Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004.
For Freud, vertical identification secures the relation of the leader to the members of the group. Each member of the group adopts the perceived attributes of its leader, and in so doing replaces his or her ego-ideal with that of an idealized model of the leader. In this way, each member of the group comes to possess the same ego-ideal. Horizontal identification secures the relation between members of the group, as each member of the group identifies with the ego-ideal of other members. However, the feminist movement cannot be said to have a leader of the type that Freud describes (that is, the prescribed, fixed status of a Pope of the Church or a General of the Army). Rather, it generally rejects ‘leaders’ because it insists upon an anti-hierarchical politics, in which ‘groups’ attempt to organize themselves within models of co-operative and collective decision-making.
In this sense, feminism attempts to resist the vertical tie of group member to leader while emphasizing the horizontal tie between members of its communities. How then is it possible to account for the operation of identifications within the feminist movement? Freud suggests that what he calls ‘leading ideas’ can serve in the place of the ego-ideal provided by the leader of a group, and as such can secure the intersubjective relations of the members of a group (1921: 125).
Drawing on Freud, Teresa Brennan suggests that a feminist ‘body of writing’ can serve as an ego-ideal (1986: 10). In terms of the subject, then, the ‘leading ideas’ of feminism can serve as the ego-ideal of the vertical tie of identification. The identification is with the political ideas of feminism. For example, bell hooks (1981) argues that many women of colour identify with and enact feminist ideas, even while disidentifying with second-wave feminism because of their perception of its racism. More recently, Rebecca Walker (1995a) put forward a similar argument in relation to her third-wave generation. Despite the complexity of naming them, there is a set of commitments or ‘leading ideas’ that the term ‘feminism’ represents. According to this model, each subject identifies with, and thus incorporates, these ‘leading ideas’ of feminist politics. In this way, the body of ideas that forms ‘feminist politics’ serves as the ego-ideal for the subject. They function as the object that the subject identifies with and ‘wants to be like’. For example, Veronica Chambers offers a typical third-wave description of her encounter with feminist ideas, in which she discovers ‘a context for my political existence. A vocabulary for my situation. An agenda to empower myself and others’ (1995: 21). However, Brennan suggests that this process is more complex than the assimilation of the abstraction called ‘feminist politics’. Brennan perceives not only a body of ideas but also ‘a person, people’ as objects of feminist identifications (1986: 10). For example, third-wave feminist Rebecca Walker describes how ‘[l]inked with my desire to be a good feminist was a deep desire to be accepted, claimed and loved by a feminist community that included my mother, godmother, aunts and close friends’ (1995a: xxx). 97
… However, the feminist movement is not simply constituted by a series of identificatory ties of each member to an ‘ideal’. The collective nature of a political movement implies more than each individual’s commitment to a set of ideas or role model. It also implies that these individuals perceive themselves as members of a political movement and that these individuals identify with each other as members of that movement. This relation is an identification with the other members of the movement, as well as with the ideals that produce political engagement. There is, it seems, another ‘emotional tie’ at work in the feminist movement. How do we understand that emotional tie? In his discussion of the psychology of the group, Freud argues that, in addition to the vertical tie of identification to the ‘ideal’, there is also a tie between group members. Freud argues that in this relation between group members, each member has ‘put one and the same object in the place of their ego-ideal and have consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego’ (1921: 147). This horizontal tie between members of a group can be seen within the feminist movement. Members recognize others as ‘feminists’ because of a shared commitment to a political project. Each member identifies in others a shared ego-ideal of ‘feminist politics’. In this sense, each subject has put ‘one and the same object’ – feminism – in the place of their ego-ideal and ‘have consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego’. That identification creates a relation between subjects as members of a collective movement. For example, in the introduction to the anthology, To Be Real, Walker argues that ‘these thinkers stake out an inclusive terrain from which to actively seek the goals of social equality and individual freedom they all share’ (1995a: xxxv). These ego-ideal identifications construct both a feminist subject and its relation to other feminist subjects, forming a feminist ‘we’. Brennan suggests that the ego-ideal identification of feminists offsets the categorical imperatives of the patriarchal super-ego, which permits an evasion of the commands of the Father, and makes it possible to think ‘outside’ patriarchy (1986: 10). Certainly, it appears that a feminist ego-ideal displaces the patriarch’s. However, the possibility of such a process also suggests that the Father’s intervention may not be as effective as he would wish.
If, as I have argued, the paternal super-ego is not necessarily effectively secured in, or does not secure, the formation of the female subject, its failure permits an evasion of its normative injunctions and hence creates a possibility of feminist ego-ideal identification.
