International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13 – 27

www.ics-elsevier.com

The body and the world B

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel *
Paris Psychoanalytical Society, France

Abstract. This Essay was written after September 11, in the hope of better understanding the minds
of those who made their bodies explode in order to shatter other bodies in the name of God. As
analysts do not meet, in their practice, such individuals, the author put under scrutiny, three well-
known authors and, for two of them, also film directors, Foucault, Pasolini and Mishima, in whom
one may find a blending of sadism, extremist political views (whether on the right or on the left
leading to an admiration for cruel leaders, such as Hitler, Staline or Khomeiny), a more or less
unconscious identification with Christ, Jean Genet and others, although not present in this paper, fit
with the psychic organization here described, to which, it is necessary to add suicidal ideas, attempts
or accomplishments. The unconscious fantasy here at stake seems to be that the dismantling of one’s
own body, together with the shattering of other bodies, provokes a corresponding dislocation of the
world and a final apotheosis resulting with a fusion with God. D 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Keywords: Sadism; Anthropophagy; Blood; Father’s phallus; Mother’s womb; Extremism; Light

1. The dismembered body

bThe human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it
down, and rearranges it.Q
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
On 2 March, 1757, Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill King Louis XV
with a penknife, was condemned as a regicide bto make the amende honorable before the
main door of the Church of Paris,Q where he was to be btaken and conveyed in a cart,
wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax.Q Then bthe flesh will be torn

B
This paper condenses part of a book, Le Corps comme Miroir du Monde (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 2003). The book has been published in English by Free Association Books in 2005 under the title The
Body as the Mirror of the World.
* 82 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris, France. Tel.: +33 1 45480124; fax: +33 1 42840670.
E-mail address: jeanne.chasseguet@free.fr.

0531-5131/ D 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.

doi:10.1016/j.ics.2005.09.065
14 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

from his breasts, arms, thighs, and calves with red-hot pincers. . .and, on those places where
the flesh will be torn away, will be poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and
sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horsesQ [1] (p. 3).
But the horses did not succeed in pulling Damiens apart:
Finally, the executioner, Samson, said to Monsieur Le Breton that there was no way
or hope of succeeding, and told him to ask their Lordships if they wished him to
have the prisoner cut into pieces. . .
After two or three attempts, the executioner Samson and he who had used the
pincers each drew out a knife from his pocket and cut the thighs where the trunk of
the body ends instead of severing the legs at the joints; the four horses. . . carried off
the two thighs after them, namely, that of the right side first, the other following;
then the same was done to the arms, the shoulders, the arm-pits and the four limbs;
the flesh had to be cut almost to the bone. . .
One of the executioners. . . said shortly afterwards that when they had lifted the trunk
to throw it on the stake, he was still alive. (pp. 4–5)
Readers will have recognized in these passages the surgically precise description of
Damiens’s torture that makes up the opening of Discipline and Punish [1], the best-known
book by Michel Foucault, in which he attempts to describe and denounce bthe disciplinary
societyQ.
But here is the description of another victim of torture:
After hunting for an hour, they found a stray cat small enough to ride in the palm of
Noboru’s hand, a mottled, mewing kitten with lacklustre eyes. . . .Scattered through
the gloom in the shed, the five naked boys stood rooted, their eyes glittering. [2]
(pp. 56, 58)
Noboru slams the cat several times against a beam.
The kitten had bounced off the log for the final time. Its hind legs twitched, traced
large lax circles in the dirt floor, and then subsided. The boys were overjoyed at the
spattered blood on the log. . .
Dull red blood oozed from the kitten’s nose and mouth, the twisted tongue was
clamped against the palate.
bC’mon up close where you can see. I’ll take it from here.Q Unnoticed, the chief had
put on a pair of rubber gloves that reached up to his elbows; now he bent over the
corpse with a pair of gleaming scissors. Shining coolly through the gloom of the shed,
the scissors were magnificent in their cold, intellectual dignity: Noboru couldn’t
imagine a more appropriate weapon for the chief.
Seizing the kitten by the neck, the chief pierced the skin at the chest with the point of
the blade and scissored a long smooth cut to the throat. Then he pushed the skin to
the sides with both hands: the glossy layer of fat beneath was like a peeled spring
onion. The skinned neck, draped gracefully on the floor, seemed to be wearing a cat
mask. The cat was only an exterior, life had posed as a cat. . .
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 15

bWhat do you think? Doesn’t it look too naked? I’m not sure that’s such a good
thing: like it was bad manners or something.Q The chief peeled aside the skin on the
trunk with his gloved hands. . .

Noboru tried comparing the corpse confronting the world so nakedly with the
unsurpassably naked figures of his mother and the sailor. But compared to this, they
weren’t naked enough. . .

The kitten bled very little. The chief tore through the surrounding membrane and
exposed the large, red–black liver. Then he unwound the immaculate bowels and
reeled them onto the floor. Steam rose and nestled against the rubber gloves. He cut
the colon into slices and squeezed out for all the boys to see a broth the colour of
lemons. bThis stuff cuts just like flannel.Q. . .

