The signifying value of that which stumbles in a spoken or written sentence refers to Lacan's idea of a split between the ego and the subject, a fundamental principle of post-structuralist psychoanalysis. Lacan's theory of mind and language is quite obviously anti-objectivist and it rejects psychologisms that reify the human being. The subject, for Lacan, is necessarily subjective and the split between the subject and the ego is a contingency for the "full word." Lacan's emphasis on a subjectivist account of the unconscious is similar in many ways to the subjectivism of the pre-modern psychology and linguistics that underlies dhvani theory. pg1
the dhvani theorists and the practioners of Lacanian psychoanalysis emphasize the connection between language and unconscious desire. In analytic situations, ultimately, the subject is the subject of the unconscious and it speaks most "truthfully," as Freud has pointed out, in slips of the tongue and other errors showing that the ego's censorship has been suspended. pg1
The unconscious for Lacan is not a reified object; instead, it is a discourse that proceeds as a result of the "split" and "cut" between the suject de enonciation (speaking subject) and the sujet de l'enonce (subject as spoken of): the constituting subject and the constituted subject. pg1
In his widely known essay, "Function and Field of Speech and Language," Lacan makes an explicit reference to the Indian theory of sug gestion in order to point out that the unconscious does not express itself in language; it reveals itself through suggestion. More narrowly, Lacan traces the sources of the "full word" in what he calls "the power of the symbol," a power that the analyst can evoke "in a carefully calculated fashion in the semantic resonances of his remarks" (Ecrits 1966, 82). He adds, "this is sure ly the way for a return to the use of symbolic effects in a renewed technique of interpretation in analysis" [emphasis mine] (82). Thus, it is in the context of finding a more dynamic technique that Lacan refers to "the teaching of Abhinavagupta (tenth century)" (110). More specifically, Lacan identifies Abhinava's dhvani theory and the properties of speech on which the theory is based as an important source for his notion of the "full word". pg1
The sequence of passages in which Lacan first refers to the dhvani theory are worth quoting in full. In this regard, we could take note of what the Hindu tradition teaches about dhvani, in the sense that this tradition stresses the property of speech by which it communicates what it does not actually say. Hindu tradition illus trates this by a tale whose ingenuousness, which appears to be the usual thing in these examples, shows itself humorous enough to induce us to pen etrate the truth that it conceals. A girl, it begins, is waiting for her lover on the bank of a stream when she sees a Brahmin coming along towards her. She runs to him and exclaims in the warmest and most amiable tones: 'What lucky day this is for you! The dog that used to frighten you by its barking will not be along this river bank again, for it has just been devoured by a lion that is often seen around here'.... The absence of the lion may thus have as much affect as his spring would have were he present, for the lion only springs once, says the proverb appreciated by Freud (Ecrits 82). pg1
The example of the girl, the Brahmin, the devouring lion and the recalcitrant dog is one of nearly five hundred examples discussed at length in Dhvanydloka. pg1-2
The "primary character of symbols," Lacan says, "brings them close to those numbers out of which others are composed, and if they therefore underlie all the semantemes [emphasis added] of a language (langue), we shall be able to restore to speech its full value of evocation [emphasis added] for their inferences, using as our guide a metaphor whose symbolic displacement will neutralize the secondary meanings of the terms that it associates" (82). The psychoanalytic significance of poetic metaphor is based on what Lacan calls a "profound assimilation of the resources of language (langue), and especially of those that are concretely realized in its poetic texts [emphasis added]" (82 83). From this citation and discussion, Ahbhinava's dhvani theory emerges as an important source for Lacan's idea of a new psychoanalytic technique of interpretation. pg2
Abhinava's dhvani aesthetic is undoubtedly one of the most significant non-Western literary/poetic theories that developed in India for centuries before the beginning of Mid-Eastern and European colonialisms. pg2
