On page 4, Lacan talks about the formation of an "alienating identity" brought on by the mirror stage. This identity will then "mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development." Although I am far from certain on this point, it seems that the transition of "instinctual thrusts" to dangers is the alienating factor here. Upon recognizing himself in the mirror, the subject becomes aware of his (physical?) relationship to the other objects he encounters, and understands at some level that he must cooperate with these others in order to get what he wants. Thus the subject must limit the physical manifestations of his desires, divorcing his inner-world from the outer-world. Before he recognized himself as a member of the physical world, the subject had no obligations to it. Maybe? Thoughts?
Maybe I have a handle on alienation (and maybe I don't), but there are several things I am totally confused by. Toward the end, Lacan talks about a "knot of imaginary servitude that love must always undo again, or sever." I think he may be talking about the ever-widening separation that occurs between the outer self and the inner self as a result of the imposition of cultural norms, and that love is some kind of satisfaction of an object cathexis whereby the inner and outer worlds may be united? (For anyone who may be, like myself, still a bit confused on cathexis, I found the definition given
here helpful)
Finally, does anyone know why Lacan refers to the "aggressivity" that underlies all kinds of actions in the second to last paragraph? What is this aggressivity, and where does it come from?
I found myself thinking that the divorcement of the inner world and the outer world might not require additional alienating factors. Since we can only see an externalized version of ourself, along with the rest of the exterior world, it seems like our inner and outer worlds are split into two as soon as we can see a representation of ourself at all.
ReplyDeleteBefore the mirror stage, for example, we could be forgiven for complete internality; even as we observed the external world, before we populate that world with a version of ourself, we are simply a different kind of entity than everything else, an internally thinking being rather than an externally active one. When we become capable of representing ourself as something having a place in the external world, we already effectively have two different and contradictory conceptions of the self. I suppose that danger or stress might aggravate the distinction between inner and outer world, but I think there is already enough of a distinction that is ultimately based on the "creation" of an external self at all.