concluded that the Doppelginger subject is
pathologicallyrelative.Whatthis logic of loss is relyingupon is precisely
the identitarylogic of the same. The irrecuperateabilityof meaning or
subjectivityassumes that such a recuperationis possible. However, this
can only be asserted by assuming an identity of what has been lost.
Contraryto this dialecticof loss, the chiasmic logic retainscausality
and teleologyas a productive impossibility.Theinfinitythatthe impossibility
of causality creates is here the organization of the original relations.
Those relationsneed no definite content, and thus are not dependent on
sameness. And they are productive because, as already shown, they
allow for repetition. When this productive impossibility is articulated
in terms of the ontology of the subject,the result is the Doppelgainger-
the product of the repetition.The Doppelgainger'ssubjectiveontology is
generated by a chiastic or differentialidentity.What persists in the site
of relationalityas the site of identity is an asymmetry-the chiasmus-
that resists any attempt to be stabilized or foreclosed.
Perhaps the best characterizationof this identity is as "unsinnig
zwanghaft,"the words Freuduses to characterizeNathaniel'slove for his
unleashed complex (244).Identityis a senseless necessaryconnection, a
compulsion to create an image of oneself, which, however, is both
nonsensical and impossible to contemplate(unsinnig).This compulsive
identity, more of a repetition or a compulsion to repeat (Wieder-
holungszwang), is forevermoving and unableto fix onto a single image or
object. It is the very structure of iterative identity-not its object or
content-that is designated in the footnote as the castration complex.
Thisis the structurethatFreudintroducedat the beginningof the footnote
as the "originalarrangement"of the "materialelements" of the story.
Within this structurethere is no conclusive metonymic substitutionof
propernames. Instead,the propernames function as the metaphorsthat
makethe unfoldingof the structurepossible.Castration,as thatstructure,
is the name that subjectiveidentityhas takenwhen it is no longerpossible
to construe it as a correspondence,but when identity is understood as
the relations that persist within the structureitself.
In the footnote, the image and its significationhave indeed attained
a structure in which they are infinitely re-arrangeable.And it is the
expression of this structure that gives the subject its identity. The
uncanny then is not the product of the object, but the threat that the
subject experiences within that structure, as the subject surmounts

Doppelgangerin Freud's"The'Uncanny"' 113
geneticteleology.Further,the uncanny,insofaras it is a feelingthatalready

participatesin the continuous becoming of the self, produces one's own
self-identityin language.An identity,moreover,that is differential,given
by relationality,or, as Freud has put it early on in the essay, "wirselbst
Fremdsprachige sind,"our self-identityis given by a languagethatis foreign,
differentiatingour own subject ("Uncanny,"341; Unheimliche,232). In
Freud'sdiscussion of the Doppelgainger,which immediatelyfollows his
explicationof the "Sandman,"there is also a nexus between identity and
repetition. All that is needed for Freud's Doppelganger to be
accommodated within the structure introduced by the footnote is to
understand the "limitless self-love" [uneingeschrtinktenSelbstliebe]
("Uncanny,"339; Unheimliche,229-230, trans. altered) not in terms of
primary narcissism but in terms of the "originalarrangement"of the
castrationcomplex. The self-identity,with its "splittings,divisions and
substitutions[Ich-Verdopplung, Ich-Teilung,Ich-Vertauschung]"("Uncanny,"
356; Unheimliche, 246, trans. altered)produced by self-love is impossible
to restrict,preciselybecause its origin is in a universalarrangementthat
can neverbe fullyencounteredenface;it is in a stateof perpetualbecoming
and incompletion.
Having shown that it is possible to retain both singularity and
infinity in an extrapolationof Freud'snotion of the subject,we can now
returnto a point alluded to regardingthe differentversions of repression
in Freud'swork.Discoveringan articulationof the Doppelgangerin Freud
that is compatible with JeanPaul'sis anachronisticin two respects. On
the one hand, it affirms the non-linear chronological--i.e., non-
originary- arrangementof castrationin the footnote;and, on the other,
it reads "The 'Uncanny"' through Freud's late understanding of
repression,anxiety,and the castrationcomplex. Having alreadylooked
at the former,a briefglance at the latteris now called for.At this juncture,
it should be noted that SamuelWeberhas demonstratedthat it is possible
to read "The 'Uncanny'" (1919) through the theory of castration
publishedfrom1926onwards.Thekey to such a readingis to view anxiety
as that which produces repression. Thus, it is related to the castration
complex which is the paradigmaticanxiety.He notes, "The castration
complex now appears as the nucleus of the Freudian theory of the
uncanny"(1111)Not only is this a move beyond the primacyof narcissism
on which the earliesttheory that derived anxietyfrom repressionhad to
insist; it precludes a conception of subjectivityas "fully self-conscious"
(1112).This it leads beyond a repetitionof narcissismbased on identity,
toward repetition as "the articulationof difference, which is equally a
dis-articulation,dis-locatingand even dis-membering"(1114). Thesubject