The world-historical Dasien, as Heidegger maintains, is "that living thing whose Being is essentially deter mined by the potentiality for discourse" (Being and Time 41). pg2
Particular emphasis shall be placed on Lacan's and Abhinava's shared sense of the unconscious as a dynamic process, of the centrality of memory, erasure of primary sense and intention in every instance of poetic and analytic enunciation, a necessary rupture between the signified and signifier and emphasis on constitutive ambiguity in all instances of speech (due to the split between the ego and the subject). pg2-3
Certainly, Freud's notion of the unconscious is distinctively European: Judeo-Christian. At the same time, a world-historical amnesia is engendered by forgetting that Abhinava and his poet precursors, Vyas, Valmiki and Kalidasa, also identify unconscious memory as the source of aesthetic expe rience. Abhinava's notion of the unconscious is no doubt grounded in the Saivaite metaphysics of forgetting one's true cosmic [bhraman] nature and partial recollections by the individual soul [dtman] of this lost self-awareness. In a manner that is no less mystical, Leibniz's theory of the unconscious also posits a distinction between unconscious and conscious thoughts and sense perceptions (see Monadology, paras. 10-21 and Oxford Companion to the Mind 433). Leibniz, and subsequently Proust, underscore the significance of recalling unconsciously perceived (Leibniz) or half forgotten (Proust) per ceptions and sensations: of objects, details, familiar scenes that trigger a new, reconstituted emotion/experience. Similarly, Abhinava's claims about the aes thetic import of mental processes of forgetting and remembering is not con fined to spiritual and mystical dimensions of human experience. He empha sizes that within the normal life span of one individual so many selves are lost and forgotten, recognized, misrecognized, recollected and lost again. Human mind and memory constitute unfathomable layers of vdsands and samskdras, traces of frustrated desire and latent impressions, which, Abhinava claims, are triggered by dhvani markers in poetic figuration. pg3
In the context of analytic speech, especially in the way in which Lacan maps it out, the vdsands and samskdras (desire traces and memory traces) give rise to chains of associations as in instances of parapraxis, and so forth. Both systems of speech (vdc) assume an endless, beginningless memory in relation to endless and beginningless forgetting -- with flashes of recollection here and there. Abhinava refers to human minds being "varied by begin ningless memory. pg3
In the contexts in which the word, samsara, is frequently used, it stands for the world as it is constituted with in each human consciousness. It is beginningless only because one forgets the point of origin, it is endless because one is always at the mid-point of all space-time configurations. pg3
From a Sanskritized Indie point of view, an abstract of the dhvani aesthetic should look something like this: (a) four levels of language awareness, pard (undifferentiated transcendental signified), pasyanti (the "beholding" awareness, or object awareness) madhyamd (speech of thinking, under standing, fancying), and vaikhari (the audible, material language); (b) four aims of life, dharma (duty), artha (money or fortune), kdma (sexuality, or desire), moksa (salvation); (c) three components of character and/or con stituent elements of consciousness (sattva [reason], rajas [passion], tamas [ignorance]); (d) three types of mobilities (or dilatations) derived from vari ous combinations of the constituent elements, vikdsa (blossoming), druti (speed), vistdra (expansion); (e) nine basic emotions and art emotions srngara [love], karuna [pity], hdsya [laughter], bibhatsa [disgust], raudra [ter ror], bhaya [fear], vira [valor], santa [peace]); (0 the attendant permanent and transitory states of mind (sthdyi and vyabhicdri bhdvas), consequents and determinants (anubhdvas and vibhdvas) pg4
In his commentary on Ananda's Dhvanydloka, Abhinava reiterates that the dhvani effect resides in uvdc." Interestingly, the Sanskrit term exactly par allels parole in the context of which "full speech" occurs. Dhvani and the "full word" refer to signifying schema that are located in between conven tional systems of language and instances of individual utterance. It is for this reason that conventional figures of speech are not to be confused with the figurativity of dhvani, though dhvani can be fused with a particular figure of speech. Just as dhvani works in collaboration with various figurative uses of language, instances of "full speech" in Freud are most often found in slips of the tongue, instances of parapraxis, homophony, metonymy and metaphor (in dreams), mistakes, errors, unintended puns. The examples that Abhinava uses to support his theses instantiate all these verbal processes (see Ingalls 780-837). Etymologically, the orientation of the dhvani theory in parole is validated by the fact that the word kavih (poet) in Sanskrit is derived from the root ku (to speak). pg5
