Cause for Alarm: How, in becoming-spy, holes develop in the hero’s Symbolic order
Emma Grundy Haigh
Beyond its outward appeal to propaganda and social paranoia, spy fiction provides a useful tool for investigating the nature of the individual subject and its relation to the concepts fundamental to Lacanian psychoanalysis. In turn, psychoanalysis offers significant insights into some of the messages that infiltrate spy fiction. In the Lacanian tradition, the subject suffering a radical split by the unconscious is central to the human condition. Lacan expands upon Freud’s Spaltung, the concept of the divided self, to explain the inherent fragmentation of the subject; he outlines the different planes which make up the subject’s reality by redefining the terms commonly used to denote them, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. These orders, or ‘registers’, can be used to investigate the development of the figure of the spy within espionage thrillers – the process of alienation and uncertainty he faces as he transforms from a despicable threat to the ultimate hero.
In this essay, I offer a close reading of three heroes of the early spy genre, how they enter the spy world and what that entry means in terms of their interaction with the Lacanian conception of the Symbolic order. Erskine Childers’s Davies and Carruthers (The Riddle of the Sands, 1903), John Buchan’s Richard Hannay (the Richard Hannay series, 1914–1921) and Max Brand’s Willie Gloster (Cause for Alarm, 1938) respectively exemplify three of the ways that the ‘hero’ is permitted entry into the dark and scandalous world of espionage. In Davies and Carruthers, we find accidental spies, who stumble upon a plot against Britain that must be thwarted. In Richard Hannay, we find the gentleman spy, whose social position places him at the centre of an intrigue. In Gloster, we find the counter-spy, who must infiltrate the other side and work for them against his country’s allies. The temporary, urgent nature of these three stages allows the hero entry into the world of espionage; yet that sense of transience and urgency simultaneously forces the heroes to confront their own sense of permanence, their alienation from themselves and the un-reality of reality that the Symbolic order otherwise provides. As each enters the spy world, a small tear develops in the fabric of the spy-hero’s Symbolic order.
The vel of alienation
Alienation is a process that takes place at certain times in a subject’s existence, rather than a permanent state. Lacan develops his theory of alienation beginning in his 1936/1949 article on the mirror stage, from which spring his theories of the Symbolic order.[i]
In the pre-mirror stage, the subject is unaware of itself as anything but unified with all it comes into contact with, part of everything; that is, the subject experiences a sense of ‘oneness’ without understanding that ‘one’ is singular. The mirror stage produces a ‘vision of harmony of a subject essentially in discord’.[ii] The mirror stage is experienced ‘as if’ the subject has gazed into a mirror and, observing its reflection, for the first time recognises that it is a whole, separate, unique being, unattached from all others (i.e. ‘one’ in the singular sense). At the moment of this discovery, the subject becomes gleefully aware that it is its own self, a single, unified whole; simultaneously, it is struck by the horrifying realisation that it is completely separate from others, and for ever unable to unite with others. In part, the horror of this situation is constructed around the subject’s sudden confrontation with its own lack: its ‘unattachedness’ presents itself as a lack of unity with others, as estranged from the identifiable.
A sense of ‘either/or’ prevails, in which the subject can either accept itself as whole, separate but ultimately alienated from others, or refuse and become alienated from itself. This is because, in an attempt to make sense of this paradoxical state of subjective alienation, the subject nonetheless seeks to identify itself via the other and the desires of the other; to the extent that the subject is ‘caused’ by the other’s desires (which can be thought of in as simple terms as the subject’s parents’ motivations for procreating), the subject attempts to fathom those desires and fix its own identity within them. In order to do so, the subject must cause itself to essentially disappear from the equation: ‘in [the subject’s] confrontation with the Other, the subject immediately drops out of the picture. While alienation is the necessary “first step” in acceding to subjectivity, this step involves choosing “one’s own” disappearance’.[iii] The ‘choice’ is an illusion, of course; ‘self’ preservation dictates that the subject must disappear in order to accede to subjectivity.
