Copjec

The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan Author(s): Joan Copjec Source: October, Vol.
49 (Summer, 1989), pp. 53-71 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778733 . Accessed: 14/03/2014 17:51
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The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan
JOAN COPJEC
Lacan parodies the image of himself Through his appearance in Television, - that we have, to a -of his teaching large extent, received and accepted. his now himas he leans assertively behind hands alone desk, Standing supporting now thrownupwardin some emphaticgesture,Lacan staresdirectly out forward, at us, as he speaks in a voice that none would call smooth of "quelque chose, n'est-ce pas?" This "quelque chose" is, of course, never made specific,never of factsthatis known,but revealed,and so it comes to stand fora factor a system not by us. This image recalls the one presented to Tabard by the principalin Vigo's Zerofor Conduct.It is the productof the childish,paranoid notion thatall a public world our privatethoughts and actionsare spied on byand visiblewithin representedby parentalfigures.In appearing to us, then,by means of the "mass what we may call our "televisual" fear-that media,"' Lacan seems to confirm we are perfectly, completelyvisible to a gaze that observes us fromafar (tele meaningboth "distant"and [fromtelos]"complete").2 That thisproffered image is parodic, however,is almost surelyto be missed,so strongare our mispercepof the words withwhich he opens his tions of Lacan. And, so, the significance address and by which he immediatelycalls attention to his self-parody--"I alwaysspeak the truth.Not the whole truth,because there's no way to say it all. impossible:words fail. Yet it's throughthis Saying the whole truthis materially holds onto the real."' - the significance of these that the truth veryimpossibility words may also be missed,as theyhave been generallyin our theoriesof representation,the most sophisticatedexample of which is filmtheory. in a kindof establishing Let me first, shot,summarizewhat I take to be the
In The Four FundamentalConceptsof Psycho-Analysis 1. (London, The Hogarth Press, 1977, p. 274), Lacan speaks of the "phantasies" of the "mass media," as he veryquicklysuggestsa critique of the familiarnotion of "the societyof the spectacle." This notion is replaced in Lacan by what mightbe called "the societyof (formedfrom)the nonspecularizable." of ancientGreek termsare from Liddell and Scott's 2. Lexicon,1906; all translations Greek-English thissource. 3. Jacques Lacan, Television,trans. Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelson, no. 40 (Spring 1987), p. 7. October,
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central misconceptionof filmtheory:believing itselfto be followingLacan, it in doing so, however,itoperates in ignoranceof, conceivesthe screenas mirror;4 and at the expense of, Lacan's more radical insight,whereby the mirror is conceived as screen.
The Screen as Mirror
This misconceptionis at the base of film theory's formulationof two One of the concepts- the apparatus and the gaze- and of theirinterrelation. clearest and most succinctdescriptionsof this interrelation -and I must state because of the wayit responsibly here thatit is becauseof itsclarity, and explicitly endemic film I to articulates that cite this not to assumptions theory, description, or its it authors is of the editors a Re-vision, particularly provided by impugn on film.Althoughitsfocusis the special situation collectionof essaysby feminists of the femalespectator,the description outlinesthe general relationsamong the and terms as gaze, apparatus, subject theyare statedby filmtheory.Afterquoting and Punishin whichBentham'sarchitectural a passage fromFoucault's Discipline Re-vision the is laid the editorsmake the following for claim: out, panopticon plan the dissociationof the see/being seen dyad [which the panoptic arrangementof the central tower and annular arrangementensures] and the sense of permanentvisibility seem perfectly to describe the condition not only of the inmate in Bentham's prison but of the woman as well. For defined in termsof her visibility, she carries her own Panopticonwithher wherevershe goes, her self-image a function of her being foranother. . . The subjectivity to assigned femininity withinpatriarchalsystems is inevitably bound up withthe structure of the look and the localizationof the eye as authority.5 The panoptic gaze definesperfectly the situationof the woman under patrithat it is the of the structurewhichobliges the woman to is, archy: veryimage monitorherselfwith a patriarchaleye. This structuretherebyguarantees that even her innermostdesire will always be not a transgression, but rather an of the law, thateven the "process of theorizingher own untenable implantation situation" can only reflectback to her "as in a mirror,"her subjugationto the gaze.
4. Mary Ann Doane points out that it is our very fascinationwith the model of the screen as mirrorthathas made it resistant to the kindsof theoreticalobjections whichshe herselfmakes. See no. 11 (Fall 1980), p. 28. Mary Ann Doane, "Misrecognitionand Identity,"Cine-Tracts, 5. Los Angeles, Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams,eds., Re-vision, American Film Institute,1984, p. 14. The introduction to thisveryusefulcollection of essaysalso attemptsto detail some of the historicalshiftsin feministtheories of representation;I am only to argue the need forone more shift, thistimeaway fromthe panopticmodel of cinema. attempting
The Orthopsychic Subject
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The panoptic gaze defines,then, the perfect, of the i.e., the total,visibility of any subject under any social order, whichis to say, woman under patriarchy, of any subject at all. For the very condition and substance of the subject's is his or her subjectivization by the law of the societywhichproduces subjectivity that subject. One only becomes visible- not only to others,but also to oneself histori-through (by seeing through)the categoriesconstructedby a specific, These of are of defined society. categories visibility categories knowledge. cally The perfectionof vision and knowledge can only be procured at the exand nonknowledge.According to the logic of the panoptic pense of invisibility last do not and (in an important these sense) cannot exist. One might apparatus, summarizethis logic- therebyrevealing it to be more questionable than it is is normallytaken to be - by statingit thus: since all knowledge (or visibility) produced by society(thatis, all thatit is possible to knowcomes not fromreality, but from socially constructedcategories of implementablethought),since all is produced, or all that is knowledge is produced, onlyknowledge (or visibility) produced is knowledge (visible). This is too glaring a nonsequitor- the then clauses are too obviouslynot necessaryconsequences of the ifclause- forit ever to be statableas such. And yet thislack of logical consequence is preciselywhat must be at work and what must go unobserved in the foundingof the seeing/ the comprehension of the subject by the laws that being seen dyad whichfigures rule over its construction. Here-one can already imagine the defensiveprotestations: I have over- there is a measure of indetermination stated my argument available even to the panopticargument.This indetermination is provided forby the factthatthe subject is constructednot by one monolithicdiscourse but by a multitudeof different discourses.What cannot be determinedin advance are the articulations that may result from the chance encounter- sometimes on the site of the subject-of thesevariousdiscourses.A subjectof a legal discoursemayfinditself in conflict withitself as a subject of a religiousdiscourse.The negotiationof this conflict mayproduce a solutionthatwas anticipatedby neitherof the contributhave underlinedthispart of Foucault's work ing discourses.Some filmtheorists in an attemptto locate possible sources of resistanceto institutional formsof to clear a for a feminist I for would cinema, space power, example." argue, of subject positionsand however,thatthissimpleatomizationand multiplication of conflict thispartesextra does not lead to a radical underminpartesdescription of or is Not it the case that at each stage what is power. ing knowledge only is in conceived Foucauldian to produced theory be a determinate thingor position, of but, in addition, knowledgeand power are conceived of as the over-alleffect the relations amongthe various conflicting positionsand discourses. Differences do not threatenpanoptic power; theyfeed it.
