Notes to Zizek: How to read Lacan
Chapter: Troubles with the Real. Lacan as viewer of Alien.
Key words: lamella, “manlet”, object a, partial object, libido, living dead, death drive, compulsion to repeat, immortal, alien, theory of trauma, theory of relativity, Imaginary, Real, horror, objectit petit a, melancholy, anamorphosis, shame, tics, monster, Einstein, social antagonism, hard sciences, borrowing and annihilation, Theory of everything, sinthome.
In this chapter Zizek comments and analyzes the mysterious notion of LAMELLA that Lacan introduces in his theory in relation to the Real and the Imaginary. But what Lacan reveals through this weird term? “Lamella” etymologically signifies a “thin layer.” It is used in biology and geology, to describe a plate-like structure. In zoology it can describe a gill; it can also refer to a layered material such as mica or graphite. Lastly, it can denote a portion of cortical bone, which is the hard, stacked osseous tissue that makes up thesurface of the skeleton. In the field of psychoanalysis, lamella is associated with the Freudian concept of “partial object”, this weird and autonomous organ that can survive without the Body. In the The Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud links the partial object with the breast, the faeces and the phallus.
According Lacan, lamella is this monstrous and unfathomable thing that is described as
- amoebalike.
- an imaginary bodily organ; l’hommelette
- As the human being as pre-sexual, pre-subject substance, of a “life that has need of no organ”. Beyond the monstrosity of the Allien -lamella is hidden the postive obverse of “castration”. Zizek explains that lamella can be seen as the the partial object cut off from the rest of the Body caught in sexual difference- which is associated with the anatomical differences between the sexes. The Real of lamella is linked with the Real inscribed in the core of the human (a) sexuality.
- libido.
- organ without body.
- an entity of pure surface, of pure semblance, that changes its form
- something indivisible, immortal, indestructible, unreal.
- something that does not exists but it insists
- its status is phantasmatic
- the monstrous alien in the film of Ridley Scott. Lacan myths of lamella has something terrifying that recalls in mind the horror film with Aliens, these nightmare, indestructible, invincible creatures that can be multiplied and change morph into a multiple of shapes. The description of ” an extra-flat thing that all of sudden flies up and envelops your face is” is depicted in Riddley Scott’s Alien:
Also alien “is libido as pure life” (p.63). (Libido was introduced by Freud and uses the term to speak especially about sexual energy while Lacan uses the term to discuss sexuality in terms of desire and juissance and he locates it in the imaginary order.)
- in the domain of Imaginary is a kind of image that endeavors to stretch the imagination the boundary of unrepresentative.
- something between Imaginary and Real.
Zizek will describe the lamella as the image of the discordance between reality and the Real. The realm of Real is divided between the Real of the lamella-the Real in its imaginary dimension- and the scientific Real.
Zizek adds a third Real, the real of the object petit a which is this small feature that betrays the true nature of the things; Like in the movie “Invasion of the body Snatchers”, in order for someone to distinguish an alien from the a human being has to grasp the small detail that makes the difference. No matter how much some things try to look differently, the fact is that the object petit a reveal their true nature.
The object petit a is also related to the concept of desire. It can be seen as:
a) as object of desire
b) as object, the cause of desire> the feature of whose we account we desire the object. And as Zizek explains the statut of this case is the anamorphosis:
A distorted or monstrous projection or representation of an image on a plane or curved surface, which, when viewed from a certain point, or as reflected from a curved mirror or through a polyhedron, appears regular and in proportion; a deformation of an image.
.
Next to the object petit a we find the Object a: “the shadow of what it is not”, “ shadow of nothing”. Lacan’s object a refers to the object-cause of desire: that which is in the object more than the object and which makes us desire it in the first place.Who starts to be aware to have lost his desire for the desired object, according to Freud, is the melancholic type. Melancholy occurs when finally we get the desired object but then we are disappointed; when we are thrown into a new environment with the feat to lose the attachment with the old environment.
Theory of trauma. Trauma is something that intrudes into the physical life and disturbs its balance.From this perspective, a brutal experience is inscribed in memory as an unclear event and elevated into a traumatic Real, in order to help the individual to cope with the enigma behind the traumatic experience.
Examples:
- Case of “Wolf-man”
Zizek claims that there is a parallel between the theory of relativity and the Lacanian theory. Theory of relativity, gives account of how nature works at the macroscopic level. For example the light for the observer moves at the same speed. For Lacan the object of desire remains always at the same distance from the subject without matter how close it is.
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Links: http://www.zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewfile/368/424
http://nosubject.com/index.php?title=Lamella
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/dramaandtheatre/documents/pdf/platform/22/feelingtraumafinal.pdf
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While I was reading this chapter it came into my mind Kristeva and the theory regarding the abject.
Kristeva’s understanding of the “abject” provides a helpful term to contrast to Lacan’s “object of desire” or the “object petit a.”. Whereas the objet petit a allows a subject to coordinate his or her desires, thus allowing the symbolic order of meaning and intersubjective community to persist, the abject “is radically excluded and,” as Kristeva explains, “draws me toward the place where meaning collapses” . It is neither object nor subject; the abject is situated, rather, at a place before we entered into the symbolic order.
(Source: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html)
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FEELING PERFORMANCE REMEMBERING TRAUMA>
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/dramaandtheatre/documents/pdf/platform/22/feelingtraumafinal.pdf
Kira O’ Reilly
http://blip.tv/pacitti-company/kira-o-reilly-syncope-645999