Filiations of the Negative

Front matter

Francesco Adriano Clerici Filiations of the Negative Reading Franz Kafka and Paul Celan with André Green Francesco Adriano Clerici Reading Franz Kafka and Paul Celan with André Green Francesco Adriano Clerici Expanding the theoretical framework developed by André Green over more than four decades of research, this book offers a new inquiry into the work of the Negative in the late writings of Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Paul Celan (1920– 1970). The study follows the thread of the Greenian concept of the incréable, a figure of the Negative expressing a tension toward a lost and severed origin, one that can never be reconstituted or created, but only represented otherwise through writing. In doing so, the book explores the function of absence and of the limit in the creative process. In this light, Kafka’s and Celan’s writings emerge not only as works on, and at the limits of representation. Through the creative process, the authors persistently interrogate the loss of origins, the question of writing, and the death drive at the heart of culture and civilization. Cover image: Cueva de las Manos, detail; Pablo A. Gimenez; https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/south_america/cueva_de_los_manos/index.php CC BY-SA 4.0 ISBN 9791255103080 (print) ISBN 9791255103127 (PDF) ISBN 9791255103141 (EPUB) DOI 10.54103/milanoup.246

Francesco Adriano Clerici FILIATIONS OF THE NEGATIVE Reading Franz Kafka and Paul Celan with André Green

Filiations of the Negative. Reading Franz Kafka and Paul Celan with André Green / Francesco Adriano Clerici. Milano: Milano University Press, 2025.

Chapter 1

André Green’s Work of the Negative from the Standpoint of the Creative Processes L’inconscience ne supprime pasle travail psychique.

André Green (1993: 393)1 La permanence du souvenir est la preuve que rien n’est définitivement disparu, que rien ne saurait être vraiment mort.

André Green (1993: 348-349)2 The Negative and the Matrix of Human Life: Drive, Object, Limit In a homonymous paper published in 1986 on the Revue Française de Psychanalyse, and later included in the book Le Travail du négatif, Green proposes to designate as the work of the Negative […] l’ensemble des opérations psychiques dont le refoulement est le prototype et qui a ultérieurement donné naissance à des variantes distinctes telles que la négation, le désaveu et la forclusion. […] Faut-il rattacher le travail du négatif au seul moi et à ses mécanismes de défense? On pourrait le penser au premier abord. Je soutiendrai au contraire que le travail du négatif s’étend à l’ensemble des instances de l’appareil psychique. Soit encore que l’analyse nous amène à distinguer le non du moi, le non du surmoi et le non du ça. J’envisagerai également les incidences de la réponse de l’objet sur la constitution des rapports oui-non. (1993: 373)3 1 «Unconsciousness does not do away with psychical work.» (Green 1999b, 282) The quote is from the Séminaire sur le travail du négatif, the trascription of a seminar given in 1988 at the Paris Psychoanalytic Institute. The text is included in the appendices of Le Travail du négatif both in the original French edition as well as in the English one. 2 Cfr. Green 1999b: 251-252: «The permanence of memory is proof that nothing has disap - peared definitively, that nothing can really be dead.» 3 Green 1999b: 269: «[…] I proposed to designate as “the work of the negative” all the psy - chical operations of which repression is the prototype and which later gave rise to distinct variations such as negation, disavowal and foreclosure. […] Should the work of the negative be related to the ego alone and its mechanisms of defence? One might think so at a first approach. I would maintain on the contrary that the work of the negative extends to the agencies of the psychical apparatus as a whole. In other words, an analysis of it leads us to distinguish the no of the ego, the no of the super-ego and the no of the ide I shall also envisage the effects of the object’s response on the constitution of yes-no relations.»

This description offers a preliminary point of access to Green’s theory of the Negative. To begin with, let us focus on the first part of the excerpt. There are at least two essential elements that need to be pointed out. The first one is the structural, organisational role of the Verdrängung—and of other psychical operations such as negation [Verneinung], disavowal [Verleugnung, also translated as splitting] and foreclosure [Verwerfung], as further configurations of the prototypical model of suppression. The second element into play here, which is directly linked with the defence mechanisms of the psychic apparatus, is the ineliminable relationship between the work of the Negative and the drive processes [motions pulsionnel] (Green 1993: 58 ff; Green 1999b: 36 ff.). In a more general sense, we may say that the defence mechanisms ought to be understood as operations allowing the constitution and the modulation of a barrier, of a limit which protects and “contains” the psychic apparatus. 4 A border which is not pre-ex - isting: its structural fundamental matrix has to be created in the early stages of 4 Let us notice—as Urribarri has also shown—how these two elements, i.e., the structuring dimension of the defence mechanisms and especially the role of the drive and of the drive motions [le pulsionnel], are present from the outset in Green’s thinking, and constitute indis - pensable aspects to envisage the work of the Negative beyond a philosophical standpoint. In Le Travail du négatif, Green devotes an ample chapter to this question (Green 1993: 45-75; Green 1999b: 26-49), but his reflections on the subject reach as back as to the early Sixties.