According to Lacan, the subject relies on the other to fill the gaps, to replace the ‘thing’ that disappears (i.e. wholeness, oneness), what Lacan calls the ‘objet a’ that disappears the instant the subject originally splits in the mirror stage. This missing thing both manifests in an object of some kind and creates a lack by its absence. This object/lack produces important effects in both the Imaginary and Symbolic orders (which are themselves part of the Real), and is impossible to attain or access in any direct way in either the Imaginary or the Symbolic. Briefly, the Imaginary relates to the ‘imagined self’, i.e. the image of the self created by the projection of ideas onto the subject by the subject itself. It is structured by the Symbolic, the realm of language and the social and cultural networks that structure reality; it is where ideas and objects, i.e. signifiers, acquire meaning, in association with other ideas and objects. The Real is ‘the domain of whatever subsists outside symbolisation’[iv]; that is, it relates that which is beyond the Symbolic, relating to the material ‘signifieds’ that underlie the Imaginary and Symbolic and the drive to make sense of things.[v]
Within this triad, it is the Symbolic that is both salve for the subject against its own divided self and the realm in which the subject is whole but not alienated, separate but not dominated by the other. The Symbolic is as much the locus of the self as it is the realm of radical alterity, in which the subject’s desires are regulated by the desires of others.[vi]
Once upon a time…
On a wider scale, the Symbolic order is thus what governs the unspoken rules of society, extending beyond personal behaviour, state law or cultural ideology. The Symbolic order prompts us to behave and converse in ways that are expected of us; it changes with the shifting mores of society, serving as a constant gauge against which we measure ourselves. In this respect, the Symbolic order presents us with an unidentifiable authority, a ‘big Other’ or rule of Law that designates radical alterity. The big Other is to a certain extent equivalent to the Symbolic insofar as it exists only if the subjects operating within it behave as though it exists. For the Symbolic order is neither solid nor indestructible. It offers us a horizon of meaning that allows us to identify anything that threatens our perception of the world; but in revealing these threats it also reveals its own fragility, its own intangibility. Thus, the Symbolic order is where the subject acquires language, learns about itself (via others) and conceives its subjective infrastructure of belief that allows it to function within the world it lives.
When the spy genre began to take shape in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the ‘true spy’ was always cast as the despicable corruptor of the moral fabric of society. In the spy novels of the middle Cold War, the spy evolved into the ultimate hero, the only person that stands between us and those who wish to destroy us. Needless to say, this shift in status goes beyond a simple moral slide from Bad to Good. The transition of the figure of the spy from an adversarial role into that of hero occurs over a period of enormous flux and change in Britain and Europe. Both in real life and in fiction, the suggestion of the presence of spies marks a fundamental disruption of the way things should be. That is, spies and the need for spying, whether between nations or corporations, contradict our usual assumptions that our world is secure and just, our borders protected and that we are scaffolded by allies. Rather, spies are specifically defined in respect to other subjects, and are made fundamentally other by the fact that they, unlike most subjects, are indicative of social/internal imbalance, geopolitical instability and a level of uncertainty teetering towards paranoia regarding those that surround us.[vii]
At the turn of the twentieth century, true spies were seen to symbolise a dangerous otherness; this in turn made the spy world ‘an unsavoury arena in which to develop fictional heroes’.[viii] This dangerous otherness was developed in fiction as representative of differences in class, occupation or nationality, between the spy and the hero. Because the spy’s services are traditionally bought, rather than fulfilled out of moral or patriotic duty alone, early depictions of their actions show them as always cold, premeditated and deliberate, and thus dishonourable and contemptible. Furthermore, because of perceptions of national propriety and valour, the spy’s services were additionally portrayed as being only at the behest of a foreign government. Thus, spying in the early entries to the genre is regarded as an activity that is done to Britain, and occasionally her allies, but categorically not something that Britons engaged in themselves. However, as Britain and Europe found themselves on the precipice of the First World War, spying was grudgingly acknowledged as necessary to secure Britain’s shores. Nonetheless, spies were still considered deeply suspicious; Nathan Hale’s maxim that ‘Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honourable by being necessary’ was never quite accepted.[ix]
Indeed, well into the twentieth century, in spite of being faced with evidence of the need for espionage, it was largely agreed that ‘gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail’.[x] The spy, was still too dangerous, too other, to be ‘one of us’. This attitude helps to explain why the original heroes of spy novels were innocent bystanders thrust into events, or gentlemen at a loose end who happen upon the nefarious plans of an as-yet undetected enemy organisation. The hero must act in order to ‘save’ his world/country/life, even if it means engaging in espionage. Failure to do so ultimately means knowingly sacrificing everything he values to the enemy. Thus the hero is effectively forced into the role of the spy, and in part defined by all the negative connotations associated with spies.