6. See, especially,Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender,Bloomington,Indiana University Press, 1987.
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The Lacanian argument is quite different.It states that that which is produced by a signifying systemcan never be determinate.Conflictin thiscase does not resultfromthe clash between two different positions,but fromthe fact is not that no positiondefinesa resolute identity. Nonknowledge or invisibility and two as the between two meancertainties, wavering negotiations registered ings or positions, but as the undermining of every certainty,the incompleteness of every meaning and position.7Incapable of articulatingthis more radical understandingof nonknowledge,the panoptic argument is ultimately to resistance, unable to conceive of a discourse that would refuserather resistant than refuelpower. between My purpose here is not simplyto point out the crucial differences Foucault's theory and Lacan's, but also to attempt to explain how the two theories have failed to be perceived as different. How a psychoanalytically inas expressiblein Foucauldian terms, formedfilmtheorycame to see itself despite the fact that these very terms aimed at dispensing with psychoanalysis as a method of explanation. In Foucault's work the techniquesof disciplinary power (of the constructionof the subject) are conceived as capable of "materially the body in depth withoutdepending even on the mediationof the penetrat[ing] If power takeshold on the body,thisisn'tthrough own subject's representations. to be interiorizedin people's consciousness."' For Foucault, the its having first conscious and the unconsciousare categoriesconstructedby psychoanalysis and other discourses(philosophy, literature, law, etc.): like other sociallyconstructed categories, they provide a means of renderingthe subject visible,governable, trackable. They are categories through which the modern subject is apprethan(as psychoanalysis rather hended and apprehendsitself, maintains)processes of apprehension;theyare not processes which engage or are engaged by social discourses(filmtexts,for example). What the Re-vision editors force us to confrontis the fact that in filmtheorythese radical differences have largelygone unnoticedor have been nearlyannulled. Thus, thoughthe gaze is conceived as a metapsychologicalconcept central to the descriptionof the subject's psychic engagementwiththe cinematicapparatus,the concept,as we shall see, is formulated in a way that makes any psychicengagementredundant. a kindof "Foucauldization" of My argumentis thatfilmtheoryperformed Lacanian theory;an early misreadingof Lacan turnedhim into a "spendthrift" Foucault- one who wasteda bit too much theoretical energyon such notionsas
7. In "What Is a Question," F.S. Cohen makes thisimportant distinction clearly:"Indeterminaa waveringbetweendifferent but the grasping tionor doubt is not,as is oftenmaintained, certainties, of an incompleteform" (The Monist,no. 38 [1929], p. 354, fn. 4). 8. Michel Foucault, in Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge, New York, Pantheon, p. 186. The interviewwith Lucette Finas in which this statementoccurs was also published in Meaghan Morris and Paul Patton,eds., MichelFoucault:Power,Truth, Strategy, Sydney,Feral Publications,1979. The statementis quoted and emphasized in Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain's excellent book, Michel Foucault,New York, St. Martin's Press, 1984, p. 244.
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the antithetical by parental intermeaningof words or the repressioninstituted of Foucault (wherebyeverydisavowalis seen diction.It is the perceived frugality an avowal of what is being denied), every bit as much as the to be essentially thathas guaranteed Foucault's in history, recentand widelyproclaimedinterest in Lacan the over academy. ascendancy
It was through the concept of the apparatus--the economic, technical, ideological institution- of cinema that the break between contemporaryfilm and itspast was effected.9 This break meantthatcinematicrepresentation theory of a prior and external was considered to be not a clear or distortedreflection social discourses that to construct and but one helped among reality reality, many the concept of the apparatus was not the spectatorialsubject. As is well-known, but was importedfromepistemological studiesof science. originalto filmtheory, The actual term dispositif ("apparatus") used in filmtheoryis borrowed from Gaston Bachelard, who employed it to counter the reigningphilosophyof phenomenology.Bachelard proposed instead the studyof "phenomeno-technology," by an independentreality, believingthatphenomena are not given to us directly but are, rather, constructed (cf. the Greek techne,"produced by a regular method of making,rather than found in nature") by a range of practicesand techniques that define the field of historicaltruth.The objects of science are materializableconcepts,not natural phenomena. Even thoughit borrowshis termand the concept it names, film does theory in the workof Bachelard, but ratherin thatof one of his not locate itsbeginnings Louis Althusser.'o(This history is by now relatively but sincea students, familiar, numberof significant it is necespointshave been overlooked or misinterpreted, saryto retracesome of the details.) Althusserwas judged to have advanced and corrected the theory of Bachelard in a way that foregroundedthe subjectof science. Now, although he had argued that the scientific subject was formedin
9. Although some might claim that it was the introductionof the linguisticmodel into film studiesthatinitiatedthe break, it can be more accuratelyargued thatthe break was precipitated by a in the linguistic model itself- froman exclusiveemphasison the relationbetween signifiers to shift and the subject,theirsignifying effect. That is, it was an emphasison the relationbetween signifiers not untilthe rhetorical aspect of language was made visible-by meansoftheconcept oftheapparatus - thatthe fieldof film studieswas definitively reformed.I am arguing,however,that,once thisshift was made, some of the lessons introducedby semiologywere, unfortunately, forgotten. To definea break(ratherthan a continuity) between whatis oftenreferred to as "two stages," a break between Freud's first or the first and second semiology,is analogous to defining and second concepts of transference.It was only with the second, the privilegingof the analyst/analysand thatpsychoanalysis relationship, (properlyspeaking)was begun. Biographyratherthan theoryis the of these concepts. source of the demand for the continuity The best discussion of the relationshipbetween Bachelard and Althussercan be found in 10. Etienne Balibar, "From Bachelard to Althusser:The Concept of 'EpistemologicalBreak,"' Economy vol. 5, no. 4 (November 1976), pp. 385-411. and Society,
