Response to Lacan Lecture

Firstly, I would like to thank Ashley for a very interesting lecture on Lacan and his theories. I especially like the visual display of signifier and signified (as first done by Saussure) with Lacan’s revision—signifier and signifier. Lacan depicts language as being a metonymy, a word-to-word connectivity that, in time, produces meaning. Through this word-to-word connectivity, we are in search of a meaning, a destination; however, this destination will never be reached. One will undergo this perpetual searching for meaning, only to reach another signifier. And so the cycle goes on. Lacan reaches the conclusion that there is no signified, but simply signifiers—words. He claims that each and every one of us is constituted through these words, as if we are made up of a myriad of codes (like The Matrix). This structure is known as “The Symbolic.” There is neither an exit from nor an entry to from the symbolic. If this symbolic structure were eliminated, humans would be unable to exist. In Mantissa, for example, Miles Green is at first unaware of his symbolic structure. He first comes to the realization that he is human and, in fact, a man when he sees the face of a woman peering down at him as he lay on the bed. This moment in the text is quite similar to Lacan’s view of the symbolic. We learn that Miles Green possesses the traits of a man, the senses of a man, and the body of a man at a split second, thus relating to Lacan’s notion of “the symbolic.”
Moving on in the lecture, Ashley goes on to describe Lacan’s idea that language and desire are one and the same—synonymous. “If you are talking about language, you are also talking about the activity of desire. And if you are talking about desire, you are always already talking about the linguistic structure of metonymy, which is the structure of language as such.” One may come to reach the object of his or her desire and find out that that endpoint is not what he or she had in mind. The object was not what was initially thought it to been, now he or she must move on to the next, again reciprocating in the metonymic moving towards desire. This continuous movement towards the so-called object of desire is, again, the filling of a void—a void that can never actually be filled. Lacan says that no person has a fixed, stable identity. It is constantly changing. He goes on to discuss the idea of the Mirror Stage, the stage where the infant first discovers his/her image in the reflection of the mirror. At this moment, the infant figures out his/her identity and realizes that he/she is whole. Lacan continues by saying that identity is made up of three key parts: identity is fictional, identity can never really be reached, and identity creates anxiety. Despite the incredible joy, jouissance, the infant receives when first discovering his/her identity, anxiety permeates throughout the infant’s being. The infant comes to understand that his/her identity is merely an illusion. This mirror stage idea could also be related to Mantissa. In the scene where Dr. Delfie shows Miles his own reflection in the mirror, it is as if he experiences the jouissance that the infant experiences when discovering the illusory identity. A wonderful Lacanian moment in the text, I must say.
Thank you once again for your insights and for deepening and complicating our understanding of Lacan.

Metamorphoses of Erato

The beginning of Matissa by John Fowles is highly provocative and exhibits evidence of several concepts and theories. Several times in the text, Fowles uses both the notion of the death of the author and the notion of post-structuralism as well as psychoanalytical theory. Miles Green is a patient in an unfamiliar institution, or asylum, or hospital where the reader is uncertain as to where Greene actually is. This, in a way, is the idea of decentred universe, since Green does not know where he is; he is deconstructed from his reality, what he is familiar with. All we know from the text is that the patient is undergoing a series of treatment by Dr. A. Delfie, whom asks Green several routine questions and sees if he is able to answer them. A question Green asks is how long he has been where he is, Dr. Delfie answers “just a few pages.” Green questions the use of ‘pages’ and corrects her by saying ‘days.’ Dr. Delfie states that “You’ve mislaid your identity, Mr. Green. What I have to work on is your basic sense of reality. And that seems in good shape.”(14). Judging from this dialogue, it is as if Fowles is using post-structuralism conception. If I am, in fact, interpreting this passage correctly, the word ‘pages’ is put in place of ‘days,’ ‘days’ conceivably being the center of the two characters’ discourse. It is evident that the word ‘days’ should have been used in the sentence as opposed to ‘pages.’ In addition to this, another linguistic dialogue between Dr. Delfie and Green develops during the sexual treatment session. Instructing him to be “a little more erotic,” Green replies “I can’t. I don’t know you from Adam.” (Green should have said Eve.) Dr. Delfie says “Mr. Green, the person I want you not to know me from is Eve. Or are you trying to tell me you’d rather have this treatment from a male nurse and doctor?”(19). This raises a question of his sexuality—of course one could interpret this slip of the tongue as a Freudian slip, psychoanalytically speaking—whether he has a repressed homosexual desire. In a post-structuralist view, this, again, is a linguistic idiosyncrasy.
The character of Dr. Delfie is, in itself, deconstructed as we read part two of the text. At this point in the story, it is unclear whether the reader should refer to the character of Dr. Delfie as Dr. Delfie or Erato—since they are theoretically the same character but portrayed in two different contexts—however, it is interesting that Fowles purposely provokes this sentiment within the reader. Another means of deconstruction by deconstructing Erato’s character. She undergoes a metamorphosis, transforming into a punk rocker, who is a kind of representation of the anti-misogynist female in a most extreme form: a punk in the sense of dark make-up and garment, a heavy-metal musician carrying an electric guitar, and a shaved, bleached head. Then she metamorphoses into Erato, the goddess of lyrical, ardent poetry, crowned with a wreath of Ophelia roses, in a light, long tunic, and carries a lyre across her body. Green considers it a far more feminine appearance, whereas Erato considers her appearance to be a simpler way to exploit her. Alright, I will try not venture into Feminist criticism land (not just yet, anyway.) In their discourse, Erato expresses her opinion of the novel. “Death of the novel, that’s a laugh. I wish to all my famous relations it was. And good riddance…It’s what I loathe about this rotten country. And America, that’s the worse. At least the French are doing their best to kill the whole stupid thing off for good.”(66). Comical yet intriguing are Erato’s words of deconstruction and the idea of the death of the author, or in her discourse, ‘death of the novel.’ Surely she is referring the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, among the several post-structuralists/deconstructionists. That’s it for now.
I hope this close-reading is, at least, a bit understandable and valid.