Fort-Da

According to Freud, the game of Fort-Da played by his grandson was aimed at
coming to terms with the absence of his mother by achieving mastery or agency
over it. He does this through the invention of symbolism, using the reel in order
to represent her. Lacan’s interpretation of the game, whilst conceding that it
does indeed attempt to achieve mastery, subordinates this function to what he
regards as its main achievement, which is the entry into language and hence
self-constitution of the subject, since “the signifier is the first mark of the
subject.” The subject constitutes itself in opposition to the reel being thrown
away - the object. Rather than being a mere embodiment of his mother, the
object, according to Lacan, is in fact part of the subject that detaches itself from
him while still remaining his. The object symbolizes the lack on the part of the
subject, and will come to be called the objet petit a by Lacan. It is the existence
of this lack that gives rise to language. As well as ensuring mastery, then, the
game of Fort-Da aims, by creating the symbolic object as other, to ensure lack or
desire for the other (Aiming alternately at the Da of the Fort and the Fort of the
Da).

Suicide by Fort da

And yet the question remains, as posed earlier in this chapter, as to precisely
how we are to account for the connection between grief and death, given its
apparent scientific implausibility. For Freud, the connection between death,
melancholia and loss can be summarized thus: the loss of a love object leads to
its internalization in the ego, leading to what Freud describes as a destructive
loyalty by identification. The subject’s feelings towards the lost object of love
are ambivalent, a mixture of desire and resentment at being abandoned. The
combination of ambivalence and internalization cause the ego to take revenge
on the lost object by attacking itself. The workings of the melancholic ego, then,
amount to an essentially masochistic self-destruction. I would submit that
Grisostomo’s death follows just this model. Having been inevitably rejected by
Marcela, Grisostomo, professing his undying love but also his resentment of her
cruelty, absents himself to write the poem that takes revenge with his subjective
representation of her to the detriment of her good name, but ultimately brings
about his own death.

However, there is more to Grisostomo’s death than just grief, for although no
specific act of suicide is mentioned, it is very much intentional. Given that
Grisosotomo’s death occurs, as we have just seen, immediately following his
game of Fort-Da, the act of its self-constitution, it would seem that his case
suggests pa paradoxical relationship between the subject’s self-constitution and
self- destruction. The game of Fort-Da itself turns out to be the act of suicide.
In order to explain this paradox, let us consider the pleasure in unpleasure, in
Lacanian terms, jouissance, that connects the game to death. Jouissance,
according to Lacan, is “the path towards death”, that which inspires the subject
to transgress the pleasure principle, to the point where pleasure becomes pain
(towards The Thing or lost object)

-According to Lacan, the Fort-Da game’s making absent of the objet petit a
deliberately repeats the Spaltung (note a similar association between splitting ad
the loss of the love object as Freud posits in his theory of melancholia) It is a
deliberate, therefore masochistic repetition of the unpleasurable loss. In the
disappearance of the object, a perverse gratification unconsciously obtained, one
that runs counter to the most fundamental prohibitions. Grisostomo’s perversely
deliberate conjuring of jealousy and suspicion by his self-enforced absence would
certainly seem to correspond wIth this seems that

- As a manifestly unattainable object of desire, Marcela is a pure embodiment of

the objet petit a, the object cause, who serves as he mother-substitute in the
Fort-Da game. Following Lacan, desire for her would substitute for desire for the
Thing or lost object, that is union with the Mother, by the inverted Ladder of the
Law of desire. Jouissance with the mother, the lost object of desire, is
“forbidden to him who speaks as such” – upon entry into language, thus the
game of Fort-Da should, in theory, entail a renunciation of jouissance with the
mother, the lost object, that is substituted by the objet petit a.

- Grissostomo’s game of mastery turns out to be simultaneously a declaration of

submission

In a paradoxical reversal,or, alternatively, a progression to its furthest extreme,

the of the Fort-Da, the game of deathly repetition by which the subject
constitutes itself, turns out to be the act of suicide. The perverse, forbidden
gratification or jouissance obtained from the vengeful absenting of Marcela, the
objet petit a, is carried to its absolute limit, the path towards death followed to
its final destination, “the final destination of those who follow the path that
heedless love places in front of them.“ The objet petit a, Marcela, who
substitutes for the lost object upon its renunciation (following the inverted
ladder), is in fact the instrument by which the pleasure principle is transgressed
and, in death, the ultimate jouissance with the lost object or Thing is achieved.
This paradox is emphasized by the fact that this death is consummated in the
act of writing. Entry into language, as Lacan explains, entails a renunciation of
jouissance, yet Grisostomo’s act of writing is precisely his means to jouissance, a
linguistic suicide.

The self-destruction of the subject by its self-constitution, the reversal of the

entry into language by the play of Fort-Da – such are the contradictions implied
by being