The kitten’s dead pupils were purple flecked with white; the gaping mouth was
stuffed with congealed blood, the twisted tongue visible between the fangs. As the
fat-yellowed scissors cut them, he heard the ribs creak. And he watched intently
while the chief groped in the abdominal cavity, withdrew the small pericardium, and
plucked from it the tiny oval heart. When he squeezed the heart between two fingers,
the remaining blood gushed onto his rubber gloves, reddening them to the tips of the
fingers. . .

The liver, limp beside the corpse, became a soft peninsula, the squashed heart a
little sun, the reeled-out bowels a white atoll, and the blood in the belly the tepid
waters of a tropical sea. Death had transfigured the kitten into a perfect,
autonomous world.

I killed it all by myself–a distant hand reached into Noboru’s dream and awarded him
a snow-white certificate of merit–I can do anything, no matter how awful. [2] (pp.
58–61; italics in original).

Some readers will have recognized a scene, as unbearable as that of Damiens’ torture,
appearing in the book by Mishima, The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea [2]. The
torture of the little cat is only a quick sketch, a prelude to the foreshadowed death of the
sailor, the father-figure.
In Confessions of a Mask [3], Mishima remembers something he read in childhood.
bVisions of dprinces slainT pursued me tenaciously. Who could have explained for me
why I was so delighted with fancies in which those body-revealing tights worn by the
princes were associated with their cruel deaths?Q (p. 21). bOn the other hand, I delighted
in imagining situations in which I myself was dying in battle or being murderedQ (p. 24).
The fantasies of the young Mishima at times have an anthropophagous aim. Thus, in
Confessions of a Mask, he describes an imagined instrument of execution that does not fail
to evoke the machine in Kafka’s bIn the Penal ColonyQ. This instrument includes
bmechanical drills for piercing the human bodyQ [3] (p. 94). The blood is collected,
sweetened, canned, and sold commercially.
16 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

He likewise details the fantasy of a funeral feast in which an adolescent is killed in

order to be eaten:

The platter was put down, filling that blank space on the table, which had been
glittering blankly in the light. Returning to my seat, I lifted the large knife and fork
from the platter and said:

bWhere shall I begin?Q

There was no answer. One could sense rather than see many faces craning forward
toward the platter.

bThis is probably a good spot to begin on.Q I thrust the fork upright into the heart. A
fountain of blood struck me full in the face. Holding the knife in my right hand, I
began carving the flesh of the breast, gently, thinly at first (p. 97).
Such cannibalism is found in other authors: Tennessee Williams, in Suddenly Last
Summer [4], Pasolini, in his film The Pigsty (1969). (The main character, an
adolescent, says: bI killed my father, I ate human flesh and I quiver with joy.Q) Pasolini
himself was assassinated by a lout whom he forced to plunge a stake into his chest.
That, at least, is the description given by Dominique Fernandez in his remarkable book
In an Angel’s Hand [5]. Pier Paulo Pasolini’s father, a Captain in the colonial fascist
army in Africa during World War II, from time to time sent a postcard to his wife. The
son comments:
More than any others, I was struck by the picture of an explorer flat on his back
between the paws of a tiger. One could only see his head and shoulders. The rest
was hidden under the belly of the big cat, which had devoured one arm wrested
from the trunk, and was getting ready to dig its fangs in the other. The young
adventurer, who had not fainted and was not frightened by what was happening
to him, though fully conscious of his fate, was lying, not like someone who is
tensing against a horrible death, but with the subdued grace of a victim. The tiger
had torn his shirt. What one saw of the young man’s naked skin showed a
vigorous and tanned flesh. . . Before going to sleep, I addressed a kind of prayer
to the tiger, for it to come and grab me in its paws, and make a feast of my
body. [5] (p. 97).
To eat and to be eaten seem here to be equivalent: bMy father’s gesture, on the day
when he put, incidentally without any special intention, this message into the camp’s letter
box, had linked forever in his son’s heart pleasure and punishment, eager greed and guilty
submissionQ (p. 319). (One can no longer distinguish between the subject and the object of
the beager greedQ.) It is known that Pier Paolo Pasolini’s favourite place for venal love
were Rome’s slaughterhouse surroundings.
In his film The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1984), Pasolini chose his mother to
represent the Virgin Mary. Immediately after the success of the movie–he was honoured in
Venice and received the Grand Prize of the International Catholic Cinematic Office–he left
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 17

for Kenya, whence his father had formerly sent the postcard with the tiger when he was a
prisoner. The author imagines his thoughts:
Do you still dare to deny your father’s importance in your life? You would like him
to have no weight on your behaviour, to have disappeared without marking you with
his influence. You only love your mother, and you cannot bear the idea that another
contributed to making you what you are. Willy nilly, you have to face the evidence.
The one you never think about and whom you saw die without feeling, dogs your
every step and escorts you with his shadow. [5] (p. 317).

