Is it with the gifts of Danaoi (the Greeks who laid siege to Troy) or with the passwords that give

them their salutary non-sense that language, with the law, begins? For these gifts are already symbols, in the sense that symbol means pact and that they are first and foremost signifiers of the pact that they constitute as signified, as is plainly seen in the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange - pots made to remain empty, shields too heavy to be carried, sheaves of heat that wither, lances stuck into the ground - all are destined to be useless, if not simply superfluous by their very abundance. Is this neutralization of the signifier the whole of the nature of language? On this assessment, one could see the beginning of it among sea swallows, for instance, during the mating parade, materialized in the fish they pass between each other from beak to beak. And if the ethologists are right in seeing in this the instrument of an activation of the group that might be called the equivalent of a festival, they would be completely justified in recognizing it as a symbol. [1] Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25 minutes episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear ("Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!..."). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by the "big Other". The symbolic order is the second nature of every speaking

being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts, I as it were swim in it, but it nonetheless remains ultimately impenetrable and I cannot ever put it in front of me and fully grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some anonymous all-pervasive agency. Does this mean that, for Lacan, we, human individuals, are mere epiphenomena, shadows with no real power of our own, that our self-perception as autonomous free agents is a kind of user's illusion blinding us for the fact that we are tools in the hands of the big Other which, hidden behind the screen, pulls the strings? There are, however, many features of the "big Other" which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, "knight" is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called "messenger" or "runner" or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the

unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short. The big Other operates at a symbolic level. What, then, is this symbolic order composed of? When we speak (or listen, for that matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech activity is grounded on our accepting of and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds of presuppositions. First, there are the grammatical rules I have to master blindly and spontaneously: if I were to bear in mind all the time these rules, my speech would come to a halt. Then there is the background of participating in the same lifeworld which enables me and my partner in conversation to understand each other. The rules that I follow are marked by a deep split: there are rules (and meanings) that I follow blindly, out of custom, but of which, upon reflection, I can become at least partially aware (such as common grammatical rules), and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, unbeknownst to me (such as unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I am aware of, but have to act on the outside as if I am not aware of them - dirty or obscene innuendos which one passes over in silence in order to maintain the proper appearances. This symbolic space acts like a standard against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and

for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others," the big Other always has to be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low class joke about a poor peasant who, after enduring a shipwreck, finds himself on a lone island with Cindy Crawford. After having sex with her, she asks him if he is fully satisfied; his answer is yes, but nonetheless he still has a small request to make his satisfaction complete - could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a moustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a hidden pervert, as she will immediately see if she carries out the request. When she does, he approaches her, elbows her ribs and tells her with the obscene smile of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze. In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual, in the sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists. Its status is similar to that of an ideological cause like Communism or Nation: it is the substance of the individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their entire existence, the point of reference which provides the ultimate horizon of meaning to their lives, something for which

these individuals are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity, so this substance is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter," a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter which fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter - its true addressee are not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself: The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing nor the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading. [2] Is it not exactly the same with the symptom in the Freudian sense of the term? According to Freud, when I develop a symptom, I produce a ciphered message about my innermost secrets, my unconscious desires and traumas. The symptom's addressee is not another

real human being: before an analyst deciphers my symptom, there is no one who can read its message. Who, then, is the symptom's addressee? The only remaining candidate is the virtual big Other. This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained by their continuous activity. However, the provenance of the big Other is still unclear. How is it that, when individuals exchange symbols, they do not simply interact with each other, but always also refer to the virtual big Other? When I talk about other people's opinions, it is never only a matter of what me, you, or other individuals think, but also a matter of what the impersonal "one" thinks. When I violate a certain rule of decency, I never simply do something that the majority of others do not do - I do what "one" doesn't do. This brings us to the dense passage with which we opened this chapter: in it, Lacan proposes no less than an account of the genesis of the big Other. "Danaoi" is the term used by Homer to designate the Greeks who were laying siege to Troy; their gift was the famous wooden horse which, after it was received by the Trojans, allowed the Greeks to penetrate and destroy Troy. For Lacan, language is such a dangerous gift: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. The symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, which neutralizes its content in order to declare itself as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the

link between the giver and the receiver established when the other accepts the gift. Lacan even engages here in a bit of speculation about animal ethology: the sea swallows who pass a caught fish from beak to beak (as if to make it clear that the link established in this way is more important than who will finally keep and eat the fish), effectively engage in a kind of symbolic communication. Everyone who is in love knows this: a present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very abundance - only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. Roman Jakobson called this fundamental mystery of the properly human symbolic order "phatic communication": human speech never merely transmits a message, it always also selfreflectively asserts the basic symbolic pact between the communicating subjects. The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called "empty gesture," an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as

the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn't one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture an offer - which is meant to be rejected. Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer - this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend's offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link. The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise

way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath's grasp is the fact that "many human acts are performed ... for the sake of the interaction itself." [3] In other words, the sociopath's use of language paradoxically fits perfectly the standard commonsense notion of language as purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it, and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. This determines a sociopath's attitude towards morality: while he is able to discern moral rules that regulate social interaction, and even to act morally insofar as he establishes that it fits his interests, he lacks the "gut feeling" of right and wrong, the notion that one just cannot do some things, independently of the external social rules. In short, a sociopath truly practices the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism, according to which, morality designates a behavior we adopt by way of intelligently calculating our interests (in the long run, it profits us all if we try to contribute to the pleasure of the greatest possible number of people): for him, morality is a theory one learns and follows, not something one substantially identifies with. Doing evil is a mistake in calculation, not guilt. Because of this performative dimension, every choice we confront in language is a metachoice, that is to say, a choice of choice itself, a choice that affects and changes the very coordinates of my choosing. Recall the everyday situation in which my (sexual, political, or financial) partner wants

me to make a deal with him; what he tells me is basically: "Please, I really love you, if we come together here, I will be totally dedicated to you! But if you reject me, I may lose my control and make your life a misery!" The catch here, of course, is that I am not simply confronted with a clear choice: the second part of this message undermines the first part somebody who is ready to ruin me if I say no to him cannot really love me and be dedicated to my happiness, as he claims in the first part. The reality of the choice offered to me thus belies its terms: hatred or, at least, cold manipulative indifference towards me underlies both terms of the choice. There is, of course, a symmetrical hypocrisy, which consists in saying: "I love you and will accept whatever your choice will be; so even if (you know that) your refusal will ruin me, please choose what you really want, and do not take into consideration how it will affect me!" The manipulative falsity of this offer, of course, resides in the way it uses its "honest" insistence that I can say no as an additional pressure on me to say yes: "How can you refuse me, when I love you so totally?" We can see now how, far from conceiving the Symbolic which rules human perception and interaction as a kind of transcendental a priori (a formal network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice), Lacan is interested precisely in how the gestures of symbolization are entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic

function reaches far beyond the standard theory of the performative dimension of speech as it was developed in the tradition from J.L. Austin to John Searle: The symbolic function presents itself as a twofold movement in the subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating at every instant, lies the whole progress of a function in which action and knowledge alternate. [4] The historical example evoked by Lacan to clarify this "twofold movement" is indicative in its hidden references: in phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our society considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two, in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike. [5] Lacan's (implicit) reference here is to Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness , a classic Marxist work from 1923 whose widely acclaimed French translation was published in the mid-1950s. For Lukacs, consciousness is opposed to mere knowledge of an object: knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself 'practical', an act which changes its very object. (Once a worker "considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat," this changes his very reality: he acts differently.) One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the base of this declaration, one does something new - the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the

moment of act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously, renders how the subject relates to this content. Even the most downto-earth objects and activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life. One should never forget that utility functions as a reflective notion: it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning. A man who lives in a large city and owns a landrover (for which he obviously has no use), doesn't simply lead a nononsense, down-to-earth life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under the sign of a no-nonsense, down-toearth attitude. To wear stonewashed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life. The unsurpassed master of such analysis was Claude Levi-Strauss, for whom food also serves as "food for thought". The three main modes of food preparation (raw, baked, boiled) function as a semiotic triangle: we use them to symbolize the basic opposition of ("raw") nature and ("baked") culture, as well as the mediation between the two opposites (in the procedure of boiling). There is a memorable scene in Louis Bunuel's Fantom of Freedom in which relations between eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at their toilets around the table, pleasantly talking, and when they want to eat, they silently ask the housekeeper "Where is that place, you know?" and sneak away to a small room in the back. As a sup Me gusta A 67 personas les gusta esto. S el primero de tus amigos.

This is the first of two articles looking at the theory of the mirror stage in Lacans work. This first part looks at the presentation of the mirror stage as we find it in the Ecrits, specifically in the 1949 paper, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. This is usually seen as the main text on the mirror stage theory, but there are a number of other texts roughly contemporary with it, through which Lacan develops related ideas. By looking at these as well we can learn something about the development of the mirror stage theory and its place in Lacans thought at that time. The second article on the mirror stage will look at how it is presented and developed over the course of Lacans Seminar. Rather than leaving the subject in the late forties, Lacan continued to develop the mirror stage theory from Seminar I in the early fifties, right up until Seminar XXII in 1975. Context of the mirror stage theory in Lacans work The paper in the Ecrits published in 1966, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, was first delivered in 1949 at the International Psychoanalytical Association congress in Zurich. It was presented less than a year after the paper on Aggresssivity in Psychoanalysis was delivered in Brussels in May 1948. Although the original paper on the mirror stage was presented in Marienbad in 1936, the fact that both the 1949 and 1948 papers were delivered less than a year apart suggests that it helps to read both together. Indeed, these two papers contain very similar ideas, and although the aggressivity paper is

chronologically the earlier, it is much longer, and in the published Ecrits follows the paper on the mirror stage. Lacan clearly approved of their publication in reverse chronological order, which we can perhaps take as an indication that the aggressivity paper is an expansion or development of ideas put forward in the mirror stage papers of 1936 and 1949. Lacanian psychoanalyst Philippe Julien suggests just this, seeing the mirror stage theory as a compression of two phases: narcissism and aggressivity: In the mirror stage, Lacan compressed the two phases into one. At the very moment when the ego is formed by the image of the other, narcissism and aggressivity are correlatives. Narcissism, in which the image of ones own body is sustained by the image of the other, in fact introduces a tension : the other in his image both attracts and rejects me (Julien, Jacques Lacans Return to Freud , p.34). If we turn to the index at the back of the Ecrits that Jacques-Alain Miller has carefully compiled, we find references to the mirror stage stretched throughout the papers that comprise the Ecrits. It is listed, perhaps curiously, under the heading The Defiles of the Signifier, alongside which are related concepts such as narcissism, aggressivity, the superego and the ideal ego. But the theory of the mirror stage is not an entirely original contribution. Lacan stands on the shoulders of many theorists (some might say appropriating their work) in order to formulate, what is probably still in the Anglo-American world, his best known contribution to psychoanalytic theory. Lacans antecedents in the mirror stage theory

Lacan has many antecedents whose ideas he draws on for the mirror stage theory. Between them, Leader in his excellent Freuds Footnotes , and Borch-Jacobsen in his equally good Lacan: The Absolute Master give a fairly comprehensive resum of these (Leader, Freuds Footnotes, p.197; Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master, p.46). Whilst Lacan may or may not have been aware of all of these works, and whilst some of their work may not be directly related to the development of the mirror stage theory, it might be useful at this point to list them in order to provide some context pre-Lacan for the theorys lineage: Charles Darwin, in an 1877 paper entitled A Biographical Sketch of an Infant had already noticed how at eight month old his son was able to associate his reflection in the mirror with his name. Darwin writes, I may add that when a few days under nine months old he associated his own name with his image in the lookingglass, and when called by name would turn towards the glass even when at some distance from it (text available here). Darwin also reports the different reactions of humans and apes when confronted with their reflection in a mirror. In contrast to the child, who remains fascinated with its image despite understanding it is only an image (as opposed to another child), The higher apes which I tried with a small looking-glass behaved differently; they placed their hands behind the glass, and in doing so showed their sense, but far from taking pleasure in looking at themselves they got angry and would look no more (text available here ). In 1894 James Mark Baldwin published his paper Imitation : A Chapter in the Natural History of

Consciousness in the journal Mind. In this exhaustive study he argues, long before Freud or Lacan, that the infant is at first unable to properly recognise objects (the care-giver, for example) outside himself as not being part of his own body, treating the others body as his own. Nevertheless, he is dependence on the imitation of the other for his own maturation (paper available here, see p.42-43 in particular). The American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley , whose intriguinglynamed concept of the looking glass self was developed in his 1902 work Human Nature and the Social Order. Here is just a small sample from this book that is likely to tickle the ears of anyone familiar with Lacans theory of the mirror stage: In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how ones self that is any idea he appropriates appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude towards this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or lookingglass self. As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in anothers mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it (Human Nature and the Social Order , 2009 edition, BiblioBazaar, p.183-184). It is claimed by many writers that Lacan borrows a concept developed by Roger Caillois, legendary psychasthenia (the theory that an

animal will alter its physical appearance in accordance with its environment) to support the theory of mimicry the mirror stage theory entails. In the mirror stage paper in the Ecrits Lacan uses Caillois theory to dismiss as ridiculous the idea that animals might do this because of some kind of adaptation to their environment, a criticism which even ardent Lacanians must admit is a bit too sweeping (Ecrits, 96). Whilst Caillois gets a mention in the 1949 paper (ibid), it is only in passing, and whilst passing references in Lacan s work are never a sign of how important a theorist is for him, we should probably be wary of overstating the importance of Caillois for the mirror stage theory. According to Roudinesco, it is from Louis Bolk that Lacan gets the idea of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system in infants and their imperfect powers of physical co-ordination during the early months of life (see Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.30). However, Lacan does not acknowledge Bolk in the 1949 article. If we look at this passage in the Ecrits that Roudinesco cites we find that in its entirety it reads: The objective notions of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal tracts and of certain humoral residues of the maternal organism in the newborn confirm my view that we find in man a veritable specific prematurity of birth ( Ecrits, 96). What is interesting to note is that Lacan attributes this view to himself it is my view. In the following paragraph he simply says Let us note in passing that this fact is recognised as such by emryologists, under the heading fetalisation (Ecrits, 97), but he does not credit the theory of

fetalisation to Bolk by name. William Preyer , a pioneer of developmental psychology, chronicles in his 1882 work, The Mind of the Child, the observations he makes, at each stage in the childs development, the interest it shows in its reflection in a mirror: Eleventh week, child does not see himself in mirror. Seventeenth week, joy in seeing image in mirror.Thirty-fifth week, his image in mirror is grasped at gayly. Sixty-sixth week, child strikes at his image in mirror. Sixtyseventh week, makes grimaces before mirror (text available here). Lacan credits the idea of transitivism, to which he makes reference in the paper in the Ecrits, to Charlotte Buhlers work on infant behaviour (Ecrits, 98). Lacans interest in and reliance on gestalt theory for the mirror stage might stem from the work of Paul Guillaume, a French psychologist working at the same time as Lacan and one of the principal representatives of gestalt theory in France. His work of 1925, LImitation chez lenfant , concentrates on phenomena of imitation in the infant and is a text that Lacan was likely aware of. Another gestalt theorist worthy of mention is Wolfgang Khler, a key figure in the development of gestalt psychology. Lacans strange reference to the Aha-Erlebnis or epiphany (literally: ah-ha moment) at the start of the mirror stage article in the Ecrits is borrowed from Khler (Ecrits, 93). However probably the most important amongst these antecedents is Henri Wallon. Lets look briefly at Lacans debt to Wallon. Lacans debt to Wallon It might be surprising to learn that the term stade du miroir appears in Henri

