More on Lacan

Lacan offers a bit of a critique of the mirror stage -- not just exposition but objections.  Some ideas: this stage -- occurring between 6 to 18 months -- “places the primordial I in a fictional direction.”

It’s a mirage, a gestalt, a statue, a phantom, an automaton, an illusion, a projection.

A kind of fundamental hallucination

He says that the mirror-I is “more constituent than constituted” -- that is, this mere part takes the place of the whole -- stands-in for it -- fixes it, inverts it, sets it up as a basic opposition:

                                    Same                          Turbulent

                                    Thing                          Changing

                                    Over                           Over

                                    Here                           Here

Inaugurating the mental phenomena of the I -- the subject enframed into the mirror I

Lacan regards the mirror as a trap.  It sells the obligation to harden and become a ‘this.’

Fragment overwhelms whole -- simple versus complex -- stagnant versus dynamism. 

The thing that cannot possibly be seen as self-contained and self-sufficient -- 

is shaped and projected into a thing that is seen as wholly self-contained and self-sufficient

Some of his enigmatic sayings -- themes for thought:

from this point on the I that thinks cannot be the I that is

Return to Hegel: the I can only know itself in terms of an I that can recognize the I -- 
therefore self-consciousness can only fulfill itself in another self-consciousness -- 

'Future anterior' (Jacques Lacan) = later idea of 'Anticipated belatedness' (Samuel Weber)

“I am launching myself into a field to find out what I might have become”

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