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and by the fieldof science, Bachelard had also maintainedthat the subject was neverfullyformedin thisway. One of the reasons forthismerelypartialsuccess, he theorized, was an obstacle that impeded the subject's development; this obstacle he called the imaginary. But the problem with this imaginary,as laterpointedout, was thatit was itself Althusser largelyuntheorizedand was thus as externaland prior (thatis,almostby default)accepted by Bachelard as a given, of historicaldeterminations. The scientific to ratherthan as an effect subject was detersplit,then, between two modes of thought:one governed by historically mined scientific forms,the other by formsthat were eternal,spontaneous,and almost purelymythical." Althusserrethoughtthe categoryof the imaginary, makingit a part of the of the subject.The imaginary construction came to name processof the historical a process necessaryfor- ratherthanan impediment to- the ideological foundprovided the formof the subject'slived relation ing of the subject:the imaginary to society.Through thisrelation,the subjectwas broughtto accept as itsown, to of the social order. recognize itselfin, the representations This last statementof Althusser'sposition is importantfor our concerns here because it is also a statementof the basic positionof filmtheoryas it was developed in the '70s, in France and in England,byJean-LouisBaudry,Christian Metz, Jean-Louis Comolli, and by the journal Screen. In sum: the screen is a mirror. The representations cinema, the images produced by the institution on are the the as its own.12 There is, screen, subject presented accepted by in the notionof the subject's "own image"; it can refer an ambiguity admittedly, to the subject. Both either to an image of the subject or an image belonging referencesare intended by filmtheory.Whether that which is representedis specularized as an image of the subject's own body or as the subject's image of someone or somethingelse, what remainscrucial is the attribution to the image of what Lacan (not filmtheory,which has never, it seems to me, adequately accounted for the ambiguity)calls "that belong to me aspect so reminiscent of property."'" It is thisaspect that allows the subject to see in any representation
11. This notionof the scientist discontinuous withhim-or herself can be givena preciseimage,the formsthat alchemical image of the Melusines: creatures composed partiallyof inferior,fossil-like reach back into the distant and partially of superior,energetic(scientific) past (the imaginary) activity. In ThePoetics ofSpace (Boston, Beacon, 1969, p. 109), Bachelard, whose notionof the unconsciousis more Jungianthan Freudian, refersto this image fromJung's Psychology and Alchemy. 12. The one reservation Metz has to the otherwiseoperativeanalogybetweenmirror and screenis that at the cinema, "the spectatoris absent fromthe screen: contraryto the child in the mirror" (Christian Metz, The ImaginarySignifier, Bloomington, Indiana UniversityPress, 1982, p. 48). the errorimpliedin thisreservation Jacqueline Rose clarified by pointingout that"the phenomenon of transitivism demonstrates thatthe subject's mirroridentification can be withanother child," that one alwayslocatesone'sownimagein another and thusthe imaginary identification does not depend on a literalmirror("The Imaginary,"in Sexuality in theField ofVision,London, Verso, 1986, p. 196). What is mostoftenforgotten, of thisfact:one alwayslocatestheother however,is the corollary in one's ownimage.The effect of thisfacton the constitution of the subject is Lacan's fundamental concern. Lacan, The Four FundamentalConcepts, 13. p. 81.
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but a reflection of itself as masterof all it surveys. of itself, not only a reflection The imaginary relationproduces the subjectas masterof the image. This insight characteristic of reality."'4 led to film "impression reconceptionof film's theory's betweenthe No longerconceived as dependent upon a relationof verisimilitude henceforth attributed to a was real this and the referent, impression image relationof adequation betweenthe image and the spectator.In other words,the of reality resultsfromthe factthatthe subjecttakesthe image as a full impression of itselfand its world; the subject is satisfied thatit and sufficient representation has been adequately reflectedon the screen. The "realityeffect"and the "subject effect"both name the same constructedimpression:that the image makes the subject fullyvisibleto itself. The imaginary relationis definedas literally a relationof recognition. The subject reconceptualizedas its own concepts already constructedby the Other. of representation is thoughtto take place secondSometimesthe reconstruction arily rather than directly,after there has been a primaryrecognitionof the subject as a "pure act of perception." This is Metz's scenario."5The subject first withthe gaze and then recognizesthe images on recognizes itselfby identifying the screen. Now, whatexactlyis the gaze, in thiscontext?Whydoes it emerge in this way fromthe theoryof the apparatus? What does it add- or subtractwhere it does not figureas a term?6 All thesequestions fromBachelard's theory, in due course; fornow we mustbegin with more fully willhave to be confronted the observationthat thisideal point can be nothingbut thesignified oftheimage, the point from which the image makessense to the subject. In taking up its the image with sense. position at this point, the subject sees itselfas supplying Regardlessof whetherone or two stagesare posited,the gaze is alwaysthe point fromwhichidentification is conceived by filmtheoryto take place. And because the gaze is always conceptualized as an analogue of that geometral point of Renaissance perspective at whichthe picturebecomes fully, visible, undistortedly the gaze alwaysretainswithinfilmtheorythe sense of being thatpoint at which sense and being coincide. The subject comes into being by identifying withthe Sense the -that is the ultimate of image's signified. founds subject point the film theoreticalconcept of the gaze.
It wasJean-LouisBaudry who first 14. formulated thisdefinition of the impression of reality.See his second apparatus essay, "The Apparatus," in Camera Obscura, no. 1 (Fall 1976), especially pp. 118-119. 15. Metz's two-stage scenario is critiquedby Geoffrey in "A Note on History/DisNowell-Smith course," in Edinburgh '76, pp. 26-32; and by Mary Ann Doane in "Misrecognitionand Identity." 16. to the gaze as "metempsychotic": I have elsewherereferred althoughit is a concept abhorrent to feminist reason, the targetof constanttheoreticalsallies, the gaze continuesto reemerge,to be as an assumptionof one filmanalysisafteranother. The argumentI am makingis reincorporated, that it is because we have not properlydeterminedwhat the gaze is, whence it has emerged,thatwe have been unable to eliminateit. It is generallyargued that the gaze is dependent on psychoanalytic of voyeurism structures and fetishism, presumedto be male. I am claiminginsteadthatthe gaze arises out of linguistic and thattheseassumptions, in turn,shape (and appear to be naturalized assumptions by) the psychoanalytic concepts.
