Magnetic Animal: Derrida, Wildlife, Animetaphor

Abstract

In concluding chapter three of Die Traumdeutung, Sigmund Freud offers a final illustration of his thesis, A Dream is the Fulfilment of a Wish. After a series of empirical observations, citations, speculations, and interpretations, Freud confesses abruptly: I do not myself know what animals dream of.l He follows the rare moment of restraint, however, by citing a proverb in the form of a riddle: What do geese dream of? Of Maize.2 dreams of animals, like those of human beings, express desires. Freud closes the paragraph by affirming the force of the parabolic insight: The whole theory that dreams are wish-fulfilments is contained in these two phrases.3 Even animals, it would seem, at least those in proverbs, participate in the logic of dreams. It is thus in the form of an animal proverb that Freud configures the secret of dreams. Freud's recourse to proverb underscores the complex nature of figuring the unconscious in general, and dreams in particular. distance that animal metaphors evoke creates a further layer of complexity. Yet the Freudian logic, as Jacques Derrida has shown at length, often requires such radical detours. Freud frequently turns to metaphors, citations and footnotes as a means of extending the proper body of his thought into areas that resist the conventional paths of representation. However, the specific allusion that Freud makes in defense of his theory of dreams-the dreams of animalsresonates with a crucial aspect of that theory, namely, regression. If, as Freud believes, the origins of dream wishes are revealed in regression, then the recourse to animality here suggests a point of contact