From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 19.1 (1999): 158-76. Copyright © 1999, The Cervantes Society of America FORUM
Against Dualisms: A Response to Henry Sullivan*
HOWARD MANCING n a recent essay entitled “Don Quixote de la Mancha: Analyzable or Unanalyzable?” published in this journal, Henry W. Sullivan makes the case for the psychoanalysis of literary characters. While there is much to ponder in Sullivan's essay, there are two points, both involving dualisms, that I would like to discuss. In the first case, Sullivan argues insightfully and convincingly against an absolute distinction between how we know and think about fictional characters and how we know and think about real people. In the second case, however, Sullivan insists on an absolute (Cartesian) mind-body dualism as a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory. I would like to repeat and extend Sullivan's argument in the first case, but refute it and deny its validity in the second.
First dualism: Fact/Fiction Sullivan cites as representative of a certain widely-shared approach Maud Ellmann's insistence that there is an important distinction between a “human being made of flesh and character made of words” (5), a distinction that allows us to make one kind statement about the former but not the latter. Ellmann is not alone in making the real-life/fictional distinction a fundamental matter of ontology. We are all familiar with arguments like hers, having heard * For a response to this response, see “Don Quixote & the ‘Third Term’ as Solvent of Binary Dualisms: A Response to Howard Mancing”, by Henry W. Sullivan, Cervantes 19.1 (1999): 177-97. -F.J.
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19.1 (1999) Against Dualisms: A Response to Henry Sullivan 159 them often enough specifically with respect to Cervantes. The case made in terms of fictional characters here is part of a larger issue of the supposedly