FETISH

The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein. Courtesy of The National Gallery, London.

 Fetish
An Erotics of Culture

HENRY KRIPS

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA, NEW YORK

 Copyright © 1999 by Cornell University
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First published 1999 by Cornell University Press

First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1999

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Krips, Henry.
Fetish : an erotics of culture I Henry Krips.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN o-8014-3542-o (hardcover : alk. paper).-ISBN o-8014-8537-1
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Social sciences and psychoanalysis. 2. Psychoanalysis and
culture. 3· Fetishism (Sexual behavior) 4· Gaze-Psychological
aspects. I. Title.
BF175+S65K75 1999

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FoR MY PARENTS,

HENRY AND LUISE

 Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Fetish and the Gaze 1

I
INTRODUCING LACAN
1 The Song Not the Singer: Signifier, Objet a, Fetish 15

2 Body and Text: The Roots of the Unconscious 33

II
FETISH

3 A Slave to Desire: Defetishizing the Colonial Subject 45

4 Fetish and the Native Subject 57

III
SociALIZING THE PsYCHic:
FROM INTERPELLATION TO GAZE

5 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 73

6 The Ambassador's Body: Unscreening the Gaze 97

vii
viii Contents

7 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 119

8 Seeing Texts 133

IV
INTERPASSIVITY AND THE POSTMODERN
9 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink:
Mystery Science Theater 3000 153
10 Crash and Subversion 171

Appendix: The Oedipus Connection 185

Bibliography 193
Index 197
 Preface

M y introduction to social theory came through reading and teaching

Althusser, Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan. This group of authors, sit-
uated on the break between what seemed to be a moribund structuralism
(associated with Levi-Strauss, Mauss, and Durkheim) and a new, intellec-
tually vigorous poststructuralism, promised new concepts of the text and
subjectivity. The works of these writers also hinted at the possibility of a
new politics, one that bypassed the doctrinaire and formulaic certainties
of traditional left-wing critique.
The intellectual project that I, like many others, took from this experi-
ence was a fascination with the constitution of the subject, specifically
with the relation between the subject and that which, in an older vocabu-
lary, was called the social setting. Lacan, in particular, became a key figure
in this project, since it was clear that, through his reading of Freud, a sub-
stantive break had taken place from earlier structuralist and Marxist con-
ceptions of the subject as a ficelle, a placeholder in a social structure. The
Althusserian problematic of interpellation, specifically in its Lacanian re-
working by Screen theory, and later by feminist critics, was a key site at
which this project took shape. The problematic of interpellation also be-
came a key point of transition at which the "serious" work of social theory
intersected with what, on occasions, seemed to be lighter issues in cultural
studies, film theory, and communication.
The book that follows has been written at this particular conjuncture. Its
framing concern is with the intersection of the social and the individual,

ix
x Preface

or, in theoretical terms, with the interface between Freud and Marx in
their Lacanian and Althusserian reformulations. Two concepts provide
key points of focus for my investigation: the fetish and the gaze. The
strategic advantage of these concepts is that each has been theorized from
two sides, as it were-from within a social theoretic framework (I have in
mind Foucault's work on the panopticon, and the Marxist conception of
commodity fetishism) as well as from a psychoanalytic perspective
(Freud's work on the fetish and Lacan's on the gaze).

Some of the material in this book has appeared elsewhere. Parts of Chapter
4 overlap with an article, "Fetish and the Native Subject," which appeared
in Boundary 2 CKrips 1996); a much simplified version of Chapter 5 appeared
as "Interpellation, Antagonism and Repetition" in Rethinking Marxism
(Krips 1994b); and there is some slight overlap between Chapter 7 and "Ide-
ology, Rhetoric and Boyle's New Experiments," which appeared in Science
in Context CKrips 1994a). An earlier version of Chapter 6 appears as a
chapter of At the Intersection, edited by Tom Rosteck, published by Guilford
Press. I am indebted to the publishers for permission to reprint extracts.
In this work, which has taken far longer to complete than I could ever
have imagined, I have been aided immeasurably by colleagues, friends, stu-
dents, and casual acquaintances who shared my interests. My introduction
into social theory was eased through the intellectual generosity and rigor of
a friend and colleague, Geoff Sharp, with whom I taught social theory at the
University of Melbourne for several years. The material on Lacan, centered
in Chapters 1 and 2, but also pervading the book as a whole, has benefited
greatly from discussion with Marie-Luise Angerer, Valerie Krips, Renata
Salecl, Susan Schwartz and Slavoj Zizek, as well as Patrizia Lombardo and
John Beverley, with whom I had the great pleasure of teaching Lacan at the
University of Pittsburgh. Jonathan Arac and Ronald Judy generously read
and commented upon the material on Beloved and about Homi Bhabha. The
discussions of the gaze (Chapters 6, 7, and 8) and postmodernism (Chapters
9 and 10) have grown out of work undertaken at the University of Pitts-
burgh over the last few years, but also in Austria. I am grateful to the Inter-
nationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften for enabling this
work, as well as ~o my Austrian friends and colleagues, especially Marie-
Luise Angerer, Lutz Musner, and Daniela Tugendhat, for much support and
vigorous intellectual exchanges. Bernie Kendler, my editor at Cornell, has
been amazingly supportive throughout this project; and I would also like to
thank John LeRoy, Caroline Lurie, Nancy Zafris, and my son, Henry Krips,
for contributing to the final work. Undoubtedly, however, the main influ-
ence upon this book, every page of which bears her imprint, is Valerie
Krips. I am grateful to her in more ways than I can say.
FETISH
 Introduction: Fetish and the Gaze

T he American critic Jeffrey Masson, writing in the British Guardian

newspaper on March 29, 1997, asks how "crazy" were the thirty-nine
members of Heaven's Gate, the Californian millennia! cult whose mem-
bers had performed a ritual mass suicide a few days previously. He an-
swers his own question: "It is in the nature of a cult to have enemies. This
paranoia gives an edge to everyday existence: you can never tell when
you will be seized by dark and evil forces, so be on the alert." He then
generalizes these remarks to encompass not only what he calls "California
fruitcake" but also J. R. R. Tolkien, under whose spell, Masson confesses,
he had fallen: "The British know this well [the attraction of paranoid uni-
verses] from the extraordinary popularity of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It
is just such a universe that Tolkien creates .... I was already a little bit
alarmed just by reading it. I saw the appeal, I felt it, I gave in to it (the way
some people give in to the music of Wagner). I could sense certain fascistic
tendencies underneath the writing, a kind of overt anti-semitism."
In these comments Masson goes beyond identifying a group's behavior
as symptoms of a collective psychic disorder. He also hints at the possi-
bility of mass political and psychic disturbances-paranoia, fascism, anti-
semitism--emanating from apparently innocent cultural artifacts such as
The Hobbit and (perhaps less innocently) the Ring cycle. In an unintended
irony, Masson repeats the trope of "dark and evil forces" which he criti-
cizes in the pronouncements of the Heaven's Gate cult. Indeed, the irony

1
2 Introduction

is doubled: Masson, arch-critic of Freud, employs Freudian concepts such

as paranoia on a flimsier basis than Freud ever countenanced.
The feminist legal critic Catherine MacKinnon, arguing from within a
psychological rather than a Freudian framework, claims that reading
pornography has a brutalizing effect upon the male psyche. Porn, she
claims, functions as "primitive conditioning, with pictures and words as
sexual stimuli.... It makes them [men] want to [rape]; when they believe
they can, when they feel they can get away with it, they do" (MacKinnon
1993, 16, 19). She continues: "The message of these materials, and there is
one ... is 'get her.' ... This message is addressed directly to the penis, de-
livered through an erection and taken out on women in the real world"
(21). According to MacKinnon, arguing from within a behaviorist model
of the psyche, porn directly reflects male psychic reality by helping to
create it. In a nutshell, pornography conditions men to sexual violence. 1
Like her associate Masson, MacKinnon sees the cultural as a source of
widespread, perverse psychic effects.
Claims that cultural forms are causally linked to psychic structures are
also advanced in contexts less hostile to Freud. In a recent book, Fetishism
and Curiosity, the feminist film critic Laura Mulvey tells us that her focus
will be upon "the way that feminist theory has constructed collective fan-
tasy into a 'symptomology' through an analysis of popular culture, partic-
ularly the cinema.... Erotic images disavow those aspects of society's
sexuality that are hidden and disturbing. In this sense, the obvious dis-
course of sexuality appears as symptoms, literally, in the case of cinema,
screening its repressions" (Mulvey 1996, xiii-xiv). And the Lacanian critic
Joan Copjec also proposes a link between cultural form and psychic struc-
ture. Among Chinese men, she claims, fetishism takes on a cultural di-
mension. For example, the disavowal associated with it finds form not in
words but rather in the culture of binding women's feet. Thus the split or
divided form of a cultural object, the woman's folded foot, directly reflects
the split psychic structure of the men who revere it: "If the Chinese man
mutilates the woman's foot and reveres it, it is the foot that wears the mark
of this division, not the Chinese man" (Copjec 1978, 111).
Homi Bhabha, the postcolonial theorist, also invokes the trope of reflec-
tion as a means of describing relations between the cultural and psychic
domains. In particular, he explains the internal dissonances of ante-
bellum Southern discourse about slaves, specifically slave literature, by

1. The psychic reality MacKinnon countenances is pruned back to verifiable psycholog-

ical mechanisms and structures, such as conditioning, beliefs, attitudes, behavioral dispo-
sitions, and so on, rather than the lusher Freudian psycho-scape implied by Masson's re-
marks in the Guardian.
 Fetish and the Gaze 3

proposing that its structure reflects the fetishistic form of master-slave re-
lations. In his influential essay "The Other Question," for example, he
points to "contradictions and heterogeneity" surrounding racial stereo-
types and argues for a "functional link" between such stereotypes and the
fixation of the fetish: "For fetishism is always a 'play' or vacillation be-
tween the archaic affirmation of wholeness/similarity-in Freud's terms:
'All men have penises'; in ours 'All men have the same skin/race/cul-
ture' -and the anxiety associated with lack and difference-again, for
Freud 'Some men do not have penises'; for us 'Some do not have the same
skin/race/culture"' (Bhabha 1994,74, 82).
In this book, I explore such suggestions that cultural practices are the ef-
fects-and indeed symptoms-of psychic disorders. I also examine the
converse claim that cultural artifacts, whether books by Tolkien, music by
Wagner, pornography, or the films of David Lynch, may take on a consti-
tutive role in psychically structuring their audiences (although without
necessarily imprinting or "conditioning" them as MacKinnon says). This
project involves considerable intellectual and political risk. As Masson's
diagnosis of the Heaven's Gate cult (sight unseen) and his speedy demoli-
tion of Tolkien indicate, claims that psychic structures mirror cultural
forms are open to abuse; they provide a cheap way of pathologizing mar-
ginal groups and activities. Freud himself, as I indicate in the next section,
issues a stem warning to interpretations that link psychic and cultural
realms.
Nevertheless, the project of linking the psychic and the cultural is worth-
while. It promises rewards: a new cultural politics that not only breaks
with the socialization model characteristic of older style Marxism but also
rejects more traditional idealist approaches. In this context the notions of
fetishism and the gaze are of central importance. But the way they have
been theorized assigns them an essentially conservative function. Screen
theory, one of the most influential theories of visual culture of the last
thirty years, takes the gaze as a mechanism for the transmission and repro-
duction of ideological effects. And, because it involves taking pleasure
from serving the Other's desire, fetishism (in its Freudian sense) has also
been taken as an exclusively conservative psychic formation. 2
In this book I argue against Screen theory's concept of the gaze as a
mechanism for producing ideology. Instead, I present the gaze as ideolog-
ically constituted in its own right, an object to which ideological meanings
attach via chains of unconscious associations (Chapters 5 and 6). I also
counter the traditional picture of fetishism as an inherently conservative

2.In Chapter 4 I provide an illustration of fetishism operating in a conservative mode, a

point to which I return in Chapter 10.
4 Introduction

psychic formation (Chapters 9 and 10). For example, in the course of ana-
lyzing David Cronenberg's film Crash, I demonstrate how a fetishistic
scopic regime undermines the ideological forms of Hollywood domestic
realism by exposing its effects upon the viewer. I also show how fetishism
plays a subversive role in reversing the tendency to "abstraction" (in the
sense of the erasure of difference), which is so characteristic of moderniza-
tion (Sharp 1985). In particular, I show how Crash inducts viewers into a
fetishistic scopic regime which drives a wedge between the human eye,
with which viewers engage the filmic image, and the inhuman mechan-
ical eye of the camera, which watches on their behalf. Thus, in a direct
physical way, the film's fetishistic visual economy undermines the mate-
rial processes of modernization as well as metaphysical theories of vision
that collapse human seeing and mechanical techniques of signal transmis-
sion/ scanning into a single abstract category of "vision." Briefly, in Crash,
fetishism takes on a subversive role by undermining not only the ideolog-
ical forms of Hollywood realism but also the modernizing processes of ab-
straction through which differences, specifically the difference between
human and nonhuman, are erased.

Psychocultural Connections and Their Vicissitudes

In Totem and Taboo (1913), Freud points out that although cultural prac-
tices, such as religion and art, may resemble neurotic behavior, they are
ontogenetically quite different. Neurotic behavior, he argues, is the result
of "sexual instincts," which are "essentially the private affair of each indi-
vidual," whereas cultural practices, such as religion and art, are driven by
"social instincts" and involve "collective effort" (Freud 1989, 73-74). Con-
sequently, actions that would be symptoms of sexual disorder, were they
performed on an individual basis, may not be so when performed collec-
tively as part of a cultural practice. A soldier's cold-blooded killing on the
battlefield does not indicate a psychotic or sadistic pathology. Or, as Freud
makes the point, collective behavior resulting from a social taboo may re-
semble the elaborate avoidance and cleansing rituals practiced by an ob-
sessive, but at the level of psychic structure there is a world of difference
between taboo and obsession: "A warning must be issued at this point.
The similarity between taboo and obsessional sickness may be no more
than a matter of externals; it may apply only to the forms in which they are
manifested [the behavioral symptoms] and not extend to their essential
character [psychic structure] .... It would be obviously hasty and unprof-
itable to infer the existence of any internal relationship from such points of
agreement as these" (Freud 1989, 26).
 Fetish and the Gaze 5

In general terms, Freud's point is that what appears at first sight to be a

collective symptom, indicative of a mass psychic disorder, may merely be
ritualized conduct or have other less alarming psychic or nonpsychic
causes. Indeed, on second glance, the possibility that the members of a
large and diverse population have a uniform psychopathological profile,
a view embodied in common national stereotypes-"the obsessive
German," "the hysterical Frenchman," "the paranoid Albanian," and so
on-seems totally implausible, not to mention politically regressive. The
intellectual rationale behind such stereotyping is often a crude kind of
"cultural dopism," which depicts popular cultural artifacts, such as
pornography or advertising, as power points from which ways of being
and acting, even psychic structures, disseminate into the populace. Such
ideas (often associated with Adorno's work on mass culture) have been ef-
fectively discredited by recent media scholars who, influenced by Michel
Foucault, Michel de Certeau, and others, have argued that resistance
plays an important role in popular reactions to contemporary media (see
Fiske 1987, chap. 5). The notorious attempt by Nazi science to develop
personality profiles for national or large-scale social groups-Gypsies,
Aryans, Jews, homosexuals, and so on-has also played a role in discred-
iting notions of collective psychic profiles. The American anthropologists
Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead attempted a similar project with
equally dismal results (Heald and Deluz 1994).
Even Masson seems to concede that individuals may resist national
psychological profiles when, in his Guardian article, he allows that, thanks
to a certain "innate scepticism (of cults and, I am delighted to say, of psy-
choanalysis)," the English have by and large resisted the seductive invita-
tions to paranoia and fascism that, he claims, are incipient in Tolkien's
work. Nevertheless, the spell exerted by the idea of national stereotypes is
evident in Masson's reference to an English "innate scepticism." Masson
appeals to one national characteristic-skepticism-to break up an-
other-fascism. Indeed, his whole article is permeated with nationalistic
stereotyping, right down to the final comment, "I really do love the
British."
Arguments against linking the cultural and psychic realms also seem ap-
posite in criticizing MacKinnon's claim that there exists a direct causal con-
nection between pornography and a psychic characteristic of its male con-
sumers, namely sexual aggression. At a theoretical level, her argument
fails to take into account Freud's point that identification with a phantasy
figure flows readily across gender lines. For example, in the Dora case,
Freud argues that Dora's behavior manifests an unconscious desire for
Frau K., her father's lover and suitor's wife. For Freud her desire does
not indicate any sexual instability. Instead, through an identification with
6 Introduction

her father's desire, it signals an unconscious paternal identification. In

other words, for Freud the significant aspect of Dora's phantasy is not the
sexual content of the desire but rather the paternal position from which she
engages with it. By parity of reasoning, it follows that quite "normal" male
readers of porn may identify with the position of woman victim rather
than male aggressor, in which case their aggressive tendencies cannot be
reinforced in the simplistic way that MacKinnon suggests.3
In short, as Laura Kipnis points out, neither the biology nor gender of
readers of Hustler magazine determines the form of their identification
with its pornographic materials, let alone forces them into a common psy-
chic response (Kipnis 1996, 196). In the same way, one may argue, gender-
swapping phantasy games played by Net users do not indicate their
gender instability. On the contrary, one might turn the argument around
and conclude that the preponderance of biological males among Net users
suggests that even when playing at being a woman, they are engaging in
a "boys' game."
The empirical and theoretical arguments so far seem to militate against
any project to establish connections between the psychic and cultural do-
mains. This conclusion is premature, however. Instead, the lesson to be
learned is that if Freudian concepts such as paranoia and hysteria are to be
used in the social and cultural domains, then careful attention must
be paid to their conditions of application as well as scope. In particular,
the psychic effects produced by a cultural artifact may be highly localized
rather than general in the way that Masson and MacKinnon suggest.
Such localization of psychic effects is evident in the case of Gustave
Flaubert's obsessive relation with his novel Madame Bovary (discussed in
Chapter 8). In cases such as these, we must surrender Durkheim's influential
conception that cultural objects are resonance points at which a whole so-
ciety (a "primal horde") expresses and produces a collective identity for its
members. On the contrary, it will emerge that particular users of a cultural
object may adapt it to suit their own peculiar strategic and psychic ends.
In other cases, such as Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadors (which I
discuss in Chapter 6), I argue that on occasions psychic and ideological struc-

3· MacKinnon attempts to bolster her argument by claiming that porn, unlike other kinds
of writing, blurs the boundary between representation and reality. Porn really is violence
rather than merely its representation. By reading it, men are brutalized: habituated, condi-
tioned, to violence. Thus their psyches are shaped along the lines of the pornographic im-
ages and words they read. However, without some independent argument for why porn
as opposed to other forms of literature broaches the boundary between representation and
reality, such claims amount to special pleading. In any case, the point remains that such
conditioning of a man to violence may condition him to being a victim rather than an ag-
gressor.
 Fetish and the Gaze 7

tures may become imbricated in such a way that a more widespread relation
of reflection results. Even in this case, however, viewers' psychic profiles do
not reflect the formal structure of the artifact in a uniform and transhistorical
fashion. On the contrary, as I show in the Appendix, in my discussion of the
Oedipus myth, only for very basic psychic structures will the relation be-
tween the psychic and the cultural assume an effectively universal dimen-
sion.

Socializing the Fetish

Because it has been theorized from a cultural as well as a psychic point

of view, the fetish is a convenient site at which to begin an exploration of
psychocultural connections. In his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,
Freud illustrates the fetish by means of a piece of fur, which, because it re-
sembles pubic hair, may come to function as an adult's memorial to that
moment when as a child he noticed his mother's lack of a penis and thus
faced the possibility of his own castration: "The replacement of the
[sexual] object by a fetish is determined by a symbolic connection of
thought, of which the person concerned is usually not conscious.... No
doubt the part played by fur as a fetish owes its origin to an association
with the hair of the mons veneris . ... Symbolism such as this is not always
unrelated to sexual experiences in childhood" (Freud 1975, 21).
Freud emphasizes that such memorials to the moment of first contact
with maternal lack are not necessarily veridical in content. Instead, they
may point to a structure of lack that, although haunting the subject from
birth, only later, and retrospectively, comes to assume a concrete form in
connection with an imagined primal trauma, such as the first sight of the
mother's genitals. 4 Of course, pieces of fur may not carry such meaning
for everyone. When they do, however, this fact is signaled by the sort of
unrealistic anxiety (an anxiety with no apparent appropriate object) that,
according to Freud, gathers at the site of any such repetition (Wieder-
holung) of the primal scene.5

The function of the fetish is as much that of a screen as a memorial. That

is, it stands in the place of that which cannot be remembered directly. It
substitutes for that which is and must remain repressed (verdriingt). As

4· Arguably the whole notion of childhood innocence is an aspect of such retrospectively

installed narratives of childhood trauma.
5· See Laplanche and Pontalis 1974, 36, 379, for a discussion of Freud's distinction be-
tween realistic and unrealistic anxiety. I return to this question in detail in Chapter 8.
8 Introduction

such, the fetish is also a site of disavowal (Verleugnung), and specifically of

contradiction: we know that fur is not pubic hair, but even so, in a way that
is never clearly specified, we know that it is:

In cases of fetishism ... the patient (who is almost always male) not recog-
nizing the fact that females have no penis-a fact which is extremely unde-
sirable to him since it is a proof of the possibility of his being cas-
trated ... disavows his own sense-perception which showed him that the
female genitals lack a penis .... The disavowed perception does not, how-
ever, remain entirely without influence. He takes hold of something else in-
stead-a part of the body or some other object-and assigns it the role of
the penis he cannot do without. It is usually something that he in fact saw at
the moment at which he saw the female genitals. (Freud 1969, 59--60)

This traditional conception of the fetish strongly implicates Freud's

theory of castration and thus accords a privileged place to the penis in the
constitution of the human psychic economy. By distinguishing the penis
from the phallus, Lacan's reworking of the Freudian architectonic
promises to avoid such privileging. In particular, Lacan allows that
whereas interest in the penis is historically and culturally contingent,
something which he calls "the phallus" enjoys an omnihistorical signifi-:
cance. He defines the phallus as the signifier of lack in the Other, where
the place of the Other (which may be occupied by the mother, a po-
liceman, or any other authority figure) is the externally projected position
from which the subject looks for an answer to the question of his or her
own desire. According to Lacan, the subject projects this question in the
form "Che vuoi?" "What do you [the Other] want?"-a question that, as
the subject traverses his or her phantasy, takes on a new form: "What does
he [the Other] want of me?" (Lacan 1977, 312). 6
Lacan thus differs from the overtly patriarchal Freud, for whom con-
frontation with the possibility of loss or absence of the penis functions as a
key moment in the accession to subjectivity? Lacan, by contrast, argues
that the accession to subjectivity involves introducing the subject into an
economy of lack defined in relation to the phallus. In patriarchal societies,

6. In this context, the choice of the name "phallus" is unfortunate, since it carries with it
penile connotations that open Lacan unnecessarily to accusations of phallocentrism. Ad-
mittedly certain of Lacan's remarks encourage such accusations, specifically his (question-
able) claim that, because of its capacity for turgidity, the penis is uniquely favored as a
phallic organ-see Lacan 1977,319-320.
7· According to Freud, the child glimpsing the mother's genitals experiences it as her lack
of a penis.
 Fetish and the Gaze 9

such as our own, the penis happens to occupy the position of the phallus,
but this coincidence should not blind us to the fact that in the final
analysis the phallus is defined in terms of a psychic economy of lack
rather than the topological accidents of the male anatomy.
The Lacanian reworking of the Freudian architectonic (which I discuss
further in Chapter 2) enables a reconceptualization of the fetish. Lacan
distinguishes between the object that a subject desires-the "object of de-
sire"-and another object that he designates the "objet a." The objet a has a
dual function. It is not only the object-cause of desire but also the object of
the drive, that is, the object around which the subject turns in order to de-
rive pleasure. The relation between the objet a, the desiring subject, and
the object of desire resembles (I argue in Chapter 1) the relation between
the chaperone, the suitor, and the beloved. By functioning as a site at
which the suitor exercises his or her skills in order to get access to the ob-
ject of desire, the chaperone covertly provides him with an opportunity
for gaining pleasure (perhaps his only pleasure). Although the chaperone
is not herself an object of desire, by standing in the way of what the suitor
wants she becomes part of a structure that sustains, that is, causes, his de-
sire. In short, like the objet a, she is covertly the object-cause of desire and
a source of pleasure, without herself being desired.
I argue that the fetish is a special instance of the objet a, one for which re-
pression is breached to the extent that the subject more or less clearly rec-
ognizes the real source of his pleasure, and thus enters an economy of dis-
avowal. In this way, the fetish is reconceived in a way that divorces it from
its specifically Freudian meaning as a memorial to the mother's lack of a
penis.
The problem, then, is how to transpose the Lacanian conception of the
fetish, which is geared to individual psychic structures, into the social
arena. Althusser's notion of interpellation assists in this endeavor
(Chapter 5). Althusser is concerned with the question of how the social
constitutes individuals as subjects. Individuals, he argues, become sub-
jects in response to being addressed, or "interpellated," by what he calls
Ideological State Apparatuses. But he is less than fully helpful about how
interpellation discharges its constitutive role; for instance, he makes no
mention of the creation of desire. I argue that the Freudian notion of repe-
tition (Wiederholung) helps to provide an answer here. By addressing sub-
jects collectively and in incoherent terms, interpellation functions as a site
of what Freud calls repetition, that is, a site where subjects repeat their
own primal lack, projected as an incoherence within the terms in which
they are interpellated. From a Lacanian perspective I argue that, as repeti-
tions of the primal scene, interpellations become sites of anxiety, and thus
sites for the production of the desire with which subjects respond to the
10 Introduction

question posed by their own lack: "Who am I-what do I want?" The

question of whether such desire is fetishistic devolves, then, upon the
issue of whether the corresponding objet a is also an object of disavowal.
I consider whether the concept of the fetish can be successfully transposed
to the social domain in a range of cases. In particular, I criticize Bhabha' s
analysis of fetishism among black slave cultures (Chapter J). In other cases,
however, fetishism takes on a collective dimension: the Hopi Katcina dance
and Ojibwa totemic identifications, I argue, are associated with fetishistic
structures of desire; and the Oedipus myth operated as one element in a
fetishistic structure of desire centered upon relations between a Greek (male)
citizen, his wife, and the eromenos, a young male lover (Chapter 4).

Cafe Life and the Gaze

Because the gaze, like the fetish, has been theorized from both a cultural
and a psychic point of view, especially by film theorists associated with
the journal Screen, it too is a convenient site at which to situate an explo-
ration of psychocultural connections. What Lacan calls the gaze is akin to
what Roland Barthes calls the "punctum." Barthes develops this concept in
the context of a distinction between the "true photograph" and the
myriad banal images that circulate in the media. The surfaces of these
banal images are covered in their entirety by visual elements to which
meaning adheres by courtesy of highly conventionalized cultural codes.
Such elements, which constitute the "studium," evoke at most a polite in-
terest or prurient "half-desire" (Barthes 1993, 26-28, 42-43). A "true" pho-
tograph by contrast, one that makes its viewers "pensive" (J8), is distin-
guished by a punctum, which breaks up the tedium of the studium. The
punctum is a detail or spot that arrests the viewer's eye, or, as Barthes says,
"pricks" it. Refusing conformity with any creative logic, the punctum is a
point of real violence, which in its sheer contingency, oddity, or even un-
canniness violates the familiar codes of the studium (40, 41, 51). 8
The punctum challenges the viewer, who feels himself under scrutiny,
challenged to make sense of what is seen. As Barthes points out, the para-
doxical nature of the punctum spills over onto the viewer, who is left
without a sense of how he or she is seen. Thus the experience takes on the
paradoxical dimensions of being looked at but knowing no one is looking.

8. At such points the picture does violence to the viewer even when the object it repre-
sents is not violent at all. Thus pictures with punctums constitute reversals of newspaper
representations of violence, which do no violence at all despite their horrific content.
 Fetish and the Gaze 11

Barthes illustrates this phenomenon with a story taken from life: "The
other day, in a cafe, a young boy came in alone, glanced around the room,
and occasionally his eyes rested on me; I then had the certainty that he
was looking at me without however being sure that he was seeing me; an
inconceivable distortion: how can we look without seeing?" (111).
The punctum is closely related to what Lacan calls the gaze, which he il-
lustrates with the story of an experience at sea. A fisherman, Petit-Jean,
"pointed out to me something floating on the surface of the waves. It was
a small can, a sardine can. It floated there in the sun, a witness to the can-
ning industry, which we, in fact, were supposed to supply. It glittered in
the sun. And Petit-Jean said to me -You see that can? Do you see it? Well, it
doesn't see you! ... I was not terribly amused at hearing myself addressed
in this humorous, ironical way" (Lacan 1981, 95-96). Thus the gaze, like
the punctum, is a distortion precipitating the viewer into looking back at
himself or herself, into interrogating what is seen, "doubling reality" and
"making it vacillate" (Barthes 1993, 41).
Walter Benjamin also offers a representative anecdote which points to
the phenomenon of the gaze: "Looking at someone carries the implicit ex-
pectation that our look will be returned by the object of our gaze. When
this expectation is met (which, in the case of thought processes, can apply
equally to the eye of the mind and to a glance pure and simple), there is an
experience of the aura to the fullest extent" (Benjamin 1973, 147). In Ben-
jamin's terms, then, the tin can in Lacan's story takes on an "auratic"
quality. Lacan's failure to see Petit-Jean's joke indicates that the tin can is a
site not only of aura, however, but also of that which Benjamin opposes to
the auratic, namely the raw shock of the lived, manifested as signs of anx-
iety. In short, as Terry Eagleton suggests, the Lacanian concept of the gaze
links the elements of aura and shock, which Benjamin opposes (Eagleton
1981, 35, 38-39).
Barthes associates the punctum with striking visual elements in pho-
tographs, such as the strapped pumps worn on the feet of a slave girl
(Barthes 1993, 43), but also with unusual "life" situations, such as the
searching glance that looked over and overlooked him sitting in a cafe.
But he offers no unified mechanism to account for such disparate effects.
The "true" photograph, he tells us, creates its effect by doing violence to
conventional expectations (the studium), but it is not so easy to see how
this same account would apply to the case of the young boy's look. A sim-
ilar difficulty affects Lacan' s conception of the gaze, which he applies in-
discriminately to images, such as Holbein's painting The Ambassadors, as
well as to "life" situations, such as the glittering tin can floating on the sea.
Some of Barthes' s remarks suggest that the gaze is an almost objective
structure, supervening upon purely formal elements of an image. But
12 Introduction

elsewhere, it seems, Barthes intends the gaze as a private phenomenon, a

relation between a particular viewer and an image. For instance, he allows
that the photo of his mother may exert a spell for him but for no one else.
This ambiguity between objectivity and subjectivity points to a further
difficulty, which enables a return to my central question: How can a sub-
jective psychoanalytic conception, like the gaze, account for the public,
objective effects of images? How is it possible to bridge the gap between
individual psychic responses and the communal effects of cultural arti-
facts?
I suggest answers to these question through the study of a series of ex-
amples; these include not only images-Holbein's painting The Ambas-
sadors (Chapter 6), the television show Mystery Science Theater JOoo
(Chapter 9), and Cronenberg's film Crash (Chapter 10)-but also written
texts which have an impact upon the visual imagination of the reader-
Flaubert' s Madame Bovary and Boyle's scientific experimental manual New
Experiments Physico-Chemical (Chapters 7 and 8). My concern in studying
these cases is not to expose Freudian themes in the contents of the various
texts; rather, I employ psychoanalytic theory as a resource for illuminating
and explaining constitutive effects.
 I
INTRODUCING LACAN
 1

The Song Not the Singer:

Signifier, Objet a, Fetish

I n his collection of essays Ecrits, Lacan describes a game in which a

group of children sing a nursery rhyme, "The dog goes miaow, the cat
goes woof-woof" (Lacan 1977, 303-304). To talk literally of the children's
aim or even intention in this context is inappropriate, since, as I argue in
my discussion of the Fort-Da game later in this chapter, such games pre-
date, indeed contribute to, the emergence of structures of desire and in-
tentionality. Nevertheless, from the point of view of their actions, it ap-
pears retrospectively as if the children intentionally made a mistake, that
is, sent out a wrong signal, and in that restricted sense it may be said that
they practice, or, more correctly, will have been practicing, a deception.
But who is the audience upon whom the deception is practiced? Lacan
remarks in a related context: "The child ... does not address the other, if
one uses here the theoretical discourse derived from the function of the I
and the you. But there must be others there-they don't speak to a partic-
ular person, they just speak, if you'll pardon the expression, a la can-
tonade," where the phrase "ala cantonade" means "to no one in particular,
to the company at large" (Lacan 1981, 208; Lacan is, of course, punning
upon his own name here). In other words, each child sings for him or her-
self, or, more correctly, for a self-projection onto the other children who
are present, a projection that depends upon the fact that the children are
able to hear. themselves singing. Thus, it appears, each child deceives him

15
16 Introducing Lacan

or herself. The proof is that a child continues playing the game even when
no one else is listening. 1
The children's squeals of delight when they hear their mistake indicates
that they recognize the self-deception. Nevertheless, they repeat it over
and over again in order, it seems, to reexperience the pleasure of spotting
their mistake. In that sense, then, the deception is doubled. That is, seeing
through one deception is instrumental in falling for another.
The words of the song function not merely as signals (what Lacan refers
to as "signs") but rather as signifiers, separable from the particular mean-
ings they carry. Specifically, by systematically switching word order in a
way that literally makes no-sense/nonsense, the children display a prac-
tical knowledge that words are elements in a signifying system governed
by rules of substitution and combination, and that, by breaking the rules,
word sense is lost. The children may not know this consciously, but the
game shows that at a practical level they know it nonetheless: "The child,
by disconnecting the animal (dog) from its cry ('woof-woof'), suddenly
raises the sign to the function of the signifier" (Lacan 1977, 304). In Lacan's
later terminology, the game may be said to embody a recognition of the
sign's "dyadic" nature (Lacan 1981, 236). The Lacanian name for the signi-
fier "woof-woof," which, through the double deception enacted in the
game, comes to stand in the place of another signifier "miaow," is the
Freudian term "Vorstellungsrepriisentanz" (representative of a representa-
tion).2
Is the structure of double deception sufficient to establish the signifier
in its full status as a linguistic signifier, an element in what Lacan calls
"Speech"? A certain ambiguity attends Lacan's pronouncements on this
issue. He draws a distinction between a form of deception that animals
practice, namely, "the pretence to be found in physical combat or sexual
display" (Lacan 1977, 305), and a form of double deception that only hu-
mans undertake: "But an animal does not pretend to pretend. He does not
make false tracks whose deception lies in the fact that they will be taken as
false, while being in fact true ones, ones, that is, that indicate his true trail"
(305). To be specific, human quarry, unlike animals, may cover their foot-
prints on a path so carelessly that a hunter will "see through" the ap-
parent dissimulation, and so presume that the quarry has gone down a
second path. The hunter is then deceived by the quarry taking the first

1. In the terms that I foreshadowed in the Introduction, for each child the other children
occupy the place of the Other, and may indeed be seen as stimuli for setting such a struc-
ture in place. I return to this issue below.
2. In the next chapter I present a more refined version of Lacan's concept of the Vorstel-
lungsrepriisentanz.
 The Song Not the Singer 17

path. This is double deception in exactly the sense in which I am using it

as a deception that paradoxically depends upon the deceived seeing
. through another deception. The children's game involves a similar struc-
ture but with the added twist that the one against whom the deception is
practiced is the same as the one who deceives.
Lacan's position seems to be, then, that from a structural point of view,
the distinction between Speech and signaling coincides with that between
double deception and the simpler deception involved in sexual display. In
particular, Speech must be "capable of lying" in the special sense of lying
by telling the truth. That is, Speech must be capable of the double decep-
tion of telling the truth as if it were a lie, thus deceiving the listener into
taking what is said as a lie when in fact it is the truth. (Irony involves a
similar structure of "intentional lying.") The famous Freudian joke that
Lacan often quotes, "Why are you telling me that you are going to Cracow
and not to Lemberg, when you're really going to Cracow?" illustrates
such deception (.Zizek 1989, 197; Lacan 1981, 139).
But Lacan also advances a second position in connection with the rela-
tion between Speech and pretense: "It is clear that speech begins only with
the passage from 'pretence' to the order of the signifier, and that the signi-
fier requires another locus-the locus of the Other, the Other witness, the
witness Other than any of the partners-for the Speech that it supports to
be capable of lying, that is to say, of presenting itself as Truth" (Lacan
1977, 305). Here, it seems, Lacan requires that Speech, and thus the order
of signifiers, requires something more than pretense: a distinctively lin-
guistic and specifically semantic dimension, that of Truth.

Despite their apparent difference, these two positions on the relation of

Speech to pretense are identical. Lacan defines Truth not in terms of a
formal system of semantics, or as correspondence with reality, but rather
in terms of the existence of the Other, an ideal witness who transcends the
particularities of intersubjective relations (who is, as he says, "Other than
any of the partners"), and who exists as a sort of standard against which
deception is judged. In other words, a subject sets in place a position from
which to judge his or her own signaling performances: "Is it a lie? That is,
is it deception? If not then (by definition) it is the Truth." Lacan' s name for
the position from which a subject judges whether he or she lies is "the
Other." As Lacan says, "it is from somewhere other than the Reality that it
concerns that Truth derives its guarantee: it is from Speech" (1981,
305-306, emphasis added to highlight Lacan's pun on "other").
Understood in this way, the function of the Other can be glossed in
terms of the structure of double deception. That is, at least for the pur-
poses Lacan has in mind in this argument, the Other can be construed as
18 Introducing Lacan

no more than the externally projected position from which a subject is able
to implement certain judgments concerning the deceptiveness of his or
her own activities. In short, the Other can be understood as a certain judg-
mental function, set in place retrospectively, by which subjects assess their
own past performances as deceptive and, on that basis, are able to under-
take a double deception.
On this conception, there is no question of the Other having special ac-
cess to the Truth, construed as correspondence with Reality. Instead, the
Other is a repository of knowledge, the place of the one who knows, un-
derstood simply as the point from which subjects expect to hear whether
or not they have lied. In short, the Other is nothing more than the function
of such an expectation. The signifier, then, is nothing more than the signal
as it operates under the sign of the function of the Other: in other words,
as it operates in the context of Speech understood as a structure of double
deception.
Lacan also uses the term "symbolic order" to refer to what he calls
"Speech." The substantive point that he makes by this variation in nomen-
Clature is that a symbol is a sort of substitute, something that stands in the
place of something else which is absent, but which we know is not
the same as what it replaces. In standing for this something else, however,
the symbol makes the other thing present after all, present "symbolically,"
as we say. Thus, even as we see through one deception, that is, know that
the symbol differs from that which it symbolizes, we are caught in a
second deception, in which what is absent somehow becomes present
through its symbol. Thus what we call symbolic systems, whether lin-
guistic or not, operate with the same structure of double deception that
characterize Speech.

The Objet a

The signifier as Vorstellungsrepriisentanz also makes an appearance in

another children's pastime, the Fort-Da game, where it takes on an addi-
tional dimension as what Lacan calls the objet a-the objet petit autre
(small-o other object). Individuals, Lacan tells us, begin life lacking unity
with their world and themselves, a lack (manque) manifested in the erratic
presence of their providers. This lack is not so much a matter of the care-
giver's absence but rather of the subject's failure of self-sufficiency, a de-
pendence upon others that continues to be a source of anxiety even when
the infant is safely in the arms of its provider (Lacan 1981, 6J).
Lacan here takes up a suggestion made by Freud: for the young child in
arms, the conception of an unconscious wish and inhibiting danger
 The Song Not the Singer 19

amounts to a sense of its own lack due to "a growing tension due to need,
against which it is helpless," or "stimulation ris[ing] to an unpleasurable
height without its being possible to be mastered psychically or dis-
charged." This feeling of lack or helplessness, Freud claims, arises from
and replicates the birth trauma (Freud 1993, 294). He goes on to say: "It is
this factor, then, which is the real essence of the 'danger."' 3
Children express this lack/ danger by demanding the return of an ob-
ject, such as the breast. But no object is ever equal to the lack in question
since, even when the object demanded returns, the child's dependence
continues. Thus, by entering the path of demand, children effectively
place themselves beyond the possibility of overcoming lack. Nevertheless,
those who demand do not go uncompensated. They are able to distract
themselves from their recurrent lack by activities that, as Lacan says, "go
some way to satisfying the pleasure principle" (Lacan 1981, 62).
Such activities are apparent in children's earliest behavior, such as the
Fort-Da game which Freud observes his grandson playing. The child re-
peatedly throws away and then retrieves a cotton-reel tied to the end of a
piece of string: "For the game of the cotton-reel is the subject's answer to
what the mother's absence has created on the frontier of his domain-the
edge of his cradle-namely a ditch, around which one can only play at
jumping" (62). As in the singing game, this activity involves a self-deception:
the cotton-reel substitutes for the mother in the way that the signifier
"miaow" substitutes for "woof" in the singing game. The reel is not a sat-
isfactory substitute, however. It is, as Lacan says, "not the mother reduced
to a little ball" (62). Nevertheless, the child is trapped into continuing the
game by the pleasure it affords, a pleasure that evolves from seeing
through the deception. The pleasure at issue here does not come from
seeing through the deception as such, that is, does not point to some sort
of primal epistemophilia. Instead, I argue later in this chapter, it arises
from a combination of seeing together with seeing through what one has
seen, and thus seeing oneself seeing.
In short, the substitution of cotton-reel for mother implemented in the
course of the Fort-Da affords a certain quota of satisfaction without being
totally satisfactory. This form of substitution is the child's best chance in a
situation where it must lose something. In short, the game is the only in-
teresting (that is pleasurable) "answer" to the gap created by his mother's
absence. And so he must play: knowing that the cotton-reel is not the
mother, he is nonetheless forced (a forced choice) to pretend that it is.
Thus the child's deception is doubled, reinstituted, despite-indeed, be-

3· Lacan's famous/infamous notion of jouissance may be seen as a reworking of the

Freudian notion of inhibition and instinctual wish as lack.
20 Introducing Lacan

cause of-the pleasure that comes from seeing through it the first time
around.
In virtue of the game's comings and goings and the mother's recurrent
absences, the cotton-reel and the mother are both embedded in structures
of alternating presences and absences. Thus the cotton-reel resembles the
mother at a structural level. That is, the reel and the mother occupy ho-
mologous positions within networks of alternating presences and ab-
sences. The cotton-reel also substitutes for the mother in the sense of
taking her place in the child's field of attention. In short, the cotton-reel
substitutes for the mother on the basis of a structural resemblance. Thus,
in an extended sense, the cotton-reel may be said to be in a metaphoric re-
lation to the mother. In other words, in an extended sense, the cotton-reel
may be said to take on the role of a signifier substituting for another signi-
fier: the mother.
As in the case of metaphoric substitutions in general, the vehicle
(cotton-reel) is palpably not the equivalent of the tenor (mother). Instead,
there is a gap between the two, a gap that, in the case of linguistic
metaphors, creatively shifts the meaning of the tenor in the direction of
the vehicle. In the case of the Fort-Da game, this gap is productive of plea-
sure, pleasure which, I argued, fuels the game and thus sustains the sub-
stitution, despite the palpable gap separating substitute from substituted.
By virtue of his efforts in sustaining the game, the child displays a prac-
tical recognition that the cotton-reel, like the signifier "woof-woof," is a
material object that can be lifted clear of its immediate context and relo-
cated. Thus the cotton-reel takes on the structure of a Vorstellungsrepriisen-
tanz: a signifier that the subject recognizes as dyadic. One might equally
claim, however, as Lacan does, that it is the game as a whole rather than
the cotton-reel which functions as a signifier. That is, by its similarity of
form the game substitutes for the mother's comings and goings: "The ac-
tivity as a whole symbolizes repetition.... It is the game itself that is the
Repriisentanz of the Vorstellung" (62-63). The ambiguity concerning the
identity of the signifier-whether it is the game as a whole or merely one
of its parts, the cotton-reel-is harmless, an aspect of a more general am-
biguity with respect to the boundary between signifiers and their con-
texts.
In the context of discussing the Fort-Da game, Lacan introduces a new
category of objects, the objet a, of which the cotton-reel is an instance. The
mother's breast, according to Lacan, is the paradigmatic and originary
objet a. After the child has been weaned, this object is "lost" not only be-
cause, like the cotton-reel, it takes on a more or less separate existence but
also because the child's access to it is proscribed. It thus comes to sym-
 The Song Not the Singer 21

bolize and embody the child's originary and never to be overcome state of
lack due to its historical dependence upon others. To be specific, it retro-
spectively takes on a phantasmatic, purely functional identity as an end-
lessly satisfying cornucopia:

It [the objet a] is precisely what is subtracted from the living being ... it is of
this that all the forms of the objet a ... are the representatives, the equiva-
lents. The objets a are merely its representatives, its figures. The breast-as
equivocal, as an element characteristic of the mamiferous organization-
certainly represents that part of himself that the individual loses at birth,
and which may serve to symbolize the most profound lost object. I could
make the same kind of reference for all the other objects. (Lacan 1981, 198)

Lacan argues that a certain lack of ontological consistency is essential to

an object's role as objet a. Like the mother's breast, the object must be
haunted by a specter, a phantasmagoric reminder of the originary lack
from which the concrete objet a distracts the subject, and for which it func-
tions as a tangible monument: "an ungraspable organ, this organ that we
can only circumvent, in short this false organ" (196). This phantasmatic
underside of the objet a does not echo a missing object in the way that a
photo echoes things past. Instead the phantasm is a reification created by
the simultaneous concealment and resurgence, in short repression, of the
subject's originary lack, a lack that, I argued above, is a function of the
subject's continuing dependence upon others.
In this respect, then, the objet a bears a structural similarity to the "com-·
modity": it is not only a concrete object but also a ghostly value, a false
essence carried by the concrete object and constituted through the
processes of exchange. In sum, from a tropological perspective the objet a
is not merely a metaphor, that is, a substitute for a specific other object.
Rather, it is a catachresis, a substitute for an object constituted retrospec-
tively through the act of substitution. To be specific, in putting itself for-
ward as a substitute, the objet a creates the false impression that there was
something-an original lacking object, for instance, the mythical end-
lessly overflowing maternal breast-for which it acts as a substitute
(Chaitin 1996, 89-92).4

4· For a nice discussion of catachresis in the different but tantalizingly similar context of
commodity fetishism, see Keenan 1993, 182-183. Lacan refused to permit the translator of
Seminar XI to provide a formal definition of the objet a in the glossary of terms, instead
"leaving the reader to develop an appreciation of the concept in the course of [its] use"
(Lacan 1981, 282).
22 Introducing Lacan

Desire

In the course of the Fort-Da game, Lacan tells us, the mother's "outline"
is transformed, "made up of the brush-strokes and gouaches of desire"
(Lacan 1981, 63). Desire thus manifests itself as the relation which is estab-
lished between the subject and an object of need when the subject's atten-
tion is redirected to an-other object, namely, the objet a. In particular, by
substituting the cotton-reel for his mother, the child falls from needing her
into desiring. Or, to put matters more bluntly, desire is what happens to
need when its object is traded for something more accessible but less sat-
isfying.
The representative anecdote of the Fort-Da game displays a key feature
of the relation of desire to the objet a. The objet a in the specific guise of the
cotton-reel is not itself desired. That is, the child is clear that it wants its
mother, not the cotton-reel. This is not to say that the objet a is totally free
of desire. On the contrary, desire always plays around its edges: "You then
say, as Freud observed, I love mutton stew ... [but] [y]ou're not sure you
desire it. Take the experience of the beautiful butcher's wife. She loves
caviar, but she doesn't want any. That's why she desires it. You see, the ob-
ject of desire is the cause of desire, and this object [the objet a] that is the
cause of desire is the object of the drive-that is to say, the object around
which the drive turns" (Lacan 1981, 243). Nevertheless, even when the
objet a is desired, its function does not depend upon this fact. As Lacan
makes the point, "The function of the objet a ... is never found in the posi-
tion of being the aim of desire" (t86).
The Fort-Da game illustrates that the cotton-reel, as the objet a, not only
is undesired but also, by distracting the child from trying to get his
mother, blocks or defers access to what he really wants. This account of
the emergence of desire repudiates the commonsense "humanist" view
that distraction is a matter of offering the child one thing it wants in ex-
change for another. The cotton-reel is not a distraction in this sense be-
cause it is not itself an object of desire. In any case, the mother for which
the cotton-reel is a sort of substitute becomes desirable only after the
Fort-Da game is set in place. Although not itself desired, however, the
cotton-reel is a key element in setting a scene within which the subject's
desire unfolds, and in that sense it functions as an object-cause of desire.
Thus the objet a takes on a paradoxical dual role in relation to desire, as
both its cause and its impediment.
In order for desire to fulfill its characteristic adult function of moti-
vating action, subjects must be under the misapprehension that pleasure
arises from pursuing desire. They must fail to recognize what children
know at a practical level: the real source of their pleasure lies in engaging
 The Song Not the Singer 23

with rather than avoiding the objet a. 5 Such failure of recognition is an as-
pect of what Lacan following Freud calls "repression" (Verdriingung) and
is a constitutive element of the unconscious (a topic to which I return in
more detail in the next chapter).
This does not mean that repression is always successful. On the con-
trary, from a Freudian perspective, there must be breaches or slippages,
what Freud calls "returns of the repressed": parapraxes, unintended puns,
and so on, by which subjects betray their knowledge that the real origins
of their pleasure lie with the objet a. "Normal" (that is nonfetishistic) sub-
jects do not systematically avow this knowledge. Instead, they accord it
sporadic practical recognition by displays of excessive care or anxiety in
approaching the objet a. By contrast, in the case of fetishistic structures of
desire that I discuss later in this chapter, such knowledge takes on a sys-
tematic, practical character as a phantasy, perhaps even emerging into
consciousness. In that respect, we may think of fetishism as a form of re-
gression-not a return to childish innocence, but rather a resurfacing of
knowledge repressed in the transition to adulthood.
The chaperone illustrates the structure of the objet a. Often represented
as an aged female relative, she is not paradigmatically an object of desire
but instead stands in the way of what the suitor wants: the beloved. Nev-
ertheless, the chaperone is covertly instrumental in producing a certain
quotient of pleasure for the suitor. This arises not from the attainment of
desire or even the contemplation of such attainment but rather from en-
gaging with the chaperone, in particular from successfully allaying her
suspicions and evading her scrutiny. That is, as in the Fort-Da game, she is
the object around which the subject moves to produce pleasure, the cause
of desire rather than its object.

Thus far, my account of the formation of desire has been pre-Oedipal. At

the Oedipal stage, access to the mother is forbidden, a proscription rein-
forced by a threat of danger (castration, for example), which distracts the
little man from what he wants. As a result, the idea (Vorstellung) of the
mother is "decathected" or "repressed," so that at the level of conscious-
ness it is unclear how much and in what respect he wants her. Does he
merely crave her attention, want her close presence, or desire access to
her body in some more intimate respect of which he is only dimly
aware?