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relationis not, however,merelya relationof knowledge,of The imaginary sense and recognition;it is also a relationof love guaranteedby knowledge.The to representthe subject, it seems also to be an image seems not only perfectly image of the subject's perfection.An unexceptional definitionof narcissism appears to supportthisrelation:the subject fallsin love withitsown image as the becomes in thisaccount image of its ideal self.Exceptfor the factthatnarcissism the harmonious relationbetweenselfand social order the structure thatfacilitates (since the subject is made to snuggle happilyinto the space carved out for it), relation to the account, the subject's narcissistic whereas, in the psychoanalytic with and disrupt other social relations.I am attempting to self is seen to conflict minor here no of between and the point disagreement psychoanalysis pinpoint panoptic argument: the opposition between the unbinding force of narcissism and the bindingforce of social relationsis one of the definingtenetsof psychoanalysis."7It is neverthelesstrue that Freud himselfoften ran into difficulty and that many,fromJung on, have found it tryingto maintainthe distinction easier to mergethe two forcesintoa libidinalmonism.But easier is not better;to is not only to destroypsychoanalysis but also to court disregard the distinction determinism. of the relationof the subject to the social necesWhy is the representation sarily an imaginaryone? This question, posed by Paul Hirst,'8 should have launched a serious critiqueof filmtheory.That it did not is attributable, in part, to the factthatthe question was perceived to be fundamentally a questionabout the content of the concept of the imaginary.With only a slightlydifferent came to bear, almost emphasis,the questioncan be seen to ask how the imaginary the burden of the construction of the exclusively, subject despite the factthat we always speak of the "symbolic" constructionof the subject. One way of answeringthisis to note thatin much contemporary theorythe symbolicis itself structured like Althusser's likethe imaginary, versionof the imaginary. And thus Hirst'scriticisms are aimed at our conceptionof the symbolic construction of the in That this is is so made once the of subject, general. explicit again by frugality of some Foucault, who exposes to us not onlythe content,but also the emptiness of our concepts. For he successfully demonstratesthat the conception of the unnecothers)relies makes the imaginary symbolicon whichhe (and, implicitly, essary.In a move similarto the one thatrefigured ideologyas a positiveforceof the productionratherthan falsification of reality, Foucault rethinks law symbolic forceof the productionratherthan repressionof the subject as a purely positive and its desires. Offeringhis argument-that the law constructsdesire- as a
17. Mikkel Borsch-Jacobsen's book, The Freudian Subject(Stanford,Stanextremelyinteresting ford University distinction in itsfinalsection- withresults Press, 1988), grappleswiththisnecessary fromLacan's. verydifferent Paul Hirst, "Althusser'sTheory of Ideology," Economy and Society, vol. 5, no. 4 (November 18. 1976), pp. 385-411.
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of psychoanalysis, Foucault refusesto acknowledge that psychoanalysis critique has itselfnever argued any differently. verWhat is the difference, then,between Foucault's and psychoanalysis's sion of the law/desirerelation?Simplythis:Foucault conceivesdesire not onlyas but also as a realization of the law, whilepsychoanalysis us thatthis teaches an effect, is an error.To say that the law is only positive, and realization conflation ofeffect that it does not forbid desire, but rather incites it, causes it to flourishby is requiringus to contemplateit, confessit, watch forits various manifestations, thatthe law causes us to havea desire- forincest,let us to end up sayingsimply thispositionrecreatesthe errorof the psychiasay. While rejectinghis moralism, in one of Mel Brooks's routines.In a fitof revulsion,thispsychiatrist throws trist because she reportedhavinga dream in whichshe "was a patientout of his office kissingher father!"The feelingof disgustis the humorousresultof the psychiathe enunciativeposition of the dreaming patient trist'sfailure to differentiate from the stated position of the dreamed one. The elision of the difference - enunciation and statement- causes desire to be between these positions thoughtas realization in two ways. First,desire is conceived as an actual state allowed by law. Second, if desire is somethingone resultingfroma possibility simplyand positivelyhas, nothing can prevent its realization except a purely of desire is realization,unlessit is prohibitedby some externalforce.The destiny external force. denies the preposterouspropositionthat societyis founded Psychoanalysis on desire-the desire forincest,let us say once again. Surely,it argues, it is the of thisdesire whichis crucial.The law does not construct a subjectwho repression and has a but one who its one who desire, desire, unequivocably rejects simply wantsnot to desire it. The subject is thussplitfromitsdesire,and desire itself is - unrealized; it does not actualize what the conceived as something- precisely law makes possible. Nor is desire committedto realization,barringany external hinderance. For the internal dialectic which makes the being of the subject of desire into a dependent on the negation of its desire turnsthe construction self-hindering process. of the law as positiveand nonrepressiveimpliesthat Foucault's definition - thatit must be obeyed,since onlythatwhichit the law is both (1) unconditional into -and (2) allows can come existence; being is, by definition,obedience - since nothing, no is no cause unconditioned the there desire,precedes law; i.e., of the law and we must not thereforeseek behind the law for its reasons. Law does not exist in order to repressdesire. Now, not only have these claims for the law been made before,theyhave also been previouslycontested.'9 For these are preciselythe claims of moral
19. Mikkel Borsch-Jacobsen,in "The Law of Psychoanalysis" (Diacritics [Summer 1985], and Taboo. This articlerelies,it appears, pp. 26 - 36), discussesFreud's argumentwithKant in Totem on Lacan's work in L'ithiquede la psychanalyse, (Paris, Seuil, 1986) and the unpublishedseminaron
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conscience which Freud examines in Totemand Taboo. There Freud reduces these claims to what he takes to be theirabsurd consequences: "If we were to admit the claims thus asserted by our conscience [that desire conformsto or always falls withinthe law], it would follow,on the one hand, that prohibition would be superfluousand, on the other, the fact of conscience would remain unexplained.''20 On the one hand, prohibitionwould be superfluous.Foucault agrees: once the law is conceived as primarily positive,as producingthe phenomthe concept of a negative,repressivelaw can be viewed as an ena it scrutinizes, On the other hand, the fact of conscience would excess-of psychoanalysis. remain unexplained. That is, there is no longer any reason for conscience to be superfluous.What becomes suddenlyinexpliexist; it should,like prohibition, of conscience-which is not only the subjective cable is the very experience experience of the compulsion to obey, but also the experience of guilt,of the -once we have accepted the claimsof conremorse that followstransgression science that the law cannot