Jacques Lacan

1. Terms & Major Concepts2. Mirror Stage, the Unconscious and

the Phallus

L’s languageComplicated syntax; p. 1303Meanings: allusive (to Freud, as well as the other texts and his contemporaries), poetic and paradoxical.“In other words—for the moment, I am not fucking, I am talking to you. Well, I can have exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking. That’s what it means. Indeed, it raises the question of whether in fact I am not fucking at this moment. (Lacan The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.165-66.)

Major Concepts1. Identity is split; desire a lack. (split: e.g. self and mirror image; self and

(m)other; need and demand; ideal ego and ego ideal, speaking and spoken subject)

2. Against Cartesianism (rational consciousness) and humanism (free will). “Unconscious is the language of the Other.” Language speaks us. I think where I am not.”

– A child’s sexual development (“The Mirror Stage”)– The unconscious structured like language (The

Agency of the Letter”)– Sexual relationship (Signification of the Phallus)

Questions1. Do you agree that our identity is fragmentary and

why?  2. What are your examples of mirror image, as it is

related to identity? 3. Do you agree with Lacan that both our desire and

demand (for love) are insatiable?  That there is always an otherness to it which cannot be represented in language?

4. Which of the following do you agree with?  "I think, therefore, I am," "Where I think, there I am," or "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think." 

5. What is phallus to Lacan? Do you agree our desire centers around “being” or “having” phallus?

Key terms

The three orders of human existence; the mirror stageThe three kinds of “want” Schema L:

1)de-centered subject with intra-psychic conflicts; 2) A child’s development in relation to the other

and the Other. the PhallusLacan’s algorithms of the unconscious

The orders of human existence: the Imaginary, the Symbolic & the Real

The Real – ‘pure plenitude’; cannot be talked about. The imaginary – where “human self comes into being through a fundamentally aesthetic recognition” (text 1281); with an identificatory image of its own stability and permanence; The Symbolic -- language

The Mirror Stage

The baby (with its fragmentary sense of self) identifies with an external image (of the body in the mirror or through the mother or primary caregiver) have a sense of self (ideal ego). Split: experiences fragmentation; sees wholeness.

Effects of the three orders: Need, Demand, and Desire (1)

A child develops from need to demand and desire.// its movement from the Real, to the Imaginary and Symbolic.

Need – requirements for brutal survival. (biological need) absence of the mother the baby’s

social, imaginary and linguistic functions evolve.

the Real the Imaginary The Symbolic

need demand desire

Effects of the three orders: Need, Demand, and Desire (2)

Demand: need formulated in language. -- Demand has two objects: one spoken, the other

unspoken. --insatiable, the result of the ego’s self-idealization. -- always addresses an other; consciously demands

concrete, particular objects. p. 63 -- verbalization of imaginary subject-object, self-other

relations. 66 (Grosz pp. 59 - 67)-- “Signification of the Phallus” demand for love 1307

Effects of the three orders: Need, Demand, and Desire (3)

Desire: primally repressed wishes reappear in and as unconscious desire.

--marks the child’s entry into the domain of the Other—the domain of law and language.

-- insatiable; characterized by lack (of object).

(Grosz pp. 59 - 67)

The self, the other, the Other(Lacan’s Schema L)

Id (man in the realm of ‘the Real’)

the other (e.g. mother, mirror image)

Ego the Other

Imaginary rel

ation The unconscious

The Mirror Stage

the Other

The Other enters the oedipal triangle as a point outside the dual imaginary structure. As the law of symbolic functioning, the Other is embodied in the figure of the symbolic father. (G 74) Its major signifier: the phallus. . . stands for language and the conventions of social life organized under the category of the law. (source)

The Other: related ideas

The other as a place -- the other is thus the place where is constituted the one which speaks with the one who listens. There is otherness of the other that corresponds to the S, that is, the big Other, the subject who is unknown to us, The Other who is symbolic by nature.The unconscious is the discourse of the other.

“The Signification of the Phallus”

I. Intro.Start with a question about Freud’s idea of castration complex p. 1303; (Refuting the criticisms) Introduce the linguistic notion of signifier and signified 1305 rediscover “the laws that govern the other scene” of the unconscious 1306

“The Signification of the Phallus”

II. Phallus and its effects--defined p. 1306--effects (need demand desire)1306-1308-- phallus as Aufhebung 取代昇存

III. Sexual relations as determined by the phallus 1309

Lacan’s algorithms of the unconscious

Algorithmic representations of the metaphoric and the metonymic processes in the unconscious.

S/s : / = the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious, which resists being represented; / = the phallus.

f(S)

Is

Lacan’s views of S/s

not one-to-one static correspondence between language and social realities p. 1291Pp. 1293 no signification can be sustained other than by reference to another signification. the restroom signs as an example 1294 –– Language as structure more than representation– signified- not mental concepts, but social meanings

= signifiers Sliding signfiers p. 1295 – 96

Signifier and signified

the image of twin doors symbolizing, through the solitary confinement offered Western Man for the satisfaction of his natural needs away from home, the imperative that he seems to share with the great majority of primitive communities by which his public life is subjected to the laws of urinary segregation.

Signifying chain

P. 1297 Tree as an example Metonymy: eg. Thirty sails; word-to-word connexion Metaphor: e.g. sheaf In this movement from one term to another (substition), Lacan will recognize the movement of desire.

Metonymy: F (S. . . S) = S (-) S

Sliding of the signifier over the signified. (S. . . S): two contiguous signfiers; metonymy;= a relation of congruence(-) : maintenance of the bar Can be expanded into

S. . . S1 S S

s S s

Example for analysis

“Snowed Up”The Law of the father; Eddie’s desireThe change in the role of Thrigg from pursuer to caretaker

Example for analysis (2)

The PianoThe function of the piano key

Reference

Elizabeth Grosz Jacque Lacan: A Feminist IntroductionThe Other (with a big O) http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/Lacother.htm Text: http://www.anotherscene.com/japanpm/agency1.html