5· This does not imply that pleasure never comes from getting what one wants. On the
contrary, the child takes pleasure from the breast which it also desires. In this case, how-
ever, pleasure comes from the desired object only because it is also an object of need. The
question of producing pleasure will be addressed in more detail below.
24 Introducing Lacan

Under these circumstances, the decathected desire or, as Freud calls it,
the "unconscious wish" (unbewusster Wunsch) for the mother persists at a
conscious level but in disguised form, as a series of affective attachments
to other objects connected to the mother by chains of associations of the
kind connecting her to the cotton-reel. Lacan takes such disguised resur-
facings of unconscious desire as the result of an intrinsic instability of de-
sire, that is, its continuing tendency to displace onto new objects. By such
displacements, he says, subjects avoid or at least manage to distract them-
selves from facing the always and already recurring trauma of their own
lack. 6
Freud's own life provides an illustration of such displacement. During
his summer holidays one year he journeyed by carriage from Ragusa to
Herzegovina. He fell into conversation with his traveling companions
about "the various peculiarities of the Turks living there, as I had heard
them described years before by a friend and colleague who had lived
among them for many years as a doctor." For reasons which only become
apparent later, Freud found himself unable to relay a further story,
namely, that "upon encountering sexual disturbances" the Turks "fall into
utter despair" (Weber 1992,91-92, quoting Freud 1953-73, 3:29o-291, 6:3).
The conversation then drifted to Italian art, and Freud strongly recom-
mended the frescoes at Orvieto cathedral. Again he found himself
strangely restrained in his conversation, unable to recall the name of their
painter, Signorelli.
In his rereading of this episode from Freud's life, Lacan suggests that an
unconscious desire betrays its presence in Freud's lapse of memory in
connection with the painter's name, a lapse which we may retrospectively
identify with the earlier failure to tell the story of the Turks' attitude to
failures of sexual performance. The desire in question is Freud's secret
concern with his own impotence, the unmanning of the master, the ·
Seigneur, a desire which, Lacan argues, manifests in disguised form as a
forgetting of the name "Signorelli."
But this claim makes sense only if the path connecting the desire to the
forgetful behavior operates at the level of signifiers rather than the objects
to which they refer. That is, nothing links forgetting the name "Signorelli"
to the question of Freud's impotence other than the accident that erasing
the name is a rebus for Freud's own unmanning. This connection is estab-
lished in virtue of Freud's status as master-Seigneur-but also through

6. According to Lacan, such avoidances also belong to the Freudian phenomenon of re-
pression. In this respect, then, the repressed, that is, the unconscious, emerges not as some
deep, dark, hidden reservoir of facts and urges but rather as a systematic oversight struc-
turing subjects' practices, a point to which I return in the next chapter.
 The Song Not the Singer 25

the "accident" that the first three letters of "Signorelli" coincide with the
first three of "Sigmund." In short, as Lacan makes the point, "a desire ... [is]
situate[d] in the denuded metonymy of [this] discourse ... where the sub-
ject [in this case Freud himself] surprises himself in some unexpected
way" (Lacan 1981, 28).

Pleasure

Freud proposes two mechanisms for producing pleasure. The first,

cathexis, involves stabilizing a subject's libidinal energies by anchoring or
"fixing" them to a particular object of need. The fixing is not a physical act
of attachment but rather a fixing of attention to an idea (Vorstellung) of the
object? For instance, a child derives pleasure by fixing libidinal energies
to a particular idea of the mother's breast.
The other mechqnism Freud proposes is the drive (Trieb). 8 Each drive is
associated with an imbricated pair of needs; the scopic drive, for example,
with the need to see (voyeurism) and be seen (exhibitionism): ''What the
voyeur is looking for and finds is merely a shadow, a shadow behind the
curtain.... If also the structure of the drive appears, it is really complete
only in its return form [namely] in exhibitionism" (Lacan 1981, 182-183).9
The drive produces pleasure by stabilizing the libidinal flux associated
with such paired needs, neither of which fully fixes upon its object: "'Plea-
sure' obeys the law of homeostasis that Freud evokes in Beyond the Plea-
sure Principle, whereby through discharge the psyche seeks the lowest
possible tension" (281). How is such stabilization or "homeostasis"
achieved?
Discussing the scopic drive, Lacan introduces a new kind of object, "the
lure." Operating in its "natural function," the lure is exemplified by ani-
mals who, casting off their skin, create a double, a visual simulation,
which deceives their enemies. Humans are deceived in a more complex
way: "the human subject ... is not, unlike the animal, entirely caught up
in this imaginary capture" (107).! 0 Instead, and here Lacan repeats a

7· See Laplanche and Pontalis 1974,62-65, 162-164, for useful discussions of the vagaries
of the Freudian notion of fixing and cathexis.
8. Lacan's term for the drive, pulsion, is a translation for Freud's term Trieb, which is mis-
translated in the Standard Edition of Freud as "instinct." On this point of mistranslation
see Laplanche and Pontalis 1974, 214-215.
9· Lacan discusses the scopic drive and its connection to such circular movements of
seeing and being seen in Lacan 1981, 181-184. See too 165-168 for a general discussion of
the connection between the drive and the production of pleasure.
10. See also Lacan 1981, 102, 104, 111, 186; see as well my remarks on the signifier earlier
in this chapter.
26 Introducing Lacan

theme from his earlier work in Ecrits that I discussed above, humans are
deceived through simulacra-or "lures"-which work in a paradoxical
way by permitting viewers to see through them. For instance, in Plato's
story, Parrhasios wins a painting competition by tricking his competitor
Zeuxis with a painting of a veil: "Zeuxis has the advantage of having
made grapes that attracted the birds [the lure in its natural function] ....
Parrhasios triumphs over him for having painted on the wall a veil, a veil
so lifelike that Zeuxis, turning towards him said, Well, and now show us
what you have painted behind it" (103). Zeuxis, unlike the birds, is not de-
ceived into thinking the painting depicts something real, since, in saying
"show us what you have painted," he recognizes that the veil's image is
merely a painting. Nonetheless, despite seeing through the deception, in-
deed because he sees through it, he is trapped by the image since, in
asking what is painted behind the veil, he mistakenly infers: veils conceal,
therefore something must be painted behind the painted veil. His mistake,
an instance of what I am calling double deception, is characteristic of the
deceptions created by trompe l'oeil-deceptions sustained even as, indeed
because, they are seen through. In short, Parrhasios wins the prize by cre-
ating a lure fit for humans, while Zeuxis produces a lure which, operating
in its "natural function," is strictly for the birds.
A mask hanging on a wall functions similarly to Parrhasios' s painting.
The simulated eye sockets are, as viewers well understand, not eyes at all;
no one is looking from behind the mask. Nevertheless, in the same way
that the painting of the veil seems to conceal something in a fictional place
painted behind it, a scrutiny seems to emerge from a fictional location be-
hind the mask: "Man, in effect, knows how to play with the mask" (107).
The mask's eyeless eyes, doubly deceptive, thus function as a lure.U
But how, in allowing viewers to see through it, does the lure trap
viewers? The mechanism of entrapment, Lacan tells us, depends upon the
pleasure created in seeing through what has been seen: "What is it that at-
tracts and satisfies us in trompe l'oeil? When is it that it captures our atten-
tion and delights us? At the moment when, by a mere shift of our gaze, we
are able to realize that the representation does not move with the gaze and
that it is merely trompe l'oeil?" (112). The pleasure produced is not an intel-
lectual satisfaction at uncovering a deception. That is, Lacan is not hinting
at a primal form of epistemophilia. On the contrary, the viewer knows all
along he is being deceived. Instead it depends upon the workings of the

11. In the case of works of trompe l'oeil the deception concerns the object rather than its re-
lation to the subject, that is, the subject is deceived about the reality corresponding to the
appearance. In the case of the mask, a certain ambiguity obtains: is the subject deceived
about the mask itself-about whether it constitutes a real face-or does the deception con-
cern the more general question of whether someone is looking from behind the mask?
 The Song Not the Singer 27

scopic drive. As they see through the first level deception, viewers look
back at what they have seen, thus scrutinizing themselves, and specifi-
cally their own role as viewers. Thus they place themselves and what they
see on display. That is, even as they recognize that the eyes that they see
are trompe l'oeil-a masquerade-viewers feel themselves to be the object
of a "look" coming from the object's vicinity. In this way the raw materials
of the scopic drive are brought together, namely, voyeuristic and exhibi-
tionistic libidinal thrusts (poussees) arising from the twinned needs to see
and be seen, neither of which is fully satisfied. For instance, the eyeholes
of an empty mask provide an evasive target for the those who need to see.
We look at the holes but also behind them for the absent eyes that look
back at us, and the scrutiny from the direction of the mask takes on an am-
biguous quality: we feel under scrutiny but know we are not: "What the
voyeur is looking for and finds is merely a shadow, a shadow behind the
curtain" (182-183). The pleasure which emerges, the delight at viewing
the trompe l'oeil, proves that such a drive structure has successfully locked
into place.
Lacan' s name for structural distortions of the visual field, those that are
not only seen but are also the source of a look turned back upon the
viewer, is "the gaze." A gaze in this sense is created by the visual sem-
blance of a viewer behind the mask's eyeholes as well as the simulation of
a scene behind Parrhasios's painting of the veil. In short, the gaze is a
pseudo-object, masquerading as something objective when it is merely a
structural effect of the visual field, a hollow or absence around which the
scopic drive is constructed. By contrast, the mask, like the painting on the
wall, is a concrete object, a lure, that sustains the gaze as a structural ele-
ment in the field of its effects. As Lacan puts it, the mask is "that beyond
which there is the gaze" (107). According to Lacan, all drives are struc-
tured in this way, as responses to a twinned pair of needs. The responses
circle a pseudo-object, the "object of the drive," which in turn is screened
by a concrete object-in the case of the scopic drive, called "the lure"
(17o-18o).

The question arises, then, how the drive, as-the structure through which
pleasure emerges, connects with desire. Lacan answers by advancing a
bold hypothesis identifying the objet a in its role as object-cause of desire
with the object at the center of the drive. This identity is well illustrated in
the case of the Fort-Da game, for which, as I explained above, the cotton-
reel functions as objet a in its role as object-cause of desire. We saw that the
game involves a double deception. The first deception takes the form of
an identity or, more accurately, a relation of metaphoric substitution be-
tween mother and cotton-reel, which is based upon a shared relational
28 Introducing Lacan

structure: both cotton-reel and mother leave and return to the child. The
child is well aware of the deception. Nevertheless, because of the pleasure
the game affords, he continues to play, thus allowing the deception to re-
tain a grip.
The mechanism at work here, I claim, is the scopic drive, for which the
distortion of the visual field created by the sudden reappearances and dis-
appearances of the cotton-reel functions as the gaze. To be specific, the
Fort-Da game, through its structure of double deception, is homologous to
trompe l'oeil, and thus a site for the operation of the scopic drive.
Thus the cotton-reel fulfills a dual role: it is the objet a qua object-cause
of desire, and it is, like the mask, a lure supporting the gaze, a pseudo-
object at the center of the scopic drive. The phantasm, "the false organ"
that, I argued earlier, haunts the objet a as a reminder of the subject's orig-
inary lack, may then be identified as the gaze. As Lacan (1981, 243) puts
the point, "This object that is the cause of desire [the objet a] is the object of
the drive." He repeats this identification in the specific context of the
scopic drive: "Is it not clear that the gaze intervenes here only in as much
as ... the subject ... who feels himself surprised [is] the subject sustaining
himself in a function of desire?" (85). And he then reasserts it in the con-
text of the oral drive, for which the breast functions as an archetypical
objet a: "To this breast in its function as object, objet a cause of desire, in the
sense that I understand the term-we must give a function that will ex-
plain its place in the satisfaction of the drive" (168).12 In what follows, and
except where I need to do otherwise, I shall follow Lacan in reading the
term "objet a" fairly elastically, to cover not only the lure but also the objet
a proper, as well as the object at the center of the drive. In particular, the
gaze may be taken as an instance of an objet a.

Fetishism

In this section I argue that Lacan' s account of the objet a as both object of
the drive and object-cause of desire provides a way of understanding the
phenomenon of fetishism. A chaperone, I have argued, may take on the
characteristics of an objet a. Although not herself desired by the suitor, she
is nonetheless the cause of his desire as well as the center of the evasive ac-
tivities through which he produces his pleasure. In some cases the suitor
may become overattentive to the chaperone, so scrupulous about satis-
fying the letter of her demand for restraint that it is as if he puts her desire
before his own or, what comes to the same thing, appears to be afraid of

12. See also Lacan 1981, 179-180.

 The Song Not the Singer 29

getting what he wants. In Lacanian terms such a subject "gives up on his

own desire" and instead dedicates himself "perversely" (as we say) to
abetting the objet a in its function as impediment to desire. Such giving up
is a matter of foregoing the pursuit of desire rather than eliminating desire
or (as it may seem) displacing it onto the chaperone. That is, the suitor
continues to desire his beloved but systematically gives up her pursuit in
order to return to the fascinating business of evading the chaperone.
The sacrifice is not without its compensations since the suitor's engage-
ment with the objet a yields a return of pleasure by stabilizing his libido.
Under such a regime, the objet a takes on the role of what Freud calls "the
fetish." Conceived in this way, fetishism is not a matter of a socially unac-
ceptable or unusual desire but rather a paradoxical refusal to follow up on
one's desire.
This conception of the fetish, as a special sort of objet a that attracts the
attention normally reserved for the object of desire, fits well with recent
work suggesting that fetishism is no less a feature of women's psychic
structure than men's (see Apter 1993; Gamman and Makinen 1994). But
how can this conception be linked to the more traditional Freudian ap-
proach discussed in the Introduction, which defines fetishism in terms of
the disavowal of an object (the "fetish") that functions as a substitute for
the mother's missing penis? 13
The fetishistic suitor knows, indeed sees, that the chaperone is only an
old woman with no real power to stop him getting what he wants. This
knowledge plays the role of what Freud in his classical treatment of
fetishism calls avowal. But even so, and for reasons which often remain
conveniently obscure, the suitor recognizes that the chaperone is impor-
tant. That is why he lavishes such attention on her. This contradictory
recognition, which constitutes the fetishistic disavowal, may not be a
matter of explicit belief, may indeed be vigorously denied. Instead, it is a
matter of a phantasy scenario that structures the suitor's behavior, taking
on the dimensions of a symptom which, as Freud tells us, is always a
coded message.
When the "normal" (that is nonperverse) subject confronts the chap-
erone, by contrast, the disavowal impacts behavior only at the level of slips
punctuating his practices-strange hesitations, blushes, and so on-as if he
found her attractive. Apart from such slips, he keeps as far away from the
objet a as he can without giving up on what he wants. Thus for both the

13. Dylan Evans, following Lacan, identifies perversion as a general clinical structure con-
nected with disavowal. Fetishism, then, falls under this concept as a special case of per-
version in which a fetish object functions as a symbolic substitute for the mother's missing
phallus (Evans 1996, 138-139). I do not need to make such fine distinctions here, and will
refer to perversion and fetishism interchangeably.
30 Introducing Lacan

fetishist and normal subject the situation is unequivocal at the level of con-
sciousness: "she's only an old woman; if only we could get rid of her, what
fun we would have." But for the fetishist, this knowledge is betrayed by a
contrary knowledge encoded into the phantasies structuring his behavior.
In situations of fetishism there is no need for repression, that is, no need
to defer the otherwise dangerous knowledge that satisfaction derives not
from acquiring what one desires but rather from engaging with the objet a,
the chaperone, for example. Consequently, such knowledge rises easily
into consciousness although, as Copjec points out, it is rare for the revela-
tion to be total: "It is important to recall Freud's several warnings against
possible misunderstandings: the construction of the fetish does not itself
reveal, except in certain 'very subtle' cases, the subject's simultaneous af-
firmation and denial of loss" (Copjec 1994, 113). Instead, the knowledge
surfaces in veiled form, as a recognition that contrary to perception, the
fetish is important in some sense never made totally clear. Such knowl-
edge is expressed in the characteristic split form of what Freud calls dis-
avowal: "I know that, but even so ..." 14
The other feature emphasized by traditional Freudian accounts of
fetishism is an associative connection between the mother's missing penis
and the fetish. This connection is clear in specific instances of fetishism,
but it can also be established on general theoretical grounds by deriving a
connection between the objet a, of which the fetish is an instance, and the
mother's lack-not specifically her lack of a penis but rather her lack in a
more general sense. The derivation is relatively straightforward in the
case of the Fort-Da game.
The cotton-reel is joined to Freud's grandson by a piece of string. But
the game drives a wedge between the child and his toy, thus consigning
the latter to the position of missing part. Through this process of "self-
mutilation," the child creates a new lack, his own lack of bodily integrity
(Lacan 1981, 62). Because the game only goes "some way to satisfying the
pleasure principle" (62, my emphasis) the child is subjected to a second lack,
constituted by the gap between the satisfaction he gets from the game and
the (purely imaginary) state of total satisfaction which is and continues to be
his aim (Ziel). These two lacks are structurally equivalent in virtue of sharing
the same position in the child's causal history: both emerge as aspects of his
response to the problem of failure to get satisfaction. 15

14. Freud originally conceived disavowal simply as "the subject's refusal to recognize the
reality of a traumatic perception" in the specific context of psychosis; but it came to take
on a more extended meaning in his work as a contradictory belief concerning the existence
of an object of unrealistic anxiety (Laplanche and Pontalis 1974, n8-12o).
15. The equivalence here is a matter of a shared metonymic relation with a prior common
cause. As Freud has shown us, psychic equivalences are grounded in such relations.
 The Song Not the Singer 31

Because it emerges as a response or, as Lacan says, an "answer" to orig-

inal lack, the double lack created by the Fort-Da game is an exchange for
the child's original lack due to his dependence upon others for the satis-
faction of his needs. In short:

Subject's original lack = Lack of objet a = Continuing lack of satisfaction

This series of equivalences can be extended to include the mother's

lack. That is, the subject's lack implies that the mother is also a site of lack
since, insofar as she cannot give satisfaction, she too must be lacking. This
equivalence depends, of course, upon the contingent fact that it is the
child's mother, as the source of his needs, whom he misses. Thus:

Mother's lack= Subject's original lack

Therefore we arrive at a chain of identities:

Mother's lack= Subject's original lack= Continuing lack of satisfaction=

Lack of objet a

from which it follows that

Mother's lack = Lack of objet a

Thus the proposition that the objet a is important-that its lack is a catas-
trophe-is equivalent to that qualified denial of the mother's lack which
Freud designated by the term "disavowal."
Similar equivalences can be derived for all the objets a introduced by
Lacan (the breast, the turd, the gaze, the voice, and so on), since in all
cases the objet a provides a focus around which diversions from the sub-
ject's continuing lack are organized. In this way, then, the fetish, as a spe-
cial sort of objet a, takes on the role of substitute for maternal lack. This
role for the fetish is not one of its essential characteristics, however; it de-
pends instead upon a culturally and historically contingent fact, namely,
the role of the mother as caregiver in the early life of the child.

This redefinition of fetishism and reconceptualization of the relation be-

tween pleasure and desire have consequences that extend well beyond the
arena of Freud scholarship. According to a tradition going back to Aris-
totle, human actions are defective-irrational or incontinent-if they are
not directed to achieving what their agents desire. The phenomenon of
fetishism provides an exception to this Aristotelian principle of action.
32 Introducing Lacan

Fetishists are "irrational" in the sense of not pursuing their desires. In-
stead, they attend perversely (as we say) to something else, the fetish,
which thereby functions as an impediment, a delaying mechanism, with
respect to the attainment of their desire. So, for example, they may rivet
their attention upon an item of clothing or a bodily part instead of pur-
suing that which they continue to desire, from a safe distance as it were:
the consummation of sexual relations with the beloved.
Nevertheless, as I have argued, their actions, specifically their engage-
ment with the fetish, produce pleasure, and in that respect may be seen as
"properly motivated," that is, "done for good reason." This combination
of "irrationality" with "done for good reason" suggests new possibilities
for the relation between human subjects and their objects.
 2

Body and Text:

The Roots of the Unconscious

If psychoanalysis is to be constituted as the science of the unconscious, one must

set out from the notion that the unconscious is structured lilce a language . ...
At a time that I hope we have now put behind us, it was objected that in giving
dominance to structure I was neglecting the dynamics so evident in our
experience. It was even said that I went so far as to ignore the principle affirmed in
Freudian doctrine that this dynamics is, in its essence, through and through,
sexual.
Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pychoanalysis

L acan's name is associated famously with the view that "the uncon-
scious is structured like a language" (Lacan 1981, 203). But Lacan's lin-
guistic and specifically structuralist conception of the unconscious has
been the target of much criticism. In particular, orthodox Freudians have
accused him of promoting linguistic aspects of the unconscibus at the ex-
pense of its sexual nature. Lacan has shown himself quite sensitive to such
criticism. He agrees that "the reality of the unconscious is sexual re-
ality.... At every opportunity, Freud defended this formula, if I may say
so, with tooth and claw"; and then acknowledges that "in advancing this
proposition [the sexual nature of the unconscious] I find myself in a prob-
lematic position-for what have I taught about the unconscious? The un-
conscious is constituted by the effects of speech .... The unconscious is
structured like a language" (149--150).
In this chapter I argue that, provided the embodied, material nature of
speech is taken into account-speech as parole rather than langue-a con-
ception of the unconscious as linguistically structured can be reconciled
with the notion that it is sexual in nature. I start by unfolding some of the
many ways in which one may read Lacan' s deceptively fertile aphorism
"The unconscious is structured like a language." For argument's sake Ire-

33
34 Introducing Lacan

strict the terms "signifiers" and "Speech" in this chapter to their conven-
tional meanings, as essentially linguistic in nature, rather than using them
in the somewhat broader sense introduced in the previous chapter.

The Unconscious Is Structured Like a Language

According to Freud, the unconscious consists of intertwining chains of

associations formed by the primary processes of condensation and dis-
placement. These processes, Roman Jakobson argues, are structurally
identical with the linguistic tropes of metaphor and metonymy. From this
it follows trivially that "the unconscious is structured like a language"
(Lacan 1981, 149, 203). Lacan's aphorism can also be understood less triv-
ially, however: the slips, bodily symptoms and dream images that offer a
royal road into the unconscious, as Freud maintained, operate as signifiers
or, indeed, as rebuses that despite their visual form depend upon lan-
guage for discharging their symbolic function. As Lacan makes the point
more generally:

The unconscious is that chapter of my history that is marked by a blank or

occupied by a falsehood: it is the censored chapter. But the truth can be re-
discovered; usually it has been written down elsewhere. Namely:
-in monuments: this is my body ... in which the hysterical symptoms
reveals the structure of a language. (Lacan 1977, 50) 1

Lacan also indicates, and here a third sense of his aphorism emerges, that
the unconscious is manifested, indeed constituted, by certain "effects of
speech," not only Freudian parapraxes ("the frontiers where slips of the
tongue and witticisms, in their collusion, become confused," 299) but also
the split between the subject of enonciation (the one who speaks) and the sub-
ject of enonce (the fictional figure in terms of which a speaker speaks about
himself or herself). This split, Mikhail Bahktin argues, is a consequence of the
impossibility of a speech act referring to itself. Either the act asserts that it is
already completed, in which case it falsely claims the termination of some-
thing which, ex hypothesi, is still ongoing; or it asserts that it is incomplete,
in which case, when completed, it will be guilty of false modesty, that is, of
denying its own achievement. Speech, it seems, always arrives too early or
too late at the scene of its own production. To be specific, a temporal gap ex-

1. He lists these other locations: "in semantic evolution ... the stock of words," "in my
style of life and ... character," "in traditions ... which bear my history," "in the distor-
tions necessitated by linking of the adulterated chapters to the chapters surrounding it."
 Body and Text 35

ists between the moment of speaking and the operation of the referential ap-
paratus by which speech refers to itself, a gap which, in tum, creates a split
between the subject of enonce and its intended referent, the subject of enonci-
ation. As Tzvetan Todorov puts it, "If I tell (orally or in writing) an event that
I have just lived, in so far as I am telling (orally or in writing) this event, I find
myself already outside the time-space where the event occurred. To identify
oneself absolutely with oneself, to identify one's 'I' with the 'I' that I tell is as
impossible as to lift oneself up by one's hair" (Todorov 1984, 52).2
The process of speaking distracts the speaker from this split. Speech cre-
ates the illusion that the referent of the spoken "I" refers to the one who
speaks, thus protecting speakers from recognizing the limping quality of
their own utterances. This convenient illusion is not merely a matter of
suppressing from immediate consciousness the split between the subject
of enonciation and the subject of enonce but rather of overlooking it at the
level of discursive practice. That is, at issue is a certain practical lack of at-
tention to the split rather than a failure to recognize or "know" it at the
level of consciousness. 3 According to Lacan, such overlooking is a consti-
tutive moment in the formation of the unconscious:

Once the structure of language has been recognized in the unconscious,

what sort of subject can we recognize for it?
We can try, with methodological rigour, to set out from the strictly lin-
guistic definition of the I as signifier, in which there is nothing but the
"shifter" or indicative, which, in the subject of the statement [inonce1, desig-
nates the subject in the sense that he is now speaking.
That is to say, it designates the subject of the enunciation. (Lacan 1977, 298)

Thus far I have followed the strand of argument in the early Lacan (of
Ecrits), which demonstrates that the unconscious is an "effect of speech"
(149). But in his later work, specifically Seminar XI, Lacan may be seen as re-
versing the ontological priority of speech over the unconscious, by arguing
that the constitution of the unconscious in dream work creates a split in the
subject similar to that between the subject of enonce and enonciation. Thus,
rather than speech preceding and providing a constitutive basis for the un-
conscious, the latter precedes and sets in place a structure subsequently real-
ized in the unfolding of the spoken word-what Saussure calls parole. In other

2. As Lacan makes the point, the "me" (moi) that signifies the subject of enonce "designates
the subject of the enunciation but does not signify it" (Lacan 1977, 298).
3· As with Louis Althusser's conception of ideology, the "knowledge" referred to is not so
much a matter of ideas in the head as of representations structuring practices-see my dis-
cussion of Althusser in Chapter 5·
36 Introducing Lacan

words, the structure of the unconscious lays the groundwork for language
rather than the other way around. I turn to this argument in the next section.

Dreaming the Unconscious

In The Interpretation of Dreams (1965, 547-550), Freud recounts an incident

in which a father, sleeping in the room next door to his dead child, is shocked
by a noise. He wakes up with a start, whereupon he discovers that a candle
has overturned in the next room, and that the old man whom he had
charged with watching over the dead child has fallen asleep. The father sub-
sequently reports having dreamed that the infant stood by the bed where the
father was sleeping, took him by the arm, and said: "Vater, siehst du denn nicht
das ich verbrenne ?" (Father, don't you see that I am burning?).
In the context of discussing this dream, Lacan recounts another: "The
other day, I was awoken from a short nap by a knocking at my door just
before I actually awoke. With this impatient knocking I had already
formed a dream, a dream that manifested to me something other than this
knocking. And when I awake, it is in so far as I reconstitute my entire rep-
resentation around this knocking-this perception" (Lacan 1981, 56).
Lacan clarifies this last point by adding that when he awakes, "I know
that I am there, at what time I went to sleep, and why I went to sleep.
When the knocking occurs, not in my perception, but in my conscious-
ness, it is because my consciousness reconstitutes itself around this repre-
sentation-that I know that I am waking up, that I am knocked up" (56).
In Lacan' s dream, as in the one recounted by Freud, a man is woken by a
perception invading his sleep. By imposing the forms of consciousness
upon this perception after he awakes, the dreamer retrospectively symbol-
izes what disturbed him. At the same time he formulates his own identity
as one who, having woken, retrospectively recognizes what woke him.
Lacan then poses the following question: "Here I must question myself
as to what I am at that moment-at the moment, so immediately before
and so separate, which is that in which I began to dream under the effect
of the knocking which is, to all appearances, what woke me" (56). What is
Lacan signaling by this strange question concerning the identity of the
dreamer-"What am I at that moment?"-at that liminal moment when I
am still asleep but on the threshold of waking? And what is Lacan telling
us by juxtaposing an account of this structurally similar but symbolically
impoverished dream next to Freud's?
Lacan is making the point that what is important in dreams is not so
much their manifest or latent content as their abstract form: that the
dream's content, including the dreamer's perception, is inserted retro-
 Body and Text 37

spectively into his consciousness after he wakes. What does Lacan mean
by "consciousness" here? As he uses the term, it refers to something that
differentiates waking from dreaming. It cannot, then, refer simply to
awareness or even perception, since in dreams no less than in waking we
are aware of, indeed perceive, aspects of reality, for example, the knocking
that the father noticed during his dream of the burning child. Instead, by
"consciousness" Lacan means a particular set of symbolic forms in terms
of which, after waking, the one who was dreaming comes to characterize
the reality he perceives, including the remembered knocking that, having
impinged upon his perceptual field even as he slept, woke him.4
In this context, the unconscious is exemplified by the way the knocking is
perceived at the moment when it occupies the center stage of the dream, as a
literally indescribable source of dread that, while retaining the semblance of a
message, breaks the boundaries of the symbolic forms in terms of which the
sleeper represents his waking experiences. In this guise, the noise that dis-
turbs the sleeper constitutes an intrusion of what Lacan calls the Real: a site of
anxiety where the symbolic order breaks down. This disturbance incites
Lacan, "interpellates him," as Althusse~ would say, to restore order by finding
a sense to the noise, which, by a catachretic substitution of meaning for non-
meaning, reworks the knocking into something sensible. The sleeping Lacan
effects this transformation by waking up and retrospectively identifying the
terrifying aspect of the noise as "just a dream." As he puts it, when he is awake
"the knocking occurs not in my perception [as it did in the dream], but in my
consciousness.... It is because my consciousness reconstitutes itself around
this representation ... that I know that I am waking up" (s6).
This reconstitution involves not only a reworking of reality to fit the
symbolic order but also a splitting between two "I's": the "I" who, while
dreaming, hears the original meaningless noise as a disturbance of the
symbolic landscape, and another "I" who, after waking, retrospectively
perceives, knows, what is going on: "I [the second I] know that I [the first I]
am ... knocked up" (56). At the liminal moment of waking the disjuncture
between these two "I' s" breaks into the open, thus leading Lacan to ask,
"What am I at that moment?"
A similar mechanism is at work in speech. When parapraxes, unintended
puns, and so on break up the pattern of speech to the point where they in-
dicate what Freud calls "unrealistic anxiety'' (an anxiety with no apparently
appropriate object) speakers are led to reassess their own words for some-

4· In Lacan's dream, this reality was aural in nature, a knocking, as was the noise of the
overturning candle in the dream of the burning child recounted by Freud. In the context of
establishing what Lacan means by "consciousness," it is germane to take note of his com-
plaint that Freud never returned to the problem of consciousness (Lacan 1981, 57).
38 Introducing Lacan

thing more that they might be saying, for something they have missed. This
veiled excess of meaning defamiliarizes speech, filling it with resonances
that, like the anonymous, free-floating "acousmatic" voice of a film sound-
track (the mother's voice in Hitchcock's Psycho) seem to come from a
somewhere else which is nowhere (ZiZek 1996, 92). Speakers are thus trans-
formed into listeners to their "own" alienated utterances, and correspond-
ingly a wedge is driven between the "I" producing the speech and the "I"
reflexively listening to what is being said. Such distortions of speech, which
cause speakers to listen to their own utterances coming back from else-
where, fall under the heading of what Lacan calls "the Voice."
It is true, of course, that speakers quickly seal off these moments of insta-
bility in their speech, retrospectively passing them off as accidents. Never-
theless, the structural similarity with dreams remains, since in Freud's ac-
count of the dream of the burning child the father too engages in a sealing
off, erasing the waking moments of disorientation in his sense of self and
the world. To be specific, almost as soon as he wakes, the father comes to a
retrospective (mis)understanding that the noise disturbing his dream was
merely the result of a candle overturning in the next room. Thus the uncon-
scious, which is constructed around an assortment of such troubling little
pieces of reality located outside the symbolic order, displays a structure of
splitting similar to that manifested in speech. Here, then, we see another
sense in which "the unconscious is structured like a language."

The Sexual Unconscious

In its material form as clusterings of liminal objects crossing the oral

and aural orifices of the body, speech constitutes the raw material of what
Lacan calls the invocatory drive. This drive forms when libidinal impulses
or cathexes associated with the subject's twinned needs (Bediirfnisse) to
speak and be spoken to circulate a distortion in the vocal field, such as the
burning child's cry in the father's dream. These imbricated speakings and
listenings, such as the father retelling his dream while reworking his per-
ception of the noise that disturbed his sleep, have the effect of stabilizing
the libidinal flux, thus producing pleasure in accord with the Freudian
pleasure principle (Lacan 1981, 281). Such pleasure, according to Lacan, is
always sexual in nature: "For the moment, I am not fucking, I am talking
to you. Well! I can have exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking.
That's what it means. Indeed, it raises the question of whether in fact I am
not fucking at this moment" (165-166). 5

5· In this context it is important to point out that the book in which this passage appears is
a written transcript of oral performances.
 Body and Text 39

The pleasure produced by the invocatory drive distracts subjects from,

and thus in a practical sense leads them to forget, not only the split between
the subject of enonciation and the subject of enonce but also a more basic, in-
deed originary, gap created by the subjects' lack of self-sufficiency~their
dependence upon others for satisfying their needs: ''The variation [telling
and being told] makes one forget the aim of the significance, by trans-
forming its act into a game, and giving it certain outlets that go some way
towards satisfying the pleasure principle.... The game ... is the subject's
answer to what the mother's absence has created on the frontier of his do-
main-the edge of his cradle-namely a ditch around which one can only
play at jumping'' (62). 6 According to Lacan, such forgetting corresponds to
what Freud calls repression (Verdriingung) and thus institutes the function
of the unconscious. Insofar as the distracting pleasure that enables this for-
getting is sexual in nature, so too is the resultant unconscious.
This conception of the unconscious differs from that advanced in my
earlier discussion of the dream of the burning child, where I identified it
with the troubling "little pieces of reality" such as the dream presentation
of the knocking that woke Lacan. The present reconceptualization of the
unconscious focuses upon its effects rather than its causes, upon the do-
mesticated leftovers of repression rather than the chaotic, anxiety-
provoking materials which call for repression.

Lacan' s account of the origins of the unconscious can be generalized by

proposing that, in all instances, repression, and thus the unconscious, re-
sult from pleasurable distractions created by what he calls the "partial
drives" (invocatory, scopic, oral, anal, sadomasochistic). Insofar as all
these drives are sexual in nature, so too is the unconscious: "Every-
thing ... [that] assumes sexual value, passes from the Erhaltungstrieb,
from preservation, to the Sexualtrieb, only in terms of the appropria-
tion ... its seizure, by one of the partial drives" (191)?
Freud's argument for the sexual nature of the unconscious runs along
somewhat different lines. Like Lacan, he introduces the function of the
unconscious through repression. Unlike Lacan, however, he explains re-
pression in terms of the "Law of the Father," a prohibition that takes the

6. These remarks are advanced in the context of a discussion of a parent reading to a child
but also of the Fort-Da game, where, one can argue, the scopic rather than invocatory drive
is operative.
7· See also Lacan 1981, 177. Lacan calls these drives "partial" in the sense that each, al-
though sexual in nature, is "partial with regard to the biological finality of sexuality"
(Lacan 1981, 177). According to Lacan, there is no sexual drive as such (189). Instead, ac-
tivities are sexualized, libidinally invested, in relation to one of the "partial drives." It is
important to keep in mind here that Lacan distinguishes sexual from gender relations.
That is, for Lacan the sexual is a matter of the drive, whereas gender is a higher order
structure involving the subject's relation to desire.
40 Introducing Lacan

form of an explicit threat directed against an erotically charged wish. For

instance, little Hans's desire to "coax with" [caress] his mother is inhib-
ited-"repressed"-by a threat, in this case maternal, to "cut off his wid-
dler" (Freud 1990, 167-305). Thus, for Freud (as indeed for the earlier
Lacan of Seminar IV) the sexual nature of the unconscious is parasitic
upon the sexual nature of repressed materials, such as little Hans's wish,
which retrospectively, that is, after repression, take an unconscious form.
The later Lacan (of Seminar XI), by contrast, does not assign an origi-
nary role to prohibition in establishing repression. Instead, even when the
mother is its agent, as in the case of little Hans, the Law of the Father, like
the father himself, arrives too late on the scene, after all the hard work of
repression has been done: "when the Legislator (he who claims to lay
down the Law) presents himself to fill the gap, he does so as an imposter"
(Lacan 1977,311). Thus the paternal contribution is a purely formal prohi-
bition that sets the seal on repression by mystifying and concealing its ori-
gins: "It is not the Law itself that bars the subject's access to jouissance-
rather it creates out of an almost natural barrier a barred subject" (319).
Lacan deals rather carefully with the matter of his differences from
Freud concerning the origins of repression. He indicates that Freud or at
least Freudians have taken the sexualization of the child too far (Lacan
1981, 176-177). In particular, he suggests that, rather than sexuality func-
tioning as a source of effects from the earliest moments of a subject's exis-
tence, its importance is established retrospectively: "The legibility of sex
in the interpretation of the unconscious mechanisms is always retroac-
tive .... Infantile sexuality is not a wandering block of ice snatched from
the great ice-bank of adult sexuality" (176).
The connections Lacan proposes between the unconscious, language,
and the sexual are evident in his account of the dream of the burning
child. He argues that the terrifying "little pieces of reality" that erupt into
dreams-the knocking, the noise of the candle overturning, the smell of
burning, and so on-all suggest the idea of another, unspeakable reality-
die Idee einer anderer Lokalitiit (56)-the memory of which has been lost, and
for which the "little pieces of reality" seemingly function as traces. Such
traces constitute what Lacan, following Freud, calls Vorstellungsrepriisen-
tanzen, representatives for representations: representations that substitute
for, stand in the place of, other representations that are missing because
what they represent is unrepresentable. Rather than being some ur-
verdriingt primal scene too horrible to relate, the "unrepresentable" in this
context is a void created by the absence of any object that would fill the
subject's originary lack. The cause of this void is not the subject's lacking a
particular object, such as the mother's breast, but rather his or her depen-
dence upon others for the satisfaction of basic needs.
 Body and Text 41

Although the void concealed by the Vorstellungsreprasentanz contains no

objects, it is not totally empty but instead, according to Lacan, constitutes
the site of an "other reality hidden behind the lack of that which takes the
place of representation" (6o). That other reality is the drive. Lacan clarifies
this point in connection with his subsequent discussion of the Fort-Da
game (62), where he argues that it is the pleasure produced by the drive
that, by distracting the subject, "takes the place of representation."
The drive at issue in Lacan's discussion of the dream of the burning
child is, of course, the invocatory drive. That is, the noise of the candle
overturning takes on resonances of the terrible cry through which the fa-
ther addresses himself on behalf of his child lost beyond the grave-
"Vater, siehst du denn nicht das ich verbrenne?"-and from which he can flee
only by bursting into wakefulness. As Lacan claims, we do not dream in
order to escape reality; rather we wake in order to escape the Real, which
is Lacan's name for the order of anxiety provoking disruptions to the sym-
bolic order typified by the child's cry (58). 8
The noise and the cry in combination take on the ambiguous dimen-
sions of the Voice around which the invocatory drive forms as the father
moves to and fro in two dimensions (Lacan 1981, 6o): in and out of the
dream, but also between audition and utterl.ng, attempting to evade the
cry that hounds him in his dreams but also ventriloquizing his dead child,
an act that he repeats in censored form after waking. The pleasure pro-
duced in this way is sexual in nature because it is an effect of a drive (177).
In this context, then, the origins of the unconscious are located in the
distractions created by the invocatory drive as it turns around the terri-
fying cry haunting the dreamer's sleep. This same drive structure sets in
train a splitting of the subject as he vacillates between the "I" who speaks
and the "me" who listens to what is said, a splitting that is forgotten as the
subject moves into fully wakened speech.
Thus the covert operations of the drive explain not only the irreducibly
sexual nature of the unconscious but also its linguistic structuring, specif-
ically its implication in a splitting of the subject that parallels the split be-
tween subject of enonciation and subject of enonce. In short, the tension
noted by Lacan between linguistic and sexual approaches to the uncon-
scious is resolved in Freud's theory of the drive.

8. See also Zizek 1989, 45· The Real may take either of two forms: either an unsymboliz-
able point of excess, that which Freud associates with das Ding, or a residue, a leftover
from the process of symbolization, a piece of white noise from which all categorizable
sounds have been sifted.
 II
FETISH
 3
A Slave to Desire:
Defetishizing the Colonial Subject

Sometimes I woke up, and found her bending over me. At other times, she
whispered in my ear, as though it were her husband who was speaking to me, and
listened to hear what I would answer. If she startled me, on such occasion, she
would glide stealthily away; and the next morning she would tell me I had been
talking in my sleep, and ask who I was talking to. At last, I began to fear for my
life.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

I n his influential essay "The Other Question," Homi Bhabha points to

"contradictions and heterogeneity" surrounding racial stereotypes:
"The black is both savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and digni-
fied of servants (the bearer of food); he is the embodiment of rampant sex-
uality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simple-
minded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar, and manipulator
of social forces" (Bhabha 1994, 8z). Bhabha argues for a "functional link"
between such stereotypes and the disavowal of castration, which Freud
takes as characteristic of fetishism: "For fetishism is always a 'play' or vac-
. illation between the archaic affirmation of wholeness/similarity-in
Freud's terms: 'All men have penises'; in ours 'All men have the same
skin/race/culture'-and the anxiety associated with lack and differ-
ence-again, for Freud 'Some men do not have penises'; for us 'Some do
not have the same skin/race/culture."' (74) This argument, which charac-
terizes fetishism in terms of a discursively constituted, anxiety-ridden
point of contradiction, is the key to legitimating Bhabha's projection of
fetishism onto whole colonial populations. Specifically, it authorizes a
reading of the vacillations about the black body I slave displayed in
Southern ante-bellum discourse as symptoms of a collective fetishistic
structure of desire.

45
46 Fetish

In a later essay, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial

Discourse," Bhabha argues for an apparently different link between racial
stereotypes and structures of mimicry, a link that, he argues, applies to the
colonial subjects of British India no less than to the slave population of the
Carolinas:

The effect of mimicry on the authority of colonial discourse is profound and

disturbing. For in "normalizing" the colonial state or subject, the dream of
post-Enlightenment civility alienates its own language .... The ambiva-
lence which thus informs this strategy is discernible ... in this double use
of the word "slave": first simply, descriptively as the locus of a legitimate
form of ownership, then as the trope for an intolerable, illegitimate exercise
of power. What is articulated in that distance between the two uses is the
absolute imagined difference between the "Colonial" State of Carolina and
the Original state of Nature. (Bhabha 1994, 86)

The difference from his earlier argument turns out to be more rhetorical
than substantial, however. By figuring the colonial subject as "almost the
same but not quite," mimicry shares the ambiguities and disavowals char-
acteristic of fetishism (86).
Bhabha also looks for reflections of the structure of mimicry-fetishism
in colonial slave literature as well as contemporary works like Toni Mor-
rison's Beloved: "I want to link this circulation of the sign from the 187os in
the world of Beloved, to the circulation of other signs of violence in the
185os and 6os in northern and central India" (199). And in closing his dis-
cussion of Beloved he refers to "the ambivalences and ambiguities" of the
"unhomely world ... enacted in the house of fiction ... its sundering and
splitting performed in the work of art" (18).1
In short, Bhabha seems to be claiming that in British India no less than
the slave plantations of the deep South, master-slave discourses and pop-
ular literature are indicators, indeed symptoms, of a fetishistic structure of
desire that marks black bodies and continues to circulate today in books
like Morrison's Beloved. Bhabha admits to a certain "recklessness" in
proposing a black desire that so readily slips across cultural and historical

1. He also writes, immediately before the quotation on page 18: "When the present tense
of testimony loses its power to arrest, then the displacements of memory and the indirec-
tions of art offer us the image of our psychic survival." Thus, in terms of Bhabha's frame-
work, colonial literature and Beloved take on interestingly different roles, although the ap-
parent privileging of the latter is complicated by complex intertextual relations as well as
by the ideological nature of literature-ideological even when most arresting. (Morrison
indicates her indebtedness to nineteenth-century slave narratives in several interviews-
see Taylor-Guthrie 1994, 29, 182, 257.)
 A Slave to Desire 47

divides. His recklessness serves a noble political cause, however. In lo-

cating a similarity in desire between different marginal groups, he claims
to be laying the groundwork for a common collective resistance against
colonial oppression: "I want to move from the tortured history of Aboli-
tionism to the Indian Mutiny. My reckless historical connection is based
not on a sense of contiguity of events, but on the temporality of repetition
that constitutes those signs by which marginalized or insurgent subjects
create a collective agency" (199).
I do not intend to question the propriety of Bhabha's liberatory political
goals or question his claim that historical acts of psychic violence perpe-
trated upon black bodies left their mark in fetishistic forms of desire. 2 In-
stead, I propose alternative readings of the texts Bhabha considers, read-
ings that reveal the alleged scenes of perverse desire as something less
than pathological. Specifically, I argue that Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl and Morrison's Beloved may be read in terms of quite
"normal," that is, nonperverse, forms of desire. 3
My point is not to reverse Bhabha's claim by suggesting that normal
rather then perverse desires were endemic to colonial/ slave societies. To
draw such a conclusion would simply reproduce in reverse form
Bhabha's mistake of reading psychic structure from literary representa-
tions. Rather, my point is that even if, for argument's sake, and despite all
the attendant political risks of pathologizing the black slave, we concede
Bhabha's assumption concerning the perverse nature of the slave's desire,
then my readings of Beloved and the Jacobs's narrative fail to uncover such
desire. In short, my readings provide counterexamples to Bhabha's claim
that certain privileged literary texts reflect the psychic structures of the so-
cial conditions that produced them.

Marna's Baby

In the Jacobs's narrative the slave's body functions as a source of anx-

iety for the jealous mistress who is driven to make nightly visits in order

2. One might well object that his strategy of looking for a common representation of black
desires, and thus erasing differences between and within such desires, is repressive rather
than liberatory. Indeed, it is a highly dubious strategy in the cause of black liberation,
since, as I showed in the Introduction, it lends itself all too readily to a politically regres-
sive pathologizing of a marginal group.
3· Of course, such literary illustrations do not provide evidence that the connections in
question were instantiated in the lives of real slaves. In the case of the Jacobs narrative,
though, this issue is complicated, since the narrative can be taken as a form of self-
narration or folk history rather than literature. See Jean Yellin's preface to the Jacobs story.
48 Fetish

to check that her husband is not sleeping with his slave (see the quotation
at the beginning of this chapter). This anxiety is "unrealistic" in Freud's
sense that it is inappropriate to its object. The inappropriateness is not a
matter of the mistress, Mrs. Flint, having no cause for her jealousy but
rather of the lengths she goes to in acting it out. Such anxiety, according to
Freud, is the result of an unconscious link to the primal scene of lack. In
Lacan's words, it "introduces us, with the greatest possible accent of com-
municability, to the function of the lack or fault [la fonction du manque]"
(Lacan's unpublished Seminar X, of 1962/63, quoted in Weber 1991, 153).4
In such traumatic situations, according to Lacan, desire emerges: "It
should not be forgotten that ... 'trauma' is only the reverse side of the
process by which not only 'perceptions' but also 'desires' themselves are
constituted." Specifically, as I argued in Chapter 1, desire is created at sites
where the subject is assailed by unrealistic anxieties arising from failure to
come to terms with the Other's desire: "The desire of the Other does not
recognize me .... It challenges me [me met en cause], questioning me at the
very root of my own desire [my emphasis] .... And it is because this entails
a relation of antecedence, a temporal relation, that I can do nothing to
break this hold other than to enter into it. It is this temporal dimension
that is anxiety" (Lacan, quoted in Weber 1991, 155, 160).5
In what form does desire manifest in the scene of southern discomfort
portrayed by Jacobs? Hortense Spillers suggests that the mistress's desire
takes the form of sexual attraction to her slave's body: "a sexuality that is
neuter-bound, in as much as it represents an open vulnerability to a gi-
gantic sexualized repertoire that may be alternately expressed as male/ fe-
male."
Spillers analyzes the bedroom scene described at the beginning of this
chapter along these lines: "Suspecting that her husband, Dr. Flint, has
sexual designs on the young Linda [Harriet Jacobs] ... Mrs. Flint assumes
the role of a perambulatory nightmare who visits the captive woman in
the spirit of a veiled seduction.... The 'jealous mistress' here (but jealous
for whom?) forms an analogy with the 'master' to the extent that male
dominative modes give the male the material means to fully act out what
the female might only wish" (Spillers 1987, 76-77). Spillers continues:
"Neither could claim her body ... as her own.... In the case of the

4· Note that according to Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, anxiety is a response to the
traumatic "perceptual loss" that inhibits the proper functioning of the pleasure principle,
that is, prevents the maintenance of fixed cathexes (Weber 1991, 154, 160).
5· La can also says along the same lines: "Anxiety manifests itself clearly from the very be-
ginning as relating-in a complex manner-to the desire of the Other. ... The anxiety-
producing function of the desire of the Other [is] tied to the fact that I do not know what
object o I am for this desire" (Weber 1991, 161).
 A Slave to Desire 49

doctor's wife, she appears not to have wanted her body, but to desire to
enter someone else's" (77). A variety of familiar desires are mentioned in
the course of Spillers's analysis: the husband's carnal lust, the wife's "ec-
stasy of unchecked power," and the "fabric of dread and humiliation"
constructed by the two women, projected differentially by each in terms
of their local narratives of loss and desire. 6
Spillers's proposal finds little independent support in the text. In partic-
ular, it has difficulty in explaining the mistress's behavior toward the
sleeping slave, circling her persistently, whispering in her ear, then
"gliding stealthily away" as she awakes. If there exists what Spillers calls
a "gigantic sexualized repertoire" at work here, then it is, it seems, subject
to a strong negative proscription or inhibition. In that case, however, guilt
should be part of Mrs. Flint's response to her slave. But the text provides
little evidence of this.
An alternative reading is that the slave's body is an impediment to the
mistress's real desires. Mrs. Flint is intent on maintaining not only the dig-
nity of her social position, as a married woman and the wife of a profes-
sional man, but also her appearances as a good wife: a skilled manager of
the home, virtuous, and both honored and, by implication at least, desired
by her husband. The text provides reasons for why she should be insecure
about these matters. Mrs. Flint, we are told, was not herself "a very re-
fined woman," "a second wife, many years the junior of her husband,"
who was a "professional man" much concerned with saving appearances
(Jacobs 1987, 34, 33).? The fact that the real Dr. Flint's first marriage ended
in a famous and acrimonious divorce case-which cited his first wife's
drinking, addiction to laudanum, promiscuity, and general carelessness
with household expenses-no doubt contributed to the second Mrs.
Flint's insecurities. 8 These come to a head in a bitter confrontation during
which the slave is made to reveal Dr. Flint's sexual advances to her: "As I
went on with my account her color changed frequently, she wept, and
sometimes groaned ... but I was soon convinced that her emotions arose

6. Like Bhabha, Spillers offers her analysis not only as a reconstruction of a fictionalized
character but also as an account of the psychic structure of real slaves, including the histor-
ical protagonist of the Jacobs narrative. Unlike Bhabha, however, Spillers interrogates the
terms of her analysis by historicizing her theoretical framework: "This narrative scene from
Brent's [Jacobs's] work, dictated to Lydia Maria Child, provides an instance of a repeated
sequence, purportedly based on 'real' life. But the scene in question appears to so com-
mingle its signals with the fictive, with casebook narratives from psychoanalysis, that we
are certain that the narrator has her hands on an explosive moment of New-World/U.S.
history that feminist investigation is beginning to unravel" (Spillers 1987, 76--77).
7· The historical figure Mary Horniblow, upon whom the figure of Mrs. Flint was based,
was the daughter of an inn keeper (Jacobs 1987, 26o-261).
8. See Jacobs 1987, 262 n. 1, 263 n. 8.
50 Fetish

from anger and wounded pride. She felt that her marriage vows were des-
ecrated, her dignity insulted.... She pitied herself as a martyr" (JJ).
In this context, the slave's body seems to function for Mrs. Flint less as
an object of desire (Spillers) than as what Lacan calls the objet a, which, by
openly attracting her husband's attention, stands in the way of there-
spectability and respect that Mrs. Flint wants: an impedi!llent to her desire
rather than its object. In short, from Mrs. Flint's perspective, desire at-
taches to the slave's body indirectly-"clings to it," as Lacan says (Lacan
1981, 245).
The slave's body occupies this role not only because Dr. Flint wants her
but also because, in treating Linda Brent as a rival who needs to be
watched, Mrs. Flint inadvertently brings about the very thing she fears. To
be specific, Mrs. Flint leaves her own bed at night for the slave's bedroom,
where she can continue her scrutiny. By so doing, the slave comes be-
tween husband and wife, although not in exactly the way the wife fears. 9
On this reading, a quite different explanation of Mrs. Flint's strange be-
havior emerges. According to Lacan, pleasure arises not from subjects get-
ting what they want but rather from their engaging with the objet a. Thus
the mistress's endless returns to the scene of her rival's body do not man-
ifest conflicted desire so much as the pursuit of pleasure. In short, the real
source of pleasure arises not from some repressed pansexual desire, as
Spillers suggests, but rather from circling the objet a.
Lacan also indicates that too close an approach to the objet a creates
loathing. By exposing the objet a and associated lure as the "piece of shit"
around which the subject's activities turn, the phantasy upon which both the
staging of desire and the production of pleasure depend is threatened (Lacan
1981, 268). Such loathing is apparent in Mrs. Flint's repeated hesitation to
touch the "black" skin and her precipitate flights from the slave's waking
body, ·as if such contacts threatened to expose her in the nakedness of for-
bidden desire. These withdrawals are not flights from the illicit; they are
means of preserving the phantasy of a rival for Dr. Flint's affections, which in
turn sets the scene in which she produces pleasure and enacts her real desire
to secure her marriage. Specifically, if she comes too close or stays too long,
she risks seeing through the "black" body, recognizing it as merely a slave
with no real claim on her husband's affections, and thus destroying thenar-
rative underpinnings of her pleasurable nightly peregrinations.
Harriet Jacobs was quite fair skinned, as the photo on the cover of the
Yellin edition of her diary indicates and as she herself tell us. The contra-
diction between this empirical fact and the equally undeniable fact of her

9· Slavoj ZiZek (1989, 64~9) argues that such wayward chains of causes are typical of the
workings of the objet a.
 A Slave to Desire 51

"blackness" does not detract from her role as objet a. On the contrary, it
makes a close approach to her body even more dangerous, since it
threatens to expose the arbitrary nature of the color bar upon which ante-
bellum Southern society was based.
This reading does not preclude the possibility of fetishism. In order for
Mrs. Flint's desire to be fetishistic in the strictly Freudian sense, however,
an extra element is required, namely, a discourse of disavowal to the effect
that "the slave doesn't want to sleep with my husband, but even so she is
taking him from me." Mrs. Flint's utterances and behavior show no signs
of such vacillations. On the contrary, against all the evidence, she seems
totally convinced that Linda is open to her husband's ineffectual attempts
at seduction and is equally determined to stop him. Obsession rather than
perversion seems to be the structure of Mrs. Flint's psychic universe.
In sum, Jacobs's story provides evidence neither of fetishistic desire (as
Bhabha claims) nor strange pansexual rites (Spillers's contention). In-
stead, the reader is presented with the spectacle of a wife going about the
familiar business of milking what pleasure she can from the deferrals of
the bedchamber. The peculiar mixture of pleasure and loathing displayed
by the mistress toward the slave's body confirms its identity as the objet a,
or, more correctly, its associated lure.

