Volume 67, Issue 2, Spring 2023
Frances L. Restuccia
Pages 427-444
Crime and Adventure
Gide/Agamben/Lacan
This article arranges a dialogue between Gide’s Lafcadio’s Adventures and Agamben’s The Adventure, prompting a foray into Lacanian theory. Gide emerges as the bridge between Lacan and Agamben, enabling us to observe a transformation of what psychoanalysis deems pathology—perversion—into a political stance: perversion involves play with the law. Gide and Agamben promote a life of adventure composed of gestures that elude the law’s ability to stamp one’s behavior as crimen. For Gide and Agamben, life is not, or should not be, a law court pronouncing judgments or a psychoanalytic session intent upon detecting pathology—not a trial but a dance.