Jacques Lacan

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Jacques Lacan Elizabeth Bishop

• Displaced Identities and Love

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Outline

• Questions about Identity
• Three Stages of Psychic Development
• Questions about gender and Lacans views of
  language
• Gender Difference, Desire, and Love
• Questions about Lacans views of love
• E. Bishops Poetics of Displacement
• Next week

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Split Identity

• Identity is split desire out of a lack.
• (split e.g. self and mirror image self and
  (m)other)
• 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. (Ego alienated, not the
  center of ones identity. Ideal ego ego
  ideal)

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Questions

1. Do you agree that our identity is fragmentary and
   why?  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." 
2. What are the three phases of psychic development
   according to Lacan?
3. What is mirror stage? Why is it an important
   stage in child development?

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

• (chap 3 156-58)
• The Real pure plenitude (no subject-object
  distinction) cannot be talked about.
• The imaginary (mis)recongnition of ones self
  through an external image illusory unity with
  the mother ? split from her.
• The Symbolic entry into language ? split in the
  speaking self and spoken I

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

• The Real oneness and jouissance
  (undifferentiated unity of the mother, objects of
  love, or objet a).
• The imaginary (the mirror stage)
• two together and then separate (Baby and the
  Mother)
• The Symbolic three the Father, the (M)other,
  and Self

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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 1) experiences fragmentation but sees
  wholeness 2) sees loss in the mirror image

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Mirror Identity Some examples

• Vanity In classical paintings fairy tales
  (actually it implies patriarchys repression of
  female subjectivity)
• e.g. Venus at
• her Mirror
• by VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez
• de Silva y (b. 1599, Sevilla, d. 1660,
• Madrid)

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Uses of Mirror Some examples

• The return of the repressed Alter ego (or
  double) as ones mirror image (or ideal ego).
• e.g. 19th century women in Jane Eyre and Wide
  Sargasso Sea (textbook chap 4 166-69) The Piano
  

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Uses of Mirror Some examples

• The French Lieutenants Woman Sarahs
  self-protrait

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Mirror image double extensions

• Weesp. women-- are always conscious of our
  mirror images, or looking for screen images for
  self-identification.
• Looking at the mirror changing ones ideal ego
  or discovering ones selves. (Piano/French
  Lieutenants Woman)
• Whats projected on the mirror The Other, either
  ideal ego or the repressed.
• e.g. Jane/Antoinette movie stars
• The magical and the uncanny? Mirror, Mirror
  on the wall
• ? psychological roots the strangest //
  the most familiar (homely, unhomely)

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The Oedipal Stage

• Second-stage split? desire for the mother
  sublimated into desire for the unattainable
  Other
• Recognize the Name of the Father. (textbook chap
  3 157 chap 4 164)

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The self, the other, the Other(Lacans Schema L)

Id (man in the realm of the Real) the other (e.g. mother,mirror image)
Ego the Other (Father)
2. Interactions of different forces in the psyche
1. From The Mirror Stage to Oedipal stage and
after
Imaginary relation
The unconscious
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the Other

• The Other is embodied in the figure of the
  symbolic father. Its major signifier the phallus
• . . . stands for language and the conventions of
  social life organized under the category of the
  law. (source)
• (different from the feminine Otherwhich is
  the feminine space on the margin or outside of
  the Symbolic Cf. chap. 4.)

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II. Questions

1. Why is gender definition slippery?
2. What is phallus to Lacan? Why is it
   transcendental signifier? Do you agree our
   desire centers around being or having
   phallus?
3. Why is the unconscious structured like language?

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Slippery Chain of Signification

• Meaning of a sign is not in it rather, it
  resides in its difference from the other signs.
  (textbook chap 3 157)
• Sign signifier (form) signified (concept
  usu. more than one)
• To determine its meaning, we need to look at its
  context (its differences from and relation to the
  signs around it).
• Transcendental signifier absolute sign whose
  meaning(s) does not change in its context. (chap
  3 158 chap 4 174)

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Gender Difference

• Lacans analogy of the restroom signs (chap 4
  171-72)
• Arbitrary meaning structure determine gender
  difference
• Slippery chain
• 3. It speaks man?

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Phallus vs. Woman as Other

• (chap 4 172-73)
• In the Symbolic Order, phallus wholeness and
  power wholeness ? hole, in fact, nobody owns the
  phallus/power.
• Women as Lack, or Other which can move outside
  of language and be in jouissance.