Anthropophagy is the most concrete means of destroying and possessing the object.
The introjection of the object is a primitive form of love and is based on real incorporation
(breast, milk).
But introjection becomes a psychic mechanism destined, in the course of
development, to place good objects inside the self in order to give strength and
confidence to the ego and to ensure the processes of identification inherent in
development. The lost objects are taken in so as to keep them or some of their
characteristics within the ego. The fact that the cannibalistic feast is, in Mishima’s
fantasy, a funeral meal leads to the hypothesis of a loss that he was not truly able to
introject because of his relationship with the object of that loss. He can only swallow it
concretely. To be sure, this occurs in the realm of fantasy, but with a minimum of
displacement and symbolization.

2. What to do with a Father?

bFathers are suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into
something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine, a
machine for dishing up lies to kids. . . Fathers are the flies of this world. They hover
around our heads waiting for a chance, and when they see something rotten, they
buzz in and root in it. Filthy, lecherous flies broadcasting to the whole world that
they’ve screwed with our mothers.Q
Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.
bMy father, that hero with a smile so soft. . .Q
Victor Hugo, bAfter the BattleQ

We have seen that oral introjection, for Mishima, is only minimally symbolized and
that, in spite of its literary elaboration, it retains the brawQ character of a cannibalistic meal.
He is always ready to start all over again because the satisfaction cannot be permanent.
Hunger is certain to torment the once again empty belly.
In thinking of examples of famous writers in whom the anthropophagous fantasy is
clearly described–Mishima, Tennessee Williams, Pasolini–I realize, with some surprise,
that these are all homosexual men. I will venture to propose a hypothesis and to place
this concrete hunger in relation to another hunger that one observes among a certain
type of homophiles: the clearly sexual hunger that compels these subjects
compulsively to seek multiple, often furtive relations with casual partners whose
18 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

faces are barely seen in the shadow of the night, in corners, or in the toilets of train
stations.
This insatiable hunger, which has as its object the penis more than the whole man,
appears to be the consequence of the missing introjection of the parent of the same sex:
the father and his attributes. The objects of the anthropophagous fantasies in the
authors quoted are an adolescent in Mishima, a young man in Tennessee Williams, the
father in Pasolini’s The Pigsty, and Pasolini himself in his fantasy and his tragic end. In
any case, they have to do with a man—the father or, probably, the magnified double of
the subject.
Introjection, insofar as it is a process that enriches the subject, is possible only if the
relations with the object, whom I take to be the father, have been sufficiently good and
constant. The introjection that is supposed to lead to a real identification implies an
enlargement of the ego. In other words, the sexual and aggressive investment in the father-
object (and/or his penis) is transformed into a narcissistic investment, coextensive with the
investment of the ego. One can say, then, that the object of the identification in the internal
world has disappeared as such, but it has been assimilated by the ego, the very substance
of which it helps to form.
An insignificant father, despised by the mother–or, on the contrary, one who is
brutal and coarse–makes the process of idealization necessary for the introjection of the
father and his attributes difficult, which is itself a prelude to identification. It seems, if
one can judge by the work of Mishima and his tragic fate, that a great disillusionment
must have occurred precociously in his relationship with his father, as if the latter had
fallen from his pedestal. Two indications point in this direction. First, The Sailor who
Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Noboru, who spies at
night through a hole in a chest of drawers into the adjoining room, observing the love-
making between his mother, a beautiful and elegant young widow, and a navy officer,
Ryuji. At first, Noboru looks upon the sailor as a hero. But when the latter turns out to
be a simple and kind man, Noboru–under the influence of the gang of boys his age
and its leader that I have mentioned previously–decides to kill him; and the sacrifice of
the cat provides the model for the murder to come. The diatribe against the father, cited
as my epigraph, is voiced by the leader of the gang.
Noboru writes in his diary:
CHARGES AGAINST RYUJI TSUKAZAKI

ONE: smiling at me in a cowardly, ingratiating way when I met him this noon.
TWO: wearing a dripping-wet shirt and explaining that he had taken a shower in the
fountain at the park—just like an old bum.
THREE: deciding arbitrarily to spend the night out with Mother, thereby placing me in an
awfully isolated position. [2] (p. 81; italics in original)

But Noboru decides to erase the third paragraph, ba contradiction of the first two, which
were aesthetic, idealistic.Q His contempt and his hatred culminate when his mother
discovers that the child was spying on them at night. She sobs with rage and sadness: bI
could die this very minute!Q (p. 153). (In the meantime, she had told the child her plans to
marry the sailor who would then be his father.).
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 19

She thinks that she will put an end to her despair by appealing to Ryuji: bI’m
going to see that Father punishes you.Q And to the sailor who is opening the door:
bI want you to punish him, Father. If this child isn’t beaten thoroughly, the evil in
him will keep getting worse. He was spying on us through a hole in the chest hereQ
(p. 155).
Contrary to all expectations, the sailor addresses Noboru with understanding and
indulgence:

bWhat you did was wrong, there’s no question about that, but from now on I want
you to direct that curiosity toward your school work, do you understand? . . . You’re
not a child any more and someday we’ll be able to laugh together and talk about
what’s happened here as three adults. . . I’ll seal that hole up in the morning and then
we can all forget this whole unpleasant evening.Q . . .