Beloved

Halle, the husband of Sethe, Beloved's protagonist, works on Sundays in

order to purchase his mother's freedom. Sethe is attracted to him as much
for this self-sacrifice as for the amazing strength of his love: ''Maybe that was
why she chose him. A twenty-year old man so in love with his mother that
he gave up five years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change was a
serious recommendation" (Morrison 1987, 11). His mother, Baby Suggs, ex-
presses similar amazement at her son's strength of desire, which she allows
to move her north against her better judgment: ''When Halle looked like it
meant more to him that she go free than anything in the world, she let herself
be taken 'cross the river.... Halle, who had never drawn one free breath,
knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her" (141).
In the light of Halle's example, Sethe' s own desires are transformed. But
under the benevolent paternalism of the Garner family, her desire for
freedom, like Halle's, is bounded by the overarching restraints imposed
by slavery and the system of indentured labor: "Gettin away was a money
thing to us. Buy out. Running was nowhere on our minds"-a theme re-
peated elsewhere in the book: "The ... girl he knew as Halle's girl was
obedient (like Halle), shy (like Halle), and work-crazy (like Halle)'' (197,
52 Fetish

164). It is only when the schoolteacher takes over the home farm ("Sweet
Home," as it is called) and sets his adolescent boys to suck dry her breasts
that Sethe conceives a desire for freedom at all costs. Initially this mani-
fests in a restrained and covert way as "the Plan," but her desire finds full
expression when she reaches freedom, experienced as an exultant and
selfish pleasure at successfully bringing her children to safety: "I did it. I
got us all out.... Decided. And it came off like it was supposed to. We
was here. Each and every one of my babies and me too .... It was a kind of
selfishness I never knew nothing about before. It felt good" (162).
The pertinent changes in Sethe' s desire take place not so much at the
level of content or even affect but rather in the structure of subjectivity
within which possibilities for enacting desire are defined. Paul D, Sethe's
lover, describes the new Sethe in terms similar to those employed by Baby
Suggs in describing her son's desire to free her, a desire so powerful that it
brooked no interference from others: "This here Sethe was new ... talked
about love like any other women ... but what she meant could cleave the
bone.... This here new Sethe didn't know where the world stopped and
she began.... It scared him" (165).
Much of the narrative of Beloved is structured by this theme of the terri-
fying power of desire. It is embodied in the figure of Beloved, the book's
eponymous and mysterious protagonist: "But it was Beloved who made
demands. Anything she wanted she got, and when Sethe ran out of things
to give her, Beloved invented desire" (240). In a mysterious way that the
book never clarifies, Beloved is related to the daughter whom Sethe killed
out of love/ desire, and thus is also the effect of desire. In short, she stands
in a doubly metonymic relation to desire, as both its effect and cause. Thus
her eventual banishment, the community's ritualized failure to incorpo-
rate her, signals a failure to come to terms with desire, a failure that struc-
tures and plays havoc with the lives of three generations of women: Baby
Suggs, Sethe, and Sethe' s other daughter, Denver.
In Lacanian terms, Beloved is the Real of desire, the objet a: not the de-
sired itself but that which controls and flows from desire: inchoate, un-
speakable, horrifying, overwhelming, that which always escapes the or-
dering of the symbolic, a presence surrounded in mystery. She appears in
this role to a group of women who see her and her adopted family
standing together on the porch of their house: "Well, they saw some-
thing ... it was standing right next to Sethe. But from the way they de-
scribe it, don't seem like the girl I saw in there" (265), an apparition that
comes to takes on almost legendary status-"Later, a little boy put it out
how he ... saw, cutting through the woods, a naked woman with fish for
hair" (267). Such sightings are accompanied by a peculiar loss of memory
on the part of those who participate in their telling: "Everybody knew
 A Slave to Desire 53

what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremem-
bered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking
for her.... It was not a story to pass along" (274). Beloved's unsocialized
nature-her thoughts lack even the most rudimentary spatial and tem-
poral structure--reinforces the indeterminacy surrounding the question
of who or what she is: "All of it is now it is always now .... I am al-
ways crouching the man is on my face his face is not mine his
mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked" (211).
The book incorporates a counterpoint to the theme of desire and its terri-
fying consequence: an ethic of self-denial which recommends loving small:
"Being so in love with the look of the world, putting up with anything and
everything, just to stay alive in a place where a moon he had no right to
was nevertheless there. Loving small and in secret" (221), a theme repeated
later in Sethe's self-description: "Nobody loved her and she wouldn't have
liked it if they had, for she considered love a serious disability" (256). This
austere ethic renders personal desire and its enactment problematic, even
hubristic, an occasion for anxiety: "And it worked out fine, worked out just
fine, until she got proud and let herself be overwhelmed by the sight of her
daughter-in-law and Halle's children ... and have a celebration of black-
berries that put Christmas to shame. Now she stood in the garden smelling
disapproval, feeling a dark and coming thing, and seeing high-topped
shoes that she didn't like the look of at all. At all" (147).
Subjects, black ones at least, it seems, get their pleasure not from fol-
lowing their desire but rather, as in fetishism, from serving the other. As
the Jacobs narrative puts it: "My mistress was so kind to me that I was al-
ways glad to do her bidding and proud to labor for her as much as my
young years would permit. I would sit by her side for hours, sewing dili-
gently, with a heart as free from care as that of any free born white child"
(Jacobs 1987, 7). These lines are echoed in Morrison's evocation of the
Sweet Home regime: "She wanted to love the work she did, to take the
ugly out of it.... A few yellow flowers on the table, some myrtle tied
around the handle of the flatiron holding the door open for a breeze
calmed her, and when Mrs. Garner and she sat down to sort bristle, or
make ink, she felt fine" (Morrison 1987, 22).
Much of the narrative tension in Beloved comes from an interweaving of
such episodes of self-denial with the horrendous consequences of untram-
meled desire. For instance, Sethe's "crime," the consequences of which
continue to haunt her throughout the book, is presented as the result of in-
dulging a love that is "too thick":

"Your love is too thick," he said ....

"Too thick?" ... "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."
54 Fetish

"Yeah. It didn't work, did it? Did it work?" he asked .... ''Your boys gone
you don't know where. One girl dead, the other won't leave the yard." (165)

At the end of the book, following Beloved's expulsion, a semblance of

normalcy returns to the local Cincinnati community of blacks in the form
of a chilling reassertion of the historically dominant ethic of self-denial:
"Her smile, no longer the sneer he remembered, had welcome in it ....
Paul D touched his cap. 'How you getting along?' 'Don't pay to com-
plain"' (266). This final act in the story constitutes a sort of return, a "wel-
come back" to the false sweetness of Sweet Home. Denver's chilling
"Don't pay to complain" repeats the quietism characteristic of the black
slaves at the story's opening. Similarly, the relation between Denver
(Sethe's daughter) and the Bodwins, who benevolently open a space in
their town house for a new black servant, repeats the paternalistic relation
between the Garners and Sethe. Education and the educated stand as a
continuing and dangerous support of this ethic: a chain stretching from
Jacobs's Dr. Flint, to Morrison's schoolteacher of Sweet Home, and Miss
Bodwin's generous offer: "'She says I might go to Oberlin.' And he didn't
say, 'Watch out. Watch out. Nothing in the world more dangerous than a
white school teacher"' (266).
In the context of these retreats and returns to the ethic of self-denial, the
white man and his congeries play the role of objet a (or associated lure), that
which stands in the way of the black woman's desire both by impeding ac-
cess to the place of desire (freedom) and by occupying it in her stead. The
white man is also that around which, despite his lack of desirability, the
black woman always turns. Beloved's horrifying description of "the men
without skin [who] push them through with poles" (210), as well as Linda
Brent's crude attempts at manipulating her white lover, Mr. Sands, for
whom she displays a total lack of passion, position the white man not so
much as an object of desire as a strange attractor around which black lives
circulate: "Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered
vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would enrage
Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another; and it was something
to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way.... I made a headlong
plunge. Pity me, and pardon me, 0 virtuous reader ... the painful and hu-
miliating memory will haunt me to my dying day" (Jacobs 1987, 55-56).
Baby Suggs's final lament echoes this theme of the white man who, like
the bad luck he brings, always returns: "those white things [who] have
taken all I had or dreamed ... and broke my heartstrings too. There is no
bad luck in the world but whitefolks" (Morrison 1987, 89). For Sethe and
Paul D, too, the white man as represented by Sweet Home constitutes the
objet a (/lure): an object Sethe wants to desire ''because she wanted to love
 A Slave to Desire 55

the work she did, to take the ugly out of it" (22); Sweet Home as the some-
time tender trap in which the white man holds them, and to which they
seem condemned to return not merely in their memories and conceptions
of home but also as a certain structure of servitude:

"How come everybody runs off from Sweet Home can't stop talking
about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed."
"Girl, who you talking to?"
Paul D laughed. "True, true. She's right, Sethe. It wasn't sweet and it sure
wasn't home." He shook his head.
"But it's what we were," said Sethe, "All together. Comes back whether
we want it or not." She shivered a little. (13-14)1°

In sum, the regime of desire open to the inhabitants of Sweet Home

under the benevolent stewardship of the Garners or in the Cincinnati
household of the Bodwins displays all the characteristics of fetishism: the
attenuation of desire and agency as well as a more or less overt preoccu-
pation with the white man as an objet a that, in functioning as a site of dis-
avowal, takes on the trappings of the fetish.
Fetishism is not the only regime of desire envisaged by Beloved, how-
ever. By living extravagantly with desire, the book's various menages a
deux, Sethe-Denver, Paul 0-Sethe, Denver-Beloved, Sethe-Beloved, all
run the risk of transgressing the ethic of "loving small." In each case, the
couples are disrupted by a third party who catalyzes the release of a de-
structive excess of desire. Paul D, for instance, muses sorrowfully upon
the cataclysmic effect Beloved has upon his relation with Sethe, as he is
moved "like a rag doll" from room to room, away from Sethe, toward the
ultimate scene of his seduction in the cold room: "sHE MOVED HIM ... Paul
D didn't know how to stop it because it looked like he was moving him-
self" (114); "And then she [Beloved] moved him. Just when doubt, regret,
and every single unasked question was packed away, long after he be-
lieved he had willed himself into being, at the very time and place he
wanted to take root-she moved him. From room to room. Like a rag
doll" (221).
Normal-that is, nonperverse-desire always and already returns,
breaking up these fetishistic regimes of self-denial, whether it be through

10. Beloved and the white man thus occupy similar roles in relation to desire, namely, as
objets a. Whereas the white man comprises the objet a in its guise as the gift which turns to
shit even as it is exchanged (Lacan 1981, 268), Beloved comprises the objet a in its more
ephemeral manifestation, as a hitch in the symbolic order around which activities circulate
(Ziiek 1989, 169-171).
56 Fetish

the opportunities for earning freedom offered by Sweet Home or "free"

waged labor in Cincinnati. In particular, repression overtakes the moment
of avowal, leaving disavowal in sole possession of the field, "there is no
bad luck in the world but whitefolks" (from Baby Suggs's last lament-
89). At the same time, the importance of the white man as the objet a dis-
appears from view as he becomes the invisible framework for black lives
rather than its all-seeing and ever visible pivot.
Thus, Bhabha's characterization of the slave's desire as fetishistic
proves to be only half the story. A second "normal" regime of desire is
present in both Morrison's and Jacobs's narratives, a regime which, de-
spite its normality, is no less oppressive than the one forged by and
around the white masks of Sweet Home. Morrison's Beloved may be read
as an exploration of the interweaving of these two different regimes, an
exploration that casts a deep shadow across the nostalgically invested
Sweet Home and its modern reincarnation in the streets of Cincinnati. In
this light, Baby Suggs's retrospective evaluation of her response to Sweet
Home stands as a key moment in such an exploration: "In Lillian Garner's
house, exempted from the field work that broke her hip and the exhaus-
tion that drugged her mind; in Lillian Garner's house where nobody
knocked her down (or up), she listened to the white woman humming at
her work; watched her face light up when Mr. Garner came in and
thought, It's better here, but I'm not.... It surprised and pleased her, but
worried her too" (14o).U
Thus, contrary to Bhabha's claim, the representations of desire in
Beloved, as in Jacobs's narrative, fail to reflect ("enact" as Bhabha says) the
split forms, the "ambivalences and ambiguities," of fetishistic desire,
which Bhabha takes to be characteristic of slave/ colonial regimes (Bhabha
1994, 18). On the contrary, the desires portrayed in these texts constitute a
complex interweaving of fetishism with other "normal" forms of desire. If
psychic structure is reflected in cultural forms, as Bhabha claims, then it is
not in the straightforward way which he envisages.
11. This evaluation is echoed in Paul D's subsequent musings: "He wondered how much
difference there really was .... Garner called and announced them men-but only on
Sweet Home, and by his leave" (Morrison 1987, 22o).
 4
Fetish and the Native Subject

I n the previous chapter, I criticized Bhabha's attempt to draw a connec-

tion between psychic structure and cultural form. In particular, I denied
his thesis that the psychic splitting resulting from violences inflicted upon
black bodies in slave/ colonial societies was reflected in certain cultural ar-
tifacts. On the contrary, I argued, the texts Bhabha analyzed should be
read in terms of an interweaving of "normal" (nonperverse) and other de-
sires. In this chapter, I reverse the argument by presenting three cases in
which the split form of a cultural artifact not only reflects but also par-
takes in a structure of disavowal characteristic of communal fetishism.
The point against Bhabha, then, is not that relations of reflection between
psychic structures and cultural forms do not exist, but rather that such
connections should not be established in a question-begging way by
reading psychic structure from what is simply assumed to be a "corre-
sponding" cultural form. On the contrary, both cultural form and psychic
structure should be independently established, so that the claim of a con-
nection between them emerges as nontrivial and empirically confirmable.

The Hopi Son

In Soleil Hopi, Taleyseva, a chief of the North American Hopi Indians,

narrates his childhood. Hopi ritual, we are told, included a ceremony
during which certain masks, called Katcina, were worn by dancers. The

57
58 Fetish

Hopi encouraged a belief among their offspring that the masked dancers
were gods (also called Katcina). Young children were frightened into be-
having themselves by being told that if they did not eat their porridge, go
to sleep, stop crying, and so on, then the Katcina would come and eat
them. At initiation, however, apparently to the great consternation of the
young initiates, fathers and uncles of the clan revealed themselves as
wearers of the masks, a revelation that threatened to destroy not only key
elements in the children's cosmology but also the rationale for much of
their learned behavior. As Taleyseva recounts the story of his own initia-
tion: "I was greatly shocked: these weren't spirits .... I felt unhappy be-
cause all my life I had been told that the Katcina were gods. I was above
all shocked and furious to see my clan uncles and fathers dancing as
Katcina. But it was even worse to see my own father" (Mannoni 1964, 16).l
As they were exposed to the apparently devastating revelation, initiates
were offered additional knowledge in mythological form: a recounting of
un autrefois, a golden age, when the gods had danced openly among the
people. The myth went on to claim that "in a mysterious way" the gods
were still present on dance days: "You know that the real Katcina don't
come to dance in the pueblos as they did in other times. They come only in
an invisible fashion, and inhabit the masks during the dance days in a
mysterious way" (16) ..
Commenting on this moment of revelation, Mannoni observes that
"one sees there ... the moment when belief, abandoning its imaginary
form, enters the symbolic mode sufficiently to open out into [religious]
faith, that is to say, onto commitment" (16-17). The operation of what
Mannoni refers to here as the "symbolic" involves a form of double de-
ception that I alluded to earlier in my discussion of the signifier in its role
as Vorstellungsrepriisentanz.
The first level of deception practiced upon the children involves the
masks functioning as false tokens of the gods' presence, thus concealing
their absence. In the context of the initiation, the masquerade becomes
more complex, however. It is admitted that the masks hide the absence of
the gods, but the admission is made only in order to advance a second de-
ception: that the absence is only an apparent one, since the gods are present
invisibly (de far;on invisible). Mannoni associates such deception with the
operation of religious symbols, which signal the presence of the divine by
the paradoxical device of admitting their own poverty as representations.
Michael Taussig remarks a similar structure of deception among the
Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego. During the initiation dance, known as the

1. All translations from Mannoni are mine.

 Fetish and the Native Subject 59

Hainu, men wearing horned masks mime women-hating spirits. Taussig

comments upon two quite different forms of "sacred violence" attached to
this performance:

On the one hand the women and children, forming the "audience," have to
pretend-to mime-on pain of death that what they are witness to are real
gods and not their kinsmen acting as gods. In this way the public secret es-
sential to mystical authority is preserved.
On the other hand is the violence associated with the demasking of the
gods that the male initiates are forced to witness in the privacy of the men's
house. Through the violence of demasking fused with laughter, the power
of the mimetic faculty as a socially constitutive force is thereby transferred
from the younger to the older men, the duped becomes one with the
dupers, and ... "the great secret" fortifies [the] "invisible state." (Taussig
1993, 85-86)

Thus not only the initiates but the audience too are involved in structures
of double deception. That is, "knowing" that the masks are fakes, the au-
dience see through one deception, but even so, indeed because of this,
they must enter a second deception, that is, they must pretend that they
have not seen through the first. The initiates are trapped in a similar struc-
ture, which, by its difference, marks their special status. Like their audi-
ence, prior to initiation they only pretended to believe in the masks. But
then, in the secrecy of the men's hut, they must act as if they are shocked
by the unmasking, that is, they must engage in a second deception. They
must pretend that prior to initiation they had not seen through the earlier
deception.
What separates the "knowing" initiates from the "ignorant" audience is
not a matter of knowledge but rather of power relations and social
arrangements, a matter of who is forced ("on pain of death") to pretend to
whom. That is, from the outset, everyone knows that the dancers are their
kinsmen. After the ceremony, however, the audience are forced to con-
tinue the pretense that the initiated have access to the "truth," whereas, at
least among themselves, the initiated are able to drop the pretense. Their
superior status resides, then, in the fact that they can speak the real
truth-the cruel fact that there is no truth-while the uninitiated must
continue to conspire in what they know to be a lie: that the truth exists.
The fact that everyone knows all along that the "truth" in question is a lie
makes the demonstration of power more effective rather than less.

The Katcina initiation ritual and the attendant revelation became a site at
which a contradiction took shape: "I know that the dancers are my uncles
60 Fetish

and fathers, not spirits, but even so the Katcina are present when my uncles
and fathers dance in the masks" (16). This contradiction takes the logical
form of what Freud calls "disavowal" (Verleugnung): "I know that ... but
even so ... " But can we claim, as Mannoni does, that Hopi engagement
with the Katcina masks is one of disavowal in the full Freudian sense?
More specifically, can we take the Katcina masks as fetish objects in
Freud's sense? Or by doing so do we commit Bhabha's mistake of ex-
porting psychoanalytic concepts into the cultural domain on the basis of
overgeneralized structural homologies?
As I pointed out in Chapter 1, according to Freud fetishistic disavowal
consists of two components: first, an "avowal" of the form "I know that,"
usually grounded in commonsense perception, which more or less di-
rectly asserts what has been repressed, such as the mother's missing penis
or some other metaphoric transcription of her primal lack; second, the dis-
avowal proper, expressed in the form "but even so," which by denying
what has been avowed reinstates repression, for instance denying the
mother's penis is missing through investing some other object, such as a
knee or a piece of fur, as a substitute. Does the Hopi initiation ritual and
its attendant revelation involve such a structure, in which the repressed
surfaces in order to be disavowed?
In many Hollywood films the repressed is portrayed as a sort of un-
namable and unmentionable thing (Freud's das Ding) that adults cannot
bring readily to mind because of its associations with childhood experi-
ences so horrifying that they are wiped from memory almost as soon as
they happen (for example, sight of the mother's genitalia, an incident in
the family romance, and so on). Only later, in adult life, does the repressed
return in various sinister guises, brought to full consciousness by much
painful and difficult psychoanalytic work of a hermeneutic kind.
Lacan turns this traditional portrayal of repression upside down by ad-
vocating a return to Freud's insight that subjects may without much diffi-
culty bring to mind repressed memories, indeed do so without occa-
sioning themselves much distress: "Freud made it quite clear that,
although it was difficult for the subject to reproduce in dream the memory
of the heavy bombing raid, for example, from which his neurosis de-
rives-it does not seem, when he is awake, to bother him either way"
(Lacan 1981, 51). The memory's "repressed" status, according to Lacan, re-
sides not in the putative fact of its burial beyond immediate recall but
rather in the phantasy structure of symptoms, including the various and
varied hidden forms of return that punctuate a subject's life practices. The
subconscious status of repressed memories pertains not to their content,
which may be quite open to consciousness, but rather to their hidden con-
nections with these practices (slips, symptoms, and so on). The phenom-
 Fetish and the Native Subject 61

enon of disavowal illustrates precisely such a possibility, since it allows re-

pressed knowledge to surface systematically and more or less openly.
In the context of the Hollywood portrayal of repression, it is tempting to
interpret the moment during the Katcina ritual when the masked dancers
are revealed to be the novices' uncles as representing a resurfacing or "re-
turn" of what has been repressed. Specifically, it is tempting to understand
the revelation "I know that the dancers are my uncles and fathers, not
spirits," as a brutal confrontation with the repressed or hidden knowledge
that the gods are not there at all, a confrontation deflected at the last
minute by the sophistic device of reconceiving the gods' presence as invis-
ible or perhaps symbolic in some way: "but even so the Katcina are present
when my uncles and fathers dance in the masks." The disavowal, in partic-
ular the (mis)representation of the gods' apparent absence as a sign of their
invisible presence, emerges, then, as an attempt to reinstate repression in
the wake of the return of what previously has been hidden. Since, ac-
cording to Freud, the return of the repressed is always accompanied by
anxiety, this view has the virtue of explaining, indeed predicting, the "con-
sternation" (reconstrued as anxiety) that Taleyseva retrospectively associ-
ates with the initial revelation of the masked dancers' identities.
A Lacanian conception of repression suggests a quite different account.
Repressed knowledge, I argued in Chapter 1, takes the form of affirming
the importance of the objet a, which in turn functions as a stand-in, or
metaphoric equivalent, for the subject's lack. In the case of the Hopi initi-
ation, for reasons I discuss below, the objet a is the Katcina mask, and so
the claim that the masks are vessels for the gods expresses the importance
of the objet a. Thus the act of revealing that uncles rather than gods are in-
side the masks counts as the reinstatement of repression rather than its
easing. The repressed knowledge at issue is not some deep truth too hor-
rible to bear, but rather a simple claim with which everyone is familiar,
namely, that the gods still dance in attendance upon the tribe. It is an open
secret that this claim is false. Indeed, it is through this structure of open se-
crecy that repression is set in place. Here, then, repressed knowledge is
upon everyone's lips, but everyone knows it to be a lie. By contrast, ac-
cording to the Hollywood conception, the repressed is a horrible truth
that is difficult to bring to light, but when it does emerge (with the help of
an analyst) one is forced to acknowledge it by the sheer force of the insight
it offers.
In short, the repressed nature of the knowledge that the gods are in the
masks does not reside in its failure to enter consciousness. On the con-
trary, like the shell shock victim's memories of the bombing raid, it lies
well to the forefront of awareness (Lacan 1981, 51). But neither does there-
pressed nature of the knowledge reside simply in the fact that, through a
62 Fetish

structure of open secrecy, subjects deny its truth. Instead, as I indicated

above, its repressed nature lies in a subject's failure to realize the extent to
which, even when knowing it to be untrue, it structures the subject's ac-
tions, specifically his or her symptoms. In Zizek' s terms, repression is not
simply a subject's failure to know but rather a failure to know what
knowledge is being acted upon (Zizek 1989, 69).
As we have seen, however, belief in the gods' presence inside the masks
is recuperated after the revelation; specifically, it returns in mythological
form as a denial of what the initiates plainly see: "but even so the Katcina
are present when my uncles and fathers dance in the masks." In terms of
my analysis, such recuperation constitutes a "return of the repressed" at
the level of consciousness. By surfacing more or less openly into con-
sciousness instead of reappearing merely as slips, this return of there-
pressed constitutes a disavowal in the full Freudian sense. And a fortiori
the contradiction between the revelation that the masks are empty and the
subsequent mythological recuperation of the gods' presence functions as
a disavowal.
The exact moment of disavowal is not easy to identify. Taleyseva re-
counts another, even earlier childhood incident in which he surprised his
mother making the traditional gifts given by the masked Katcina to Hopi
children: "The mothers ... redeem their terrorized children [from the
Katcina] by giving the Katcina meat; in exchange, the Katcina give the
children maize balls, piki, which on this occasion are exceptionally colored
red." "On one occasion," Taleyseva tells us, "I surprised my mother
cooking the piki. When I saw that it was red, I was bowled over. That
evening I couldn't eat, and when the Katcina distributed their gifts I
didn't want them" (Mannoni 1964, 14-15). How can this story, which im-
plies that Taleyseva knew the dancers were fakes long before his initia-
tion, be reconciled with the apparently contradictory claim that the reve-
lation of his uncles' role in the initiation ceremony came as un grand choc?
Freud argues that trauma attaches to an event not because it is horrible
or shocking when it happens but rather because a subsequent pattern of
symptoms retrospectively positions that event at their fictional origin. In
particular, Taleyseva' s traumatic memory of his initiation, "J' ai eu un grand
choc," is not significant as a veridical historical record of a shocking child-
hood experience, since if the episode with the piki is to be credited, he al-
ready knew well before his initiation that the dancers were not gods. In-
stead, the memory took on its traumatic quality retrospectively, as later
anxieties (we don't know which) attached themselves to it. In short, by a
process of rememorization the initiation took on the paradoxical status of
a memorial to later events. It follows that, rather than arising at the mo-
ment of initiation, the structure of disavowal was instituted retrospec-
 Fetish and the Native Subject 63

tively, as an aspect of initiates' integration of their experiences into histor-

ical remembrances of their lives.

Unmasking the Katcina

Mannoni argues that Hopi initiation precipitated a structure of dis-

avowal, a conclusion I qualified by emphasizing the retrospective nature
of that process. A fine-grained analysis is needed in order to justify the
further claim that the Katcina mask is the fetish object implicated in this
structure.
Prior to initiation the Katcina mask was employed as a threat to make
Hopi children behave themselves. It thus prevented them from getting
what they really wanted. But also, like the cotton-reel in the Fort-Da game,
it provided an object around which their activities circulated. The children
carefully approached the masks on dance days, fascinated and terrified by
the prospect of falling under their gaze, then with howls of mixed delight
and horror quickly withdrew to a safe position of invisibility from which
they could see without being seen, before venturing out again.
Such dovetailed activities of seeing and being seen, like the successive
throwings away and retrievals of the Fort-Da, set in place the scopic drive,
and along with it the creation of pleasure as well as anxiety. As in the Fort-Da,
desire emerged from such activities, enabling the masks to take on the role of
object-cause of desire: "From that time he [Taleyseva] took care to do what
was good" (16-17). In the context of this process the Katcina mask, like the
cotton-reel, played the role of lure, and thus a front for the gaze as an objet a. 2
After the revelation and counterrevelation during initiation, the Katcina
no longer functioned as threats, sources of divine retribution for misbe-
havior. Instead, as Taleyseva tell us, the young Hopi initiates behaved
well out of a sense of responsibility rather than fear (16-17). Nevertheless,
the Katcina masks continued to fill the role of lure screening the objet a.
Such continuity was mandated by the fact that many of the "good" prac-
tices acquired in childhood survived into adulthood, practices that, since
they were organized originally to selectively attract and avoid the atten-
tion of the Katcina, continued to carry the imprint of the masks at their
center. By playing with the deception that the masks were gods-first un-
dermining it (via the revelation) and then reinforcing it in qualified form

2. Not any such dovetailing of seeing and being seen results in a drive structure. On the
contrary, it is the paradoxical combination of anxiety and pleasure associated with the
children's relations with the Katcina which signals that a drive was at work in such situa-
tions.
64 Fetish

(via the myth)-the initiation positioned the mask as a lure screening the
gaze.
In Chapter 1, I argued that in becoming a site of disavowal, a lure is
transformed into a fetish. The Katcina mask exemplifies such an object.
The relevant disavowal takes the characteristic form noted by Copjec, ''be-
tween the disavowal that produces the fetish object [the mask] and an
avowal that allows subjects to do without it" (Copjec 1994, 113). Specifi-
cally, it takes the form of a contradiction between the assertion that the
gods inhabit the masks in an invisible fashion and the observation that the
masks are empty, a contradiction repeated at the level of Hopi practices as
a tension between adult responsibility and childhood fear of the Katcina.
According to Freud, such contradictory structures are constitutive of per-
verse or, more correctly, fetishistic forms of subjectivity. The element of per-
version resides not in the unusual or socially unacceptable nature of the ob-
ject of desire but rather in the way that the structure indirectly brings to the
surface the gap between the production of pleasure and the achievement of
desire. That is, by deferring access to the object of desire and lingering with
the corresponding lure in its role as fetish, the perverse subject shows that
pleasure resides in engaging the fetish rather than the object of desire. In
short, the fetishistic subject constitutes a novel type of subjectivity for which
agency resides not (as it does for the normal subject) in trying to get what
one wants, but rather in sticking with the impediment to desire.

Hunting the Fetish

The structure of fetishism is also evident in a case discussed by Claude

Levi-Strauss in his book Totemism. Among the Ojibwa and Algonquin the
totem is an element in a system of norms restricting partners with whom
individuals trade, eat, cohabit, and so on. In this way it acts as a system-
atic guide but also impediment to achieving desired alliances. It functions
also as an object around which the transmission and reception of speech
circulates. In particular, the totemic animal is "killed and eaten [only] with
certain ritual precautions, viz., that permission had first to be asked of the
animal, and apologies be made to it afterwards" (Levi-Strauss 1963, 21).
The domain of ritual thus functions as an arena for exfoliating intellec-
tual difficulties about the totem's status in the same way that Hopi prac-
tices act as an arena for working out difficulties concerning the status of
the Katcina masks. What are we to make of such rituals? Are they merely
"empty ritual," as we say, or do the Ojibwa literally think that the dead are
listening, that the animal's spirit hears the apologies and retrospectively
sanctions its own killing?
 Fetish and the Native Subject 65

According to Levi-Strauss, the Ojibwa are perfectly clear that an an-

imal's totemic nature does not imply any special connection with the
spirit world: '"It's only a name,' they said to the investigator" (21). Never-
theless, in Durkheimian terms, the totemic animal operates as a "sacred"
object around which individuals' responses resonate with and reinforce
each other. Because of this, although it appears as a perfectly ordinary ob-
ject ("only a name"), in confronting it the Ojibwa act as if they were facing
a far greater spectacle, that of society itself, as Durkheim puts it (Durk-
heim 1915, 322; Lukes 1975, 589).3 The Ojibwa's apologies may be under-
stood, then, as directed not to the hunted animal as such but rather to so-
ciety as a whole in its specific manifestation as the totem.
Not only does the hunter address the animal/totem, but also the totem
addresses or at least listens to the hunter through the medium of the
totemic animal. I do not mean that the hunter is addressed in any literal
sense or even in the Althusserian sense of "interpellated" (although it is
true that the field of practices lying behind the totem "hail" the hunter in
Althusser's sense). Instead, I mean that the animal/totem leads the hunter
to enter into a dialogic situation if not into actual dialogue. Specifically, by
falling to his arrows the animal causes the hunter to experience his ritual
imprecations as heard, and even in a metaphoric sense "answered."
Specifically, by going through a form of apology to the animal for killing
it, he enacts a self-deception-namely, that the animal hears what he says
when in fact, as we would say, he is only listening to himself.
Jean-Paul Sartre's story of looking through a keyhole, as retold by
Lacan, makes a similar point.

The gaze that surprises me and reduces me to shame ... is not a seen gaze,
but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other.... Far from speaking of
the gaze as of something that concerns the organ of sight, he [Sartre] refers
to the sound of rustling leaves, suddenly heard while out hunting, to a foot-
step heard in the corridor ... (a]t the moment when he has presented him-
self in the action of looking through a key hole. A gaze surprises him in the
function of voyeur, disturbs him, overwhelms him and reduces him to a
feeling of shame. (Lacan 1981, 84)

In this episode, an intrusion from outside the domain of the scopic,

namely, the noise of a footfall, precipitates the voyeuristic Sartre into a sit-

3· Levi-Strauss was keen to divorce himself from any connections between the religious
and totemic orders. That is, for Levi-Strauss, the religious has to do with the spirit world
(which the Ojibwa designate as manido), which cuts across the totemic order of ototeman
(Levi-Strauss 1963, 18, 22). Because of the religious connotations of the term "sacred," Ben-
jamin's terminology of the "auratic" is less misleading than Durkheim's.
66 Fetish

uation in which he falls under the eye of an Other located ambiguously

within his field of visibility. In the same way a kill at the end of the Ojibwa
hunt constitutes an "answer" to the hunter's prayers, a sign that he has
been heard. And as in the case of Sartre' s story of peering through the key-
hole, the unrealistic anxieties associated with the activity ("Have I per-
formed the appropriate rituals correctly?" "Will the gods smile on me?"
and so on) identify the hunter's interlocutor as located in the field of the
Other.
Of course the hunter knows that the animal doesn't hear him when it is
dead; and even while it is being hunted there is no question of dialogue
between hunter and hunted. Nevertheless the self-deception of talking
with the animal exerts a grip, proven by the hunter's experience of the
slain animal as "an answer to his prayers," which, in turn, transforms his
invocatory field into a site of a dialogical exchange with the Other. Such
distortion of the vocal field constitutes an objet a for the invocatory drive,
what Lacan calls the Voice, with the hunted animal playing the role of cor-
responding lure. The pleasures of the hunt and the associated anxieties
confirm that in the framework of the hunt, the twinned activities of
speaking and being spoken to have set in train such a drive structure.
Identifying the animal as a lure helps make more understandable the
distinction between totem and guardian spirit upon which Levi-Strauss
dwells at some length. The Ojibwa, it seems, like to have a guardian spirit
and work hard to get one, but do not to care much one way or the other
about their totem. By contrast, a certain anxiety attends relations with the
totem: desire relates to it tangentially rather than attaching directly: "At
most there were reported hints of physical and moral distinctions [be-
tween totems]" (Levi-Strauss 1963, 22). This is not to deny that it is impor-
tant, indeed a matter of life or death, to identify with a totem; on the con-
trary, all the native's subsequent ritual practices take place within a
framework constructed in terms of that object. The totem itself, however,
appears to be peculiarly lacking as a site of desire. It is not so much an ob-
ject of desire as a prop for it. These are exactly the characteristics of the
lure, which is on the way to desire but is not itself desired. 4
The totemic animal is also a site of disavowal, an intricate system of
practical and cognitive contradictions that asserts as well as denies the im-

4· According to Lacan, metonymy is the trope associated with desire. Thus the suggestion
that the distinction between the guardian spirit and totem corresponds to that between the
lure and the object of desire fits well with Levi-Strauss's claim that the guardian spirit is
associated with causal (or religious) modes of thought, that is, with metonymy. It also fits
with Lacan's view that the objet a is the first signifier, and thus associated with metaphor,
the trope that, Levi-Strauss notes, is associated with totemic relations since they depend
upon an isomorphism between the set of totems and set of clans.
 Fetish and the Native Subject 67

portance of the objet a. That is, on the one hand, Ojibwa and Algonquin
practices and beliefs suggest a commitment to an affinity between the
totemic animal and clan members. On the other, Ojibwa clan members
protest that the totem is no more than a name, and the Algonquin take the
matter of an affinity between clan members and their totems as a topic for
jokes: "The Algonquin ... [told] jokes such as 'My totem is the wolf, yours
the pig.... Take care! Wolves eat pigs"' (Levi-Strauss 1963, 22).
This discursive contradiction is echoed at a practical level. Specifically,
it reappears as a conflict between the already noted ritual apologies to
totemic animals before killing or eating them and a certain casualness
concerning their extinction: "Although the caribou had completely disap-
peared from Southern Canada, this fact did not at all worry the members
of the clan named after it" (21). The domain of practice thus functions as
an arena for exfoliating intellectual difficulties about the totem's status, in
the same way that Hopi practices acted as an arena for working out diffi-
culties concerning the status of the Katcina masks.
Thus the totemic animal takes on the characteristics of a fetish. It is not
only a lure screening a corresponding objet a but also a site of disavowal
echoed at the level of practice. The fetishistic nature of the totem is con-
firmed by the peculiar lack of affect attending the disaster of the totemic
animals disappearing from the hunting grounds. Such lack of affect is
characteristic of engagement with the fetish because, although the fetish
gets all the perverse subject's attention, it does not comprise his object of
desire. 5
In sum, a Lacanian approach explains aspects of Levi-Strauss's ethno-
graphic materials, specifically the Algonquin's jokes, which a purely
structuralist approach marginalizes. It also indicates more generally how,
despite their internal cognitive dissonances, fetishistic structures com-
prise a good strategy for traditional, strongly bounded societies. The
Ojibwa deny the authority of the various hunting and eating rituals: "I
know the totem is only a name." Nevertheless there is a strong incentive
for attending to rituals-not because of the contradictory avowal that "all
the same it is important to respect the rituals," but rather because of the
pleasure produced by the structure of fetishism. Indeed, such pleasure
may be the only one the fetishist gets, since his own desires are sacrificed
on the altar of the Other. A similar situation, I argue in the next section, is
evident in connection with Levi-Strauss's discussion of the Oedipus myth.

5· This conclusion can also be justified along more orthodox Freudian lines. Since the
totem is a fetish, its vanishing signals an end to pleasure, thus repeating the primal wound
that Freud calls "trauma." Lack of affect is one characteristic reaction to such a catas-
trophe, a point that Lacan makes in the context of his discussion of Freud's case of the
shell-shocked neurotic (Lacan 1981, 51).
68 Fetish

Man, Wife, and Boy

According to Levi-Strauss, the Oedipus myth functioned in the classical

Greek context as a means of exploring a contradiction between a tradi-
tional or what Levi-Strauss calls "theoretical" belief in autochthony (born
of the earth) and an experientially grounded belief in sexual procreation
as applied to the origins of man. The contradiction in question may be ex-
pressed in terms of the following disavowal: "I know that I am born of man
and woman (experience tells me so), but even so (theory tells me) I am born
of the earth." This contradiction was extended by classical Greek
metaphors and rituals which, by associating woman/womb/birth with
nature/ soil/ cultivation of plants, allowed the contradiction to be re-
framed as a disavowal concerning woman's lack of reproductive self-
sufficiency: "I know that man is the product of intercourse between hus-
band and wife, but even so he is born of earth-woman-wife alone."
According to Levi-Strauss, the Oedipus myth provided a means of
coping with this contradiction by showing it to be equivalent to a "real
contradiction" negotiated in Greek social life between two marital strate-
gies: endogamy (marrying in) and exogamy (marrying out) or, as Levi-
Strauss puts it, between overrating blood relations and undervaluing
them:

Although the problem [the contradiction between the two models for the
origin of man] cannot be solved, the Oedipus myth provides a kind of log-
ical tool which related the original problem-born from one or born from
two?-to the derivative problem: born from different or born from same?
By a correlation of this type, the overrating of blood relations is to the un-
derrating of blood relations as the attempt to escape autochthony is to the
impossibility to succeed in it. (Levi-Strauss 1979, 216) 6

Thus the myth implied that settling upon a marriage partner involved
more than a private arrangement of who lives with whom: the origins of
humanity (is man autochthonous or the result of sexual reproduction?)
and his place in the universe were in the balance as well.
These imbricated cognitive and practical contradictions, I suggest, con-
stituted a structure of disavowal for which the mother's lack, represented
in this case by her lack of reproductive self-sufficiency, filled the role of
fetish? Whereas the Hopi initiation myth functioned exclusively as a site

6. I discuss this myth proof in more detail in the Appendix.

7· Levi-Strauss presents no evidence that the structure of fetishism surrounding the
Oedipus myth includes a traumatic childhood revelation that, like the unmasking of the
 Fetish and the Native Subject 69

of avowal ("but even so the gods are in the masks"), the Oedipus myth
staged both the disavowal ("but even so man comes from woman/ earth
alone") and the avowal ("woman is lacking/needs a man"). Indeed, the
Oedipus myth went further by inflecting the resultant contradiction out of
the domain of cosmological schemes into the domain of marital strategies.
In the case of fetishism staged within the Oedipus myth, as for fetishism
generally, the object of desire must reside somewhere other than the
fetish. In the classical as well as Hellenic Greek context it is not difficult to
locate that object. A man's object of desire was the eromenos, the young
male lover, relations with whom were in uneasy tension with the adult
male's responsibility to the oikos, that is, the household and its attendant
women embodied in the figure of the mother and wife. Michel Foucault
argues that such tension was not the result of an opposition between ho-
mosexuality and heterosexuality, or even between love of boys and an
ethic of marital fidelity (which in any case seems to have been a later
Roman and specifically Christian development), but arose instead from a
conception of the adult male as one who, loving the beautiful, whether
male or female, also exhibited suitable moderation and self-control in his
daily life:

In so far as he was married ... a man needed to restrict his pleasures ... but
being married in this case meant, above all, being the head of a family....
This is why reflection on marriage and the good behavior of husbands was
regularly combined with reflection concerning the oikos (house and house-
hold) .... For the wife, having sexual relations only with her husband was a
consequence of the fact that she was under his control. For the husband,
having sexual relations only with his wife was the most elegant way of ex-
ercising his control. This was not nearly so much the prefiguration of a sym-
metry that was to appear in the subsequent ethics, as it was the stylization
of an actual dissymmetry. (Foucault 1987, 15o-151.)

Thus a familiar pattern emerges: man's access to the object of his desire
is blocked by or in tension with a need for sexual relations with his wife,
which in turn functions as a practical embodiment of her lack expressed
as a lack of reproductive self-sufficiency. In short, the fetish as an embodi-

Katcina among the Hopi, constitutes a real historical origin for the structure. As I indicated
in connection with my earlier discussion of the Katcina ritual, there may be no such origin.
Local stories asserting the contrary may be merely fictions, which take on significance
purely retrospectively by the way in which they organize subjects' subsequent self-
narratives. Instead, what matters is the imbricated structure of disavowal and perversion
that, according to Freud, repeats the primal experience of separation from the mother.
70 Fetish

ment of woman/mother's lack blocks man's access to the object of his de-
sire. In this case, however, the structure emerges directly rather than
through covering over woman's lack with a lure and corresponding drive
object.

The fetish, I have argued, is a lure screening the objet a at the center of a
network of practices diverting subjects from attending to their desires. It
is also an object of disavowal, the site of a real contradiction ramifying
within the subject's discursive as well as nondiscursive practices. Lacan
explains how such fetishistic structures act as sites at which the usual
processes of repression are breached, thus leading to a perverse form of
subjectivity exposing the constitutive split at the heart of the subject. By
using the evidence provided by ritual and myth, I have argued that in
three cases, among the Hopi, the Ojibwa, and Hellenic Greeks, such psy-
chic splitting of subjects is reflected at a social level.
 III
SOCIALIZING THE PSYCHIC:
FROM INTERPELLATION TO GAZE
 5
Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition

Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects . ... All ideology has the function
(which defines it) of "constituting" concrete individuals as subjects.
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy

Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality;

in its basic dimension it is a phantasy construction which serves as a support for
our "reality" itself; an "illusion" which structures our effective, real social
relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernel (conceptu-
alized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as "antagonism": a traumatic social
division which cannot be symbolized).
Slavoj Ziiek, The Sublime Object of Ideology

I n the previous chapter I established the possibility of communal

fetishistic structures of desire. In this chapter, through an examination
of Althusser' s theory of interpellation, I begin a discussion of the more
basic question of how social structures, and specifically ideological prac-
tices, shape psychic structures at a communal level. Althusser's theory, it
turns out, is overgeneralized in its approach to this question. He proposes
a mechanism by which, as he puts it, ideology affects "nine out of ten" of
the "right" individuals, but he fails to specify how and why the mecha-
nism works in some cases but not others. By supplementing Althusser
with Lacan, I attempt to reduce but also come to terms with this lacuna
(lacana) in Althusser's theory.
Althusser's work, especially his famous ISA (Ideological State Appara-
tuses) essay, has proven decisive in introducing the issue of human sub-
jectivity and its constitution into contemporary cultural studies (Al-
thusser 1971). Both the Birmingham School and Screen theory have
adopted the concept articulated in the ISA essay that subjects are created
in response to a process of "interpellation." Althusser illustrates this con-
cept by a piece of what he calls "theoretical theatre" (Althusser 1971, 163).
A policeman in the street shouts, "Hey, you there!" The hailed individual,

73
 74 Socializing the Psychic

Althusser tells us, "will turn around. By this mere one-hundred-and-

eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because
he has recognized that the hail was 'really' addressed to him" (163).
The appropriation of the concept of interpellation by cultural studies, es-
pecially Screen theory, has been dogged by a persistent misreading. It has
been and continues to be commonplace to take interpellation as a form of
"discipline" (in Foucault's sense) or even "socialization" in something like a
traditional Durkheirnian sense: determining who individuals are by pressing
them into already formed subject positions. Even Judith Butler, from whose
reading of Althusser I borrow key elements, reproduces this misreading:
"For the most part, it seems, Althusser believed that this social demand-one
might call it a symbolic injunction-actually produced the kinds of subjects it
named. He gives the example of the policeman on the street yelling 'Hey you
there!', and concludes that this call importantly constitutes the one it ad-
dresses and cites. The scene is clearly a disciplinary one; the policeman's call
is an effort to bring someone back into line" (Butler 1997, 95).
In this chapter I read Althusser differently. My key point will be that
paradoxically the effectiveness of the call depends not upon the precision
of the terms in which it addresses individuals but rather upon the gaps in
what it says. Individuals conceal from themselves the existence of such
gaps by piecing out the content of the call, thus constituting for them-
. selves a picture of what the caller wants of or for them. Thus subjects con-
spire in their own subjection, or, as Althusser puts it, "subjects work by
themselves" (Althusser 1971, 182). In short, interpellation leads its audi-
ence to actively construct a position by and for themselves.
Subjects are also led to misrecognize their active role in the production
of such positions, thus preserving their sense that already before the call
they were someone in the eyes of the caller. In particular, the positions that
they make for themselves appear to preexist them, may even take on a
"natural" inevitability, in the face of which resistance appears not only fu-
tile but also inappropriate.
Althusser also claims that interpellation leads subjects to relate to such
positions in a way that they are misrecognized as "freely subjecting them-
selves." The misrecognition at issue here, he says, is not a matter of "false
consciousness" in any straightforward sense. On the contrary, subjects re-
ally are free, free to be ''bad subjects" and resist the imprecations of the call.
This is not to say that subjects are self-fashioning agents, totally "free" to
choose who they are. On the contrary, Althusser would claim, such a view
is itself ideological, and must be rejected along with the opposing deter-
ministic conception that subjects are merely the effects of socialization.
But if neither socialization nor individual choice power the constitutive
workings of the call, what does? As Butler poses the question: "What
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 75

leads to this reproduction? Clearly, it is not a mechanistic appropriation of

norms, nor a voluntaristic appropriation. It is neither simple behaviorism
nor a deliberate project" (Butler 1997, 119). Specifically, how does the call
lead subjects not only to (re)produce themselves but also to misrecognize,
indeed elide, their own active role in this (re)production? In this chapter, I
shall turn to these questions in an extension and reworking of Althusser' s
hypothetical example of the policeman's call.
Althusser's position, as I have presented it, corresponds with Freud's
view that the constitution of the subject involves both the formation of an
ideal ego, that is, an idealized self-image, and an ego ideal, an externally
projected standpoint from which the subject judges himself or herself in
relation to that image. The ideal ego corresponds with the self-image in
terms of which a subject is interpellated and, more specifically, with an
idealized image that a subject has of himself as it is reflected back from the
site of the Other. As Lacan puts it, the ideal ego is "the point at which he
[the subject] desires to gratify himself in himself" (Lacan 1981, 257). The
ego ideal, by contrast, corresponds with the position from which the sub-
ject judges himself in relation to his ideal ego, and thus the position from
which "he will feel himself both satisfactory and loved" (or not, as the
case may be) (257). In short, it is "the point [in the space of the Other] from
which he looks at himself" (144).l Althusser goes beyond Freud, however,
in arguing that subjects are constituted by "freely" taking up a position in
relation to the gap between these two ego functions and, in particular, by
"deciding" about what to do in relation to how they are supposed to be.
The question arises, of course, whether in going beyond Freud and ex-
posing the ideological construction of the human subject as a self-
motivating, free "agent" at the center of the little drama of his own ac-

1. For La can' s account of the classical Freudian distinction between ideal ego and ego
ideal, see Lacan 19th, 144,257. See too Laplanche and Pontalis 1974 for an interesting ge-
nealogy of this distinction. Note that, according to Lacan, the construction of the ideal ego
involves the ego ideal, which, in turn, of course, involves the ideal ego; in short, these two
ego functions are reciprocally constitutive: "By clinging to the reference point of him who
looks at him in the mirror [the parent in the position of ego ideal], the subject sees ap-
pearing, not his ego ideal, but his ideal ego, that point at which he desires to gratify him-
self in himself" (Lacan 1981, 257). The implication of the ego ideal in the ideal ego is a con-
sequence of the point I made above: subjects complete their own self-image (ideal ego).
This is possible only if, in constituting their self-image, subjects are already able to occupy
a position, namely, the ego ideal, which, for strategic purposes, they locate outside of
themselves. For Freud, by contrast, the ideal ego remained firmly connected to the imagi-
nary order and the function of primary narcissism, and thus predates the ideal ego.
Lacan's reworking of these Freudian concepts corresponds to an important shift in his
work in the 196os, when he took the Real rather than the Imaginary as the limit to the sym-
bolic order and site of the pleasure.principle, a point to which I return-see Zizek 1989,
0~rn- ·
76 Socializing the Psychic

tions, Althusser's account of subjection is itself ideological. I shall return

to this point when I discuss the more general question of the ideological
status of Althusser' s position.