In “L’inconscient freudien et la psychanalyse freudienne contemporaine” (1962) Green discusses what he sees as the «reductionist» position of Lacan’s approach defended by Laplanche and Leclaire. Green asserts that: « Notre position tient à mettre davantage en valeur le rôle des pulsions dans ses aspects économiques et ses organisations basales et cherche, tout en tenant compte du rôle structurant fondamental du refoulement, à saisir les manifestations du sujet dans son conflit entre la positivité et la négativité. » (Green 1962 : 373). In one of the footnotes at the end of his paper, Green also observes: « En fait la reconstruction de Freud à travers Lacan se situe sur des bases radicalement différentes de celles du fondateur de l’analyse. Lacan semble poursuivre un dessein particulier qui est la recherche d’un statut ontologique de la psychanalyse, sur des fondements d’une cohérence philosophique d’où tout un aspect du freudisme est à réinterpréter. Celui qu’on a coutume de qualifier de naturaliste. Malgré les impasses où il peut paraitre conduire, son maintien semble indispensable, car cette perspective représente une des rares tentatives – sinon la seule – pour donner corps à la réalité psychique sans la substantifier.» (Green 1962: 379, fn 26). See Urribarri’s translation of these two quotes—which he condenses in one—in Urribarri 2018: 68: «In contrast to Lacan’s position, ours tends to place more value on the role of drives in their economic aspects and in their basic organization, and aims, while also considering the fundamental structuring role of repression, to grasp the subject’s manifestations in the conflict between positivity (drives) and negativity (defences).

Actually Lacan’s reconstruction of Freud is built upon grounds that differ radically from those of the founder of psychoanalysis. Lacan seems to follow a particular desire: to find an ontological status for psychoanalysis based on philosophical consistency, which requires the reinterpretation of a whole aspect of Freudism: everything that is usually labelled as biologistic. In spite of the impasses to which this apparently leads, it seems to me to be indispensable to preserve it, since this perspective is the only attempt to give psychic reality body without reifying it.» Let us remind that, according to Freud’s formulation in his 1915 essay Triebe und Triebsschicksale (1948, vol. 10: 214), the drive is that concept «on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative of the stimuli originating infancy. A major breakthrough in the development of the Negative envisaged from a structural and organizational perspective was marked by Green’s first paper on narcissism, Narcissisme primaire: structure ou état , first published in 1967 (1983: 88-147; 2001: 48-90). It is not accidental that Green attains to a crucial step forward in the formulation of the Negative by investigating this concept. One of the main purposes of this paper was to overcome a description of narcissism in terms of clinical «state,» and to further explore the role of the death drive in the psychic apparatus. Green juxtaposes here two models of narcissism developed by Freud: a «primary narcissism»—an absolute form of narcissism that aims to a minimal tension within the psychic apparatus (hinting at the so called «Nirvana principle»)—and a «secondary narcissism»—outcome of the construction of the Ego, the goal of which is conservation and representation. Green defends the hypothesis according to which narcissism ought to be con - ceived in terms of a structure facilitating the binding process of the death drive. To illuminate this point, he refers to Freud’s concept of Reizschutz—the protection barrier against stimulation—developed in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920). It is through this multi-layered membrane, which allows the binding processes and the neutralisation of the death drive, that living matter acquires its structural limits (Duparc 1996: 42 ff).

