Holmberg, Rafael; (2025) Traces of Nothing: The Freudian Trace and the Incomplete Ontology of the Psychoanalytic Subject. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Holmberg_10209470_thesis.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 January 2026. Download (1MB)

Abstract

This thesis builds upon the antagonistic relation between continental philosophy and psychoanalysis by an exploration of the Freudian ‘trace’. The trace (variously represented for example by the logic of the Erinnerungsspur, the trace-mnésique, condensation, displacement, and Nachträglichkeit or après-coup) features in psychoanalysis as an enigmatic quality both of memory and of subjecthood itself: it describes the reproduction of an incomplete or non-existent origin, a recollection which formulates the very scene that is recollected, or the incomplete relation between presentation and representation. Precisely this disjunctive logic of the trace is a recurring yet fragmentary feature of Freudian and later French psychoanalytic thought (primarily Lacan and Laplanche), and – as the thesis argues – can act as a bridge to our understanding of the 20th-centruy philosophical appropriation of psychoanalysis. Additionally, the paradoxical functioning of the trace which can be derived from Freud through to Badiou finds an especially important mirror in German Idealism (specifically Kant, Schelling, and Hegel), and in so doing reveals the importance of this philosophical school to understanding psychoanalysis. By a comparative approach to these authors with the intention of developing an extensive description of the operation of the trace in relation to the unconscious, the subject, and its ontological ‘ground’, the thesis argues that a more rigorous formulation of the psychoanalytic subject becomes possible.

Download activity - last month

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item