Page 180 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes And do we dare suggest, as we read Lacan reading literature, that haunting the straight line of his
intention, with its proliferation of discourses on the phallus and metaphor, there might be a
shadow, a fear, an unconscious letter that insists, contrary to all intended purposes, that the
phallus does not and has never existed, and that we have long been playing with the most
apparent and childish of fantasies.
Self-Assessment
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) Lacan asserts that ‘the Phallus is a ...............’ .
(a) signifier (b) signified
(c) metonymy (d) fantasies
(ii) Lacan aligns this operations with ............... .
(a) metaphor (b) metonymy
(c) desire (d) none of these

15.3 Summary

• 'Nature and Culture' in the study of Unconscious as projected by Jacques Lacan in his essay
"The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious".
• Jacques Lacan, being influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic structuralism and
psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud, gives insistence on projection of unconscious in
a linguistic framework. It is Freud who summarizes unconscious as chaotic and indefinable;
Lacan starts his investigation from this point and interprets unconscious in terms of letter or
utterance. Lacan analyses unconscious through a linguist's methodology and considers
unconscious as structured system like language. His procedure is to recast Freud's key concepts
and mechanism into linguistic mode, viewing human mind not as pre-existent to, but as
constituted by language we use. Lacan also follows Roman Jacobson's theory of metaphor
and metonymy to stimulate and validate his argument.
• In his essay "The Insistence of the letter in the Unconscious", Lacan exposes the key concept
of nature and culture in the formation of unconscious. Nature and Culture take crucial part
in the formation of human character as human beings are both natural and a cultural product.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, psychosexual development and Oedipus complex is discussed
in terms of pre-linguistic stage of development that he calls the imaginary and the stage after
acquisition of language that he calls symbolic. Descartes speaks that there are some innate
ideas, which we inherit at the time of our birth that are considered as natural instincts to our
character. The infant's gradual discovery of his self and the competence of the distinction
between 'self' and 'other' at the 'mirror stage' tries to know the 'other'. The infant gradually
develops a longing to know the opposite sex, and feels attractive and constructs the Oedipus
complex. Attraction towards opposite sex is very natural to everyone.
• Lacan illustrates the working of unconscious in the conscious state of mind, which exposed
in terms of letters and utterances. To validate his point Lacan mentions one example of a
couple of siblings who were traveling by train, sitting face to face near the windows, and
when the train had stopped in one station they had seen two urinals, dividing one for
gentleman and another for ladies.
• Lacan alters the whole concept of signifier-signified established by Saussure and redefines
the arbitrariness of sign where 'tree' is not only a signifier of 'plant'; it signifies more than one
signified. Likewise, letters and words or verbal icons, lead to a signifying chain and explore
the psychology.
• Lacan uses his concept of the letter to distance himself from the Jungian approach to symbols
and the unconscious. Whereas Jung believes that there is a collective unconscious which
works with symbolic archetypes, Lacan insists that we must read the productions of the

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