Originally, the Sanskrit aestheticians borrow the word from grammarians where the technical meaning of "dhvani" is "the last sound" in a chain of sounds that enters the ear, "so that heard sounds are sounds born of sounds, [not the original sounds produced by the organs of speech]" (Ingalls 170). They compare these "sound-produced" sounds to waves when a "stone is dropped in a pond" which resonate "like reverberations of a bell." Abhinava's reference to the sphota theory is simply an attempt to justify his poetic use of dhvani in the context of a reified grammatical precedent. pg5
What dhvani reveals, manifests, hints at, is often what is not said, either lit erally or metaphorically. Hence, dhvani meaning is that which lies beyond spoken words. pg6
Lacan's claim that the signifying law constrains all practitioners of the word, even the gods, finds further support in the Upanishadic iteration. Within this comparative framework then, the common goal of the Indian theorists and Lacan is to show the importance of a com munication model that considers seriously the context, constitutive ambigui ty and the role of the speaker and the interlocutor in all acts of parole (poet ic and analytic). pg9
in spite of Abhinava's and Ananda's allegiance to Saivaite mysticism, their account of dhvani-related language functions is basically a materialist account. It is no doubt true that in sections of Dhvanydloka, Ananda invokes the supra-sensory nature of non-mundane experience where the limited subject (dtman) seeks the larger truth of (brhaman). However, the only attribute of brhaman that is relevant here is based on the etymology of the word. The root word brh means to "increase," because brhaman has the virtue of being brahat (large). In the verb form brhamita, as an instrument of increase, it is associated with a fusion of sen sation and perception that an aesthetic moment is consititued by. The state of pure brhaman is an undifferentiated state, the pard state of language awareness; there cannot be any denotative and suggestive operation there. Leibniz produces a similar description of the unconscious by referring to thinking processes of "monads" whom he regards, differing in this regard from Ananda, as inferior, less intelligent minds pg9
The material operations of language and perception that Leibniz regards as superior to the monadic consciousness are called avidhyapade in Sanskrit, because they occur through the intervention of avidhya. Avidhya is the nec essary imposition of limit and ignorance/blindness on the impossible large ness of brahman and of the pard stage of transcendental language awareness pg9
Lacan's widely known idea of Jouissance has to do with the genesis of the psychoanalytic prototypes for fantasy (and desire) in the foundational myth of the family romance, the Oedipus complex, the associated prohibitions and necessary censors: the entire trauma/drama of growth in the face of the Law of the Father. The object petit a develops into a more specific concept in Lacan. It is too widely associated with his thought to need any more than a brief reminder. In the context of fetishism, object a is the frag ment which causes desire, assuming that desire is always something that is left over from the fulfillment of need and demand. In economic terms, the object a is mostly structured by the subject's relation to the principle of excess, of surplus value. As a remainder left over from a whole, as a trace of something consciously forgotten, it mobilizes desire. For dhvani theorists the various consequents and determinants of rasa (the art emotion that leads to aesthetic pleasure) are always part objects. Moreover, dhvani theorists, especially Abhinava, consider aesthetic pleasure and erotic pleasure as being analogous. In fact, they go beyond a mere choice of metaphor and analogy and clearly identify the primacy of the pleasure principle. In Saivaite meta physics, the relation between the human and the divine, between atman and brhaman is a highly eroticized relation and its reference point is a much celebrated mystical/cognitive jouissance (see Mircea Eliade 1958, 254-273). pg10