fail to impose itselfand cannot be caused. Foucault of the law agrees once again: the experienceof conscienceand the interiorization is made superfluousby his theoryof law. throughrepresentations Again: the claims of conscience are used to refutethe experience of conscience. This paradox located by Freud will, of course, not appear as such to those who do not ascribe the claims to conscience. And yet somethingof the in Foucault's description of panopticpower and filmtheory's paradox is manifest of the relation between the description apparatusand the gaze. In both cases the model of self-surveillance recalls the psychoanalytic model of moral implicitly conscience even as the resemblance is being disavowed. The image of selfis both required to constructthe subject and made surveillance,self-correction, redundant by the fact that the subject thus constructedis, by definition, absoThe correct. and of its lutely upright,completely inevitability completeness success rendersthe orthopedicgestureof surveillanceunnecessary.The subject is and can only be inculpable. The relationbetween apparatus and gaze creates There is, in fact,no psychoanalytic only the mirage of psychoanalysis. subject in sight.
anxiety;see especiallythe sessionof December 12, 1962, where Lacan definesobsessionas thatwhich overthedesirein theOther with theOther's demand.This remarkrelatesobsessionalneurosisto a covers certain (Kantian) concept of moral consciousness. Works 20. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Editionof theComplete Psychological of SigmundFreud, trans.James and Alix Strachey,London, The Hogarth Press and the Instituteof Psycho-Analysis, 1953-1974, vol. 13, pp. 69-70.
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Orthopsychism21
-that is, a split-subject How, then, to derive a properlypsychoanalytic ratherthan the cause of the social fromthe premisethatthe subject is the effect to Lacan's solution,it willbe necessaryto pause to order?Before turning, finally, review one extraordinary chapter fromBachelard-chapter IV of Le rationalde soi"- where we will find ismeapplique,titled"La surveillanceintellectuelle of the some argumentsthat have been overlooked in more recent theorizations construction AlthoughBachelard pioneered the theoryof the institutional of the fieldof science, he also (as we have already said) persistently argued that the protocols of science never fullysaturated nor provided the contentof this field. The obstacle of the imaginaryis only one of the reasons given for this. there is also a positive Besides this purely negative resistanceto the scientific, from taking a such reduction itself that the scientific condition of prevented of the that reasons these Both concepts science are togetherguarantee place. and scientific allowed, never mere realizationsof possibilities thought historically of the is never simply habit, regulatedretracing possiblepathsalready laid out in advance. of science, To say thatthe scientific by the institution subject is constructed Bachelard would reason, is to say thatit is alwaysthereby obliged to surveyitself, its own thinking,not subjectively,not through a process of introspectionto fromthe position of the which the subject has privilegedaccess, but objectively, from relationmay seem no different So farthisorthopsychic institution. scientific the panoptic relation we have been so intent on dislodging. But there is a relation(unlike the panoptic one) assumes that it is the orthopsychic difference: just thisobjective surveythatallows thoughtto become (not whollyvisible,but) it allows thoughtto remain hidden,even under the most intensescrutiny. secret; Let us make clear that Bachelard is not attemptingto argue that there is an a means (among others)of original,privateselfthathappens to findin objectivity of concealmentis the that is He itself. verypossibility arguing,rather, concealing For it is the veryact of to itself. relation the raised subject's objective by only
In order to dissociate his concept of science from that of idealism, conventionalism, and 21. Bachelard formulatedthe concept of "applied rationalism": a scientific formalism, concept must integratewithinitselfthe conditions of its realization. (It is on the basis of this injunctionthat Heisenberg could dismissas illegitimate any talkof an electron'slocation thatcould not also propose an experimentalmethodof locatingit.) And in order to dissociatehis concept of science fromthatof and realists, the concept of "technicalmaterialism": the positivists, Bachelard formulated empiricists, and the protocols of scientific the instruments formulated.The experimentsmust be theoretically systemof checks and balances according to which these two imperatives operate is what Bachelard He extends the notion in Le rationalisme normallymeans by orthopsychism. appliqui, however, to include the formation of the scientific subject. Gaston Bachelard, Le rationalism 22. appliqui, Paris, Presses Universitairesde France, 1949, pp. 65-81.
apparatus.22
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- which makes clear the fact that the surveillance subject is external to itself, exists in a relation of "extimacy" (Lacan's word) with itself- that causes the as culpable, as guiltyof hidingsomething.The objecsubject to appear to itself tive relation to the self, Bachelard informsus, necessarilyraises the insidious thus: "To everything whicha man allows to question that Nietzsche formulated become visible,one is able to demand: what does he wish to hide?" It does not matterthat this "man" is oneself. The ineradicable suspicion of dissimulation raised by the objectiverelationguaranteesthatthoughtwillnever become totally coincident with the formsof the institution. Thought will be split,rather,bemakes manifest, and suspicionabout whatit is tweenbeliefin whatthe institution willbe taken its All secret. objectiverepresentations, veryown thought, keeping of or the but as no not true itself fictions: as the world, subject representations by "impressionof reality" will adhere to them. The subject will appear, even to of representato be no more thanan hypothesis itself, ofbeing.Beliefin the reality themselves.And tions will be suspended, projected beyond the representations consistin the "mass of objections to the "impressionof reality"will henceforth constituted reason," Bachelard says here; and elsewhere: in the convictionthat "what is real but hidden has more contentthan what is given and obvious.'"23 The suspicionof dissimulation offers the subjecta kindof reprievefromthe dictatesof law, the social superego. These dictatesare perceived as hypotheses that must be tested rather than imperativesthat must be automaticallyand unconditionally obeyed. The subjectis not onlyjudged by and subjectedto social Self-surveillaws; it also judges themby subjectingthem to intellectual scrutiny. one thoughtor representation lance, then, conduces to self-correction; always advances another as the former's judge. The chapter ends up celebratinga kind of euphoria of free thought.As a resultof its orthopsychic relationto itself, i.e., before an image which it doubts, the scientific subject is jubilant. Not because its image, its world, its thought reflects itsown perfection, but because the subjectis thusallowed to imaginethat It is thissense of the perfectibility of thingsthatliberates theyare all perfectable. constraints of the social order. Thought is thoughtfromthe totally determining conceived to police, and not merelyto be policed by the social/scientific order, and the paranoia of the "Cassandra complex" (Bachelard's designationfor the childishbeliefthateverything is already knownin advance, by one's parents,say) is therebydispelled. Curiously,the charge of guiltthatis lodged, we were told,by the structure of surveillance,has been dropped somewherealong the way. It is now claimed, on the contrary, thatsurveillanceenables thoughtto be "morallysincere." As it turnsout, then,it is the veryexperience of moral conscience,the veryfeelingof that absolves of the guilt, thought chargeof guilt. How has thisabsolution been