In this model, feminist identifications take three forms. The first is an affective primary relation with other women. The second and third involve ego-ideal identifications with the ‘ideals’ of feminist politics and with others as members of a political movement. In Freudian terms, both horizontal and vertical ties form feminist subjects. An example of this process can be seen in Elissa Marder’s description of the label ‘feminist’ as ‘seemingly personally conferred (I declare myself a feminist) and collectively confirmed (I am acknowledged by others as participating in feminism)’ (1992: 149). This personal conferral – ‘I identify myself as’ – and that collective confirmation – ‘I identify myself with others and others identify me as’ – produce feminist subjects and the relation between them.
If identification is ‘the detour through the other that defines a self’, then that process forms a feminist ‘self’. Primary identification enables a feminist subject to engage with other women. It institutes a relation between female subjects, and enables a recognition of, as well as a relation to, other women. In this way, it enables feminists to identify with other women and to imagine a relation to them.
Fuss describes how Fanon’s psychoanalytic theory repeatedly calls for ‘“an ethics of mutual identifications”…a world of reciprocal recognitions’ (1995: 144). The construction of an affective relation to other women provides the possibility of an ethics of mutual identifications with, and reciprocal recognitions of, other women. The operations of ego-ideal identifications enable feminist subjects to recognize and imagine themselves as a political movement. After all, feminism is a movement of people, an imagined community that coheres in demonstrations, writing, meetings, actions, projects, conferences, and other forms of activism. The mechanism of ego-ideal identifications enables feminists to perceive themselves as members of a movement. The identifications of its members form this collectivity, both with the ideals of feminist politics and with other subjects identifying with those ideals. This political relation enables feminist conversations to take place, because it forms a feminist ‘I’ and a feminist ‘we’. Therefore feminist subjects are not ‘autonomous, self-making, self-determining subject[s]’ (Alarcón 1994: 141). Rather, a relation to other subjects and to feminist politics produces feminist subjects. 99
Loving the self as other: imaginary identification
This description of identificatory relations between political subjects should not be mistaken for a second-wave ‘sisterhood’ of women united by their identity. Identificatory ties are a means of establishing both commonality and difference, which work to produce both unity with, and differentiation from, others. Lacanian theory provides a means of further understanding this complicated process. While drawing on the Freudian theory, Lacan’s account provides a more complex distinction between imaginary and symbolic identification. This distinction enables us to understand the different identificatory processes at work in the production of feminist subjects, and to draw out the politics of feminist identifications. Like Freud, Lacan recognizes the importance of identification in the formation of the subject, but inflects the Freudian theory through his own theory of the mirror stage. Malcolm Bowie points out that Lacan understands primary identification as being formed in the mirror stage, and accordingly emphasizes its narcissistic and egoistic aspects (1991: 33– 34). For Lacan, the mirror stage can be understood ‘as an identification’ which forms the ego-ideal and hence precipitates the ego (É: 2). For Lacan, identifications are always situated in the imaginary order because they reflect the ego’s narcissistic perceptions.
This Lacanian theory is crucial to understanding feminist identifications because it describes the other side of identification – the desire of the ego that the other mirror the self. 10
Lacan argues that in imaginary identifications, the object is caught in the ego’s méconnaissance or misrecognition of the other as self. The ego misrecognizes the other in its specular reflections, perceiving the other as identical to itself. The identificatory object is known only as the same as self, and with that misrecognition comes a refusal of difference.
In a desire for sameness, the ego perceives only those qualities that are identical to it, so that it refuses difference in the object. The identificatory object functions not as an Other but as an imaginary counterpart, an other that the self imagines to reflect it.
Those imaginary misrecognitions can be seen at work in the feminist movement when a knower, while identifying with other women, does not perceive another woman’s difference, but instead only her similarity. An example of a literal méconnaissance can be seen in Veronica Chambers’s critique of Naomi Wolf’s failure to ‘see’ the colour of her beauty myth (1995: 27). Such an imaginary identification produces the effect of a refusal to recognize the differences between women. In refusing the differences between women, imaginary relations do not recognize other identifications that women may themselves have.
Rightly or wrongly, the third wave emerges from a perception of second wave refusal of difference. It contends that feminism cannot reflect only the concerns of white, middle-class women, but must recognize ‘the multiple, interpenetrating axes of identity’ (Drake and Heywood 1997a: 3). This refusal of the difference between women is symptomatic of the relation of aggressivity to, and mastery of, others of imaginary identification. In this relation to others, the self appropriates the other in an act of violence, reducing the other to an imaginary counterpart whose difference has been mastered. If the other insists upon her difference, the egoistic self greets her with hostility arising from an anxiety of difference. Such an identificatory operation ‘is itself an imperial process, a form of violent appropriation in which the Other is deposed and assimilated into the lordly domain of self’ (Fuss 1995: 145). 100