Wallons 1931 article, Comment se dveloppe chez lenfant la notion de corps propre, (in Journal de Psychologie, November-December 1931, pp.705-48, cited in Roudinescos The Mirror Stage, an obliterated archive, Cambridge Companion to Lacan, CUP, 2003, p.26). But Roudinesco notes that Lacan neglects to cite Wallon as his source quite astonishing given Wallon is his main intellectual reference here. Indeed, Roudinesco points out that Wallons name is not mentioned either in Lacans 1949 paper or in the bibliography of the Encyclopedie francaise article he wrote in 1938 (ibid, p.27). In fact, there is only one reference to Wallon in the text of the Ecrits, and that comes in the 1948 paper Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis, where Lacan namechecks Wallon, but not in the context of the mirror stage (Ecrits, 112). Roudinesco writes, In 1931, Henri Wallon gave the name preuve du miroir (mirror test) to an experiment in which a child, put in front of a mirror, gradually comes to distinguish his own body from its reflected image. According to Wallon, this dialectical operation takes place because of the subjects symbolic comprehension of the imaginary space in which his unity is created. On 16th June 1936, Lacan revised Wallons terminology and changed the preuve du miroir into the stade du miroir that is, mixing two concepts, position in the Kleinian sense and phase in the Freudian sense (Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.29). Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, who says that Lacans description of the mirror stage is far from being truly original (Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.47) also credits

Wallon as being its true originator: [The mirror stage] had already been given a detailed presentation in 1931-32 by the psychologist Henri Wallon, who relied on previous work by Darwin, Guillaume, Preyer, and Charlotte Buhler. Moreover, Wallon had already drawn much the same conclusions as Lacan. (BorchJacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.46). The non-acknowledgement of Wallon as such an important source for the mirror stage theory is made all the worse by the slightly too selfindulgent bragging Lacan engages in when crediting himself for the idea. Take, for example, this short passage from On My Antecedents: If I presented the mirror stage in 1936, when I had yet to be granted the customary title of analyst, at the first International Congress at which I had my first taste of an association that was to give me plenty of others, I was not lacking in merit for doing so (Ecrits, 67). Borch-Jacobsen comments that, One cannot help being struck by Lacans stubborn silence concerning this important debt [to Wallon]. The article on the family complexes makes no mention of Wallon. Likewise, in the text tentitled The Mirror Stage, Lacan says not a word about Wallon and he attributes to Baldwin an approximate periodisation that in fact belongs to Darwin. Wallon extensively quotes Darwin; Lacan does not. Via the false reference to Baldwin, he skips over Wallon (Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.248-249). What we know about the 1936 article Speaking about the gestation of the mirror stage theory between 1936 and 1949 in Presentation on Psychical

Causality, Lacan says, I duly presented it at the Marienbad Congress in 1936, at least up to the point, coinciding exactly with the fourth stroke of the ten-minute mark, at which I was interrupted by Ernest Jones who was presiding over the congress. I did not submit my paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the congress; you can find the gist of it in a few lines in my article about the family published in 1938 in the Encyclopdie Francaise, [the 'Family Complexes' article, available here] in the volume on The Life of the Mind (Ecrits, 184-185). What is remarkable about Lacans confidence in taking credit for the mirror stage theory is that the encyclopaedia article to which he refers here was penned on the suggestion of Wallon himself! Whilst there is scant record of the contents of the lost 1936 lecture, Me gusta A 67 personas les gusta esto. S el primero de tus amigos. This is the first of two articles looking at the theory of the mirror stage in Lacans work. This first part looks at the presentation of the mirror stage as we find it in the Ecrits, specifically in the 1949 paper, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. This is usually seen as the main text on the mirror stage theory, but there are a number of other texts roughly contemporary with it, through which Lacan develops related ideas. By looking at these as well we can learn something about the development of the mirror stage theory and its place in Lacans thought at that time. The second article on the mirror stage will look at how it is presented and developed over the course of Lacans

Seminar. Rather than leaving the subject in the late forties, Lacan continued to develop the mirror stage theory from Seminar I in the early fifties, right up until Seminar XXII in 1975. Context of the mirror stage theory in Lacans work The paper in the Ecrits published in 1966, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, was first delivered in 1949 at the International Psychoanalytical Association congress in Zurich. It was presented less than a year after the paper on Aggresssivity in Psychoanalysis was delivered in Brussels in May 1948. Although the original paper on the mirror stage was presented in Marienbad in 1936, the fact that both the 1949 and 1948 papers were delivered less than a year apart suggests that it helps to read both together. Indeed, these two papers contain very similar ideas, and although the aggressivity paper is chronologically the earlier, it is much longer, and in the published Ecrits follows the paper on the mirror stage. Lacan clearly approved of their publication in reverse chronological order, which we can perhaps take as an indication that the aggressivity paper is an expansion or development of ideas put forward in the mirror stage papers of 1936 and 1949. Lacanian psychoanalyst Philippe Julien suggests just this, seeing the mirror stage theory as a compression of two phases: narcissism and aggressivity: In the mirror stage, Lacan compressed the two phases into one. At the very moment when the ego is formed by the image of the other, narcissism and aggressivity are correlatives. Narcissism, in which the

image of ones own body is sustained by the image of the other, in fact introduces a tension : the other in his image both attracts and rejects me (Julien, Jacques Lacans Return to Freud , p.34). If we turn to the index at the back of the Ecrits that Jacques-Alain Miller has carefully compiled, we find references to the mirror stage stretched throughout the papers that comprise the Ecrits. It is listed, perhaps curiously, under the heading The Defiles of the Signifier, alongside which are related concepts such as narcissism, aggressivity, the superego and the ideal ego. But the theory of the mirror stage is not an entirely original contribution. Lacan stands on the shoulders of many theorists (some might say appropriating their work) in order to formulate, what is probably still in the Anglo-American world, his best known contribution to psychoanalytic theory. Lacans antecedents in the mirror stage theory Lacan has many antecedents whose ideas he draws on for the mirror stage theory. Between them, Leader in his excellent Freuds Footnotes , and Borch-Jacobsen in his equally good Lacan: The Absolute Master give a fairly comprehensive resum of these (Leader, Freuds Footnotes, p.197; Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master, p.46). Whilst Lacan may or may not have been aware of all of these works, and whilst some of their work may not be directly related to the development of the mirror stage theory, it might be useful at this point to list them in order to provide some context pre-Lacan for the theorys lineage: Charles Darwin, in an 1877 paper entitled A Biographical Sketch of an Infant had already noticed how at

eight month old his son was able to associate his reflection in the mirror with his name. Darwin writes, I may add that when a few days under nine months old he associated his own name with his image in the lookingglass, and when called by name would turn towards the glass even when at some distance from it (text available here). Darwin also reports the different reactions of humans and apes when confronted with their reflection in a mirror. In contrast to the child, who remains fascinated with its image despite understanding it is only an image (as opposed to another child), The higher apes which I tried with a small looking-glass behaved differently; they placed their hands behind the glass, and in doing so showed their sense, but far from taking pleasure in looking at themselves they got angry and would look no more (text available here ). In 1894 James Mark Baldwin published his paper Imitation : A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness in the journal Mind. In this exhaustive study he argues, long before Freud or Lacan, that the infant is at first unable to properly recognise objects (the care-giver, for example) outside himself as not being part of his own body, treating the others body as his own. Nevertheless, he is dependence on the imitation of the other for his own maturation (paper available here, see p.42-43 in particular). The American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley , whose intriguinglynamed concept of the looking glass self was developed in his 1902 work Human Nature and the Social Order. Here is just a small sample from this book that is likely to tickle the ears of anyone familiar with Lacans theory of the mirror stage: In a very large and

interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how ones self that is any idea he appropriates appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude towards this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or lookingglass self. As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in anothers mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it (Human Nature and the Social Order , 2009 edition, BiblioBazaar, p.183-184). It is claimed by many writers that Lacan borrows a concept developed by Roger Caillois, legendary psychasthenia (the theory that an animal will alter its physical appearance in accordance with its environment) to support the theory of mimicry the mirror stage theory entails. In the mirror stage paper in the Ecrits Lacan uses Caillois theory to dismiss as ridiculous the idea that animals might do this because of some kind of adaptation to their environment, a criticism which even ardent Lacanians must admit is a bit too sweeping (Ecrits, 96). Whilst Caillois gets a mention in the 1949 paper (ibid), it is only in passing, and whilst passing references in Lacan s work are never a sign of how important a theorist is for him, we should probably be wary of overstating the importance of Caillois for the mirror stage theory. According to Roudinesco, it is

from Louis Bolk that Lacan gets the idea of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system in infants and their imperfect powers of physical co-ordination during the early months of life (see Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.30). However, Lacan does not acknowledge Bolk in the 1949 article. If we look at this passage in the Ecrits that Roudinesco cites we find that in its entirety it reads: The objective notions of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal tracts and of certain humoral residues of the maternal organism in the newborn confirm my view that we find in man a veritable specific prematurity of birth ( Ecrits, 96). What is interesting to note is that Lacan attributes this view to himself it is my view. In the following paragraph he simply says Let us note in passing that this fact is recognised as such by emryologists, under the heading fetalisation (Ecrits, 97), but he does not credit the theory of fetalisation to Bolk by name. William Preyer , a pioneer of developmental psychology, chronicles in his 1882 work, The Mind of the Child, the observations he makes, at each stage in the childs development, the interest it shows in its reflection in a mirror: Eleventh week, child does not see himself in mirror. Seventeenth week, joy in seeing image in mirror.Thirty-fifth week, his image in mirror is grasped at gayly. Sixty-sixth week, child strikes at his image in mirror. Sixtyseventh week, makes grimaces before mirror (text available here). Lacan credits the idea of transitivism, to which he makes reference in the paper in the Ecrits, to Charlotte Buhlers work on infant behaviour (Ecrits, 98).

Lacans interest in and reliance on gestalt theory for the mirror stage might stem from the work of Paul Guillaume, a French psychologist working at the same time as Lacan and one of the principal representatives of gestalt theory in France. His work of 1925, LImitation chez lenfant , concentrates on phenomena of imitation in the infant and is a text that Lacan was likely aware of. Another gestalt theorist worthy of mention is Wolfgang Khler, a key figure in the development of gestalt psychology. Lacans strange reference to the Aha-Erlebnis or epiphany (literally: ah-ha moment) at the start of the mirror stage article in the Ecrits is borrowed from Khler (Ecrits, 93). However probably the most important amongst these antecedents is Henri Wallon. Lets look briefly at Lacans debt to Wallon. Lacans debt to Wallon It might be surprising to learn that the term stade du miroir appears in Henri Wallons 1931 article, Comment se dveloppe chez lenfant la notion de corps propre, (in Journal de Psychologie, November-December 1931, pp.705-48, cited in Roudinescos The Mirror Stage, an obliterated archive, Cambridge Companion to Lacan, CUP, 2003, p.26). But Roudinesco notes that Lacan neglects to cite Wallon as his source quite astonishing given Wallon is his main intellectual reference here. Indeed, Roudinesco points out that Wallons name is not mentioned either in Lacans 1949 paper or in the bibliography of the Encyclopedie francaise article he wrote in 1938 (ibid, p.27). In fact, there is only one reference to Wallon in the text of the Ecrits, and that comes in the 1948 paper Aggressivity in

