“What if Batman stops slapping Robin?”

As I have explained on previous occasions, my book-in-progress, A Certain Gesture: Evnine’s Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga!, is connected in many ways with my own psychoanalysis. While the impetus for the book did not originally come from the analysis, that part of my life very quickly infiltrated the creative work, shaping the book and providing the psychic fuel for work on it. Had the analysis not taken up residence in the book, like a cuckoo’s egg, the book would either have dwindled to nothing or been a much smaller, less ambitious and interesting work. I wrote about some of the connections between the book and the analysis in an unpublished paper, the first part of which became a blog post, and later parts of which have either been incorporated into the book itself or are being written up as a free-standing scholarly paper.

While the link to my analysis has been integral to the development of the book, it has also created a ligature between two parts of my life that leaves the book vulnerable, a hostage to fortune. A couple of weeks ago my analyst asked “what if Batman stops slapping Robin?” In other words, what will happen if I resolve or ameliorate the intrapsychic conflict that animates the book (epitomized for me in its central image) before the book is finished? In fact, I had been asking myself that question, in one form or another, for a while. For example, I have sometimes toyed with the idea of ending the analysis – only to tell myself that I can’t do that before I have finished the book!

But things are already beginning to crumble. I can tell that I feel differently about the image that is at the core of the book. I am no longer drawn to it in the same way. It is no longer a source of libidinal release, as it used to be. I am not so worried by the thought that, if the book is finished and published, I will almost certainly not take the same delight in it as I have hitherto. I have experienced that loss in connection with all my previous books – now either lifeless and indifferent to me or rapidly becoming so. What I am worried about is that I simply will not be able to bring the book to completion if I make more progress on the analysis front!

The analysis is not the only source of energy for the book. Perhaps I need to cultivate the others and let the book gradually evolve more under their aegis. It is already, by design, such a hodge-podge (nor is it being written from beginning to end – though even if it were, the reader will be advised that their progress through the book should depend on chance and whim) that such a reorientation will likely have little discernible effect on its character. But will those other energy sources be enough to see me through the crushingly difficult process of laboring in obscurity on a bizarre work that is, at best, an object of mild but puzzled curiosity to my philosophical colleagues? A work whose prospects for publication are frankly dim? Hitherto, these obstacles were outshone by the exhilaration and certainty that the central image always infused me with, a connection to the project at a deep and libidinal level.

At the other end of the ligature, will I encounter (am I already encountering) an unconscious resistance to progress in the analysis on the basis of my fear? Am I desperately clinging to old, neurotic structures for the sake of my book?

A ligature between separate spheres: a key to injustice (Michael Walzer) – a jury-rigged raft on which to navigate a river – a ball and chain to drag you under.