Trans Pronouns, Transference, and The Ambassadors

Abstract: While certain discussions of trans pronouns refer to third-person “address,” for Benveniste, “address” is limited to “I” and “you”; the third person is the “non-person.” From Jean-Claude Milner’s theory of names and insults and forms of quasi-address that place one above or below the person, the article turns to three other crossings of pro-nominal “person”—psychoanalytic transference (an address to the third person hidden within an I/you address), free-indirect style (a first-person discourse in the third), and certain reversals of person in James’s ghost stories—in order to understand the ending of The Ambassadors and Strether’s realizations there.