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.