This key step forward is accompanied by another critical development. By analysing the concept of narcissism, Green shows that the exclusive reference to the pulsionnel, i.e., to the drive processes, or to the notion of drive per se , is actually insufficient in order to come to grips with the complexity of the Negative—and more generally with the structuring, organisation and functioning of the psyche. That leads us to consider now the second part of Green’s excerpt from his 1986 paper. In it, Green extends the area of the Negative not only to the articulation between the first and the second topography in Freud’s work, but also to the articulation of the drive theory with the object relation theory—the latter an area of research explored mostly by British psychoan - alysts. In order to overcome the opposition between drive theory and object relation theory, Green proposes to conceive the object as a «révélateur de la pulsion,» articulating the notion of the drive and of the object through a novel conceptualization of the limit (Green 1990: 103-140; 1997: 60-83). In dialogue with Fernando Urribarri, Green summarises the question as follows: L’objet a dès le début une double fonction: d’une part, stimuler la vitalité du sujet, stimuler et être révélateur de la pulsion; d’autre part, promouvoir la symbolisation, la représentation, en dispensant adéquatement les soins et en régulant le rythmes entre présence et absence – c’est-à-dire en rendant tolérable l’excitation parce qu’il la diffère.

Ce délai demandé à la satisfaction n’est tolérable que si le sujet peut from within the organism and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work in consequence of its connection with the body.» Chapter 1. André Green’s Work of the Negative avoir recours à une autre scène, la scène inconsciente, dans laquelle il retrouve, ou plutôt réinvestit, le traces de l’objet, sa représentation – c’est possible pour le sujet dans la mesure où l’objet l’a aidé à créer cette internalisation qui constitue ce que j’appelle la « structure encadrante,» laquelle surgit comme espace de la représentation. (Urribarri 2013: 48)5 Let me insist on this crucial point, for it shows at once the crucial role of the absence in the psychic structuring, as well as the role of the category of limit with regards to the function of the object. In this respect, as Duparc also points out, Green’s originality consists in having shown that the condition sine qua non for the framing structure of the psyche of the subject has to be thought from «the absence on the background of presence:» from an empty and «mortified» [«mortifiée»] shell, we might say with Duparc (1996: 44), that the subject creates in a negative relationship with the object. The primary object that allows the development of such framing structure is the mother. It is indeed what Green calls «the negative hallucination of the primary object» that enables the infant to negativise the presence of the mother, and to internalise it as such.6 This passage is essential for the creation of what Green calls «framing structure» and the formation of an empty representational space, on which new representations and autoerotic tendencies are to be inscribed (Duparc 1996: 45).

The role of the object in this context is summarised as follows by Green: […] l’objet absolument nécessaire à l’élaboration de la structure psychique doit s’effacer. Il doit se faire oublier comme constituant de la structure psychique ; il existe sous la forme de l’illusion qu’il n’est pas constitutif de la structure psy - chique, mais se donne comme différent de celle-ci, comme objet d’attraction ou de répulsion […]. La fonction intrinsèque de l’objet est paradoxale: l’objet est là pour sti - 5 «The object has since the beginning a dual function: on the one hand, to stimulate the vitality of the subject, to stimulate and reveal the drive; on the other hand, it promotes symboli - sation, representation, providing appropriate care [ en dispensant adéquatement les soins – here Green seems to be referring to the object as metonymic extension of the motherly figure, f.c.] and regulating the rhythm between presence and absence—that means to make tollerable the exitation in order to delay it [ parce qu’il la diffère ]. This delay demanded in satisfaction is only tollerable if the subject can turn to another scene, the unconscious scene, in which the subject rediscovers, or rather reinvest the traces of the object, its representation. And that is possible for the subject only insofar as the object has helped creating such internalisation that constitutes what I call the “framing structure,” which emerges as the space for representa - tion.» 6 See Green 1983: 139 «La mère est prise dans le cadre vide de l’hallucination négative, et devient structure encadrante pour le sujet lui-même. Le sujet s’édifie là ou l’investiture de l’objet a été consacré au lieu de son investissement. Tout est alors en place pour que le corps de l’enfant puisse venir se substituer au monde extérieur.» Cfr. Green 2001: 85: «The mother is caught in the empty frame of negative hallucination and becomes a framing structure for the subject himself. The subject constructs himself in the place where the object’s investiture has been consecrated to the locus of its investment. Everything is then in place so that the infant’s body can take the place of the external world.»