Screening the Call

According to Althusser, the policeman's call, "Hey you there!" is struc-

tured in terms of two interlinked ideological representations: first, a his-
torically specific ideology-in-particular which proposes a prior, original
guilt on the part of the one, the "you there" whom it addresses; second, an
omnihistorical ideology-in-general which, even when there are several
who respond to the call, addresses each as a unique, individual subject-
the one who is called: "It's you, it really is you!"-to which, in turning
around, each of them replies in a concrete, "material" fashion: "It's me, it
really is me!" (Althusser 1971, 161).
In classifying both of these representations as "ideological," Althusser
implies that they not only address individuals but also are sources of con-
stitutive effects. The question, then, is the nature and mechanism of such
effects. What power is responsible for the amazing piece of rhetorical leg-
erdemain whereby the many who pass by and hear the call ("nine times
out of ten it is the right one," 163) experience themselves as uniquely, per-
sonally addressed, and (according to Althusser) however innocent they
may have considered themselves to be, experience a presentiment, a thrill,
of guilt? In short, how does the call bridge the gap between the one and
the many, between the fictional addressee it poses for itself and the casual
passersby who belong to its real-life audience?
This question may be given concrete form in the context of magazine
advertisements. How is it that the photograph of a pair of eyes looking
into the camera, coupled with the cheesy slogan "For the you who is re-
ally you," manage to make each viewer ("nine times out of ten it is the
right one") feel that they have been not only personally addressed but
also recognized in the innermost core of their being, despite being totally
sure at an intellectual level that the advertisement knows nothing of who
they are?
Althusser suggests a specular mechanism for this process of interpella-
tion. First, the subject constructs an imaginative self-projection at the site
of an external figure whom Althusser designates the "Subject"; second,
the projection returns to the subject in the form of a recognition of himself
as that figure. This process, Althusser suggests, is an analogue of the
process of coming to recognize oneself in a mirror. He describes it in terms
of what I call "the mirror thesis":
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 77

The duplicate mirror-structure of ideology ensures simultaneously:

1. the interpellation of individuals as subjects;
2. their subjection to the Subject;
3· the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects' recognition
of each other, and finally the subject's recognition of himself.
4· the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition
that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, every-
thing will be all right: Amen-' So be it.' (Althusser 1971, 168-169) 2

The mirror structure that Althusser evokes may involve direct physical
resemblance, a possibility he illustrates using Christian ideology. Here the
role of Subject is filled by God, in whose image, so the scripture tells us,
man is made (167). This ideology-the specular relation between man and
God-is materially embodied in the many images of the Holy family at
the center of daily Christian life. Since, according to Althusser, ideology
exists at the level of material practices rather than ideas, the fact that we
know intellectually that these pictures are merely symbolic or allegorical
is beside the point. What counts is not what we "believe" in our head but
rather what we perform in our rituals-that we kneel down before the im-
ages, our eyes devouring them, and intone the words of worship, as if we
saw our God before us.
In other cases, the relevant mirror structure may be less elaborate, com-
prising no more than the subject's recognition that the Subject recognizes
him: "Yes, it's really me, he knows who I am, and I know him as one who
knows me!" For example, although he may not admit it in so many words,
the subject as citizen recognizes that the State knows how it really is with
him, a practical knowledge that the State manifests in treating him in cer-
tain ways. 3 To be specific, the subject knows he is just a number, a knowl-
edge that, it appears, is confirmed, "mirrored," as we might more prop-
erly say, by the impersonal way in which the State treats him, identifying
him by his social security number, evaluating him according to the dollar
amount of his salary, and so on.
What remains ambiguous, perhaps even concealed, in this situation is
that the State's treatment of him, and its practical knowledge of his situa-

2. For a working out of this structure in a concrete case see Williamson 1978, 67.
3· In some cases, Althusser tells us, the Subject is a concrete individual-the king, for in-
stance--in relation to whom the subject's whole being is shaped as a loyal subject. In other
cases, the Subject is abstract or totally fictional-God, the State, and so on-reified as as-
pects of the representational schemata within which subjects frame answers to the calls
made upon them (Althusser 1971, 169). In particular, in the case of interpellation by the
policeman's shout the Subject is the abstract function of the Law embodied in the robust
figure of its representative, the policeman.
78 Socializing the Psychic

tion, brings about the state of affairs in which the subject knows that he is
just a number. This means that the Subject's appearance of independent
knowledge, although persuasive, is only a mirage, one in which the sub-
ject conspires to his own advantage in order to give what he knows the
appearance of independent and authoritative support.

In the subsequent appropriation of Althusser's work by cultural studies, I

shall argue, the specular model of interpellation encapsulated in the
mirror thesis has gained covert support from an illegitimate connection
with Lacan's theory of a "mirror stage," during which children make
"imaginary identifications" with images of themselves and their parents.4
This connection between the work of Lacan and Althusser takes its cue
from an unfortunate (although not altogether unintentional) homonymy
between Lacan' s term "imaginary" and the term "imaginary" used by Al-
thusser as shorthand for the ideologically distorted nature of individuals'
relations to their real conditions of existence ("Ideology is a representation
of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of exis-
tence," 153, my emphasis). 5
Consider, for example, Judith Williamson's Decoding Advertisements,
which typifies 1970s Screen theory approaches to the constitutive effects
of images: "Lacan says that the ego is constituted, in its forms and energy,
when the subject 'fastens himself to an image which alienates him from
himself' so that the ego 'is forever irreducible to his lived identity.' Clearly

4· This theory was articulated as early as 1936, reworked in Lacan's 1949 paper "The
Mirror Stage," and published in Ecrits, chap. 1.
5· In the ISA essay, by contrast with Screen theory's appropriation of it, Althusser is
careful to avoid articulating any connection between his own and Lacan's senses of the
imaginary, although, given his close relation with Lacan, it would be disingenuous of him
to claim that such a connection was not implicit in what he wrote. His refusal to enunciate
the connection explicitly may be seen as growing out of his close (ultimately unhappy) re-
lations with the French Communist Party, which in the 196os vigorously denounced psy-
choanalytic ideas, specifically La can' s, as "reactionary ideology" -see Althusser' s letter of
February 21, 1969, to the translator of his article for New Left Review (reprinted in Lenin and
Philosophy) in which he discusses Lacan (Althusser 1971, 177).
The nearest Althusser comes to explicitly invoking Lacanian ideas in support of what I
have called the mirror thesis is in the closing paragraphs of his article on Lacan, written
five years before the ISA essay but redrafted as a companion piece to it, where he draws a
parallel between, on the one hand, the Marxist thesis that "history ... has no 'center' ex-
cept in ideological misrecognition" and, on the other, Freud's discovery that "the human
subject is de-centered, constituted by a structure which has no 'center' either, except in the
imaginary misrecognition of the 'ego,' i.e. in the ideological formations in which it recog-
nizes itself" (201). This parallel between the decentered subject and history's lack of center,
he adds circumspectly, "has opened up one of the ways which may perhaps lead us some
day to a better understanding of this structure of misrecognition, which is of particular con-
cern for all investigations into ideology" (2o1).
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 79

this is very similar to the process of advertising, which offers us an image

of ourselves that we may aspire to but never achieve" (Williamson 1978,
63-64, quoting Lacan 1971 on the mirror stage). Here Williamson explic-
itly presents the mechanism of interpellation as specular in nature, oper-
ating by a mechanism that is "very similar" if not identical to the Lacanian
process of imaginary identification. 6
In this chapter I argue against any such connection between Al-
thusserian and Lacanian senses of the imaginary, between interpellation
and the mirror stage. This, in turn, raises the question of whether the no-
tion of interpellation can survive such drastic conceptual surgery. Can
there be interpellation without mirrors? I answer this question by devel-
oping a model of interpellation which, instead of focusing upon the role of
mirror identification, invokes Lacan's later view that the constitution of
the subject involves confrontation with and concealment of what Lacan
calls the Real.

The Imaginary

Althusser makes clear that what he calls the "imaginary" nature of a

subject's ideological relations to the real conditions of existence has
nothing to do with how those relations are imagined in the literal sense.
Instead, their imaginary nature is a matter of "material effects," particu-
larly the fact that they overlay and distort the "real conditions of exis-
tence," understood in the sense of the economic circumstances governing
individuals' lives. For example, a teacher performs paid labor, churning
out her students as workers, managers, investors, and so on, who despite
her best intentions help to lubricate the cogs of capitalist production.
These are the brutal, unflattering, "real" conditions of her existence as a
paid functionary of the State. The ideological apparatus within which she
works, the school, modifies or distorts these real conditions, turning them
in what Althusser calls "an imaginary direction." She is, for example, en-
couraged to be loyal to the institution, dedicated to the cause of learning,
and so on, all of which enable her activities to be integrated more produc-
tively into the system of production, contributing to its overall stability.

6. She does add, however, that the process of "imaginary identification" involved in ide-
ology does not require a mirror image in any literal sense ("I prefer to use the idea of
'mirror phase' as a metaphor, a shorthand for all the social and external reflections of the
self," 63). Nevertheless, as the quotation in the text makes clear, she takes mass-mediated
images including advertising to operate according to processes that are "very similar" to
the processes of imaginary identification manifested in the mirror stage.
80 Socializing the Psychic

The ideological-what Althusser' s calls "imaginary" -nature of these

relations to the institution in which she works is not simply a matter of the
educational state apparatus placing a flattering gloss on her activities. On
the contrary, teachers ("nine out of ten") really are dedicated and loyaL In-
stead, as Althusser indicates, it is a matter of the relations between pupil
and teacher distorting the real conditions of their lives in a way that serves
to reproduce the overall system of production.
Althusser also proposes that, at least in the capitalist era, such ideolo-
gies are set in place with the help of what he calls a dispositif (Althusser
1971, 157-158), an ideological device that positions subjects as having
"freely" chosen to be who they are. By reaffirming those choices, subjects
confirm not only their identity but also, as part of that identity, their
ability to choose: "The individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order
that he shall submit freely to the commandment of the Subject, i.e. in order that he
shall (freely) accept his subjection" (169).
Althusser does not take this ideological dispositif as merely an idea in
the head, since for him ideology is always a matter of material effects
(1971, 165-170). And, in fact, in most cases teachers really do chose to
follow their profession, a "vocation" to which, it is said, they were called,
and which they elected to follow. And even when it is a fiction, the story
that an individual really chooses to be a teacher is not merely flattering
self-deception, incidental to her pedagogic practices. On the contrary, it
affects her actions in "real" -that is, "material" -ways, insofar as, at a
practical level and on a daily basis, she takes responsibility not only for
her students but also for the institution within which she works.
Althusser thus diverges from the traditional Marxist conception of ide-
ology as "false consciousness" or ''beautiful lies" that mystify and conceal
the exploitative nature of the real conditions in which people live. Indeed,
he explicitly criticizes this tradition on the grounds that, by analyzing ide-
ology in idealist terms as a form of "consciousness," it fails to be materi-
alist (149). Instead, he analyzes ideology in terms of materialist concepts
such as "practices," "rituals," "apparatuses," and what he calls "represen-
tations" -by which he means not ideas in the head but rather "implicit be-
liefs," that is, propositional schema that structure human practices
without necessarily emerging at the level of consciousness: "The 'ideas' or
'representations,' etc., which seem to make up ideology do not have an
ideal (ideale or ideelle) or spiritual existence, but a material existence" (155).
"Disappeared: the term ideas .... Appear: the terms: practices, rituals, ideo-
logical apparatus" (159).
It follows, then, that in Lacanian terminology what Althusser calls the
"imaginary," namely, material distortions of the real conditions of exis-
tence, belong to the symbolic realm rather than the imaginary, that is, to
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 81

the domain of symbolizable material realities rather than mental images.

This conclusion directly contradicts the popular Screen theory gloss of Al-
thusser, exemplified in the above quotation from Williamson, which pro-
poses a convergence between the Althusserian and Lacanian senses of the
imaginary. It also undermines the support that such a convergence would
provide for the mirror thesis.
Althusser's transformation of the terms "imaginary" and "ideology"
can be understood in the context of his broader theoretical practice. The
term "ideology" brings with it meanings from an early "descriptive"
stage of Marxism, exemplified by the "early Marx" of the 1844 manu-
scripts and the German Ideology, when Marx had not yet shed his ideolog-
ical roots in Feuerbachian humanism. At that stage ideology was con-
ceived as "beautiful lies" or, in traditional formulaic terms, as an
imaginary representation (a false system of ideas) which misrepresents
(mystifies by inverting) the real (true) conditions of existence.
This traditional formulation for ideology came up against a limit from
within Marxism itself. Marx's materialism contradicted the idealist and
purely "descriptive" terms in which this early formulation was framed.
Following the lead of Marx's later work, Althusser reworked the defini-
tion of ideology in materialist terms. In particular, he redefined ideology
in terms of a syntactic permutation of the traditional formula: as "a 'Rep-
resentation' of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their real
Conditions of Existence" (Althusser 1971, 152).
This new definition incorporates two decisive shifts from the traditional
formula. First, ideology is taken to be a representation of individuals' re-
lations to their real conditions of existence rather than of the conditions
themselves; second, the term "imaginary" is applied to the actual rela-
tions between individuals rather than, as in the traditional formula, to the
representations of those relations. In short, ideology is not (as the early
Marx contended) a set of ideas that are "imaginary" in the sense of
creations of the imagination with no correspondence to reality, but rather
a set of relations through which the real conditions of existence are
modified.
Thus Althusser' s theoretical transformation of the classical Marxist def-
inition of ideology may be seen as dialectical, a sublation of a particular
Marxist concept in response to its negation from within Marxism itself.
Specifically, Althusser's redefinition of ideology preserves key terms of
the classical formula, while purging it of idealist elements in favor of a
purely material ontology. Thus Althusser's criticism of those who steer
the question of ideology in the direction of "false consciousness" does not
reflect a postmodern disinterest in or dismissal of issues of truth and fal-
sity. Rather, his point is that an emphasis upon questions of truth or falsity
82 Socializing the Psychic

in talking about ideology indicates an ideological commitment to an ide-

alist ontology of propositions rather than to material practices (156).

Questioning the Mirror

In general terms, then, Althusser takes interpellation as a means of dis-

torting the real conditions of existence so that they take the form of specular
relations to a "unique, absolute Other Subject" who, despite the inherent di-
versity among subjects, manages to provide each of them with a mirror
image of who he or she "really" is (178). In support of these claims. Al-
thusser makes "it [ideology] speak" in a particular case in a way that we, his
readers, will recognize its specular nature. We thus become our own au-
thorities for his (Althusser's) analysis (165). He achieves this rhetorical
sleight of hand by assembling a "fictional discourse" which, he claims, en-
capsulates what the Christian ideology says, "not only in Testaments, The-
ologians, Sermons but also in its practices, its rituals, its ceremonies and its
sacraments.... God addresses himself to you through my voice.... It says
this is who you are .... This is your place in the world! This is what you
must do" (165-166). We are expected/persuaded to recognize this fictional
discourse as structuring Christian religious practice, even though, as Al-
thusser implicitly concedes, no one may ever say it in so many words.
Althusser's argument at this point masquerades as a form of empirical
justification. But the justification is a sham, its persuasive effect having
less to do with the structure of reader experiences than with the argu-
ment's interpellative form. Specifically, we, as readers, are called upon to
recognize certain experiences as our own-''Yes, that's it, that's how it re-
ally is!" -which Althusser then "decipher[s] into theoretical language" on
our behalf (168). In short, Althusser's text seeks to create the experience of
specularity, of finding a mirror image of oneself in the figure of the Sub-
ject, as an ideological effect.
To be blunt, for all its pretensions to scientific, "theoretical" status, Al-
thusser's description of interpellation as "specular" is couched in termi-
nology, including idealist notions of visualization, which, in belonging to
the level of "spontaneous description," are themselves ideological. In
short, it seems that in the context of Althusser's argument for the mirror
thesis, empiricism in the form of an appeal to experience functions, as it
often does, as a bridgehead for ideology.
Since I am not assuming a "false consciousness" model of ideology, this
does not mean that Althusser's account of interpellation is false. Rather,
my point is that because it is not "scientifically" validated according to the
accepted canons of scientific induction, there is a "real" (that is, scientific,
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 83

not just logical) possibility that the experience of specularity is mis-

leading. To be specific, like any pure sensory input, the experience of a
specular relation provides a poor basis for justifying the mirror thesis
which it appears to confirm.
Lack of proper justification is not the most serious threat to the mirror
thesis, however. According to Althusser' s discussion in his essay "On the
Materialist Dialectic" (Althusser 1982, chap. 6) propositions acquire "sci-
entific" status not through avoiding ideology (that, according to Al-
thusser, is impossible) but rather through being embedded within a theo-
retical praxis that criticizes the ideological nature of their language. Such
criticism is not merely a matter of ideas in the head but rather of practical
recognition (connaissance) constituted by an (of necessity only partial)
breaking with ideological language: "While speaking in ideology, and
from within ideology we have to outline a discourse which tries to break
with ideology, in order to dare to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e. sub-
jectless) discourse on ideology" (Althusser 1971, 162).
Such theoretical praxis, the stepping back from ideology while within
ideology, must be ongoing, a matter of permanent "self-criticism" (164)
since, merely in virtue of being written, new forms of description are im-
plicated in ideology ("The author and reader of these lines both live
'spontaneously' or 'naturally' in ideology," 160). This strategy of per-
petual revolution results in the many deferrals and self-qualifications
scattered throughout the ISA essay, including the wording of its subtitle,
"Notes towards an Investigation," and its many unredeemed promises:
"That the author ... is completely absent as a 'subject' from 'his' scientific
discourse ... is a different question which I shall leave on one side for a mo-
ment" (160, 121, my emphasis)?
Unfortunately, Althusser's discussion of the mirror thesis in the ISA
essay fails to display such hallmarks of the scientific. In particular, it fails
to display a practical "awareness" of its own ideological nature. This
failure is evident in Althusser's allusion to the mirror thesis as a "deci-
phering into theoretical language" of the experience of subjection, an allu-
sion that patently fails to step back from, indeed denies, the ideological
nature of the idealist terminology in which his thesis is expressed (168). It
is true, of course, that Althusser makes some allowance for the ideolog-
ical, or at least descriptive, nature of the language framing the thesis. 8 He

7· Althusser's redefinition of "the scientific" is as innovative as his reconceptualization of

ideology, although its radical nature is more easily overlooked. He allows that scientific dis-
course is also ideological, thus disposing of one of the key oppositions of traditional Marxist
thought, between ideology and science (a category that Marxism appropriates for itself).
8. Althusser also concedes that his argument here is, as he puts it, "rhetorical" ("I shall
use a rhetorical figure and 'make it speak,"' 165).
84 Socializing the Psychic

describes this language as a "special mode of exposition" that is '"con-

crete' enough to be recognized but abstract enough to be thinkable and
thought, giving rise to knowledge" (162). But this concession seems to be
more by way of a covert attempt to forestall the accusation of ideological
stain than a display of awareness of such stain.
Briefly, in virtue of Althusser' s failure to acknowledge the ideological
nature of the mirror thesis, it belongs to the category of protoscientific
propositions (what he calls Generalities t) rather than the category of the
scientific (what he calls Generalities 3). In saying this, I am not simply re-
iterating the point that the mirror thesis is implicated in ideological termi-
nology. On the contrary, failure to be scientific is a far more serious defect,
involving not only an implication in ideology but also a failure to recog-
nize such implication.9
If Althusser's attempt at a "scientific description" of interpellation fails,
then what is its "correct," scientific description? In the next section, in the
context of reworking Althusser' s story of the policeman's call, I argue for an
alternative account of interpellation that takes the Lacanian Real rather than
the Imaginary as its focus. In particular, I argue that ideological effects arise
from individuals confronting the Real limits to the symbolic order rather
than mirror images. This alternative account of interpellation repudiates the
idealist terminology bedeviling Althusser's discussion of the mirror thesis.
This does not mean that my account avoids ideology as such. That, as Al-
thusser argues, would be impossible. Nevertheless, I argue, by displaying
an awareness of its own ideological nature, my account accomplishes what
Althusser fails to achieve in his rendition of the mirror thesis: "to be the be-
ginning of a scientific (i.e. subjectless) discourse on ideology" (162).

Powering the Call

The policeman walking the beat shouts "Hey you there!" Suppose a
passerby hears his call while taking a nightly, predinner stroll around the

9· Conversely, as Althusser points out, even the most scientific discourses, including his
own ISA essay; may be steeped in ideology: "the author and reader of these lines both live
'spontaneously' or 'naturally' in ideology.... Ideological effects [exist] in all discourses-
including even scientific discourse.... Ideology has no outside" (16o, 161 n. 16, 164). Thus
Althusser redraws the traditional Marxist opposition between ideology and science. For
him the important issue is not the avoidance of ideology-that is impossible-but rather
the adoption of a scientific discourse, which displays its scientific nature by a practical
awareness of its own (inevitably) ideological nature. Such awareness transforms the dis-
course into a site of perpetual struggle, situated in an ever recurring gap between an old
ideological enframing and its critique, a struggle that installs a new ideological frame.
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 85

block. In an instant, even though she apparently has nothing on her con-
science, she comes to a startled halt, seized by a guilt which she displays for
all to see. This is not intended as an empirically accurate description of the
way in which people actually respond to policemen shouting. On the con-
trary, in most circumstances a single shout by a policeman, however embar-
rassing, will be insufficient to produce the constitutive effects achieved by
more sustained interactions with Ideological State Apparatuses. As Al-
thusser himself admits, his story of the policeman's call is a piece of "the-
ater," a fictional model that provides a convenient stage on which to explore
what happens when interpellation by a full-fledged Ideological State Appa-
ratus takes place (163). In Butler's terms, then, Althusser's figure of the po-
liceman may be seen as merely "exemplary and allegorical," a synecdoche
for an Ideological State Apparatus (Butler 1997, 106).
But what, it may be asked, is a self-avowed piece of "theater" doing in
what aspires to being a scientific account? The important point is not the
theatricality of the story but rather Althusser' s admission that it depends
for its credibility upon theatrical truth effects that are ideological in the
sense that they provoke the response: "Yes, that's it, that's the way it really
is" (Althusser 1971, 161, 166). In short, at this stage of his argument Al-
thusser's account finally displays a practical awareness of its own ideo-
logical nature. In so doing it guarantees its own scientific status and, in
that respect at least, improves upon the earlier, purely experiential (and
thus ideological) treatment of the mirror thesis.
In the context of Althusser's piece of theater, we may ask what strikes
the passerby as she pursues her nightly stroll and hears the shout, "Hey
you there!" What moves her to reconstitute herself through what Al-
thusser refers to as her "one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn"? It is, I
suggest, not the policeman's personal authority or even the power he em-
bodies as a representative of the law, but rather a tension arising between
the implicit accusation of criminality and the palpable appearance of in-
nocence of the passerby's behavior ("I was just walking down the street,
minding my own business," she might protest). Such tension arises not
merely from a personal sense of innocence. On the contrary, as Althusser
remarks, "large numbers ... have something on their consciences" (174).
Rather, the tension results from a conflict between, on the one hand, a
meaning of innocence which attaches to the action of strolling one's
neighborhood streets and, on the other, a meaning which turns a po-
liceman's shout, whatever its intent, into an accusation of guilt.
The stroll's innocence is not merely a matter of the stroller's state of
mind. Instead, it is determined by a meaning framework, a widely ac-
cepted, publicly sanctioned set of associations between home, hearth,
mealtime, relaxation, and so on, in terms of which a nightly, predinner
86 Socializing the Psychic

walk in the neighborhood more or less unavoidably takes on a certain

quality of innocence, although not in a strictly legal sense. Such meaning
is neither indefeasible nor unequivocal. For instance, an indigent street
person might see such a stroll as a self-indulgent exercise of bourgeois
privilege, an arrogant assertion of the rights of property. This effective loss
of innocence is reinforced by the obscurity of the law, which raises the
possibility that an "innocent" stroll may pose all sorts of legal problems:
unwitting trespass, violation of a traffic ordinance, and so on.
Despite such destabilizing cross-currents, the meaning of innocence en-
joys a certain fixity, the result in part of work by interests who stand to
benefit from the general acceptance of a bourgeois ideology that presents
the "home" as a site of certain rights and privileges. The aphorism "A
man's home is his castle" nicely captures the spirit of this pervasive ide-
ology, which structures our practices as well as consciousness. In La-
canian terms, this ideological meaning acts as a point of suture at which
the passerby's identity along with a corresponding account of her activi-
ties as "an honest citizen minding her own business" are sewn up for the
time being. On this point, Marxist arguments for the existence of hege-
monic structures converge with Lacan's claim that relatively stable mean-
ings are necessary as temporary resting places from the otherwise contin-
uing diffusion of meaning along chains of signifiers.
Similarly, the accusation of guilt implicit in the policeman's shout is de-
termined not by some intention on his part (he may have merely wanted
to draw attention to an approaching car) or even by the passerby's startled
response, but rather by a meaning framework that assigns the role of ar-
biter of guilt to the institution of the law embodied in the figure of the po-
liceman on the beat. This meaning too may be destabilized by various
cross-currents. For example, in some circumstances the image of the po-
lice as defenders of the State and propertied interests tends to work
against their positioning as fair and reasonable judges of guilt and inno-
cence. Nevertheless, the meaning of guilt is relatively stable, a rhetorical
as well as a practical and political achievement buttressing the hegemonic
order.
These apparently opposing evaluations by intersecting meaning frame-
works create a tension at the site of the policeman's call. From a strictly
logical point of view of course there is no contradiction, since the stroll's
innocence is established by its associations with home and hearth, while
the policeman's accusation of guilt has a legal basis. 10 Nevertheless, the

10. In any case even if the senses of guilt and innocence were totally commensurable, the
policeman's accusation does not entail my actual guilt (at most it entails that I am accused
of being guilty).
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 87

meaning of innocence renders the policeman's accusation of guilt inap-

propriate in some strong sense, careless to the point of arrogance, a gross
abuse of power, as we might say. In short, the policeman's call functions as
a site at which certain aspects of the meanings or "identities" that the
passerby is offered, as middle-class burgher, citizen under the law, and so
on, are not only brought into conflict but also internally destabilized, each
meaning in tum becoming the site of rival interpretations struggling to as-
sert themselves. The structural similarity with Laclau and Mouffe's con-
cept of antagonism is clear: "Antagonisms constitute the limits of every
objectivity, which is revealed as partial and precarious objectification" (La-
clau and Mouffe 1985, 125). 11 My point here does not depend upon an
exact correspondence with Laclau and Mouffe's concept. Nevertheless,
for convenience, I adapt their term "antagonism" to describe the struc-
tural instability that emerges at the site of the policeman's call.
An argument by Judith Butler suggests an alternative, more general ac-
count of the formation of antagonisms as sites of interpellation. An inter-
pellation, she asserts, is an exercise of power, power in what Foucault
would call"the mode of subjection" (Butler 1997, 95). In particular, it may
be seen as an attempt to impose a particular identity defined in terms of
the social meanings that frame it. She then argues, following Foucault,
that any such exercise of power creates resistance. If, as seems not un-
likely, such resistance takes shape as a counteridentity, also defined in
terms of particular social meanings, and if this, in tum, creates a reac-
tionary counterresistance, and so on, then an antagonism forms at the site
of the call. Of course, not all interpellations will generate such "perpetual
spirals of power and resistance" (to use Foucault's term). On the contrary,
in the final section of this chapter I suggest a variation upon Butler's ar-
gument which allows that resistance may remain inchoate, a site of the
Real in Lacanian terms. Nevertheless, insofar as such resistances form,
they provide a mechanism for the formation of antagonisms at the site of
interpellations, of which the story of the policeman's call may be seen as a
special instance.
The antagonisms that gather at sites of interpellation do not inhibit their
constitutive effects. On the contrary, I argue, they function as a driving
force. In particular, in Althusser's story, I suggest, it is not the persuasive
propositional content of the policeman's call, the "ideas" he transmits,
that interpellate, but rather a tension within the "lived" representations
structuring the addressee's practices, a tension between the guilt em-
bodied in her reaction to the call and various practical associations which

11. For a general discussion of the notion of antagonism, see Laclau and Mouffe 1985,
12)-127.
88 Socializing the Psychic

attach a meaning of innocence to the ritual of a nightly predinner stroll. As

Butler explains it, "Interpellation works by failing, that is, it institutes its
subject as an agent precisely to the extent that it fails to determine such a
subject exhaustively" (197). I turn now to my key question of how this
process works, of how the subject emerges in response to such tensions.

An Althusserian Attempt

a
As first attempt to answer this question, I adapt Althusser's mirror
thesis. The reaction of the passerby to the policeman's call, whether she
turns and runs or comes to a startled halt, carries with it an interrogative
inflection, expressing uncertainty about the investment others have in her
situation. It covertly poses a question: What do you want, you the law-
abiding citizenry who underwrite the law and observe this embarrassing
little encounter? What do you want done in this situation to which you
have contributedby your serious and inscrutable expectations? (The ef-
fect will be the same even if the streets are empty of spectators.)
At the level of surface semantics, the question "What do you want?" is
directed at the policeman, but in the last instance the functionary to whom
it is addressed is "the Subject," in this case the law, which knows what is
wanted because it is the one that wants it (Althusser 1971, 181). Although
the question is directed to the Subject, it is the passerby's to answer, since
the Subject is in part at least a fictionalized projection of herself. To be spe-
cific, she responds to her conception of what the law might want of her
rather than simply what its concrete representatives (policemen, statutes,
lawyers, and so on) say. She must answer on the Subject's behalf, not only
because the Subject is her creation but also because it constitutes a point of
identification for her. In short, because the Subject provides her with a
specular image of herself, questions directed at it must also be taken on
board.
Of course, she does not have to go along with what the Subject wants of
or for her. That is, even though she wants to be like it, she need not iden-
tify with what it wants for her. In brief, she may be a ''bad subject" and re-
ject the image in terms of which she construes it as addressing her (181).
She may, for example, earnestly protest her innocence in the face of the po-
liceman's public declaration of her guilt, even seeking reparation for the
injury he has done her. In either case, however, insofar as she recognizes
him as representative of the one to whom she is subject, she cannot be in-
different to him. In response to his desire, so the argument goes, she must
form a desire of her own, which, in its form, in the specific nature of its re-
lation for or against his desire, carries traces of its origins.
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 89

This Althusserian account is suggestive as far as it goes, but it still

leaves unanswered the basic question of how antagonisms, such as the
one created by the policeman's call, constitute new forms of subjectivity,
including new desires. I tum to Lacan for an answer.

Lacanian Desire

In Chapter 1, I argued that desire emerges as an aspect of a three-

cornered game involving a subject, an object of desire, and a little "other
object," what Lacan calls objet petit autre (objet a for short), which stands in
the way of subjects getting what they want. Engaging this little other ob-
ject, circling it, affords subjects a degree of pleasure-it "go[es] some way
to satisfying the pleasure principle" -and thus distracts them from their
continuing state of lack (Lacan 1981, 62).
The pleasure produced in the course of the game is the result of what
Freud calls the "drive" (Trieb). Subjects misrecognize their own agency in
this process. In particular, in treating the object of desire as that which
"motivated" their actions, they mistake their pleasure as the result of get-
ting what they want. This misrecognition belongs to the Freudian cate-
gory of repression (Verdriingung). In precipitating subjects into desire and
the related category of agency, the misrecognition is also an aspect of what
Althusser calls "ideology in general." This does not mean that agency is
an illusion, but rather that it is accompanied by a false history, which mis-
recognizes it as being prior, as indeed being the cause of the process rather
than an effect. I argued in Chapter 1 that such a pattern of misrecognition
and the resulting production of desire are repeated whenever subjects
come up against a repetition (Wiederholung) of their primal lack.
Antagonisms, as I presented them in the previous section, are likely
sites of such repetitions. They are tensions within the social framework of
meanings, which, by raising the question, "What does the Subject want of
me?" reveal a gap in the subject's self-mastery, his knowledge of who he
is. This gap, I suggest, is a convenient site for repeating another, namely,
the primal gap created by the mother's absence or, more fundamentally, a
lack of independence from others.
The possibility of such repetition depends upon the following ho-
mology. The primal scene involves the child's lack of control over, and
thus alienation from, what he experiences as part of himself or herself, for
example, the mother. An antagonism, such as the tension generated at the
site of the policeman's hail, involves a not dissimilar lack of control. For
instance, the passerby's response in running away is refracted through the
gaze of the Other and reincorporated by her as a sign of a hitherto unrec-
90 Socializing the Psychic

ognized guilt to which, through her response, she retrospectively owns

up. In both situations, the primal scene of lack as well as the interrupted
stroll, a similar structure is manifested: a part of the self is separated, only
to be reincorporated in an unfamiliar, that is, hitherto unrecognized, and
alienated (othered) form.
Such structural similarity may seem a tenuous basis upon which to
ground a relation of repetition in the Freudian sense. Freud has shown,
however; that repetition needs little in the way of objective similarity.
Even the slightest resemblance may result in a transfer of libidinal charge
associated with the primal scene onto a new situation, thereby trans-
forming it into a repetition. In that event, Lacan argues, the new situation
becomes the site of what Freud calls "unrealistic anxiety" (anxiety
without an appropriate object).
The story of the policeman's call can now be brought to some sort of
closure. As I indicated earlier, the point of this story has not been to un-
derstand the real effects of the policeman's shouting, but rather to provide
a convenient framework within which to develop a plausible mechanism
for explaining the call's constitutive impact and, in particular, its produc-
tion of desire. In brief, the mechanism I suggest traces a causal trajectory
along pathways that detour through the unconscious, from call, to antag-
onism, to primal scene, and thus on to desire. To be specific, an antago-
nism develops at the site of the call. By preparing a site for a repetition of
the primal scene, this antagonism not only stimulates desire but also
leaves telltale traces of anxiety in its wake. I do not assume that this mech-
anism drives all real-world interpellations. Instead, in the following chap-
ters I show how variants of it throw light upon a selection of concrete in-
terpellative situations drawn from different social and cultural settings.

Butler Troubles

In her book The Psychic Life of Power Butler introduces a reading of Al-
thusser which overlaps mine at key points. Specifically she claims, as I do,
that gaps in representations rather the contents of representations create
interpellative effects ("Interpellation works by failing, that is, it institutes
its subject as an agent precisely to the extent that it fails to determine such
a subject exhaustively"-Butler 1997, 197). My position differs signifi-
cantly from Butler's, however.
Following Freud, Butler argues that the formation of a subject involves
the constitution of a conscience ("Conscience doth make subjects of us
all," 107). As it does for Freud, conscience plays a double role. First, it is
the site of a particular psychic structure: a split (Spaltung) between the
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 91

ego-ideal (a point from which the individual reflexively sees him or her-
self as desirable) and the ideal ego (an image in terms of which the indi-
vidual wants to see him/herself). Second, the conscience is the site of a
narcissistic investment that subjects have in their own integrity, an in-
tegrity that the child comes to misrecognize when it sees a mirror image of
itself held up by its mother:

In Freud's view, the formation of the conscience enacts an attachment to a

prohibition which founds the subject in its reflexivity. Under the pressure of
the ethical law, a subject emerges ... who takes him/herself as an object,
and so mistakes him/herself, since he/she is, by virtue of that founding
prohibition, at an infinite distance from his/her origin .... And this prohi-
bition is all the more savory precisely because it is bound up in a narcissistic
circuit that wards off the dissolution of the subject. (103)

By a complex series of transformations, some of which are only implicit,

Butler links this Freudian conception of the subject not only to Althusser' s
concept of interpellation but also to Lacan' s distinction between the sym-
bolic and the imaginary as well as to Foucault's economy of power and re-
sistance. First, she inflects the narcissistic desire for identity-to find a
"wholesome" image for oneself-into the symbolic domain, as a desire to
find or make a name for oneself: "Called by an injurious name, I come into
social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my ex-
istence, because a certain narcissism takes hold of any terms that confers
existence, I am led to embrace the term that injures me" (104).
Second, she identifies Althusserian interpellation with the symbolic
process of being "called" or classified under an injurious name, which she
connects, in tum, with the "founding prohibition"-in Freudian terms, the
law of the father. Thus, when the subject is called as guilty, even if that call
is legally or socially grounded, the guilt in question is invested with uncon-
scious resonances of primal injunctions against incest, masturbation, and so
on: "For Foucault, a subject is formed and then invested with a sexuality by
a regime of power. If the very process of subject formation, however, re-
quires a preemption of sexuality, a founding prohibition that prohibits a cer-
tain desire but itself becomes a focus of desire, then a subject is formed
through the prohibition of a sexuality, a prohibition that at the same time
forms this sexuality-and the subject who is said to bear it" (103).
According to Butler, the latter "view disputes the Foucaultian notion
that psychoanalysis presumes the exteriority of the law to desire, for it
maintains that there is no desire without the law that forms and sustains
the very desire that it prohibits. Indeed, prohibition becomes an odd form
of preservation, a way of eroticizing the law that would abolish eroticism"
92 Socializing the Psychic

(103). In short, Butler takes the prohibition associated with the Oedipal
law of the father to be operating covertly in the domains of the juridical
and social law whenever the latter function in an interpellative mode. The
interpellation at issue here, understood as a symbolic mandate with un-
conscious resonances, is accusatory rather than merely normative. That is,
rather than simply telling its audience what they should do, it addresses
and warns them as de facto transgressors ("You sinners!" "Hey you
there!" and so on).
Butler also identifies interpellation with the workings of "power" in the
Foucaultian sense of discipline: "The Althusserian notion of interpella-
tion ... is clearly a disciplinary one" (95; and see too the opening sentence
of the previous quotation from Butler). This allows her to theorize resis-
tance somewhat differently than Lacan. In particular, she follows Screen
theory in taking the imaginary as the site of resistance to interpellation:
"Lacan restricts the notion of social power [interpellation] to the symbolic
domain and delegates resistance to the imaginary" (98). This view, for
which Screen theory has provided a vehicle, dates back to the early Lacan
of the 1950s. It constructs an opposition between the imaginary domain,
which Lacan identifies as the domain of narcissism, and the symbolic do-
main in which, according to Butler, interpellation operates. Specifically,
Butler claims, the narcissistic wish to be recognized in terms of a partic-
ular linguistic category-the wish to have it said who I am-functions as
a source of resistance to interpellation.
Butler gives this Lacanian position a novel Hegelian twist, however, by
thinking of interpellation as a sublation of the desire for nomination. To be
specific, the desire for a name may be thought of as encountering a limit
or, in Hegelian terms, as being "negated" by the desire for an injurious
name, since such a name cannot be desirable. Interpellation-the taking
up of an injurious name-emerges, then, as a sublation of the desire for
nomination. It follows that the imaginary desire for nomination opposes
the symbolic process of interpellation, not in the simple sense of negating
or contradicting it, but rather in the dialectical sense of sublating it, that is,
incorporating its radical negation. In short, interpellation emerges, from a
productive tension between a desire for nomination and resistance to an
injurious name. From this dialectical structure a further paradox emerges:
"Only by occupying-being occupied by-that injurious terms can I resist
and oppose it" (104).
Butler claims that this paradoxical conclusion of her line of argument
marks a point of agreement with Foucault and departure from Lacan. 12

12. "Foucault formulates resistance as an effect of the very power that it is said to oppose.
This ... marks a departure from the Lacanian framework" (Butler 1997, 98).
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 93

That is, according to Lacan, Butler claims, the conflict between the narcis-
sistic desire for nomination (which is on the side of the imaginary) and in-
terpellative pressure in favor of an injurious nomination (on the side of
the symbolic) must end in the defeat of the imaginary: "The imaginary
thwarts the efficacy of the symbolic law but cannot turn back upon the
law ... resistance appears doomed to perpetual defeat" (98).
By contrast, for Foucault (with whom Butler sides on this issue) no con-
flict between power and resistance ends in such dismal fashion. Instead of
the tediously repetitive defeat of the imaginary by the symbolic mandate
of the law, Foucault offers us "perpetual spirals of power and resistance."
Butler locates subjects at the site of this endless conflict-an open spiral of
imaginary sublations of symbolic mandates-through which individuals
reflexively spiral around the question of who they are. With the help of
Hegel, Butler thus manages to cross Foucault with Lacan. The apparently
agreeable result is that, by restoring a degree of effectiveness to the imagi-
nary, the "fixed" Lacanian subject ("fixed" in the sense that the defeat of
the imaginary is inevitable) is liberated, rendered fluid.
But Butler's conclusion here sells La can short. It fails to take into ac-
count Lacan's historical shift in emphasis from the imaginary to the Real.
For the later Lacan (of the 196os) the opposition to the symbolic arises not
from the imaginary, as Butler claims, but rather from the Real: those
anxiety-provoking points of failure of the symbolic order which always
and already inhere in the symbolic and trouble it. This suggests a some-
what different version of Butler's argument. Opposition to the symbolic is
located at the site of the Real, and the opposing structures are held to-
gether not as imbricated functions of the conscience but rather as a conse-
quence of the fact that any symbolic system must eventually come up
against its own limitations in the Real.
This reformulation of Butler's argument reconceives the nature of resis-
tance to an injurious interpellation. Resistance is not fueled by a narcis-
sistic desire for nomination. Instead its source lies in "another scene,"
namely, the Real, and specifically in the return of the repressed, mani-
fested in what Jacqueline Rose describes as "something endlessly re-
peated and relived moment by moment throughout our individual histo-
ries ... not only in the symptom, but also in dreams, in slips of the tongue
and in forms of sexual pleasure which are pushed to the side of the
norm ... there is resistance to identity [interpellation] at the very heart of
psychic life" (Rose 1986, 9o-91). Butler too identifies resistance to the sym-
bolic with such "moment by moment" repetitions, but, following the early
Lacan of the 50s and his later Screen theory exponents, she classifies them
as "the workings of the imaginary in language" rather than (as I do)
denizens of the Real (Butler 97).
94 Socializing the Psychic

My difference from Butler is more than an academic dispute between

the "early" Lacan of the 1950s and his "later" 1960s reincarnation. Instead,
the future-indeed, the very possibility-of "real" resistance is at stake
here. On the one hand, if Butler is correct, then a Lacanian framework en-
tails that resistance can never win, that the conflict with power is a sham.
In that case, for a real politics of resistance to be possible, a break from
Lacan is necessary. (Here we see another version of the Screen theory crit-
icism of Lacan, to which I return in the next chapter.)
On the other hand~ if my characterization of resistance is correct, then a
Lacanian perspective entails that neither power (symbolic interpellation)
nor resistance (the Real points of failure of interpellation) have the upper
hand. On the contrary, each poses and reproduces the other in what Fou-
cault poetically describes as "perpetual spirals of power and resistance."
Thus, rather than constituting a break from Lacan (as Butler claims), Fou-
cault's account of the relation between power and resistance projects a La-
canian perspective into the microphysics of power. In sum, by identifying
the Real (rather than the imaginary) points of failure internal to an inter-
pellation as sites of "resistance," my modification of Butler's argument
manages to cross Foucault with Lacan without prejudicing the privilege
Lacan assigns to the symbolic or precluding the possibility of real resis-
tance to subjectification.

There is a second, more basic difference between Butler's approach and

mine, one that I have bracketed in the discussion until now. Butler models
the call upon the act of addressing an individual in terms of socially or
legally stigmatized names, like "Jew," "Black," "woman," and so on. She
also argues for an "eroticizing of the [social/juridical] law" in accord with
a Freudian erotics of prohibition (103). Thus her invocation of the "law"
may be understood as a reference not only to social and/ or juridical
norms but also to a "founding prohibition" in the Freudian sense, that is,
to the Oedipal prohibition or what Lacan calls "the law of the father." This
ambiguity in reference of the law plays an essential role in Butler's argu-
ment, since it is from the psychic dimensions of the law in its social or
civic senses that she understands the constitutive effects of interpellation
as arising.
At this point a question arises: is Butler's bold claim of an ever present
psychic and specifically erotic dimension to the law too strong? In partic-
ular, must we accept her implicit contention that whenever an address in
terms of an injurious name is sanctioned juridically or socially, it will have
the constitutive effects associated with a call in the Althusserian sense? In
allowing that in "one out of ten cases" the policeman's hail may fail to
make its mark, even Althusser, it seems, would find this contention a little
 Interpellation, Antagonism, Repetition 95

too sweeping. For Althusser, unlike Butler, the fact that an individual is
addressed in an injurious way by the civic and social law does not of itself
precipitate the constitutive effects characteristic of interpellation. On the
contrary, I argued in this chapter, such an address takes on a constitutive
role if and only if it partakes in the dimensions of the Real, and in partic-
ular acts as a site of unrealistic anxiety. And it does this if and only if it is a
repetition (Wiederholung) in the Freudian sense, that is, boasts unconscious
chains of associations connecting it to the primal scene of lack.
In more traditional Freudian terms, the point I am making contra Butler
is that on occasions the law in its juridical/ social dimension may not res-
onate unconsciously with the law of the father. In other words, in partic-
ular cases, a juridical/ social guilt at transgressing the law-failing to fill
in a tax form properly, crossing the road against a red light, and so on-
may not be compounded as "psychic guilt," and so avoids having any
psychically constitutive effects.
Conversely not all interpellations address individuals in terms of inju-
rious and legally sanctioned names. On the contrary, my earlier argu-
ments suggest that interpellations may be mere "antagonisms" (in some-
thing like Laclau and Mouffe' s sense) rather than antagonistic in Butler's
sense of "injurious." In other words, interpellations may be points where
social meanings clash among themselves rather than with their audience.
In sum, it seems that, contra Butler, addressing individuals in terms of in-
jurious names is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for interpel-
lation. More specifically, if a naming is to function as an interpellation,
then there must be more to its unconscious dimensions than can be guar-
anteed by its purely social or formal aspects.
 6
The Ambassador's Body:
Unscreening the Gaze

The world of fiction film is mostly a world of jntention, the well-rehearsed, and the
fake: that is, Not-Reality. The comedian's trip into a swimming pool is staged, and
the light streaming from that window is probably not from the sun. We all know
this but we allow ourselves to forget it when the house lights go down. Sometimes,
though, when a fly flies in through a window, the fiction flies out the window. Re-
ality asserts itself over the film, the filmmakers, and the audience, whether we like
it or not. In these moments when reality hijacks our treasured narrative . .. we
have two options: we can merely endure it, holding our breath until the fiction re-
turns, or we can embrace the chance encounters.
Paul Harrill, "Fly Films"

I n Chapter 1, I introduced what Lacan calls "the gaze," a point from

which the visible looks back at the viewer. In this chapter and the fol-
lowing two, with a view to furthering my investigations of interpellation,
I extend my exploration of the gaze into the area of social effects. I begin
by criticizing a conception of the gaze which, taken from Lacan and de-
veloped initially for cinematic images, has come to dominate much con-
temporary work in cultural studies.