Noboru listened feeling as though he were about to suffocate. Can this man be
saying things like that? This splendid hero who once shone so brightly? . . .

The sailor was saying things he was never meant to say. Ignoble things in
wheedling, honeyed tones, fouled words not meant to issue from his lips until
Doomsday. (pp. 157–158; italics in original).
Henceforth the sailor’s fate is sealed; he is to be put to death like the cat. The leader will
say: bHe became the worst thing on the face of this earth, a fatherQ (p. 162). And then:
bWe’ve already practised the essentials on a cat and this’ll be the same, so there’s nothing
to worry about. The job’s a little bigger this time, that’s all—and it may stink a little worseQ
(p. 165).
Concerning Mishima’s second experience of disillusionment with the father, we know
that Hirohito, the Japanese emperor who allied himself with Hitler and Mussolini to form
the Berlin–Rome–Tokyo Axis, was deemed to be a god. On 15 August, 1945, he signed
Japan’s surrender, ending the war: the last Axis power to capitulate did so only after the
atomic bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s emperor then declared that he
was not a god.
In 1966, Mishima wrote The Voices of Heroic Dead [6]. Marguerite Yourcenar [7]
quotes the following passage as a protest against the auto-desacralization of Hirohito that
caused the heroic deaths of the kamikazes to be in vain:
Brave soldiers died because a god has commanded them to go to war; and not six
months after so fierce a battle had stopped instantly because a god declared the
fighting at an end, His Majesty announced, bVerily, we are a mortal man.Q Scarcely a
year after we had fired ourselves like bullets at an enemy ship for our Emperor who
was a god!. . . Why did the Emperor become a man? (p. 115).
When, in 1970, Mishima [8] committed suicide in public on a balcony
overlooking a crowd, while accomplishing the seppuku that requires self-disembow-
elment followed by decapitation by a companion, his last cry was: bLong live the
Emperor!Q (p. 118).
20 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

Mishima’s two disillusionments–one of which leads, in literary creation, to murder with

dissection; and the other, in reality, to suicide by vivisection in which he is simultaneously
subject and object–appear to be linked to a further conflict that The Sailor Who Fell from
Grace with the Sea permits me to define. One cannot say, however, that the hero’s fall,
leading to a psychic catastrophe, only masks a deeper conflict. The conflict and
catastrophe seem closely linked, as I will try to show.
I have often insisted, particularly in Sexuality and Mind [9], on the necessity of
recognizing the role of the father and the mother for the development of the mind. A
fragment of a seminar by Lacan [10] reveals clearly the infantile fantasies that, in part, feed
his theory:

Whether or not it makes any difference to you, the desire of the mother is not
something one can put up with just like that: it entails always some damages. A big
crocodile in whose mouth you are: that is the mother. One never knows what can
come over her to cause her to shut her trap all of a sudden. That is the desire of the
mother. Then I tried to explain that there was something reassuring. There is a stone
roller, a sure place, which has power at the level of the trap and holds it back and
jams it. That is called the Phallus. This is the roller that gives you shelter, if suddenly
the trap should close.

This excerpt permits me to dispense with a long demonstration concerning the fear of
the mother and the need for protection by the father. Evidence of this need is presented
throughout Freud’s work, from Totem and Taboo [11] to Civilization and Its Discontents
[12], particularly in the form of a nostalgia for the father as the source of religions. But
Freud leaves vague just what it is that this father, in his religious form, is supposed to
protect us against. Lacan explains it clearly: against the mother-crocodile. In the face of
these devouring saurians, only the god Phallus (with a capital P) can protect us. Now,
shouldn’t what is conceived of as the desire of the Mother be rather understood as the
projection of the desire of the subject?
Following Béla Grunberger in this context, who has centred his work [13,14] on the
human desire to re-find the prenatal state of absolute narcissism, I have on many occasions
underscored the fascination elicited, in varying degrees, by fusion with the mother. The
wish for fusion with the mother, for a return to the darkness of the womb, comes into
conflict with the wish to grow up, to differentiate oneself from the mother, to become
autonomous. But for that to occur, one must accede to the adult world. The attraction of
the womb can be confused with the loss of self and with death.
The title of Marguerite Yourcenar’s study, Mishima: A Vision of the Void [7], refers to
the metaphysical void. But there are indications in the work that lead us down a more
bpedestrianQ path.
Noboru begins to spy on his mother at night:
And what Noboru then perceived was the zone of black. The angle was bad
somehow, and he strained until the corners of his eyes began to ache. He tried all the
obscenity he knew, but words alone couldn’t penetrate that thicket. His friends were
probably right when they called it a pitiful little vacant house. He wondered if that
had anything to do with the emptiness of his own world. [2] (p. 8).
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 21

