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Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan. Terms & Major Concepts Mirror Stage, the Unconscious and the Phallus. L ’ s language. Complicated syntax; p. 1303 Meanings: allusive (to Freud, as well as the other texts and his contemporaries), poetic and paradoxical.

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Jacques Lacan

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  1. Jacques Lacan Terms & Major Concepts Mirror Stage, the Unconscious and the Phallus

  2. L’s language • Complicated syntax; p. 1303 • Meanings: 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.)

  3. Major Concepts • 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)

  4. Questions • Do you agree that our identity is fragmentary and why? • What are your examples of mirror image, as it is related to identity? • 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? • 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." • What is phallus to Lacan? Do you agree our desire centers around “being” or “having” phallus?

  5. Key terms • The three orders of human existence;  the mirror stage • The 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 Phallus • Lacan’s algorithms of the unconscious

  6. 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

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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

  10. 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)

  11. The self, the other, the Other(Lacan’s Schema L) The Mirror Stage Imaginary relation The unconscious

  12. 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)

  13. 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.

  14. “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

  15. “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

  16. 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.

  17. Lacan’s views of S/s • not one-to-one static correspondence between language and social realities p. 1291 • Pp. 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

  18. 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.

  19. 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.

  20. 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

  21. Example for analysis • “Snowed Up” • The Law of the father; • Eddie’s desire • The change in the role of Thrigg from pursuer to caretaker

  22. Example for analysis (2) • The Piano • The function of the piano key

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

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