After 1980, J.-B. Pontalis published literary works, and often with autobiographical resonances. Brother of the Above is no exception for a clear subtext from the author is ‘self-analysis.’ Biographical dictionaries often described the most important as ‘brother of the above.’ In this exploration of brothers in life and literature, renowned or anonymous, Pontalis embarks his elder brother. Ever since Cain and Abel, jealousy and murderous rivalry between brothers have wreaked havoc. Pontalis’ book asks if the destructive force of this relationship inevitably overwhelms the hope for human survival, embodied in the usual meaning of ‘fraternity’. From Van Gogh to Flaubert, from Goncourt to Champollion, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Marcel Proust, Pontalis passes a host of brothers in review in search of an answer, and in search, too, of deliverance from his own brother’s shadow.
Table of Content
J.-F. and J.-B…………………………………………………………….3
The List ………………………………………………………………….11
Blocked ………………………………………………………………….17
In the Beginning, What Kind of Murder? ……………………..23
Traces ……………………………………………………………………29
‘Myself Alone’ …………………………………………………………35
These Two (1) …………………………………………………………37
These Two (2) …………………………………………………………41
Quest for the True Brother ………………………………………..45
These Two (3) …………………………………………………………51
Two Intruders ………………………………………………………….55
Two Writers, One Pen……………………………………………….61
These Two (4) …………………………………………………………67
These Two (5) …………………………………………………………69
These Two (6) …………………………………………………………75
Marcel and Robert……………………………………………………79
Fair Share……………………………………………………………….87
‘Time to Divide Things Up’ ……………………………………….91
Indivisibility …………………………………………………………….95
Birthright……………………………………………………………….103
These Two (7) ………………………………………………………105
‘I Owe Him Everything’…………………………………………..109
The Little Brother……………………………………………………117
The Metaphysical Age…………………………………………….123
Preserving Mother………………………………………………….133
These Two (8) ………………………………………………………137
Heads and Tails ……………………………………………………141
What is a Pervert? ………………………………………………..147
Zig and Puce………………………………………………………..157
The Invention of Fraternity …………………………………….165
How can I Get Rid of Him? ……………………………………169
Fixed Point ………………………………………………………….179
Recess ……………………………………………………………….183
A Dream Couple……………………………………………………187
A Farewell to Arms ……………………………………………….189
Acknowledgments ………………………………………………..191
Picture Credits……………………………………………………..192
About the author
A student of Jean-Paul Sartre, Pontalis became a professor of philosophy in the forties, before undergoing an analysis with his associate Jacques Lacan the following decade. He was, however, one of the minority group of disciples/analysands who did not follow Lacan into the École Freudienne de Paris, but rather stayed within the legitimist sphere as founding members of the Association Psychanalytique de France, of which he later became president.Together with Jean Laplanche, he wrote the influential work The Language of Psychoanalysis in 1967; while among his later, more literary writings were Windows and Crossing the Shadows.His 1993 autobiography, Love of Beginnings, was deliberately ahistorical, emphasising what he called ‘holes’ in discourse, where the process of slipping through or evading set formats and ways of thinking opened up new beginnings: ‘When words fail, it is because, without realising it, one is about to touch a different earth’.
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