23.
Gaston Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit,Boston, Beacon Press, 1984, p. 32.
65
fromthe thoughts secured?By the separationof the act of thinking thatit thinks. the act of thinking remainsinnocent. So thatthoughthe thoughts maybe guilty, clear. This is the only way we can And the subject remainswhole, its intentions of this chapter. Throughout his work understandthe apparent contradictions Bachelard maintainsthat "duplicityis maladroitin its address"-i.e., that they err who assume theycannotbe duped, thatno one is spared fromdeception.As a result, no thought can ever be perfectly penetrable. Yet, in this chapter he can and must penetrateits own act of maintains that the subject simultaneously thinking. -of the "joy of surveillance" -is consciously This scenarioof surveillance delineated in relation to Freud's notion of moral conscience. But Bachelard opposes his notion to the "pessimism" of that of Freud, who, of course, sees moral conscience as cruel and punishing.In Bachelard, surveillance,in seeming a positiveor benign force. the subjecta pardon, is construedas primarily to offer Bachelard, then,too, like Foucault and filmtheory,recalls and yetdisavowsthe model of moral conscience-however differently. Bachelard's psychoanalytic which is informed in the end by a psychologistic orthopsychism, argument, cannot really be accepted by filmtheory as an alternativeto panopticonism. sheltersthe subject from Although Bachelard argues that a certain invisibility what we might call "the gaze" of the institutional apparatus, the subject is nevertheless characterizedbyan exact legibility on anotherlevel. The Bachelardian subject may not locate in its imagea fulland uprightbeing that itjubilantly (but wrongly)takes itselfto be, but this subject does locate, in theprocessof this image, thejoyous prospect of righting itself.Film theory'scorscrutinizing one. rect subject is here replaced by a self-correcting has not led only to a dead end. Yet this detour through orthopsychism been led to consider is the question of deception,of the What we have forcibly be raised ifwe are to understandthe suspicionof deception thatmustnecessarily cinematic apparatus as a signifying apparatus, which places the subject in an of deception is external relationshipto itself.Once the permanent possibility admitted (rather than disregarded,as it is by the theoryof the panoptic apparatus), the concept of the gaze undergoes a radical change. For, where in the in Lacan's theoryit panoptic apparatus the gaze marks the subject's visibility,
marks the subject's culpability.The gaze stands watch over the inculpation- the
and splitting-of the subject by the apparatus. faulting
The Mirror as Screen
Film theoryintroducedthe subject into itsstudy,and therebyincorporated Lacanian psychoanalysis, primarily by means of "The MirrorStage as Formative of the Functionof the 'I.'" It is to thisessaythattheorists made referenceas they formulatedtheirargumentsabout the subject's narcissistic relation to the film
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and about thatrelationship's dependence on "the gaze." While it is true thatthe relation to its mirror mirrorphase essay does describe the child's narcissistic formulates his image, it is notin thisessay but in Seminar XI that Lacan himself concept of the gaze. Here, particularlyin those sessions collected under the his earlier mirror heading "Of the Gaze as ObjectPetita," Lacan reformulates from the one painted by film phase essay and paints a picture very different theory. Lacan tellshis tale of the relationof the subject to itsworld in the formof a humorouslyrecondite storyabout a sardine can. The storyis told as a kind of mock Hegelian epic, a send-upof the broadlyexpansive Hegelian epic formby a deliberately"littlestory"thattakesplace in a "small boat" in a "small port" and The entire overt plot consistsin includes a single named character,Petit-Jean. of a "small can." A trulyshortstoryof the object smalla; the proof the sighting of the Other which Hegel's sweepingtale, in and sole guarantee of thatalterity denies. overlooking, The story setsHegelian themesadrift and awash in a sea of bathos.A young himselfwith the slavingclass, embarkson a (Hegelian) intellectual,identifying againstthe raw forcesof a pitiless journey thathe expectswillpit him in struggle nature. But, alas, the day turnsout to be undramatically sunnyand fine,and the anticipatedevent,the meetingand matchwiththe Master,never comes about. It is narratively replaced by what we can accuratelydescribe as a "nonevent," the of sardine can--and an attackof anxiety.In the the spotting shiny,mirrorlike bathos end, however, gives way to tragedy, as we realize that in this little slice-of-life drama there is no sublationof consumption, no transcendence, only the slow dying away, throughconsumption,of the individualmembers of the slavingclass. The mockingis not merelygentle,but carriesin itswake thisabrupt statementof consequence; somethingquite serious is at stake here. If we are to rewrite the tragic ending of this political tale, something will have to be retheorized. What is it? Plainly, ultimately, it is "I"--the I that takes shape in this revisedversionof the mirrorstage. As ifto underlinethe factthatit is the I, and the narcissistic relation throughwhich it is constructed, that is the point of the of discussion,Lacan tellsa personal story.It is he, in fact,who is the first-person the narrative;thisportraitof the analystas a young man is his own. The cameo role in Seminar XI prepares us, then, for the starringrole Lacan plays as the narcissistic "What is at stake in both cases," Lacan "televanalyst"in Television. in Television about his says performanceboth there and in his seminars,in "is a a to but in which,in neithercase, do I address myself, general, gaze: gaze the name of whichI speak."24What is he sayinghere about the relationbetween the I and the gaze?
24. Lacan, Television, p. 7.
67
