Lacanian Thought

Lacanian thought refers to the work of French psychoanalyst and poststructuralist Jacques Lacan (19011981). In curriculum studies, his ideas are used to explore desire in the classroom, challenge the belief that identity is a fixed concept, and examine the subject's relationship with language. His writings and lectures are collected in Ecrits, published in 1966, and in several volumes that contain his seminars delivered between 1953 and 1981. The three orders of the Lacanian selfthe imaginary, the symbolic, and the realwere influenced in part by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure, and surrealist Salvador Dali.

The imaginary refers to a phase before the acquisition of language and therefore of an identity separate from a caretaker. Subjects are defined through an imagined sense of self based upon what they see constructed through the gaze of another. Lacan's interpretation of the mirror stage (first presented at a conference in 1936) refers to the time when infants between the ages of 6 and 18 months observe themselves in the reflection of another or an Other (i.e., mirror, mother, or sibling). Recognizing for the first time an external, cohesive identity, subjects seek to regain that ideal sense of wholeness. However, because that identity or image changes with each new reflective surface, the subject can never regain a stable, fixed identity, but continues to seek the comfort of one.

Therefore, subjects must adopt the rules and language of the symbolic order. Lacan and many of those who use his theories call their participants subjects because they must succumb to language to express themselves. As they seek their unconscious needs and desires, subjects must succumb to the symbolic register that is governed by the laws of language, which is controlled by the paternal. Furthermore, because they possess a phallus, male subjects are able to employ the symbolic order, whereas females are forever situated outside that order.

The real is the opposite of the imaginary and exists outside the symbolic. This order represents that which always remains, but is forever unattainable. Once a subject uses the symbolic (i.e., language) to try to define that which is impossible to define, it is no longer real, but is constructed by a subject. In other words, the real is always in its place, and (and to refer to one of Lacan's tenets) because the unconscious is structured like a language, it is impossible to access that which cannot be expressed through the symbolic.

Feminist and queer theories build upon and challenge many of Lacan's concepts. Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and Julia Kristeva each question the notion that the female cannot express herself through language because it is inherently male. Irigaray posits that the female, therefore, is a male construct, while Cixous advocates that the female does indeed possess a language of her own. Kristeva rejects the idea that the subject must suppress the feminine during the mirror stage and argues that the feminine expresses itself through [Page 518]the pulsations and rhythms found in language. In her work on perfomativity, Judith Butler addresses Lacan's ideas that subjects experience lack because they desire the phallus. Agreeing with Lacan's explanation of the phallus as a signifier, not always synonymous with penis, Butler argues that women can both possess and lack the phallus through performance, for example, by dressing in drag or by displacing the penis as signifier by substituting another body part.

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