There is a body
Peggy Papada
The body of the mirror stage is constructed as a visual form, as seen via the Other of speech and language. For “the purest moment of the specular relation”[1] is when by a gesture by which the infant turns toward the adult, he seeks the consent of the Other “to ratify the value of his image.”[2] Lack-in-being, which will evolve to be a characteristic of the divided subject, is precipitated here insofar as the infant is alienated from the desire of the Other and there is a discordance of two bodies: the body as organism, real and fragmented, and the body as mirror image with which the infant identifies.[3] Identification with the totality of one’s own image “authenticated by the Other” results in satisfaction[4]; the Freudian narcissism finds its reference there.
The body is linked with the ego up to the end of Lacan’s teaching: “The self as a body […] This is what is called Ego.”[5] Yet in Seminar XXIII Lacan will use the knots to speak about consistency. The ego is presented as three dimensional (real, symbolic and imaginary) hence it can no longer be reduced to the imaginary duality. The subject does not identify with its ego which can slide away but with its sinthome, with what is most singular to it. The sinthome, a call for invention and sublimation, supports the consistency of the speaking body. There is no Other to search for being and identifications. Instead “there is the One (Yad’lun), there is no sexual relation and there is a body.”[6] The ‘There is’ is on the side of the One and of existence: The distinction between being and existence puts the subject and the speaking body at stake.[7] We can then approach the trauma incurred by lalangue rather than language breaking into the One of the body.
References
[1] Lacan, J., “Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation” (1966) Écrits, trans. B. Fink, London/ New York, Norton, 2006, p. 568.
[2] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, Anxiety (1962-63), ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A.R. Price, Cambridge, Polity, 2014, p. 32.
[3] See Stevens, A. “The Bodily Effects of Language” argument for the NLS Congress 2021, available online.
[4] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, Anxiety, op. cit. p. 40.
[5] Lacan, J. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII, The Sinthome (1975-76), trans. A.R. Price, Cambridge, Polity, 2016, p. 129.
[6] Stevens, A. “The Body in Psychoanalysis.” Online presentation given at the London society of the NLS, on 10th October 2020, available online.
[7] Brousse, M.H. “La Lettre et le Corps Parlant” - text presented at the 50th Study Days of the ECF, November 2020, unpublished.