20 Legacy [legs ] and rephallization: 1. "Could it be the letter which brings Woman to be that subject, simultaneously all-powerful and enslaved, such that every hand to which Woman leaves the letter, takes back along with it, that which in receiving it, she herself has legated (fait lais )? 'Legacy' [lais ] means that which Woman bequeaths in never having had it: whence truth emerges from the well, but only halfway" (Presentation of the Ecrits, Points 7-8). 2. "To the grim irony of rephallicizing the castrated mother, by hanging, we must now add the irony that relactifies her dry breasts by the broad spattering of the splotch of milk . . . even though the main resentment comes from the absence of the penis on the woman's body" (Bonaparte, p. 475).
Further on we will come back to the question of the "part object" that is implied here. As for the well, in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dupin, after the discovery of the "fearfully mutilated" "body of the mother," recalls: "He (Vidocq) impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well." Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Edward Davidson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), p.153. All further references to Poe will be to this edition. Also note that the French for "legacy" is legs ; Derrida constantly plays on the leg in leg acy. Moreover, the older form of legs is lais . which is the homonym of lait , milk. Thus the question of legacy, rephallization, and relac tification.