Screen Theory

Screen theory developed in the 1970s from the work of a group of French
and English film theorists including Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, Jean-
Louis Baudry, Jean-Louis Comolli, and Stephen Heath. 1 In the form in
1. Jacqueline Rose offers an interesting participant's history of the Screen theory move-
ment in Rose 1986, chap. 9· For a more critical backward glance at Screen theory, see Sil-
verman 1996, 83--90·

97
98 Socializing the Psychic

which it has come to influence cultural studies, it combines elements of an

eclectic range of theoretical perspectives, including the early structuralist
work of Roland Barthes, which proposes that the meanings of signifiers are
determined by their position within a network of oppositions and equiva-
lences; Louis Althusser's conceptualization of interpellation as a process of
meconnaissance (misrecognition); and Jacques Lacan's seminal work on the
mirror stage as a foundational step in the child becoming a subject. 2
Screen theory treats filmic images as signifiers encoding meanings but
also as mirrors in which, by (mis)recognizing themselves, viewers accede
to subjectivity. One of its major strengths lies in its techniques for uncov-
ering the meanings carried by images. In the context of the 1970s, this as-
pect of the theory contributed importantly to the development of a politics
of the image, which critiqued the mass media on the assumption that the
meanings that they circulate function as blueprints for the subjectivities of
viewers. Such a view, divorced from the heady mixture of "high theory"
and leftist politics associated with Screen theory, remains the cornerstone
of much contemporary censorship practice as well as P.C. politics.
According to Screen theory, in addition to functioning as a vehicle for
meanings, the filmic image operates as the site of a "gaze," meaning a place
where viewers experience themselves as under scrutiny. The gaze is the
mechanism through which the image imposes its meanings and thus creates
constitutive effects. As in the case of Foucault's panopticon, the scrutiny
characteristic of the gaze appears to come from outside the subject but in fact
is a mediated form of self-scrutiny. Screen theory identifies the mechanism of
the gaze with the form of self-(mis)recognition described in Lacan's account
of the mirror stage. Kaja Silverman puts the position as follows:

What Lacan designates the "gaze" also manifests itself initially within a
space external to the subject, first through the mother's look as it facilitates
the "join" of the infant and the mirror image, and later through all the many
other actual looks with which it is confused. It is only at a second remove
that the subject might be said to assume responsibility for "operating" the
gaze by "seeing" itself being seen even when no pair of eyes are trained
upon it .... This "seeing" of oneself being seen is experienced by the subject-
of-consciousness ... as a seeing of itself seeing itself. (Silverman 1992, 127)

From its inception, Screen theory suffered a major defect. Since the late
1950s, Lacan had emphasized that accession to subjectivity is not merely a
matter of imag-inary self-(mis)recognition. The human subject must also

2.See Barthes 1973; Althusser's "Ideological State Apparatuses," in Althusser 1971,

121-173; and Lacan's 1949 essay "The Mirror Stage," in Lacan 1977, 1-7.
 The Ambassador's Body 99

enter the symbolic order, that is, fall under the "law of the signifier," as
well as come to terms with what Lacan called "the Real." In its visual
form, the Real comprises anxiety-provoking breaks or anomalies in the vi-
sual field where the system of perceptual categories falters, a "rupture be-
tween perception and consciousness" where viewers are jolted from their
comfortably established habits of viewing by failing to recognize what
they perceive (Lacan 1981, 56). According to the later Lacan, images im-
pact upon viewers through such manifestations of the Real, in particular
through the effects of self-scrutiny which they bring about. Lacan' s name
for such effects is "the gaze." He thus directly contradicts Screen theory's
concept of the "gaze" as an externally projected form of self-scrutiny
arising from a system of mirror effects.3
From the point of view of Screen theory, this Lacanian reworking of the
gaze suffers a major drawback. By emphasizing points of rupture in the
visual field rather than images with specific ideological meanings, it un-
dermines the simple politics of the image so important to media and film
theorists of the 1970s as well as more recent critics of less radical persua-
sion. On this basis Lacan's views are accused of being systematically apo-
litical, that is, excluding the possibility of a politics of the image. This crit-
icism, to which I reply in detail later, has become a central plank in
contemporary critiques of Lacan as well as other "poststructuralists,"
such as Jacques Derrida. (I have already discussed one aspect of this cri-
tique irt the reply to Butler in the previous chapter.)
Silverman's commentary on Lacan in Male Subjectivity at the Margins ex-
emplifies such critiques. She accuses Lacan (as well as Freud) of taking a
conception of human subjectivity characteristic of contemporary white,
middle-class, European males and generalizing it to all times and places:

Not surprisingly, given the ideological thrust of his essays on sexual differ-
ence, we can see the same kind of universalizing project at work in Freud's
account of the symbolic father as we find in Levi-Strauss's account of the
exchange of women.... Freud consequently made it impossible to concep-
tualize the incest taboo outside the context of a phallocentric symbolic
order.... Lacan also equates culture with the Name-of-the-Father. "In all
strictness the Symbolic father is to be conceived as 'transcendent"' ... he
[Lacan] observes. (Silverman 1992, 36-37)

Her criticism is not merely that Freud's and Lacan's views are ideological
and, specifically, patriarchal, but also that, by universalizing a particular

3· Lacan develops his theory of the gaze in Seminar XI: Four Fundamental Concepts of Psy-
choanalysis, first published in France in 1973 and in the United States in 1978.
100 Socializing the Psychic

conception of human subjectivity, they deny that mechanisms of subjecti-

fication incorporate ideological effects. Against this she asserts a political
imperative which resonates directly with a 1970s politics of the image:
"What must be demonstrated over and over again is that all subjects, male
or female, rely for their identity upon the repertoire of culturally available
images, and upon a gaze which, radically exceeding the libidinally vul-
nerable look, is not theirs to deploy" (153).
This chapter responds to such criticism by considering two cases dis-
cussed by Lacan: his own youthful encounter with a glint of light re-
flecting from a seafaring sardine can, and the historical reception of Hol-
bein's painting The Ambassadors. 4 In both cases, I show how the gaze
depends upon ideological factors. In particular, I argue that such factors
provide the raw material from which chains of unconscious associations
are forged, chains that connect elements of these visual objects with the
primal scene of lack. Such chains of associations invest the objects as sites
of unrealistic anxiety, a necessary condition if, as Lacan claims, they are to
function as sites of a gaze. It follows that there is no truth to Silverman's
complaint that Lacanian mechanisms of subjectification, of which the gaze
is one, rule out a causal role for ideology.
What is true, however-and here the basis of Screen theory's criticism
of Lacan becomes clear-is that according to Lacan the meanings of im-
ages are not in any straightforward sense "reflected" in viewer subjectivi-
ties. It follows that filmic images cannot be critiqued simply on the basis
that, by encoding ideological meanings, they reproduce existing ideolog-
ical structures. This does not mean that a Lacanian perspective is apolit-
ical. It does, however, require a more complex politics of the image than
Screen theory offers.
It is also true, and here I agree with the critics, that sometimes Lacan
presents the gaze as if, like the glint of light reflecting from the sardine
can, it were an objective structure, to which all viewers, past, present, and
future, passively respond in the same way. I argue that, on the contrary, in
its Lacanian form the gaze is a relational structure poised delicately be-
tween a visual object and individual viewers, its effects mediated by their
differing positions within their disparate ideological horizons. Thus, there
is no single transhistorical"audience" all of whom experience the effects
of its gaze in a similar way. On the contrary, as in Lacan's encounter with

4· The point that Lacan fails to confront in his successive analyses of this particular
painting is the patently ideological nature of its gaze. It could be argued that the phantasy
that informs but also conceals this recurring failure is a "scientism" with which Lacan
seeks to invest his theoretical discourses, a scientism that cannot easily accommodate the
fact of the ideological nature of the objects it studies.
 The Ambassador's Body 101

the sardine can, different viewers have different responses, only some of
which fall under the category of the gaze. For instance, Lacan's sea-faring
companion, Petit-Jean, laughs off the encounter, and seems to miss the
gaze entirely. He gets the joke, as we might say, but not the gaze, whereas
for Lacan, things are quite the other way around. 5
I also argue that in his account of Holbein's painting, Lacan errs by fo-
cusing exclusively on the famous anamorphic projection of the skull. It is
true that this formal element of the picture constitutes one potential site
for the gaze, but it is by no means the only one. I present two others. One
is the picture's "hyperrealism," and the other an instability in its psycho-
logical distance from the viewer. Both raise the possibility that if, as Lacan
claims, the picture "looks back" at its viewers, then it is in a highly
overdetermined way, from the canvas as a whole, rather than, as Lacan
claims, from a single formal element, namely, the image of the skull.
Despite these concessions to Lacan's critics, my theoretical account of
the gaze remains firmly Lacanian: I reject Screen theory's account of the
gaze as specular in favor of Lacan's rival claim that the gaze is a site at
which the Real disrupts the visual field. My differences from Lacan reside
in an attempt to historicize his work by showing how ideological factors
mediate the effect of visual objects upon their viewers.

The Gaze

In conversation with Gustav Janouch, Franz Kafka asserted that "sight

does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight.
They flood the consciousness" (Holland 1989, 65-66). This remark cap-
tures in embryonic form Lacan's conception of the gaze. Looking at pic-
tures, Lacan says, is not simply a matter of receiving independently im-
pressed images and mastering them by decoding their meanings. Instead,
the viewer's eye strains to pick out shapes in a flood of light which
threatens to overwhelm it. Lacan's name for the unmasterable flood of
light and the field of its effects is "the gaze." The gaze challenges us to
form an image and make sense of what we see; by means of a mechanism
I discuss later, it also places us under scrutiny.
Lacan discusses the gaze in a story about a boat trip he took with a
group of Breton fishermen when he was in his twenties. It was a sunny
day, and a tin can floated on the sea, reflecting sunlight into his eyes. "You

5· Elizabeth Cowie points out that for Lacan not all images "feed the gaze." Instead, as
Lacan says, some have a "pacifying, Apollonian effect ... something that involves the
abandonment, the laying down, of the gaze" (Lacan 1981, 101, cited in Cowie 1997, 289).
102 Socializing the Psychic

see that can?" one of the fisherman, Petit-Jean, said with a laugh, "Do you
see it? Well, it doesn't see you!" The young Lacan was not amused. Here-
counts his reaction: "The can did not see me ... [but] it was looking at me
all the same ... and I am not speaking metaphorically.... I, at the
moment-as I appeared to those fellows who were earning their livings
with great difficulty ... looked like nothing on earth. In short, I was rather
out of place in the picture. And it was because I felt this that I was not ter-
ribly amused" (Lacan 1981, 96).
Thus the light not only unsettled his visual field but also made him feel
under scrutiny; it challenged his sense of self. He came to feel, as he says,
"out of place" in the picture as the indeterminacy characteristic of the
glint of light spilled over onto its viewer. Lacan identifies this challenging
glint of light with the gaze, which, he says, is "always a play of light and
opacity. It is always that gleam of light-it lay at the heart of my little
story.... In short, the point of the gaze always participates in the ambi-
guity of the jewel" (96).
In general terms, then, he restricts the gaze to points of distortion in the
visual field where the appearance of objects threatens to disintegrate into
a play of light and shadow, where, by unmasking light as the raw material
from which appearances are fashioned, viewers glimpse their own active
contribution to what they see. Thus the gaze is like the moment in a movie
when the mechanics of image production come into view. By showing the
grain of the film, a fly landing on the camera lens, or an actor behaving out ·
of character, the movie affords a glimpse of its own nature as constructed
image. In terms of film theory, the gaze is the point at which the illusion of
realism wavers. In cognitive terms, it is a point where the visual field
breaks out of the symbolic system in which its objects are conceptualized.
More specifically, Lacan insists, the gaze belongs to the order of the
Real, meaning that it is not only a point where we cannot see "properly"
because our visual field refuses to conform with the relevant symbolic
conventions, but is also a site where the subject experiences an excessive
or "unrealistic" anxiety, such as the young Lacan' s evident discomfort at
the glint of light. Such anxiety, according to Freud, is associated with rep-
etitions (Wiederholungen), that is, events connected by chains of uncon-
scious associations to the domain of the repressed, those traumatic primal
moments when, by experiencing need, infants recognize themselves as
sites of lack.
Not all anomalies in the visual field constitute moments of anxiety. For
example (and here I turn to the incident described in the this chapter's
epigraph), the sight of an actor in a film behaving "out of character,"
straining to ignore the fly that has blundered onto the film set and landed
on his nose, may occasion viewer amusement rather than distress. In such
 The Ambassador's Body 103

cases, psychic investment in the transparency of the representational fic-

tion is not great enough for viewers to experience anxiety when it is de-
stroyed. This in turn raises the question of why the young Lacan makes
such heavy weather of his encounter with the glint of light. Why does this
particular failure to make out what he sees cause him so much distress?
His anxiety arises, I suggest, from the following chain of associations
connecting the glint of light with the primal scene. The fisherman's sar-
donic remark, "You see that can? ... Well, it doesn't see you," thrust upon
the young Lacan an unwelcome realization of himself as without a place
among the men whom he admired and counted as friends. He felt at a loss
or, as he says, "rather out of place in the picture" (96). Thus, at a structural
level the joke resembled the primal scene of loss. The glint of light, in turn,
resembled the joke, since both were sources of discomfort. And since the
joke was uttered in proximity to, and took as its topic, the glint of light, the
former was also a contiguous effect of the latter. Thus a chain of
metaphoric and metonymic associations connected the primal scene of
lack to the joke, which, in turn, was connected to the glint of light, thereby
raising the possibility that all three events converged at an unconscious
level. The excessive discomfort stimulated in the young Lacan by the
light, evidenced not only by its immediate disruptive effect but also more
crucially by its memorialization more than twenty years later in his writ-
ings, suggests that such a convergence in fact occurred. The glint of light
thus took on the dimensions of the gaze, as not only a distortion of his vi-
sual field but also a repetition and source of "unrealistic anxiety" for the
young Lacan.
In this story of Lacan's day at sea, the ideological is present as a thinly
disguised class hostility expressed and enacted in the fisherman's joke.
Under this disguise, ideology functions as a mediating link in a chain of
unconscious associations connecting the primal scene of lack to its subse-
quent repetition in the encounter with the glint of light. In short, the glint
carries ideological traces not as encoded meanings (as Screen theory sug-
gests) but rather through its unconscious associations.
Like children who miss their mothers, the young Lacan sought distrac-
tion from the yawning symbolic void created by the glint of light, a void
that carried unconscious echoes of primary lack. Such distraction, Lacan
tells us, is implemented through entrance to a new pleasurable field of
practices, "the subject's answer to [the] absence ... created on the frontier
of his domain-the edge of his cradle-namely a ditch around which one
can only play at jumping" (Lacan 1981, 62). So, like the child who plays
with a cotton-reel as a pleasant distraction from the absence of the mother,
the young Lacan reacted to his seagoing encounter by squinting, moving
his head from side to side, shielding his eyes, and so on. These openings
104 Socializing the Psychic

and closings of his visual field-looking, looking away, and looking

again-produced a mixture of pleasure/unpleasure characteristic of en-
gagement with the scopic drive (a point to which I return in the next sec-
tion). Here, then, is what distracted the young Lacan from the uncon-
sciously invested recognition of his own bourgeois status as a
well-educated young man en vacances, playing at fishing and "out of
place" in the working-class world of the fishermen whom he called
friends.
In my reconstruction of Lacan's day at sea, ideology functions as a me-
diating link in a chain of unconscious associations between the primal
scene of lack and the glint of light. The chain, in turn, provides a bridge
across which anxiety flows onto the glint of light, thus setting in motion
the anxious movement of the eyes by which the young Lacan seeks relief
from confrontation with the Real. The resultant pleasurable dynamic of
looking and looking again is constitutive of the gaze, revealed here as an
anxiety-provoking but ultimately pleasurable distortion of the young
Lacan' s visual field.
Several key questions remain to be answered. How can this relatively
minor episode in Lacan' s personal history be generalized to provide a
model for more far-reaching psychosocial effects? How, for example, does
Lacan's account of the gaze in the context of his personal and highly idio-
syncratic reaction to a glint of light carry over to the public reception of
mass-mediated imagery? And how does the glint create the feeling of
being under scrutiny characteristic of the gaze: "The can did not see
me ... [but] it was looking at me all the same"? In the next section, as I en-
gage with Silverman's work, I criticize Screen theory's answer to the last
question, and I suggest an alternative. Before doing so, however, it is im-
portant to notice a certain ambiguity which affects the Lacanian concep-
tion of the gaze and is endemic to his writings at large.
In the story of his youthful adventure at sea Lacan locates the gaze
equivocally between the actual upwelling of light, its subjective effects as
a distortion of his visual field, and its objective cause, the glinting surface
of the tin can. In Lacan' s writings, this ambiguity takes the more general
form of an uncertainty about the objet a, of which the gaze is a special case.
Is it a concrete "objective" entity such as the cotton-reel in the famous
Fort-Da game described by Freud, or a field of "subjective" effects con-
structed around a "lost object," such as the absence in the child's life
opened up by loss of access to its mother's breast? Where, in particular,
are we to locate the objet a in the continuum stretching from the breast, a
retrospectively fictionalized cornucopia around which a certain narrative
of lack is constructed, to the concrete objects that are its metaphoric sub-
stitutes? In Chapter 1, I attempted to answer this question in general
 The Ambassador's Body 105

terms, but here, except where clarity of exposition requires, I make no at-
tempt to resolve this creative ambiguity in Lacan's architectonic. In so
doing I follow Lacan's own strategy of refusing to define the objet a (282).

"Being Looked At" by Screen Theory

According to Silverman, and Screen theory more generally, the gaze is a

means of constituting individuals as subjects by "projecting" images onto
them: "the gaze ... has ... power to constitute subjectivity... by pro-
jecting the screen [her term for the image] on to the object.... Just as
Lacan' s infant can see him or herself only through the intervention of an
external image, the gaze can 'photograph' the object only through the grid
of the screen" (Silverman 1992, 150). She also insists, and here she draws a
contrast between herself and Lacan, that images projected by the gaze are
"culturally generated" and in a quite traditional sense "ideological": "Al-
though Four Fundamental Concepts does not do so, it seems to me crucial
that we insist upon the ideological nature of the screen by describing it as
that culturally generated image or repertoire of images through which
subjects are not only constituted, but differentiated in relation to class,
race, sexuality, age, and nationality" (150). 6 In short, for Silverman the
gaze operates like Foucault's panopticon: it is a disciplinary apparatus by
which "subject positions" -that is, socially prescribed images of how to
be a subject-are transmitted to individuals who, in responding to them,
are constituted as subjects.
In the perspective of Screen theory, individuals respond to such images
as if recognizing themselves in a mirror: "That's me, that's who I really
am!" As with specular recognitions in general, however, there is a gap be-
tween the individual and the image. That is, although the process of
looking at the image masquerades as passive, work is always involved in
making the image one's own, so that one sees oneself in the image. This
work and the corresponding gap between image and viewer are erased in
the process of looking, thus retrospectively concealing the constitutive na-
ture of the act of recognition.
The specular recognitions that Screen theory proposes should not be
understood merely as acts of identification with a character or viewing
position encoded in the image. On the contrary, as John Fiske and others
have argued, the viewer is engaged in a complex relation of "implication-

6. The distinction she draws here between her position and Lacan's is an aspect of the crit-
icism of Lacan that I am questioning, namely, a criticism for omitting ideological factors
from the process of constituting subjects.
106 Socializing the Psychic

extrication" with the image, allowing a pleasurable variation between

identification and resistance in relation to its encoded positions (Fiske
1987, 169-178). Even when viewers manage to find points of identification
for themselves within a media text, they do so, Fiske argues, not with en-
coded positions but rather with the "play of similarity and difference
along the axes of nation, race, class, gender, power, work, etc." (178). In
other words, insofar as a viewer's engagement with the text involves an
act of identification, it is a matter of situating oneself within a space of
possible positions, the boundaries of which are established by textually
encoded subject positions.
In short, the recognition "That's me!" involves the more general "That's
where there's a place for me!" rather than simply "That's who I am!" The
experience of being scrutinized, of being "under the gaze," results from
the specular nature of this process, from the fact that in looking at the
image one seems, at least retrospectively, to be looking at oneself; or, more
correctly, one is being looked at from where one has been and, to some ex-
tent, still seems to be.
This second-generation Fiskean Screen theory account of the gaze is
plausible in the case of a range of mass media images, especially adver-
tising. It runs into major difficulties, however, in accounting for the effects
of the glint of light encountered by the young Lacan. Because the glint did
not encrypt an ideologically loaded image with which he could identify, it
is difficult to see how Screen theory can explain the young Lacan' s experi-
ence of being under surveillance, let alone account for the presence of a
gaze. It is true, of course, that the glint did have unconscious associations
with ideological meanings. But such associations are not germane to
Screen theory, which concerns itself only with meanings encoded ac-
cording to generally accepted pictorial conventions rather than amor-
phous glints of light creating unconscious associations in individual
viewers. I suggest an alternative to the Screen theory account, one that not
only does justice to Lacan's story of his youthful adventures at sea but
also explains his feeling of being under scrutiny. This alternative account
is based upon the later Lacan's conception of the gaze as an objet a and
denizen of the Real, rather than Screen theory's specular conception,
which is grounded in the early Lacan' s theory of the mirror stage.

Because of its unconscious resonances, the glint of light distorting the

young Lacan's visual field fascinates him. He steps back and forward,
squinting, refocusing, anxiously changing point of view in order to re-
work what he sees. By inducing him to review what he has seen, the glint
of light creates a split within his point of view. More specifically, in
coming to see the distorted nature of what he sees, he is made aware of
 The Ambassador's Body 107

himself as a viewer, and in that respect he finds himself under scrutiny, a

scrutiny that, although self-induced, appears to come from somewhere
else-from the region of the glint of light. In the same way, when viewers
of a film see a fly bump into the camera lens, they are made aware of
themselves as viewers, as subjects of/to an illusion, which, in turn, means
that they experience themselves as under scrutiny, a self-scrutiny that ap-
pears to come from elsewhere, namely, the direction of the film. In sum,
the experience of being under surveillance is an effect of viewers ad-
justing their sights in response to a failure to see clearly, rather than, as
Screen theory claims, the effect of a specular (mis)recognition in response
to an externally projected image.
The combined seeing and being seen constitutive of the gaze not only
cause the young Lacan' s feeling of being under scrutiny but also cater to
his voyeuristic and exhibitionistic needs to see and be seen. This circula-
tion of satisfactions, according to Lacan, lies at the heart of the scopic
drive, which like all drives (according to Freud) produces pleasure:

You grasp here the ambiguity of what is at issue when we speak of the
scopic drive. The gaze is this object lost and suddenly refound in the con-
flagration of shame, by the introduction of the other. Up to that point what
is the subject trying to see? ... What the voyeur is looking for and finds is
merely a shadow, a shadow behind the curtain .... What one looks at is
what cannot be seen. If, thanks to the introduction of the other, the structure
of the drive appears, it is really completed only in its reversed form ... [i]n
exhibitionism.... It is not only the victim who is concerned in exhibi-
tionism, it is the victim as referred to some other who is looking at him.
(Lacan 1981, 183-184)

Thus the gaze explains not only the young Lacan's feeling of being under
scrutiny but also the pleasure that, distracting him from his anxieties,
transforms the gaze into an object of fascination to which, even as he
squints, he cannot shut his eyes.

My account of the gaze differs from Screen theory's in four key respects.
First, by emphasizing the role of the Real rather than focusing on the
imaginary and symbolic, it refers to Lacan' s later work rather than sharing
Screen theory's preoccupation with his early theory of the mirror phase.
Second, it explains Lacan's seagoing encounter with the glint of light.
Third, it suggests that a gaze carries ideological meanings via chains of
unconscious associations rather than encoding them according to gener-
ally accepted, public conventions. Fourth, by invoking the gaze as the ob-
108 Socializing the Psychic

ject around which the scopic drive turns, it explains the intimate connec-
tion between the gaze and the production of pleasure.
My account of the gaze also fleshes out and generalizes the suggestions
for an interpellative mechanism which I made in the previous chapter.
The gaze, like the antagonism created by the policeman's call, comprises a
formal incoherence which functions as a site of encounter with the Real,
and more specifically a repetition of the primal scene of lack. Whereas the
incoherence associated with antagonisms is constituted directly by con-
tradictions between social meanings, in the case of the gaze the incoher-
ence inheres in a physical disruption of the visual field, which takes on
contradictory ideological meanings via chains of unconscious associa-
tions.

First Gaze

Hans Holbein (the Younger") painted The Ambassadors in 1533, the year
after he settled in England. The picture portrays two Frenchmen: Jean de
Dinteville, seigneur de Polisy (1504-65), and Georges de Selve, bishop of
Lavour (1509-42). The picture was a private commission by de Dinteville
upon the occasion of a secret mission to England by de Selve in support of
his friend de Dinteville, who had been unsuccessfully negotiating on be-
half of the French king with Henry VIII concerning the highly sensitive
question of relations with Rome. (Henry was about to break with the
Catholic Church over the question of his divorce from Catherine of
Aragon and marriage to the already pregnant Anne Boleyn.)
In the lower foreground of the painting is an anamorphically projected
image of a skull, an object which comes into focus only when the viewer
steps to the side of the picture and looks at it awry. Lacan claims that this
distorted image is "the gaze as such, in its pulsatile, dazzling and spread
out function" (Lacan 1981, 89). He contextualizes this assertion with a few
remarks concerning the "furious polemics" to which the production of
anamorphic images gave rise in the sixteenth century, when researches
into geometrical perspective and the invention of Diirer's "window" (the
perspectival device pictured in Diirer' s famous woodcut) enabled the de-
velopment of mechanical techniques for perspectival painting.
What justifies the claim that Holbein's anamorphic image of the skull
constitutes a gaze in Lacan's sense of the term? And for which viewers
does it constitute a gaze? More specifically, how can we make the transi-
tion Lacan suggests from the blinding effects of the glint of light upon the
young Lacan during his day at sea to the visual impact of formal tensions
in Holbein's portrait upon its various and varied historical viewers?
 The Ambassador's Body 109

Rather than focus exclusively upon the skull image, as Lacan does, I turn
first to two other less remarked formal elements in the painting which, I
argue, also constitute potential sites for a gaze.
The art critic and historian John Berger points out that The Ambassadors
dates from the inception of the tradition of oil painting on canvas in
Northern Europe circa 1500. It also coincided with the beginnings of the
free market for art, which gradually came to displace the medieval pa-
tronage system through which artists earned their living (Berger 1972, 84).
Gold leaf and expensive pigments became de rigeur for the artist-
craftsman as paintings themselves became costly objects, sought after by a
new class of connoisseurs and entrepreneurs with an eye for expensive
materials rather than a predilection for classical allusions.
The oil painting was valued not only for the intrinsic value of its mate-
rials but also for what it represented. Berger cites Claude Levi-Strauss on
this point: "Rich Italian merchants looked upon painters as agents, who
allowed them to confirm their possession of all that was beautiful and de-
sirable in the world. The picture ... represented a kind of microcosm in
which the proprietor recreated within easy reach and in as real form as
possible, all ... to which he was attached" (86).7 In order to "recreat[e]
within easy reach and in as real form as possible" those things to which
the nouveaux riches were attached, the oil painting mediated the connec-
tion between representation and represented in a new way. A new realistic
style of painting simulated not only the look but also the tactility of sur-
faces, "importuning the sense of touch," as Berger remarks in connection
with The Ambassadors:

Every square inch of the surface of this painting, whilst remaining purely
visual, appeals to, importunes the sense of touch. The eye moves from fur
to silk to metal to marble to paper to felt, and each time what the eye per-
ceives is already translated, within the painting itself, into the language of
tactile sensation .... Except for the faces and hands, there is not a surface in
this picture which does not make one aware of how it has been elaborately
worked over-by weavers, embroiderers, carpet-makers, goldsmiths,
leather workers, mosaic-makers, furriers, tailors, jewellers. (go)

The art historian Jurgis Baltrusaitis indicates that in the case of The Am-
bassadors the "realism" of this new style of painting verges upon the ex-
cessive: "Everything is so realistic as to verge on the unreal. The numbers,

7· The painting itself, as a commodified object, thus became an apt subject of representa-
tion. The many paintings of paintings from this period indicate this dual role of the
painting as both representation and represented (Berger 1972, 85-87).
110 Socializing the Psychic

the letters, the globes, the texture of the clothes are almost deceptively life-
like. Everything is astonishingly present and mysteriously true to life. The
exactness of every contour, every reflection, every shadow extends be-
yond the material it represents. The whole painting is conceived as a
trompe l'oeil" (Baltrusaitis 1976, 93). The excess of realism is not like these-
lective magnification of individual details in naif paintings. 8 Instead, a
subtle plethora of small details is twinned with overly sharp visual defin-
ition, with the result that even from a distance a dense panorama of folds
and textures is revealed which could-in reality-only be seen upon
much closer inspection. In Susan Stewart's useful terminology, the result
of such excess is "to increase not realism but the unreal effect of the real . ...
It does not tell us enough and yet it tells us too much" (Stewart 1993,
26-27).9 Such a hyperrealistic style provides a vehicle for an abstract form
of representation which Jean Baudrillard calls the "simulacrum," that is, a
simulation that, unlike imitation, depends for its effect upon acknowl-
edging its own status as an appearance. 10 In particular, admitting its de-
ceptive nature by an exaggerated, hyperrealistic form, The Ambassadors
signals that its painted surfaces are, so to speak, "too good to be true."
Like another Renaissance genre of painting, that of trompe l'oeil, it capti-
vates us by acknowledging and playing with its own deceptive nature:
"What is it that attracts and satisfies us in trompe l'oeil? When is it that it
captures out attention and delights us? At the moment when, by a mere
shift of our gaze, we are able to realize that the representation does not
move with the gaze and that it is merely trompe l'oeil" (Lacan 1981, 112).
Certain elements in Holbein's painting, specifically the flat, lackluster
rendering of the flesh of the ambassadors, violate the form of the simu-
lacrum, however: "Every square inch of the surface of this painting, whilst
remaining purely visual, appeals to, importunes, the sense of touch ....
Except for the faces and hands, there is not a surface in this picture which
does not make one aware of how it has been elaborately worked over"
(Berger 1972, go, my emphasis). Recent restoration work has established
that the contrast between the image of the ambassadors' flesh and other

8. I have in mind here the naif paintings of trees which show a whole tree while impos-
sibly distinguishing between individual leaves.
9· Note that the excess which I am alluding to here is not merely a matter of more detail
coming to light as the viewer moves closer to the painting. On the contrary, by including
detail that remains invisible until one moves in close, a painting may merely simulate re-
ality to the point where approaching it, like getting closer to objects in real life, reveals
more to the eye. Rather, the excess I have in mind involves the painting's hyperrealistic
quality, which works against any "reality effect."
10. Baudrillard 1983, 150. Thus the simulacrum differs from other types of simulation,
such as the fake, which conceal their status as appearances.
 The Ambassador's Body 111

elements in the picture is the result of variations in the mixture of paints.

Dinteville' s tunic, for example, is rendered vividly in a glossy layer of
lampblack in oil with additions of pine resin. Grey, formed by working a
little lead white into the wet paint, is employed only sparsely in highlights
to relieve the basic black of the tunic. By contrast, the mid-grey primer
shows through the top layer of paint in which the faces of the ambas-
sadors are rendered, producing what Susan Foister, Ashok Roy, and
Martin Wyld (1997, 83) refer to as a "slight deadening effect." The ren-
dering of the hands, using a warm white-vermilion mix muted with a
cooler shadow paint, produces a similar "deadening effect."
Interestingly the techniques for rendering flesh in The Ambassadors
differ from those applied in other well-known paintings executed by Hol-
bein in the 1530s. In the famous portrait Christina of Denmark (1538), the
face and hands take on a pale luminous quality as the paint is worked
thinly without the usual grey priming layer, while in the portrait of Her-
mann Wedigh (1532) the face is thickly painted in a high pinkish tone, in
small, smoothly blended brushstrokes (Foister, Roy, and Wyld 1997, 83).
In the context of these other paintings and of the hyperrealistic style of
most of the canvas, the image of flesh in The Ambassadors is an exception,
indeed a point of resistance, to the simulacra! form of representation char-
acteristic not only of this painting but also of Holbein's contemporaneous
works. 11

Marx points out that goods involved in capitalist form of exchange appear
to have a "real" or "intrinsic" value and that this value has material effects
upon the lives of both buyers and sellers, even when they realize that talk
of such value is a fiction. Customers thus treat the "value" of a commodity
as if it were a real, intrinsic property even when they know that it is an ar-
tifice created through the processes of exchange (.Zizek 1989, 31). In short,
the commodity too takes on the form of a simulacrum.

11. The contrasting visual definition between the ambassadors' flesh and other objects in
the picture such as clothing is reinforced by an uncertainty about how well the ambas-
sadors fill their roles. They carry their finery as if it were made for them. They are, as
Berger says, "confident" and "relaxed" with each other (Berger 1972, 94). But this impres-
sion determined by their bodily deportment is in tension with a certain "wariness" that
the figures display in their look toward the viewer (97). Thus an element of uncertainty is
introduced. Are their gorgeous clothes a tribute to "natural" ambassadorial qualities or
merely outward show? Are the men, as represented by their flesh, equal to their clothes or
is it rather the clothes which make the men? The uncertainty internal to the picture's rep-
resentations captures nicely the personal difficulties and lack of success attending de Din-
teville's ambassadorial mission. In a letter of 23 May 1533 he writes: "I am the most
melancholy, weary and wearisome ambassador that ever was seen" (Foister, Roy, and
Wyld 1997, 16).
112 Socializing the Psychic

As such, any point of resistance to the simulacra! form also constitutes a

site of resistance to the commodity form. This, in turn, means that the
image of the naked faces and hands of the ambassadors constituted a site
at which one of the forms governing the capitalist relations of exchange
central to the lives of the bulk of Holbein's contemporaries broke down. At
an abstract structural level, this breakdown in social relations resembled
the failure to relate to others that, according to Lacan, haunts all human
existence from its earliest moments. This resemblance, as in the story of
the sardine can, opened the possibility of an unconscious, metaphoric
connection between the image of the ambassadors' flesh and the primal
scene of lack. For viewers who made such a connection, the image of the
flesh functioned as a repetition in the Freudian sense and thus as a site to
which unrealistic anxiety attached. For such viewers, the image of the am-
bassadors' flesh took on the status of a gaze, that is, a point invested with
unrealistic anxiety where the perceptual symbolic order falters. As in the
case of the glint of light that blinded the young Lacan, ideological factors
contributed to the unconscious connection along which anxiety traveled
in order to invest this element of the painting as a gaze.

Second Sight

A second gaze, also ideologically mediated, haunts Holbein's painting,

unsettling the spectator's attempt to find a proper distance from which to
view the canvas. With the exception of the ambassadorial flesh, all,the
items pictured are goods on display, crying out to be touched: "The sur-
face verisimilitude of the oil painting tends to make the viewer assume
that he is close to-within touching distance of-any object in the fore-
ground of the picture" (Berger 1972, 97).U Yet the conventions of
sixteenth-century public portraiture, exemplified by Holbein's painting,
insisted on a formal distance between sitter and viewer. To this end, the
ambassadors look "aloof and wary.... The presence of kings and em-
perors had once impressed in a similar way.... Equality must be made in-
conceivable" (97). Berger argues that "it is this [distance] and not technical
inability on the part of the painter-which makes the average portrait of
the tradition appear stiff and rigid" (97). Renaissance portraiture, he

12. This cry is more by way of a hysterical seduction than an open invitation, since a pro-
hibition to touch ("Don't touch the merchandise") often extends up to the moment of pur-
chase, which thus takes on the magical quality of a honeymoon. The function of the prohi-
bition is not only to heighten the emotional investment in the act of purchase but also to
defer the always disappointing moment when the purchase is complete and the goods are
transformed into possessions.
 The Ambassador's Body 113

claims, "never resolved" this difficulty in establishing a psychological dis-

tance from the viewer (98). In the case of The Ambassadors the difficulty is
reinforced by a formal tension between the nearly life-size scale of the fig-
ures of the ambassadors, which implies a distant viewing position, and
the details on their clothing, which entail a view from closer in.
A similar unsettling of viewer position is evident in the grotesque series
of images painted by Arcimboldo in the late sixteenth century. From close
up, Arcimboldo's paintings appear as chaotic juxtapositions of realisti-
cally painted images of pieces of fruit, flowers, instruments of war, and so
on. By contrast, from a distance the individual images are seen to be ele-
ments of a human face. Thus, simply by changing position, viewers cause
an incongruous jump from one domain of reality to another, from veg-
etable to mari, for instance. The different domains of reality are held to-
gether by an aesthetic logic internal to each painting: the face titled
"Spring" is made up of fresh fruits, and so on through all the seasons, a
logic which the paintings' relations to each other confirm. The coexistence
of these different levels of reality within one painting unsettles the viewer
position. So, for example, it is impossible to determine whether the
painting "Spring" should be viewed close up, so that individual pieces of
fruit come into view, or from a distance, when the face of Spring appears.
As in trompe l'oeil, the charm of the painting arises precisely from moving
between the two perspectives.
The difficulty in determining an appropriate distance from which to
view paintings such as these reflects a real contradiction within the social
relational field characteristic of sixteenth-century European merchant cap-
italism. By dint of their occupation, merchants counted as commoners. By
establishing a personalized system of exchange as well as commonality of
interest with their quality customers, however, they created a superior
status for themselves. This contradiction was an aspect of a more general
set of tensions created at all levels of class structure by a radical expansion
of the activities of the market. In principle at least, everyone was free to
buy what they liked from whomever they liked, and, as money and goods
changed hands, different social strata interacted, approaching each other
in unaccustomed, personal ways.
The formal difficulty in settling upon a distance from which to view
Holbein's painting echoed or, as Marx would say, "reflected" these ideo-
logical difficulties which viewers experienced in establishing a position
for themselves in the new social space created by the expansion of the
market. At a structural level, this difficulty resembled the primal difficulty
individuals experienced in finding a place for themselves in the world of
others. Insofar as, for some viewers, this resemblance became the basis for
an unconscious connection, unrealistic anxiety attached to their difficul-
114 Socializing the Psychic

ties in settling upon a viewing position, which thus took on the dimen-
sions of a gaze. Like the gaze associated with the image of the ambas-
sadors' flesh, this gaze was constituted through an ideologically mediated
connection.
It may be objected that the formal difficulty in establishing a viewing
position to which I have alluded is more a matter of the picture violating
an aesthetic convention than an "objective distortion" of the sort dis-
played by the glint of light in the story of the young Lacan's fishing trip.
The key issue, however, is not the origin of such visual effects but rather
their function: in unsettling the observer's visual field such effects create
conditions for a gaze. Such unsettling may happen as readily in response
to violations of aesthetic preferences as more "objective" forms of distor-
tion. In other words, viewers' purely "subjective" aesthetic response may
precipitate a faltering of their visual field that is no less effective from the
point of view of creating a gaze than the visual disruption created by an
"objective" glint of light. Lacan may be seen as making exactly this point
in juxtaposing his little story of a day at sea to an account of the "subjec-
tive" distortions created by "those little blues, those little browns, those
little whites ... that fall like rain from the painter's brush" (Lacan 1981,
11o--the reference here is to Cezanne)P

The Third Eye

The bulk of objects pictured in The Ambassadors-navigational instru-

ments, a book of arithmetic, a lute, and so on-are drawn in linear, single-
point perspective, properly viewed from the front of the picture. The
image of the skull, by contrast, is brought into focus only through surren-
dering a frontal view and moving to the side of the picture-putting the
ambassadors to one side, so to speak. Thus the frontal viewpoint brings
into focus the mundane ambitions and achievements of man-commer-
cial, cultural, scientific, and religious-while the lateral view brings into
focus death and the end to earthly vanities.
By situating the image of the skull, a traditional memento mori, in formal
opposition to images of objects symbolizing worldly activities and aspira-
tions, Holbein's painting evokes a traditional contrast between death and
mundane ambition. The opposition is no sooner presented than it is un-
dermined. The rich tones of the silver cross, symbolic of resurrection and

13. He also juxtaposes this account of the gaze with descriptions of "natural" or "objec-
tive" effects such as snakes dropping their scales, birds their feathers, and trees their
leaves (114).
 The Ambassador's Body 115

eternal life, half hidden behind the curtain against which the ambassadors
stand, suggest that life ("real" life) resides on the side of overcoming
worldly ambitions. 14 The dead quality of the ambassadors' flesh comple-
ments this suggestion by hinting that death ("real" death) lurks under the
rich vestments of the ambassadors.
In this way, Holbein's painting recapitulates the Renaissance theme of
the Vanities, which ran through the work of Holbein's humanist contem-
poraries such as Cornelius Agrippa, Sir Thomas More, and Erasmus of
Rotterdam, the latter two of whom were patrons as well as important in-
tellectual sources for Holbein.l 5 Man's real life, they said, lies not in the
flesh but in the transcendence of worldly temptation.
Holbein's painting thus anticipates the moral of Lacan' s nice discussion
of the forced choice ''Your money or your life." Lacan points out that there
is no real choice here since to die means giving up your money in any case
(212). Holbein's picture hints at a similar deadlock. If, like the ambas-
sadors in Holbein's painting, man depends upon observation and rea-
soning (including philosophical theology) as the path to knowledge, then
he cannot understand death, since to do so requires experiencing it per-
sonally, thus leaving behind not only the world but also all possibility of
understanding. In the end it seems there is no choice about knowing
death: the death's-head must escape comprehension. Perhaps that is why
the ambassadors look so wary, their eyes missing not only the skull before
them but also the crucifix behind them. If they ever get to the point of
knowing death, then, like the viewers who move sideways in order to
look awry at the image of the skull, they too will have fallen off the edge
of the picture.
According to humanism, the way out of this deadlock is for man to give
up vain and foolish dependence upon his own limited techniques for
gathering knowledge, and instead place faith in the word of God. Cor-
nelius Agrippa eloquently puts forth this view in the conclusion to his
Declamatio: "For the word of God is the way, the rule, and the target at
which, whoever does not wish to err should aim, and thus attain the truth.
All other knowledge is at the mercy of time and oblivion and will perish;
for all the sciences and the arts will vanish away and others will replace
them." 16

14. A cross hidden behind the curtain was a traditional symbol in sixteenth-century
iconography. The curtain represented the veil of appearances, hiding the truth and the
light (Baltrusaitis 1976, 100).
15. On these points see Baltrusaitis 1976, chap. 7, which Lacan cites as his source on these
matters.
16. H. C. Agrippa, De incertitudine et vanitate scientarum et artium atque excellencia verbi
Declamatio, Antwerp, 1530; cited in Baltrusaitis 1976,100.
116 Socializing the Psychic

This humanist position, at which Holbein's picture hints by its inver-

sion of the traditional opposition between life and death, contradicts an
ideology in terms of which the daily lives of a key segment of Holbein's
audience were structured. The field of social practices integral to the new
form of merchant capitalism involved a radical expansion of man's access
to and domestication of the world around him. The ambassadors repre-
sented in Holbein's picture typified the new class of men who lived by
and promoted these new possibilities. As Berger puts it, they "were con-
vinced that theworld was there to furnish their residence in it" (Berger
1972, 96). The objects surrounding them-instruments for navigation and
tools of the arts and sciences-symbolized these enhanced capacities for
knowledge and control. All visible things were to be comprehended in
human terms. Nothing, however different or alien it appeared, was per-
mitted to escape the symbolic net constituted by scientific, theological,
and cultural knowledges. The catch-phrase "man is the measure of all
things" captured the spirit of this new ideology.
But this ideology, as humanism pointed out, could not accommodate
death. Death fell outside human understanding, belonging to what Lacan,
in his reworking of Freud's analysis of the dream of the burning child, de-
scribes as a "rupture between perception and consciousness" (Lacan 1981,
56)P Thus the image of the skull functioned doubly as a transgressive el-
ement. First, as an anamorphosis, it transgressed the conventions of
single-point linear perspective implemented elsewhere in the picture.
Second, it symbolized death, which transgressed the "man is the mea-
sure" ideology by which an important segment of Holbein's audience
lived. By evoking human mortality as well as being anamorphotic, the
image of the skull, metonymically linked death and anamorphosis.
But death threatened the integrity of the forms of daily life, not be-
cause life opposed death (on the contrary, humanism interrogated this
simplistic opposition) but rather because the daily round of activities was
structured in terms of an ideology ("man is the measure") which could
not accommodate death. Thus the death's-head image bore a structural re-
semblance to the primal scene of lack, because it also threatened the in-
tegrity of subjects' lives. In this case too, then, a possibility exists of an ide-
ologically mediated chain of unconscious associations between the primal
scene and a formal element of the painting, namely, the anamorphosis. In-
sofar as this possibility was realized for particular viewers, the image of

17. Baltrusaitis argues that the existence of death as a limit to human understanding con-
stituted a contradiction within humanist writings that paired a commitment to man's
ability to acquire knowledge with a religiously inspired skepticism associated with the
doctrine of the Fall.
 The Ambassador's Body 117

the skull became a site of unrealistic anxiety, and thus took on the dimen-
sions of the gaze, a physical disruption of their visual field that, via its as-
sociations, provoked an encounter with the Real.

In this chapter my brief has been purely explanatory: to advance a plau-

sible mechanism by which, through unconscious associations, formal ten-
sions within The Ambassadors produce the effects of a gaze in Lacan' s sense
of the term. 18 Because the associations in question are ideologically medi-
ated, the existence of the relevant gaze is historically contingent and may,
indeed, vary from viewer to viewer, depending upon his or her particular
position on the ideological horizon. This argument demonstrates that al-
though Lacan himself may fail to historicize the construction of the gaze
in particular cases, his general theoretical views do not preclude such a
possibility. Despite its modesty, this conclusion suffices as a means of re-
futing critics, such as Silverman, who accuse Lacan of proposing concep-
tions of the gaze and subjectivity which leave no space for ideological or
historically contingent effects in their constitution.
This is not to say that my analysis is uncritical of Lacan. On the contrary,
I disagree with his sweeping claims concerning the existence, extent, and
source of the gaze for particular visual objects. Specifically, I disagree with
his implicit claim that all (or nearly all-"nine out of ten," as Althusser
might say) who look at The Ambassadors experience it looking back at
them, that the gaze of this painting is, as it were, an objective structure on
view for all to see. I also argue against Lacan that formal devices other
than the anamorphic image of the skull may function as sources for this
painting's gaze.
Although my account allows that the gaze of a particular painting af-
fects some viewers but not others, it does not explain how and why this
happens. In particular, like Althusser, I have offered no account of what
distinguishes the "one out of ten" who, according to Althusser, fails to at-
tend to the policeman's call. Nor have I discussed how interpellation op-
erates in linguistic rather than visual contexts. In the next two chapters I
begin an exploration of how these questions might be addressed by
tracing the effects of the gaze upon particular members of the readership
for two written texts, Robert Boyle's New Experiments Physical Mechanical
and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

18. My analysis fails to predict which of the painting's formal elements are responsible for
its gaze and who will feel its effects. Such predictive failur~r, as Karl Popper would call
it, "unfalsifiability"-is characteristic of Freudian analyses and the Geisteswissenschaften
more generally. Despite Popper's arguments, this unfalsifiability is not an epistemic de-
fect, since for all such disciplines explanatory power rather than predictive success or
technical control is the episternically relevant value.
 7
The Vice of the Virtual Witness

SIR FORMAL TRIFLE: Upon my sincerity, I wholly eschew all oratory and
compliments with persons of your worth and generosity. And though I must con-
fess upon due occasions I am extremely delighted with those pretty, spruce expres-
sions wherewith wit and eloquence use to trick up human thoughts, and with the
gaudy dress that smoother pens so finely clothe them in, yet I never use the least
tincture of rhetoric with my friends, which I hope you'll do me the honor to let me
call you. (Aside) I think I am florid.
Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso

Boyle's New Experiment

R obert Boyle, born in 1626, youngest son of the earl of Cork, was a bril-
liant scientific experimentalist, an accomplished man of letters, and a
key member of the early Royal Society. Boyle's Law, which proposes are-
lation of inverse proportionality between the pressure and volume of a
gas, was discovered by and named after him. It continues as a topic of
high-school physics texts today. Boyle was also responsible for the devel-
opment of the air pump, a major tool of the new experimental sciences in
the seventeenth century. The breadth and quality of his experimental
work in pneumatics, chemistry, and other areas of the natural sciences
were admired by contemporaries at home and abroad. For example, after
having read Boyle's latest "chymical" work while boating up the Thames,
Samuel Pepys writes: "I can understand but little of it, but enough to see
that he is a most excellent man" (Diary, June 2, 1667). Upon reading
Boyle's Hydrostatical Paradoxes Made Out by New Experiments for the Most
Part Physical and Easy, Pepys' s reaction was even more flattering, referring
to the work as "of infinite delight" (Hall1966, 166).
Such admiration was, however, neither universal nor unqualified. On
the contrary, the fun poked at the scientific experimentalist Sir Nicholas
Gimcrack in Thomas Shadwell's play The Virtuoso (1667) suggests that the

119
120 Socializing the Psychic

work of the Royal Society, especially of its amateur correspondents, was

the target of public ridicule. Pepys's diary entry for February 1, 1664, re-
ports a visit to the duke's chamber where the king spent "an hour or two
laughing ... at Gresham College. . . . Gresham College he mightily
laughed at, for spending time only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing
else since they sat" (Shadwell 1966, xxi). In the context of such royal
amusement the note of qualification sounded in the first of Pepys's re-
marks cited above ("I can understand but little of it") takes on added sig-
nificance. Boyle's practical work may well have been admired by many,
such as Pepys (who consulted Boyle about a pair of spectacles), but it
seems that Boyle's writing left something to be desired.
In 1659 Boyle wrote a monograph, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical,
describing experiments performed by him over the preceding two years.
The book appeared in 166o as his first published scientific work. Part of its
novelty lay in its prose style when describing experiments:

We then took a lamb's bladder large, well dried, and very limber, and
leaving in it about half as much air as it could contain, we caused the neck
of it to be strongly tied .... This bladder being conveyed into the receiver,
and the cover luted on, the pump was set on work, and after two or three
exsuctions ... the imprisoned air began to swell in the bladder ... [and] be-
fore we had exhausted the receiver near so much as we could, the bladder
appeared as full and stretched, as if it had been blown up with a quill.
(quoted in Hall1966, 326)

Boyle continued to employ and develop this style of writing in subsequent

books, which he published at the rate of about one a year until his death in
16g1. The style was, he confessed, "prolix" as well as "circumstantial," that is,
unfashionably verbose and characterized by a proliferation of small, appar-
ently inessential details: "I have declined that succinct way of writing ...
[and] delivered things, to make them seem more clear, in such a multitude of
words, that I now seem even to myself to have been in divers places guilty of
verbosity'' (Proemial Essay, quoted in Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 63).
Like the metaphysical poets (John Donne, George Herbert, and Boyle's
contemporaries Andrew Marvell, Thomas Wilmot, and Henry Vaughan)
Boyle employed a hypotactically complex prose: long, winding sentences
punctuated by nested layers of appositive subordinate clauses, which
Boyle himself describes unflatteringly as "making sometimes my periods
or parentheses over-long" (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 63-64). 1

1. See Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 64 n. 86, for the relation between Boyle's prose and
Dryden's.
 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 121

Also like the metaphysical poets, Boyle employed a "simple and pure,"
even home-spun, vocabulary grounded in observation (Eliot 1972, 285),
although Boyle's references to mundane objects, unlike those of the poets,
were not to be interpreted metaphorically. Indeed, he eschewed all
metaphoric inflation of meaning. As he says in the Proemial Essay, he re-
jects a "florid" and "rhetorical strain" in favor of a "naked way of writing"
(Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 66). Even the similes he employed-for ex-
ample, "as if it had been blown up with a quill"-were firmly rooted in fa-
miliar, observable phenomena.
The experimental accounts often appeared in the first person, as if re-
counting a sequence of personally experienced events: "We carefully
weighed out a small lump of our shining matter, amounting to three grains,
and having purposely broken it into divers lesser fragments, perhaps six or
seven at least, we laid them upon a flat bottomed glass, that was broader at
the top than the bottom, and shallow too (not being near an inch deep) that
the matter might be more fully exposed to free air. This glass we placed in a
South window, laying it very shelving" (Icy Noctiluca, 1681, quoted in Hall
1966, 317). But variations on this basic style also occurred throughout
Boyle's writings, for instance, imperative or impersonal styles of narration:
"Take good syrup of violets, impregnated with the tincture of the flowers,
drop a little of it upon a white paper (for by that means the change of colour
will be more conspicuous and the experiment may be practised in smaller
quantities) and on this liquor let fall two or three drops of spirit either of salt
or vinegar" (Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, 1664, quoted in
Hall1966, 292). On occasions such descriptions were focalized through the
eyes of a first-person narrator; in other instances through the eyes of an ef-
faced, external narrator, as in the Homeric tradition of mimesis described by
Eric Auerbach: "Fully externalized description, uniform illumination, unin-
terrupted connection, free expression, all events in the foreground, dis-
playing unmistakable meanings, few elements of historical development
and of psychological perspective" (Auerbach 1968, 23). In all variants, how-
ever, whatever their syntactic or narrative form, the experimental accounts
seemed grounded directly in the author-narrator's personal observation of
experiments that he had conducted or supervised personally.
The effect of such dry and convoluted prose focused through the eye of
a single observer was to conjure up images directly in the mind's eye of
the reader, as if they were seeing or, better, remembering seeing the exper-
iments for themselves. As Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer put it, the
descriptions transformed readers into "virtual witnesses," that is,
"trigger[ed] in the reader's mind a naturalistic image of the experimental
scene" so that "it would be as if that reader had been present at the pro-
ceedings" (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 6o, 62-63).
122 Socializing the Psychic

Boyle's prose not only produced an illusion of reality. It was also persua-
sive; it created belief in the appearances conjured in the mind's eye. To this
end, it incorporated several traditional rhetorical devices: the familiar trope of
descriptio (detailed description) but also, in order to enhance authorial ethos, a
wordy display of modesty ("I cannot but fear that my discourses ... want
many choice things wherewith the learned writings of others might have en-
riched or embellished them") as well as selfless concern for the reader: "I
thought I might do the generality of my readers no unacceptable piece of ser-
vice, by so punctually relating what I carefully observed that they ... need
not reiterate themselves an experiment to have as distinct an idea of it"
(preface to New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, quoted in Hall1g66, 328, 325).
In short, "Boyle's texts were constructed so as to provide a source of virtual
witness that was agreed to be reliable." As Shapin and Schaffer observe, the
aim was to write "experimental reports in the correct way [so that] the reader
could take on trust that these things happened" (1985, 62, 61, my emphases).
The first-person form of Boyle's narratives aided in this rhetorical func-
tion. By making the words of the text appear as their author's personal
testimony, Boyle's standing as a gentleman of high moral character and a
brilliant scientist could be marshaled in support of his text. In this context,
as Shapin argues, Boyle's exemplary life and personage took on the di-
mensions of a rhetorical artifact (1994, 127, 185).
The persuasive function of Boyle's text was augmented by eschewing
the traditional scholastic philosophy of essences in favor of a more "com-
monsense" empiricist ontology restricting reality to what was empirically
accessible. This modest metaphysics (the end of metaphysics, some would
say) foreshadowed Hume's skeptical repudiation of all that is neither "ab-
stract reasoning concerning quantity and number" nor "experimental rea-
soning concerning matter of fact and existence."
The distinctive nature of Boyle's prose is illuminated by a useful oppo-
sition introduced by W. J. T. Mitchell, between what he calls "realism" and
"illusionism":

Illusionism is the capacity of pictures to deceive ... or otherwise take

power over a beholder; in ... trompe l'oeil ... for instance, the point is to
provide a simulation of the presence of objects ... to trigger a responsive
experience in the beholder. Realism, by contrast, is associated with the ca-
pacity of pictures to show the truth about things. It doesn't take power over
the observer's eye so much as stands in for it, offering a transparent
window onto reality, an embodiment of a socially authorized and credible
"eyewitness" perspective. The spectator of the realist representation is not
supposed to be under the power of the representation, but to be using rep-
resentation in order to take power over the world. (Mitchel11994, 325)
 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 123

In terms of this distinction, the literary project of mimesis chronicled by

Auerbach was concerned with illusionism rather than realism. Boyle's
project involved both illusionism and realism. As Shapin and Schaffer
point out, these two aspects were not independent. Illusion was supposed
to take on a persuasive role, thus contributing to the text's realism in
Mitchell's sense of the term.
Boyle was neither frank nor clear about the role of such realism in his
project. And for good reason. Admitting the persuasive function of his
prose style would have meant exposing it to the criticism that highly em-
bellished styles of writing and rhetoric generally attracted. Such criticism
is exemplified by the following remarks by Francis Bacon, spiritual father
of the Royal Society: "An affectionate study of eloquence and copie of
speech ... grew speedily to an excess ... ; men began to hunt more after
words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase ... and the
sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works
with tropes and figures, than the weight of the matter" (Bacon 1996, 139).
Although he goes on to say: "But yet notwithstanding it [rhetoric] is a
thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even
of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution." In short, it is
excess of rhetoric rather than rhetoric as such that is to be eschewed.
The introduction to Thomas Sprat's commissioned History of the Royal So-
ciety also denounced "Eloquence as a thing fatal to Peace and good Man-
ners." And even among critics of the Royal Society, a strong distrust of ex-
cessive rhetoric was apparent. Indeed, the high-flown orator was
sufficiently a figure of disrepute to make a theatrical appearance. Sir Formal
Trifle, a character in Shadwell's The Virtuoso, provided a butt for criticizing
excessive use of rhetoric: "Is there so great a rascal upon earth as an orator,
that would slur and top upon our understandings and impose his false con-
ceits for true reasoning and his florid words for good sense?" (1, i, 236-239).
Such criticism of the abuse of rhetoric extended to all verbal techniques
of persuasion. Bacon, for example, criticized the a priori philosophizing of
the Schoolmen-Aristotelians, Platonists, and so on-who sought to per-
suade purely by the presentation of grand metaphysical schemes without
recourse to experience (what Bacon called "experiment").2 The latter criti-
cism was also taken up by the Royal Society, as evidenced by Boyle's im-
plicit criticism of mathematicians: "I am to excuse myself to mathematical
readers. For some of them, I fear, will not like, that I should offer for
proofs such physical experiments, as do not always demonstrate the
things, they would evince, with a mathematical certainty" (Hydrostatical

2. In the seventeenth century, the meanings of "experience" and "experiment" were not
yet fully distinguished in the modem way.
124 Socializing the Psychic

Paradoxes Made Out by New Experiments for the Most Part Physical and Easy,
quoted in Hall1966, 170). In place of purely verbal mathematical demon-
stration, Boyle offered "experimental proof."
Concern over the abuse of ornamental devices in speech was reinforced
by Puritan rejection of all kinds of decoration. Such concern constituted a
key element in a Restoration sensibility that proper modesty-"prudence"
or "civility,'' as Shapin calls it-should rule in all things: "courtesy texts re-
peatedly counseled gentle readers, if they wished to be credible, to perform
their relations without boasting, passion, or pedantry" (Shapin 1994, 221).
Such advice left considerable scope for legitimate applications of
rhetoric, as exemplified both by Bacon's highly rhetorical polemics on be-
half of science as well as by pedagogical and polemical passages in
Boyle's writings. Bacon went so far as to accord an important place to
rhetoric both in the art of invention and in countering the seditious influ-
ence of the affections (in the "coloring of the worse") (Bacon 1996, 239).3
Sir William Petty, an important member of the Royal Society, also ac-
corded a key place to rhetoric in the process of education (Petty 1927,
2:3-8). Even Sprat, who polemicized against rhetoric in his History of the
Royal Society, allowed a ·place for rhetoric in literature, asserting that the
new experimental philosophy would offer literary language a rich new
field for constructing similes and comparisons (Sprat 1667, 324, 414-417).
Within scientific writing itself, however, rhetoric was to be avoided: ob-
servation together with reason (albeit without the formal excesses of the
"mathematicians") were to be the grounding principles of scientific be-
lief.4 Why, then, did Boyle transgress these principles by creating a new
rhetorical style of writing, and how did he cope with the fact of his trans-
gression? These questions set the agenda for the remainder of this chapter.

