Cutrofello - All for nothing : Hamlets negativity

All For Nothing

Short Circuits

Slavoj iek

The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity,

by Slavoj iek

The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsches Philosophy of the Two,

by Alenka Zupani

Is Oedipus Online? Siting Freud after Freud,

by Jerry Aline Flieger

Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK,

by Alexei Monroe

The Parallax View,

by Slavoj iek

A Voice and Nothing More,

by Mladen Dolar

Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan,

by Lorenzo Chiesa

The Odd One In: On Comedy,

by Alenka Zupani

The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?

by Slavoj iek and John Milbank, edited by Creston Davis

Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology,

by Andr Nusselder

Lacan at the Scene,

by Henry Bond

Laughter: Notes on a Passion,

by Anca Parvulescu

All for Nothing: Hamlets Negativity,

by Andrew Cutrofello

All For Nothing

Hamlet's Negativity

Andrew Cutrofello

The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England

2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

Knock, knock.

Whos there?

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself!

Who are you? asked K., and immediately sat halfway up in bed. But the man ignored the question, as if his presence would have to be accepted, and merely said in turn: You rang?

Franz Kafka, The Trial, trans. Breon Mitchell

Series Foreword

A short circuit occurs when there is a faulty connection in the networkfaulty, of course, from the standpoint of the networks smooth functioning. Is not the shock of short-circuiting, therefore, one of the best metaphors for a critical reading? Is not one of the most effective critical procedures to cross wires that do not usually touch: to take a major classic (text, author, notion) and read it in a short-circuiting way, through the lens of a minor author, text, or conceptual apparatus (minor should be understood here in Deleuzes sense: not of lesser quality, but marginalized, disavowed by the hegemonic ideology, or dealing with a lower, less dignified topic)? If the minor reference is well chosen, such a procedure can lead to insights which completely shatter and undermine our common perceptions. This is what Marx, among others, did with philosophy and religion (short-circuiting philosophical speculation through the lens of political economy, that is to say, economic speculation); this is what Freud and Nietzsche did with morality (short-circuiting the highest ethical notions through the lens of the unconscious libidinal economy). What such a reading achieves is not a simple desublimation, a reduction of the higher intellectual content to its lower economic or libidinal cause; the aim of such an approach is, rather, the inherent decentering of the interpreted text, which brings to light its unthought, its disavowed presuppositions and consequences.

And this is what Short Circuits wants to do, again and again. The underlying premise of the series is that Lacanian psychoanalysis is a privileged instrument of such an approach, whose purpose is to illuminate a standard text or ideological formation, making it readable in a totally new waythe long history of Lacanian interventions in philosophy, religion, the arts (from the visual arts to the cinema, music, and literature), ideology, and politics justifies this premise. This, then, is not a new series of books on psychoanalysis, but a series of connections in the Freudian fieldof short Lacanian interventions in art, philosophy, theology, and ideology. Short Circuits intends to revive a practice of reading which confronts a classic text, author, or notion with its own hidden presuppositions, and thus reveals its disavowed truth. The basic criterion for the texts that will be published is that they effectuate such a theoretical short circuit. After reading a book in this series, the reader should not simply have learned something new: the point is, rather, to make him or her aware of anotherdisturbingside of something he or she knew all the time.

