The Symptomatic Narrative in Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth

Abstract

In this article I read Robbe-Grillet’s narrative in the novel In the Labyrinth as symptomatic in a Lacanian sense. The chronology in this labyrinthine novel functions according to the Lacanian scheme of "the return of the repressed from the future" (see Lacan's first seminar). Robbe-Grillet uses the labyrinth as mise-en-abîme, where competing narrators seem to lose the Ariadnic thread of apparently the same story only to recuperate it, not for resolution, but for further confusion. This technique conforms to Robbe-Grillet's philosophy of the novel and with his attempt to break the habits of the realist and psychological novel and deny the reader comfortable forms of identification. Foucault's reflections on the paradoxical dynamics at the center of the labyrinth are also useful in the reading of Robbe-Grillet’s novel. In baroque style, Robbe-Grillet revives photographs and paintings and, throughout the novel, entertains ambiguities about his protagonist and his story.