Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25-minute 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.
That word, epiphenomena: A secondary phenomenon that results from and accompanies another: "Exploitation of one social class or ethnic group by another [is] an epiphenomenon of real differences in power between social groups" (Harper's).
ReplyDeletePathology. An additional condition or symptom in the course of a disease, not necessarily connected with the disease.