muler, pour éveiller la pulsion et en même temps pour la contenir. (Green 1993: 389-390)7 The space in which the primary object gives the illusion of effacing itself, of being absent from the perceptive field of the subject is indeed the space of the negative hallucination. The role of negative hallucination, in this regard, is not that of being a mere container without content, but rather of circumscribing the limits of a space that appears to be empty, and which is occupied instead by the very absence of representation. This is, for Green, one of the necessary conditions for the creation of a structure framing representation.8 The extensions of Green’s Negative, therefore, goes beyond the domain of conscious thinking, of a particular agency of the psyche, or the explanation of a pathological state to become codition for human life: [Le travail du négatif] apparaît d’abord comme condition à la vie humaine, à la vie sociale. Car il faut bien contenir la «force brute» – cette force qui est la donnée de base du psychisme du fait de sa relation avec les pulsions. Du coup, le négatif consiste premièrement à dire «non» a certaines pulsions. / Le non est fondamental pour s’organiser. Il peut être «dit» à plusieurs choses et il opère à différents niveaux. Un premier niveau, lié au rôle des pulsions, correspond à l’organisation interne. Un deuxième niveau renvoie au plan intersubjectif, celui des relations avec les objets. Il faut dire «non» à l’objet pour pouvoir dire «oui» à soi-même, pour devenir un sujet. (Urribarri 2013: 21-22)9 7 Green 1999b: 279: «[…] that object which is absolutely necessary for the elaboration of psychical structure should efface itself.

Its role as a constituent of psychical structure should be forgotten about; it exists in the shape of illusion which is not constitutive of psychical structure but presents itself as being different from it, as an object of attraction or repulsion. […] The intrinsic function of the object is paradoxical: the object is there to stimulate, to awaken the drive and at the same time to contain it.» (tr. mod.) 8 Green 1993: 384: «L’hallucination négative n’est pas un phénomène pathologique. Elle n’est pas l’absence de représentation comme le suggère l’absence de l’image dans le miroir, mais représentation de l’absence de représentation . L’hallucination négative est le concept théorique qui est la précondition à toute théorie de la représentation, qu’il s’agisse du rêve comme de l’hallucination.» Green 1999b: 276: «Negative hallucination is not a pathological phenomenon. It is not the absence of representation as is suggested by the absence of the image in the mirror, but the representation of the absence of representation. Negative hallucination is the theoretical concept which is the precondition for any theory of representation, whether it is dreams or hallucination which is concerned.» 9 «[The work of the Negative] seems to be above all the condition for human life, for social life. For it is necessary to contain the “brute force”—this force which is the basic result of the psyche in relationship because of its relationship with the drives. At once, the negative consists primarily in saying “no” to certain drives. / The “no” is fundamental to organise the subject. Such no may be “said” to multiple things and operates on different levels. A first one, linked to the role of the drives, corresponds to the internal organisation. A second level refers to the intersubjective level, that of the object relation. It is necessary to say “no” to the object in order to say “yes” to yourself, to become a subject.»

Chapter 1. André Green’s Work of the Negative

Green’s theory of the Negative may be envisaged as a structural model of the psychic activity and functioning in its heterogeneity. 10 The complexity of such structure cannot be properly grasped if we fail to consider the ineliminable conflictuality that characterises the psychic apparatus. This theory gives account of the dynamics of organization and disorganization , of structuring and destructuring inhabiting the subjective constitution and indeed creating the «condition for the existence of the structuring psychic apparatus,» (Kohon and Perelberg 2017: 19) in the articulation of the intrapsychic (the drives) and interpsychic (object relation).11 The Work of the Negative and Its Subversion In this preliminary and necessarily reductive introduction to Green’s theory, I deliberately put the accent on a “constructive,” or rather “organising” per - spective of the work of the Negative. In such a context, the death drive plays a fundamental role, we might say, of “co-operation” with Eros—although it would be more appropriate to speak of “intricacies” between death drive and Eros. If we envisage the death drive—or destructive drives, as Green also has proposed to call them—in terms of unbinding processes, we can grasp the importance of destructivity in the organization of the psychic apparatus: the subject can basically say “yes” to its own existence by saying “no” to the object—a “no” which has indeed a gravid, fundamental role. What we did not discuss in more specific terms, however, are those situations in which destructivity is not at the service of structuring or separation of the subject, but rather of its radical disorganization and disintegration towards death. This is what Green calls the «subversion of the work of the Negative:»