Ananda, and Abhinava after him, praise the language efficacy of vyan jaktva that subordinates primary (denotative) meanings and secondary (metaphorical and m?tonymie) meanings. They stress the point that it is the "primary sense" that is blocked, not "literal meaning;" literal meanings are conventional and are linked with langue rather than parole. In fact, the link of literal meaning with vyanjand is important because the dhvani significa tion occurs because of a differential between the two. As has been shown, Lacan's notion of the rupture that occurs due to the split between the sub ject and the ego also emphasizes this differential. pg 13
In all cases, the context of associative memory (and desire) traces, Abhinava assumes, works in conjunction with the temporality of reading and response. Personal and public memory banks work in conjunction/disjunc tion in the same way in which instances of langue and parole do. Readers' and audience's collective memories of mythological literature and other cul tural discourses have an impact on their receptivity to subsequent aesthetic materials. According to Abhinava, however, each individual subject will inter nalize and remember cultural materials differently depending on his/her own memory clusters: samskdras and vdsands. pg 14
assumptions about a dynamic uncon scious that manifests itself in human utterance. In almost all the passages that are analyzed for their dhvani effect (in Dhvanaydloka), the signs, signifiers and signifieds that are deferred have invariably something to do with prohi bition, transgression, and the Law. The majority of the verses Abhinava and ?nanda choose from Prakrit (popular literatures) deal with adultery. pg 14
related to those that result in the aesthet ic circulation of dhvani meanings. It is interesting to note that Lacan defines "full speech" in the context of "empty speech;" the dialectic of emptying (through negation) and fullness (resulting from an involuntary surfacing of the negated signifier) is as essential to the French analyst as it is to the Sanskrit aestheticians. pg 15
This type of fusion of dhvani with figures of speech generates various kinds of dhvani effect: thus we can have vyatirekadhvani (derived from con trast), slesadhvani (from puns), laksanadhvani (from metonymy), arthdntaranydsa (from the figure of substantion), utpreksddhvani (from the figure of conceit, metaphysical and other). The three major types common ly identified are vastudhvani, alarnkdradhvani and rasadhvani. As has been shown above, in all three certain verbal operations are blocked while others are released, or un-blocked. Through this blocking and un-blocking opera tion what is suggested in instances of vastudhvani is an idea, or a thing (vastu): not an art emotion or a figure of speech as it would be in the two other forms respectively. Vastudhvani, like any other form of dhvani can operate independently, or in conjunction and disjunction with other forms of dhvani. pg 16
One of the early Seminars in which Lacan speaks of the analytic value of "full speech" includes a dialogue on Freud's notion of Negation. Following Freud, Lacan points out that one of the fundamental functions of the ego is misrecognition (m?connaissance). Patterns of misrecognition underlie mech anisms of defense that shape the discourses (and the semiosis) of the ego, its myriad ways of hiding, setting aside, repudiating, negating, and so forth. The Sanskrit equivalent of misrecognition, avidhyd, is central to the typolo gy of the four levels of language awareness mentioned above. Even though the Sanskrit word avidhyd is often translated as "ignorance," as a paradig matic term, avidhyd is closer to the Freudian-Lacanian term, miconnaissance. Vidhy? means knowledge. The suffix a is equal to the English "non" and the French me. Hence, avidhyd signifies a state of "non-knowledge." Again, with in Abhinava's metaphysical system the word for self-knowledge is abhigy?n, the exact parallel of which is the English word "recognition" or the French word, connaissance. The fundamental terminological affinities between dhvani and "full word" are strengthened by this equivalence between the principle of avidhyd and the psychoanalytic principle of misrecognition. pg 19
