Lacan. What to say about Lacan? OK, there is a quote that I found to be really sad in the first piece, so I will start there. It was regarding the two kids on the train, who thought they had reached the towns of “ladies” and “gentlemen”: “For these children, Ladies and Gentlemen will be henceforth two countries towards which each of their souls will strive on divergent wings, and between which a truce will be more impossible since they are actually the same country and neither can compromise on its own superiority without detracting from the glory of the other”. What a rotten thing to say. Really. Is the situation of male/female relationships really so hopeless? His words are a slightly different take on the battle of the sexes idea, but not at all in a comforting way. And one dares not disagree with his assertion that “they are actually the same country”, since such a disagreement merely feeds into his next assertion! The whole thought is just thoroughly depressing. Interesting, I suppose, but in the end so very sad. OK, moving on.
I wonder about how to apply Lacan’s theories to literature. His idea that no one is actually complete, but we look to be defined by others, or The Other, (another thoroughly depressing concept) could perhaps be applied to reading, as well. It is rather problematic, though, since in reading, we are not interacting with a person, or palpable other, but a representation, using of the flawed medium of language, of people or situations. Since there is not an actual way to receive personal validation, this reason for reading, if it is indeed what Lacan asserts is happening when we read, seems completely futile. Perhaps one can identify with a character in a book, and see himself reflected back through the book, and hence the language functions in this scenario as the infant’s mirror. Even in this limited way, though, it seems like a poor shadow of validation. If we seek a concept of ourselves (which is completely defined by how The Other sees us, a concept I really don’t buy, BTW) as individual and unique, this can hardly be the case in the instance of identification with a literary figure. It is inevitable that a figure we relate to has been read and reflected countless times before us, and will be after us. The figure is always/already someone else, not just us, certainly not a whole, unique, individual representation of the reader. I give up.
After the dark cloud that is Lacan, Kristeva seems almost liberating. The assertion that we can reach the semiotic, that it is possible to return for brief, fleeting interludes of inspiration, is refreshingly hopeful in comparison. I can certainly see the fleeting approach to the unguarded or unsocialised primitive, which seems to correspond to Kristeva’s semiotic in the language of young children, and in the mentally ill. The idea that poetry should ideally achieve these fleeting insights is certainly a revolutionary theory, and one that I am going to need some more time to process, I think. I seem to recall a section where Kristeva cites music as a way to perhaps circumvent the trap of the symbolic, which strikes a chord (pardon the pun) with me. I have often wondered, in previous readings, what these theorists would say about music as a medium of communication. The act of hearing music is certainly on a separate plain, far more subjective and “listener response” if you will, but still tied to the symbolic, actually. After all, when a musical plays a piece of music, he reads symbols on the page, in the form of notes, and turns them into music. Is the music then distorted by having gone through the process of notation, and then being reproduced, though? Hmmm. Is it like having someone read aloud? Well, not really, I guess, since language is the medium of communication either way, which is the distorted medium. So, perhaps musical communication is a truly primal, undistorted means of communication. Still, I don’t think we will be abandoning language in order to play all of our thoughts on personal accordions anytime in the near future.