Because of this paradox set by the conflict between propriety and patriotism, allowing the hero to enter the spy world marks a somewhat uneasy shift. Borne within the transition from enemy of the state to national hero, there is also a shift in the emphasis on how we regard the spy. In order to accept the hero as spy (and indeed, the spy as hero), we must become less interested in who is spying (i.e. usually a traitor or an invader) and more concerned with the structure of the spy’s identity (i.e. their subjective selves). For the heroes of early spy novels, this shift is still more keenly felt. They are forced to confront their own prejudices against the ‘type of man’ who spies, even as they are forced to confront the need to spy.
The Accidental Spy (or the man who must, for his country)
One of the first heroes to emerge in the spy genre comes into espionage quite by chance. This hero initially has no intentions to spy; rather, he is thrown into his role by circumstance, by suddenly coming into possession of knowledge of a threat to national security. His conscience cannot allow him to ignore the situation, or hope that someone else will come along to solve the problem for him. In fact, the accidental spy often finds himself cut off from or unable to reach those who might be in a position to rectify the situation, and so he must act largely alone. This is the situation Davies, hero of The Riddle of the Sands (Childers, 1903),[xi] finds himself in while yachting in the Balkans, when he stumbles upon what looks like a German plot to invade Britain. Far from the British Admiralty, and lacking tangible proof, Davies is isolated. However, the burden of his knowledge also places him in danger from those who do not want him to know. He is nearly capsized by fellow yachter Dollmann, who he thinks is a German agent and who he fears suspects he knows too much.
The Riddle of the Sands illustrates the struggle of the subject to maintain the illusion of the Symbolic order in the face of that which threatens it, beginning with Davies straining to be believed and then to act. Davies must take action to ensure that what he does know, or at least suspects, will be safely conveyed to British authorities, without the Germans getting to him first. In spite of his conviction of German misconduct, he is loath to create any embarrassment or hostilities between nations, should he be mistaken. To this end he invites his friend Carruthers, the narrator and a junior officer in the Foreign Office, to join him. Initially unaware of his intended role, Carruthers provides Davies with a cover story (they are duck-hunting tourists) and, most importantly, he acts both as moral compass and validates his beliefs/actions. However, rather than fortify Davies’s claims against Dollmann and the Germans, the addition of Carruthers at first further fractures the situation. To his dismay, Davies’s conviction that the Germans are involved in some sinister undertaking is met with scepticism from Carruthers. Carruthers doubts the true nature of the Germans’ activities, making it appear as though he is acting in their defence. For Davies, Carruthers’s lack of support divides them as countrymen – the one area in which they should be solidly united. This unexpected rejection from Carruthers causes a temporary fissure in Davies’s conviction, leading him to doubt himself.
However, for Carruthers, Davies’s evidence is little more than conjecture and coincidence. When Carruthers demands Davies define what it is he suspects Dollmann and the Germans of doing, Davies is hesitant to actually name the activity: ‘I don’t think “spy” is the right word [to describe Dollmann]; but I mean something pretty bad’ (94).
Davies deduces that, if they are to confirm his suspicions about the Germans’ activities, they themselves must spy on Dollmann. Unconvinced at first, after witnessing the suspicious behaviour of Dollmann and his crew first hand, Carruthers eventually concedes that they have some need for conducting a bit of ‘independent research’ (215). Finally, in the thick of a fog, they break onto the site of German activity and Davies’s suspicions are confirmed: the coastal site is headquarters to a group of agents planning an invasion of Britain. Yet before they can escape and warn the British Admiralty, Davies makes a shocking discovery: Dollmann is English, an ex-Navy hero and a fellow countryman.
