Jacques Lacan Essay - 3310 Words

The theories of Jacques Lacan give explanation and intention to the narrator’s actions throughout the novel â€Å"Surfacing†. Although Margaret Atwood may not have had any knowledge of the French psychoanalyst’s philosophies, I feel that both were making inferences on behavior and psychology and that the two undeniably synchronize with each other. I will first identify the complex philosophies of Jacques Lacan and then demonstrate how the narrator falls outside of Lacan’s view of society and how this leads to her demand for retreat from that society in order to become ‘whole’. Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst that derived many of his theories from Sigmund Freud. His views of the conscious and unconscious being split and a†¦show more content†¦This is the state to which the narrator wants to return. She is deeply disturbed by the identity that has befallen her. I use the word befallen because it is this disparity, of having needs and no way to express or fulfill them, that the narrator wants to escape from and return to the original state of ‘nature’. We must understand the narrator’s position in society in order to understand why she wants to return to the REAL. The second phase, the Imaginary, is where our sense of self is formed. It must be noted that the process of forming a self is a settlement for having left the REAL and a labor to regain that oneness, â€Å" The fiction of the stable, whole, unified self that we see in the mirror becomes a compensation for having lost the original oneness with the mothers body. In short, according to Lacan, we lose our unity with the mothers body, the state of quot;nature,quot; in order to enter culture, but we protect ourselves from the knowledge of that loss by misperceiving ourselves as not lacking anything--as being complete unto ourselves.†(Klages, 2). The narrator early on in life has views of society, while she is going through her scrapbook she notes, â€Å"They were ladies, all kinds: holding up cans of cleanser, knitting, smiling, modeling toeless high heels and nylons with dark seams and pillbox hats with veils†¦I did want to be those things†. She wants to fill the gap th at has been left by herShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Jacque Lacan s The Mirror Stage1644 Words   |  7 PagesWhile discussing Jacque Lacan’s The Mirror Stage for the second time this semester I started thinking about my own younger brother’s introduction to the mirror a few years ago. As I was trying to remember this interaction, I came to the realization that his first interaction with his â€Å"self† wasn’t with a mirror at all- it was actually with an iPhone’s front facing camera- used as a form of distraction while he sat in his highchair. This made start thinking about the fact that the recent generationsRead MoreThe Portrayal of Women in Advertising Essay958 Words   |  4 Pagesbe published in the influential British film journey screen. (Hein,2008) Her written views have achieved to shift the perception of film theories conventional structure known as psychoanalytic, which were written about by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Lacan was to have primarily came up with the theory and was originally identified as the â€Å"gaze†. His use was to define the anxious state that derives with the awareness that one could be viewed. He argues that a person loses a sense of â€Å"autonomy†Read MoreA Lacanian Analysis of Paul Austers New York Trilogy4030 Words   |  17 Pagesconcept of fragmented self was first introduced by Freud through his model of three part psyche, namely ego, id and super-ego, and later modified by Jacque Lacan, the famous postmodern psychoanalyst. The split of subject is one of the most appealing concepts in the postmodern literature. By assimilating the structure of unconscious to that of language, Lacan bridges between psychoanalysis and linguistics and hence makes a new interdisciplinary field of study. The splitting of self that Freud was consideredRead MoreI Am You: The Misrecognized Post-Structuralist Subject827 Words   |  3 PagesJacques Lacan and Louis Althusser, post-structuralist philosophers and intellectual theorists, have expanded the confines of the human subject (Pauker). Addressing it from opposite academic disciplines they deal with many similar topics however expressed in different ways. As each independently discusses the self awareness of the human subject, many ties can be formed between these two theorists, both arguing that a subject is misrecognized and constructed differently to the traditional CartesianRead MoreBartleby the Scrivener2030 Words   |  8 Pagesaccept our represented world for an authentic one. Jacques Lacan reasons that reality is completely outside language and decides that we must come to terms with that fact that reality is impossible to access or imagine. Lacan posits that there is a dichotomy between reality and representation because language is needed to interpret what he calls the â€Å"Ideal-I,† or the version of the self that is closest to the actual representation of the self. Lacan rejects the idea of the Cartesian subject and insteadRead MoreSexuality And Gender Identification : A Perspective Point Of View855 Words   |  4 Pagesidentification in regards to gender identity. Beginning with Chapter Twenty-two Silverman elaborates Lacan’s theory regarding semiotic linguistics and anthropology. In Chapter Twenty-two Silverman examines the delivery of Jacques Lacan’s theories, which mirror those of Freud. Lacan extends the works of Freud, â€Å"retaliating the works of Saussure and Levi-Strauss† (Silverman, 1999). Furthermore, Silverman utilizes the â€Å"Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis†, to describe Lacan’s seminars and writingsRead MoreEssay on Patriarchal Structure of An Active Male Gaze 1678 Words   |  7 Pagesto the fact that patriarchy power to control cinematic pleasure has revealed. Many critics have noticed that Mulvey’s application of psychoanalysis and filmmaking appears in an ironic return to Freud and Jacques Lacan. Mulvey uses the gaze to examine male pleasure in narrative cinema, but Lacan argues that the gaze is a much more primary part of human subjectivity than patriarchy which although powerful, is secondary manifestation of culture. Cinema offers plenty pleasures and one of them is scopophiliaRead More The Quest for Nothing in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein Essay2228 Words   |  9 Pageschild at the moment when the child, still in state of dependency, identifies its reflection in the mirror. The child is then left to the mercy of the gigantic and fiendish realization that it may never again become unified with the ideal-I, or as Jacques Lacan names it, the Gestalt. The Gestalt represents the rigid structure of the subjects entire mental development, an ideal goal that cannot be obtained, and the subject will only rejoin the coming-into-being of the subject asymptotically. This isRead More Psychoanalytical Criticism2775 Words   |  12 Pagespsychoanalytical theorists since Freud was Jacques Lacan and I will use Lacan’s â€Å"The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud† as a starting point to explain some of his concepts of psychoanalytical thought. First of all, Lacan created t hree different categories to explain the subject’s transformation from infant to adulthood, namely need, demand, and desire and labeled these three psychoanalytic orders, as the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Lacan claims that during the SymbolicRead MorePsychoanalytical Criticism of Macbeth1170 Words   |  5 Pagestheorists after Freud was Jacques Lacan. In his text, â€Å"The Signification of the Phallus,† asserts that the idea of both sexes are based on the male â€Å"being† and the female â€Å"having† the phallus, and these two differences determine the relations between the sexes while also bringing them together. For Lacan, the phallus for males represents power, authority, and desire while for females the phallus signifies lack of power and agency (182). Another important text by Lacan is â€Å"The Agency of the Letter