Psychoanalysis, where Lacan namechecks Wallon, but not in the context of the mirror stage (Ecrits, 112). Roudinesco writes, In 1931, Henri Wallon gave the name preuve du miroir (mirror test) to an experiment in which a child, put in front of a mirror, gradually comes to distinguish his own body from its reflected image. According to Wallon, this dialectical operation takes place because of the subjects symbolic comprehension of the imaginary space in which his unity is created. On 16th June 1936, Lacan revised Wallons terminology and changed the preuve du miroir into the stade du miroir that is, mixing two concepts, position in the Kleinian sense and phase in the Freudian sense (Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.29). Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, who says that Lacans description of the mirror stage is far from being truly original (Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.47) also credits Wallon as being its true originator: [The mirror stage] had already been given a detailed presentation in 1931-32 by the psychologist Henri Wallon, who relied on previous work by Darwin, Guillaume, Preyer, and Charlotte Buhler. Moreover, Wallon had already drawn much the same conclusions as Lacan. (BorchJacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.46). The non-acknowledgement of Wallon as such an important source for the mirror stage theory is made all the worse by the slightly too selfindulgent bragging Lacan engages in when crediting himself for the idea. Take, for example, this short passage from On My Antecedents: If I presented the mirror stage in 1936, when I had yet to be granted the

customary title of analyst, at the first International Congress at which I had my first taste of an association that was to give me plenty of others, I was not lacking in merit for doing so (Ecrits, 67). Borch-Jacobsen comments that, One cannot help being struck by Lacans stubborn silence concerning this important debt [to Wallon]. The article on the family complexes makes no mention of Wallon. Likewise, in the text tentitled The Mirror Stage, Lacan says not a word about Wallon and he attributes to Baldwin an approximate periodisation that in fact belongs to Darwin. Wallon extensively quotes Darwin; Lacan does not. Via the false reference to Baldwin, he skips over Wallon (Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.248-249). What we know about the 1936 article Speaking about the gestation of the mirror stage theory between 1936 and 1949 in Presentation on Psychical Causality, Lacan says, I duly presented it at the Marienbad Congress in 1936, at least up to the point, coinciding exactly with the fourth stroke of the ten-minute mark, at which I was interrupted by Ernest Jones who was presiding over the congress. I did not submit my paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the congress; you can find the gist of it in a few lines in my article about the family published in 1938 in the Encyclopdie Francaise, [the 'Family Complexes' article, available here] in the volume on The Life of the Mind (Ecrits, 184-185). What is remarkable about Lacans confidence in taking credit for the mirror stage theory is that the encyclopaedia article to which he refers here was penned on the

suggestion of Wallon himself! Whilst there is scant record of the contents of the lost 1936 lecture, Me gusta A 67 personas les gusta esto. S el primero de tus amigos. This is the first of two articles looking at the theory of the mirror stage in Lacans work. This first part looks at the presentation of the mirror stage as we find it in the Ecrits, specifically in the 1949 paper, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. This is usually seen as the main text on the mirror stage theory, but there are a number of other texts roughly contemporary with it, through which Lacan develops related ideas. By looking at these as well we can learn something about the development of the mirror stage theory and its place in Lacans thought at that time. The second article on the mirror stage will look at how it is presented and developed over the course of Lacans Seminar. Rather than leaving the subject in the late forties, Lacan continued to develop the mirror stage theory from Seminar I in the early fifties, right up until Seminar XXII in 1975. Context of the mirror stage theory in Lacans work The paper in the Ecrits published in 1966, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, was first delivered in 1949 at the International Psychoanalytical Association congress in Zurich. It was presented less than a year after the paper on Aggresssivity in Psychoanalysis was delivered in Brussels in May 1948. Although the original paper on the mirror stage was presented in Marienbad in 1936, the fact that both

the 1949 and 1948 papers were delivered less than a year apart suggests that it helps to read both together. Indeed, these two papers contain very similar ideas, and although the aggressivity paper is chronologically the earlier, it is much longer, and in the published Ecrits follows the paper on the mirror stage. Lacan clearly approved of their publication in reverse chronological order, which we can perhaps take as an indication that the aggressivity paper is an expansion or development of ideas put forward in the mirror stage papers of 1936 and 1949. Lacanian psychoanalyst Philippe Julien suggests just this, seeing the mirror stage theory as a compression of two phases: narcissism and aggressivity: In the mirror stage, Lacan compressed the two phases into one. At the very moment when the ego is formed by the image of the other, narcissism and aggressivity are correlatives. Narcissism, in which the image of ones own body is sustained by the image of the other, in fact introduces a tension : the other in his image both attracts and rejects me (Julien, Jacques Lacans Return to Freud , p.34). If we turn to the index at the back of the Ecrits that Jacques-Alain Miller has carefully compiled, we find references to the mirror stage stretched throughout the papers that comprise the Ecrits. It is listed, perhaps curiously, under the heading The Defiles of the Signifier, alongside which are related concepts such as narcissism, aggressivity, the superego and the ideal ego. But the theory of the mirror stage is not an entirely original contribution. Lacan stands on the shoulders of many theorists (some might say

appropriating their work) in order to formulate, what is probably still in the Anglo-American world, his best known contribution to psychoanalytic theory. Lacans antecedents in the mirror stage theory Lacan has many antecedents whose ideas he draws on for the mirror stage theory. Between them, Leader in his excellent Freuds Footnotes , and Borch-Jacobsen in his equally good Lacan: The Absolute Master give a fairly comprehensive resum of these (Leader, Freuds Footnotes, p.197; Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master, p.46). Whilst Lacan may or may not have been aware of all of these works, and whilst some of their work may not be directly related to the development of the mirror stage theory, it might be useful at this point to list them in order to provide some context pre-Lacan for the theorys lineage: Charles Darwin, in an 1877 paper entitled A Biographical Sketch of an Infant had already noticed how at eight month old his son was able to associate his reflection in the mirror with his name. Darwin writes, I may add that when a few days under nine months old he associated his own name with his image in the lookingglass, and when called by name would turn towards the glass even when at some distance from it (text available here). Darwin also reports the different reactions of humans and apes when confronted with their reflection in a mirror. In contrast to the child, who remains fascinated with its image despite understanding it is only an image (as opposed to another child), The higher apes which I tried with a small looking-glass behaved differently; they placed their hands behind the glass, and in doing so showed their sense, but far from

taking pleasure in looking at themselves they got angry and would look no more (text available here ). In 1894 James Mark Baldwin published his paper Imitation : A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness in the journal Mind. In this exhaustive study he argues, long before Freud or Lacan, that the infant is at first unable to properly recognise objects (the care-giver, for example) outside himself as not being part of his own body, treating the others body as his own. Nevertheless, he is dependence on the imitation of the other for his own maturation (paper available here, see p.42-43 in particular). The American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley , whose intriguinglynamed concept of the looking glass self was developed in his 1902 work Human Nature and the Social Order. Here is just a small sample from this book that is likely to tickle the ears of anyone familiar with Lacans theory of the mirror stage: In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how ones self that is any idea he appropriates appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude towards this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or lookingglass self. As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in anothers mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it (Human

Nature and the Social Order , 2009 edition, BiblioBazaar, p.183-184). It is claimed by many writers that Lacan borrows a concept developed by Roger Caillois, legendary psychasthenia (the theory that an animal will alter its physical appearance in accordance with its environment) to support the theory of mimicry the mirror stage theory entails. In the mirror stage paper in the Ecrits Lacan uses Caillois theory to dismiss as ridiculous the idea that animals might do this because of some kind of adaptation to their environment, a criticism which even ardent Lacanians must admit is a bit too sweeping (Ecrits, 96). Whilst Caillois gets a mention in the 1949 paper (ibid), it is only in passing, and whilst passing references in Lacan s work are never a sign of how important a theorist is for him, we should probably be wary of overstating the importance of Caillois for the mirror stage theory. According to Roudinesco, it is from Louis Bolk that Lacan gets the idea of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system in infants and their imperfect powers of physical co-ordination during the early months of life (see Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.30). However, Lacan does not acknowledge Bolk in the 1949 article. If we look at this passage in the Ecrits that Roudinesco cites we find that in its entirety it reads: The objective notions of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal tracts and of certain humoral residues of the maternal organism in the newborn confirm my view that we find in man a veritable specific prematurity of birth ( Ecrits, 96). What is interesting to note is that Lacan attributes this view to himself

it is my view. In the following paragraph he simply says Let us note in passing that this fact is recognised as such by emryologists, under the heading fetalisation (Ecrits, 97), but he does not credit the theory of fetalisation to Bolk by name. William Preyer , a pioneer of developmental psychology, chronicles in his 1882 work, The Mind of the Child, the observations he makes, at each stage in the childs development, the interest it shows in its reflection in a mirror: Eleventh week, child does not see himself in mirror. Seventeenth week, joy in seeing image in mirror.Thirty-fifth week, his image in mirror is grasped at gayly. Sixty-sixth week, child strikes at his image in mirror. Sixtyseventh week, makes grimaces before mirror (text available here). Lacan credits the idea of transitivism, to which he makes reference in the paper in the Ecrits, to Charlotte Buhlers work on infant behaviour (Ecrits, 98). Lacans interest in and reliance on gestalt theory for the mirror stage might stem from the work of Paul Guillaume, a French psychologist working at the same time as Lacan and one of the principal representatives of gestalt theory in France. His work of 1925, LImitation chez lenfant , concentrates on phenomena of imitation in the infant and is a text that Lacan was likely aware of. Another gestalt theorist worthy of mention is Wolfgang Khler, a key figure in the development of gestalt psychology. Lacans strange reference to the Aha-Erlebnis or epiphany (literally: ah-ha moment) at the start of the mirror stage article in the Ecrits is borrowed from Khler (Ecrits, 93). However probably the most important

amongst these antecedents is Henri Wallon. Lets look briefly at Lacans debt to Wallon. Lacans debt to Wallon It might be surprising to learn that the term stade du miroir appears in Henri Wallons 1931 article, Comment se dveloppe chez lenfant la notion de corps propre, (in Journal de Psychologie, November-December 1931, pp.705-48, cited in Roudinescos The Mirror Stage, an obliterated archive, Cambridge Companion to Lacan, CUP, 2003, p.26). But Roudinesco notes that Lacan neglects to cite Wallon as his source quite astonishing given Wallon is his main intellectual reference here. Indeed, Roudinesco points out that Wallons name is not mentioned either in Lacans 1949 paper or in the bibliography of the Encyclopedie francaise article he wrote in 1938 (ibid, p.27). In fact, there is only one reference to Wallon in the text of the Ecrits, and that comes in the 1948 paper Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis, where Lacan namechecks Wallon, but not in the context of the mirror stage (Ecrits, 112). Roudinesco writes, In 1931, Henri Wallon gave the name preuve du miroir (mirror test) to an experiment in which a child, put in front of a mirror, gradually comes to distinguish his own body from its reflected image. According to Wallon, this dialectical operation takes place because of the subjects symbolic comprehension of the imaginary space in which his unity is created. On 16th June 1936, Lacan revised Wallons terminology and changed the preuve du miroir into the stade du miroir that is, mixing two concepts, position in the Kleinian sense and phase in the Freudian sense (Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan

, p.29). Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, who says that Lacans description of the mirror stage is far from being truly original (Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.47) also credits Wallon as being its true originator: [The mirror stage] had already been given a detailed presentation in 1931-32 by the psychologist Henri Wallon, who relied on previous work by Darwin, Guillaume, Preyer, and Charlotte Buhler. Moreover, Wallon had already drawn much the same conclusions as Lacan. (BorchJacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.46). The non-acknowledgement of Wallon as such an important source for the mirror stage theory is made all the worse by the slightly too selfindulgent bragging Lacan engages in when crediting himself for the idea. Take, for example, this short passage from On My Antecedents: If I presented the mirror stage in 1936, when I had yet to be granted the customary title of analyst, at the first International Congress at which I had my first taste of an association that was to give me plenty of others, I was not lacking in merit for doing so (Ecrits, 67). Borch-Jacobsen comments that, One cannot help being struck by Lacans stubborn silence concerning this important debt [to Wallon]. The article on the family complexes makes no mention of Wallon. Likewise, in the text tentitled The Mirror Stage, Lacan says not a word about Wallon and he attributes to Baldwin an approximate periodisation that in fact belongs to Darwin. Wallon extensively quotes Darwin; Lacan does not. Via the false reference to Baldwin, he skips over Wallon (Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen,

Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.248-249). What we know about the 1936 article Speaking about the gestation of the mirror stage theory between 1936 and 1949 in Presentation on Psychical Causality, Lacan says, I duly presented it at the Marienbad Congress in 1936, at least up to the point, coinciding exactly with the fourth stroke of the ten-minute mark, at which I was interrupted by Ernest Jones who was presiding over the congress. I did not submit my paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the congress; you can find the gist of it in a few lines in my article about the family published in 1938 in the Encyclopdie Francaise, [the 'Family Complexes' article, available here] in the volume on The Life of the Mind (Ecrits, 184-185). What is remarkable about Lacans confidence in taking credit for the mirror stage theory is that the encyclopaedia article to which he refers here was penned on the suggestion of Wallon himself! Whilst there is scant record of the contents of the lost 1936 lecture, Me gusta A 67 personas les gusta esto. S el primero de tus amigos. This is the first of two articles looking at the theory of the mirror stage in Lacans work. This first part looks at the presentation of the mirror stage as we find it in the Ecrits, specifically in the 1949 paper, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. This is usually seen as the main text on the mirror stage theory, but there are a number of other texts roughly contemporary with it, through which Lacan develops related ideas. By looking at these as well we can learn something about the

development of the mirror stage theory and its place in Lacans thought at that time. The second article on the mirror stage will look at how it is presented and developed over the course of Lacans Seminar. Rather than leaving the subject in the late forties, Lacan continued to develop the mirror stage theory from Seminar I in the early fifties, right up until Seminar XXII in 1975. Context of the mirror stage theory in Lacans work The paper in the Ecrits published in 1966, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, was first delivered in 1949 at the International Psychoanalytical Association congress in Zurich. It was presented less than a year after the paper on Aggresssivity in Psychoanalysis was delivered in Brussels in May 1948. Although the original paper on the mirror stage was presented in Marienbad in 1936, the fact that both the 1949 and 1948 papers were delivered less than a year apart suggests that it helps to read both together. Indeed, these two papers contain very similar ideas, and although the aggressivity paper is chronologically the earlier, it is much longer, and in the published Ecrits follows the paper on the mirror stage. Lacan clearly approved of their publication in reverse chronological order, which we can perhaps take as an indication that the aggressivity paper is an expansion or development of ideas put forward in the mirror stage papers of 1936 and 1949. Lacanian psychoanalyst Philippe Julien suggests just this, seeing the mirror stage theory as a compression of two phases: narcissism and aggressivity:

In the mirror stage, Lacan compressed the two phases into one. At the very moment when the ego is formed by the image of the other, narcissism and aggressivity are correlatives. Narcissism, in which the image of ones own body is sustained by the image of the other, in fact introduces a tension : the other in his image both attracts and rejects me (Julien, Jacques Lacans Return to Freud , p.34). If we turn to the index at the back of the Ecrits that Jacques-Alain Miller has carefully compiled, we find references to the mirror stage stretched throughout the papers that comprise the Ecrits. It is listed, perhaps curiously, under the heading The Defiles of the Signifier, alongside which are related concepts such as narcissism, aggressivity, the superego and the ideal ego. But the theory of the mirror stage is not an entirely original contribution. Lacan stands on the shoulders of many theorists (some might say appropriating their work) in order to formulate, what is probably still in the Anglo-American world, his best known contribution to psychoanalytic theory. Lacans antecedents in the mirror stage theory Lacan has many antecedents whose ideas he draws on for the mirror stage theory. Between them, Leader in his excellent Freuds Footnotes , and Borch-Jacobsen in his equally good Lacan: The Absolute Master give a fairly comprehensive resum of these (Leader, Freuds Footnotes, p.197; Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master, p.46). Whilst Lacan may or may not have been aware of all of these works, and whilst some of their work may not be directly related to the development of the mirror stage theory, it might be useful at this point

to list them in order to provide some context pre-Lacan for the theorys lineage: Charles Darwin, in an 1877 paper entitled A Biographical Sketch of an Infant had already noticed how at eight month old his son was able to associate his reflection in the mirror with his name. Darwin writes, I may add that when a few days under nine months old he associated his own name with his image in the lookingglass, and when called by name would turn towards the glass even when at some distance from it (text available here). Darwin also reports the different reactions of humans and apes when confronted with their reflection in a mirror. In contrast to the child, who remains fascinated with its image despite understanding it is only an image (as opposed to another child), The higher apes which I tried with a small looking-glass behaved differently; they placed their hands behind the glass, and in doing so showed their sense, but far from taking pleasure in looking at themselves they got angry and would look no more (text available here ). In 1894 James Mark Baldwin published his paper Imitation : A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness in the journal Mind. In this exhaustive study he argues, long before Freud or Lacan, that the infant is at first unable to properly recognise objects (the care-giver, for example) outside himself as not being part of his own body, treating the others body as his own. Nevertheless, he is dependence on the imitation of the other for his own maturation (paper available here, see p.42-43 in particular). The American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley , whose intriguinglynamed concept of the looking glass

self was developed in his 1902 work Human Nature and the Social Order. Here is just a small sample from this book that is likely to tickle the ears of anyone familiar with Lacans theory of the mirror stage: In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how ones self that is any idea he appropriates appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude towards this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or lookingglass self. As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in anothers mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it (Human Nature and the Social Order , 2009 edition, BiblioBazaar, p.183-184). It is claimed by many writers that Lacan borrows a concept developed by Roger Caillois, legendary psychasthenia (the theory that an animal will alter its physical appearance in accordance with its environment) to support the theory of mimicry the mirror stage theory entails. In the mirror stage paper in the Ecrits Lacan uses Caillois theory to dismiss as ridiculous the idea that animals might do this because of some kind of adaptation to their environment, a criticism which even ardent Lacanians must admit is a bit too sweeping (Ecrits, 96). Whilst Caillois gets a mention in the 1949 paper (ibid), it is only in passing, and whilst passing references in Lacan s

work are never a sign of how important a theorist is for him, we should probably be wary of overstating the importance of Caillois for the mirror stage theory. According to Roudinesco, it is from Louis Bolk that Lacan gets the idea of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system in infants and their imperfect powers of physical co-ordination during the early months of life (see Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.30). However, Lacan does not acknowledge Bolk in the 1949 article. If we look at this passage in the Ecrits that Roudinesco cites we find that in its entirety it reads: The objective notions of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal tracts and of certain humoral residues of the maternal organism in the newborn confirm my view that we find in man a veritable specific prematurity of birth ( Ecrits, 96). What is interesting to note is that Lacan attributes this view to himself it is my view. In the following paragraph he simply says Let us note in passing that this fact is recognised as such by emryologists, under the heading fetalisation (Ecrits, 97), but he does not credit the theory of fetalisation to Bolk by name. William Preyer , a pioneer of developmental psychology, chronicles in his 1882 work, The Mind of the Child, the observations he makes, at each stage in the childs development, the interest it shows in its reflection in a mirror: Eleventh week, child does not see himself in mirror. Seventeenth week, joy in seeing image in mirror.Thirty-fifth week, his image in mirror is grasped at gayly. Sixty-sixth week, child strikes at his image in mirror. Sixtyseventh week, makes grimaces before

mirror (text available here). Lacan credits the idea of transitivism, to which he makes reference in the paper in the Ecrits, to Charlotte Buhlers work on infant behaviour (Ecrits, 98). Lacans interest in and reliance on gestalt theory for the mirror stage might stem from the work of Paul Guillaume, a French psychologist working at the same time as Lacan and one of the principal representatives of gestalt theory in France. His work of 1925, LImitation chez lenfant , concentrates on phenomena of imitation in the infant and is a text that Lacan was likely aware of. Another gestalt theorist worthy of mention is Wolfgang Khler, a key figure in the development of gestalt psychology. Lacans strange reference to the Aha-Erlebnis or epiphany (literally: ah-ha moment) at the start of the mirror stage article in the Ecrits is borrowed from Khler (Ecrits, 93). However probably the most important amongst these antecedents is Henri Wallon. Lets look briefly at Lacans debt to Wallon. Lacans debt to Wallon It might be surprising to learn that the term stade du miroir appears in Henri Wallons 1931 article, Comment se dveloppe chez lenfant la notion de corps propre, (in Journal de Psychologie, November-December 1931, pp.705-48, cited in Roudinescos The Mirror Stage, an obliterated archive, Cambridge Companion to Lacan, CUP, 2003, p.26). But Roudinesco notes that Lacan neglects to cite Wallon as his source quite astonishing given Wallon is his main intellectual reference here. Indeed, Roudinesco points out that Wallons name is not mentioned either in Lacans 1949 paper or in the

bibliography of the Encyclopedie francaise article he wrote in 1938 (ibid, p.27). In fact, there is only one reference to Wallon in the text of the Ecrits, and that comes in the 1948 paper Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis, where Lacan namechecks Wallon, but not in the context of the mirror stage (Ecrits, 112). Roudinesco writes, In 1931, Henri Wallon gave the name preuve du miroir (mirror test) to an experiment in which a child, put in front of a mirror, gradually comes to distinguish his own body from its reflected image. According to Wallon, this dialectical operation takes place because of the subjects symbolic comprehension of the imaginary space in which his unity is created. On 16th June 1936, Lacan revised Wallons terminology and changed the preuve du miroir into the stade du miroir that is, mixing two concepts, position in the Kleinian sense and phase in the Freudian sense (Roudinesco in The Cambridge Companion to Lacan , p.29). Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, who says that Lacans description of the mirror stage is far from being truly original (Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.47) also credits Wallon as being its true originator: [The mirror stage] had already been given a detailed presentation in 1931-32 by the psychologist Henri Wallon, who relied on previous work by Darwin, Guillaume, Preyer, and Charlotte Buhler. Moreover, Wallon had already drawn much the same conclusions as Lacan. (BorchJacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.46). The non-acknowledgement of Wallon as such an important source for the mirror stage theory is made all the worse by the slightly too self-

indulgent bragging Lacan engages in when crediting himself for the idea. Take, for example, this short passage from On My Antecedents: If I presented the mirror stage in 1936, when I had yet to be granted the customary title of analyst, at the first International Congress at which I had my first taste of an association that was to give me plenty of others, I was not lacking in merit for doing so (Ecrits, 67). Borch-Jacobsen comments that, One cannot help being struck by Lacans stubborn silence concerning this important debt [to Wallon]. The article on the family complexes makes no mention of Wallon. Likewise, in the text tentitled The Mirror Stage, Lacan says not a word about Wallon and he attributes to Baldwin an approximate periodisation that in fact belongs to Darwin. Wallon extensively quotes Darwin; Lacan does not. Via the false reference to Baldwin, he skips over Wallon (Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan : The Absolute Master , p.248-249). What we know about the 1936 article Speaking about the gestation of the mirror stage theory between 1936 and 1949 in Presentation on Psychical Causality, Lacan says, I duly presented it at the Marienbad Congress in 1936, at least up to the point, coinciding exactly with the fourth stroke of the ten-minute mark, at which I was interrupted by Ernest Jones who was presiding over the congress. I did not submit my paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the congress; you can find the gist of it in a few lines in my article about the family published in 1938 in the Encyclopdie Francaise, [the 'Family Complexes' article, available here] in the volume on The Life of the

Mind (Ecrits, 184-185). What is remarkable about Lacans confidence in taking credit for the mirror stage theory is that the encyclopaedia article to which he refers here was penned on the suggestion of Wallon himself! Whilst there is scant record of the contents of the lost 1936 lecture, plement to Lvi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a "stuff for thought": the three basic types of toiletdesign in the West form a kind of excremental counterpoint to the Lvi-Straussian triangle of cooking. In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water, is way in front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit is supposed to disappear as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles - the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that, in the famous discussion of different European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying , Erica Jong mockingly claims that "German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything." It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant excrement which comes from within our body, is clearly discernible in it. Hegel was among the first to

interpret the geographic triad of Germany-France-England as expressing three different existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness, English moderate utilitarian pragmatism. In terms of political stance, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of one of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English economy. The reference to toilets enables us to discern the same triad in the most intimate domain of performing the excremental function: ambiguous contemplative fascination; the hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; the pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in ideology. This declarative dimension of symbolic interaction can be exemplified by means of a delicate situation in human relationships. Imagine a couple with a tacit agreement that they can lead discreet extra-marital affairs. If, all of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an ongoing affair, she will have good reasons to be in panic: "If it is just an affair, why are you telling me this? It must be something more!" The act of publicly reporting on something is never neutral, it affects the

reported content itself and although the partners learn nothing knew by means of it, it changes everything. There is also a big difference between the partner simply not talking about the secret adventures and explicitly stating that s/he will not talk about them ("You know, I think I have the right not to tell you about all my contacts, there is a part of my life which is of no concern to you!"). In the second case, when the silent pact is rendered explicit, this statement itself cannot but deliver an additional aggressive message. What we are dealing with here is the irreducible gap between the enunciated content and the act of enunciation that is proper to human speech. In academia, a polite way to say that we found our colleague's intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say: "It was interesting." So, if, instead, we tell our colleague openly "It was boring and stupid", he would be fully justified to be surprised and to ask: "But if you found it boring and stupid, why did you not simply say that it was interesting?" The unfortunate colleague was right to take the direct statement as involving something more, not only a comment about the quality of his paper but an attack on his very person. Does exactly the same not hold for the open admission of torture by the high representatives of the US administration? The popular and seemingly convincing reply to those who worry about the recent US practice of torturing suspected terrorist prisoners is: "What's all the fuss about? The US are now only openly admitting what not only they were doing all the time,

but what other states are and were doing all the time - if anything, we have less hypocrisy now!" To this, one should retort with a simple counter-question: "If the high representatives of the US mean only this, why, then, are they telling us this? Why don't they just silently go on doing it, as they did it till now?" So when we hear people like Dick Cheney making obscene statements about the necessity of torture, we should ask them: "If you just want to torture secretly some suspected terrorists, then why are you saying it publicly?" That is to say, the question to be raised it: what is there more in this statement that made the speaker tell it? The same goes for the negative version of declaration: no less than the superfluous act of mentioning, the act of NOT mentioning or concealing something can create additional meaning. When, in February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the UN assembly in order to advocate the attack on Iraq, the US delegation asked the large reproduction of Picasso's Guernica on the wall behind the speaker's podium to be covered with a different visual ornament. Although the official explanation was that Guernica does not provide the adequate optical background for the televised transmission of Powell's speech, it was clear to everyone what the U.S. delegation was afraid of: that Guernica , the painting supposed to be depicting the catastrophic results of the German aerial bombing of the Spanish city in the civil war, would give rise to the "wrong kind of associations" if it were to serve as the background to Powell advocating the bombing of Iraq by

the far superior U.S. air force. This is what Lacan means when he claims that repression and the return of the repressed are one and the same process: if the U.S. delegation had abstained from demanding that Guernica be covered up, probably no one would associate Powell's speech with the painting displayed behind him - the very change, the very gesture of concealing the painting, drew attention to it and imposed the wrong association, confirming its truth. Recall the unique figure of James Jesus Angleton, the ultimate cold warrior. For almost two decades, until 1973, he was the chief of the counter-intelligence section of the CIA, with the task to unearth moles within CIA. Angleton, a charismatic, highly idiosyncratic figure, literary and educated (a personal friend of T.S.Eliot, even physically resembling him), was prone to paranoia. The premise of his work was the absolute conviction in the so-called Monster Plot: a gigantic deception coordinated by a secret KGB "organization within organization," whose aim was to penetrate and totally dominate the Western intelligence network and thus bring about the defeat of the West. For this reason, Angleton dismissed practically all KGB defectors offering invaluable information as fake defectors, and sometimes even sent them back to the USSR (where, of course, they were immediately put to trial and shot, since they were true defectors). The ultimate outcome of Angleton's reign was total immobilization - crucially, in his time, not one true mole was discovered and apprehended. No

wonder Clare Petty, one of top officials in Angleton's section, brought the Angleton paranoia to its logical self-negating climax, by concluding, after an exhaustive and long investigation, that Golitsyn (the Russian defector with whom Angleton was engaged in a true folie deux, shared madness) was a fake and Angleton himself the big mole who successfully paralyzed the anti-Soviet intelligence activity. Effectively, one is tempted to raise the question: what if Angleton was a mole justifying his activity by the search for a mole (for himself, in the real life version of Kevin Costner's No Way Out plot)? What if the true KGB Monster Plot was the very project to put in circulation the idea of a Monster Plot and thus immobilize the CIA and neutralize in advance the future KGB defectors? In both cases, the ultimate deception assumed the guise of truth itself: there was a Monster Plot (it was the very idea of the Monster Plot); there was a mole in the heart of CIA (Angleton himself). Therein resides the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the destructive plot against which it is fighting. The nicety of this solution - and the ultimate condemnation of Angleton's paranoia - is that it doesn't matter if Angleton was just sincerely duped by the idea of a Monster Plot, or if he was the mole: in both cases, the result is exactly the same. The deception resided in our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion to put under suspicion the very idea of suspicion. Recall the old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving the