Or la subversion du travail du négatif, que l’on rencontre dans les cas-limites, consiste à se dire non à soi-même. Mais ce n’est pas un «non» au sens du refoulement ou du renoncement à l’objet incestueux en réponse à l’exigence du Surmoi. Le mouvement est plus extrême : il consiste à négativer le désir en attaquant les liens à l’objet jusqu’aux fondements de l’éros dans le Moi. / Ces sujets peuvent alors utiliser dans des buts destructeurs n’importe quelle variante (de la simple négation à la forclusion) de ce travail du négatif – destruction de leur propre structure psychique et de toute forme d’évolution vers une prise de conscience de ce qu’ils sont, de leur désir, du rôle de leur histoire, du rôle des facteurs qui les constituent […]. Voici donc le paradoxe du travail du négatif: Comment quelque chose qui fait partie de l’«équipement humain», si l’on peut dire, peut-il se retour- 10 See in this regard also Balsamo (2019: 10 ff.), who describes André Green as a «thinker of the connections,» pointing out the peculiar «reticular» dimension that characterises his thinking. 11 It might also have been noticed that in this brief overview, we deliberately focused on what we may call the “spatial dimension” of the Negative. As our work unfolds in relationship with Kafka’s and Celan’s writings, we will have the chance to confront us with the question of temporality of the Negative.

ner contre soi-même? (Urribarri 2013: 22)12 We shall have occasions to return to the role of such mortiferous and de - structive subversion of the Negative in its intricacies with the creative process by analysing the writings of Kafka and Celan in the next chapters. The Incréable Let us now consider Green’s theory of the Negative from the angle of the creative processes through writing. What I wish to show is how the work of the Negative can enable us to give account not only of the sources, or better of a possible origin of creation and creativity, but also of the originality of the representational strategies that characterise the work of an author. Otherwise formulated, the question I would like to address is how Green’s theory can enable us to envisage the specificity, the uniqueness of a work and of the work of writing—as trace of a process of subjectivation—by reconstructing après-coup the matrix characterizing the possibility of literary creation. A process of subjectivation, whose outcome, as we shall see in the following, is not limited to the creating subject, but rather involves another form of subjectivity. From a psychoanalytic perspective, as Green remarks, the questions of creation, of creativity, of its goal and of its end, lead us to investigate the relationship between body and being (Winnicott) and their transformations occurring in the process of subli - mation (Green 1992: 314).

The ample chapter devoted to sublimation in Le Travail du négatif —closing with a remarkable analysis of Nerval’s Aurélia ou le Rêve et la Vie (1855)—is only one of the many writings that bears witness to the centrality of the question for Green. Here I would like to create an explorative trajectory of my own, by dwelling more in particular on a paper published more than ten years prior to The Work of the Negative: La réserve de l’incréable (1982). In it, Green engages in a close reading of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927), with a focus on Le Temps retrouvé , posthumously published in 1927. The fact that Green develops this paper by tackling Proust’s work is surely of no secondary importance. The validity of his formulations, 12 «Now, the subversion of the work of the Negative, which we encounter in borderline cases, consists in saying no to oneself. But this is not a “no” in the sense of suppression or of renouncement to the incestuous object in response to the demand of the Super-ego. The movement is much more extreme here: it consists in negativizing the desire by attacking the links with the object until the fundaments of Eros within the Ego. / These subjects can then use with destructive purposes no matter which variety of such work of the Negative (from the simple negation to the foreclosure)—destruction of one’s own psychic structure and of all the forms of evolutions toward an awareness of what they are, of their desire, of the role of their history, of the role of the factors that characterise them […]. Here lies therefore the paradox of the work of the Negative: how something that belongs to the “human equip - ment,” if we can say so, can backfire and turn against us.» Chapter 1. André Green’s Work of the Negative however, are not to be confined to the particular case of Proust only. Quite on the contrary: with this essay, Green attempts to go to the roots of creativity by investigating what he elsewhere (Green 1992: 57) calls that unknown wound, that inarticulable loss, that form of mourning which every creative work pre - supposes. An unsaturable absence, of which the work shall be the transformation, the tangible product.

