Abstract

This paper engages in an overdue dialogue amongst some aspects of the thinking of Maria Zambrano and psychoanalytic theory. The discussion focuses on some epistemological and phenomenological ideas that were prevalent in twentieth-century European philosophy. The notion of the real, for instance, is one of the jambs of this comparison, particularly between Zambrano and Jacques Lacan’s ideas. Reflecting upon how Zambrano, Lacan and Freud characterised the origins and limits of the subject and language is testimony of these problems and limits themselves. Division, traversement, schism and exile are distinct yet similar heterogeneities that are central in the thinking of these authors. The Zambranian schism between philosophy and poetry, where pathos and logos are divided, resembles the psychoanalytic understood schism between the psychic and bodily and recalls the problems of the Freudian pleasure principle. These schisms can in turn be understood as an exile of a mythical prelinguistic unity which is best characterised by Lacan as the fundamental castration of the subject of desire. The psychoanalytic reflection upon Zambrano’s writing itself opens possibilities for future dialogues, perhaps in terms of a sinthomatic savoir-faire, which offers yet another layer to the discussion of her remarkable life and work.