Noboru imagines bthat propagation was a fictionQ, and he summons his contempt of
fathers and teachers: bTherefore, his own father’s death, when he was eight, had been a
happy incident, something to be proud of.Q His thoughts continue: bWhen his mother had
been gentle, he was able to sleep without looking. On those nights, the vision appeared in
his dreams insteadQ (p. 9). Soon afterwards, he calls up his desire for firmness: bA large
iron anchor withstanding the corrosion of the sea. . . that was how he liked to imagine his
heart.Q
Then comes the description of a night when the body of the sailor appears in all its
splendid virility:

His broad shoulders were square as the beams in a temple roof, his chest strained
against a thick mat of hair, knotted muscle like twists of sisal hemp bulged all over
his body: his flesh looked like a suit of armour that he could cast all at will. Then
Noboru gazed in wonder as, ripping up through the thick hair below the belly, the
lustrous temple tower soared triumphantly erect. (p. 11)

One sees that a contrast is drawn between the empty female sex of his mother, a bpitiful
little vacant houseQ, and the manly rod, bthe lustrous temple towerQ, between the vulgar
profane and the triumphant holy. At the very moment that the void of the maternal genitals
is perceived, there comes the idea of reproduction as a bfictionQ, and hence of the
insignificance of the father.
It is to this inanity that the splendour of the sailor’s body will be opposed. The classic
castration complex that would result from seeing the female genitals without a penis, and
lead the boy to think that a similar fate could befall him, does not seem to exhaust the
meaning of the feelings awakened in Noboru by seeing his mother’s body and the
associations to which this gives rise: the metaphysical extension, if one wishes to follow
Marguerite Yourcenar, of this void that reaches from the maternal genitals to the whole
world.
The acknowledgement, by the boy, of the existence of the vagina (and not of feminine
bcastrationQ) implies his becoming conscious of the prepubescent state of his penis, which
is too small to copulate with his mother and to give her a child. This realization is denied
when, on the day of the sacrifice of the cat, the leader says: bbNo adult is going to be able
to do something we couldn’t do. There’s a huge seal called bimpossibilityQ pasted all over
this world. And don’t ever forget that we’re the only ones who can tear it off once and for
allQQ [2] (p. 50).
There is, nowadays, a powerful attack against the very idea of differences. If Little
Béla, the child who lives in my house, notices gleefully the similarity between something
possessed by an adult and something he has himself, it makes him yell with joy: bThe
same, the same!Q It is not only that he can compare (and thus appreciate differences), but
that at the same time he is happy and satisfied because he has the same thing as an adult.
That is, the distance between him, the little child, and the bbig peopleQ has been abridged,
even if only for a fleeting instant.
I believe that one of the profound narcissistic wounds common to all human beings
is linked to the differences that exist between the child and the adult. It follows that the
limits placed on the drives by prohibitions, authority and the father function not merely
22 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

as hindrances when they instill a sense of moderation; they are a safeguard for our
narcissism. Instead of feeling impotent or coming up against the impossibility of
achieving completeness, the absolute, or the infinite, the child, like the adolescent,
comes up against prohibitions [13]. Thus, he feels less incapable than hindered. The
hindrances, while limiting him, contain him and provide (internal) boundaries for his
violence.
Conversely, it can be clearly seen in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
that the child-voyeur is inundated by the excitement procured by the spectacle of the
lovers to the point that it precipitates a state of depersonalization in him. It is as though
he is playing a game with scattered cards, until the sudden wailing of a siren
establishes bthe universal orderQ [2] (p. 13). The boy is bcertain he had watched a
tangle of thread unravel to trace a hallowed figure. And it would have to be protected:
for all he knew, he was its 13-year-old creator. . . dIf this is ever destroyed, it’ll mean
the end of the world.QT
As he comes into the presence of the primal scene, the subject tries to exert an
omnipotent sway on what is in the process of unfolding. He wishes to be the bdirectorQ of
something that, in fact, entirely escapes his will. One can imagine that he also has an
enormous desire to destroy the scene that provokes in him an apocalyptic terror: the terror
of the end of the world. The idea of the end of the world comes up several times in
Mishima’s text. In its psychotic form, the idea is understood by Freud as a representation
of the withdrawal of investment in objects and the (narcissistic) return of this investment
into the ego: bThe end of the world is the projection of this internal catastrophe; his
subjective world has come to an end since his withdrawal of his love from itQ [15] (p. 70).
The sudden wailing of the siren that puts an end to the scattering of the cards and re-
establishes the order of the universe can be understood as the violent intervention that is
necessary to put back together the shattered ego of the child. It is a spine, a btemple towerQ,
a nautical anchor resisting the corrosion of the sea.
The protection against the shattering of the ego, inundated by excitations or engulfed by
the void of the maternal body, would be the triumphant phallus of the sailor to which the
child manages to hold fast, just as Ulysses was tied to the mast of the ship that prevented
him from succumbing to the song of the sirens and following them to the bottom of the
sea.
Prior to his meeting with the sailor, Noboru has not internalized any sense of paternal
virility that would confer a feeling of confidence and cohesion on him. Nor can the sailor
substitute for the missing father. To reassemble his shattered ego, what the child wants is
not a father but a hero: bdAnd that’s your hero?TQ asks the leader. bdDon’t you realize there
is no such thing as a hero in this world?TQ [2] (p. 50). Noboru’s grievances will culminate
when his mother tells him bdYour’re going to have a papa again. Mr. Tsukazaki is going to
be your new father. . . We’re going to be married early next monthTQ (pp. 144–145).
bNoboru felt a whirlwind catch him up and spin him away toward the tepid, formless
world he dreaded mostQ (p. 146).
This world evokes the deck of scattered cards. . . but there is no siren’s wail to put
things back into place: the btemple towerQ has, likewise, lost its power. Noboru tries to
cling to words: bhard heartQ, bhard as an iron anchorQ (p. 146). Lacking the sense of
himself as sustained by a triumphant power, he forces himself to become insensible.
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 23