This discovery temporarily shatters the illusion of Davies and Carruthers’s Symbolic order, in which Dollman’s nationality should make him, unshakably, an ally, bound to them by Britain and by a shared Britishness. Instead, Dollmann is revealed to be the other-that-knows: ‘the Real subject of knowing’.[xii] His betrayal becomes a reflection of their own activities: just as he has turned spy against the British, they have turned spy against a fellow countryman. This double-sided betrayal forces them to confront the Real, in which the objective truth of their situation is painfully pressed upon them.[xiii] Interestingly, Davies and Carruthers have starkly different reactions to this confrontation. For Davies, Dollmann’s true identity pushes him more definitively into the realm of the other; if Dollmann is working for the Germans, he can no longer be considered British, and thus spying against him is validated. In the spirit of Nathan Hale, Davies asserts, ‘the man is an Englishman, and if he’s in Germany he’s a traitor to us, and we as Englishmen have a right to expose him. If we can’t do it without spying we’ve a right to spy, at our own risk’ (108).
Carruthers, however, becomes fixated on the idea of Dollmann as the person he had previously claimed to be. The images of Dollmann as the German gentleman and as British merge, leaving Carruthers unable to disentangle one version of Dollmann from the other and incapable of believing that he could have taken up such a ‘dirty business’. It is only by recognising that ‘if [Dollmann] were not such an agent, the whole theory fell to the ground’ (112), which would mean Carruthers would be made irrevocably othered by his own spy activities, that he is able to accept Dollmann as he really is: an Englishman and a traitor. In this way, Carruthers is able to reinstate the Symbolic order and begin to work to defend it.
However, even now bolstered, Davies and Carruthers are momentarily unanchored once more when they finally corner Dollmann with the accusation he is a traitor to his country. Far from declaring his allegiance to Germany or begging forgiveness, Dollmann furiously declares he is working for the English, as a double agent. Davies and Carruthers, he claims, are on the brink of ruining years of meticulous planning (313).
This would appear to be yet another, perhaps more damaging rent in the fragile fabric of the Symbolic order, which could cause Davies and Carruthers to regress to a state in which ‘the desire of the other’ overwhelms their own subjectivity. Davies and Carruthers have no way of confirming Dollmann’s story, and only Dollmann’s word for it. Moreover, as Carruthers admits, the only successful spy is one that leaves no trace, so the likelihood of finding evidence that might verify his claim is slim. Still, they decide the only way to prove Dollmann’s protests is to take him back to England. To not act could have dire consequences, while, under the reassuring authority of the Admiralty, they would either be shown to have fulfilled their duty by bringing back a traitor or, at worst, reprimanded for being too diligent.
However, this confrontation has brought another face-to-face with the Real. Unable to reconcile himself with his own desires, with no shore in sight, Dollmann jumps overboard. Dollmann’s refusal to speak of what he had done, to those who could confirm it, exemplifies the tenuous stability of the Symbolic. For Dollmann, the threat of the big Other, as represented by the Admiralty (i.e. the other who knows[xiv]), would have revealed an objective truth about his own delusions. In killing himself, Dollmann secures his silence and denies Davies and Carruthers access to a third party that would provide an interface between them as separate subjects (symbolisation, language, the law and the Other). However, killing himself becomes irrefutable proof of his guilt, and thus he also steadies and verifies the illusion of their place within the Symbolic order, as well as the superiority of British authority.
The Gentleman Spy, or the man who knew too much
The gentleman spy allowed the temporary adoption of the spy’s characteristics in order to defeat the adversarial spy by playing him at his own game. Retaining his amateur status is one way the early twentieth-century spy-hero was able to ‘overc[o]me the traditional image of the spy as traitor and seducer’.[xv] Like the accidental spy, the gentleman spy, such as Richard Hannay of The Thirty-nine Steps (Buchan, 1914),[xvi] is an individual caught up in events. However, rather than happening upon knowledge, he is presented with his knowledge by a third party and makes the decision to act on this knowledge. One of the best examples of this comes in The Thirty-nine Steps. Hannay is entrusted with the knowledge of an anarchist plot set to destabilise Europe by Franklin P. Scudder, a journalist who uncovered the plot, and is now being hunted by the anarchists. Due to careful planning on the anarchists’ part, Scudder has to wait three weeks before he can act on his knowledge, but is killed before he can see his plan to foil the plot through: ‘The men who knew that he knew what he knew had found him, and had taken the best way to make certain of his silence’ (21).
