It is when illness threatens to erase her family’s history forever that the protagonist of this first-person narrative decides to undertake a journey towards that unknown land, towards that country from which her ancestors were exiled, deported. In the beginning, there are no names— “everything is designated but not named” [1] ; the names will only come later, once, in a sense, the barrier of silence has been overcome, says Cécile Wajsbrot about her novel Mémorial.
While the father and the sister never spoke about what had happened before, never uttered a word in their mother tongue, never wanted to return to their country of origin, while the silence they jealously kept threatens to be solved forever behind the wall of a memory-affecting illness, she, the last surviving member of the lineage, tries to recover the bits of what once was their story, in order to be able to go on living.
The young woman travels, “guided by the idea [she has formed] of [her] family’s life” [2]. It is about life and death : for some, “deliberately blinding oneself to the past in order to be able to move forward, to keep going — to be able to live” [3] ; for her, “resuming memory where they had left it” [4]. Silence, misunderstanding, and a fundamental “about that, we don’t talk” lie at the heart of this narrative and paradoxically become an indelible mark on the subject, orienting her entire life, like a destiny.
If there are discontents in the family, if there is unease in the speaking being, it is due to the misunderstanding in which our ancestors were immersed [5], argues Lacan. And he adds that this is what we inherit — this is what this lineage has transmitted to us when “giving us life” […] To the extent that even before this beautiful legacy, you are part of, or rather, you partake in, the stuttering of your ancestors” [6].
In this issue, Famil invites you to read interpretations, written by four colleagues, of what is transmitted, regarding silence and misunderstanding — not without “a desire that is not anonymous” [7].
Why is psychoanalysis interested in the family and the current discontent within it ? That is the question Katty Langelez-Stevens attempts to answer in the PIPOL12 podcast.
[1] Wajsbrot C., Mémorial, Gouville-sur-mer, Le Bruit du temps, 2019, p. 166
[2] Ibid., p. 122.
[3] Ibid., p. 42.
[4] Ibid., p. 74.
[5] Cf. Lacan J., “Le malentendu”, Aux confins du Séminaire, text established by Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris, Navarin, 2021, p. 74.
[6] Ibid., p. 75.
[7] Lacan. J., “Note on the Child,” (1969) The Lacanian Review, Issue 4, trans. R. Grigg, Paris, NLS, 2018, p. 13.
Translated by Laurence Maman
Copy edited by Alasdair Duncan
