Perversionens versioner

En psykoanalytisk læsning af retstematikken i Steen Steensen Blichers »Præsten i Vejlbye«

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of Steen Steensen Blicher’s novella »The Vicar of Vejlbye« (1829), which deals with the question of law and subjectivity through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The novella presents two versions of perversion in relation to the law: On the one hand the judge Erik Sørensen, who perceives himself as the instrument of the big Other; on the other hand the criminal Morten Bruus, who turns the legal procedure upside down in order to gain satisfaction, merging public law with his private desire. Whereas Erik Sørensen believes, that »every man’s judgment comes from God«, and thereby fetishistically disavows the lack in the big Other, denying the uncertainty and fallibility in the workings of the law, Morten Bruus, who »lusts for legal proceedings«, encourages justice to take its seemingly right course in order to satisfy his own thirst for vengeance. Through the Lacanian lens we can expose Blicher’s novella as a compelling story on the ways in which the law might enter the psychic economy of the subject, and thus uncover a highly interesting statement on subjectivity’s relation to law.