confirmthe coincidence of the Foucauldian and Lacanian positions,to indicate of the I, the mappingof that,in both, the gaze determinesthe completevisibility of the subject. But the I on a perceptualgrid. Hence the disciplinary monitoring thiscoincidence can only be produced by a precipitous,"snapshot" reading of into Lacan, one that failsto notice the hyphenthat splitsthe termphoto-graph - "light"- and graph- among other things, a fragment of the Lacanian photo phrase "graph of desire"--as it splitsthe subject that it describes. Photo.One thingis certain:lightdoes not enterthese seminarsin a straight line, throughthe laws of optics. Because, as he says,the geometriclaws of the propagationof lightmap space only,and notvision,Lacan does not theorizethe cannotfigure construction visual fieldin termsof these laws. Thus, the legitimate forhim-as it does forfilmtheory- the relationof the spectatorto the screen. And these seminarscannot be used, as theyare used by filmtheory,to support the argumentthat the cinematicapparatus, in direct line with the camera obthe space and ideologyof Renaissanceperspective, scura,by recreating produces a centered and transcendent subject.26 This argumentis critiquedin the seminarson the gaze as Lacan makesclear the Lacan speakingsubject cannotever be totallytrapped in the imaginary. why claims, rather, that "I am not simply that punctiformbeing located at the geometralpoint fromwhich the perspectiveis grasped."27Now, filmtheory,of to course, has alwaysclaimed thatthe cinematicapparatus functions ideologically itself as source and centerof the represented produce a subjectthatmisrecognizes world. But although this claim mightseem to implyagreement with Lacan, to being that Renaissance persuggest,too, that the subject is not the punctiform film would have us believe it notion of misrecognition turns is, theory's spective fromLacan's in important the fact that the term out to be different ways.Despite an error on the a failure to subject's part, implies misrecognition properly recognize its true relation to the visible world, the process by which the subject is installedin its position of misrecognition operates withoutthe hint of failure.
25. Lacan, The Four FundamentalConcepts, p. 106. of the Basic CinematographicAppa26. See, especially, Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects no. 28 ratus" (firstpublished in Cinithique,nos. 7-8 [1970] and, in English, in Film Quarterly, Depth [Winter1974- 75]), and Jean-LouisComolli, "Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, of Field" (firstpublished in Cahiers du cinema,nos. 229, 230, 231, and 233 [1970-71] and, in This for historicalcontinuity has been taken granted by film English,by the BritishFilm Institute). of the noncontinuity between Renaissance techniquesof observation theorygenerally.For a history no. 45 (Summer 1987). In and our own, see JonathanCrary,"Techniques of the Observer," October, the camera obscura from the physiologicalmodels of vision that this essay, Crary differentiates succeeded it. Lacan, in his seminarson the gaze, refersto both these models as theyare represented by the science of optics and the philosophyof phenomenology.He exhibitsthem as two "ways of being wrongabout thisfunctionof the subject in the domain of the spectacle." 27. Lacan, The Four FundamentalConcepts, p. 96.
ment through which . . . [the] I [is] photo-graphed.'"25This might be taken to
The gaze is that which "determines" the I in the visible; it is "the instru-
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assumes the position perspectivebids it to take. Erased The subject unerringly the negative force of error emerges later as a fromthe process of construction, But fromwhere does it come? Film theoryhas the at directed subject. charge this position of misrecognition. of construction the described Though it only film another is that there actual, theory has nonpunctiform position, implies of thisposition. never been able to describe the construction In Lacan's description,misrecognitionretains its negative force in the As a resultthe process is no longerconceived as a purely processof construction. rather one withan internaldialectic. Lacan does not take the but one, positive drawsas an accurate description that of its singletriangle geometricalperspective own operation. Instead he rediagramsthisoperation by means of twointerpeneThus he represents both the waythe science of opticsfigures the trating triangles. emission of lightand the way its straightlines become refracted,diffused(the way theyacquire the "ambiguityof a jewel") once we take into account the way in this figuring. The second trianglecuts through itselfinterferes the signifier the first, markingthe elision or negation that is part of the process of construction. The second trianglediagrams the subject's mistakenbelief that there is somethingbehind the space set out by the first.It is this mistakenbelief (this even those representations that causes the subject to disbelieve misrecognition) laws of to the scientific The Lacanian subject, who optics. shaped according is submitted to doubts the accuracyof even its most "scientific"representations, law thatis radicallydifferent fromthe optical laws to whichthe film a superegoic theoreticalsubject is submitted.
The gaze
image screen
The subjectof representation
forus the structure Graph.Semiotics,not optics,is the science thatclarifies of the visual domain. Because it alone is capable of lending thingssense, the alone makes vision possible. There is and can be no brute vision, no signifier vision totallydevoid of sense. Painting,drawing,all formsof picture-making, are material,thatis, then,are fundamentally graphicarts. And because signifiers because they are opaque rather than translucent, because they refer to other ratherthandirectly to a signified, the fieldof visionis neitherclear nor signifiers easilytraversable.It is insteadambiguous and treacherous,fullof traps. Lacan's Seminar XI refersconstantly, but ambiguously, to these traps.When Lacan says that the subject is trapped in the imaginary,he means that the subject can
69
imagine nothingoutside it; the imaginarycannot itselfprovide the means that would allow the subject to transcendit. When he says,on the other hand, thata is a "trap forthe gaze," he means thatthe painting,or any otherrepresentation, representationattractsthe gaze, induces us to imagine a gaze outside--and observing-the field of representation.It is this second sense of trapping, wherebyrepresentationappears to generate its own beyond (to generate, we mightsay, recalling Lacan's diagram, the secondtriangle,which the science of opticsneglectsto consider) thatpreventsthe subject fromever being trapped in Where the filmtheoretical the imaginary. positionhas tended to trap the subject to conceive of language as constructing in representation idealist the (an failing), Lacan that the walls of the sees these walls subject's being, subject argues prison as trompe l'oeil and is thus constructedby somethingbeyond them. For, beyond everythingthat is displayed to the subject, the question is asked: what is being concealed fromme? What in this graphic space does not itself?This point at whichsomething show, does not stop notwriting appears to be invisible, thispointat whichsomething fromrepresentaappears to be missing tion, some meaning leftunrevealed, is the point of the Lacanian gaze. It marks of a signified; it is an unoccupiable the absence point,the pointat whichthe subject The the visual then takes on a terrifying field, disappears. image, alteritythat the from in itself the That "belong to me prohibits subject seeing representation. aspect" is suddenly drained from representation,as the mirrorassumes the functionof a screen. an agnostic descriptionof the way the real Lacan is certainlynot offering is cut off from the view object subject's by language, of the way the real object in the network of His is not the idealist position of escapes capture signifiers. either Plato or Kant, who split the object between its real being and its semblance. Lacan argues, rather,that beyond the signifying network,beyond the visual field,there is, in fact,nothingat all.28The veil of representation actually conceals nothing.Yet the factthatrepresentation seems to hide, to put a screenof in frontof somethinghidden beneath, is not treated by aborescent signifiers Lacan as a simpleerror which the subject can undo; nor is thisdeceptivenessof whichundoes the subject,deconstructs itsidentity language treatedas something its boundaries. Rather,language's opacityis takenas the verycause by menacing of the subject'sbeing,itsdesire. The factthatit is materially impossibleto say the - thattruth whole truth backs from that wordsalwaysfall always away language, short of their goal founds the subject. Contraryto the idealist position that the cause of being,Lacan locates the cause of being in the informe: the makesform unformed(that which has no signified, no significant in the visual field); shape the inquiry(the question posed to representation'spresumed reticence). The