The term incréable, that Green introduces in the psychoanalytic vocabulary by adverbializing the French adjective incrée (uncreated), defies to a great extent translation.13 To be sure, it is possible to render it with the English adverb uncreatable. For the purpose of my analysis, however, I deem of particular importance to leave the name, the signifier incréable untranslated. By so doing, I intend to put the accent on an “untranslatability,” a “non-paraphrasability” resisting— reserved—at the core of the poetic, of the literary, of the psychoanalytic, and ultimately of the infancy of the creature—of what is created. For a French-speaking Jewish psychoanalyst born in Cairo—“foreign” in a language that he perceives intimate, oddly familiar, and yet as the idiom of an idealised elsewhere—incréable may echo in retrospect the question of the loss of an origin, an attempt to name and call an untranslatable “unknown” deeply inscribed in body and psyche. With the incréable, Green attempts to give thinkable form to what remains inaccessible and inarticulable to the subject in spite of its proximity, and which only the work of creation is capable of re-presenting to the subject in new, acceptable—i.e. cultural—terms. As a linguistic trace of that which the subject “does not know not to know,” the incréable is crucial to reflect upon the relationship between the complex role of the oedipal struc - ture and the question of the transitional cultural objects (Green 1993: 324 ff; Green 1999b: 235 ff). What concerns here Green is therefore how sublimation intervenes in the process of transformation of a cesura, a severed link, into the creation of a new cultural bond through the creation of objects which are neither created nor uncreated, internal or external, existing or non-existing, but rather un-create-able. In other words, the term incréable—in which we may also hear resounding the word incroyable, i.e., unbelievable—invites us to consider from a new point of view the question of subjectivity, cultural experience and of the place in which cultural objects situate. As such, the incréable transcends the category of the judgement of existence, for literature, poetry, and more generally art and creation give indeed form to something which in spite of its apparent inexistence, is perceived as particularly, effectively, and affectively real. For these reasons, the incréable is not simply a concept: it is an encounter «between concept and affect» (Green 2005: 208-210), a neologism that defies the limits of representation of the psyche—there where we cannot yet discern 13 This paper is still untranslated in English.

the most remote from the deepest. It constitutes a sort of “theoretical hieroglyph:” a product of sublimation on its own, that epitomises the level of creativity, of poiesis, at work in Green’s “clinical thinking.” And indeed, this word touches something which is pre-ontological (in the sense of Winnicott’s being), although not pre-corporeal, and whose “language” is pre-verbal: Qu’est donc l’incréable? L’incréable, c’est pour le créateur, le noyau maternel, le noyau de la relation du corps de la mère: le représentant psychique de la pulsion, sous forme d’affect lié à la relation au corps maternel qu’il s’agit de représenter autrement, par le travail de l’art. Non le corps, mais l’affect, c’est-à-dire la trace du rapport au corps de la mère. L’action de représentation (qu’on peut appeler la représentance) est liée à la perte de l’objet maternel, au deuil, et à l’évocation du souvenir dans l’absence. Cette perte est liée à la coupure instaurée par le père entre l’enfant et sa mère. Le lien avec le corps de la mère est alors définitivement rompu. Cette coupure va laisser subsister des investissements érotiques et agressifs ; sensuels et tendres, les premiers étant soumis au refoulement, les autres conservés parce qu’ils sont inhibés quant à leur but. Mais il y a quelque chose que le père ne réussit pas à faire disparaitre. C’est le mouvement auto-érotique de cette relation au corps de la mère qui perdure comme un noyau protégé, dynamiquement actif et inabordable. Le refoulement primaire recouvre cela. ( Green 1992: 321-322)14 By incréable, Green refers to that remnant of the maternal core, to that affective trace of the relationship with the body of the mother around which the subject shall asymptotically revolve by means of the creative process, without any possibility of accessing or possessing it.

Let us notice that in this definition we can recognise all the elements constituting his theory of the Negative: the structuring role of the defence mechanisms; the drive motions; the narcissis - tic structuring (auto-erotic investments); the object relation; and ultimately, al - though not explicitly mentioned, the work of negative hallucination emerging in the loss of the maternal object. The representation of the absence of rep - resentation is what also allows, in this context, the protection of that affective «knot,» «dynamically active and unapproachable.» 14 «What is then the incréable? The incréable is for the creator the maternal core, the core of the relationship with the body of the mother: the psychic representant of the drive, in form of affect, linked to the relationship with the body of the mother, and which has to be represented otherwise, through the work of art. Not the body, but the affect, that is the trace of the relationship with the body of the mother. The action of representation (which we can call representational) is linked to the loss of the maternal object, to the mourning, and to the evocation of the memory in the absence. This loss is linked to the cut operated by the father between the infant and the mother. The link with the body of the mother is thus irrevocably severed. This cut provokes the emergence of investments both erotic and aggressive, sensual and tender, the former being subjected to suppression, the latter preserved because they are inhibited as for their goal. But there is something that the father cannot make disappear. That is the auto-erotic motion of the relation with the body of the mother, which remains and lasts as a protected core, dynamically active and inaccessible. That is the place of primary suppression.» Chapter 1. André Green’s Work of the Negative