As a gentleman spy, Hannay is bound by the law of his society (that is, the socio-Symbolic order) and is driven to uphold it at all costs. Hannay knows that the enemies of Scudder are the enemies of their shared Symbolic order (i.e. the West). He also knows that ‘[Scudder’s] enemies must reckon that he had confided in me. So I would be the next to go’ (21). Rather than risk Scudder’s work, Hannay decides to leave London and spend the next twenty days hiding in Scotland working out who might be able to help him and how they might be approached. Given his deep conviction in the Symbolic order, the transitory nature of his involvement in espionage activity allows him to form temporary alliances, with those who also share his conviction, as needed. Though on the run from police (who think he murdered Scudder) and enemy alike, Hannay is able to act without having to rely on an official infrastructure to back him up, because he knows that the big Other of British authority will support his actions as soon as he can make them known.
In striving to eradicate the stain that threatens the security of the Symbolic order, Hannay demonstrates how easily the Symbolic order could collapse without its constant maintenance. Thus, for the spy-hero, unlike other adventure heroes, the outcome is greater than the protection of a single object or person. His ability to rise to the occasion is vital to the security of everything he holds to be true. In this respect, these novels enforce the value of the socio-Symbolic order and the ordinary subject’s submission to it. Through the establishment of this, any crisis the subject faces in the Symbolic order is immediately resolved. However, this reality is made problematic by virtue of the fact that it (the Symbolic order) is essentially a fiction. The Symbolic is the entire framework of the subject’s belief; yet the Symbolic only functions insofar as the subject believes in it and his/her activities sustain it.
Hannay actively upholds the Symbolic order by being constantly on the move, evading his pursuers by racing from one hideout to another, through one disguise after another. After finagling another escape, Hannay trades places with a Scottish road worker and winds up leaving Scudder’s notebook with him, as he embarks on a harrowing chase from both the anarchists and the police. He fakes his way out of the anarchists’ clutches by posing first as the road worker and then as an English tramp; he plays highwayman with one of his set from London (a chance encounter if there ever was one); and is taken for a ‘repentant burglar’ by an ‘old wife’ who gives him some food and a plaid. In between, he sleeps rough overnight, exposed to the elements, and is forced to hide in full view of the sun at its peak.
As Hannay goes, the people who take him in allow him to begin to articulate his story. First as a tall tale, to an innkeeper, then the full truth to a parliamentary candidate whose local meeting he rescues. His increasing ability to speak of the anarchist plot is a reflection of his increasing assurance in the Symbolic order. When forced to be silent, Hannay’s ‘reality’ gets flipped upside-down; it is recognisable but awful[xvii]. As a speaking subject, he is able to ‘affirm the legitimacy of empire and its power structures’.[xviii] Ultimately, Hannay is able to reassert the dominance of his Symbolic order by naming the anarchists as spies and forcing them into the dialect of espionage. In forcing them into the dialect of espionage, Hannay illustrates one of the fundamental precepts of the Symbolic order. The Symbolic register is simultaneously structured and accessed via speech. The subject cannot reach his object except through language; thus, by insisting that the anarchists recognise themselves as the signifier Anarchist, Hannay is able to ascend into language. The signifier both constitutes the subject-other (i.e. anarchist) and delineates him, forcing his disguises to drop and his deception to fail.
The Counterspy, the man who encounters the Real
The counterspy comes as a bridge between the gentleman spy and the professional spy. The gentleman spy, as noted, is led into his position due to the bestowal of knowledge, upon which he must act. The professional agent is a professional, working for crown and country, trained by a government agency to protect the Law. The counterspy, on the other hand, spies because others have spied, he works against enemy espionage. One of the best examples of this can be seen in The Phantom Spy by Max Brand (1938). It is also an excellent illustration of the fragility of the Symbolic order, when faced with an impossible other.
For Lacan, the sense of lack experienced by the subject at the instant of the original split in the mirror stage translates into a reliance on the other to fill the gaps, to replace the ‘thing’ that disappears (i.e. wholeness, oneness). As noted above, Lacan calls this ‘thing’ the objet a.[xix] At those times in which the Symbolic order is threatened, or the subject faces a confrontation by the return of the Real, the objet a manifests itself in the real absence of an object of some kind. In this way, the objet a serves at once to fill in gaps in the Symbolic order and to fill the place of the Real.
