Hamlet Reloaded: When to be Continues... to be
Hamlet Reloaded: When to be Continues... to be

Summary/Abstract: There are two main ideas that resurface from a psychoanalytical reading of Hamlet, one being a consequence of the other: firstly, the “to be or not to be” in Hamlet’s monologue which is a way of questioning the reloaded, eternalized life, and, secondly, the legacy of the father which is just a not fulfilling of the function of the father as version of the father in the proper sense. If Lacan speaks of Hamlet as “the tragedy of desire” it is because, beyond any psychologizing theme, the node of the structure of desire, veiled by Oedipal reading, is the signifier. In the attempt to go beyond the limits of Oedipus, Lacan aims to the signifying chain as such. This will lead, with Hamlet, to two conclusions: on the one hand, once in the signifier, there will be no more “not to be”, and, on the other hand, because the Other of the Other lacks, at the level of the Other of the Other, there is no “to be”. But in Hamlet, once the spectrum appears and delivers knowledge, once the veil is lifted and the son is pushed to be a non-dupe, the question about to be or not to be does, in fact, reveal a hopeless truth: to be or… to be. One can thus witness the emergence of a life on the function repeat, always reloaded, like a computer game with infinite lives to spare: a hopeless truth instead of a truthless one.

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