He feels nothing other than contempt with regard to his mother and Ryuji. He does not
want a father (one knows little of his previous father, except that he is dead), but a glorious
ideal that no longer exists. In its place, there is only a man. At the idea of his mother’s
marriage with the sailor, Noboru is seized by apocalyptic fantasies. He tries to deny the
terrifying reality. He abandons himself to a reverie in which his mother comes back to him
and cries:

We are most certainly not going to get married. If we did a thing like that the world
would turn to chaos: ten tankers would sink in the harbour, and a thousand trains
would be derailed; the glass in the windows all over the city could shatter; and every
lovely rose would turn black as coal. (p. 147; italics in original)
It is after these thoughts that Noboru slips into the chest of drawers again that allows
him to observe the amorous frolics of the couple, and when he is caught by his mother. . .
And after these thoughts that, to his great disillusionment, Ryuji will reveal himself to be
soft and paternal instead of cold, hard, and cruel as steel. (One understands here whence
arises the attraction to sadomasochism.)
Henceforth it will be the leader who lulls the children with illusions by making them
believe they are superior to adults and, above all, to fathers. He will inculcate contempt
and teach them to murder:
All six of us are geniuses. And the world, as you know, is empty. . . Teachers,
schools, fathers, society—we permit all those garbage heapsQ (p. 161). bWe
must have blood! Human blood! If we don’t get it this empty world will go
pale and shrivel up. We must drain that sailor’s fresh lifeblood and transfuse it
to the dying universe, the dying sky, the dying forests, and the drawn, dying
land.Q (p. 167).
One is reminded of the Aztecs’ sacrifice of adolescents whose blood was required to
ensure the sun’s survival.
The reader might no doubt be surprised to see that I have selected the life and work of a
homosexual writer as being particularly revealing of the most important functions of the
father. However, it is rather the effects of the absence of these functions in the subject’s
internal world that are particularly striking in such instances. To be sure, Mishima’s
personality, as reflected in his writings and in his autobiography Confessions of a Mask, is
extreme and cannot always be equated with other figures of male homosexuality. But, as I
have been able to point out, neither is it altogether unique in certain of its manifestations.
In the short volume that she dedicates to Mishima, Marguerite Yourcenar describes the
writer’s childhood:
The grandmother is an intriguing character. . . In her quarters, where she kept the
young boy, this disturbing and touching grandmother seems to have lived a life of
luxury, sickness, and reverie. . .The imprisoned child slept in his grandmother’s
room, was witness to her nervous breakdowns, learned very young how to dress her
sores, accompanied her to the lavatory, wore the girl’s dresses which on a whim she
sometimes had him put on. . .This fey spirit no doubt planted in him the seeds of
madness once deemed necessary for genius. . .Above all, it allowed him the
24 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

experience of being jealously and madly loved and of responding to that great love
himself. [7] (pp. 13–14).

Incidentally, Yourcenar speaks also of bthe undeniable mediocrity of his fatherQ (p. 14).
Does one not see here the little boy kept in his grandmother’s belly, locked in her room,
loved, loved too much? A boy without his father to come and set him free by infusing him
with the strength that would have been indispensable for escaping and becoming a man?
The most frequently encountered word in Mishima’s work is sun. The sun that comes to
dissipate the womb’s darkness, the sun king, the sun Emperor. Hirohito was supposed to
be a sun god, the god of the Empire of the Rising Sun. Sun and Steel [8] is the title of a
striking book by Mishima. His suicide is prefigured there.

