5 Displaced Reference for Information: Jokes, Trauma, and Fables

Before turning to powerful particulars as ontologically expressive agents, I would like to look briefly at powerfully particular expressions within signification, conceived of as expressions of repressed or potential meaning—meaning that appears from below the bar of overt signification (thus being sublime, potential, or latent powers). In this chapter, I will describe three cases where evidence appears through literary and narrative devices in performative social space: jokes, fables, and the psychoanalytic theory of trauma (which is based on a notion of recursive time).