The sloka describes Kasyapa's hermitage which the King (the protago nist) has just entered. He and his charioteer see "Wild rice grains under trees/where parrots in hollow trunks,/stones stained by dark oil/of crushed ingudi [pine] nuts (emphasis mine)/trusting deer who hear human voices/yet don't break their gait,/and paths from ponds streaked/by water from wet bark cloth" (Miller 93). According to ?nanda, the prefix in the term prasinigdhah, translated here as "stained by dark oil" intensifies suggestive ness, or the dhvani effect. ?nanda and Abhinava believe that the stanza, without the word prasinigdhah, would have been a simple citra (picture painting) poem aimed simply at atmosphere-building. According to Ananda, it is this word that impregnates the image with the dhvani meaning. Here, ?nanda isolates a morphological factor to account for the dhvani effect. The prefix pra (with, or endowed with) combined with snigdhah (oiled) gives rise to dhvani; without it the phrase would have been a simple descriptive phrase. The emphasis is not on the stones but what they show, a pattern of recurrent action of the grinding of pine nuts. pg 20
It is this larger context that produces dhvani-fullness of signification, the repetitive action is indicative of the ascetic life styles of forest dwellers, as distinct from the lifestyles of householders. While householders use mustard, sesame and other fine oils, hermits can only use pine oil and other wild oils: a self abnegative substitution that scriptures and law books proscribe for ascetics. Moreover, in ancient India, pine oil is used to heal wounds (S'akun tald 4. 14). The wound motif, beginning with the love wound that disrupts S'akuntala's life, is recurrent in the play. Equally recurrent are references to healing associated with asceticism. K?lid?sa's play is a drama of desire, for getting, remembering and recognition. This sloka is significant in the way it orients the reader into the oppositional value systems of eroticism and asceti cism which is part of the thematic structure of the play. However, the most significant argument in favor of ?nanda's idea, which he does not himself articulate, is the following. The phrase "prasignidhah" facilitates the recall of a related term, vdsand. Vdsand refers to desire related memory traces in the mind. The literal mean pg 20
ing of the word, vdsand, is something close to "perfumed with oil or grease" (of former attachments). In this associative way, the cognitive act of falling in love, germination and sprouting of erotic impulse is causally linked with the oil and grease marks, memory-desire traces (vdsands) accumulated either in the temporal past or the pre-past of a previous birth. It is interesting to note, in the context of ?nanda's isolation of the prefix pra, the word for repeated births of vdsand-drenched psyches (souls) is punarjanma (again birth): a word that uses the preiixpunah (again). The prefix punah in prasnigdhah is embedded. The signifying stones become stained with dark oil because of the repeated "again-oiling" of them (by the hermits). The suffusion (of oil) sug gested by pra is due to the repetition (punah) of this action, a repetition that is emblematic of the repetitive function of memory and desire traces. As usual, ?nanda's intuition about the dhvani-fullness o? prasnigdh ah is more precise than he seems to have thought at the time. The "stones stained with dark oil" image, in the dhvani way of reading, emerges as a mirror metaphor for the metaphysics, aesthetics and psychology on which the famous play is based. An embedded simile would lead to an associative thought and an instance of vastudhvani-. stones are stained with oil like minds are marked by vdsands accumulated in the past, and so forth. When Dusyanta enters into the for est/hermitage, the sight that greets him is emblematic of his destiny (niyati) as a human subject and as the hero of this play. He does not know that, alle gorically, the semiotic sign of the oil-stained stones announces his entrance into the pleasure/penance, or the tapas/bhoga driven aesthetic of rememory, to borrow a famous phrase from Toni Morrison. pg 21
Certainly, the psychoanalytic context of memory traces linked with past desires does not transcend the limits of one life, nor does Dusyanta's awak ening to desire, his forgetting and remembering transcend one life span of human limit. Moreover, the parallelism is not contingent on such an assump tion. The general psychoanalytic emphasis on the past, to the oil or grease perfumed vdsands of earlier (Oedipal attachments), their remembered and forgotten traces in the mind, subsequent working through in associative memory and speech, is not too far either from Abhinava's psycho-poesis and Lacan's analytic thinking and practice. pg 21
dhvani significations are sometimes held in abeyance?as they wait for contexts to become concomitant. pg 22