Matryoshka

[merlin]

I believe that matryoshka is a topological model of Nicolas Abraham's
'cryptophoric subject'. To be cryptophoric, in his explanation, means to
bury within one's Self  "the segment of an ever so painfully lived Reality
- untellable and therefore inaccessible to the gradual, assimilative work
of mourning, which leads to establishment of a sealed-off psychic space, a
crypt within ego" ("The Shell and the Kernel").

Since the Impossible Object cannot be legally buried, ego buries the object
within itself, but since, nevertheless, it CANNOT be buried, ego must
constantly rebury it, or must bury the place of its burial.  Thus  the
double foreclosure (cloture double) arises, or double space of entombment:
a lock on the vault, a cemetery with a guardian. Surrounding Chernobyl
sarcophagus with a Zone, cleaning up informational space around Chechnia,
and burying them both within the collective consciousness, creating the
zone of artificial unconscious. Unlike Derrida's mise-en-abime - infinite
self-exposure, cloture double refers to infinite (since impossible)
concealment: to conceal properly one must conceal also the place of
concealment, to bury not the kernel, but the shell of a kernel - the hull
(korpus) of the sunken submarine.

Cryptophoric subject is one who himself becomes a shell - a place where all
kinds of impossible things are concealed. This applies to Russian Soul by
definition, and, presumably, to Russian Heart:

                Serdce russkoe ochen' bol'shoe,
                Vs'a velikaia Rodina v nem.

It is likely not for chance that Abraham illustrates the case with the
story of a Russian (Sergei Pankov, Freud's "Wolf-Man").

Valery Merlin

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