Temporal Rupture and the Logic of the Lack: Trauma, Exile, and the Fragmentation of Subjectivity
Abstract
This paper develops a philosophical account of trauma and exile through the interrelation of lack, temporality, and narrative identity. Drawing on Lacan, Husserl, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, it interprets trauma as a rupture within the logical and temporal structures that constitute subjectivity. In Lacan, the manque-à-être exposes the subject’s constitutive lack—the impossibility of coincidence between language and being—while trauma appears as the return of the Real that resists symbolization. In Husserl and Heidegger, this rupture manifests as a disjunction in time: the breakdown of the synthesis that unites retention and protention, revealing temporality as finite and ecstatic rather than continuous. Through Ricoeur, narrative emerges as a symbolic mediation that re-figures the temporal wound without closing it, transforming absence into meaning while preserving its negativity. The argument culminates in the proposal of a non-totalizing logic of subjectivity, where reason itself is reinterpreted as mediation through difference and delay. The paper thus articulates a Continental conception of logic grounded not in identity but in incompleteness—a logic of becoming that makes possible both thought and life within rupture.
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Dafov, B. (2025). Temporal Rupture and the Logic of the Lack: : Trauma, Exile, and the Fragmentation of Subjectivity. Dia-Noesis: A Journal of Philosophy, 18(2), 159–186. https://doi.org/10.12681/dia.43449
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