The Image in Front of the Mirror
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009The Image in Front of the Mirror
In pursuit for the true meaning entailed in Freud’s attempts to comprehend human cognition, Jacques Lacan elaborates in Ecrits on the relationship between the signifier and the signified as a method of asserting reality, while challenging the reader to seek the meaningful question that needs to be answered. “Who am I?” Using more or less the Socrates methodology of an imaginary dialog between the reader and himself, Lacan enters the world of reality using as his tools the algorithms of metonymic and metaphoric structures. By defining their interrelated existence along with their opposing role in a person’s understanding about what he defines as “nature” and oneself, Lacan penetrates the eternal battle between conscious and unconscious thought.
Beginning his journey with the fundamental notion of “I think, therefore I am”, directs the reader to accept a revised definition of the same principle, through the use of negation. Specifically, he asserts that: “I am Bosch SRV 43 M 13 not, where I am the plaything of my thought; I think about what I am where I do not think I am thinking”. Through this belief, Lacan introduces the power of negating oneself in order to define existential affirmation. It seems like the mirroring result of the “reality principle” on which he refers to in “The Mirror Stage” is actually the identification of a concrete whole through Olympus Stylus 500 /
(more…)