Explaining Virtual Witness

In Boyle's period, the gathering of testimony by reputable witnesses

was a crucial step in authorizing claims of all kinds, religious, legal, and
scientific: "In Chancery no less than at common law rank counted: the

3· See also Bacon 1996, 139, 140, 190, 21o-219, 223-224, 237-241.
4· Bacon's instructions for constructing his tables of positive and negative instances in-
cluded specifying honestly "whether the author was a vain-speaking and light person, or
sober and severe" (Preparative towards a Natural and Experimental History, quoted Shapin
1994, 222). Following this Baconian principle, Boyle specified that "cited Testimonies
ought to be considerately and candidly deliver' d," and he questioned reports delivered in
a "dogmatical," "violent," or "confident" manner (Use of Reason and Natural Philosophy;
unpublished Boyle Papers, quoted in Shapin 1994, 222).
 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 125

word of a gentleman of good standing would be accepted against that of a

maidservant even if supported by other witnesses" (Hill1987 269). Not
only the reputation but also the number of witnesses was important: "For,
though the testimony of a single witness shall not suffice to prove the ac-
cused party guilty of murder; yet the testimony of two witnesses, though
but of equal credit ... shall ordinarily suffice" (Boyle, Some Considerations
about Reason and Religion, quoted in Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 56).
Boyle multiplied witnesses for his experimental claims by performing
experiments in a social space, namely, the Royal Society's assembly rooms
at Gresham College, London, to which access was monitored by keeping a
register "to be sign' d by a certain Number of the Persons present, who
have been present, and Witnesses of all the said Proceedings, who, by Sub-
scribing their Names, will prove undoubted testimony'' (Hooke, Philosoph-
ical Investigations and Observations, quoted in Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 58).
Boyle's reports often incorporated lists of witnesses together with their cre-
dentials: "those excellent and deservedly famous Mathematics Professors,
Dr. Wallis, Dr. Ward, and Mr. Wren ... whom I name, both as justly
counting it an honour to be known to them, and as being glad of such judi-
cious and illustrious witnesses of our experiment" (New Experiments,
quoted in Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 58). Elsewhere Boyle invoked a more
highly born witness: "the experiment having been tried both before our
whole Society, and very critically, by its royal founder, his majesty himself"
(Hydrostatical Discourse, quoted in Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 218). Such
records indicate that in the scientific arena, no less than at law, questions of
who was a witness in good standing reproduced "the social and moral ac-
counting systems of Restoration England" (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 59).
As Christopher Hill has pointed out, however, the tradition of legiti-
mating beliefs by citing witnesses of good reputation was under consider-
able pressure in Restoration England. Protestant views insisted that per-
sonal witness, not the opinion of religious authorities, was the proper
path to knowledge of God. Experience, not the word of others, however
reputable, was to be the touchstone for a person's knowledge claims:
"Thomas Collier, preaching to the Army at Putney in 1647, offered to con-
firm one of his points from Scripture, 'although I trust I shall declare
nothing unto you but experimental [experienced] truth.' 'Experience goes
beyond all things,'· Coppin declared. The Antinomian Henry Pinnel con-
trasted the way 'a man knows a thing by reading it' with 'experimental
certainty of it in himself"' (Hil11987, 368).
Boyle and the Royal Society may be seen as responding to this chal-
lenge to traditional epistemological practices by adopting an "experi-
mental philosophy" that grounded belief in personal experience and ex-
perimentation (although, as we have seen, they were also concerned to
126 Socializing the Psychic

multiply witnesses of good standing). In Marie Boas Hall's words, the So-
ciety's members "tried strenuously [not] ... to believe as true what they
had not seen with their own eyes" (Hall1966, 28). By performing experi-
ments in their own homes, the Society's correspondents grounded their
beliefs on the basis of modest generalizations (inductions) from their own
experience, with due attention to the possibility of counterexamples (what
Bacon called "negative instances").
Boyle adopted a similar strategy in his religious apologetics, such as The
Excellence of Theology (1674, but written in 1665) and The Usefulness of Ex-
perimental Natural Philosophy (1663, written as early as 1647). Here he pro-
mulgated a naturalistic approach to theology, one that sought proofs for
the existence of God not in philosophical argumentation but rather in em-
pirical study of the natural world to discover signs of divine providence
(Hall1966, 48-52). 5 In both theology and natural philosophy, it seems,
Boyle aimed to eschew purely verbal argumentation, including the testi-
mony of others, in favor of direct and personal experience. 6
The empiricism mandated by Boyle and the Royal Society created diffi-
culties in implementing another aspect of their charter. The Society was
committed to making science a more public activity, a commitment ap-
parent in the following quotation from Boyle's writings: "Such a treatise
for the kind, as that which follows ... may perhaps ... persuade a greater
number of differing sorts of readers, than a far more elaborate [one]"
(Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural philos-
ophy, quoted in Hall1966, 158). Boyle explicitly cites Bacon as the inspira-
tion for this commitment: "[This book] may serve to beget a confederacy,
and an union between parts of learning, whose possessors have hitherto
kept their respective skills stranger ... which how advantageous it may
prove towards the increase of knowledge, our illustrious Verulam [Bacon]
has somewhat taught us" (Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of
Experimental Natural philosophy, quoted in Hall1966, 162-163).
This Baconian project for a public science resonated with various ide-
ologies in Restoration England, where the matter of the production and

5· Such an approach came into prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
under the rubric "natural theology."
6. This is not to say that theology and philosophy were one and the same for Boyle. On
the contrary, he argued that natural philosophy was justified insofar as it contributed to
theology, a point expounded upon at length in publications such as The Excellence of The-
ology, compared with Natural Philosophy (as both are Objects of Men's Study) (1674). Robert
Hooke, one of Boyle's early assistants, and later Curator (or Demonstrator) of Experi-
ments at the Royal Society, confirmed this distinction between theology and philosophy:
"The business and design of the Royal Society is to improve the knowledge of natural
things ... by Experiment (not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Morals, Politics,
Grammar, Rhetoric, or Logic)" (quoted in Hall1966, 28).
 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 127

ownership of knowledge was an important public and political issue,

manifesting itself in the question of the language in which to write the-
ology. Knowledge and in particular theology, it was argued, were not to
be the exclusive preserve of scholars, the upper class, and the priesthood,
all of whom were educated in Latin, but should also be available to the
masses who read in the vernacular.
The seriousness with which such principles were taken by Boyle and
his immediate successors, such as Hooke and Newton, is evident in an in-
creasing shift from Latin to English as the written language of science.
(English had been used as a language for science since the mid-sixteenth
century, despite frequent complaints that it lacked the necessary termi-
nology.) Newton's Principia, for example, published in 1687, first ap-
peared in Latin, whereas the first edition of the Opticks, in 1704, appeared
in the vernacular. Although fluent in the language, Newton did not write
a Latin version of the Opticks, instead paying an impoverished disciple,
Samuel Clark, five hundred pounds to do the job (Westfall1ggo, 648)?
The empiricism and emphasis upon personal witness characteristic of
the new experimental philosophy created difficulties for the public dis-
semination of scientific works such as Boyle's New Experiments. Not only
did these works fail to communicate with the general audience whom
they targeted (in this context Pepys' s comments cited in the opening sec-
tion of this chapter are germane), but they also struck a serious difficulty
of principle. The texts relied for effect upon readers trusting their experi-
mental accounts. For the most part, however, such accounts, like many re-
ports of exotic events received by the Royal Society, were not and could
not be supported by the intended readers' personal experiences, few of
whom enjoyed the social or scientific status to be invited to the Royal So-
ciety's public experimental performances, let alone had access to the
major financial resources and technical skills needed to repeat experi-
ments for themselves. As Boyle tells us: "Such trouble as I met with in
making those trials, and the great expence of time that they necessarily re-
quire (not to mention the charges of making the engine, and employing a
man to manage it) will probably keep most men from trying again these
experiments" (preface to New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, quoted in
Hall1g66, 325).
It seems, then, that if its projected readers were to follow mandated em-
piricist principles, Boyle's text could not make its experimental claims ra-
tionally credible to the majority. In short, Boyle was caught on the horns of

7· Note that although learning Latin was part of acquiring an "education," many of the
"educated" middle- and upper-class readers whom the Royal Society hoped to enroll in
the cause of science would have lacked any great fluency in the language.
128 Socializing the Psychic

a dilemma: either he sacrificed the Baconian project to create a public sci-

ence or he forced his readers to transgress empiricist principles in coming
to believe what they read.
Boyle's new prose style was, I suggest, a response to this dilemma. By a
series of cleverly judged rhetorical devices, including the trope of de-
scriptio, his prose created such "clear and distinct ideas" of the experi-
ments in readers' minds that they believed in them as if they had wit-
nessed them personally. Readers were transformed into "virtual
witnesses," and thus were enabled to conceal from themselves their
failure to satisfy the empiricist requirement of personally witnessing what
they believed.
Shapin and Schaffer offer a somewhat different rationale for Boyle's
prose. For Boyle and his contemporaries, Shapin and Schaffer point out, the
number of witnesses was an epistemologically relevant factor. Thus, be-
cause it appeared to multiply witnesses, virtual witnessing took on the di-
mensions of a rhetorical strategy. Since every new reader comprised a new
virtual witness, "through virtual witnessing the multiplication of witnesses
could be, in principle, unlimited" (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 6t). Shapin
and Schaffer see a special role for this rhetorical strategy in virtue of the ex-
panded audience for science, an audience who for the most part lacked the
opportunity or ability to directly witness or replicate Boyle's experimental
performances: "Yet, because of natural and legitimate suspicion among
those who were neither direct witnesses nor replicators, a greater degree of
assurance was required to produce assent .... Boyle's literary technology
[of virtual witnessing] was crafted to secure this assent" (6t).8
By contrast with Schaffer and Shapin, I take virtual witnessing as a
rhetorical strategy which, by simulating the effects of personal witness, con-
ceals the violation of empiricist principles needed to render Boyle's texts
credible to its readers. Whereas Shapin and Schaffer explain Boyle's rhetor-
ical strategy in terms of a traditional epistemology favoring multiplication
of witnesses, my explanation invokes the new empiricist epistemology.
In which ever way it is explained, however, the strategy of virtual wit-
nessing created a major difficulty. Because of its persuasive dimension,
Boyle's new prose style violated the prescription against rhetoric in experi-
mental descriptions. Boyle would have been well aware of this violation. He
and many of its readers were well schooled in classical rhetoric, one of the el-
ements of the medieval Trivium which continued to provide the framework
for University education. Boyle attempted to conceal the violation by a va-

8. On this point see New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, 1-2, quoted in Hall1966, 325;
Shapin and Schaffer 1985, 6o, 62. Here too the emphasis appears to be not so much upon
simulating personal witness as on the multiplication of witnesses.
 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 129

riety of strategies. He avoided mentioning the term "rhetoric" in reference to

his own writing, and by emphasizing its lack of ornamentation-in partic-
ular, apologizing for failing to heed the "precepts of rhetoricians" who re-
quired a more embellished style-he implicitly denied his writing's rhetor-
ical nature: "I cannot but fear that my discourses ... want many choice
things, wherewith the learned writings of others might have enriched or em-
bellished them" (New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, quoted in Hall1966,
328).
From a formal point of view, however, such strategies only com-
pounded the problem, since the indirect denial of its own rhetorical na-
ture involved Boyle's writing in yet another piece of rhetoric, namely, the
familiar Aristotelian trope of enhancing authorial ethos by refusing to en-
gage in sophistry or rhetorical niceties. Nevertheless, from a rhetorical
point of view, the strategies seem to have been effective. They emerge as
formally self-defeating but nonetheless persuasive rhetorical ploys,
sliding ambiguously between the obvious truth that Boyle's rhetoric was
unconventional (for texts of philosophy) and the false claim, the merit of
which he sought to persuade his reader, that his writing was rhetoric free.

In addition to both concealing and denying its rhetorical nature, Boyle's

text offered a formal justification for its prose style: "I thought I might do
the generality of my readers no unacceptable piece of service, by so punc-
tually relating what I carefully observed, that they may look upon these
narratives as standing records in our new pneumatics, and need not reit-
erate themselves an experiment to have as distinct an idea of it, as may
suffice them to ground their reflexions and speculations upon" (preface to
New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, quoted in Hall1966, 325). In other
words, Boyle claimed that his prolix prose was intended not to persuade
but rather to provide readers with a clear enough impression of the exper-
iments to "ground their reflexions upon" without going to the trouble and
expense of repeating the experiments for themselves.
Of course, this claim came perilously close to admitting the rhetorical
nature of his prose. Boyle skirted this further admission by claiming that
the point of giving readers "distinct ideas" was to enable them to repeat
the experiments for themselves: "I thought it necessary to deliver things
circumstantially that the person I addressed [the experimental accounts]
to might without mistake, and with as little trouble as possible, be able to
repeat such usual experiments" (quoted in Hall1966, 325). Even the most
straight-laced empiricist could approve the latter justification.9
9· Replicability does not play the same methodological role here as in the modern context.
Its importance for Boyle lay in enabling readers to observe his experiments for themselves
and thus come to believe his accounts on the basis of personal witness.
130 Socializing the Psychic

A related justification appeared in Boyle's later essay On the Practical

Uses of Natural Philosophy, published in 1671 (although written some six
years earlier):

the generality of those readers, to whom we would give good impressions

of the study of nature, being such as will probably be more wrought upon
by the variety of examples, and easy experiments, than by the deepest no-
tions, and the neatest hypotheses, such a treatise for the kind, as that which
follows, containing many practices of artifices and such particulars, that are
either of easy trial, or immediate use, may perhaps by that variety gratify,
and persuade a greater number of differing sorts of readers, than a far more
elaborate piece. (quoted in Hall1966, 158)

Here Boyle's concern was not so much that readers be persuaded of the
truth of the experiments as that they receive "good impressions of the
study of nature." Even the following quotation, which strongly suggests
that Boyle's intention was to persuade his readers, is open to this weaker
reading: "Of my being somewhat prolix in many of my experiments, I
have these reasons to render: that some of them being altogether new,
seemed to need the being circumstantially related, to keep the reader from
distrusting them" (from New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, quoted in
Hall1966, 324-325). Here Boyle's stated intention is that of preventing dis-
trust rather than creating trust; in other words, he seeks to engage his
readers' interest and encourage them to suspend disbelief rather than per-
suade them.
Unfortunately, as Boyle himself conceded with disarming honesty, such
justification for his prose was worthless, since, despite his plain and de-
tailed instructions, few were able to repeat the experiments: "Such trouble
as I met with in making those trials ... will probably keep most men from
trying again these experiments." Indeed, it was some time before any sci-
entists, especially his continental critics, were able to perform his experi-
ments, let alone confirm their results (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, chap. 6).
Nevertheless, justifying his style of writing as a clear and accurate means
of communicating instructions served the useful purpose of deflecting at-
tention from its real function as a rhetorical device.
In sum, Boyle's strategy of virtual witnessing was a response to an em-
piricist epistemology that stressed the importance of personal witness
rather than multiple witnesses or the word of authorities. This episte-
mology created a serious problem for texts, such as New Experiments, that
described what were for the bulk of its intended readers effectively unwit-
nessable experiments. In this respect Boyle's texts were uncomfortably
close to the esoteric and secret works of the alchemists, a fact hinted at in
 The Vice of the Virtual Witness 131

Pepys's remark that he found Boyle's work "so chymical, that I can un-
derstand but little of it."
The task of virtual witnessing was to conceal this difficulty by creating
in readers' minds an impression that they had personally witnessed the
experiments. By concealing, denying, and justifying their own rhetorical
nature, Boyle's writings addressed the further difficulty that virtual wit-
nessing took on the dimensions of a rhetorical technique. Here, then, we
see the Boylean rhetoric of science at work, complete with its own invis-
ible meta-rhetoric, which conceals its rhetorical nature by creating an ap-
pearance of being rhetoric free.
A similar rhetoric is in use today as the plain, detailed, prose style of the
modern experimental account. Its discourse of self-justification (insofar as
it includes one) appeals not to considerations of audience convenience (as
Boyle did) but rather to the self-evident value of the historically specific
forms of "precision" and "objectivity" that it embodies. This modern sci-
entific rhetoric is able to conceal its own rhetorical nature not only because
modern readers, uneducated in rhetoric, are unable to see "plain writing"
as a trope but also because Boyle's "prolix and circumstantial" rhetoric
has taken on the dimensions of an official style, gaining its persuasive ef-
fect as much from the institutional authority of science as from its formal
rhetorical effects.
From a contemporary perspective it thus becomes difficult to compre-
hend the scrupulousness displayed by New Experiments with respect to
the question of its style. In the context of the seventeenth century, how-
ever, when the Royal Society was struggling to establish itself as the legit-
imate inheritor of the tradition of "natural philosophy," and when readers
showed an informed wariness of rhetoric, Boyle's scrupulousness
emerges as a practical necessity. In the next chapter, where I show how the
rhetorical technology of virtual witnessing creates a gaze, I turn to further
details of the visual aspects of Boyle's text.
 8
Seeing Texts

You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most
exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear cut glass, thin as a bubble and as
transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know
whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine . ... If you are a member of that van-
ishing tribe, the amateur of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because
everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing
which it was meant to contain.... Bear with me in this long-winded and
fragrant metaphor; for you will find that all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass
have a parallel in typography.
Beatrice Ward, The Crystal Goblet

W hen we talk about "looking at" a book we usually mean one of two
things. First, we may mean literally viewing it: inspecting its cover,
typeface, layout, and so on. In this context a gaze may arise in a perfectly
straightforward way. For example, the glittering gold leaf of an illumi-
nated medieval manuscript may physically impact the eye in the same
way that a glint of light assaulted the young Lacan during his day at sea.
But such a gaze has nothing to do with the propositional content of the
text, and in any case has little relevance for the modern printed book, the
visual appearance of which has been standardized to the point where it
has little impact.
Indeed, such invisibility has been elevated to the level of a norm. In her
book The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Beatrice Ward adopts
an avowedly "modernist" stance (which she defines in terms of attention
to function rather than form) when she writes: "A page set in 14-pt. Bold
Sans is, according to the laboratory tests, more legible than one set in
11-pt. Baskerville. A public speaker is more 'audible' in that sense when
he bellows. But a good speaking voice is one which is inaudible as a voice.
It is the transparent goblet .... Type well used is invisible as type, just as
the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of

133
134 Socializing the Psychic

words, ideas" (Ward 1955, 13). 1 Her argument is that since the function of
printing is "to convey specific and coherent ideas," printing should be
"readable" rather than "legible." By this she means that the typeface
should be invisible as type, that is, should enable readers to take in ideas
without distracting them through ornamentation or being visually intru-
sive in any way. Here the thread connecting Boyle's Restoration sensi-
bility to modernism is clear.
We may also talk about "looking at" or "viewing" a text in a quite dif-
ferent way, as a metaphor, a colorful way of restructuring the semantic
space of reading in terms of concepts associated with sight and seeing.
Within the terms of this metaphor, written texts may be assigned a "gaze"
in a sense that has nothing to do with physical vision. This metaphor has
taken on special importance in the context of the modern novel or realist
fiction more generally, which, as Peter Brooks points out, favors visual
modes of description: ''The dominant nineteenth-century tradition, that of
realism, insistently makes the visual the master relation to the world, for
the very premise of realism is that one cannot understand human beings
outside the context of the things that surround them, and knowing those
things is a matter of viewing them, detailing them, and describing the
concrete milieux in which men and women enact their destinies" (Brooks
1993, 88).
Thus, when we talk of "viewing" a text, it seems that we do so in one of
two ways, either by ignoring the text's content and referring to visual en-
gagement with its material signifiers, or talking metaphorically about as-
pects of the process of reading which have nothing to do with literally
seeing or having visual impressions. In both cases, the possibility of liter-
ally (as opposed to metaphorically) seeing what the text says is erased. In-
deed, as Ward suggests, the "modernist" sensibility wants to erase all pos-
sibility of seeing the text, to the extent of rendering its material signifiers
"transparent."
Despite normative pressures against visualizing written texts, there is
one tradition of writing, what Auerbach calls mimesis, for which reading
does involves literally viewing what it says. Mimetic writing incorporates
vivid or, as we say, "realistic" descriptions that stimulate visual impressions
in readers. The impressions result not from perceiving or even remem-

1. For Ward's self-definition as "modernist" see Ward 1955, 12. This chapter's epigraph,
taken from the preceding page, gives a fuller illustration of the metaphor of the crystal
goblet. I am grateful to Adrian Marshall for pointing me toward this delightful mixture of
high Tory party nostalgia and British modernism. For a more academically satisfying ac-
count of the historical roots and complexities of the matter of typography see Drucker
1994·
 Seeing Texts 135

bering but instead operate through the faculty of imagination-the mind's

eye.2 The visual field created by such writing may, on occasion, take on the
structure of the gaze. I shall discuss this possibility by returning to Boyle's
New Experiments and introducing a discussion of Haubert's Madame Bovary.

Emma's Body

Gustave Haubert's Madame Bovary (1857) is taken by many as the first

"realist novel." Like Holbein's The Ambassadors and Boyle's New Experi-
ments, its descriptions are characterized by an excess of detail. The de-
scriptions of Emma through the eyes of the men who know her focus in
great detail upon apparently unconnected and trivial aspects of her ap-
pearance, as if reporting the half-hidden details upon which a fetishistic
observer's eye might stumble and linger-a lock of hair curling onto the
nape of the neck, a shoe, the corners of her mouth:

Her eyelids seemed perfectly fashioned for those long ardent looks that
drown the eye; while deep breathing dilated her fine nostrils and lifted the
plump corners of her mouth, shadowed in the light with a faint black
down .... About her neck the dropping coils of her hair; they twined in a
great mass, neglectfully.... Something subtle that ran straight through you
breathed out even from the folds of her gown and from the curve of her
foot. Charles, just as in the first days of his marriage, found her delicious
and irresistible. (Flaubert 1992, 157)

These little things-these partly obscured corners and edges of her

body-like the trinkets with which she litters her life, catch the eyes of the
men whom she charms and fascinates in a way that they find hard to un-
derstand:

The less Charles understood of these things, the more they beguiled him.
They added to the pleasures and comforts of his fireside. It was like a sprin-
kling of gold-dust along the narrow track of his life .... In Rouen she saw
ladies wearing bunches of trinkets on their watch chains; she bought some
trinkets. For her mantelpiece she wanted a pair of large blue glass vases,
and a little later, an ivory work-box, with a silver-gilt thimble. (47)

Only her clothing, it seems, occupies the eye in a more systematic way:
"She would be wearing her dressing-gown unbuttoned, revealing, between

2. A written description may also trigger visual memories, but that is not my focus here.
136 Socializing the Psychic

the copious folds of her corsage, a pleated chemisette with gold buttons.
Round her waist she had a cord with big tassels, and her little wine-red slip-
pers had large knots of ribbons, spreading down over the instep" (47). Even
with respect to her clothes, however, the view seems to flit from detail to de-
tail. When Leon, her lover to be, joins her in conversation for the first time,
"she was wearing a little cravat made of blue silk, that made her tube-
pleated batiste collar stick up like a ruff; and, whenever she moved her
head, half her face was screened by the fabric or else was pleasingly re-
vealed" (67). This punctuated regime of description is repeated in connec-
tion with the "dear room" in which the lovers' rendezvous takes place:

There was a great big mahogany bed in the shape of a boat. The curtains
made of red oriental stuff, hung from the ceiling, curving out rather too low
over the wide bed-head .... The warm room with its plain carpet, its frivo-
lous decorations, its tranquil light, seemed quite perfect for the intimacies of
passion. The arrow-headed curtain rods, the brass fittings, and the big balls
on the fender would gleam suddenly, whenever the sun shone in. (2.15)

The scopic economy thus mirrors the empty peregrinations of the lovers'
conversations, which move randomly from phrase to phrase, centering
upon nothing more substantial than vague shared sentimental attach-
ments: "one of those vague conversations in which every random phrase
always brings you back to the fixed center of mutual sympathy. Paris, the-
atres, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the society they knew nothing
of" (67). In short, as Brooks argues, the look implicit in the narratorial de-
scriptions in Madame Bovary is fetishistic, fastening upon details not be-
cause they are salient but rather because, at an unconscious level, they dis-
tract from what cannot be seen (Brooks 1993, 103).
When Emma's body is described in more comprehensive terms, it is in
vacuous, conventional, even stereotypical language, which on occasion
makes explicit reference to the romantic art and literature from which it is
culled: "She was the lover in every novel, the heroine in every play, the
vague she in every volume of poetry. On her shoulders he found the
amber colours of Odalisque au bain; she had the long body of some feudal
chatelaine; and she looked like the Pale woman of Barcelona, but supremely
she was the Angel" (Flaubert 1992, 215). In short, except for a few details
which prick their sensibilities-the "faint black down" and the "folds of
her gown"-Emma is perceived by her lovers in terms of a collage of ba-
nalities: a virtuous, even virginal woman whose conquest seems to serve
primarily as a mark of the manliness and worldly status of her seducer:
"Never had he met with such grace of language, such modesty of dress,
such tableaux of drowsy maiden-innocence. He admired the exaltation of
 Seeing Texts 137

her soul and the lace on her skirts. Besides was she not a lady, and a mar-
ried woman! A real mistress" (215). Thus the ostensible site of desire,
Emma's body, is represented as a disturbing void, a site of failure of repre-
sentation, veiled only by a thin tissue of cliches and an erratic trail of glit-
tering points to which the eyes of her bourgeois lovers are irresistibly
drawn. The critical thrust of Haubert's text, as Fredric Jameson remarks, is
constituted by this evacuation of the site of desire. 3
In Barthes's terms, then, Haubert's descriptions take the studium-
punctum form characteristic of the "true" photograph (Barthes 1993,
26-27): the bulk of the novel's descriptions verge on the stereotypical (the
studium), but these are interrupted by punctums-lyrical phrases that, by
lavishing detail upon small, apparently insignificant detail of appearance,
transgress the dominant descriptive regime. In this way, Haubert sought to
capture the fetishistic quality of the bourgeois gaze, constituted by its fasci-
nation with trivia, forever seeking distractions from what it never dares to
consider, namely, the fundamental emptiness of its own existence.
Transcending the vulgarities of bourgeois thought, the punctums in
Haubert's text redeem his writerly project by providing distance from
bourgeois sensibility. But they were also points of danger, for Haubert
sought to capture in words ephemeral objects that fascinated the bour-
geois sensibility but were impossible to mention. Haubert explicitly
dwells upon this danger. He was, he writes in a letter to a friend, "afraid
of becoming another Paul de Kock or producing a kind of chateaubrian-
dized Balzac .... How to render trivial dialogue that is well written? ... I
pass alternately from the most extreme emphasis to the most academic
platitude" (quoted in Bourdieu 1996, 93).
Haubert's anxiety spills over into the content of his text. For the bulk of
the book, the more intimate contours of Emma's body are a site of invisi-
bility, which is doubled since it masquerades as visibility. As Brooks argues,
because of the words lavished upon her appearance, readers think they
know Emma's body well. It is only when they attempt to construct a picture
of how she appears that, as Brooks points out, the book's failure to provide
a representation of her body becomes evident: "The reader's sense of the
presence of Emma's body is so intense and so memorable that it comes a
something of a surprise, upon rereading the novel, to find that there is very
little in the way of full length portraiture of Emma" (Brooks 1993, 90). 4

3· See Jameson's discussion of Flaubert in Jameson 1981.

4· This structure of invisibility, which conceals itself behind a mask of visibility, resembles
the Victorian taboo against sexuality which Foucault describes in the first volume of his
History of Sexuality, a taboo so profound that any mention of the taboo was itself pro-
scribed. Arguably this taboo arose from the same bourgeois prudishness that Flaubert
sought to capture in Madame Bovary.
138 Socializing the Psychic

In a passage near the end of the novel, however, when the ill-fated affair
with Leon is almost over, Emma's sensuality suddenly thrusts itself into
the light, figured as the site of an unnamable horror, an excessive empti-
ness, which foreshadows the death of passion as well as Emma herself
("pale and silent ... that brow covered in cold drops"):

Emma came back to him more inflamed, more voracious. Her undressing
was brutal, tearing at the delicate laces on her corset, which rustled down
over her hips like a slithering snake.... Pale and silent and serious, she fell
upon him, shivering ... on that brow covered in cold drops, on those mur-
muring lips, in those wild eyes, and in the clasping of those arms, there was
something excessive, something empty and lugubrious, which Leon felt
sliding, imperceptibly, between them, as if to push them asunder. (Flaubert
1992,230)

In this passage, Flaubert graphically anticipates the Lacanian "Thing"

(Freud's "das Ding"): a horrifying, inchoate void, the disgusting under-
belly of pleasure, associated here with an ambiguously phallic female sen-
suality, erupting and sliding through the phantasmatic trappings of a
fragmenting (male) symbolic order.
Until that juncture in the text, the polite and prudish bourgeois conven-
tions of description (the studium) coexisted with the violent little breaks (the
punctums) upon which Emma's lovers focused. But at that point the little
spots, the punctums, suddenly swell up, consume, and take over the whole of
Emma's body, which, by failing to take a determinate visualizable form,
stands nakedly revealed as a point of failure in the symbolic order.
The horrifying terms in which this encounter is described suggest that
at this point in the novel the author's anxieties concerning the production
of his text coalesce with something less controlled, more visceral, which
haunts his imaginings. The phrase "something excessive, something
empty and lugubrious" may be seen as a hidden metaphor for the loath-
some bourgeois banalities, "a kind of chateaubriandized Balzac," which
Flaubert consciously struggled to avoid in writing Madame Bovary. But it
also resonates with a more basic, sexual, and specifically phallic anxiety
that seems to find form and surface at this point in the text, from which it
then disseminates, retrospectively and prospectively shrouding all other
encounters with Emma's body in unrealistic anxiety (unrealistic because
of the hidden nature of its object).
Thus, for its author, it seems, the punctums of Madame Bovary take on the
dimensions of a gaze: a site of unrealistic anxiety where the symbolic
order falters. To be specific, it seems that for Flaubert the points of overde-
scription of Emma's person mark the boundaries of a gaze emanating
 Seeing Texts 139

from a horrifying emptiness at the center of her body, toward which his
writing gestures but which finally it cannot describe.

The Virtual Gaze

Shapin and Schaffer claim that reading Boyle's descriptions of scientific

experiments creates visual impressions which simulate the effects of "wit-
nessing": "The technology of virtual witnessing involves the production
in the reader's mind of such an image of an experimental scene as obviates
the necessity for either direct witness or replication" (Shapin and Schaffer
1985, 6o). These visual effects, I argued in Chapter 7, arise from Boyle's
style of writing, a hypotactic excess of detail unrelieved by verbal flour-
ishes, which he refers to apologetically as "prolix and circumstantial."
The writing's unremitting excess, the tedium of reading the plain, de-
tailed descriptions, forces readers to "step back" from what they read, to
dip in and out of a text that otherwise would overwhelm them. This effect
is reinforced, indeed guided, by changes of descriptive depth within the
narrative itself. Some items are described in detail, as if at the center of the
narrator's focus, while others are reduced to the status of props, merely
named, as if glanced at in passing. A good example is Boyle's experiment
with the lamb's bladder (quoted on p. 120). Here the process of "exsuc-
tion" and the bladder itself, "large, well dried, and very limber," are de-
scribed in some detail, while two other items, the pump and the receiver,
as well as the process of conveying the bladder, are mentioned in passing.
This variation in descriptive depth imposes a duality of perspective on the
narrative, the close-up alternating with the distant. In short, readers may
be thought of as looking and then looking again from a more distant per-
spective at what they have seen already from closer in.
The looking in question is an act of visual imagination, of course, rather
than seeing in any literal sense. Nevertheless, according to Shapin and
Schaffer, readers do form visual impressions of what they read, which, al-
though lacking the "realistic" quality of bona fide perceptions, are no less
visual than dreams or memories. In particular, by imaginatively looking
again at what they have seen, Boyle's readers "review" their own
"seeing." Thus, they not only "see" but also, in a reflexive tum, put them-
selves and in particular their own "seeing" under review.
New Experiments, like Madame Bovary, incorporates elements to which its
author's anxieties attach. Boyle's anxieties seem to target the text's style
rather than particular narrative moments, however, and thus diffuse over
the work as a whole. This does not imply that Boyle dwells any less ful-
somely ("prolixly") upon selected details than Flaubert: "a flat bottomed
140 Socializing the Psychic

glass, that was broader at the top than the bottom, and shallow too (not
being near an inch deep) that the [contained] matter might be more fully ex-
posed to free air'' (Icy Noctiluca, quoted in Hall1966, 317). Unlike Flaubert,
however, Boyle's descriptive focus on particular items is not an occasion for
anxiety but rather reflects the items' salience to his more general project of
providing recipes for repeating experiments. So, for example, in the last quo-
tation he gives details about the shape, dimensions, and material of a dish
because these are judged relevant to the experiment's successful conduct.
Instead, in Boyle's text unrealistic anxiety attaches to the question of his
written style. Boyle expresses this anxiety in elaborate, multiply layered,
and internally incoherent statements which struggle with the issue of the
rhetorical nature of his writing. On the one hand, he avoids mentioning, in-
deed implicitly denies, his style's rhetorical nature; on the other, he justifies
its rhetorical effects. (I return to these paradoxical manifestations of his anx-
iety later in this chapter.) In short, Boyle's writing combines the two ele-
ments constitutive of the gaze: it leads readers to step back and look again
at what it describes, and it functions as a site of unrealistic anxiety. Because
the resultant gaze attaches to features of the text as a whole, to its style
rather than to localized points, it takes on what Barthes (referring to the
punctum rather than the gaze) calls its "less Proustian expansion," which
"while remaining a 'detail' ... fills the whole picture" (Barthes 1993, 45).
The gaze associated with New Experiments is characteristic of memory
rather than perception. At each point in Boyle's narrative a stage of an ex-
periment is described. These descriptions include subtly oscillating time
references, which imply that the narrator knows about events both later
and earlier than the stage of the experiment he is describing. For example,
the description of tying up a lamb's bladder includes a reference to its
being "well dried" and "limber," thus implying prior experience of drying
and manipulating the bladder. At another point in the same quotation, the
receptacle for the gas ("the receiver") is said to have been in a state "before
we had exhausted [it] near so much as we could." Here the description in-
cludes foreknowledge of events yet to come: by continuing the process of
exsuction more air would be exhausted from the receiver. Such fore-
knowledge together with the past tense of the narrative strongly suggest
that rather than reporting impressions resulting from observing the exper-
iment, the narrator is recalling events from his past. Thus Boyle's descrip-
tions simulate the effects of memory both by the selective nature of their
focus and by their temporalization.5 In the following sections, I confirm

5· The past tense of the narrative is strictly speaking irrelevant to this point, since the issue
is not the narrator's relation to the impressions he is relaying but rather the relation of the
impressions themselves to the moment of their conception.
 Seeing Texts 141

the existence of this gaze in New Experiments by tracing its effects in

Boyle's phantasies about his own writing. I also undertake a similar con-
firmation for Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

Unrealistic Anxiety, Desire, and Phantasy in Bovary

Flaubert' s prose was motivated, it seems, by two interlocking desires.

Wanting to discredit literary rivals, specifically the first-wave "realist"
school associated with Gustave Courbet and Jean Champfleury, here-'
marks in the preface to Madame Bovary that the "irritation produced in me
by the bad writing of Champfleury and the so-called realists has not been
without influence in the production of this book," adding elsewhere that
he "wrote Madame Bovary to annoy Champfleury" (Bourdieu 1996, 88, 93).
He also tells us that he wanted to write beautifully. These desires, we may
speculate, found expression in a parodic project designed to highlight the
bourgeois dreariness and mediocre sentiments characteristic of Champ-
fleury's work by rewriting them in a beautiful way, "to blend lyricism and
the vulgar.... I wanted to show that bourgeois dreariness and mediocre
sentiments could sustain beautiful language" (96, 93).
I argued that this project was not without its anxieties. Although deter-
mined to complete Madame Bovary, Flaubert questioned whether it would
bear any resemblance to his original intentions: "What this book will be, I
don't know; but I can say that it will be written" (quoted in Bourdieu 1996,
96). Such an attitude bespeaks what Freud calls unrealistic anxiety.
Freud explains such anxieties by suggesting that from earliest childhood
subjects are dogged by threats that inhibit the satisfaction of "instinctual
wishes." He distinguishes five different stages in which such threats ap-
pear: birth, loss of the mother, object loss in the genital stage associated with
the paternal injunction and castration threat, loss of love or punishment by
the stem superego (associated with the danger of "separation or expulsion
from the hoard"), and death or fate (Freud 1993, 294-297).
Freud makes clear that the inhibited wishes-what he also calls "certain
feelings and intentions within us"-may not be at the forefront of the
child's mind but instead may be posited retrospectively as causes of the
threats. More generally, "the loved person would not cease to love us nor
should we be threatened with castration if we did not entertain certain
feelings and intentions within us" (303-304).
The same threats which inhibit wishes also generate anxieties that
would overwhelm the child were it not for ways of controlling them. Sim-
ilarly, Freud tells us, toothache, like anxiety a danger signal, threatens to
overwhelm the sufferer and become a danger in its own right unless con-
142 Socializing the Psychic

trolled by, for example, the sufferer indulging in various "symptomatic"

distractions such as hitting his head. 6
Such control of anxiety, Freud tells us, is achieved in two quite distinct
stages: first, the "instinctual wishes" are repressed, decathected at a con-
scious level by masking them behind phantasy structures of opposing
conscious desires. Second, through a process of symptom formation, al-
though repressed, the instinctual wish returns and is realized in dis-
guised form. According to Freud, the function of this combination of re-
pression and return is to attain the instinctual wish while shifting
attention away from the otherwise paralyzing threat that its realization
creates.
At an unconscious level, the wish and corresponding threat remain ac-
tive, producing anxieties which are free floating because the dangers to
which they respond have been hidden from view. Such "free" anxieties
make their way along unconscious pathways and manifest in what Freud
calls an "unrealistic form," attached to new objects which retain uncon-
scious connections with the original dangers. Because the new objects no
longer match the objects to which they were a response, these second-
level anxieties appear, in Freud's terms, "unrealistic." In short, unrealistic
anxiety is a reaction to a hidden threat that is covertly connected to an
overt source of anxiety by a chain of unconscious associations.
This account of unrealistic anxiety, based upon his work on animal pho-
bias in children-for example, the Little Hans case-appears in Freud's
later writings beginning with the "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety"
essay of 1926: "The anxiety felt in animal phobias is, therefore, an affective
reaction on the part of the ego to danger, and the danger which is being
signalled in this way is the danger of castration. This anxiety differs in no
respect from the realistic anxiety which the ego normally feels in situa-
tions of danger, except that its content remains unconscious and only be-
comes conscious in the form of a distortion" (Freud 1993, 282)?
Such anxieties are managed by and precipitate a process of "sy~ptom
formation." This involves developing ritual-like behaviors, what Freud
calls "symptoms," that are positioned by unconscious trains of associa-
tions as disguised realizations of repressed wishes. According to this con-
ception (which generalizes the earlier definition of "symptom" developed
by Freud in the context of his work on hysteria) the symptom is a dis-

6. Toothache is itself regarded as a symptom in the more usual medical sense of this term,
that is, as a diagnostic sign. The behavior by which the sufferer distracts himself from pain
thus becomes a symptom of a symptom.
7· Freud's earlier view, which appears as late as the 1923 edition of The Ego and the Id, is
that the cause of anxiety is the freeing of energy resulting from decathexis accompanying
repression (Freud 1993, 283-287).
 Seeing Texts 143

guised return of an instinctual wish. 8 Because its connection with the wish
is hidden, the symptom does not trigger a threat of danger and therefore
avoids setting off the alarm bells of anxiety. Symptoms thus provide sub-
jects with a means of realizing their unconscious wishes while keeping
anxiety in check: "It is plain, then, that ... the obsessional act of washing
of the hands [was] to obviate outbreaks of anxiety. In this sense every in-
hibition which the ego imposes on itself can be called a symptom" (302).
Because it constitutes a return of the repressed, the symptom takes on a
transgressive quality, covertly breaking through the masking phantasy of
conscious desires which function as a defense against the unconscious wish
and its associated danger. Freud also argues that since, unlike the uncon-
scious wish it represents, the symptom is uninhibited, it is subject to what
he calls "a compulsion to repeat." It is as if the cathecting energy originally
associated with the wish is turned into a source of kinetic energy driving
the resulting symptom (312). The paradoxical combination of transgression
and compulsion to repeat is a key distinguishing mark of the symptom.
If the disguise concealing the symptom's identity as a return of the re-
pressed is too thin, the symptom may becomes a site of renewed anxiety
(or, as Freud calls it, "unpleasure"). Such supplemental anxiety is espe-
cially likely in cases of obsession, although it may also occur in cases of
phobia: "The mechanism of phobia does good service as a means of de-
fence and tends to be very stable. A continuation of the defensive struggle,
in the shape of a struggle against the symptom, occurs frequently" (283).
Usually, however, in the case of phobia the symptom, an avoidance of the
phobic object, seems totally free of anxiety, which focuses instead upon
the phobic object. In such cases, anxiety arises in connection with the
symptom only when the subject is somehow prevented from enacting it.
Thus, Little Hans may be said to be anxious to avoid horses, but not anx-
ious about avoiding them. qr, to make the same point in a slightly dif-
ferent way, he is anxious about horses rather than about avoiding them.
In the case of obsession, by contrast, matters are not so clear-cut. The
symptom is not simply the avoidance of a phobic object upon which the
bulk of anxiety is focused through a train of unconscious associations con-
necting it to the primal situation of danger. Instead the symptom develops
in relation to the superego, as a substitute formation for a wish that has
been repressed because it transgresses the superego's commands.
Flaubert's writing of Madame Bovary illustrates the latter possibility.
Flaubert did not doubt his ability to write ("I can say that it will be

8. In the Three Essays of 1905, Freud conceives of the symptom as a "sign of, and substitute
for, an instinctual satisfaction which has remained in abeyance ... a consequence of the
process of repression" (Freud 1993, 242).
144 Socializing the Psychic

written"). Instead his anxieties and doubts attached in an indeterminate

way to the project as a whole, to the question of its possibility ("what this
book will be, I don't know"). His simplest course of action would have
been to give up or modify his goals. Instead he persisted in the face of
doubt and uncertainty. In short, the project's execution took on the ap-
pearance of a "compulsion to repeat."
In virtue of its parodic nature, the book realized in disguised form ex-
actly what Haubert consciously desired to avoid, namely, an alignment
with Champfleury. The transparency of this disguise (to others) is evident
from his contemporaries' reactions-despite vociferous protests by its au-
thor, Madame Bovary attained the status of an exemplary "realist" text.
Haubert's writing thus functioned as a disguised means of transgressing
his conscious desire to evade the mark of "realism." In short, Haubert's
persistent struggle to write Madame Bovary evinced the characteristics of a
symptom, that is, a paradoxical combination of transgression with com-
pulsive repetition. Correlatively, the accompanying anxieties, which, I ar-
gued, found a point of focus in the punctal encounters with the margins of
Emma's body, assumed an unrealistic dimension.
The symptomatic nature of Haubert's writing of Bovary implies that it
was motivated at an unconscious level. The most plausible candidate for
such motivation is a covert wish to be like Champfleury. What the deeper
unconscious roots of this wish might have been I can only speculate: per-
haps an Oedipal relation with the impotent figure of Champfleury, who, as
a founding figure of the "realist'' movement with which Haubert was asso-
ciated publicly, bore the "name of the father." 9 Whether or not one accepts
this paternal identification, the Oedipal resonances of the unconscious de-
sire motivating Flaubert in the context of crafting Madame Bovary seem clear
enough, finding expression in the description of the ambiguously phallic
Thing that Leon encounters beneath the sheets: "something lugubrious."
The unconscious wish to be like Champfleury, masked by an opposing
conscious desire to write beautifully and a vitriolic criticism (denial) of "re-
alism," found suitable expression in the parodic form of Haubert's project.
In Freudian terms, the project functioned as a phantasy structure de-
fending against, but also sustaining, an unconscious wish. This structure,
in tum, provided a setting for a new conscious desire to rewrite
Champfleury's vulgar themes in "lyrical fashion," a desire encapsulated in
the apparently oxymoronic formula "Write the mediocre well," to which
Haubert constantly returned "in an ... obsessional fashion" while writing
Madame Bovary (letter to Louis Colet, quoted in Bourdieu 1996, 94 n. 96).

9· As Lacan emphasizes, the bearer of the name of the father is always impotent (Lacan
1977, 315).
 Seeing Texts 145

Boyle's Desire

Boyle explicitly desired to spread the good word of science to a more

generallay audience and encouraged his readers to witness and repeat ex-
periments for themselves: "The generality of those readers, to whom we
would give good impression of the study of nature ... will probably be
more wrought upon by the variety of examples and easy experiments....
Such a treatise for the kind, as that which follows, contain[s] many prac-
tices of artifices and such particulars, that are either of easy trial, or imme-
diate use" (Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Nat-
ural Philosophy, quoted in Hall1g66, 158). He also expressed a desire to
write well, in the accepted philosophical mode: a "close and concise way
of writing" which "manifest[s] those truths more distinctly ... and yet
without exceeding that brevity, my avocations and the bounds of an essay
exact of me" (Of the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy, quoted in
Hall1g66, 141).
These two desires conflicted, since the general reader, whom Boyle de-
sired to reach, could not be persuaded by a "close and concise" style.
Boyle resolved this rhetorical difficulty by sacrificing the desire to write
philosophically, developing instead a new "circumstantial and prolix"
prose: "I confess, that it was out of choice, that I declined that close and
concise way of writing, that in other cases I am wont to esteem. For
writing now not to credit myself, but to instruct others ... " (Hydrostatical
Paradoxes Made Out by New Experiments for the Most Part Physical and Easy,
quoted in Hall1g66, 170).
Schooled in traditional rhetoric, Boyle must have been well aware of the
rhetorical function served by the new style of writing. Nevertheless, as I in-
dicated above, he both avoids mentioning this fact and (paradoxically) de-
nies it. "I cannot but fear," he writes in the preface to New Experiments,
"that my discourse ... wants many choice things wherewith the learned
writings of others might have enriched or embellished them" (quoted in
Hall1g66, 324, 325). As I also pointed out, these strategies of avoidance and
denial are combined with a contrary strategy of justifying the new style,
thus undermining the attempt to deny its rhetorical nature. By this contra-
dictory combination of strategies, Boyle betrays an anxiety that is unreal-
istic in precisely the Freudian sense of persisting against good reason.
According to Freud, such unrealistic anxiety indicates that Boyle's ac-
tions conceal an unconscious wish masked by and opposed to his con-
scious desire. The obvious candidate for this wish is a predilection for the
self-same rhetorical forms against which Boyle protests. (Such protests, a
form of denial-Verneinung-are, as Freud notes, among the simplest
mechanisms of defense.)
146 Socializing the Psychic

The presence of this unconscious wish is doubly confirmed insofar as it

explains two otherwise puzzling features of Boyle's rhetoric. The first is
Boyle's choice of the Aristotelian trope of "plain speaking," uncommon in
philosophical disquisitions of the time, which persuades by appearing to
avoid engagement with rhetoric. By deploying this trope, Boyle is able to
realize covertly an engagement with rhetoric-a goal that he uncon-
sciously desires but which he must also deny, lest he offend his own sen-
sibilities as well as those of his colleagues in the Royal Society.
Boyle's strange apology for not heeding "the precepts of rhetoricians"
can be explained similarly. In the light of the Royal Society's well-known
hostility to rhetoric, Boyle's apology must be read nonliterally, as to some
extent insincere or at least disingenuous, an indirect way of denying his
text's complicity in rhetoric. But the apology also served an unconscious
function of permitting Boyle, under the cover of insincerity, to express
safely what he dared not say openly and may have been reluctant to
admit even to himself: regret at not being able to use his rhetorical skills.
In short, the tensions within the phantasy structure of Boyle's conscious
strategies and desires suggest the presence of an unconscious wish that he
explicitly denies, namely, an interest in rhetoric. No less than Madame Bo-
vary, New Experiments is, it seems, the site of its author's unconscious in-
vestment.