In The Phantom Spy, the objet a takes shape as the plans for the Maginot Line, France’s defensive fortifications. Set in Europe in the same year that it was written (1938), the narrative heaves under the looming threat of Hitler’s growing power in Germany. However, rather than Hitler, the real threat is an international faction of warmongers. Frustrated with what this cabal see as Hitler’s hesitancy to invade France right away, they steal the plans for the Maginot Line with the intention of presenting them to Hitler so Germany can attack France’s weakest points.
The British Secret Service turns to Lady Cecil de Waters to secure the return of the plans. Initially it appears as if Cecil is just another gentleman spy (albeit female and entrusted, via the special circumstances of impending war, by the government). She is able to form quick alliances with people who share her interests in maintaining Britain’s security and independence, namely her part-time American lover, Willie Gloster, and Jules Caillard, a Frenchman claiming to be Monsieur Jacquelin, the infamous superspy. As counterspy, the official infrastructure of the British authorities has an idea that Gloster is working for them, even if he hasn’t been officially recognised the way Lady Cecil has. Gloster and Cecil and the cabal of warmongers steal the plans back and forth from each other, and in the process Gloster and Cecil uncover who is pulling the strings behind the scenes, using double- and triple-crosses, impersonation and infiltration, and violent reprisals.
Unbeknownst to Cecil, Gloster decides to infiltrate the Russian contingent by disguising himself as a Russian agent. As noted above, the human subject is always looking for something to fill the gaps at its core.[xx] But because the lack is inherent to the human condition, the illusion that the gap can and has been filled is fragile and easily threatened; it thus has significant negative consequences. The illusion promises satisfaction, but only in return for the sacrifice of individual ego demands. Submission to ‘the desires of the other’ is accompanied by an enormous sacrifice of the self. Gloster’s infiltration now takes on a double meaning: in order to infiltrate successfully, he must sacrifice himself to the desires and ideology of the Russians, yet in doing so, he simultaneously threatens the Symbolic order he seeks to protect and the Symbolic order of those he seeks to vanquish. Gloster, then, now occupies both the threatened subject and the threatening signifier.
In order to fully infiltrate the adverse party, Gloster substitutes himself for Gregor Raskoi, a drunken, loud-mouthed, debauched Russian agent who few people have ever seen but, due to his predilection for killing, many people fear and despise. Adopting the mannerisms and low ‘peasant’ Russian of Raskoi, Gloster becomes unrecognisable. His own self undergoes a degree of aphanisis, becoming gradually eclipsed by the image of Raskoi as conceived by the Russians. Gloster-as-Raskoi here must reign supreme over Gloster-himself; Gloster-himself thus becomes barred by the Russians’ vision of Raskoi. Gloster-himself must divide to allow Gloster-as-Raskoi to exist.
It is in embracing Raskoi so fully that Gloster initiates what will become a recurrent source of conflict and crisis for future spy-heroes. In spite of allowing himself to become eclipsed by Gloster-as-Raskoi, Gloster must simultaneously maintain some part of Gloster-himself. However, complicating this situation still further is the fact that Gloster is also the real Monsieur Jacquelin, and to a certain extent, Gloster-as-Jacquelin must eclipse both the other two selves. In conceiving of himself in a triumvirate of such disparate identities, in dividing himself so assuredly, Gloster becomes other to all (to the Russians, to the British, to the real Raskoi, etc.) and other to no one. However, in doing so, he becomes radically alienated from himself. In becoming Gloster-as-Raskoi as well as Gloster-as-Jacquelin, he discovers that the other itself is not whole; there is no other of the other, no guarantee of the absolute, objective truth.
For Lacan, what we conceive of as truth resides in the desire of the subject, which is in turn ‘the desire of the other’. As the ultimate counterspy, Gloster represents truth and is at the same time the locus of truth but only insofar as Gloster constitutes the subject’s (into which position we can situate as British authority, or even to a more primordial extent, his own impersonator, Jules Caillard) desire for the impossible object. The truth we demand of the other is always relative to the desires of the subject seeking completion who asks for it.[xxi]
Consider the disunity of Gloster. The deliberate fragmentation of his selves means that he can never be whole while operating under any of his disguises; yet, it also renders reunification all the more difficult. When it is revealed that Gloster is Monsieur Jacquelin, only Cecil, herself othered by her gender, understands the full extent of his deception. Gloster as Gloster-himself is not the object of desire, but an imago that structures that desire; Gloster-as-Jacquelin is an impossible other. He remains a divided subject, unable to fulfil the completion, or unity; by ‘choosing’ to disappear in the desires of the other, by embracing his own aphanisis, Gloster embraces the illusion of the Symbolic order and so reveals the fallacy of unity as a fantasy of the subject.