factory, the wheel-barrow he was rolling in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty - till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheel-barrows themselves. This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not forget to include into the content of an act of communication this act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the first thing to bear in mind about the way the unconscious operates: it is not hidden in the wheel-barrow, it is the wheel-barrow itself. Is it with the gifts of Danaoi (the Greeks who laid siege to Troy) or with the passwords that give them their salutary non-sense that language, with the law, begins? For these gifts are already symbols, in the sense that symbol means pact and that they are first and foremost signifiers of the pact that they constitute as signified, as is plainly seen in the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange - pots made to remain empty, shields too heavy to be carried, sheaves of heat that wither, lances stuck into the ground - all are destined to be useless, if not simply superfluous by their very abundance. Is this neutralization of the signifier the whole of the nature of language? On this assessment, one could see the beginning of it among sea swallows, for instance, during the mating parade, materialized in the fish they pass between each other from beak to beak. And if the ethologists are right in seeing in this the instrument of an activation

of the group that might be called the equivalent of a festival, they would be completely justified in recognizing it as a symbol. [1] Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25 minutes episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear ("Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!..."). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by the "big Other". The symbolic order is the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts, I as it were swim in it, but it nonetheless remains ultimately impenetrable and I cannot ever put it in front of me and fully grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some anonymous all-pervasive agency. Does this mean that, for Lacan, we, human individuals, are mere epiphenomena, shadows with no real power of our own, that our self-perception as autonomous free agents is a kind of user's illusion blinding us for the fact that we are tools in the hands of the big Other which, hidden behind the screen, pulls the strings? There are, however, many features of the "big Other" which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the

game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, "knight" is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called "messenger" or "runner" or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short. The big Other operates at a symbolic level. What, then, is this symbolic order composed of? When we speak (or listen, for that matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech activity is grounded on our accepting of and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds of presuppositions. First, there are the grammatical rules I have to master blindly and spontaneously: if I were to bear in mind all the time these rules, my speech would come to a halt. Then there is the background of participating in the same lifeworld which enables me and my partner in conversation to understand each other. The rules that I follow are marked by a deep split: there are rules (and meanings) that I follow blindly, out of custom, but of which, upon reflection, I can become at least partially aware (such as common

grammatical rules), and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, unbeknownst to me (such as unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I am aware of, but have to act on the outside as if I am not aware of them - dirty or obscene innuendos which one passes over in silence in order to maintain the proper appearances. This symbolic space acts like a standard against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others," the big Other always has to be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low class joke about a poor peasant who, after enduring a shipwreck, finds himself on a lone island with Cindy Crawford. After having sex with her, she asks him if he is fully satisfied; his answer is yes, but nonetheless he still has a small request to make his satisfaction complete - could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a moustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a hidden pervert, as she will immediately see if she carries out the request. When she does, he approaches her, elbows her ribs and tells her with the obscene smile of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as

the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze. In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual, in the sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists. Its status is similar to that of an ideological cause like Communism or Nation: it is the substance of the individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their entire existence, the point of reference which provides the ultimate horizon of meaning to their lives, something for which these individuals are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity, so this substance is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter," a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter which fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter - its true addressee are not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself: The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing nor the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish

or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading. [2] Is it not exactly the same with the symptom in the Freudian sense of the term? According to Freud, when I develop a symptom, I produce a ciphered message about my innermost secrets, my unconscious desires and traumas. The symptom's addressee is not another real human being: before an analyst deciphers my symptom, there is no one who can read its message. Who, then, is the symptom's addressee? The only remaining candidate is the virtual big Other. This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained by their continuous activity. However, the provenance of the big Other is still unclear. How is it that, when individuals exchange symbols, they do not simply interact with each other, but always also refer to the virtual big Other? When I talk about other people's opinions, it is never only a matter of what me, you, or other individuals think, but also a matter of what the impersonal "one" thinks. When I violate a certain rule of decency, I never simply do something that the majority of others do not do - I do what "one" doesn't do.

This brings us to the dense passage with which we opened this chapter: in it, Lacan proposes no less than an account of the genesis of the big Other. "Danaoi" is the term used by Homer to designate the Greeks who were laying siege to Troy; their gift was the famous wooden horse which, after it was received by the Trojans, allowed the Greeks to penetrate and destroy Troy. For Lacan, language is such a dangerous gift: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. The symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, which neutralizes its content in order to declare itself as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between the giver and the receiver established when the other accepts the gift. Lacan even engages here in a bit of speculation about animal ethology: the sea swallows who pass a caught fish from beak to beak (as if to make it clear that the link established in this way is more important than who will finally keep and eat the fish), effectively engage in a kind of symbolic communication. Everyone who is in love knows this: a present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very abundance - only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. Roman Jakobson called this fundamental mystery of the properly human symbolic order "phatic communication": human speech never merely transmits a

message, it always also selfreflectively asserts the basic symbolic pact between the communicating subjects. The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called "empty gesture," an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn't one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture an offer - which is meant to be rejected. Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer - this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the

beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend's offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link. The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath's grasp is the fact that "many human acts are performed ... for the sake of the interaction itself." [3] In other words, the sociopath's use of language paradoxically fits perfectly the standard commonsense notion of language as purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it, and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. This determines a sociopath's attitude towards morality: while he is able to discern moral rules that regulate social interaction, and even to act morally insofar as he establishes that it fits his interests, he lacks the "gut feeling" of right and wrong, the notion that one just cannot do some things, independently of the external social rules. In short, a sociopath truly practices the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism, according to which, morality

designates a behavior we adopt by way of intelligently calculating our interests (in the long run, it profits us all if we try to contribute to the pleasure of the greatest possible number of people): for him, morality is a theory one learns and follows, not something one substantially identifies with. Doing evil is a mistake in calculation, not guilt. Because of this performative dimension, every choice we confront in language is a metachoice, that is to say, a choice of choice itself, a choice that affects and changes the very coordinates of my choosing. Recall the everyday situation in which my (sexual, political, or financial) partner wants me to make a deal with him; what he tells me is basically: "Please, I really love you, if we come together here, I will be totally dedicated to you! But if you reject me, I may lose my control and make your life a misery!" The catch here, of course, is that I am not simply confronted with a clear choice: the second part of this message undermines the first part somebody who is ready to ruin me if I say no to him cannot really love me and be dedicated to my happiness, as he claims in the first part. The reality of the choice offered to me thus belies its terms: hatred or, at least, cold manipulative indifference towards me underlies both terms of the choice. There is, of course, a symmetrical hypocrisy, which consists in saying: "I love you and will accept whatever your choice will be; so even if (you know that) your refusal will ruin me, please choose what you really want, and do not take into consideration how

it will affect me!" The manipulative falsity of this offer, of course, resides in the way it uses its "honest" insistence that I can say no as an additional pressure on me to say yes: "How can you refuse me, when I love you so totally?" We can see now how, far from conceiving the Symbolic which rules human perception and interaction as a kind of transcendental a priori (a formal network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice), Lacan is interested precisely in how the gestures of symbolization are entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic function reaches far beyond the standard theory of the performative dimension of speech as it was developed in the tradition from J.L. Austin to John Searle: The symbolic function presents itself as a twofold movement in the subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating at every instant, lies the whole progress of a function in which action and knowledge alternate. [4] The historical example evoked by Lacan to clarify this "twofold movement" is indicative in its hidden references: in phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our society considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two, in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike. [5] Lacan's (implicit) reference here is to Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness , a classic Marxist

work from 1923 whose widely acclaimed French translation was published in the mid-1950s. For Lukacs, consciousness is opposed to mere knowledge of an object: knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself 'practical', an act which changes its very object. (Once a worker "considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat," this changes his very reality: he acts differently.) One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the base of this declaration, one does something new - the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously, renders how the subject relates to this content. Even the most downto-earth objects and activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life. One should never forget that utility functions as a reflective notion: it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning. A man who lives in a large city and owns a landrover (for which he obviously has no use), doesn't simply lead a nononsense, down-to-earth life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under the sign of a no-nonsense, down-toearth attitude. To wear stonewashed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life. The unsurpassed master of such analysis was Claude Levi-Strauss, for whom food also serves as "food for thought". The three main modes

of food preparation (raw, baked, boiled) function as a semiotic triangle: we use them to symbolize the basic opposition of ("raw") nature and ("baked") culture, as well as the mediation between the two opposites (in the procedure of boiling). There is a memorable scene in Louis Bunuel's Fantom of Freedom in which relations between eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at their toilets around the table, pleasantly talking, and when they want to eat, they silently ask the housekeeper "Where is that place, you know?" and sneak away to a small room in the back. As a supplement to Lvi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a "stuff for thought": the three basic types of toiletdesign in the West form a kind of excremental counterpoint to the Lvi-Straussian triangle of cooking. In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water, is way in front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit is supposed to disappear as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles - the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that, in the famous discussion of different European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying , Erica Jong mockingly claims that "German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything." It is clear that none of these versions

can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant excrement which comes from within our body, is clearly discernible in it. Hegel was among the first to interpret the geographic triad of Germany-France-England as expressing three different existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness, English moderate utilitarian pragmatism. In terms of political stance, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of one of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English economy. The reference to toilets enables us to discern the same triad in the most intimate domain of performing the excremental function: ambiguous contemplative fascination; the hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; the pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in ideology. This declarative dimension of symbolic interaction can be exemplified by means of a delicate situation in human relationships. Imagine a couple with a tacit agreement that they can lead discreet extra-marital affairs. If, all

of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an ongoing affair, she will have good reasons to be in panic: "If it is just an affair, why are you telling me this? It must be something more!" The act of publicly reporting on something is never neutral, it affects the reported content itself and although the partners learn nothing knew by means of it, it changes everything. There is also a big difference between the partner simply not talking about the secret adventures and explicitly stating that s/he will not talk about them ("You know, I think I have the right not to tell you about all my contacts, there is a part of my life which is of no concern to you!"). In the second case, when the silent pact is rendered explicit, this statement itself cannot but deliver an additional aggressive message. What we are dealing with here is the irreducible gap between the enunciated content and the act of enunciation that is proper to human speech. In academia, a polite way to say that we found our colleague's intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say: "It was interesting." So, if, instead, we tell our colleague openly "It was boring and stupid", he would be fully justified to be surprised and to ask: "But if you found it boring and stupid, why did you not simply say that it was interesting?" The unfortunate colleague was right to take the direct statement as involving something more, not only a comment about the quality of his paper but an attack on his very person. Does exactly the same not hold for the open admission of torture by the high representatives of the US

administration? The popular and seemingly convincing reply to those who worry about the recent US practice of torturing suspected terrorist prisoners is: "What's all the fuss about? The US are now only openly admitting what not only they were doing all the time, but what other states are and were doing all the time - if anything, we have less hypocrisy now!" To this, one should retort with a simple counter-question: "If the high representatives of the US mean only this, why, then, are they telling us this? Why don't they just silently go on doing it, as they did it till now?" So when we hear people like Dick Cheney making obscene statements about the necessity of torture, we should ask them: "If you just want to torture secretly some suspected terrorists, then why are you saying it publicly?" That is to say, the question to be raised it: what is there more in this statement that made the speaker tell it? The same goes for the negative version of declaration: no less than the superfluous act of mentioning, the act of NOT mentioning or concealing something can create additional meaning. When, in February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the UN assembly in order to advocate the attack on Iraq, the US delegation asked the large reproduction of Picasso's Guernica on the wall behind the speaker's podium to be covered with a different visual ornament. Although the official explanation was that Guernica does not provide the adequate optical background for the televised transmission of Powell's speech, it was clear to everyone what the U.S. delegation was afraid of: that Guernica , the

painting supposed to be depicting the catastrophic results of the German aerial bombing of the Spanish city in the civil war, would give rise to the "wrong kind of associations" if it were to serve as the background to Powell advocating the bombing of Iraq by the far superior U.S. air force. This is what Lacan means when he claims that repression and the return of the repressed are one and the same process: if the U.S. delegation had abstained from demanding that Guernica be covered up, probably no one would associate Powell's speech with the painting displayed behind him - the very change, the very gesture of concealing the painting, drew attention to it and imposed the wrong association, confirming its truth. Recall the unique figure of James Jesus Angleton, the ultimate cold warrior. For almost two decades, until 1973, he was the chief of the counter-intelligence section of the CIA, with the task to unearth moles within CIA. Angleton, a charismatic, highly idiosyncratic figure, literary and educated (a personal friend of T.S.Eliot, even physically resembling him), was prone to paranoia. The premise of his work was the absolute conviction in the so-called Monster Plot: a gigantic deception coordinated by a secret KGB "organization within organization," whose aim was to penetrate and totally dominate the Western intelligence network and thus bring about the defeat of the West. For this reason, Angleton dismissed practically all KGB defectors offering invaluable information as fake defectors, and sometimes even sent them back to

the USSR (where, of course, they were immediately put to trial and shot, since they were true defectors). The ultimate outcome of Angleton's reign was total immobilization - crucially, in his time, not one true mole was discovered and apprehended. No wonder Clare Petty, one of top officials in Angleton's section, brought the Angleton paranoia to its logical self-negating climax, by concluding, after an exhaustive and long investigation, that Golitsyn (the Russian defector with whom Angleton was engaged in a true folie deux, shared madness) was a fake and Angleton himself the big mole who successfully paralyzed the anti-Soviet intelligence activity. Effectively, one is tempted to raise the question: what if Angleton was a mole justifying his activity by the search for a mole (for himself, in the real life version of Kevin Costner's No Way Out plot)? What if the true KGB Monster Plot was the very project to put in circulation the idea of a Monster Plot and thus immobilize the CIA and neutralize in advance the future KGB defectors? In both cases, the ultimate deception assumed the guise of truth itself: there was a Monster Plot (it was the very idea of the Monster Plot); there was a mole in the heart of CIA (Angleton himself). Therein resides the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the destructive plot against which it is fighting. The nicety of this solution - and the ultimate condemnation of Angleton's paranoia - is that it doesn't matter if Angleton was just sincerely duped by the idea of a Monster Plot, or if he was the mole: in both cases, the result is exactly the same. The

deception resided in our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion to put under suspicion the very idea of suspicion. Recall the old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving the factory, the wheel-barrow he was rolling in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty - till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheel-barrows themselves. This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not forget to include into the content of an act of communication this act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the first thing to bear in mind about the way the unconscious operates: it is not hidden in the wheel-barrow, it is the wheel-barrow itself. Is it with the gifts of Danaoi (the Greeks who laid siege to Troy) or with the passwords that give them their salutary non-sense that language, with the law, begins? For these gifts are already symbols, in the sense that symbol means pact and that they are first and foremost signifiers of the pact that they constitute as signified, as is plainly seen in the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange - pots made to remain empty, shields too heavy to be carried, sheaves of heat that wither, lances stuck into the ground - all are destined to be useless, if not simply superfluous by their very abundance. Is this neutralization of the signifier the whole of the nature of

language? On this assessment, one could see the beginning of it among sea swallows, for instance, during the mating parade, materialized in the fish they pass between each other from beak to beak. And if the ethologists are right in seeing in this the instrument of an activation of the group that might be called the equivalent of a festival, they would be completely justified in recognizing it as a symbol. [1] Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25 minutes episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear ("Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!..."). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by the "big Other". The symbolic order is the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts, I as it were swim in it, but it nonetheless remains ultimately impenetrable and I cannot ever put it in front of me and fully grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some anonymous all-pervasive agency. Does this mean that, for Lacan, we, human individuals, are mere epiphenomena, shadows with no real power of our own, that our self-perception as autonomous free agents is a kind of user's illusion blinding us for the fact that we are tools in the hands of the big Other which, hidden behind the screen, pulls the strings?

