2/23/11

Dr. Theresa Thompson English 7010 Spring 2011

JACQUES LACAN: MIRROR STAGE AND INSTANCE OF THE LETTER

The Mirror Stage

The border between internal world and external is fluid, slippery. Where do I end? Where does not I begin? Language is there before birth. It acts on our whole existence.

Mirror-Stage: Image of wholeness seen in mirror, Lacans Ideal-I.

Counter-acts infants sense of fragmented body. Imago (442) Threshold (443)

Mirror provides phantasy of Becomes a process of identification of coherence, of the internal self with the external Ideal-I. what makes the Represents infants first encounter with subjectivity, with spatial relations, with world, and our place as complete an external sense of coherence, and with a sense of "I" and "You. subjects in it, make sense.

2/23/11

The Mirror Stage

The border between internal world and external is fluid, slippery.

Where do I end? Where does not I begin? Language is there before birth. It acts on our whole existence.

Mirror-Stage: Image of wholeness seen in mirror, Lacans Ideal-I.

Counter-acts infants sense of fragmented body. Imago (442) Threshold (443)

Mirror provides phantasy of coherence, of what makes the world, and our place as complete subjects in it, make sense.

Becomes a process of identification of the internal self with the external Ideal-I. Represents infants first encounter with subjectivity, with spatial relations, with an external sense of coherence, and with a sense of "I" and "You.

Fantasy

Response to question: what space do I occupy for the (m)Other? Faced with enigmatic desire of the (m) Other, I feel anxiety because I dont know what the (m)Other wants.

Imaginary / Symbolic / Real

The Imaginary: the internalized image of the Ideal-I.
Imaginary is situated around idea of coherence rather than fragmentation.

The Symbolic: involves formation of signifiers and language.

Signs determined by social, cultural, moral perceptions & codes--the world of the father, the symbolic phallus--constructs, at the end of the mirror phase, ones identity. The entire system of the unconscious/ conscious manifests in an endless web of signifiers, signifieds and associations (chains of signification). The symbolic is the "determining order of the subject" (J. Hillis Miller).

The Real: that which resists representation, what is pre-mirror, preimaginary, pre-symbolic; what cannot be symbolized; what loses its "reality" once it is symbolized (made conscious) through language. (Letter 458-459)

We desire the real. We want to enunciate reality-cant ever happen.

2/23/11

Reviving Freud
Chains of signification: a train going nowhere (Letter 448, 451)

Dreams
Distortion (455) and Lack (456) Edge, frontier, where I am not (456-457, 458)

disguising the thought (452)

Metonymy (453-454) stretching forth towards the desire for something else (457-458)

Desire, Lack, and Jouissance

Sources
Benveniste, mile. Problems in General Linguistics. Miami: U of Miami P, 1971. Freud, Sigmund. Notes on a Case of Obsessional Neurosis. Found in: "Further Remarks on the Neuropsychoses of Defense" (1896, S.E. vol. 3. pp. 159ff) . The Standard Edition... Two Case Studies. (Vol. 10) Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth P, 1955. Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies. 3rd ed. Routledge Key Guides Series. NY: Routledge P, 2006. Lacan, Jacques. The Specular Image and the Graph of Desire. In Ecrits: A Selection. NY: Norton, 1977. Leader, Darian and Judy Groves. Introducing Lacan. UK: Totem Books, 1995.

2/23/11

The Specular Image and the Graph of Desire (1960)

Language is, at first, other
A= otherness of the set of linguistic elements. Child gradually associates meanings with signifiers emitted by adults. M=moi (ego) i(a)=image of the other

Signification is imposed on child, not transmitted by it.

Meanings become attributed to mothers mysterious activities, gestures, speech.

There is always something (however marginal, small, seemingly unimportant that we do NOT understand.

All are signifiers by virtue of not being understood. s(A)=significations

This is the margin of the others desire, the margin of what we do not understand. It is always present. (454) SD=margin of others desire. The truth of the ego emerges precisely in madness where the world seems to dissolve and the difference between self and other is radically put in question.

S(A)=signifier of the impossible. S plus a barred (A) signifies the impossibility of signifying something.

The Specular Image and the Graph of Desire (1960)

Language is, at first, other
A= otherness of the set of linguistic elements. Child gradually associates meanings with signifiers emitted by adults. M=moi (ego) i(a)=image of the other

Signification is imposed on child, not transmitted by it.

Meanings become attributed to mothers mysterious activities, gestures, speech.

There is always something (however marginal, small, seemingly unimportant that we do NOT understand.

All are signifiers by virtue of not being understood. s(A)=significations

This is the margin of the others desire, the margin of what we do not understand. It is always present. (454) SD=margin of others desire. The truth of the ego emerges precisely in madness where the world seems to dissolve and the difference between self and other is radically put in question.

S(A)=signifier of the impossible. S plus a barred (A) signifies the impossibility of signifying something.

2/23/11

The Specular Image and the Graph of Desire (1960)

Language is, at first, other
A= otherness of the set of linguistic elements. Child gradually associates meanings with signifiers emitted by adults. M=moi (ego) i(a)=image of the other

Signification is imposed on child, not transmitted by it.

Meanings become attributed to mothers mysterious activities, gestures, speech.

There is always something (however marginal, small, seemingly unimportant that we do NOT understand.

All are signifiers by virtue of not being understood. s(A)=significations

This is the margin of the others desire, the margin of what we do not understand. It is always present. (454) SD=margin of others desire. The truth of the ego emerges precisely in madness where the world seems to dissolve and the difference between self and other is radically put in question.

S(A)=signifier of the impossible. S plus a barred (A) signifies the impossibility of signifying something.

Phantasy
Dialectic
Mirror Stage (444)

2/23/11

Enunciation
mile Benveniste: two registers (voices) for narrative (storytelling)
Histoire: to tell a story; connotes both history and story-telling Discours: active ongoing social production of meaning

Histoire
Impersonal register: Actual process of story-telling is absent, seamless, invisible. Author, subject of the enunciation, is hidden. Story presents itself as reality: as complete Situates spectator with no role to play other than allknowing subject. Spectator has complete knowledge of the story. Complete suture: spectator is interpellated by the filmic text.

We speak (enunciate) from a subject position in the Symbolic Order.

You enter the Symbolic Order when you accept the rules (law of the Father)

Desire, Narcissism, Jouissance

Desire
Lack (Letter 456-457) The Ideal Jouissance
Lacan adds to the need-demand cycle the register of desire. Desire takes up what is eclipsed at the level of need. Demand is unconditional, it has an object; desire, in opposition to this, is an absolute condition with no object. Entry into language signifies BOTH birth of desire and repression of desire. (Letter 447) Desire has nothing as its object; the sense of lack is its object. This introduces the idea of lack and that marks out clearly the tension between demand and desire (Leader 83). Language, the entry into the social order, means experiencing even more lack because desire can never be fully satisfied (Hayward 317). Narcissism is both imaginary and symbolic. Unconscious symbolic identification with a signifying element. Speech around infant becomes incorporated into unconscious, central identifications (Leader 44)

That which is too much to bear; mostly experienced as unbearable suffering. Unconscious experiences jouissance as satisfaction, as something outside meaning and symbolization; as real.

2/23/11

there is no language (langue) in existence (Letter 449-450)

Blue Velvet: the Mothers phallus (metonymy)

Franks drama: what is he looking for?

Maternal phallus: indestructable desire (Letter 458)

2/23/11

Blue Velvet: the Mothers phallus (metonymy)

I have your disease in me now

Semen
Penis

Symbolic Order (power)

phallus (penis plus lack / castration)