And they lived (happily ever after?)
Spy fiction is particularly wrapped up in one of the primary preoccupations of the twentieth century: the increasing unknowability of the subject. Many current scholars argue that early spy fiction attempted to restore national unity via the spy’s control of disguise. However, the key to disguises is to make oneself appear as though one had never been anywhere else but in one’s current surroundings: to disappear into the illusion of the Symbolic order that disguise represents so as to appear not to be wearing one at all: ‘If you are playing a part, you will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are it.’[xxii] In spy fiction, disguise becomes a manifestation of the subject’s self-deception, delusion and insecurity; and when it is broken, disguise threatens the collapse of the Symbolic order that the spy both seeks to protect and inevitably threatens. The genre’s use of disguise and doubled-subjectivity makes it an indispensible resource through which to examine questions of identity, in particular the increasing fragmentation of Lacan’s unindividuated subject who is ‘slowly going to pieces’.[xxiii]
Bibliography
Cawelti, John, Rosenberg, Bruce. Spy Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Childers, Erskine. Riddle of the Sands (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978).
Brand, Max. The Phantom Spy (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1965).
Buchan, John. The Thirty-nine Steps (London: Pan Books, 1954).
Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. (London: Routledge, 1996)
Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Fleming, Ian. You Only Live Twice (London: Pan Books, 1967).
Hepburn, Allan. Intrigue: Espionage and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
Hilfer, Tony. The Crime Novel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
Isaacson, Walter, Evan Thomas. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. (New York: Touchstone, 1986).
Lacan, Jacques. Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2006).
-------The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud's Papers on Technique, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1991).
Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie. Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Oxford: University of Illinois Press, 1896).
Stafford, David. The Silent Game: The Real World of Imaginary Spies (London: Viking, 1989).
Woods, Brett F. Neutral Ground: A Political History of Espionage Fiction (New York: Algora Publishing, 2007).
------- ‘Revolution and Literature: Cooper’s The Spy Revisited’. Early American Review. Winter/Spring 2003. Available online:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2003_winter_spring/coopers_spy.htm
Notes
[i] Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, Écrits: A Selection, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W W Norton & Company, 2006).
[ii] Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Oxford: University of Illinois Press, 1986), p.27.
[iii] Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.50.
[iv] Ibid., p.388.
[v] Jacques Lacan, Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W W Norton & Company, 2007), pp.195–96, 286, 296, 319–20.
[vi] See Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1996); Fink, pp.50–51.
[vii] See David Stafford, The Silent Game: The Real World of Imaginary Spies (London: Viking, 1989). John Cawelti & Bruce Rosenberg, Spy Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Brett F. Woods, Neutral Ground: A Political History of Espionage Fiction (New York: Algora Publishing, 2007).
[viii] Brett F. Woods, ‘Revolution and Literature: Cooper's The Spy Revisited’, Early American Review, Winter/Spring 2003, available online: http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2003_winter_spring/coopers_spy.htm [accessed: 20 April 2011].
[ix] Nathan Hale, September 1775, quoted in Woods (2003).
[x] Attributed to former US Secretary of War Henry L Stimson, see Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Touchstone, 1986).
[xi] Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978 [1903]). Hereafter, references will be given in the main body of the text.
[xii] Ragland-Sullivan, p.49, italics original.
[xiii] Ibid., p.191.
[xiv] Lacan, Ecrits, 94–96.
[xv] Cawelti & Rosenberg, p.43.
[xvi] John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps, London: Pan Books, 1954 (1914). Hereafter all page references made in the main body of the text.
[xvii] Tony Hilfer, The Crime Novel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), p.34.
[xviii] Allan Hepburn, Intrigue: Espionage and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), p.52.
[xix] See p.3.
[xx] Lacan, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud's Papers on Technique, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1991), 160, 326.
[xxi] See Lacan, Seminar I, p.326.
[xxii] Buchan, p.127.
[xxiii] Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (London: Pan Books Ltd, 1967), p.5.