There are, however, many features of the "big Other" which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, "knight" is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called "messenger" or "runner" or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short. The big Other operates at a symbolic level. What, then, is this symbolic order composed of? When we speak (or listen, for that matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech activity is grounded on our accepting of and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds of presuppositions. First, there are the grammatical rules I have to master blindly and spontaneously: if I were to bear in mind all the time these rules, my speech would come to a halt. Then there is the background of participating in the same lifeworld which enables me and my

partner in conversation to understand each other. The rules that I follow are marked by a deep split: there are rules (and meanings) that I follow blindly, out of custom, but of which, upon reflection, I can become at least partially aware (such as common grammatical rules), and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, unbeknownst to me (such as unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I am aware of, but have to act on the outside as if I am not aware of them - dirty or obscene innuendos which one passes over in silence in order to maintain the proper appearances. This symbolic space acts like a standard against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others," the big Other always has to be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low class joke about a poor peasant who, after enduring a shipwreck, finds himself on a lone island with Cindy Crawford. After having sex with her, she asks him if he is fully satisfied; his answer is yes, but nonetheless he still has a small request to make his satisfaction complete - could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a moustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a hidden pervert, as she will

immediately see if she carries out the request. When she does, he approaches her, elbows her ribs and tells her with the obscene smile of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze. In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual, in the sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists. Its status is similar to that of an ideological cause like Communism or Nation: it is the substance of the individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their entire existence, the point of reference which provides the ultimate horizon of meaning to their lives, something for which these individuals are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity, so this substance is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter," a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter which fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter - its true addressee are not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself: The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing nor the sending

is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading. [2] Is it not exactly the same with the symptom in the Freudian sense of the term? According to Freud, when I develop a symptom, I produce a ciphered message about my innermost secrets, my unconscious desires and traumas. The symptom's addressee is not another real human being: before an analyst deciphers my symptom, there is no one who can read its message. Who, then, is the symptom's addressee? The only remaining candidate is the virtual big Other. This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained by their continuous activity. However, the provenance of the big Other is still unclear. How is it that, when individuals exchange symbols, they do not simply interact with each other, but always also refer to the virtual big Other? When I talk about other people's opinions, it is never only a

matter of what me, you, or other individuals think, but also a matter of what the impersonal "one" thinks. When I violate a certain rule of decency, I never simply do something that the majority of others do not do - I do what "one" doesn't do. This brings us to the dense passage with which we opened this chapter: in it, Lacan proposes no less than an account of the genesis of the big Other. "Danaoi" is the term used by Homer to designate the Greeks who were laying siege to Troy; their gift was the famous wooden horse which, after it was received by the Trojans, allowed the Greeks to penetrate and destroy Troy. For Lacan, language is such a dangerous gift: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. The symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, which neutralizes its content in order to declare itself as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between the giver and the receiver established when the other accepts the gift. Lacan even engages here in a bit of speculation about animal ethology: the sea swallows who pass a caught fish from beak to beak (as if to make it clear that the link established in this way is more important than who will finally keep and eat the fish), effectively engage in a kind of symbolic communication. Everyone who is in love knows this: a present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very abundance - only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human communication is characterized by

an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. Roman Jakobson called this fundamental mystery of the properly human symbolic order "phatic communication": human speech never merely transmits a message, it always also selfreflectively asserts the basic symbolic pact between the communicating subjects. The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called "empty gesture," an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn't one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture an offer - which is meant to be rejected. Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper

thing for him to do is to reject my offer - this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend's offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link. The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath's grasp is the fact that "many human acts are performed ... for the sake of the interaction itself." [3] In other words, the sociopath's use of language paradoxically fits perfectly the standard commonsense notion of language as purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it, and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. This determines a sociopath's attitude towards morality: while he is able to discern moral rules that regulate social interaction, and even to act morally insofar as he establishes that it fits his interests, he lacks

the "gut feeling" of right and wrong, the notion that one just cannot do some things, independently of the external social rules. In short, a sociopath truly practices the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism, according to which, morality designates a behavior we adopt by way of intelligently calculating our interests (in the long run, it profits us all if we try to contribute to the pleasure of the greatest possible number of people): for him, morality is a theory one learns and follows, not something one substantially identifies with. Doing evil is a mistake in calculation, not guilt. Because of this performative dimension, every choice we confront in language is a metachoice, that is to say, a choice of choice itself, a choice that affects and changes the very coordinates of my choosing. Recall the everyday situation in which my (sexual, political, or financial) partner wants me to make a deal with him; what he tells me is basically: "Please, I really love you, if we come together here, I will be totally dedicated to you! But if you reject me, I may lose my control and make your life a misery!" The catch here, of course, is that I am not simply confronted with a clear choice: the second part of this message undermines the first part somebody who is ready to ruin me if I say no to him cannot really love me and be dedicated to my happiness, as he claims in the first part. The reality of the choice offered to me thus belies its terms: hatred or, at least, cold manipulative indifference towards me underlies both terms of the

choice. There is, of course, a symmetrical hypocrisy, which consists in saying: "I love you and will accept whatever your choice will be; so even if (you know that) your refusal will ruin me, please choose what you really want, and do not take into consideration how it will affect me!" The manipulative falsity of this offer, of course, resides in the way it uses its "honest" insistence that I can say no as an additional pressure on me to say yes: "How can you refuse me, when I love you so totally?" We can see now how, far from conceiving the Symbolic which rules human perception and interaction as a kind of transcendental a priori (a formal network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice), Lacan is interested precisely in how the gestures of symbolization are entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic function reaches far beyond the standard theory of the performative dimension of speech as it was developed in the tradition from J.L. Austin to John Searle: The symbolic function presents itself as a twofold movement in the subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating at every instant, lies the whole progress of a function in which action and knowledge alternate. [4] The historical example evoked by Lacan to clarify this "twofold movement" is indicative in its hidden references: in phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our

society considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two, in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike. [5] Lacan's (implicit) reference here is to Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness , a classic Marxist work from 1923 whose widely acclaimed French translation was published in the mid-1950s. For Lukacs, consciousness is opposed to mere knowledge of an object: knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself 'practical', an act which changes its very object. (Once a worker "considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat," this changes his very reality: he acts differently.) One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the base of this declaration, one does something new - the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously, renders how the subject relates to this content. Even the most downto-earth objects and activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life. One should never forget that utility functions as a reflective notion: it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning. A man who lives in a large city and owns a landrover (for which he obviously has no use), doesn't simply lead a nononsense, down-to-earth life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under

the sign of a no-nonsense, down-toearth attitude. To wear stonewashed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life. The unsurpassed master of such analysis was Claude Levi-Strauss, for whom food also serves as "food for thought". The three main modes of food preparation (raw, baked, boiled) function as a semiotic triangle: we use them to symbolize the basic opposition of ("raw") nature and ("baked") culture, as well as the mediation between the two opposites (in the procedure of boiling). There is a memorable scene in Louis Bunuel's Fantom of Freedom in which relations between eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at their toilets around the table, pleasantly talking, and when they want to eat, they silently ask the housekeeper "Where is that place, you know?" and sneak away to a small room in the back. As a supplement to Lvi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a "stuff for thought": the three basic types of toiletdesign in the West form a kind of excremental counterpoint to the Lvi-Straussian triangle of cooking. In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water, is way in front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit is supposed to disappear as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles - the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that, in the famous discussion of different

European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying , Erica Jong mockingly claims that "German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything." It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant excrement which comes from within our body, is clearly discernible in it. Hegel was among the first to interpret the geographic triad of Germany-France-England as expressing three different existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness, English moderate utilitarian pragmatism. In terms of political stance, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of one of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English economy. The reference to toilets enables us to discern the same triad in the most intimate domain of performing the excremental function: ambiguous contemplative fascination; the hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; the pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in

ideology. This declarative dimension of symbolic interaction can be exemplified by means of a delicate situation in human relationships. Imagine a couple with a tacit agreement that they can lead discreet extra-marital affairs. If, all of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an ongoing affair, she will have good reasons to be in panic: "If it is just an affair, why are you telling me this? It must be something more!" The act of publicly reporting on something is never neutral, it affects the reported content itself and although the partners learn nothing knew by means of it, it changes everything. There is also a big difference between the partner simply not talking about the secret adventures and explicitly stating that s/he will not talk about them ("You know, I think I have the right not to tell you about all my contacts, there is a part of my life which is of no concern to you!"). In the second case, when the silent pact is rendered explicit, this statement itself cannot but deliver an additional aggressive message. What we are dealing with here is the irreducible gap between the enunciated content and the act of enunciation that is proper to human speech. In academia, a polite way to say that we found our colleague's intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say: "It was interesting." So, if, instead, we tell our colleague openly "It was boring and stupid", he would be fully justified to be surprised and to ask: "But if you found it boring and stupid, why did you not simply say that it was interesting?" The unfortunate colleague was right to

take the direct statement as involving something more, not only a comment about the quality of his paper but an attack on his very person. Does exactly the same not hold for the open admission of torture by the high representatives of the US administration? The popular and seemingly convincing reply to those who worry about the recent US practice of torturing suspected terrorist prisoners is: "What's all the fuss about? The US are now only openly admitting what not only they were doing all the time, but what other states are and were doing all the time - if anything, we have less hypocrisy now!" To this, one should retort with a simple counter-question: "If the high representatives of the US mean only this, why, then, are they telling us this? Why don't they just silently go on doing it, as they did it till now?" So when we hear people like Dick Cheney making obscene statements about the necessity of torture, we should ask them: "If you just want to torture secretly some suspected terrorists, then why are you saying it publicly?" That is to say, the question to be raised it: what is there more in this statement that made the speaker tell it? The same goes for the negative version of declaration: no less than the superfluous act of mentioning, the act of NOT mentioning or concealing something can create additional meaning. When, in February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the UN assembly in order to advocate the attack on Iraq, the US delegation asked the large reproduction of Picasso's Guernica on the wall behind the speaker's podium to be covered

with a different visual ornament. Although the official explanation was that Guernica does not provide the adequate optical background for the televised transmission of Powell's speech, it was clear to everyone what the U.S. delegation was afraid of: that Guernica , the painting supposed to be depicting the catastrophic results of the German aerial bombing of the Spanish city in the civil war, would give rise to the "wrong kind of associations" if it were to serve as the background to Powell advocating the bombing of Iraq by the far superior U.S. air force. This is what Lacan means when he claims that repression and the return of the repressed are one and the same process: if the U.S. delegation had abstained from demanding that Guernica be covered up, probably no one would associate Powell's speech with the painting displayed behind him - the very change, the very gesture of concealing the painting, drew attention to it and imposed the wrong association, confirming its truth. Recall the unique figure of James Jesus Angleton, the ultimate cold warrior. For almost two decades, until 1973, he was the chief of the counter-intelligence section of the CIA, with the task to unearth moles within CIA. Angleton, a charismatic, highly idiosyncratic figure, literary and educated (a personal friend of T.S.Eliot, even physically resembling him), was prone to paranoia. The premise of his work was the absolute conviction in the so-called Monster Plot: a gigantic deception coordinated by a secret KGB "organization within organization," whose aim was to

penetrate and totally dominate the Western intelligence network and thus bring about the defeat of the West. For this reason, Angleton dismissed practically all KGB defectors offering invaluable information as fake defectors, and sometimes even sent them back to the USSR (where, of course, they were immediately put to trial and shot, since they were true defectors). The ultimate outcome of Angleton's reign was total immobilization - crucially, in his time, not one true mole was discovered and apprehended. No wonder Clare Petty, one of top officials in Angleton's section, brought the Angleton paranoia to its logical self-negating climax, by concluding, after an exhaustive and long investigation, that Golitsyn (the Russian defector with whom Angleton was engaged in a true folie deux, shared madness) was a fake and Angleton himself the big mole who successfully paralyzed the anti-Soviet intelligence activity. Effectively, one is tempted to raise the question: what if Angleton was a mole justifying his activity by the search for a mole (for himself, in the real life version of Kevin Costner's No Way Out plot)? What if the true KGB Monster Plot was the very project to put in circulation the idea of a Monster Plot and thus immobilize the CIA and neutralize in advance the future KGB defectors? In both cases, the ultimate deception assumed the guise of truth itself: there was a Monster Plot (it was the very idea of the Monster Plot); there was a mole in the heart of CIA (Angleton himself). Therein resides the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the destructive plot against which it

is fighting. The nicety of this solution - and the ultimate condemnation of Angleton's paranoia - is that it doesn't matter if Angleton was just sincerely duped by the idea of a Monster Plot, or if he was the mole: in both cases, the result is exactly the same. The deception resided in our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion to put under suspicion the very idea of suspicion. Recall the old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving the factory, the wheel-barrow he was rolling in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty - till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheel-barrows themselves. This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not forget to include into the content of an act of communication this act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the first thing to bear in mind about the way the unconscious operates: it is not hidden in the wheel-barrow, it is the wheel-barrow itself. Is it with the gifts of Danaoi (the Greeks who laid siege to Troy) or with the passwords that give them their salutary non-sense that language, with the law, begins? For these gifts are already symbols, in the sense that symbol means pact and that they are first and foremost signifiers of the pact that they constitute as signified, as is plainly seen in the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange - pots made to