Afterword: A Historical Trajectory

I have shown how a Lacanian framework explains the strange contrast

between the violence of Flaubert's protests against "realism" and the
widespread perception that he belonged to, indeed was doyen of, the "re-
alist" school. Flaubert' s protests can be understood as aspects of a phan-
tasy structure that manifested an unconscious wish to resemble
Champfleury, a resemblance that the public perception of his work ac-
knowledged but which Flaubert himself denied.
From a Lacanian perspective, commitment to such a phantasy structure
is no casual matter, since it is essential to maintaining the drive through
which pleasure is produced. Which drive is detectable in Flaubert's en-
gagement with Madame Bovary? Earlier in this chapter I argued that
·Madame Bovary was the site of a scopic drive structure, which turned
around a gaze stimulated by lyrical descriptions of the margins of Emma's
body. Thus an explanatory connection can be drawn between two appar-
ently unrelated aspects of the novel: on the one hand, the unconscious de-
sire of its author; on the other, the formal studium-punctum structure un-
derwriting its gaze. A similar connection can be made in the case of
 Seeing Texts 147

Boyle's New Experiments. That is, Boyle's unconscious desire to be a

rhetorician may be seen as part of a support system and thus evidence for
the scopic drive structure and corresponding gaze associated with the
work's "prolix and circumstantial" prose.

The choice of works in the last three chapters may seem eclectic: Holbein's
masterpiece The Ambassadors, produced at a moment (1533) near the be-
ginning of the tradition of oil painting on canvas, a painting that, by bor-
rowing from the subgenre of anamorphic projections, played with and
undermined the Albertian system of perspective which came into promi-
nence in the fifteenth century; Boyle's New Experiments Physico-Mechanical,
first published in 166o, which, by repudiating the florid style of contem-
porary learned treatises as well as the formal argumentation of "mathe-
maticians" and arcane concepts of "chymists," lays claim to being the
origin of modern scientific rhetoric; and a nineteenth-century novel,
Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), often taken to mark the beginning of
modern "realist" fiction.
These texts are linked by a formal concern for "realism" in the broad
sense of creating lifelike appearances-what Mitchell calls illusionism
(see Chapter 7). Within this broad similarity, however, key differences
emerge. Flaubert' s novel strives for lifelikeness by imparting a certain de-
gree of "truth" about bourgeois life. Its concern is with "reality effects,"
however, rather than truth as such-with fictionalized caricature rather
than verisimilitude in the narrow sense. In short, although it is in certain
respects "true to life," Madame Bovary is a work of patent falsehood, "fic-
tional" in a sense that characterizes the modern "realist" novel generally.
Holbein's and Boyle's works, by contrast, strive not only for aesthetic
reality effects but also for credibility, that is "realism" in the narrow epis-
temological sense suggested by Mitchell rather than the traditional lit-
erary sense of the term. In Boyle's case, I argued, this persuasive dimen-
sion comprised a point of difficulty since it opened him to accusations of
being rhetorical. Holbein's painting, by contrast, readily embraced its per-
suasive function. Indeed, it was integral to the work's raison d'etre, com-
missioned by one of its subjects, de Dinteville, as a public record of his
ambassadorial mission to England. As Derek Wilson puts it in a recent bi-
ography of Holbein: "De Dinteville, who took the painting back to France
with him, wanted an impressive record of his mission ... an elaborate and
costly painting covering ten oak panels and measuring 207 by 209.5 cen-
timetres" (Wilson 1996, 196-197). In this context, the painting's circum-
stantial details, such as the unusual tile floor painstakingly copied from
Westminster Abbey, may be understood as integral to its function as a
convincing record of de Dinteville's presence in England. Holbein's repu-
148 Socializing the Psychic

tation as a portraitist depended upon such persuasive techniques. Henry

VIII was pleased with Holbein's portraits precisely because they provided
reliable pictures of their models, an invaluable asset in an age when such
pictures played a key role in closing a deal in the marriage market. 10
Despite sharing a formal concern with "realism," each of the works is
characterized by a different visual style. Although Boyle's descriptive
regime is selective, it gives an impression of comprehensiveness and plen-
itude by providing a tedious excess of detail. The temporalization and
focus of its descriptions mean that the corresponding visual field takes on
a mnemonic form. Flaubert, by contrast, provides excessive detail con-
cerning localized, eccentric aspects of Emma's body (punctums), skim-
ming over more usual points of interest. In Barthes's terms, then,
Flaubert' s description takes the studium-punctum form characteristic not
of memory but rather of the "true" photograph: "Not only is the Photo-
graph never, in essence, a memory (whose grammatical expression would
be the perfect tense, whereas the tense of the Photograph is the aorist), but
it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory.... The
Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent things, but because on
each occasion it fills the sight by force" (Barthes 1993, 91). Holbein's portrait
of the ambassadors also employs a descriptive regime based upon excess
detail. But it is a reversal or negative of the photographic form, insofar as
its lavish excess of detail spreads over the canvas as a whole, relieved only
at highly localized spots, such as the lifeless, lackluster images of the am-
bassadors' flesh. Thus, whereas the descriptive regime of Madame Bovary
is photographic, that of The Ambassadors, like trompe l'oeil, is simulacral,
playing with the revelation of its own masquerade.
The trajectory of visual styles from simulacrum to memory to photo-
graph follows in the footsteps of broader cultural, social, and technological
changes: the advent of merchant capitalism (Chapter 6), the displacement
of the medieval arts of memory in favor of writing (Chapter 7), and the in-
vention of the daguerreotype/photograph. My aim has not been to trace
this history in any detail, let alone speculate about the causal relations con-
necting it with other histories, but rather to identify a common psychic
mechanism which, in each of its successive incarnations, has sustained the
gaze by connecting it to the pleasures and desires of individual viewers.

10. There is a second reason for classifying each of these works as "realist." All were icon-
oclastic, that is, each in its respective context of production transgressed dominant con-
ventions of representation, and thus fell under Jameson's category of "realism" (to which
I return in Chapter 1o): "As any number of 'definitions' of realism assert ... realistic rep-
resentation has as its historic function the systematic undermining and demystification,
the secular 'decoding' of those preexisting inherited traditional or sacred narrative para-
digms which are its initial givens" (Jameson 1981, 152).
 Seeing Texts 149

This historical analysis stands at the endpoint of a line of theoretical de-

velopment that began with the discussion in Chapter 5 of an Althusserian
approach to the problematic of interpellation in terms of a specular model
for the constitution of subjects. In Chapter 6, I presented a refinement to
this approach, which, by infusing Althusser with the later Lacan, showed
how the problematic of the gaze provides a way of explaining the consti-
tutive effects of images upon their viewers in a historically specific way.
While allowing for the imbrication of ideological with unconscious fac-
tors, Chapter 6 followed a traditional Marxist trajectory of studying the
ideologically mediated relation of the cultural to the social without en-
gaging in an analysis that penetrates to the level of individual subjects. Al-
thusser's bald assertion that "nine out of ten" of the "right" listeners will
heed the call is typical of such approaches. He makes a small concession
to the possibility of individual variation-one out of ten may fail to
conform-but then leaves that possibility unexplained. In the present
chapter I rectified this approach by showing how in the case of individual
reader I viewers, the effects of the gaze disseminate into other areas of psy-
chic life. Thus the problematic of interpellation has been successively re-
worked from Althusser's coarse-grained purely social approach to the
point where an individual's distinctive psychic response to interpellation
can be explained.
 IV
INTERPASSIVITY AND
THE POSTMODERN
 9
Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink:
Mystery Science Theater 3000

Reification and the Postmodern

I n the Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zi.Zek draws attention to "a phe-
nomenon quite usual in popular television shows or serials: 'canned
laughter.' After some supposedly funny or witty remark, you can hear the
laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself"
(Zizek 1989, 35). Zizek then adds: "So even if, tired from a hard day's
stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the televi-
sion screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium
of the other, we had a really good time." In Robert Pfaller's terminology,
the audience who listen passively to a laugh track instead of laughing for
themselves is said to be "interpassive" (Pfaller 1999).
In its original sense, the term "interpassive" was intended to describe
agents who, instead of acting on their own behalf, delegate their activities
to others-for instance, viewers who, having recorded a show on a VCR,
do not bother to watch it for themselves since, as we might put it, some-
thing else "objectively" watches on their behalf; or an audience who,
having attended a concert, read the newspaper critique instead of making
up their own minds about what they have heard. Opportunities for inter-
passive engagements have increased through the technological mediation
of everyday practices by automatic dishwashers, ATMS, vibrators, and so
on. This mechanization of life means that we are able to interpassively
delegate ever more aspects of our daily activities to mechanical agencies.

153
154 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

For instance, my contribution to washing dishes reduces to stacking, un-

loading, and pushing the button of a machine which washes them on my
behalf.
I generalize the concept of interpassivity by rethinking it as a property
not of agents but of artifacts. In particular, a cultural artifact is said to be
"interpassive" if, like a sitcom with a laugh track, it responds to itself on
its audience's behalf, thus enabling the audience to delegate their re-
sponse. Of course, not all members of a particular audience may (inter)-
passively accept the artifact's response rather than responding for them-
selves. On the contrary, even those who start by passively listening to a
laugh track may end up actively laughing, either because the mechanical
laughter strikes them as comic or because, as Freud notes, laughter is in-
fectious.
Interpassivity may be seen as an aspect of the process of reification the-
orized by Lukacs (1983, 100). The construction of a laugh track, for in-
stance, involves removing laughter from its subjective human source and
then "objectifying" or standardizing it in various ways-smoothing it out
and editing it into the soundtrack. In this alienated (othered) form it is re-
layed back to an audience who, in the first instance at least, decathect their
own laughing in favor of listening "passively" to the recorded substitute.
This process follows the familiar pattern of reification, since it involves ab-
stracting laughter from its human origins and restoring it in alienated
form.
Alternatively, interpassivity, and canned laughter in particular, may be
explained as aspects of a "postmodern" shift in emphasis from signified to
signifier. Television shows no longer concern themselves with producing
pleasure but rather with producing its free-floating signifiers such as
laughter. The usual connections between the signifier (laughter) and the
corresponding signified (pleasure) are disrupted. The agency producing
the laughter, namely, the soundtrack, is no longer the same as the human
audience who enjoy themselves. 1
The analysis of canned laughter as either an effect of reification or a
postmodern privileging of the signifier fails to answer a further crucial
question: Why, and more specifically how, does interpassivity affect the
production of pleasure. To put the question concretely, if I no longer laugh
"spontaneously" because the soundtrack laughs on my behalf, then how
does watching the show produce the pleasure traditionally associated

1. Fredric Jameson argues that reification and the postmodem privileging of the signifier
are one and the same process: "'reification' and the emergence of an increasingly material-
ized signifier are one and the same phenomenon-both historically and culturally"
(Jameson 1992, 16).
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 155

with the personal production of laughter? At issue here is not only the pe-
culiar mechanics of watching television but also a more general question
that Marxist approaches to theories of cultural production have failed to
answer satisfactorily, namely, the relation between cultural forms and the
pleasures and desires of individual consumers.
One might, of course, answer these question from a Baudrillardian per-
spective by taking the production of pleasure in the postmodern context
as nothing but the circulation of signifiers of pleasure. But I will answer
them here from a Freudian and specifically a Lacanian perspective, fo-
cusing initially on the phenomenon of canned laughter and then ana-
lyzing the contemporary American television show Mystery Science The-
ater JOOO (MST3K for short). In general terms I argue that the pleasure
produced by interpassive cultura1 artifacts depends upon the workings of
what Freud calls the drive (Trieb), which he sees as the primary mecha-
nism for producing pleasure.

What a Laugh!

In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud claims that the con-
struction of jokes requires "joke-work" analogous to what iri. the Interpreta-
tion of Dreams he calls "dream-work." In dream-work, according to Freud,
one reworks residues of the day's waking thoughts, which, through
memory, retain their cathexis during sleep. This reworking involves con-
structing a series of associations, condensations, and displacements con-
necting the dream-thought with an unconscious wish. In this way, the
dream becomes a vehicle for covertly expressing a wish, thus evading the
prohibition associated with its direct articulation (Freud 1991, 217).
By analogy, joke-work involves three imbricated processes. The first is
wordplay, to "put words together without regard to the condition that they
should make sense, in order to obtain from them the pleasurable effects of
rhythm and rhyme" (174). The resultant concatenations of fragmentary
strings of linguistic signifiers are analogous to what in dreams are called
the "day's residues." Second, in order to evade the prohibition against
nonsense, the joker ensures that the results of his or her play conform with
minimal requirements of sense: "The joke-work ... shows itself in a choice
of verbal material and conceptual situations which will allow the old play
with words and thoughts to withstand the scrutiny of criticism" (180).
If that were all the joker did then the result would be what Freud calls
"a jest" (178). But the true joker as opposed to the mere jester takes a third
step. What she or he says must in some respect be appropriate to the occa-
sion, even when expressed in a new and quirky way (179): "Jests," he tells
156 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

us, merely "say [what] does not appear senseless .... [But] if what a jest
says possesses substance and value it turns into a joke" (181).
More specifically, Freud distinguishes jokes from jests by suggesting that
the former tap into the unconscious of the joker as well as the audience. He
suggests that even the apparently most innocent, "non-tendentious" jokes
are transgressive and set "themselves up against an inhibiting and re-
stricting power" that is connected at an unconscious level to a "repressed"
prohibition (183). 2 At this point in his exposition, Freud carefully stops
short of claiming that all jokes have such unconscious connections, but
later, in the "Theoretic Part," he tentatively advances this further claim:
"Let us decide, then, to adopt the hypothesis that this is the way in which
jokes are formed in the first person: a preconscious thought is given over for a
moment to unconscious revision and the outcome of this is at once grasped by
conscious perception" (223).
Freud also distinguishes between the "first-person" joker, who at least
initially does not laugh at her or his own creation, and the "third-person"
audience for whose benefit the joke is told, and who immediately express
their pleasure in laughter (209, 238). (The "second-person" involved in the
joke is the ''butt" of the joke, the person at whose expense the joke is told.
This second-person role is not central to jokes but essential to comic ef-
fects, which I discuss later.) According to Freud, pleasure for both the
"first" and "third" persons is a spin-off from the energy freed by the joke
through its evasion of inhibitions, that is, through managing to say indi-
rectly what should not be said.
For the first-person joker the energy freed by such evasion merely com-
pensates for the quota consumed in the joke-work, without leaving much
for the act of laughing. Thus the first-person joker laughs only as a sec-
ondary effect, par ricochet, as it were. As Freud puts the matter: "When I
make the other person laugh by telling him my joke, I am actually making
use of him to arouse my own laughter" (209). This indirect mechanism for
stimulating one's laughter by making another person laugh depends
upon the fact that, as Freud says, "Laughter is among the highly infec-
tious expressions of psychical states." The third-person audience for the
joke, by contrast, are the lucky beneficiaries of the teller's work: they get
their pleasure for free, as it were. Merely by listening, they evade the inhi-
bition that the joke teller labors to overcome. In their case, then, all the en-
ergy freed by the joke is directly channeled into and fuels the laughter ac-
companying and signaling the production of pleasure.
--~

2. "Among the various kinds of internal inhibition or suppression there is one which de-
serves our special interest, because it is the most far-reaching. It is given the name of 're-
pression"' (Freud 1991, 184),
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 157

Can Laugh

Canned laughter in a television sitcom presents problems for the

Freudian account. Since they do not laugh at the jokes, the interpassive
viewing/listening audience cannot be identified with what Freud calls the
"third party," namely, those whose laughter serves to distinguish a joke
from a mere jest. Instead, if the interpassive audience laugh, it is only as a
secondary effect, either because the mechanical canned laughter is conta-
gious or because they find it comic. Members of an interpassive audience
are more like Freud's "first party." Their laughter, like the joker's, is trig-
gered by the laughter of others. But unlike the "first party," the interpas-
sive audience do not make the jokes. In short, canned laughter is anom-
alous with respect to the Freudian scheme: its audience fit none of the
Freudian categories of first, second, or third party. Nevertheless Freud's
distinctions between the comic, the humorous, and the joke tum out to be
helpful in understanding this phenomenon.
The comic involves laughing at the expense of a "second party," for ex-
ample, at the major physical disruption created by a person slipping on a
banana skin. More specifically, Freud says, the comic involves a compar-
ison ''between two cathectic expenditures that occur in rapid succession
and are concerned with the same function" (256). A person appears comic
when an excessive expenditure of bodily energy over mental energy is ap-
parent.3 The pleasure generated by such recognition, which in tum fuels
the laughter, arises from what Freud calls "a pleasurable sense of superi-
ority" (256), which enables viewers to relax and drop their guard, thus
freeing up a certain quota of energy they previously dedicated to paying
attention to their own interests.
Of course, as Freud points out, not all such recognitions will lead to
laughter (280). Among the conditions that favor its emergence he lists a
certain degree of inattention: "A movement or a function cannot be comic
for a person whose interest is directed to comparing it with a standard
which he has clearly before his mind. Thus the examiner does not find the
nonsense comic which the candidate produces in his ignorance" (283). In
short, if it is to produce comic pleasure, then "the process of comparing
expenditures must remain automatic," that is, must "lack the cathexis of
attention with which consciousness is linked," although without neces-

3· By contrast, if the situation is reversed, if we recognize a certain saving of physical en-

ergy by applying mental effort, then "we no longer laugh, we are filled with astonishment
and admiration" (Freud 1991, 256). Here we see the origin of at least some of the pleasure
in viewing the work of art which economically conjures up a vision that we, the viewers,
must otherwise work so hard to see.
158 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

sarily sinking to the level of the unconscious (284). In the Freudian topol-
ogy, such lack of attention is associated with the preconscious.
The humorous, by contrast, is characterized as a species of defense. In-
stead of being attached to some distressing thought or feeling, cathexis is
displaced somewhere else, thus avoiding the generation of unpleasure
(290). The strategy of "grinning and bearing" or "laughing off" some ca-
tastrophe by withdrawing attention from it and focusing wryly or ironi-
cally upon some distant and relatively insignificant benefit of the situation
exemplifies the humorous. So, a man who has just lost a leg remarks: "At
least I won't have to cut all my toe-nails." In this situation too, Freud ar-
gues, inattention must be preconscious rather than deliberate (298).
In the light of these distinctions, canned laughter on the soundtrack of a
television sitcom can be understood as involving a comic effect. Just as a
shaggy-dog story derives its humor from the teller's exaggerated at-
tempts to signal that his story is a winner, so too the comic effect of canned
laughter derives in part from the lack of proportion between the sustained
laughter on the soundtrack and the stupid, unfunny jokes.
The comic effect of canned laughter also depends upon a coincidence be-
tween the mechanical and the human-in particular on a mechanization of
the human faculty of laughter. Canned laughter leads listeners to relax
their efforts by suggesting that there is no need to laugh, or even pay much
attention to the jokes, since those activities are being carried out effort-
lessly, automatically on their behalf. 4 In Freud's terms, the freeing up of en-
ergy that results from a reduction in cathexis of the listeners' attention pro-
duces a pleasurable effect combined with a secondary burst of laughter.
But none of these Freudian effects seem adequate to explain the plea-
sure that sustains viewers who, week after week, return to their favorite
sitcom. A Frankfurt-school model of television viewers-which casts
them as "cultural dopes" or "addicts" who watch what they are given to
watch, and come to enjoy it from sheer force of habit, their sole pleasure
lying in a mechanical repetition of the familiar-seems equally inade-
quate as an explanation. Such a model, geared to an outdated conception
of a "mass audience," does not fit the peculiar and pleasurable rituals of
the box. In particular, it is unable to account for the pleasures of channel
surfing, which depend upon fickleness and an obsession with novelty
rather than mechanical repetition of the familiar.
In explaining the pleasures of sitcom viewing, I draw attention to an as-
pect of canned laughter that has no place in the Freudian scheme adduced

4· According to Freud, this is an instance of a more general proposition: "Everything in a

living person that makes one think of an inanimate mechanism has a comic effect" (Freud
1991, 271).
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 159

so far, namely, an element of contradiction between viewers' intellectual

and practical engagements. On the one hand, viewers know with cer-
tainty that the laughter on the soundtrack is simulated, that it comes nei-
ther from them nor from anyone else actually listening to the program. (I
leave aside cases where a studio audience is present at the filming of the
show.) On the other hand, they find the program amusing and enjoy it as
if the laughter were genuine. In this respect, then, canned laughter func-
tions in a similar way to money. As Zi.Zek puts it:

When individuals use money, they know very well that there is nothing
magical about it-that money, in its materiality, is simply an expression of
social relations .... The problem is that in their social activity itself, in what
they are doing, they are acting as if money, in its material reality, is the im-
mediate embodiment of wealth as such. They are fetishists in practice, not
in theory. What they "do not know," what they misrecognize, is the fact that
in their social reality itself, in their social activity-in the act of commodity
exchange-they are guided by the fetishistic illusion. (.Zizek 1989, 31)

Zizek goes on to say that "what they overlook, what they misrecognize, is
not the reality but the illusion which is structuring their reality, their real
social activity. They know very well how things are, but still they are
doing it as if they did not know. The illusion is therefore double: it consists
in overlooking the illusion which is structuring our real, effective relation-
ship to reality. And this overlooked, unconscious illusion is what may be
called the ideological phantasy" (32-33). Similarly, the audience for the
soundtrack "know very well how things are," that the laughter is "purely
a pretense," that it does not originate from them or anyone else watching
the show. They are perfectly clear on this score, by contrast with the con-
fusion sometimes displayed in distinguishing actors from the characters
they play. Nevertheless, as Zizek says, "still they are doing it"; by re-
turning night after night, year after year, to see the show, they act as if the
canned laughter were a genuine response, a true index that the show is
funny. In short, the audience's response is balanced between knowing that
the laughter they hear is faked and enjoying the show as if the laughter
were genuine, an enjoyment signaled at a practical level not by the audi-
ence's laughter but rather by a strong commitment to watching the show.
Such a contradiction between knowledge and practice, between
knowing and doing, is characteristic of a phenomenon that Freud calls the
drive (Trieb), the primary mechanism for the production of pleasure.
Lacan illustrates the drive by the phenomenon of trompe l'oeil: "What is it
that attracts and satisfies us in trompe l'oeil? When is it that it captures our
attention and delights us? At the moment when, by a mere shift of our
160 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

gaze, we are able to realize that the representation does not move with the
gaze and that it is merely trompe l'oeil. For it appears at that moment as
something other than it seemed.... That other thing is the petit a, around
which there revolves a combat of which trompe l'oeil is the soul" (Lacan
1981, 112).
In the course of this description, Lacan introduces a new category of ob-
jects, the objet [petit] a. In the special case of trompe l'oeil, he tells us, the
objet a is that which "appears ... as something other than it seemed";
specifically it is that which gives rise to an instability in the viewer's vi-
sual field, causing an oscillation in what he or she sees. In short, the objet a
is the painting, the "representation" around which the flux of appearances
constitutive of the phenomenon turns. (More correctly, the objet a is the vi-
sual instability caused by the painting, but we do not need to be so precise
here.) This flux (or more correctly the associated libidinal flow) constitutes
what Lacan, following Freud, calls "the drive." It is responsible for the
production of pleasure, which fuels the phenomenon of trompe l'oeil. As
Lacan puts it, the objet a is "that other thing ... around which there re-
volves a combat of which trompe l'oeil is the soul" (112). Or, as he says else-
where in more general terms: "To this ... object, objet a ... we must give a
function that will explain its place in the satisfaction of the drive. The best
formula seems to me to be the following-that la pulsion en fait le tour"
(168-pulsion is Lacan's translation of Trieb). The term tour, Lacan tells us,
"is to be understood here with the [full] ambiguity it possesses in French,
both [as] turn, the limit around which one turns, and trick" (168). In the
case of a trompe l'oeil, for instance, the pertinent drive structure is con-
stituted by a "turning" and "returning" of looks, a looking and looking
again, in response to an unstable illusion or "trick."
In short, Lacan's position is that the pleasure produced by trompe l'oeil,
that which "attracts and satisfies us," is produced by a drive that revolves
around the painting as petit a. Lacan's name for this visual form of the
drive is "the scopic drive," and he calls the objet a around which it turns
"the gaze." Conceived in this way, trompe l'oeil illustrates perfectly the
claim that the drive is accompanied by a contradiction between what we
know and what we do. That is, as viewers of trompe l'oeil we know very
well that what we see is un tour, a trick or illusion, but all the same, in
virtue of the pleasure it affords, the trick deceives and fascinates us.
Canned laughter, I suggest, fills a similar role to trompe l'oeil but in a
vocal rather than visual context. In Lacan's terms, it too is a petit a. It is an
instance of what Lacan calls "the Voice," an audible deception or trick
(tour) within the soundtrack that "appears ... as something other than it
seems" and is encircled by a structure of vocalizations and revocaliza-
tions. To be specific, the canned laughter masquerades as laughter by the
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 161

audience, and, in turn, stimulates real laughter, albeit as an attenuated

secondary effect. (The rudimentary nature of the secondary laughter is an
aspect of the interpassive nature of the phenomenon: we do not laugh
heartily since the track does so on our behalf.)
The structure of canned laughter and its secondary spin-off constitute
what Lacan calls the invocatory drive. Conceived as a vocal analogue of
the looking and looking again that constitute the scopic drive, it functions
as a drive in its own right (Lacan 1981, 174-180, 194-195, 274). And since
according to Freud's pleasure principle, the drive in any of its forms is
productive of pleasure, it follows that canned laughter and its secondary
spin-off laughter are also a source of pleasure.
These suggestions concerning the psychic structure of canned laughter,
specifically the hypothesis that canned laughter belongs to the category of
the Voice, explain the paradoxical feature noted above: judged by their
loyalty to the show, a sitcom audience's enjoyment is well in excess of
what we might expect on the basis of their desultory secondary laughter.
Their excess pleasure, I claim, comes from the operation of the invocatory
drive circulating the canned laughter. It follows that despite its desultory
quality, the secondary laughter stimulated by the soundtrack and over-
laying the audience's purely passive response is essential to the sitcom's
production of pleasure. Without it, an invocatory drive structure would
not take shape, and the show could not produce the pleasure that sustains
viewer involvement over years of reruns.
This account of canned laughter leads to a reevaluation of what Pfaller
calls "interpassivity." Listening to a soundtrack, we have seen, stimulates
laughter as a secondary effect (par ricochet) and thus creates pleasure
through the operation of an invocatory drive structure with canned
laughter at the center functioning as the Voice-object (objet a). Thus, far
from constituting a passive delegation of one's response to others, lis-
tening to the soundtrack is part of a complex although not necessarily in-
tentional strategy in pursuit of pleasure. This complex phenomenon, an
imbrication of the passive delegation and the active pursuit of pleasure
through a set of secondary effects, provides a template for interpassivity
as a self-sustaining phenomenon.

MST3K and the Scopic Drive

The phenomenon of interpassivity is not restricted to canned laughter.

It also crops up in other contemporary media productions, such as the
television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Originally (in the late
eighties) a local cable access program produced in Minnesota, it quickly
162 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

created a large cult following on both coasts, especially among college stu-
dents. Subsequently it made it into ''big-time" national television, where it
was featured on Comedy Central. Currently it is produced (with minor
changes in format) for the Sci-Fi channel.
The program features reruns of old B-grade movies and employs an in-
novative double framing device, a device later adapted by programs such
as Beavis and Butt-Head and MTV interactive music videos. The inner-
most of the frames is a blacked out strip at the bottom of the television
screen, in which three figures are silhouetted against the movie: Mike
Nelson and his two robot friends, Tom Servo and Crow, who, we are in-
formed in a separate song and dance introductory sequence at the begin-
ning of the program, are being chased across the galaxy by an evil and
powerful woman, Pearl. She forces them to watch a steady diet of bad old
movies ("cheesy," Pearl calls them). The three figures duly watch the films
and exchange a series of smart-ass, media-wise jokes.
The figures are provided with a rudimentary mise en scene: a row of
movie theater seats on which they sit during the screening, their backs to
the television audience as if they were sitting in a row of seats in front of
us in a cinema. The gestures of the robots are minimal, without any real
attempt to achieve realistic body or lip movements synchronized with
their speech. The three figures look at the screen displayed before them,
chat about what they see, and occasionally get up and move offscreen to
make comfort visits to an indeterminate surrounding location. While they
are in the inner frame, they never acknowledge our presence "behind"
them.
The movie screening is interrupted by breaks, which function formally
as a second, outer frame for the inner one. Mike and his robot friends ap-
pear on the bridge of the spaceship in which they are traveling, and we
are treated to a full-screen, full-color elaboration of the show's premise
that they are being pursued across the galaxy by the evil Pearl. At the
same time the robots chat with Mike, revealing and occasionally com-
menting upon their own "true" identity as puppets, as well as critiquing
their performances in the inner frame as if they were actors playing the
parts of the robots. During these breaks, by contrast with the movie
screening, the presence of the audience is frequently acknowledged. The
evil Pearl, for instance, makes extensive use of conspiratorial looks at the
audience, and Mike reassures viewers when a commercial break is about
to begin: "Back in a minute."
The dialogue of the characters is consistent throughout this dazzling se-
ries of transformations: a hybrid between Beavis and Butt-Head type
wisecracks and the juvenilia of a bunch of computer nerds heavily at risk
from 00-ing on late night reruns. The following extract from a sequence
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 163

during which the figures watch the clean-cut, good-looking scientist hero
being teased and seduced by the blonde heroine is typical:

ROBOT 1: [Commenting about the hero] He's a moist, pillowy Dwayne Hick-
man type.
[The on-screen couple kiss]
ROBOT 2: I believe I'm experiencing stagflation.
[The on-screen picture shifts to a scowling, sinister figure half hidden behind the
curtains, watching the embrace]
MIKE: Freeze-hold on his eyebrows.
ROBOT 1: [Commenting about the hero's romantic technique] He just holds his
kisser up there and she does all the work.

From a structural point of view MST3K is interpassive insofar as the

show itself, via the framing figures, responds to the screened movie on the
audience's behalf. As in the case of the laugh-track on the sitcom, this
raises the possibility that the viewers passively watch the program in-
stead of responding themselves. This brings us to our problem:. in such
cases how can we explain the pleasure that sustains audience involve-
ment, and, specifically, how does the complex framing of the show con-
tribute to the evident audience enjoyment?
Part of the answer to this question (as in the case of canned laughter)
appeals to the frame's comic effect. As Freud argues, bad jokes, such as the
framing figure's wisecracks about the movie, enjoy a comic potential in
their own right: "We can ... decide whether ... to call such produc-
tions ... 'bad' jokes or not jokes at all .... Jokes of this kind undoubtedly
produce a comic effect.... Either the comic arises from the uncovering of
the modes of thought of the unconscious ... or the pleasure comes from
comes from the comparison with a complete joke.... It is not impossible
that ... the inadequacy of ... a joke is precisely what makes the nonsense
into comic nonsense" (Freud 1991, 278). But more is involved than bad
jokes. The frame in MST3K calls to our attention, and laughs on our be-
half, at a comic disparity between the (presumed) serious intentions of the
targeted movie's producers and the pathetic results of their efforts. In
other words, the framing narrative provided by MST3K functions as an
elaborate comic cue, a mise en abfme, which suggests that the targeted
movie is to be mined for comic potential. Such devices, Freud indicates,
are commonplace in the comic genre: "In the last resort it is the recollec-
tion of having laughed and in the expectation of laughing that he [the
reader of a comic book or the viewer of a farce] laughs when he sees the
comic actor come onto the stage before the latter can have made any at-
tempt at making him laugh" (283).
164 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

Freud also contends that "the generating of comic pleasure can be en-
couraged by any other pleasurable accompanying circumstances as though
by some sort of contagious effect (working in the same sort of way as the
fore-pleasure principle)" (285). In this light, the comic pleasure produced
by the framing characters' pathetic jokes in MSTJK may be seen as seeds or
catalysts for other comic effects at the expense of the movie's producers.
What Freud calls "humor," as distinct from comedy or jokes, also plays
a part in MSTJK. Under normal circumstances, the poor quality of the
movie and its dated feel would bring about a negative affective response
on the part of contemporary, hip viewers to whom MST3K is directed. The
framing narrative expects this response, and more or less effectively turns
it to advantage by channeling the audience's cathexis from their own neg-
ative affect into new directions. Specifically the frame turns the tedious as-
pects of the movie, such as the clumsiness and pretentiousness of its pro-
ducers, into points of interest for the audience. Thus the show enables the
"economy of expenditure upon feeling" that Freud (tggt, 300) takes to be
characteristic of the humorous. But, important as they are, these effects do
not exhaust the sources of pleasure in the show.
The location of the framing figures encourages an impression that we
are watching over their shoulders. This results from an obvious homology
between the figures' position (blocking our view of the screen) and the po-
sition occupied by a real audience sitting in front of us in a theater. 5 To-
gether with the fact that the figures ignore our presence, this impression
creates an illusion of "realism" in the inner frame. I do not mean that the
illusion is credible-on the contrary, we know it is just a fiction. Rather, I
mean that we relate to the events portrayed in the inner frame voyeuristi-
cally. In other words, while knowing they are a fiction, we experience the
robots as if we were watching them watch a movie. Thus a wedge is
driven between our knowledge (the robots are fictional) and the quality of
our perception (even so, they look real). (This formal sense of the term "re-
alism" differs from Jameson's, to which I shall refer in the next chapter.) In
short, as in its classical Hollywood form, the illusion of "realism" is con-
cerned with "reality effects," specifically a voyeuristic point of view,
rather than credibility.6

5· This impression is helped by the inclusion of a real man among the figures.
6. I am not claiming that the inner frame's realism is totally unqualified. On the contrary,
its poor production values-the robot figures are crude caricatures rather than con-
forming to "realistic" representations of robots-draws attention to the inner frame's arti-
fices, and thus undermines its illusion of realism. In this context it is clear that, as I indi-
cated above, lack of realism is not simply a matter of lack of credibility. On the contrary, in
one respect at least, the frame's credibility is enhanced by the transparency of its mas-
querade-at least it's honest about its own status as a simulation, we might say.
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 165

While creating an illusion of realism with respect to the fiction of the ro-
bots, the inner frame in MST3K undermines the realism of the movie that
the robots are watching with us. By bringing to our attention its clumsy ef-
fects and bad script, the robots' comments destroy the possibility of a
voyeuristic relation to the movie. In short, MST3K sacrifices the movie's
realism as part of a strategy for reinscribing realism at the level of the
inner frame within which the screening takes place. Later I argue that
such sacrificial displacement of realism from the movie to its frame is bor-
rowed from a similar strategy in the contemporary world of advertising,
where, to use Robert Goldman's terminology, "ads which are not ads"
embed their promotional claims in a frame that reflexively questions the
integrity of those claims?
The outer frame of MST3K, by contrast with the inner one, is the site of
systematic failures of realism, induced by addressing the audience di-
rectly and thus expelling them from the comfortable voyeuristic stance of
seeing without being seen. For instance, Pearl winks conspiratorially at
the audience, Mike blandly reassures us he will be "back in a minute,"
and the puppets reflexively joke about their own status as fictions: "Look
at my butt; I've got no butt." Paradoxically these failures of realism in the
outer frame support the realism of the inner frame. Viewers are directly
addressed-"interpellated" in the formal sense-as ones who are in the
know. The knowledge they are supposed to have is that they are watching
what is, in the words of the song in the opening sequence, "Just a show."
"Relax ... forget the science facts," the song instructs us. Thus, despite its
own manifest lack of realism, the outer frame functions as an elaborate
mise en abfme supporting the inner frame's realist illusion. In the next sec-
tion, I show how this feature of the show also functions as a vehicle for
ideology. But now I return to my original question: what are the sources of
pleasure in viewing MST3K?
The show's multiple frames, which include the commercial breaks and
television screen itself, are the site of multiple trompe l'oeil effects, as
viewers move in and out of a succession of illusions: the robots expose the
movie's crude visual artifices, the robots in turn are exposed as puppet

7· Goldman 1992, chap. 7· This is not to say that the movie screened in MST3K is totally
divorced from all effects of realism. On the contrary, even though we "see through" the
movie's pathetic attempts at realism, MST3K's interpassivity (the fact that it criticizes the
movie on our behalf) causes us to moderate certain aspects of our critical response. In par-
ticular, the boredom that would be created by watching the movie "cold," without the
benefit of the MST3K frame, is dispelled to some extent, and we find ourselves watching it
against our better judgment. In brief, in the context of its MST3K screening, the movie
takes on a sort of perverse fascination for the viewer who watches it not with the blind en-
thusiasm of the fan but rather with a degree of suspension of awareness of the film's arti-
fices that entails a partial return of realism.
166 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

simulations, and we see that it's all "just a show." What draws us to
MST3K, I claim, is the pleasure resulting from the oscillations of our eyes,
which, despite our sure and certain knowledge of the truth of the matter
(the figures are only puppets that we are watching on television-who
could doubt it?) flit restlessly in and out of the layers of masquerade
which the show so agreeably lays before us.
In the same way, even after we discover what appears to be a window
on the wall is merely trompe l'oeil, we continue to be drawn into the illu-
sion. This is not because we have any doubt about what is reality and ap-
pearance, but rather because falling in and out of the illusion creates a
pleasure we are loath to forgo. As Lacan elegantly makes the point, and
here I repeat a quotation given above: "What is it that attracts and satisfies
us in trompe l'oeil? When is it that it captures our attention and delights us?
At the moment when, by a mere shift of our gaze, we are able to realize
that the representation does not move with the gaze and that it is merely
trompe l'oeil" (Lacan 1981, 112). The pleasure in such effects, Lacan argues,
is produced through the scopic drive. Thus the mechanism by which
MST3K diverts us is among the most basic by which the human eye takes
its pleasure in the world of appearances.

Ideology in the Text

In the previous section I discussed a mechanism by which the interpas-

sive MST3K produces pleasure, a mechanism which has less to do with its
humor and bad jokes than with the multiple trompe l'oeil effects associated
with its frames. As well as functioning as a site for the production of plea-
sure, MST3K plays an ideological role. In this section I explore the connec-
tion between the show's erotic and ideological effects.
The illusion of realism is ideological, implicated in the forms of engage-
ment essential to contemporary consumer capitalism. It is manifested in
relations between shoppers browsing in the modern shopping mall and
the glamorous commodities displayed before them, replete with glittering
promise to make the purchaser envied/ desired by others (Berger 1972,
132-149). At an intellectual level the shoppers are cynical, knowing that
the commodities cannot deliver what they promise, but even so they put
down their money and take their chances. "By the early 198os," Goldman
writes, "a new crisis of believability unfolded .... Who could take seri-
ously the claim that an authentic self is available via consumption of com-
modity aesthetics? But who could distance themselves from this social-
ized desire to be special, to stand out?" (Goldman 1992, 222). In a similar
way, Jameson argues, virtually from its inception the "domestic realism"
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 167

of the classic Hollywood film of the 1930s, including the formal character-
istics which I grouped together under the heading "realism," was seen as
idealized fiction and, following the Great Depression, escapism (Jameson
1992, 174-175). All the same, at a practical level audiences suspended their
disbelief, paid for tickets, and entered its dreams.
In short, Hollywood realism and the cinematic consumerism of the
shopping mall depend upon a common structure, namely, the ideological
misrecognition (meconnaissance) that Zizek associates with the workings
of money and the commodity form more generally: "I know very well
how things are, but still (up to a point) I am doing it." In particular, the
Hollywood illusion of realism, which takes as its content the impression
that from an objective, third-person point of view I am watching real
events unfold before me, is the site of a fundamental split. On the one
hand, it involves an intellectual recognition that the illusion is a fiction; on
the other, at the level of practice it incorporates a misrecognition leading
one to act as if the illusion were truth.
Zizek ascribes a further dimension of misrecognition to ideology:
"What they 'do not know,' what they misrecognize, is the fact that in their
social reality itself, in their social activity ... they are guided by the
fetishistic illusion" Zizek 1989, 31). In short, they fail to recognize the con-
flict between what they do and know. Realism may be seen, then, as ideo-
logical not in virtue of its illusory nature or even the form of its illusion-
what I referred to earlier as its voyeurism-but rather in virtue of the
ideological form of misrecognition through which it is set in place: "I
know very well how things are, but still (up to a point) I am doing it."
For all its radical chic, MST3K depends upon exactly such an ideolog-
ical structure, albeit with a novel postmodern twist. Through the critical
comments made by the figures in the inner frame, it encourages viewers
to act upon their knowledge that the movie's special effects are crass, its
plot unbelievable, and so on, thus undermining any attempt to engage
with it realistically. It does this, however, only as a means of reintroducing
realism at the level of the in:J,ler frame: "I know the figures are just pup-
pets, but still (up to a point) I am watching the movie with them." I argue
next that MST3K's strategy of sacrificing the movie's realism in favor of
the frame's is echoed in a genre of postmodern advertisements that devel-
oped during the 198os in response to a shift in consumer sensibilities.

The Not-Film

Direct-sell ads of the 1950s and 196os overtly sang the praises of their
products, thus requiring a certain suspension of disbelief with respect to
168 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

their own first-order content. In the United States of the 198os, Goldman
points out, growing consumer cynicism with respect to advertising claims
meant that such direct-sell ads became less effective as instruments of per-
suasion (although a surprisingly large number of them survive at the
budget end of the advertising market, apparently targeting "working-
class" audiences). 8 This failure of the old-style ad posed a rhetorical chal-
lenge: how could ads work as instruments of persuasion in a milieu in
which they were no longer trusted? More specifically, how could con-
sumer cynicism about ads be turned to advertisers' advantage? A new
genre of ad-what Goldman refers to as "the not-ad" or "the ad which is
not an ad" -developed in response to this challenge (Goldman 1992,
chap. 7).
The new ads highlight their own status as advertisements. By offering
viewers what Goldman refers to as "a knowing wink," they implicitly
(and on occasions explicitly) allude to their generic lack of credibility
(181). Goldman illustrates such ads by the 1g85 "Out on the Street" spot
made for Levi 501 Jeans, in which an urban, ethnic, working-class char-
acter "good-naturedly places his palm between his face and the camera to
shield his face .... and then he unexpectedly steps outside the camera's
frame, off the side-walk, and then back with a grin. Playfully trans-
gressing the camera's boundary rules initiates a self-reflexive awareness
about the nature of this text as advertising, and a momentary refusal to
participate in the society of the spectacle" (184). Such ads are character-
ized by a second-order meaning of cynicism which provides contempo-
rary audiences with a ready point of identification based upon their
common mistrust of ads. The point of the strategy is not so much to create
belief in ads-that would be ridiculous-but rather to neutralize con-
sumer cynicism by turning it back on itself, specifically by showing con-
sumers that their knee-jerk mistrust of ads leads them into the self-
referential complexities of the liar paradox.
The ads do this by partaking in self-criticism, thus implicitly raising the
following unanswerable question: "If we tell you we are liars, then are we
to be trusted?" If they are to be trusted, then their claim to be liars should
be believed, in which case they are not to be trusted. On the other hand, if
they are not to be trusted, then their statement that they are liars is not
trustworthy, and so, it seems, they are not liars after all. Therefore they can

8. Lengthy "infomercials" for exercise equipment and shop-at-home programs may be

placed in this category. The problem of determining a target audience for such produc-
tions is complicated by a distinction between an appearance of appealing to working-class
sensibilities (a highly mediated ideological construction) and having "genuine" working-
class appeal (a construction that will be ideologically mediated in a different way).
 Interpassivity and the Knowing Wink 169

be trusted. In short, if they are to be trusted then they are not; on the other
hand, if they are not to be trusted then they are.
This strategy of bamboozling cynics by thrusting them into the logical
thickets of paradox has a modest aim: not to create trust in ads (that is a
lost cause) but rather to render obscure and thus shift focus from the diffi-
cult question (difficult for advertisers) of whether ads are to be believed.
By throwing into confusion the cynic's response, the new ads pave the
way for a range of auxiliary devices by which they construct meanings for
products.
The auxiliary devices do not employ direct argumentation, of course,
since to do so would simply reintroduce the difficult question of whether
ads are to be trusted. Instead, the new ads continue a range of techniques
developed in, the 1g6os and 1970s, which depend upon forging multiple
connections of a visual kind between an image of the product and an al-
ready desired referent image (a beautiful woman, a tropical island, and so
on). Thanks to such direct image-to-image connections, desirable mean-
ings transfer from referent to product. The transfer in question depends
not upon the logical forms of persuasion employed by direct-sell ads but
rather upon establishing the sorts of associations that Freud shows at
work in dreams. That is, the ads forge associations between things by
physically connecting their signifiers rather than drawing logical connec-
tions between the signifiers' contents (Williamson 1978, 15-19).
A similar strategy is at work in MST3K. To adapt Goldman's useful ter-
minology, this program is "a film which is not a film" or, briefly, a "not-
film." To be specific, MST3K reworks a familiar realist genre, the Holly-
wood B-grade movie, which in its original context of production, like ads
of the 1950s and 196os, required a certain suspension of disbelief on the
part of its viewers. Because of enhanced media-literacy, as well as radi-
cally increased sophistication in the area of special effects and the alien-
ating effects of nostalgia in the film industry at large, these movies can no
longer be watched in the same way as they were originally. On the con-
trary, a certain critical distance has opened up between contemporary au-
diences and these older movies, thus effectively foreclosing the possibility
of taking up a realist attitude to them. And as in the case of the "Out in the
Street" ad for Levi 501s, this foreclosure seems to clear a space for a heady
possibility: a subversive, indeed liberatory moment of, to use Goldman's
terms, a "refusal to participate in the society of the spectacle" (Goldman
1992, 184).
As Goldman also remarks in the case of the 501s ad, however, "instead
of unmasking the ideological construction of commodity signs," the new-
style media text "fashions the self-reflexive hipster into the newest-'most
authentic'-sign yet" (184). And similarly in MST3K, the dismantling of
170 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

the ideological structure of realism by a gesture of unmasking-"seeing

through" the movie producer's silly pretensions of realism-is merely a
step on the way to reinstalling realism at a more abstract level, that of the
inner frame.
In sum, in MST3K the framing characters' cynical stand in which we are
led to participate vicariously does not protect viewers from the ideolog-
ical illusion of realism. On the contrary, in exactly the way Zi.Zek indicates,
postmodern cynicism serves as a support for ideology: "Cynical distance
is just one way--one of many ways-to blind ourselves to the structuring
power of ideological fantasy" (Zizek 1989, 33). This, in turn, raises the
question to which I turn in the next chapter: whether it is possible for a
cultural artifact, especially one like MST3K with its radically reflexive
postmodern form, to break with or even subvert ideology.
 10

Crash and Subversion

C ronenberg's film Crash, based on a book by J. G. Ballard, is set in an

American city of the present. The meandering plot concerns a motley
assortment of people obsessed to a potentially fatal extent with cars as in-
struments for sex and violence.
The lack of a well-defined story line, the high-quality glossy color print
and arty shot production, a certain melancholy of the characters, and pro-
fuse imagery of streamlined mechanical devices place it squarely in the
category of what Jameson calls the postmodern "nostalgia-deco" film
(Jameson 1992, 222-225). Nostalgia is manifest not by setting the story in a
particular historical period-on the contrary, it takes place in an indeter-
minate present-but rather by infusing the mise en scene with an art deco
style which conveys a certain sense of historicity: "a certain synthesis be-
tween modernization (and the streamlined machine) and modernism (and
stylized forms)" (224).
This style is introduced in the opening sequence where the immacu-
lately beautiful and strangely remote Catherine (Deborah Unger) ecstati-
cally pushes her bared breast against the smooth and highly polished
curves of an airplane. A "suitor" (as her husband calls her lovers) inter-
rupts her reverie (or are her actions a narcissistic display for his benefit?)
and penetrates her from behind with his tongue as she caresses the metal
curves. Attending this moment of mechanical tendresse is a certain ambi-
guity that the film never fully resolves. Does the scene gesture, as many
critics have argued, toward a new postmodern cyborg sexuality, a partial

171
172 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

dehumanization of the body, which the character Vaughan (Elias Koteas)

explicitly refers to as the impact (literally, as it turns out, a "crashing") of
modern technology upon the body? Or is the issue here what Vaughan
refers to as his "real" project, a new ''benevolent psychopathology" cen-
tered upon the car, and hinted at in the characters' repeated conversa-
tional references to a mysterious and sinister increase in traffic: "Have you
noticed that the traffic has been getting heavier?" Or is what we see
merely a fetishizing of the machine, or an elaborate narcissistic display in
which the machine functions merely as a decorative prop?
The postmodern format continues in the unmotivated, apparently
random coincidence in names between the author, James Ballard, and one
of his <;haracters, partially echoed in turn in the name of the actor who
plays him, James Spader. It is as if the authorial signifier-the signifier of
signifiers-has become unmoored and has accidentally floated into an
adaptation of Ballard's own creation, even penetrating the "real" world of
the actors. This little joke repeats and extends the form of the Hitch-
cockian gag but with a postmodern spin. Instead of the director cropping
up under an assumed name, the author's name crops up under an as-
sumed character.