3. Suicide and dislocation of the universe

I dgin to be a-weary of the sun,And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone.
Shakespeare, Macbeth

bThe dismembered bodyQ was my topic in the first part of this study. I recalled
Damiens’ torture as it was described at length by Foucault at the beginning of Discipline
and Punish, as well as the dissection of the cat of which Mishima provides a meticulous
account in The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea. Now, this dismembering does not
take place only on the body of the other. It also, at times, includes one’s own body.
As Michel Foucault writes in the name of liberty: bWe must invent with the body, with
its elements, surfaces, volumes, and thickness, a nondisciplinary eroticism—that of a body
in a volatile and diffused state, with its chance encounters and unplanned pleasuresQ [16]
(p. 227).
One is permitted to think that Foucault’s commitment to the Iranian revolution is a
projection of this desire for bodily disorganization (no genital primacy!) onto the
universe. Does he not say that the Iranians are rejecting bthe weight of the order of the
entire worldQ, that they are accomplishing bthe first great insurrection against the
planetary systemQ, and will accomplish a btransfiguration of this worldQ [19] (p. 716);
[18] (p. 309); [19] Foucault admires, and will continue to admire, their leader, Ayatollah
Khomeiny, even when he tortures and massacres homosexuals [17] (pp. 713–716). (May
one not surmise that this, in fact, forms part of the appeal that he exerts?) Foucault leads
us to understand that the West, with its order and its laws, represents in its entirety a
confinement, a prison that must be thrown open, an iron collar from which a great
upheaval, ba religion of combat and sacrificeQ, a bpolitical spiritualityQ will come to
deliver us [18] (p. 309; italics in original); [20] (p. 694). It all comes down to a utopia in
which the bvolcanoes of madnessQ will destroy the boldest laws and compactsQ, and
where the dislocated body and universe will finally attain clarity.
Whoever dies for the revolution immediately accedes to a kind of immortality, as
though this heroic death would carry him to bthe bounds of heaven and earth, in an
envisioned history that [is] religious just as much as it [is] politicalQ [21] (p. 450). All those
capable of abandoning themselves to the bintoxicationQ of such a test will cherish forever
the memory of its victims, martyrs whose fame will live forever. . .Among the Iranians,
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 25

declares Foucault, bthere was literally a light that lit up in all of them and bathed all of
them at the same timeQ [22] (p. 219).
In Sun and Steel [8], which he wrote shortly before killing himself in public by cutting
open his belly, Mishima describes his relationship to his body: bwhen it did show itself
unmistakably as a terrifying paradox of existence–as a form of existence that rejected
existence–I was as panic-stricken as though I had come across some monster, and loathed
it accordinglyQ (p. 9).
To overcome the horror of his incarnation, the author undertakes a quest for an
incorruptible bideal bodyQ (p. 9). Mishima starts exercising his muscles—the steel that
becomes the sword for his disembowelment: bI was enveloped in a sense of power as
transparent as lightQ (p. 31). In the bEpilogue—F104Q of his book, he writes about a plane:
bAcute-angled, swift as a god, the F104 was no sooner seen than it had ripped through the
blue sky and vanished. . .How splendidly it ripped the vast blue curtain, swift as a dagger-
stroke! Who would not be that sharp knife of the heavens?Q (p. 94). And also: bThey
seemed to be saying a mass for the soon-to-be-pierced skyQ (p. 95).
These suicides of bheroesQ can constitute the culmination of mute unconscious gnostic
ideas. The horror of incarnation is often allied with an unleashed eroticism that does not
accommodate itself to the limits of the body, or to the difference between the sexes and the
generations other than as ingredients to nourish violence. In the final analysis, it is a matter
of getting rid of the body in order to reach pure light by means of a dissolution of the flesh
in the utmost debauchery and orgiastic sadomasochistic practices (as instanced by madmen
in Christ).
Indeed, James Miller, in the first chapter of The Passion of Michel Foucault [18],
brings out Foucault’s connection not only with death but also with sacrifice and suicide.
(Let us recall that, during his adolescence, he made one or several suicide attempts.)
During his sojourns in San Francisco, the author of The History of Sexuality [23] took,
with full knowledge, every kind of risk. It would seem that perversion, and the sadism that
is intrinsically tied to it, can lead not only to murder–an absolute possession of the object–
but also to suicide—an absolute dissolution of the subject. In the absence of a stable
internalization of the paternal function, the desire to reach the impossible in order to erase
the infantile narcissistic wound and the temptation to satisfy a limitless hubris demands the
sacrifice of the body itself, what Céline calls these bpackages of tripesQ [24] (p. 335), this
iron collar that confines man to an insupportable material finiteness. (I have deliberately
avoided Foucault’s personal history as much as possible. It is, however, worth mentioning
that, according to James Miller, his father was a surgeon.)
It is striking to notice that Foucault, like Mishima and Pasolini, had extremist political
engagements, and that all three had mystical conceptions. Even though, in Foucault, such
ideas appear more subtly, the quotations that I have adduced about the Iranian
bRevolutionQ speak for themselves. Pasolini’s identification with Christ cannot be ignored.
The relations to Buddha and the Master are always present in Mishima, but so is that to
Christ (the mass); before his suicide, he asked a Catholic friend to be the one to behead
him. The title of James Miller’s book, The Passion of Michel Foucault, evinces a similar
identification with Christ in Foucault.
Mishima’s political engagement was fascist. He created the bShield SocietyQ (S.S.) and
wrote a play with the provocative tittle My Friend Hitler [25]. In fact, however, his
26 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27

position mirrors, at numerous points, the stance of those of the extreme Left (the Japanese
Red Army), with one major difference: he wanted to consolidate all power in the hands of
the Emperor.
Mishima describes the seppuku of Isao as follows in Runaway Horses [26]:

