The Dialectics of the Abyss

Abstract

This paper suggests a Lacanian reading of Melville’s novel Pierre; or The Ambiguities. It focuses on the question of will; on the one hand the excessive will confronted with the incomprehensibility of the Other and its incarnation in the real other, and on the other with its reverse side, i.e., “the will that wants nothing.” The author links these problems with Rancière’s “aesthetic regime of art” and the possibility of the political or the revolutionary will.