The Aphanisis of the Pirandellian Subject

Although Pirandello’s oeuvre is very much open to a psychoanalytical reading, to date few have studied it in terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis. This article analyses Pirandello’s Enrico IV and Uno, nessuno e centomila in the light of Lacan’s theory of the subject. It demonstrates how both Pirandello’s and Lacan’s notions of subject rely on a paradoxical Aphanisis (disappearance) of subjectivity itself: according to both authors there is no subjectivity outside of otherness, or outside of the maschere created by the Other through which the subject is alienated.