Jacques Lacan

This article offers a speculative, autotextual reading of J. G. Ballard’s oeuvre through the lens of psychoanalysis and the theoretical framework of Radosvet Kolarov. It seeks to develop the concept of “auto-catastrophe” – a traumatic event that marks a radical turning point in an author’s creative output. The study conceptualizes this auto-catastrophe as a “transmodal cut” that (dis)connects various techniques, motifs, media, corpora, etc. The text also proposes a reading of Kolarov’s notion of “discursive desire,” interpreted through Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic concept of enjoyment [jouissance].
The article applies these concepts in an analysis of Ballard’s most experimental work, The Atrocity Exhibition, emphasizing its intermedial aspects in order to demonstrate how the transgressive nature of the transmodal cut enables literature to cross its own formal boundaries. The text also explores how the auto-catastrophe can (dis)connect the works and enjoyments of different authors who share the same trauma. To this end, it briefly examines the relationship between the works of Ballard and those of the American writer William Burroughs.