Crash through a Rear Window

The postmodern is also evident in Crash's emphasis upon "specular ob-

session," a motif which, Jameson argues, the postmodern movie adapts
from its modernist predecessors, where it is "motivated by the theme of
voyeurism" (216). In this respect, Hitchcock's Rear Window is a paradigm
of the modernist genre. The crippled Jimmy Stewart character sits in his
darkened room, watching Grace Kelly through the window of a lighted
room across the courtyard, where he has sent her to spy on a (hopefully
absent) homicidal neighbor. As cinematic viewers of the scene, we iden-
tify with Stewart's point of view, specifically with his voyeurism: we too
sit in a darkened room watching Grace Kelly, an identification which is
strengthened by positioning the camera (with which we also identify) so
that it looks over Stewart's shoulder.
The Stewart character's position is not that of the pure voyeur-the un-
seen watcher. He too is under scrutiny, not only by us but also indirectly
by his target (the Grace Kelley figure) who, although she does not look
back at him, knows she is being watched. And because we identify with
the Stewart character, our scrutiny of him doubles as a scrutiny of us. The
fact that it is only by ourselves that we are being scrutinized does not alter
 Crash and Subversion 173

this conclusion. 1 On the contrary, the shot's skill lies precisely in the way
that the frame covertly splits the viewer of the film between one who
looks and one who is seen.
The result of this covert self-scrutiny is that, at the level of its form, Rear
Window takes on a specular dimension, that is, displays to its viewers their
own act of looking. Viewing the film thus takes on an exhibitionistic di-
mension which, in turn, unsettles the familiar voyeuristic position of in-
visible watcher. This specular structure is not without benefit. The combi-
nation of exhibitionism and voyeurism enables the film to function as a
site for the scopic drive, conceived by Lacan as a pleasurable but also
anxiety-provoking coupling of looking and being seen.
Like Rear Window, Crash incorporates specular obsession at the level of
both form and content. By stripping the acts of seeing and being seen of
any dimension of human feeling, Crash adds a postmodern twist, how-
ever. In the postmodern movie, Jameson claims, "the psychic subject dis-
appears altogether ... and along with it, the process by which looking is
specifically foregrounded as a privileged element and a psychological
motive" (217). In terms of this distinction, Crash falls squarely in the post-
modern category. That is, unlike Rear Window, Crash presents voyeurism
as a specular structure divorced from human pleasure and desire. And,
unlike the Jimmy Stewart figure in Rear Window, the characters in Crash
appear for the most part as strangely affectless, their emotions and mo-
tives hidden from one another as well as from us. Humans are pictured as
impassive objects, hunks of aesthetically arranged hair and meat, exem-
plified by the cold, elaborately coiffed, picture-perfect and inhumanly
beautiful Catherine. When they are pictured in action, even in the throes
of sexual "passion," it is frequently as dull-eyed, stone-faced zombies
caught in the grips of a drive that renders questions of motive irrelevant.
Indeed, signs of passion emerge only when humans are joined to ma-
chines, as in the opening scene of Catherine's penetration while em-
bracing the airplane. Sexuality, it seems, pertains to the cyborg rather than
the human being, a theme echoed in the jerky movements and lifeless fea-
tures of James's lover, Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter). Her deport-
ment and looks are eerily reminiscent of Lal, the android daughter of Mr.
Data from the television series Star Trek the Next Generation, who although
she has feelings cannot give them "natural" expression.
The alienation of humans from their motives and feelings finds focus in
an episode early in the film. Two of the male protagonists, Vaughan and

1. This in tum provides a basis for a secondary identification with the Grace Kelly figure,
who is also under scrutiny.
174 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

James, stand in the corridors of the hospital where the latter is being
treated. They watch each other looking at medical photographs of torn
flesh and shattered limbs, each only tangentially aware of the other's
scrutiny. In a strange reprise and doubling of the window scene from Rear
Window, and despite their proximity, each manages to take up a voyeur-
istic position of unseen watcher in relation to the other. Vaughan, by
posing as a medical technician, conceals both his sexual interest in James
and his prurient fixation upon the photographs, a masquerade of which
we and James become aware only retrospectively. James, on the other
hand, relies upon his "real" identity as a patient in order to conceal his
voyeuristic impulses and uneasy sexual response to Vaughan.
Like Rear Window, Crash unsettles its voyeuristic scopic regime by
looking back at viewers. However, the formal techniques by which it does
this contrast with the characteristically modernist strategy employed by
Hitchcock, who, when the film looks back at the viewer, favors the shot-
reverse-shot technique. Through suturing viewers to a character who is
internal to the narrative, this technique erases their awareness of them-
selves as viewers, thus reinforcing their voyeuristic reverie even while un-
dermining it.
Crash, by contrast, avoids shot-reverse-shot sequences. Instead, the
camera's look takes on an inhuman quality: the formal, geometrically pre-
cise, and oddly angled shots follow a pattern no human viewer could repli-
cate. Highly formalized, long, linear tracking shots glide along rows of cars
in a parking lot or scan the damaged limbs of crash victims, and characters
are arrartged in stylized, totally artificial poses, silhouetted behind one an-
other, all facing in the same direction. For example, in several sequences
the camera moves up through the roof of a car and yet continues to see
what goes on underneath, as if the roof has become transparent.
By opening a gap between what is visible to the human eye and the
camera's visual field, and especially by leading viewers to see in an "un-
natural" way what they could not see for themselves, this use of the
camera draws attention to the film's nature as film. The inhuman quality
of its look refuses viewers the familiar viewing position of identifying
with the camera, that is, of watching what it sees as if they themselves
were watching. Viewers are thus made aware of the interpassive nature of
the filmic experience, the fact that they are seeing vicariously what has
been seen on their behalf.
The film thus plunges the viewer into the formal structure of the gaze.
Viewers are made aware that what they see incorporates a paradoxical,
alien element, which, by offering them a sight of what they cannot see, con-
stitutes a transgression of the perceptual symbolic order. To put the paradox
in concrete terms: "I (who sees) see that I can't be seeing this." This paradox,
 Crash and Subversion 175

in turn, makes viewers look again at what they see, thus introducing a split
between themselves as seeing and seeing what they have seen.
These formal effects are reinforced by long tracking shots of gruesome,
obscene sights, for instance, a lengthy vagina-like scar under net stockings
on a calipered leg. The shot is presented in an extended close-up, which
glides slowly and deliberately along the length of the scar. The impression
is the very reverse of identifying with the camera. On the contrary, one's dif-
ference from the camera is marked by both the shot structure and content.
This effect is created not merely by the horror of what is shown but also
by the way it is shown: the camera lingers so precisely, so dispassionately,
so inhumanly upon what it sees. By contrast with a Hitchcock film, there
is no drama in the camera's act of seeing, no sudden cuts away from the
site of horror, which, by simulating a "natural" human response, facili-
tates viewer identification with the camera. Instead, Crash creates a teeth-
grinding tension between the act of looking and what is seen/ shown. As
in Hitchcock, viewers cannot bear to see the content of what they are
shown, but Crash adds an extra twist: viewers cannot look in the same in-
human, dispassionate, fully focused way at the horrors which the camera
sees on their behalf.
The impression of being placed under scrutiny is further reinforced by a
series of mise en abfmes. In the course of the narrative, James and Vaughan
reveal to each other their voyeurism, joining openly in looking at televi-
sion clips and snapshots of violence and damaged flesh. These communal
viewings of the act of viewing are haunted by a gradually strengthening,
eventually consummated homoerotic bond between the two men, albeit
one in which all signs of human emotion are strangely muted. Other pro-
tagonists dispassionately masturbate while seated on a couch viewing
video clips of car crashes. Viewers of the film are led to identify with the
point of view of these characters, not directly, as in Rear Window, by seeing
through a character's eyes, but rather by sharing their activity of viewing
violent and sexually explicit material.
In sum, for Crash as for Rear Window, viewing involves an imbricated
looking and looking again, a voyeurism combined with exhibitionism
that is characteristic of the scopic drive. Its stylized shots of damaged
gaping flesh, like the glint of light in Lacan's story of his day at sea, make
viewers uneasily aware of their role as viewers, thus constituting a gaze
around which the drive turns (Lacan 1981, 95). Such shots constitute sites
of a knot or singularity in the visual field around which looks anxiously
circulate with a mixture of horror, fascination, and pleasure.
In viewing Crash, however, the scopic drive takes an extra, fetishistic
twist. Instead of being incorporated within the narrative (as in Rear
Window), the characteristic ambivalence of the scopic drive between looking
176 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

and looking again, between seeing and being seen, is inflected at a cognitive
level, destabilizing and splitting viewers' knowledge of what they see and
who they are. Crash refuses viewers any firm ground to which they can step
back and accept what they see as "realistic," as something that they see for
themselves. Unlike Rear Window, it refuses any easy identification with the
camera or a character. Crash, to use Jameson's phrase, "plunge[s] [us] into
the image itself as such" (Jameson 1981, 216) in the sense of making us
aware of the split between the imagining and imagined subjects.
In particular, although viewers of Crash know that what they see is only
a film, even so and contradictorily they "know" that they are implicated as
objects under its scrutiny.. The "knowledge" at issue here is not merely, as
in Rear Window, a matter of feeling under scrutiny, feeling that the film looks
back, as it were. Neither is the "knowledge" in question purely an intellec-
tual matter. On the contrary, at an intellectual level there is no equivoca-
tion. Viewers know that in reality the film does not look back at them.
Instead, it is a matter of what Freud calls "disavowal," a contradiction
between two forms of "knowledge," between what is known intellectu-
ally, on the basis of seeing, and phantasies which, in structuring people's
behavior, specifically their symptoms, provide an (often unacknowl-
edged) setting for their desires.
In his 1927 essay "Fetishism," Freud illustrates such a contradiction in
the case history of a young man who

has exalted a certain sort of "shine on the nose" into a fetishistic precondi-
tion. The surprising explanation of this was that the patient had been
brought up in an English nursery but had later come to Germany, where he
forgot his mother tongue almost completely. The fetish, which originated
from his early childhood, had to be understood in English, not German.
The shine on the nose [in German Glanz auf der Nase]-was in reality a
"glance at the nose." (Freud 1953-73, 21:155)

At an intellectual level Freud's patient knows very well that his mother
does not have a penis, but even so, he "knows" that she does, a "knowl-
edge" which he manifests in terms of a long-standing symptomatic attrac-
tion to a shine on the nose which, through a chain of signifiers crossing
from German (Glanz, meaning "shine") to English ("glance" but also
"glans," as in penis), functions as a substitute for the mother's penis. 2 In

2. Freud does not mention the homophonic relation with "glans," perhaps because this is
a word that is unlikely to have been in the childhood vocabulary of his patient who, we
are told, came to forget his childhood acquaintance with English. But it must not be for-
gotten that the effects here are retrospective, so that such anachronisms are to be expected
rather than eschewed.
 Crash and Subversion 177

this case, then, the nose functions as a phallic symbol, a relation suggested
by its shape and, more basically, by the fetishistic condition which literally
gives body to the "knowledge" of the mother's penis.3
In the same way, the unrealistic anxiety (anxiety without an appropriate
object) created by watching Crash suggests that the "knowledge" created by
viewing it, namely, that one is under scrutiny, is in the technical Freudian
sense part of a phantasy structure. Like a symptom, it not only encodes a
message but also functions as a vehicle for anxiety. On the basis of the film's
systematic erosion of any position from which it can be watched, one can
speculate that the unconscious roots of this phantasy structure lie in the
subject's repressed knowledge that he or she is the site of lack constituted
by falling short of the inscrutable expectations of the Other. In that case, the
phantasy of being watched, of being under the scrutiny of a mysterious
other, as in the experience of a film looking back at its viewer, may be seen
as constituting a direct, perhaps almost too literal, return of repressed
knowledge, a return that is responsible for unrealistic anxiety. As Lacan
writes in his unpublished Seminar X, "Anxiety manifests itself clearly from
the very beginning as relating-in a complex manner-to the desire of the
Other. From the very first I have indicated that the anxiety-producing func-
tion of the desire of the Other was tied to the fact that I do not know what
object o [objet a] I am for this desire" (quoted in Weber 1991, 161).
In MST3K, by contrast with Crash, the camera never sees in an inhuman
way, even when what it sees is totally fantastic in content. Thus identifica-
tion with the camera is never seriously threatened, even at those moments
in the outer frame when, by a character locking eyes with and addressing
the viewer, the voyeuristic illusion is shattered. This means that despite all
the "seeing through" and playful slippage between frames, MST3K, like
Rear Window, never forces viewers to confront the split implicit in seeing
themselves seeing. However unstable the content of what they see, in the
last instance MST3K viewers can identify with the apparently firm posi-
tion defined by the camera's eye. In other words, as in trompe l'oeil, the
splitting of the seeing subject into one who sees and one who is seen re-
mains covert; and, as in trompe l'oeil, viewers are distracted from such
splitting by the scopic drive's ongoing pleasures, which take shape in the
gap between illusion and its seeing through, the gap across which, in the
words of Lacan, "one can only play at jumping" (Lacan 1981, 62). 4 Para-

J. The explanandum in this case is part of the evidence for the explanans. Such circularity
is harmless, indeed, characteristic of many perfectly satisfactory historical explanations.
4- For all its radical chic, from a structural point of view, MST3K is no more than a sort of
automated double trompe l'oeil, working by an interpassive mechanism. That is, the inner
frame sees through the fiction of the movie on its viewers' behalf; and the outer frame, in
tum, sees through the inner frame's fictions.
178 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

doxically, then, the playfully reflexive visual games into which MST3K in-
troduces viewers serve to stabilize rather than disrupt their position.
In sum, MST3K and Crash exhibit two different forms of fetishism.
MST3K involves the "practical fetishism" defined by Zizek, which governs
both the ideological mechanism of meconnaissance and the operation of the
drive, and which manages to conceal the splitting of the subject. Crash, by
contrast, involves fetishism in the full Freudian sense, which, through a
"perverse" structure of disavowal, openly displays the splitting of the sub-
ject.5 With a view to clarifying the political and specifically subversive di-
mensions of the distinction between these two forms of fetishism, I turn to
Jameson's essay ''The Existence of Italy'' (Jameson 1992, 155-229).

Subversive Realism

Jameson claims that a tension exists within the concept of realism. In its
epistemological sense, realism is taken to be a mode of truth telling, a
transparent form of representation that tells things as they really are. In its
aesthetic sense, by contrast, it is a rhetorical form, a mere reality-effect that
simulates the truth through the application of culturally and historically
bound aesthetic conventions (158-159). Jameson argues for a third con-
ception of realism, one that restores to it the critical, radical political edge
it enjoyed in the works of Bahktin and Lukacs. He suggests that a code be
taken as "realist" when, in Basil Bernstein's sense of the term, it manages
to become "elaborated or universal" (169). In short, realism is an effect
created by treating a particular set of representational conventions as uni-
versal so that they appear to cover everything that exists.
Jameson then argues that by introducing a new universal categorical
scheme, realism may function as a subversive aesthetic. By "appropri-
ating part-structures" of speech and transforming them into a kind of in-
terior dialect, what Jameson calls "a private language, hysterical or
camp," a realist aesthetic may undermine a hegemonic form of represen-
tation. To be specific, from the bric-a-brac of the old symbolic order the
subversive realist aesthetic constructs a voice for a ''beleaguered collec-
tive." It thus exists at "the limits of language (or representation)," where it
is characterized by a certain "excess of intensity ... rais[ing] its voice, mo-
biliz[ing] pitch and intonation.... The individual subject seems to disap-

5· In Copjec's words, "Fetishism is, as Freud claims, 'particularly favorable' for studying
the splitting of the ego in the process of defense; as a perversion, it ex-planes it, unfolds the
split onto a flat surface and thus conveniently displays it for the analyzing eye. 'I know
very well, but just the same [I] .. .' -here we see laid out before us the splitting of the two
I's in the statement" (Copjec 1994, 111).
 Crash and Subversion 179

pear behind the beleaguered collective which thus speaks all the more res-
onantly through it'' (173).
This construal of realism elaborates a conception to be found in Jameson's
earlier work The Political Unconscious. There, basing himself on Bahktin and
Lukacs, he proposes that realism (specifically narrative realism) "has as its
historic function the systematic undermining and demystification, the sec-
ular 'decoding,' of those preexisting inherited traditional or sacred narrative
paradigms which are its initial givens" (Jameson 1981, 152).
In "The Existence of Italy'' Jameson argues that at a particular historical
juncture-America in the 1930s-the conventions of the Hollywood
movie (to which the B-grade science fiction movie belongs) constituted a
realist aesthetic. In particular, film provided a new language, a new lens,
through which Hollywood "offer[ed] viewers glimpses of their own do-
mestic and single-family existence" (Jameson 1992, 174). The "viewers"
Jameson refers to are, of course, the new class of factory workers who in
exchange for a promise of bourgeois status bought commodities manufac-
tured for the new "mass markets" created by twentieth century "Fordist"
industrial capitalism. This new Hollywood "domestic realism," as
Jameson calls it, took on a "negative or ideological moment" in the Great
Depression, when "Hollywood's images of domesticity ... suddenly
come to be seen, not as 'realism' but as compensatory wish-fulfillment
and consolation" (174). Nevertheless, thanks to a certain conservatism
built into the nexus between capitalism and the Hollywood production
system, the conventions of domestic realism continued to enjoy a certain
hegemony as elements of a cinematic genre system, retaining their histor-
ical association with the signifier "realism" in what came to be a purely
formal sense of the term. 6 In the context of these remarks, I now return to
a consideration of Crash and its fellow traveler in postmodernity, MST3K.

6. According to Jameson, Hollywood "realism" and its polar opposite in the field of "high
art," namely, "modernism," characterize second-stage, monopoly capitalism, exemplified
by America in the 1930s when the newly bourgeoisified married couple, struggling free
from their working-class roots, were attempting to give voice and sight to their aspirations
in the face of advertising and a new mass market full of relatively affordable commodities
(Jameson 1992, 174, 225-226). The postmodem, by contrast, is the "cultural dominant" of
the third, late or multinational stage of capitalism associated with the 1960s (203). The
move from second- to third-stage capitalism may also be seen in terms of the switch from
Fordism to post-Fordism. For a criticism of this view see Callinicos 1989.
The epistemic sense of realism as a mode of truth telling seems to be absent from this
little genealogy of realism, but it can be incorporated easily enough by recognizing that all
dominant systems of representation attempt to persuade their audiences that they tell the
truth. In particular, the shot-reverse-shot and the "objective," third-person shot character-
istic of Hollywood "realism" in the 1930s are two instances in a much longer history of
formal devices by which aesthetic modes have attempted to create "reality effects," that is,
persuade audiences that they are telling the truth.
180 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

Crash is subversive at the level of its form, in the sense that its shot pro-
duction undermines the voyeurism characteristic of Hollywood domestic
realism. Its form overlaps the "classic" realism of modernism, as delin-
eated in the work of Andre Bazin, who, as Jameson says, "projects an ideal
of film whose secret truth is no longer film, but rather photography itself,
and black and white photography at that" (186). This classic Bazinian re-
alism utilizes the tableau form and foregrounds the photographic signifier
by privileging the "deep [black and white] shot, grainy with the plaster of
the retaining walls and stones of the courtyard, streaked (as so often in
such filmic moments) by rain ... river water ... empty roadways flanked
by elms" (186).
Crash is distinguish~d not only by modernist devices such as the
tableau but also by a range of postmodern techniques, such as a too pre-
cise resolution of its images and a hyperrealistic gloss and coloration that
both betrays its "irreality" and, through exaggeration, foregrounds the
"technicolor" filmic signifier (192). By carrying these techniques to ex-
tremes, Crash and the postmodern more generally register their aesthetic
break from the style, irony, and plotlessness that Jameson takes to be char-
acteristic of the unstable category of modernism (201, 213). For instance,
as I indicated above, the sight gags or "in-jokes" characteristic of mod-
ernist auteur directors, such as Hitchcock's appearance as a minor char-
acter in his own productions, are taken to an attenuated extreme in Crash
through a running gag of a character whose name coincides with the au-
thor's?
Crash is also subversive at the level of content. It speaks in what
Jameson, following Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, calls "the minor"-
speaks, that is, on behalf of a disaffected, fringe group separated from the
"dominant'' by its participation in sexual practices that, to the extent that
they are recognized as belonging to a "type" rather than constituting a
disparate assortment of curiosities, are deemed pathological.8
The visual language in which Crash gives voice to this minor is adapted
from traditional images of copulation, masturbation, foreplay, sadism, ho-

7· This joke indicates another feature of the postmodern: the "death of the author" qua the
modernist auteur-director-joker, along with his gullible audience who are content merely
to be let in on the joke. Similarly, Jameson argues, we can rewrite modernist texts as post-
modern "by heightening the silences around their sentences (as in Flaubert); and can even
attempt, more violently, to misremember modernist films by jumping from 'image' or
frame to the next in a properly discontinuous or heterogeneous fashion" (207).
8. In Jameson's words, Crash "acknowledges one of the prime features of the postmodern
situation," namely, an "intensified collectivization, and the subsumption of all solitary
rebels or isolated monads into new forms of group cohesion and affirmation" (173). He
also claims that "we long mistook [this feature] to be the death or disappearance of the
subject" (173).
 Crash and Subversion 181

mosexuality, fetishism, and so on. These images are combined in new and
intensified ways: Catherine's ecstatic cyborg experience in the opening
shots; Helen's curious lack of emotion in scenes of intense sexual arousal;
Vaughan, perched in full public view on the back seat of a convertible
driven by James, his lover-to-be, undressing and masturbating a woman
he has picked up a few moments before in a parking lot. The film provides
a space in which, by being metonymically linked within a collage of im-
ages, bizarre sexual practices and their practitioners take on a contrived
collective identity. In Jameson's sense, then, the film exemplifies the sub-
versive realist project of "intensified collectivization ... the subsumption
of ... solitary rebels or isolated monads into new forms of group cohesion
and affirmation" (173).
MST3K, like Crash, transgresses the conventions of Hollywood realism,
but in a different way. In seeing through the B-grade sci-fi movie that it
screens, it relieves viewers of the task of seeing through it for themselves.
This allows them to decathect their own negative responses and slip back
into an attitude of more or less passive acceptance of the movie's image
production. Nevertheless, at a practical level, the movie screened within
MST3K loses its generic "realism." By conspiratorially appealing to
viewers to recognize the naive response that the movie not only expects
but also to some extent evinces, MST3K creates a distance between
viewers and their viewing experiences that is inconsistent with sustaining
realism. As I argued above, however, the realism lost from the movie is
reinscribed in the inner frame. In short, despite its destabilizing layers of
illusions, MST3K reproduces the ideology of realism.
Crash, like MST3K, produces pleasurable effects through the workings
of the scopic drive, but unlike MST3K it makes visible the mechanics of
the drive. That is, in Crash, pleasure is produced not by the ideological
mechanism that Zizek calls "practical fetishism," which hides from
viewers the gap between themselves as seeing and seen. Rather, the mech-
anism is fetishistic in the full Freudian sense. The usually repressed
knowledge of being under scrutiny surfaces at a symptomatic level. To be
specific, by creating a gap between human vision and what the camera
sees, the viewer is refused a comfortable point of identification. Thus
whereas MST3K, assuming a conservative cast, pacifies its viewers andre-
produces the ideological forms that it shares with the world of adver-
tising, Crash undermines these forms. Rather than being tranquilized with
the comfortable voyeuristic fare of Hollywood realism, the viewer is dis-
commoded by induction into a fetishistic scopic regime-a subversive re-
alism in Ja~eson' s sense.
In sum, and here I return to themes alluded to in the Introduction, Crash
inducts viewers into a fetishistic scopic regime that drives a wedge be-
 182 Interpassivity and the Postmodern

tween the human eye, with which viewers engage the filmic image, and
the inhuman mechanical eye of the camera, which watches interpassively
on their behalf. Thus, in a direct physical way the film's fetishistic visual
economy undermines the material processes of modernization (as well as
theories of "vision") that collapse both human seeing and mechanical
signal transmission/ scanning into a single abstract category of "vision."
The neologism by which, at a material as well as intellectual level, TV be-
comes "tele-vision" perfectly illustrates this collapse. Crash opposes this
collapse through openly depending for its effects upon a separation be-
tween the human eye and the camera.
In short, fetishism in Crash takes on a subversive role, undermining not
only the ideological forms of Hollywood realism but also the modernizing
processes of abstraction by which differences, specifically differences be-
tween human and nonhuman, are erased (Sharp 1985). In this context,
it is, of course, no accident that the contents of Crash circulate the theme
of the cyborg, that is, the partial mechanization of the human body-or
what one of its characters, Vaughan, refers to as "the impact [literally a
crashing] of modern technology upon the body." Thus, the theme of the
cyborg in Crash emerges as an ideological gloss which, at the level of the
film's form, conceals a radical separation of the human (eye) and the ma-
chine (camera).
I have argued that through its fetishistic form and despite its fore-
grounding of the theme of the cyborg, Crash subverts a modernizing ten-
dency to erase differences between human and machine. Thus Crash illus-
trates a subversive potential common to all forms of fetishism, namely, a
propensity to restore that obvious yet paradoxical dissimilarity between a
man and woman, namely, the father's possession of the phallus and the
mother's lack, which modernizing processes of abstraction as well as the
imbricated patriarchal order strive to suppress.
I am not claiming that the fetishistic scopic economy of Crash is resistant
to all ideological formations. On the contrary, as Laura Mulvey argues in
her influential essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," the
fetishistic look is one of the principal strategies by which patriarchy (un-
derstood as the symbolic-Oedipal order) preserves itself in the face of the
castration threat posed by cinematic images of woman's body (Mulvey
1975). Mulvey illustrates the fetishistic look by the highly aestheticized
images of women, such as Sternberg's portrayals of Dietrich, that distract
· attention from the referent onto the image itself. Through such distrac-
tions, the cinematic image functions as a sort of metonymic substitute for
that which woman is seen as lacking, and thus functions a~ a defense
against castration anxiety. Such a strategy can be seen at work in Crash in
the highly aestheticized "beaver shots" of Helen making love with her
 Crash and Subversion 183

husband James after having been brutally assaulted by his friend

Vaughan.
The other cinematic form of defense against castration anxiety that
Mulvey mentions is the sadistic voyeuristic look. In the case of Crash this
is cued by the shots of Vaughan's brutalizing encounters with women, as
well as by the marks of violence visible on their bodies. Here, then, we see
the full range of looks which, according to Mulvey, characterize tradi-
tional patriarchal defenses in the cinematic arena (including pornog-
raphy). Which is not to say that Crash is unambiguously antifeminist. On
the contrary, by displaying an awareness of itself as an image, Crash
adopts one of the strategies that Mulvey identifies with the subversive
feminist film. Thus here as elsewhere the question of whether fetishism is
subversive or conservative cannot be answered unequivocally.
My analyses of Crash and MST3K indicate the bankruptcy of any one-
sided approach to the question of the "the postmodern" and its political
impact. At the least a distinction must be made between a fetishistic form
of the postmodern, which subverts hegemonic ideological forms, and a
form in which the visual reflexivity characteristic of the scopic drive is less
prominent and thus takes a less perverse, ideologically conservative turn.
My analyses of the gaze and the fetish provide the analytic tools with
which such distinctions can be drawn.
 Appendix: The Oedipus Connection

For Geoff Sharp

L evi-Strauss claims that the Oedipus myth is about the inability to con-
nect two rival cosmological accounts for the origin of humanity. One of
these claims that man is autochthonous, that is, born of earth. In the Hel-
lenic context this view was embedded in a system of metaphors connecting
man with plants, and the soil with birth, blood, and woman. 1 The other
cosmological account is empirical. Drawing on common experience, it rec-
ognizes that man is the product of the sexual union of man and woman:
"The [Oedipus] myth has to do with the inability, for a culture which has
the belief that mankind is autochthonous ... to find a satisfactory transi-
tion between this theory and the knowledge that humans are actually born
from the union of man and woman" (Levi-Strauss 1979, 216).
According to Levi-Strauss, the function of the Oedipus myth is to recon-
cile its audience to the contradiction between these cosmologies. It does so in
terms of a two-step logical argument. First it proves that the contradiction
between the schemes of autochthony and sexual union is identical with an-
other, that between being born of same and born of different. This, in turn, is
shown to be identical with a social opposition between overrating and un-
derrating blood relations as marriage partners: "The Oedipus myth provides
a kind of logical tool which relates the original problem-born from one or
born from two?-to the derivative problem: born from different or born

1. Traces of such metaphors survive in English today, exemplified by the evocative "Dust
to dust, ashes to ashes" at the center of various Christian funeral services.

185
186 Appendix

from same?" (216). In this way the myth resolves the initial cosmological
contradiction between autochthony and sexual reproduction, not by media-
tion but rather by a proof that the contradiction is repeated and lived out in
the practices of negotiating whom to marry. As Levi-Strauss puts it suc-
cinctly: "Although experience contradicts theory, social life echoes cos-
mology by its similarity of structure. Hence cosmology is true" (216).
A somewhat different but more elaborate version of this account of
myth function emerges from remarks Levi-Strauss makes elsewhere in his
discussion of the Northwest Coast native American myth of Asdiwal:

All the paradoxes conceived by the native mind, on the most diverse
planes: geographic, economic, sociological, and even cosmological, are,
when all is said and done, assimilated to that less obvious yet so real
paradox which marriage with the matrilateral cousin attempts but fails to
resolve. But the failure is admitted in our myths, and there precisely lies their
function .....
. . . Such speculations ... do not attempt to depict what is real, but to jus-
tify the shortcomings of reality.... Mythical thought implies an admission
(but in the veiled language of myth) that the social facts ... are marred by
an insurmountable contradiction. (Levi-Strauss 1978, 27-30)

Such remarks suggest that myths address social difficulties. In the case of
the Asdiwal myth, the difficulty in question concerns inheritance and
domiciliary arrangements in marriage. In the case of the Oedipus myth,
by contrast, the difficulty lies in deciding between the opposing strategies
of endogamy (overrating blood relations) and exogamy (underrating
them), between, on the one hand, marriage within the close family circle
with its attendant advantages of preserving family wealth and, on the
other, marriage with distant kin, a risky but potentially highly rewarding
strategy creating new obligations but also new alliances.
Myth responds to such difficulties, it seems, by naturalizing them. In
particular, the Oedipus myth inflects the opposing marital strategies onto
the cosmological plane by showing that they are equivalent to the rival
procreative procedures of autochthony and sexual reproduction. In this
way the social difficulty of deciding upon an appropriate marriage partner
is shown to be equivalent to a cosmological difficulty, that is, a contradic-
tion in the natural order, and therefore unavoidable: what can't be helped,
must be borne. Myth thus assumes a solidaristic function similar to that of
ideology, that of naturalizing contradictions in the social order.2

2.Levi-Strauss also suggests a third account of the function of myth when he writes else-
where: "Mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions towards
 The Oedipus Connection 187

By what logic does the myth prove that the opposition between au-
tochthony and sexual reproduction is identical with that between over-
rating and underrating blood relations? Levi-Strauss offers what he calls a
"provisional formulation" in answer to this question: "The inability to
connect two kinds of relationships is overcome (or rather replaced) ... by
the assertion that [the two] contradictory relationships are identical in as
much as they are both self-contradictory in a similar way" (Levi-Strauss
1979, 216). Unfortunately he never improves upon this "provisional for-
mulation," which even well-disposed critics such as the English anthro-
pologist Edmund Leach seem to find unsatisfactory. In his volume de-
voted to Levi-Strauss in the Fontana Modern Masters series, Leach
comments: "Those who think that this is vaguely reminiscent of an argu-
ment from Alice through the Looking Glass will not be far wrong" (Leach
1982, 65).
But in connecting the Oedipus myth with the dreamlike narratives of
Lewis Carroll's Alice, Leach's critical remark is more helpful than he
seems to have intended. 3 It suggests that the logic of the Oedipus myth
depends upon the system of associations that, according to Freud, struc-
tures dream thoughts and the unconscious. The relevant associative con-
nections are obvious. Overrating blood relations as marriage partners re-
sults in offspring born of one blood. Thus, since dream logic associates
effects with their causes, overrating blood relations is equivalent to being
born of one. Since autochthony is to be born of the earth, it too is equiva-
lent to being born of one. Thus overrating blood relations is equivalent to
autochthony, since both are equivalent to being born of one. And con-
versely underrating blood relations is equivalent to being born of more
than one, that is, born of two. In Levi-Strauss's terms, then:

overrating blood relations : underrating blood relations =

autochthony : born of the union of two.

(I provide a fuller version of this proof in the final section of this ap-
pendix.) For the following reasons, however, Levi-Strauss cannot accept
this Freudian gloss of his myth logic.
The roots of Levi-Strauss's thought lie not only in the structural linguis-
tics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson but also in three im-

their resolution" (Levi-Strauss 1979, 224). Such references suggest that the function of
myth resides in mediating contradictions: "It is the nature of myth to mediate contradic-
tions" (Douglas 1978, 52).
3· Leach's attitude to Freudian explanations seems to have been ambivalent at best, as in-
dicated by the references to Freud in Leach 1982.
188 Appendix

portant traditions in French scientific thought. The first, Durkheimian so-

ciology, seeks a realm of objective social facts which function as proper ob-
jects for social science; the second, Comtean science positif, attempts to
apply rigorous ("positive") scientific method to investigating social phe-
nomena; the third, Descartes's method of analysis and synthesis, sets out
to explain the variety of phenomena in the natural world as permutations
of a small number of mathematically described structures. Levi-Strauss
attempts to bring these three strands together with structural linguistics.
He applies canons of rigorous scientific method to determine a limited
range of objective, mathematical structures that underlie the evanescent
phenomena of the social world construed as a vast semiotic system, in-
cluding myths and their retellings.
His work may be seen as an extension of the nineteenth-century project
for a mathematical phenomenology exemplified by James Maxwell, Ernst
Mach, Gustav Kirchoff, and Heinrich Hertz as well as the French physi-
cists Jean Fourier, Augustin Fresnel, and Henri Poincare. These scientists
treated the abstract equations of the new mathematical physics of electro-
magnetism, thermodynamics, and optics as descriptions of a deeper re-
ality in terms of which the messy surface of phenomenal appearances
could be explained. By analogy with such an approach, Levi-Strauss seeks
to strip away the myriad idiosyncratic details of everyday collective sto-
ries and ritual activities in order to expose objective, highly abstract math-
ematical structures upon which such phenomena may be seen as varia-
tions. Levi-Strauss explicitly draws an analogy between such structures
and musical themes, so that the term "variation" here takes on the conno-
tations it has in a musical context (Levi-Strauss 1981, 647).
Such an approach sits ill with any suggestion, such as Leach's somewhat
frivolous remark, that identifies the logical structure of myth with chains of
connections grounded in purely subjective unconscious associations. In par-
ticular, if Leach's suggestion is correct, then the persuasive force of the
Oedipus myth is not, as Levi-Strauss suggests, a matter of apodictic certainty
but instead depends upon "poetic" or tropological associations that work
upon individual readers in a highly context-dependent fashion. As Suzette
Heald and Arlane Deluz write in their introduction to a history of psycho-
logical approaches in anthropology: ''While Levi-Strauss claims Freud as a
major intellectual influence, his theories of the human mind as the creator of
culture' have dealt with the psyche solely as an intellectual product, indepen-
dent of psychoanalysis .... For Levi-Strauss, it is logic not poetry which
holds sway in ordering the unruly bric-a-brac of culture and its representa-
tions in my:thology'' (Heald and Deluz 1994, 7).
The suggestion that Freud's dream logic underwrites the inferences im-
plicit in myth also contradicts another principle endorsed by Levi-Strauss,
 The Oedipus Connection 189

namely, that mythic thought is as rigorous as its Western scientific coun-

terpart: "The kind of logic in mythical thought is as rigorous as that of
modern science.... The difference lies, not in the quality of the intellec-
tual process, but in the nature of the things to which it is applied" (Levi-
Strauss 1979, 230).
This is a central principle for Levi-Strauss, which serves to distinguish
his views from those of predecessors, such as Lucien Levy-Bruhl, who in-
troduced the concept of a "prelogical" mentality to explain why totemic
systems of classification categorize men in terms of animals.

The idea of totemism made possible a differentiation of societies ... by rel-

egating certain of them into nature (a procedure well illustrated by the term
Naturvolker), at least by classing them according to their attitude toward na-
ture, as expressed by the place [they] assigned to man in the animal
kingdom .... Totemism is firstly the projection outside our own universe,
as though by a kind of exorcism, of mental attitudes incompatible with the
exigency of a discontinuity between man and nature which Christian
thought held to be essential. (Levi-Strauss 1963, 2-3)

Levi-Strauss argues compellingly that this concept of primitive thought

played a key ideological role in legitimating the regressively paternalistic
attitude to colonial subjects which grounded much French foreign policy
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.4

4· On the relation to Levy-Bruhl see the quotation from Marcel Mauss that Levi-Strauss
cites approvingly in Levi-Strauss 1963, 96. On the relation to colonial paternalism see Levi-
Strauss 1963, 1-3. Levi-Strauss's criticism of his predecessors implicitly denies involve-
ment of his own views in the politically loaded metaphysical and ideological prejudices he
locates in others. Yet his own position, specifically his erasure of any substantive differ-
ence between the thought of "primitives" and that of "civilized" people, also plays an ide-
ological role, albeit within a colonial context different from that of his nineteenth- and
early-twentieth-century predecessors. In particular, his principle of equality between na-
tive and Western thought can be appropriated to legitimate economic practices that treat
colonial subjects as full participants in the "free market" for Western (and in particular
French) aids to civilization: "What makes a steel ax superior to a stone ax is not that the
first one is better than the second. They are equally well made, but steel is quite different
from stone. In the same way we may be able to show that the same logical processes op-
erate in myth as in science, and that man has always been thinking equally well; the im-
provement lies, not in alleged progress in man's mind, but in the discovery of new areas to
which it may apply its unchanged and unchanging powers" (Levi-Strauss 1979, 230). My
remarks here are not intended as a nostalgic gesture toward the paternalism of an earlier
period of colonization. Instead, I am making the point that the egalitarian spirit of Levi-
Strauss's critique of the notion of "prelogical mentality" can also be turned to ideological
ends, namely, defending a regime of colonization no less exploitative than its paternalistic
predecessor.
190 Appendix

In sum, the suggestion that the logical structure of the Oedipus myth is
identical with the logic of the unconscious presents two problems for
Levi-Strauss. It contradicts his (politically important) principle of equiva-
lence between mythological and scientific thought, and, by introducing
subjective structures into myth analysis at a fundamental level, it violates
the norm of objectivity in the social sciences.
Nevertheless, the suggestion has two major advantages. First, identi-
fying mythic logic as the logic of the unconscious fills a central gap in
Levi-Strauss's account concerning the nature of mythological proof.
Second, it explains the otherwise puzzling fact that the Oedipus myth
continues to speak to us today, some two thousand years after Homer. 5 It
explains this amazing continuity in terms of two features. First, according
to Freud, the logic of the unconscious in terms of which the myth is struc-
tured has characterized human thought from the beginning. Second, what
we may take as the "conclusion" of the myth, namely, the association be-
tween incest and monstrosity, continues to have force today in the form of
stories about the unfortunate results of incestuous unions, rumors about
isolated hill communities of "yellow eyes," and so on. At a rhetorical
level, these "facts" continue to provide support for the equivalences upon
which the myth's conclusion is based, despite the failure of the cosmolog-
ical views that grounded them (including the fact that autochthony pro-
duces monsters).
Some of this support, it may be argued, arises from the scientifically
proven claim that breeding from small gene pools results in a failure to di-
lute recessive strains. The air of authority and moral indignation sur-
rounding objections to incest is characteristic of the realm of superstition
rather than science, however, which in turn suggests that the objections'
continuing power resides in their social function as vehicles for drawing
boundaries around marginal practices or groups rather than in their sci-
entific validity. 6 Freud, by contrast, would suggest that, along with the
myth of Oedipus, these objections and the "facts" adduced to support
them derive their authority by resonating with repressed knowledge that
has been at the basis of all human existence from its beginning.

5· Of course, the Oedipus myth does not impact upon everyone equally. The Freudian ac-
count I am offering here also explains this waywardness. Whether an individual makes an
associative connection between a particular cause and effect is highly dependent upon
context. This is not only because causal beliefs (such as autochthony causing monsters)
may vary from person to person within and between cultures, but also because a cause is
not always associated with its effects. As Freud himself observes, on some occasions a
cigar is "just a cigar."
6. Indeed, it may be argued that these facts legitimate science rather than the other way
around.
 The Oedipus Connection 191

The Proof

Levi-Strauss detects four key relations in the Oedipus myth:

1. Overintimacy with blood relations

2. Failure to respect blood relations
3· The slaying of monsters
4· The persistence of monsters or monstrous attributes

Each relation is present in the myth as a bundle of instances. The first is man-
ifested in the episodes of Cadmos risking Zeus's displeasure by seeking his
ravished sister, Europa; Oedipus marrying his mother, Jocasta; and Antigone
burying her twin brother, Polynices, despite the King's prohibition. The
second relation is manifested in the episodes of the Spartoi killing one an-
other; Oedipus killing his father, Laius; and Eteocles slaying his brother,
Polynices. The third relation is manifested in the episodes of Cadmos killing
the dragon and Oedipus killing the sphinx, while the fourth is manifested
not by particular episodes in the myth but rather by the names of the actors:
"Labdacos" (the name of Oedipus's grandfather) means "lame"; "Laius"
(the name of Oedipus's father) means "left-sided"; and "Oedipus" means
"swollen foot," and hence ''lame" (a reference also embodied in the episode
of Oedipus losing his sandal in accordance with the oracular prophecy).
These relations in turn are divided into two oppositions: between the first re-
lation and the second (Levi-Strauss writes this opposition in abbreviated
form as "1:2") and between the third and fourth relations (3=4).
According to Greek cosmology, monsters such as dragons, the Sphinx,
the Spartoi, and so on are autochthones, that is, born of earth. Therefore,
the persistence of monsters, the fourth relation, is an effect of autochthony.
But, according to dream logic, effects stand in for, that is, are equivalent to,
their causes. Thus the fourth relation is equivalent to autochthony. But au-
tochthony, in turn, is definitionally equivalent to being born of one,
which, in turn, is logically equivalent to being born of the same, since
things which are the same are also one. In sum, the fourth relation is con-
nected to being born of same by the following chain of equivalences:

persistence of monsters (4)Bbom of one (autochthony)Bbom of same

By using the same logic, it is easy to show that the first relation is simi-
larly connected to being born of same. The first relation, excessive inti-
macy between close relatives, causes the birth of offspring from people
with the same blood. Hence, since causes stand in for their effects, the first
relation is equivalent to being born of two people with the same blood.
192 Appendix

But since according to dream logic parts stand in for wholes, a person's
blood stands for the person himself. It follows that two people of the same
blood are themselves the same. Thus being born of the same blood is
equivalent to being born of same. In sum:

overintimacy with blood relations (I)~ born of same blood~bom of same

From these two associative chains, whose links are forged by dream
logic, we see that the first and fourth relations are both connected by
strings of equivalences to being born of the same. Therefore the first and
fourth relations must also be equivalent to each other. That is, 4~1?
And since opposites of equivalents must themselves be equivalent, the
third key relation (which is opposed to the fourth) must be equivalent to
the second (which is opposed to the first). That is, 3~2
Since 4~1 and 3~2, it follows that 4:3~1:2, that is, the opposition 4:3,
between the persistence of monsters and their slaying, is equivalent to the
opposition 1:2, between overvaluing and underrating blood kin.
Quod erat demonstrandum.

In sum, Freud's associative dream logic provides the inferential connec-

tions missing from but required by Levi-Strauss's account of the Oedipus
myth. In particular, dream logic underwrites various links in the chains of
equivalences by which the oppositions 1:2 and 3:4 are proven equivalent.
Note, however, that by bringing the four key relations into a common
space where the associative chains are able to do their work of estab-
lishing the relevant equivalences, the narrative of the myth also plays an
important role in the proof.
7· The assumption that such equivalences grounded in metonymic and synecdochic con-
nections satisfy the law of transitivity is, of course, invalid from the point of view of
formal Aristotelian logic. The logic at issue here is not Aristotelian, however, but rather
Freud's dream logic, for which chains of metaphoric connections, however lengthy, entail
equivalences between their beginning and end points. Thus Leach's reference to Alice
through the Looking Glass is appropriate, although, in the light of his hostility to Freudian
approaches, unintentionally so.
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 Index

Abstraction, 4, 182 Castration,7-8,45, 182-183

Advertisements/ads, 76, 79,106,167-170, Catachresis, 21, 37
181 Cathexis, 23-25, 142-143, 157, 181
Althusser, Louis, x, 9, 65, 73-95, 98, 149 Chaperone,9,23,28-30
Jlntbassadors,The,6, 11-12,100,108-112,147 Commodity, 21, 111, 166-167
Antagonism, 87, 89, 95 Conscience, 90-91
Anxiety, 7, 9, 18, 45, 47-48, 61, 66, 90, 93, Consciousness; 36-37
102-103, 112-113, 117, 141-145, 173, false, 80, 82
177, 182-183 Copjec, Joan, 36
Arcimboldo, Guiseppe, 113 Cowie, Elizabeth, lOln
Auerbach, Eric, 121, 123, 134 Crash, 4, 171-183
Cronenberg, David. See Crash
Bacon, Francis, 123-124, 126 Cyborg, 171, 181-182
Baltrusaitis, Jurgis, 109-110 Cynicism, 166-170
Barthes, Roland, 10-12,98, 140, 148
Beloved, 46,51-56 Deception, 15-19,25-28,58-59,63,66
Benjamin, Walter, 11 Demand, 19,52
Berger, John, 109, 166 Denial (Verneinung), 145
Bhabha,rlomi,2, 10,45-47,56,57 Desire, 5, 9-10, 15,22-24,27-29,31,45-56,
Boyle, Robert, 119-131,135, 139-141, 64,66,75,88-89
145-148 object of, 9, 27, 69
Breast, 19, 21, 25, 28, 104 object-cause of, 9, 22
Brooks, Peter, 134, 136-137 Ding, Das (the Freudian Thing), 60, 138
Butcher's wife, 22 Disavowal (Verleugnung), 7, 10, 29, 31,
Butler, Judith, 74, 85, 87-88, 90-95 45-46,51,60-68,176,178
Dora,5
Canned laughter, 153, 157-161 Dream, 36-39
Capitalism, 112-113, 116, 148, 166 burning child, 36-37, 40-41

197
198 Index

Drive (Trieb), 25, 27-28, 40-41, 66, 89, Instinctual wish, 141-143
159-161, 178 Interpassivity, 153-154, 157, 161,163,174,
invocatory drive, 38, 41, 161 182
object of the drive, 27, 70 Interpellation, ix, 9, 65, 73, 95, 98, 117, 149
oral drive, 28
partial drive, 39 Jameson, Fredric, 137, 164, 166,171-173,
scopic drive, 25-26,63,104, 107-108, 178-181
160-161, 166, 173, 175, 181-183 Joke, 157, 163-164
Durkheim, Emile, 61, 65, 74, 188 Cracow and Lemberg, 17
Hitchcock, 172, 180
Ego-ideal, 79, 91 Petit-Jean, 16, 102-103
Eronemos, 10, 69 the unconscious and, 155-156
Exhibitionism, 25, 27, 107,173-175
Katcina, 10, 57-64, 67
Father, 6, 39-40, 92 Kipnis, Laura, 6
Feminism,ix,2,4, 183
Fetish,x,7-10,29-30 Lack,3,7-10, 18-21,28,30-31,40,48,61,
Fetishism,2-4,23,28-32,45-70, 135-136, 68-70,89-90,103,112,116,177
176--178, 181-182. See also Perversion Law, 39-40, 86, 88, 91, 94-95, 99
Film,4, 10,97-98,180 Leach, Edmund, 187-188
Flaubert, Gustave, 137, 141, 144. See also Levi-Strauss, Claude, 64-68, 109,
Madame Bovary 185-192
Fort-Da, 15-23, 27, 30-31, 40, 63, 104 Libido, 25, 38, 160
Foucault, Michel, 5, 69, 74, 87, 91-95, 98 Little Hans, 40,142-145
Lure,25-28,51,63-64,66,67,70
Gap,20,30,35,39,64,74, 174,181
Gaze,x,3, 10-12,26--28,63-65, MacKinnon, Catherine, 2, 5-6
97-117,133,138,140,148,160, Madame Bovary, 6, 12, 135-139, 141-144,
174-175, 183 146--148
God(s), 58,61-62,77 Mannoni, Oscar, 57-64
Goldman, Robert, 166--170 Marx, Karl, x, 3, 86, 111, 113, 149
Mask,26--28,57-64,67
Heaven's Gate cult, 1-2 Masson, Jeffrey, 1-3,5-6
Hellenic Greeks, 68-70, 185 Materialism, 77,79-80
Hitchcock, Alfred, 172-175, 180 Memory, 24, 60, 63, 103, 140, 148
Holbein, Hans, 101-108. See also Metaphor, 20, 21, 27, 34, 61, 65, 104, 134
Ambassadors, The Mimesis, 121, 123, 134
Hopi, 10,57-64,67-68 Mirror,3
Humanism, 22, 81 thesis, 76--77, 81, 84, 88
Renaissance, 115-116 stage,78-79,91,98, 106--107
See also Specular
Idea (Vorstellung), 23, 25, 80 Misrecognition (meconnaissance), 74, 89,
Ideal-ego, 75, 91 98, 107, 167, 178
Identification, 5-6, 105-106, 176--177 Mitchell, W. J. T., 122, 147
Identity, 36, 87, 181 Modernism, 134, 171, 180
Ideology, 3, 6, 73-95,99,103, 105-107, Modernization, 4, 182
112-114,116--117, 149, 166--170,178, Morrison, Toni. See Beloved
180, 182-183, 189 Mother/M(Other), 7-9, 12, 19-22,28,31,
Christian, 77-82 68-70,89,91,104,176
Illusionism, 122, 147 Mulvey,Laura,2, 182-183
Imaginary, 78-81, 92-94, 98, 107 Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K),
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 47-51 12, 155, 161-170, 177-178, 181-183
Initiation, 58-62 Myth,62,67-68, 185-192
 Index 199

Narcissism, 91-93
Need, 19,22,27,38-40 Sacred,59,68
Sardine can, 11, 100
Objet a, 9-10, 18,20-31,50-53,61,63,67, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 65
89,104-106,160 Schaffer, Simon, 121, 128, 139
Obsession, 143, 144, 173 Science,82-85,124-127,131, 144,188
Oedipal stage, 92, 144 Screen theory, ix, 3, 10, 73, 78, 81, 92-95,
Oedipus myth, 7, 68--70,185-192 97-100, 105-108
Ojibwa, 10,64-68 Sex,4-5, 186-187
Other (le grand Autre), 8, 17-18,48,75,82, the drive and, 38, 39
177 the unconscious and, 33,38-41
Shapin, Steve, 121-122,124,128,139
Panopticon,98, 105 Sharp, Geoff, 4, 182
Parapraxis. See slip Signifier, 8, 16-18,20,24,34, 58,98-99,
Penis,2-3,7-8,29-30, 176 154, 180
Pepys, Samuel, 119, 127, 131 Silverman, Kaja, 98--100,105
Perversion, fetishism distinct from, 29n. Simulacrum, 110-112, 148
See also Fetishism Slave, 10, 45-56
Petit-Jean, 11, 102 literature, 2, 46
Pfaller, Robert, 153 master-, 3, 46
Phallus,B--9, 177 Slip (Freudian), 23, 29, 34,60
Phantasy, 2, 8, 23, 142, 176-177 Specular, 76, 82, 105-106. See also Mirror
Photograph, 10-11, 148 Speech,16-18,33-35,37-38
Pleasure,9-20,22-28,32,38--39,51,87,89, Spillers, Hortense, 48--51
103, 107-108, 148, 157, 167, 173 Splitting, 34-35, 38--39, 41, 46, 70, 90,
Politics of the image, 98--99 175-178
Pornography, 3, 5-6 Stereotypes, 3, 5, 45-46
Postmodemism, 81,154,167,171-173,180, Structuralism, ix, 33, 67
183 Subject, ix, 8--9,35,39-40,64, 74-95,
Poststructuralism, ix, 99 98--100
Primalscene,9,48, 103,112-113,116 the big, 76-78, 80, 88
Punctum, 10-11,140, 146,148 ofenonc~34-35,39,41
of enonciation, 34-35,39,41
Real (le Riel), 37, 87, 93, 99,101-102,106, Symbolic, 37-38, 58, 91-94, 99, 107, 112,
117 174
Realism, 109, 122-123, 134, 141,144, Symptom, 1-5,29,34,142-144,176-177,
146-148,176,178,181 181
Bazinian, 181
Hollywood (or domestic), 4,164-167, Taleyseva, 57-64
182 Taussig, Michael, 58-59
hyper-, 110, 180 Totem, 10, 64-68
subversive, 178--181 guardian spirit distinct from, 65n, 66
See also illusionism; Mimesis Trauma, 19,24,48,62
Rear Window, 172-176 Truth,11,17,59,81
Religion,4,58,126 Trompe l'oeil, 26-28,110, 159, 165-166,
Repetition (Wiederholung), 7, 9, 20,89-90, 177
95-103, 112, 144
Repression (Verdriingung), 7, 22-23, 30, lJnconscious,23,38-41,90, 158,190
39,40,60-62,89,142-143,156,177, structured like a language, 33-38
181 lJnconscious associations, 3, 104, 106-107,
Rhetoric, 122-124,128--131,140,144,147, 113
168,178 lJnconscious desire/wish, 18, 23, 142,
Rose, Jaqueline, 93, 97n 145-146
200 Index

Virtual witness, 121, 128, 130-131, 139 Williamson, Judith, 78, 169
Vision as abstract category, 4, 182
Voice, 38, 160 Zeuxis and Parrhasios, 26
Vorstellungsrepriisentanz, 16, 18, 20, 40-41, Zizek, Slavoj, 111, 153, 159, 167
58
Voyeurism, 25, 27, 65, 107, 173-175, 177,
180-181