Jeanne de Marie-Hélène Lafon: origines et perversion

The work of the contemporary novelist and short-story writer Marie-Hélène Lafon, in which the question of origins occupies a prominent place, can be seen as fertile ground for a psychoanalytical reading. In the short story 'Jeanne' (2002), of which the present study constitutes the first in-depth analysis, the place held by the title character in the familial structure reveals itself to be decisive. The relations which Jeanne has with others are all marked by the weakness of her paternal figure, and Jeanne's story can be seen to be an unconscious appeal to the maker of the law, a quest that culminates in a perversion, specifically, fetishism. This failure of the 'name-of-the-father' establishes an unconscious structure in which the subject, unable to find a way out of the Oedipal triangle, identifies with her lack, consoling herself in a perverse 'jouissance' and consequently never managing to break free of her origins and come into her own as a desiring subject. This study of 'Jeanne' takes into account Freud's, and especially Lacan's, theories pertaining to fetishism. The latter, in conceiving of perversion as an appeal to the paternal function, puts the reader in a position to see in perversion not some kind of moral failing, but rather a psychological structure obeying an 'other' logic, that of the signifier.