Freud/Derrida as Fort/Da and the Repetitive Eponym

Abstract

knowledged or unacknowledged by him). Fort/da appears afortiori because it recalls the scene of its proper (propre) description which is the repetitive oscillation of fort/da as something Freud does himself with himself: sending away and recalling the pleasure principle, establishing the economy of his science in and through the simultaneous institution of autobiography. Derrida claims that Freud does not recount to us an autobiography, rather he gives us autobiography as such.' He does not tell us his life-story nor does he perform a self-analysis. Instead he institutes the science of his proper name in the general function of autobiography. The former and the science of psychoanalysis meet in Freud's supplemental graphique which moves according to the repetitive fort/da. The posthumous undertones expressed in Freud's attempt or compulsion to establish himself as self-originating institutor and institution are not directed towards what might be construed as Freud's effort to institute himself as a mere nominal eponym. Derrida's reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle dramatizes a far more authoritarian impulse at work in Freud's writing (p. 379).2 Derrida's, or rather, Freud's (or both) species of eponym forms a binding contract with what is properly Freud's and with what Freud has appropriated-and this entails expropriation-in the repetitive performance of fort/da. As the mobile feature of Freud's writing; fort/da is appropriation because writing is a means to appropriation. The name Freud is more than a symbolic debt and/or payment Freud acknowledges-and does not acknowledge-with regard to his predecessors. As a payment (and as the avoidance of his debt, a breach of contract) Freud exhibits a compulsion to