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the unconscious-- structured like language

• supported by Fs view of repression (ideas
  repressed as codes)
• evidence from Freuds language of Dream
  (condensation, displacement, symbolization)
• S/s / the barrier between the conscious
  and the unconscious, which resists being
  represented / the phallus.
• We are conditioned by the Symbolic order. ?
  movement of our desire like metonymy. (Cf. chap
  
  
  
  4 172)

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Insatiable Desire Need, Demand, and Desire (1)

• (chap 3 158)
• 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
  babys social, imaginary and linguistic functions
  evolve.

the Real the Imaginary The Symbolic
need demand desire
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Effects of the three orders Need, Demand, and
Desire (2)

• Demand need formulated in language.
• -- Demand has two objects one spoken, the other
  unspoken.
• -- verbalization of imaginary subject-object,
  self-other relations. 66 (Grosz pp. 59 - 67)
• Desire primally repressed wishes for the
  Mother reappear in and as unconscious desire.
• -- insatiable characterized by lack (of object).
  (Grosz pp. 59 - 67)

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Desire expressed as

• Demand of Different Objects
• The connection of the desired object and the
  demanded metonymic connection whole and parts,
  or continguity (??).
• (-) maintenance of the bar

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Questions III

1. 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?

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Lacans Views of Love (1)

• Why is there love? Because there is no sexual
  relationship.
• Love is the mirage that fills out the void of the
  impossibility of the relationship between the two
  sexes.
• Beyond the fascination with the image of its
  object, love aims at the kernel of the real, at
  what is in the object more than the object
  itself, at objet petit a.

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Lacans Views of Love (2)

• For Lacan, loves sublime moment occurs when the
  beloved enacts the metaphor of love, when he
  substitutes his position of the lover for that of
  the beloved object and starts to act in the same
  way the lover has so far acted. . . .it occurs
  when the beloved returns love by giving what he
  does not have.
• Beloved, realizing the real object-cause of the
  others love does not reside in me ? beloved
  object (metonymy what he does not have lack) ?
  can only return love (Bozovic 69 77)

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Elizabeth Bishop

• Displacement in Life
• born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911
• Spent her childhood in Nova Scotia with her
  grandparents, after her father was dead, and her
  mother hospitalized
• Attended two boarding schools in MA graduated
  from Vassar College in NY in 1934 (where she met
  Marianne Moore)
• Bishop traveled extensively in Europe and lived
  in New York, Key West, Florida, and, for sixteen
  years, in Brazil

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Elizabeth Bishop Style

• Highly crafted
• Displacement as a major theme.
• e.g. One Art and Sestina objectifying her
  losses and turn them into recognizable aesthetic
  forms (repetition, sestina, metaphor and
  metonymy). ? aestheticization or distanciation as
  a way of displacement. This displacement is
  actively done, but not permanent.
• e.g. the scream Flick the lighting on top of the
  church steeple with your fingernail and you will
  hear it.
• Cf. textbook (pp. 85 - )

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Sestina

• Sestina six elements changing positionshouse,
  grandmother, child, stove, almanac, tears.
• Metaphoric/metonymic chains
• grandmas tears ? equinoctial tears ? almanac ?
  tea as dark brown tears? moons fall like tears
  ? sings to the stove
• Childs teakettles small tears ? rigid house, a
  man with buttons like tears ? moons fall like
  tears ? inscrutable house

• Red Stove and Flowers
• The inscription May the Future's Happy Hours
  /Bring you Beans Rice Flowers / April 27th,
  1955 / Elizabeth.

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In the Waiting Room

• What kind of identity is constructed by this a
  six-year-old girl?
• How does she establish her identity?
• What do the images of volcano and African
  natives, as well as all the other images on
  National Geographic mean to her?
• How about the adults around her? And her aunt?
• What is the big black wave she is sliding
  beneath?

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In the Waiting Room

• Thesis the poem records the speakers uncertain
  entry into society (and its symbolic order) as a
  one marginalized because of her gender and her
  insecurity.
• Not sure about her self (too shy to stop dare
  not look at herself, cannot look higher)
  simultaneous self-identification and
  self-questioning
• Three-stage identification
• internalize the aunts pains
• Unable to identify with the phallus or symbols
  of powerboots, trousers, hands.
• Objects of identificationher aunt and hanging
  breasts

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In the Waiting Room

• The self-construction is uncertain and retains
  traces of the maternal Other
• moving from the exterior to the interior, pushed
  back to the exterior only to get back in
• Moving between social order and the black wave
• Social order represented by
• Clear demarcation of place and time
• clothing and boots,
• Lamps and magazines
• Social hierarchy implied in the magazine
• The black wave
• Unnamed
• Close to the darkness and coldness outside

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In the Waiting Room

• traces of the maternal Other displaced by the
  social and historical world.
• Signs of the maternal
• The aunt in the clinic her voice heard
  (scream)a voice that could have got louder and
  worse
• Family voice ? black wave
• vs. whats seen by Elizabeth and the date of the
  first World War

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Martin Osa Johnson

• movies of Africa, Borneo, and the South Seas

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Reference

• Elizabeth Grosz Jacque Lacan A Feminist
  Introduction
• The Other (with a big O) http//www.mii.kurume-u.a
  c.jp/leuers/Lacother.htm
• Lacan and Love New Formations 23 (1994).

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Next Week

• "Tell-Tale Heart" and "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan
  Poe
• Re-read chaps 3 4 for an in-class quiz.