Slavoj iek

Acknowledgments

Figuring out what exactly I had to say about Hamlet took far more time than I expected, and I wouldnt have figured it out without the assistance of many people. Paul Kottman helped me to recognize two false starts for what they were and eventually gave me extensive feedback on a draft of the entire manuscript. He and Philip Lorenz gave me the opportunity to share a draft of my prologue with the members of a seminar at the 2012 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. On top of all this, Paul presented a thoughtful response to a section of Hamlets Melancholy at another conference. In many ways he has been this books guardian angel. Working with Russell Newstadt on his philosophical reconstruction of the history of the concept of negation enabled me to realize that I too was writing a book whose overarching theme was Omnis determinatio est negatio. At one point I looked to Mladen Dolars A Voice and Nothing More for a possible model for organizing my research, so when he offered to include my book in the series he edits with Slavoj iek and Alenka Zupani I immediately felt that this would be a perfect fit. I thank all three of them for their collective imprimatur, Mladen for publishing a Slovenian translation of an earlier version of Hamlets Tarrying in his journal Problemi, Maja Lovrenov for translating that article, and Slavoj for giving me the opportunity to present a version of the books epilogue at a conference on Hegel at Birkbeck in May 2013. Suzanne Gossett offered sage advice early on and was an enthusiastic partner in co-organizing a symposium entitled Shakespeare and the History of Philosophy at the Newberry Library in March 2009. For sponsoring this symposium I thank Carla Zecher, the director of the Newberrys Center for Renaissance Studies; Samuel Attoh, the dean of the Graduate School at Loyola University Chicago; Marcela Gallegos, the Graduate Schools pinch-hitting coordinator for special events; and Nicole Lassahn, who first encouraged us to propose the symposium. Over the years, Eric Byville and Tripthi Pillai have been absolutely delightful interlocutors and interdisciplinary tutors. So has Ned Lukacher, whose Daemonic Figures: Shakespeare and the Question of Conscience helped to launch my own research project. For invaluable comments on drafts of various chapters I thank Jennifer Bates, Anthony Burton, Angela Capodivacca, Shane Ewegen, Kristin Gjesdal, Joshua Kates, Matthew Kelsey, James Knapp, Katherine Cox Knapp, Leonardo Lisi, Paul Livingston, Edward McGushin, Colin McQuillan, James Rutherford, Paula Schwebel, Anita Sherman, and Scott Trudell. Since undertaking this project I have talked with so many people about Hamlet that Im afraid Im unable to remember them all. To anyone I neglect to mention by name I can only offer my apologies, as well as my genuine, if indirect, gratitude. Besides those already mentioned I vividly recall helpful conversations with Thomas Altizer, Chris Anderson, Albert Russell Ascoli, Emiliano Battista, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Andrew Benjamin, Tina Beyene, Peg Birmingham, James Blachowicz, Ian Blecher, Nora Brank, Allan Breedlove, Thomas Bretz, Edward Casey, Cameron Coates, Rosy Colombo, Rebecca Comay, KellyAnn Corcoran, Blake Dutton, Matthias Fritsch, Erik Gardner, Theodore George, Stefano Giacchetti, Avery Goldman, Olga Graham, Craig Greenman, Kristina Grob, Anthony Gudwien, Michael Gutierrez, Andrew Hass, Laura Hengehold, Dominiek Hoens, David Ingram, Arun Iyer, Hanne Jacobs, Patrick Kain, Chin-Tai Kim, Peggy Knapp, Mira Kraft, Maria Kulp, Maggie Labinski, Len Lawlor, Paul Leisen, Julia Reinhard Lupton, John Lysaker, John McCumber, Elissa Marder, Bill Martin, Hugh Miller, Andrew Mitchell, Paul Moser, Jake Nabasny, Catlyn Origitano, Kyoungnam Park, Gail Kern Paster, Adriaan Peperzak, Diane Perpich, Trevor Perri, Sean Petranovich, Iolanda Plescia, Daniel Price, Alexei Procyshyn, Lawrence Rhu, Gabriel Rockhill, Matthew Ross, Brian Schroeder, David Schweickart, Jacqueline Scott, Rebecca Scott, Sally Sedgwick, Ezgi Sertler, Virginia Strain, Richard Strier, Kristi Sweet, Blaine Swen (and every other member of the Improvised Shakespeare Company, with whom Ive enjoyed many stimulating conversations), Annika Thiem, Tzuchien Tho, Daniel Vallaincourt, Pol Vandevelde, Victoria Wike, Heather Wilcox, Cynthia Willett, Shannon Winnubst, Michael Witmore, and Rachel Zuckert. I thank Simon Critchley, Jamieson Webster, and their editor Josefine Kals for sending me an advance copy of