On Nachträglichkeit

The adjective nachtraglich and the noun Nachtraglichkeit, which Freud uses first in his “Project” of 1895, engender a conceptualisation of the effects of time and the production of history/memory in regard to meaning. The differing translations of the term into English have long rendered it unspecific and delayed a theorisation in the English-speaking world. This chapter explores the concept of Nachtraglichkeit firstly with reference to Freud and Lacan, and secondly through a reading of Walter Benjamin. Benjamin was well acquainted with Freud's writing, and it can be argued as some commentators have done recently that while Benjamin might not make explicit mention of it, his work particularly in later years has been infused by psychoanalytic concepts. The theoretical intersection between Freud and Benjamin is most obvious in the theorisation of concepts like dream, myth, the law, melancholia, trauma, memory/remembrance, and history, but also in language and telepathy.