Isao drew in a deep breath and shut his eyes as he ran his left hand caressingly over
his stomach. Grasping the knife with his right hand, he pressed its point against his
body, and guided it to the correct place with the fingertips of his left hand. Then,
with a powerful thrust of his arm, he plunged the knife into his stomach. The instant
that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded
behind his eyelids. [26] (p. 421)

It is with this apotheosis–this fusion with the sun (the Emperor of the Land of the
Rising Sun)–that the book concludes.
The Foucaultian body furnishes a particularly striking example of the wish for a
body that is disorganized, without hierarchy, and with perfectly interchangeable parts.
The image of a dismembered body and in pieces, like those of Damiens or the
dissected cat, whose innards are likened to a world, is projected upon society or even
onto the cosmos, so that the frame of the world collapses and the heavens are
disembowelled.
Suicide would thus be the ultimate means of uniting with divine power, of becoming
one with its glory by blowing up the universe.

References

[1] M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (Trans. Alan Sheridan)Pantheon, New York,
1975, (1977).
[2] Y. Mishima, The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea, (Trans. John Nathan)Borzoi Books, New
York, 1965, (1965).
[3] Y. Mishima, Confessions of a Mask, (Trans. Meredith Weatherby)New Directions, New York, 1949, (1958).
[4] T. Williams, Suddenly Last Summer, Secker and Warburg, London, 1958.
[5] D. Fernandez, Dans la main de l’Ange: Roman [In an Angel’s Hand: A Novel], Grasset, Paris, 1982.
[6] Y. Mishima, Eirei no Koe [The Voices of the Heroic Dead], Kawade Shobo Shinsha, Tokyo, 1966.
[7] M. Yourcenar, Mishima: A Vision of the Void, (Trans. Alberto Manguel with Marguerite
Yourcenar)Farrar, Straus, New York, 1980, (1985).
[8] Y. Mishima, Sun and Steel, (Trans. John Bester)Kodansha, Palo Alto, CA, 1968, (1970).
[9] J. Chasseguet-Smirgel, Sexuality and Mind: The Role of the Father and the Mother in the Psyche, New York
University Press, New York, 1986.
[10] J. Lacan, Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan: Livre XVIII. Paris: Seuil. [The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book
XVIII], 1991.
[11] S. Freud, Totem and Taboo, S.E. 13 (1912–1913).
[12] S. Freud, Civilization and its discontents, S.E. 21 (1930)1978.
[13] B. Grunberger, Narcissism: Psychoanalytic Essays, (Trans. Joyce S. Diamanti)International Universities
Press, New York, 1971, (1979).
[14] B. Grunberger, Narcisse et Anubis: Etudes psychanalytiques 1954–1985. Paris: des Femmes. [Narcissus and
Anubis: Psychoanalytic Studies, 1954–1985], 1989.
[15] S. Freud, Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia, S.E. 12 (1911) 9 – 82.
[16] M. Foucault, Sade: sergeant of sex, (trans. John Johnston)James D. Faubion (Ed.), Aesthetics, Method, and
Epistemology, New Press, New York, 1975, pp. 223 – 227 (1998).
 J. Chasseguet-Smirgel / International Congress Series 1286 (2006) 13–27 27

[17] M. Foucault, Le Chef mythique de la Révolte de l’Iran [The Mythical Head of the Iranian Revolt], Foucault,
1978, pp. 713 – 716 (1994).
[18] J. Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, Anchor Books, New York, 1993, (1994).
[19] M. Foucault, in: Daniel Defert, François Ewald, Jacques Lagrange (Eds.), Dits et Écrits: 1954–1988
[Sayings and Writings: 1954–1988]. Vol. 3: 1976–1979, Gallimard, Paris, 1994.
[20] M. Foucault, A Quoi rêvent les Iraniens ? [What are the Iranians Dreaming Of?], Foucault, 1978, pp.
688 – 694 (1994).
[21] M. Foucault, Useless to revolt?, (Trans. Robert Hurley)James D. Faubion (Ed.), Power, New Press, New
York, 1979, pp. 449 – 453 (2000).
[22] M. Foucault, Iran: the spirit of a world without spirit, (Trans. Alan Sheridan et al.)Lawrence D. Kritzman
(Ed.), Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977–1984, Routledge, New York, 1979,
pp. 211 – 224 (1988).
[23] M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, (Trans. Robert Hurley)Pantheon, New
York, 1976, (1978).
[24] L.-F. Céline, Journey to the End of the Night, (Trans. John H.P. Marks)Little, Brown, Boston, 1932, 1934.
[25] Y. Mishima, My friend Hitler, My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Mishima Yukio. Trans. Hiroaki Sato,
Columbia University Press, New York, 1968, 2002.
[26] Y. Mishima, Runaway horses, (Trans. Michael Gallagher)Dramatists Play Service, New York, 1969.