The questions Moustapha Safouan poses to Lacan during Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental 28. Concepts, p. 103) forcehim to be quite clear on thispoint: "Beyond appearance thereis nothingin itself,there is the gaze."
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of the impossibility of seeingwhatis lackingin the representasubjectis the effect wantsto see. Desire, in otherwords,the desire tion,what the subject,therefore, institutes the subject in the visible field. of representation, thisdescription is fromthatoffered It should be clear by now how different withthe gaze as the signified by filmtheory.In filmtheorythe subject identifies In Lacan, of the image and comes intoexistenceas the realizationof a possibility. with the gaze as the signifier of the lack that causes the the subject identifies image to languish. The subject comes into existence, then, through a desire of the law, but n't its realization.Desire which is stillconsidered to be the effect no possibility and has no content;it is, cannot be a realizationbecause it fulfills the the of occasioned rather, subject'sever coincidby impossibility, impossibility from which cuts it off. the real with being representation ing in one more in accord Lacan, Narcissism, too, takeson a different meaning with Freud's own. Since something always appears to be missing from any representation,narcissismcannot consist in findingsatisfactionin one's own visual image. It must,rather,consistin the belief that one's own being exceeds of its image. Narcissism,then, seeks the self beyond the selfthe imperfections findsfaultand in which it constantly image, with which the subject constantly What one loves in one's image is something more failsto recognize itself. thanthe the source of the malevoimage ("in you more than you").29Thus is narcissism it unleasheson all lence withwhichthe subjectregardsitsimage, the aggressivity its own representations.s0 And thus does the subject come into being as a transto, the law. It is not the law,but the faultin gressionof,ratherthanin conformity the law--the desire thatthe law cannot ultimately conceal--that is assumed by the subjectas itsown. The subject,in takingup the burden of the law's guilt,goes beyond the law. Much of this definitionof narcissismI take to be compacted in Lacan's otherwisetotallyenigmaticsentences: "The effect of mimicry is camouflage in the strictly technicalsense. It is not a question of harmonizingwith the backThis is the titlegiven to the last session of the seminar published as The Four Fundamental 29. Concepts. Although the "you" of the titlerefersto the analyst,it can refer just as easilyto the ideal image in the mirror. 30. Jacqueline Rose's "Paranoia and the FilmSystem"(Screen, vol. 17, no. 4 [Winter1976-77]) is a forcefulcritique (directed specifically at Raymond Bellour's analyses of Hitchcock,but also at a range of film theoreticalassumptions)-ofthat notion of the cinema that sees it as a successful resolutionof conflict and a refusalof difference. Rose remindsus thatcinema, as "technique of the unleashes a conflict, an aggressivity, that is irresolvable.While I am, imaginary"(Metz), necessarily forthe mostpart,in agreementwithher important argument,I am claiminghere thatRose is wrong to make thisaggressivity structure of the film(the reversibility dependent on the shot/counter-shot of the look), or to defineaggressivity as the resultof the imaginary relation.The gaze is threatening not because it presentsthe reverse (the mirror)image of the subject, but because it does not. The of ever becominga fully observable being. Lacan himself gaze deprivesthe subject of the possibility is not a matterof transitive retaliation:"The phenomenonof aggressivity isn't says thataggressivity to be explained on the level of imaginaryidentification" and in the (in The Ego in Freud's Theory New York and London, Norton, 1978, p. 22). ofPsychoanalysis, Technique
71
ground, but against a mottledbackground,of becoming mottled--exactly like the techniqueof camouflagepracticedin human warfare." ' The effect of representation("mimicry,"in an older, idealistvocabulary)is not a subject who will harmonizewith,or adapt to, itsenvironment relationto (the subject'snarcissistic it does not place it in happy accord withthe the representation that constructs reality that the apparatus constructsfor it). The effectof representationis, instead,the suspicionthat some realityis being camouflaged,that we are being deceived as to the exact natureof some thing-in-itself thatlies behindrepresentation. In response to such a representation, a backgroundof decepsuch against the own breaks between its unconscious tion, subject's being up being and its conscious semblance. At war both with its world and with itself,the subject becomes guiltyof the verydeceit it suspects.This can hardly,however,be called in the old sense, since nothingis being mimed. mimicry, In sum, the conflictualnature of Lacan's culpable subject sets it worlds apart from the stable subject of film theory. But neither does the Lacanian - in subject resemblethatof Bachelard. For while,in Bachelard, orthopsychism - allows forthe correctionof thought'simperfections providingan opportunity to driftfromone positionto the subject to wander fromitsmoorings,constantly another,in Lacan "orthopsychism"--one wishesto retainthe termin order to indicatethe subject's fundamental dependence on the faultsit findsin representationand in itself- groundsthe subject.The desirethatitprecipitates transfixes the subject, albeit in a conflictualplace, so that all the subject's visions and revisions,all its fantasies,merelycircumnavigatethe absence that anchors the if subject and impedes its progress.32 It is thisdesire thatmustbe reconstructed the subject is to be changed.
on "The Theoryof Cinema and the This paper was presented in Paris at a conference Crisis in Theory" organized byMichile Lagny, Marie-Claire Ropars, and Pierre Sorlin and held in June 1988. A translation of thepaper, along with otherpapers from the conferenceand responses to them, were published in Hors Cadre, no. 7 (Winter 1988-89).
31. Lacan, The Four FundamentalConcepts, p. 99. In "Another Lacan" (Lacan StudyNotes,vol. 1, no. 3), Jacques-AlainMiller is concerned to 32. underlinethe clinicaldimensionof Lacan's work,particularly his concept of "the pass." The difference between the "deconstructionist" and the Lacanian notion of fantasy is, thus,also made clear.

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The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan Author(s): Joan Copjec Source: October, Vol.

The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan

The Orthopsychic Subject

The Orthopsychic Subject

The Orthopsychic Subject

The Orthopsychic Subject

The Orthopsychic Subject

The Orthopsychic Subject

and splitting-of the subject by the apparatus. faulting

The Mirror as Screen

The Orthopsychic Subject

ment through which . . . [the] I [is] photo-graphed.'"25This might be taken to

The subjectof representation

The Orthopsychic Subject

The Orthopsychic Subject

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