Gloving Writing, or On How a Life Is Built

Abstract

This article investigates the intersection of philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis through the cases of Antonin Artaud and James Joyce, examined with the categories of Derrida and Lacan. In Artaud, writing takes the form of the “excremental word,” reworking trauma and enabling survival by transforming divine violence into poetic creation. In Joyce, by contrast, writing assumes the form of the “enigmatic word,” supported by the contingent encounter with Nora and the invention of the sinthome, the knot that binds the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. The paper argues that writing, far from being mere representation, functions as an existential practice of invention: a “blow that strikes twice,” trauma and rewriting, that makes life livable. By comparing Artaud and Joyce, and drawing on Lacan’s theory of the Borromean knot, the article proposes to think of writing as a singular act that transforms jouissance into a letter, founding an existential function that both integrates and exceeds philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis.