On Lacan in a “new” style

I – tempted, intrigued, and inspired as I was by Lacan to find new styles of writing that challenge the conventional ones – will post a rather un-systematic response to this week’s readings:

1 – When reading the following passage from Lacan (“it is the whole structure of language that psychoanalytic experience discovers in the unconscious”, 139), I had the following “in-sight”: one of the implications of the assertion that the unconscious is structured as a language is that the unconscious – instead of being an “unruly” amalgam of most diverse elements, as I had previously conceived of it, possibly due to the randomness, unpredictability, and fragmentation of its manifestations into the conscious – has a structure, which implies that it is strictly ordered, which implies that there are a set of in-variable principles that govern it (the unconscious). Moreover, the notion of “structure” suggests to me a unity, a whole, which makes me re-consider my understanding of the idea of the split subject that Lacan proposes.

2 – Does Lacan’s theory presuppose a kind of determinism?
The formulation that “language, with its structure, exists prior to each subject’s entry into language” (139) suggests, in my view, that it does.

3 – In the lecture on Thursday, Prof. Doane called attention to the following passage from The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious: “The point is not to know whether I speak of myself in a way that conforms to what I am, but rather to know whether, when I speak of myself, I am the same as the self of whom I speak.” (156)
Aware though I am that this might be a stretch, I will propose the following reading of Lacan’s assertion: the speaking by/of the being induces the variability (/instability) of being. Simpl(isticall)y put, perhaps the subject is changed with every single utterance that the subject itself (what irony!) makes. The subject acts through language onto itself. The subject that speaks induces its own inconstancy and division.

4 – Another “in-sight”: The “I” is necessarily constituted as Other from the very “beginning” – Lacan’s account of the Mirror Stage suggests.
(Socrates’ fundamental imperative for a good life – “Know thyself” – is rendered irrelevant by Lacan’s proposition)

5 – The illustration that Lacan proposes in the place of that of Saussure (on page 143 of The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious) is intellectually appealing, but not a working formula: it completely disregards the fact that there is another case – the norm – in which Suassure’s model would be perfectly workable (gentlemen – corresponding image of the male body; ladies – corresponding image of the female body). It is worth mentioning in this respect that, in the example Lacan offers, the “gentlemen” and “ladies” are usually accompanied by representations of the male and the female’s bodies (stuck on the doors), respectively. Thus, the illustration that Lacan proposes is a “parasite” one, the exception.

6 – Lacan’s theory offers the perfect justification for the necessity of theatre/ performance. It is no surprise that his propositions have been undertaken in the discourse of Performance Studies.

7 – Are human beings necessarily assigned the positions of “subject”, “ego”, “other” (of Lacan’s “quadrature of the ego’s verifications”, 4), or could “things” also be an option? (the position of “things” is arguably assigned to women in classic Hollywood films, for example, I would suggest)

To be continued ….