remain empty, shields too heavy to be carried, sheaves of heat that wither, lances stuck into the ground - all are destined to be useless, if not simply superfluous by their very abundance. Is this neutralization of the signifier the whole of the nature of language? On this assessment, one could see the beginning of it among sea swallows, for instance, during the mating parade, materialized in the fish they pass between each other from beak to beak. And if the ethologists are right in seeing in this the instrument of an activation of the group that might be called the equivalent of a festival, they would be completely justified in recognizing it as a symbol. [1] Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25 minutes episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear ("Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!..."). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by the "big Other". The symbolic order is the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts, I as it were swim in it, but it nonetheless remains ultimately impenetrable and I cannot ever put it in front of me and fully grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some anonymous all-pervasive agency. Does this mean that, for Lacan, we, human individuals, are mere

epiphenomena, shadows with no real power of our own, that our self-perception as autonomous free agents is a kind of user's illusion blinding us for the fact that we are tools in the hands of the big Other which, hidden behind the screen, pulls the strings? There are, however, many features of the "big Other" which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, "knight" is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called "messenger" or "runner" or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short. The big Other operates at a symbolic level. What, then, is this symbolic order composed of? When we speak (or listen, for that matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech activity is grounded on our accepting of and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds of

presuppositions. First, there are the grammatical rules I have to master blindly and spontaneously: if I were to bear in mind all the time these rules, my speech would come to a halt. Then there is the background of participating in the same lifeworld which enables me and my partner in conversation to understand each other. The rules that I follow are marked by a deep split: there are rules (and meanings) that I follow blindly, out of custom, but of which, upon reflection, I can become at least partially aware (such as common grammatical rules), and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, unbeknownst to me (such as unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I am aware of, but have to act on the outside as if I am not aware of them - dirty or obscene innuendos which one passes over in silence in order to maintain the proper appearances. This symbolic space acts like a standard against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others," the big Other always has to be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low class joke about a poor peasant who, after enduring a shipwreck, finds himself on a lone island with Cindy Crawford. After having sex with her, she asks him if he is fully

satisfied; his answer is yes, but nonetheless he still has a small request to make his satisfaction complete - could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a moustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a hidden pervert, as she will immediately see if she carries out the request. When she does, he approaches her, elbows her ribs and tells her with the obscene smile of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze. In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual, in the sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists. Its status is similar to that of an ideological cause like Communism or Nation: it is the substance of the individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their entire existence, the point of reference which provides the ultimate horizon of meaning to their lives, something for which these individuals are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity, so this substance is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter," a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only

letter which fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter - its true addressee are not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself: The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing nor the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading. [2] Is it not exactly the same with the symptom in the Freudian sense of the term? According to Freud, when I develop a symptom, I produce a ciphered message about my innermost secrets, my unconscious desires and traumas. The symptom's addressee is not another real human being: before an analyst deciphers my symptom, there is no one who can read its message. Who, then, is the symptom's addressee? The only remaining candidate is the virtual big Other. This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained by their continuous

activity. However, the provenance of the big Other is still unclear. How is it that, when individuals exchange symbols, they do not simply interact with each other, but always also refer to the virtual big Other? When I talk about other people's opinions, it is never only a matter of what me, you, or other individuals think, but also a matter of what the impersonal "one" thinks. When I violate a certain rule of decency, I never simply do something that the majority of others do not do - I do what "one" doesn't do. This brings us to the dense passage with which we opened this chapter: in it, Lacan proposes no less than an account of the genesis of the big Other. "Danaoi" is the term used by Homer to designate the Greeks who were laying siege to Troy; their gift was the famous wooden horse which, after it was received by the Trojans, allowed the Greeks to penetrate and destroy Troy. For Lacan, language is such a dangerous gift: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. The symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, which neutralizes its content in order to declare itself as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between the giver and the receiver established when the other accepts the gift. Lacan even engages here in a bit of speculation about animal ethology: the sea swallows who pass a caught fish from beak to beak (as if to make it clear that the link established in this way is more important than who will finally keep and eat the fish), effectively engage in a kind of symbolic communication.

Everyone who is in love knows this: a present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very abundance - only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. Roman Jakobson called this fundamental mystery of the properly human symbolic order "phatic communication": human speech never merely transmits a message, it always also selfreflectively asserts the basic symbolic pact between the communicating subjects. The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called "empty gesture," an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn't one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture an offer - which is meant to be

rejected. Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer - this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend's offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link. The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath's grasp is the fact that "many human acts are performed ... for the sake of the interaction itself." [3] In other words, the sociopath's use of language paradoxically fits perfectly the standard commonsense notion of language as purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it,

and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. This determines a sociopath's attitude towards morality: while he is able to discern moral rules that regulate social interaction, and even to act morally insofar as he establishes that it fits his interests, he lacks the "gut feeling" of right and wrong, the notion that one just cannot do some things, independently of the external social rules. In short, a sociopath truly practices the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism, according to which, morality designates a behavior we adopt by way of intelligently calculating our interests (in the long run, it profits us all if we try to contribute to the pleasure of the greatest possible number of people): for him, morality is a theory one learns and follows, not something one substantially identifies with. Doing evil is a mistake in calculation, not guilt. Because of this performative dimension, every choice we confront in language is a metachoice, that is to say, a choice of choice itself, a choice that affects and changes the very coordinates of my choosing. Recall the everyday situation in which my (sexual, political, or financial) partner wants me to make a deal with him; what he tells me is basically: "Please, I really love you, if we come together here, I will be totally dedicated to you! But if you reject me, I may lose my control and make your life a misery!" The catch here, of course, is that I am not simply confronted with a clear choice: the second part of this message undermines the first part somebody who is ready to ruin me

if I say no to him cannot really love me and be dedicated to my happiness, as he claims in the first part. The reality of the choice offered to me thus belies its terms: hatred or, at least, cold manipulative indifference towards me underlies both terms of the choice. There is, of course, a symmetrical hypocrisy, which consists in saying: "I love you and will accept whatever your choice will be; so even if (you know that) your refusal will ruin me, please choose what you really want, and do not take into consideration how it will affect me!" The manipulative falsity of this offer, of course, resides in the way it uses its "honest" insistence that I can say no as an additional pressure on me to say yes: "How can you refuse me, when I love you so totally?" We can see now how, far from conceiving the Symbolic which rules human perception and interaction as a kind of transcendental a priori (a formal network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice), Lacan is interested precisely in how the gestures of symbolization are entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic function reaches far beyond the standard theory of the performative dimension of speech as it was developed in the tradition from J.L. Austin to John Searle: The symbolic function presents itself as a twofold movement in the subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating at every instant, lies the whole

progress of a function in which action and knowledge alternate. [4] The historical example evoked by Lacan to clarify this "twofold movement" is indicative in its hidden references: in phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our society considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two, in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike. [5] Lacan's (implicit) reference here is to Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness , a classic Marxist work from 1923 whose widely acclaimed French translation was published in the mid-1950s. For Lukacs, consciousness is opposed to mere knowledge of an object: knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself 'practical', an act which changes its very object. (Once a worker "considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat," this changes his very reality: he acts differently.) One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the base of this declaration, one does something new - the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously, renders how the subject relates to this content. Even the most downto-earth objects and activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life. One should never forget that utility functions as a reflective notion: it

always involves the assertion of utility as meaning. A man who lives in a large city and owns a landrover (for which he obviously has no use), doesn't simply lead a nononsense, down-to-earth life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under the sign of a no-nonsense, down-toearth attitude. To wear stonewashed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life. The unsurpassed master of such analysis was Claude Levi-Strauss, for whom food also serves as "food for thought". The three main modes of food preparation (raw, baked, boiled) function as a semiotic triangle: we use them to symbolize the basic opposition of ("raw") nature and ("baked") culture, as well as the mediation between the two opposites (in the procedure of boiling). There is a memorable scene in Louis Bunuel's Fantom of Freedom in which relations between eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at their toilets around the table, pleasantly talking, and when they want to eat, they silently ask the housekeeper "Where is that place, you know?" and sneak away to a small room in the back. As a supplement to Lvi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a "stuff for thought": the three basic types of toiletdesign in the West form a kind of excremental counterpoint to the Lvi-Straussian triangle of cooking. In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water, is way in front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit is supposed to disappear

as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles - the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that, in the famous discussion of different European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying , Erica Jong mockingly claims that "German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything." It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant excrement which comes from within our body, is clearly discernible in it. Hegel was among the first to interpret the geographic triad of Germany-France-England as expressing three different existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness, English moderate utilitarian pragmatism. In terms of political stance, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of one of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English economy. The reference to toilets enables us to discern the same triad in the most intimate domain of performing the excremental function: ambiguous contemplative fascination; the hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; the pragmatic approach

to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in ideology. This declarative dimension of symbolic interaction can be exemplified by means of a delicate situation in human relationships. Imagine a couple with a tacit agreement that they can lead discreet extra-marital affairs. If, all of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an ongoing affair, she will have good reasons to be in panic: "If it is just an affair, why are you telling me this? It must be something more!" The act of publicly reporting on something is never neutral, it affects the reported content itself and although the partners learn nothing knew by means of it, it changes everything. There is also a big difference between the partner simply not talking about the secret adventures and explicitly stating that s/he will not talk about them ("You know, I think I have the right not to tell you about all my contacts, there is a part of my life which is of no concern to you!"). In the second case, when the silent pact is rendered explicit, this statement itself cannot but deliver an additional aggressive message. What we are dealing with here is the irreducible gap between the enunciated content and the act of enunciation that is proper to human speech. In academia, a polite way to say that we found our colleague's intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say: "It was

interesting." So, if, instead, we tell our colleague openly "It was boring and stupid", he would be fully justified to be surprised and to ask: "But if you found it boring and stupid, why did you not simply say that it was interesting?" The unfortunate colleague was right to take the direct statement as involving something more, not only a comment about the quality of his paper but an attack on his very person. Does exactly the same not hold for the open admission of torture by the high representatives of the US administration? The popular and seemingly convincing reply to those who worry about the recent US practice of torturing suspected terrorist prisoners is: "What's all the fuss about? The US are now only openly admitting what not only they were doing all the time, but what other states are and were doing all the time - if anything, we have less hypocrisy now!" To this, one should retort with a simple counter-question: "If the high representatives of the US mean only this, why, then, are they telling us this? Why don't they just silently go on doing it, as they did it till now?" So when we hear people like Dick Cheney making obscene statements about the necessity of torture, we should ask them: "If you just want to torture secretly some suspected terrorists, then why are you saying it publicly?" That is to say, the question to be raised it: what is there more in this statement that made the speaker tell it? The same goes for the negative version of declaration: no less than the superfluous act of mentioning, the act of NOT mentioning or concealing something can create

additional meaning. When, in February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the UN assembly in order to advocate the attack on Iraq, the US delegation asked the large reproduction of Picasso's Guernica on the wall behind the speaker's podium to be covered with a different visual ornament. Although the official explanation was that Guernica does not provide the adequate optical background for the televised transmission of Powell's speech, it was clear to everyone what the U.S. delegation was afraid of: that Guernica , the painting supposed to be depicting the catastrophic results of the German aerial bombing of the Spanish city in the civil war, would give rise to the "wrong kind of associations" if it were to serve as the background to Powell advocating the bombing of Iraq by the far superior U.S. air force. This is what Lacan means when he claims that repression and the return of the repressed are one and the same process: if the U.S. delegation had abstained from demanding that Guernica be covered up, probably no one would associate Powell's speech with the painting displayed behind him - the very change, the very gesture of concealing the painting, drew attention to it and imposed the wrong association, confirming its truth. Recall the unique figure of James Jesus Angleton, the ultimate cold warrior. For almost two decades, until 1973, he was the chief of the counter-intelligence section of the CIA, with the task to unearth moles within CIA. Angleton, a charismatic, highly idiosyncratic figure, literary and educated (a personal friend of

