{"id":9674,"date":"2012-11-02T12:39:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T17:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9674"},"modified":"2012-11-02T13:37:16","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T18:37:16","slug":"imaginary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/02\/imaginary\/","title":{"rendered":"Imaginary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Baron, Paula. “Enter the Imaginarium: The Mirror, the Object and the Feminist Project” Australian Feminist Law Journal<\/em> 43 2011<\/p>\n

In terms of individual development, the child is born into the Real<\/span>, a brief period characterized by a lack of differentiation and therefore a lack of subjectivity. At arond 18 months of age, the child experiences the ‘mirror stage’<\/span> which provides entry into the Imaginary<\/span>.<\/p>\n

This mirror stage<\/span> is the point at which the child recognizes his or her reflection in the mirror. The child’s entry into the Symbolic<\/span> occurs later, as a result of the Oedipal<\/span> process. In this latter stage, the intervention of a third party into the mother-child dyad ushers the child into the social world of law and language, the child sacrificing sensual need (the Real) and egotistical demand (the Imaginary) for the laws and values if its culture.<\/span> This developmental path has been described as the subject’s passage from a ‘Being-in-Itself ‘(the Real) to a ‘Being-for-Itself’ (the Imaginary) to a ‘Being-for-Others’ (the Symbolic).<\/p>\n

In Lacanian theory, the Symbolic is the privileged site for overcoming the disabling effects of the Imaginary and the disruptions of the Real.\u00a0 “What we do as humans is structured by reflected images that lure our desire and reinforce our egos, but we remain grounded in a symbolic network that pervasively supports our speech, ritual and even our perception of the world, and we from time to time come to the edge and touch upon the nameless, the Real<\/span> that is always there but usually mediated by language.”<\/p>\n

The Imaginary<\/span> is\u00a0 thus inescapable\u00a0 and necessary, yet for Lacan, it is\u00a0 ‘always\u00a0 trouble’: illusory, deceptive\u00a0 and\u00a0 inherently\u00a0 seductive.\u00a0 The Imaginary\u00a0 ‘constantly\u00a0 exercises\u00a0 its\u00a0 seductions\u00a0 or temptations, inviting one to “fill in”\u00a0 the unavoidable “gaps” in one’s self and world descriptions or conceptions through recourse to all manner of imaginary fullness’.<\/p>\n

We have seen that mirroring is key to the individual’s entry into the Imaginary<\/span> in Lacanian theory.\u00a0 The child’s recognition\u00a0 of her reflection is\u00a0 at once her first experience of unity and wholeness and a fundamental alienation in her being.<\/p>\n

The mirror stage<\/span>, according to Lacan, gives rise to consciousness, the ego, illusions of coherence, self-sufficiency, unity and the idea of a body:<\/p>\n

[In\u00a0 the mirror stage]\u00a0 the\u00a0 child, who experiences\u00a0 herself as a\u00a0 fragmented,\u00a0 incoherent\u00a0 collection of desires and memories, happens upon an image of herself in a looking glass’ or reflective surface. This image\u00a0 stimulates the\u00a0 idea of an entity entirely independent\u00a0 of others: the\u00a0 Imago. As the\u00a0 child grows older, the imago in\u00a0 turn, becomes invested with all sorts of expectations from without….This primary identification\u00a0 with the\u00a0 mirror image\u00a0 and the consequent imago is\u00a0 a mistake….because …the subject is necessarily divided, split between the familiar Ego, which posits independence,\u00a0 and the Id, the locus of unconscious desire.\u00a0 (Lacan Book III The Psychoses<\/em>, 1955-56 p. 43)<\/p>\n

For Lacan, the ego is nothing in and of itself, but rather a ‘series\u00a0 of identifications, equivalancies, and oppositions’. As noted in\u00a0the quote above, there is a split between the\u00a0chaos and vulnerability of the\u00a0 individual’s embodied first-person\u00a0experience\u00a0and the ideal of the\u00a0third-person surface\u00a0perspective. This split can\u00a0never be reconciled,\u00a0leading\u00a0to\u00a0the individual’s frustration (which is turned upon the self or projected on to others). Because the Imaginary<\/span> has an inherently\u00a0 binary logic\u00a0 (self and other), it functions\u00a0 to create sameness and ‘a\u00a0 struggle for recognition that requires the destruction or enslavement of others so as to maintain one’s own identity’.<\/p>\n

The Imaginary<\/span> is thus characterized by rivalry, jealousy, aggression and competition. It is the Symbolic which assures peace by imposing distributive justice: this is mine, that is yours.<\/p>\n

The Imaginary<\/span> in Lacanian theory is inherently narcissistic and isolating: Whereas in the symbolic we experience the power of the social order over us, in the Imaginary<\/span>.. .we feel isolated within the shell that the ego seems to provide’.<\/p>\n

This rise\u00a0 of the\u00a0 Imaginary\u00a0 has\u00a0 been theorized\u00a0 by McGowan, following\u00a0 Zizek, as\u00a0 a symptom of the\u00a0 transformation to the so-called\u00a0 ‘Society\u00a0 of Enjoyment’. This is\u00a0 a complex notion that highlights the relationship between the Imaginary and the Symbolic in Lacan’s work. According to Lacan, entry to the\u00a0 Symbolic takes\u00a0 place through\u00a0 the\u00a0 exercise of the paternal function, sometimes called the Name-of-the-Father. This is the intervention of the third party in the mother-child dyad which, as was noted above, ushers the child into the Symbolic, subjecting his drives to the social order, law and language.<\/p>\n

The paternal function was so named because, in Lacan’s time,\u00a0 this\u00a0 intervention\u00a0 was commonly achieved by the\u00a0 father in\u00a0 a nuclear family structure, but the function can be successfully achieved by someone (indeed, something) else.<\/p>\n

Lacan also theorized that, in the movement to the nuclear family, there was a conflation of the Symbolic father with the reality of the (often wanting) father.\u00a0 The father was thus conceived as having a dual character: the\u00a0 ‘good’\u00a0 father, who prohibited enjoyment; and the\u00a0 ‘obscene’\u00a0 father who mandated enjoyment. In McGowan’s view, the transformation to the Society of Enjoyment is the result of the decline of the paternal function, that is, the loss of the ideal, prohibiting father and the concomitant rise\u00a0 of the primal, obscene fathers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baron, Paula. “Enter the Imaginarium: The Mirror, the Object and the Feminist Project” Australian Feminist Law Journal 43 2011 In terms of individual development, the child is born into the Real, a brief period characterized by a lack of differentiation and therefore a lack of subjectivity. At arond 18 months of age, the child experiences … Continue reading “Imaginary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,40,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-lacan","category-lack","category-objet-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9676,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions\/9676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}