produced by the structureof castrationcannot be pinned down to either

the mechanicalor the ocular.Instead, it is articulatedby the relationof
the two as they unfold in the subject'smateriality.There is no steadfast
identity, only regulative difference.Castrationbecomes the infinite, the
original arrangement toward which the subject strives in its
particularity.
Although Weberdoes not pursue his analysis explicitly in terms of
the absolute self, it can easily be re-inscribedin that register.The crucial
point of Weber'sre-workingof the uncanny is that as a feeling, it can
never be given absolutely.As such, it is anti-representational,something
that alwaysexceedsa specificsubjectivefeeling:the uncannyas implicated
in the structure of castrationexceeds affect on the phenomenal level.
This structurefinds expression in language,or, more precisely,a certain
type of linguistic expression, which Weber explicitly associates with
WalterBenjamin'sextrapolationof the allegoryby in the Trauerspiel book.
The nothing-the negation, the "No"--within this structure of
subjectivity then figures in a double gesture: as the repression of the
structureof castration,which is only present in its very repression,that
is, in its allegorical expression-Benjamin-or in its ambivalent
opposition--Freud (Weber1130-33).
The nothing, in this construal, is allowed to return, but is akin to
JeanPaul'snothingof the Doppelgainger.Itsexceedingof subjectiveaffect
is a function of the excess in language over mere signification.Further,
this is an excess over the absolute subject-that is, the subject that can
pose its immediate self-identity only when its parameters are strictly
defined. In this set up, the negation returns,but now the nothing is the
region of excess that the subject transverses,mindfully walking on the
thin line between the blinding light of immediate self-consciousnessand
the blind negation of repression.It was stated earlierthat this subject's
compulsion is its insistence on transgression.But perhaps this is not a
proper transgression, since, if the Doppelganger's normal state is the
overcoming and undoing the limits, then what we have here is a
transgressionof transgression;a redoing of the limit, not as a fixed line,
but as the liminal zone of transgression. The nothing zone of
subjectivity-of the Doppelganger's subjectivity.The Doppelganger is
this liminal subject that allows for the relation between image and
significationto be infinitelyrepeated,while thatrepetition,in turn,allows
for the subject'sdifferentialidentity.
MonashUniversity, Australia

Notes
1. For a characteristic Doppelglinger tale by Hoffmann, see his "The Doubles," in Tales
of E. T. A. Hoffmann, ed. and trans. Leonard J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight (Chicago:
UCP, 1972). For a Poe story, see his "William Wilson," in Collected Works of Edgar
Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Olive Mabbott (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1978), volume 2.
2. The term "modernity" should not be confused with "modernism" or "modernisms."
While they may overlap, the latter is usually understood as a particular style or genre
(e.g. Joyceian, Kafkaesque or Proustian modernism). Modernity can be understood
as a position that seeks to overcome substantialism and essentialism. Since any
essentialism is concerned with retaining the function of sameness within a logic of
identity, modernity is concerned with ways that relationality can be articulated within
a different framework. Privileged in this framework are moments of interruption.
(See Andrew Benjamin, Style and Time:Essays on the Politics of Appearance (Evanston:
Northwestern UP, 2006), Part 1, passim.) The present paper will explicate modernity
in terms of the reversibilitythat pertains to the relations established by the Doppelgiinger.
3. The discussion here concentrates only on the Freudian uncanny insofar as it is con-
nected to the Doppelgainger. A more comprehensive study of the uncanny would
have to account for Heidegger's use of the term, at least in Being and Time and in An
Introduction to Metaphysics, where the choral ode to man in Sophocles's Antigone is
addressed. It is regrettable that the first monograph on the uncanny to be published in
English is content to make only passing allusions to Heidegger. See Nicholas Royle,
The Uncanny (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2003).
4. Freud, "Negation," 11: 441. Freud's term is "die Verneinung,"perhaps better translated
as denial. Fichte's concept of negation will be shown to be crucial for the Doppel-
giinger, despite the fact that Fichte's term for negation is "die Vernichtung."Although
there are crucial differences between the Fichtean "Vernichtung"and the Freudian
"Verneinung,"in particular because the former leads to an abstraction of subjectivity
while the latter may be linked to its reduction to empirical content, the argument here
is only that both conceptions lead to forms of absolutism.
5. The first time that Jean Paul writes the word, it is spelled with a 't' between the two
compounds: Doppeltginger. Later on p. 532, the t is elided and the word is spelled in
its customary way: Doppelgiinger. However, the passage on p. 532 is an addition of
the second edition of Siebenkiisin 1818, by which time "Doppelginger" without the
t was in wide use. Andrew J. Webber, in a remarkable analysis of Heine's famous
poem Doppeltglinger,shows how the extra t "marks a sort of impediment to freedom
of speech, a caesura" and how this affects the overall structure of the poem (16).
6. For a detailed explication, see my "The Critique of Loneliness: Towards the Political
Motives of the Doppelglinger," Angelaki 9.2 (2004), pp. 81-101.
7. Jacobi's open letter to Fichte is better know today as the first document in which the
word "nihilism" receives a philosophical articulation. However, it is also the most
prominent locus of the rejection of the Fichtean I on the grounds of its equation with
divinity. Fichte's contemporaries claimed that the absolute I had usurped divine prop-
erties; Schiller wrote to Goethe in October 1794 that by conceiving the world as "a
ball that the I has thrown and that it receives back again in reflection, [Fichte] has
really declared his divinity, as we really expected" (quoted in Anthony J. La Vopa,
Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2001), p. 271). Such a conception of the absolute I as a self that strives towards, or
pertains to, the divine was crucial for the development of the literature of the period;
for instance, compare H6lderlin's "Empedocles."
8. See the footnotes in Webber, Doppelgiinger,p. 123, and p. 129. For Cixous's article, see
"Fiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud's Das Unheimliche (The 'uncanny')",
New Literary History, 7 (1976), pp. 525-548.
9. The first to point this out in a very influential paper was Cixous in "Fiction and Its
Phantoms."