T.S.Eliot, even physically resembling him), was prone to paranoia. The premise of his work was the absolute conviction in the so-called Monster Plot: a gigantic deception coordinated by a secret KGB "organization within organization," whose aim was to penetrate and totally dominate the Western intelligence network and thus bring about the defeat of the West. For this reason, Angleton dismissed practically all KGB defectors offering invaluable information as fake defectors, and sometimes even sent them back to the USSR (where, of course, they were immediately put to trial and shot, since they were true defectors). The ultimate outcome of Angleton's reign was total immobilization - crucially, in his time, not one true mole was discovered and apprehended. No wonder Clare Petty, one of top officials in Angleton's section, brought the Angleton paranoia to its logical self-negating climax, by concluding, after an exhaustive and long investigation, that Golitsyn (the Russian defector with whom Angleton was engaged in a true folie deux, shared madness) was a fake and Angleton himself the big mole who successfully paralyzed the anti-Soviet intelligence activity. Effectively, one is tempted to raise the question: what if Angleton was a mole justifying his activity by the search for a mole (for himself, in the real life version of Kevin Costner's No Way Out plot)? What if the true KGB Monster Plot was the very project to put in circulation the idea of a Monster Plot and thus immobilize the CIA and neutralize in advance the future KGB defectors? In both cases, the

ultimate deception assumed the guise of truth itself: there was a Monster Plot (it was the very idea of the Monster Plot); there was a mole in the heart of CIA (Angleton himself). Therein resides the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the destructive plot against which it is fighting. The nicety of this solution - and the ultimate condemnation of Angleton's paranoia - is that it doesn't matter if Angleton was just sincerely duped by the idea of a Monster Plot, or if he was the mole: in both cases, the result is exactly the same. The deception resided in our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion to put under suspicion the very idea of suspicion. Recall the old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving the factory, the wheel-barrow he was rolling in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty - till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheel-barrows themselves. This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not forget to include into the content of an act of communication this act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the first thing to bear in mind about the way the unconscious operates: it is not hidden in the wheel-barrow, it is the wheel-barrow itself. Is it with the gifts of Danaoi (the Greeks who laid siege to Troy) or with the passwords that give them their salutary non-sense that

language, with the law, begins? For these gifts are already symbols, in the sense that symbol means pact and that they are first and foremost signifiers of the pact that they constitute as signified, as is plainly seen in the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange - pots made to remain empty, shields too heavy to be carried, sheaves of heat that wither, lances stuck into the ground - all are destined to be useless, if not simply superfluous by their very abundance. Is this neutralization of the signifier the whole of the nature of language? On this assessment, one could see the beginning of it among sea swallows, for instance, during the mating parade, materialized in the fish they pass between each other from beak to beak. And if the ethologists are right in seeing in this the instrument of an activation of the group that might be called the equivalent of a festival, they would be completely justified in recognizing it as a symbol. [1] Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25 minutes episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear ("Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!..."). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by the "big Other". The symbolic order is the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts, I as it were swim in it, but it nonetheless remains ultimately impenetrable

and I cannot ever put it in front of me and fully grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some anonymous all-pervasive agency. Does this mean that, for Lacan, we, human individuals, are mere epiphenomena, shadows with no real power of our own, that our self-perception as autonomous free agents is a kind of user's illusion blinding us for the fact that we are tools in the hands of the big Other which, hidden behind the screen, pulls the strings? There are, however, many features of the "big Other" which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, "knight" is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called "messenger" or "runner" or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short. The big Other operates at a

symbolic level. What, then, is this symbolic order composed of? When we speak (or listen, for that matter), we never merely interact with others; our speech activity is grounded on our accepting of and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds of presuppositions. First, there are the grammatical rules I have to master blindly and spontaneously: if I were to bear in mind all the time these rules, my speech would come to a halt. Then there is the background of participating in the same lifeworld which enables me and my partner in conversation to understand each other. The rules that I follow are marked by a deep split: there are rules (and meanings) that I follow blindly, out of custom, but of which, upon reflection, I can become at least partially aware (such as common grammatical rules), and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, unbeknownst to me (such as unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I am aware of, but have to act on the outside as if I am not aware of them - dirty or obscene innuendos which one passes over in silence in order to maintain the proper appearances. This symbolic space acts like a standard against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small

others," the big Other always has to be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low class joke about a poor peasant who, after enduring a shipwreck, finds himself on a lone island with Cindy Crawford. After having sex with her, she asks him if he is fully satisfied; his answer is yes, but nonetheless he still has a small request to make his satisfaction complete - could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a moustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a hidden pervert, as she will immediately see if she carries out the request. When she does, he approaches her, elbows her ribs and tells her with the obscene smile of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze. In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual, in the sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists. Its status is similar to that of an ideological cause like Communism or Nation: it is the substance of the individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their entire existence, the point of reference which provides the ultimate horizon of meaning to their lives, something for which these individuals are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity, so this substance

is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter," a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter which fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter - its true addressee are not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself: The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing nor the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading. [2] Is it not exactly the same with the symptom in the Freudian sense of the term? According to Freud, when I develop a symptom, I produce a ciphered message about my innermost secrets, my unconscious desires and traumas. The symptom's addressee is not another real human being: before an analyst deciphers my symptom, there is no one who can read its message. Who, then, is the symptom's

addressee? The only remaining candidate is the virtual big Other. This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained by their continuous activity. However, the provenance of the big Other is still unclear. How is it that, when individuals exchange symbols, they do not simply interact with each other, but always also refer to the virtual big Other? When I talk about other people's opinions, it is never only a matter of what me, you, or other individuals think, but also a matter of what the impersonal "one" thinks. When I violate a certain rule of decency, I never simply do something that the majority of others do not do - I do what "one" doesn't do. This brings us to the dense passage with which we opened this chapter: in it, Lacan proposes no less than an account of the genesis of the big Other. "Danaoi" is the term used by Homer to designate the Greeks who were laying siege to Troy; their gift was the famous wooden horse which, after it was received by the Trojans, allowed the Greeks to penetrate and destroy Troy. For Lacan, language is such a dangerous gift: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. The symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, which neutralizes its content in order to declare itself as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between the giver and the receiver established when the other accepts the gift. Lacan even engages here in a bit of speculation

about animal ethology: the sea swallows who pass a caught fish from beak to beak (as if to make it clear that the link established in this way is more important than who will finally keep and eat the fish), effectively engage in a kind of symbolic communication. Everyone who is in love knows this: a present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very abundance - only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. Roman Jakobson called this fundamental mystery of the properly human symbolic order "phatic communication": human speech never merely transmits a message, it always also selfreflectively asserts the basic symbolic pact between the communicating subjects. The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called "empty gesture," an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing

freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn't one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture an offer - which is meant to be rejected. Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer - this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend's offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link. The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath's grasp is the fact that "many human acts are performed ... for the sake of the

interaction itself." [3] In other words, the sociopath's use of language paradoxically fits perfectly the standard commonsense notion of language as purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it, and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. This determines a sociopath's attitude towards morality: while he is able to discern moral rules that regulate social interaction, and even to act morally insofar as he establishes that it fits his interests, he lacks the "gut feeling" of right and wrong, the notion that one just cannot do some things, independently of the external social rules. In short, a sociopath truly practices the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism, according to which, morality designates a behavior we adopt by way of intelligently calculating our interests (in the long run, it profits us all if we try to contribute to the pleasure of the greatest possible number of people): for him, morality is a theory one learns and follows, not something one substantially identifies with. Doing evil is a mistake in calculation, not guilt. Because of this performative dimension, every choice we confront in language is a metachoice, that is to say, a choice of choice itself, a choice that affects and changes the very coordinates of my choosing. Recall the everyday situation in which my (sexual, political, or financial) partner wants me to make a deal with him; what he tells me is basically: "Please, I really love you, if we come together here, I will be totally dedicated to

you! But if you reject me, I may lose my control and make your life a misery!" The catch here, of course, is that I am not simply confronted with a clear choice: the second part of this message undermines the first part somebody who is ready to ruin me if I say no to him cannot really love me and be dedicated to my happiness, as he claims in the first part. The reality of the choice offered to me thus belies its terms: hatred or, at least, cold manipulative indifference towards me underlies both terms of the choice. There is, of course, a symmetrical hypocrisy, which consists in saying: "I love you and will accept whatever your choice will be; so even if (you know that) your refusal will ruin me, please choose what you really want, and do not take into consideration how it will affect me!" The manipulative falsity of this offer, of course, resides in the way it uses its "honest" insistence that I can say no as an additional pressure on me to say yes: "How can you refuse me, when I love you so totally?" We can see now how, far from conceiving the Symbolic which rules human perception and interaction as a kind of transcendental a priori (a formal network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice), Lacan is interested precisely in how the gestures of symbolization are entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic function reaches far beyond the standard theory of the performative dimension of speech as it was developed in the tradition from J.L.

Austin to John Searle: The symbolic function presents itself as a twofold movement in the subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating at every instant, lies the whole progress of a function in which action and knowledge alternate. [4] The historical example evoked by Lacan to clarify this "twofold movement" is indicative in its hidden references: in phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our society considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two, in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike. [5] Lacan's (implicit) reference here is to Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness , a classic Marxist work from 1923 whose widely acclaimed French translation was published in the mid-1950s. For Lukacs, consciousness is opposed to mere knowledge of an object: knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself 'practical', an act which changes its very object. (Once a worker "considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat," this changes his very reality: he acts differently.) One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the base of this declaration, one does something new - the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously,

renders how the subject relates to this content. Even the most downto-earth objects and activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life. One should never forget that utility functions as a reflective notion: it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning. A man who lives in a large city and owns a landrover (for which he obviously has no use), doesn't simply lead a nononsense, down-to-earth life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under the sign of a no-nonsense, down-toearth attitude. To wear stonewashed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life. The unsurpassed master of such analysis was Claude Levi-Strauss, for whom food also serves as "food for thought". The three main modes of food preparation (raw, baked, boiled) function as a semiotic triangle: we use them to symbolize the basic opposition of ("raw") nature and ("baked") culture, as well as the mediation between the two opposites (in the procedure of boiling). There is a memorable scene in Louis Bunuel's Fantom of Freedom in which relations between eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at their toilets around the table, pleasantly talking, and when they want to eat, they silently ask the housekeeper "Where is that place, you know?" and sneak away to a small room in the back. As a supplement to Lvi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a "stuff for thought": the three basic types of toiletdesign in the West form a kind of excremental counterpoint to the Lvi-Straussian triangle of cooking.

In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water, is way in front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit is supposed to disappear as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles - the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that, in the famous discussion of different European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying , Erica Jong mockingly claims that "German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything." It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant excrement which comes from within our body, is clearly discernible in it. Hegel was among the first to interpret the geographic triad of Germany-France-England as expressing three different existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness, English moderate utilitarian pragmatism. In terms of political stance, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of one of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English

economy. The reference to toilets enables us to discern the same triad in the most intimate domain of performing the excremental function: ambiguous contemplative fascination; the hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; the pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in ideology. This declarative dimension of symbolic interaction can be exemplified by means of a delicate situation in human relationships. Imagine a couple with a tacit agreement that they can lead discreet extra-marital affairs. If, all of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an ongoing affair, she will have good reasons to be in panic: "If it is just an affair, why are you telling me this? It must be something more!" The act of publicly reporting on something is never neutral, it affects the reported content itself and although the partners learn nothing knew by means of it, it changes everything. There is also a big difference between the partner simply not talking about the secret adventures and explicitly stating that s/he will not talk about them ("You know, I think I have the right not to tell you about all my contacts, there is a part of my life which is of no concern to you!"). In the second case, when the silent pact is rendered explicit, this statement itself cannot but deliver an additional aggressive message.

What we are dealing with here is the irreducible gap between the enunciated content and the act of enunciation that is proper to human speech. In academia, a polite way to say that we found our colleague's intervention or talk stupid and boring is to say: "It was interesting." So, if, instead, we tell our colleague openly "It was boring and stupid", he would be fully justified to be surprised and to ask: "But if you found it boring and stupid, why did you not simply say that it was interesting?" The unfortunate colleague was right to take the direct statement as involving something more, not only a comment about the quality of his paper but an attack on his very person. Does exactly the same not hold for the open admission of torture by the high representatives of the US administration? The popular and seemingly convincing reply to those who worry about the recent US practice of torturing suspected terrorist prisoners is: "What's all the fuss about? The US are now only openly admitting what not only they were doing all the time, but what other states are and were doing all the time - if anything, we have less hypocrisy now!" To this, one should retort with a simple counter-question: "If the high representatives of the US mean only this, why, then, are they telling us this? Why don't they just silently go on doing it, as they did it till now?" So when we hear people like Dick Cheney making obscene statements about the necessity of torture, we should ask them: "If you just want to torture secretly some suspected terrorists, then why are you saying it publicly?" That is to say, the

question to be raised it: what is there more in this statement that made the speaker tell it? The same goes for the negative version of declaration: no less than the superfluous act of mentioning, the act of NOT mentioning or concealing something can create additional meaning. When, in February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the UN assembly in order to advocate the attack on Iraq, the US delegation asked the large reproduction of Picasso's Guernica on the wall behind the speaker's podium to be covered with a different visual ornament. Although the official explanation was that Guernica does not provide the adequate optical background for the televised transmission of Powell's speech, it was clear to everyone what the U.S. delegation was afraid of: that Guernica , the painting supposed to be depicting the catastrophic results of the German aerial bombing of the Spanish city in the civil war, would give rise to the "wrong kind of associations" if it were to serve as the background to Powell advocating the bombing of Iraq by the far superior U.S. air force. This is what Lacan means when he claims that repression and the return of the repressed are one and the same process: if the U.S. delegation had abstained from demanding that Guernica be covered up, probably no one would associate Powell's speech with the painting displayed behind him - the very change, the very gesture of concealing the painting, drew attention to it and imposed the wrong association, confirming its truth. Recall the unique figure of James

Jesus Angleton, the ultimate cold warrior. For almost two decades, until 1973, he was the chief of the counter-intelligence section of the CIA, with the task to unearth moles within CIA. Angleton, a charismatic, highly idiosyncratic figure, literary and educated (a personal friend of T.S.Eliot, even physically resembling him), was prone to paranoia. The premise of his work was the absolute conviction in the so-called Monster Plot: a gigantic deception coordinated by a secret KGB "organization within organization," whose aim was to penetrate and totally dominate the Western intelligence network and thus bring about the defeat of the West. For this reason, Angleton dismissed practically all KGB defectors offering invaluable information as fake defectors, and sometimes even sent them back to the USSR (where, of course, they were immediately put to trial and shot, since they were true defectors). The ultimate outcome of Angleton's reign was total immobilization - crucially, in his time, not one true mole was discovered and apprehended. No wonder Clare Petty, one of top officials in Angleton's section, brought the Angleton paranoia to its logical self-negating climax, by concluding, after an exhaustive and long investigation, that Golitsyn (the Russian defector with whom Angleton was engaged in a true folie deux, shared madness) was a fake and Angleton himself the big mole who successfully paralyzed the anti-Soviet intelligence activity. Effectively, one is tempted to raise the question: what if Angleton was a mole justifying his activity by the search for a mole (for himself, in

the real life version of Kevin Costner's No Way Out plot)? What if the true KGB Monster Plot was the very project to put in circulation the idea of a Monster Plot and thus immobilize the CIA and neutralize in advance the future KGB defectors? In both cases, the ultimate deception assumed the guise of truth itself: there was a Monster Plot (it was the very idea of the Monster Plot); there was a mole in the heart of CIA (Angleton himself). Therein resides the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the destructive plot against which it is fighting. The nicety of this solution - and the ultimate condemnation of Angleton's paranoia - is that it doesn't matter if Angleton was just sincerely duped by the idea of a Monster Plot, or if he was the mole: in both cases, the result is exactly the same. The deception resided in our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion to put under suspicion the very idea of suspicion. Recall the old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving the factory, the wheel-barrow he was rolling in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty - till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheel-barrows themselves. This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not forget to include into the content of an act of communication this act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the first thing to bear in mind about the

way the unconscious operates: it is not hidden in the wheel-barrow, it is the wheel-barrow itself.