Lacan, Poe e os efeitos de feminização pela carta/letra: semblante, silêncio e gozo

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the effects of feminization brought about by the letter, idea extracted by Jacques Lacan from Edgar Allan Poes short story, The Purloined Letter. Our emphasis will be the examination of the psychoanalysts reading of this short story in the early 1970s. Two interpretations of the aforementioned effects will be presented: one orientated by the phallic semblant, other privileging the notion of letter. To aid in these readings, we will approach both a clinical case involving the notion of masquerade and dandyism, considered as different forms of articulation between jouissance and semblant. Regarding the latter, one can conclude that masquerade can only refer to castration, to a limit of the semblant, whereas the dandy can signal an impossibility, a point of silence in the semblants. Finally, this dissertation intends to demonstrate the contribution of the effects of feminization by the letter to an important transition in Lacans conception both of the feminine and of the letter, as well as revealing his style throughout the transmission of the idea of an opaque jouissance that does not relate to semblants.