10. Freud is too reliant on his protege Otto Rank's extrapolation of the uncanny in terms
of narcissism, first published in Imago in 1917, a couple of years prior to Freud's "Das
Unheimliche." See Rank, The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study, trans. Harry Tucker Jr.
(New York: Meridian, 1979). See Webber, The Doppelgiinger, pp. 38-55 for a discus-
sion of Rank and Freud.
11. This is of course a move away from the Kantian philosophy and its epistemological
concerns. As Freud puts it, in contradistinction to Ernst Jentsch's approach, the un-
canny is not concerned with intellectual uncertainty. See Jentsch, "On the Psychol-
ogy of the Uncanny", trans. Roy Sellars, Angelaki 2.1 (1995), pp. 7-15.
12. My translation. The German reads: "In der Tat hat die Phantasiebearbeitungdes Dichters
die Elementedes Stoffesnicht so wild herumgewirbelt,dafi man ihre urspriinglicheAnordnung
nicht wiederherstellen konnte" ("Das Unheimliche," p. 244). The English translation is
perhaps closer to Freud's intentions, but, as will soon become clear, this is precisely
the reason it is inadequate. The Strachey translation reads: "In fact, Hoffmann's imagi-
native treatment of his material has not made such wild confusion of its elements that
we cannot reconstruct their original arrangement." All references in this and the
following paragraph are to the footnote in Freud, "The 'Uncanny'," p. 353-354; Freud,
"Das Unheimliche," pp. 244-245.
13. Although there is a growing secondary literature on the chiasmus, the most succinct
account remains Rodolphe Gasche's "Reading Chiasms," in Of Minimal Things: Stud-
ies on the Notion of Relation (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999). See esp. pp. 277 ff. where
Gasche demonstrates that the chiasmus is used to indicated the essential unifinishedness
of texts.
Works Cited
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre. Siimmtliche Werke.
[1845]. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965, Vol. 1.
Freud, Sigmund. Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ("Dora") [1905], trans. Alix
and James Strachey, Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 8. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.
- -. "Negation" [1925], Penguin Freud Library. Vol. 11. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1991, 437-442.
--. "The 'Uncanny,'" Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 14. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991,
339-376. ["Das Unheimliche," Gesammelte Werke,Vol 12. London: Imago, 1947, 229-
268.
Hertz, Neil. "Freud and the Sandman," in End of The Line:Essays in Psychoanalysis and the
Sublime. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. "Jacobi to Fichte," in The Main Philosophical Writings and the
Novel Allwill, trans. George di Giovanni. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's UP,
1994, 497-536.
Novalis [Georg Friedrich Phillipp von Hardensberg]. Fichte Studies, trans. Jane Kneller.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Paul, Jean., Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstiicke, oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des
ArmenadvokatenF. St. Siebenkdis[1796], in SiimtlicheWerke,ed. Norbert Miller. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000.
- -. Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberiana.In Siimtliche Werke,ed. Norbert Miller. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000 (1.3: 1011-1056).
Webber, Andrew J. The Doppelgiinger:Double Visions in GermanLiterature.Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1996.
Weber, Samuel. "The Sideshow, or: Remarks on a Canny Moment." MLN 88.6 (1973,
1102-1133).


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The Return of Negation: The Doppelgänger in Freud's "The 'Uncanny'"

Author(s): Dimitris Vardoulakis

The Doppelgaingeras a motif arose within German Romanticism

? Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin System, 2006

This paper will concentrateon two pivotal moments in the history

Negation and the Doppelgiinger

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

one of the characteristicsof the Doppelgainger,may then be paraphrased

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

compelled to admit that it is logical to say "No."The problem with this

SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

conscious, 2) cannot say "No" regarding its content, and 3) admits of

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

on the loss suffered by the Doppelganger subject. His reading of

SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

feeling in its process of becoming, and is not reducible to the what-to

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

possible to perform such a repetition of what is original. This in turn

SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

to accommodatethe notion of subjectiveidentity in the short story to its

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

While Freud is attuned to the complexities that arise from the

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

reconciled.The second move would be to explicate this abysmal loss as

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

geneticteleology.Further,the uncanny,insofaras it is a feelingthatalready

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

produced by the structureof castrationcannot be pinned down to either

SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

SubStance#110,Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

SubStance#110, Vol. 35, no. 2, 2006

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