"Wow.. I can be sexual too..."

First off, thank you Ms. Shelden for your interesting post regarding Lacan's ideas. Your examples helped clarify the difficult concepts Lacan discusses in his "mirror stage."

After reading this post, I feel as though I now have a better understanding of certain ideas like jouissance and how often through our enjoyment we can lose our identity by getting caught up in this pleasure.

Personally. I feel that is what happens with Miles Green in Mantissa. In the first section of Mantissa, Green shares with the readers how he feels as he enters the mirror stage - the idea that he no longer knows who he is, or what certain objects are. For the first time, he can identify himself through the concept of other.

While Lacan believes that sexual satisfaction and identity are contradictory, I personally feel that Fowles thinks otherwise. For example, through his illicit affair with Dr. Delfie and Nurse Cory, Miles Green was able to understand and come to terms with more and more of his identity. The idea of the "death drive" according to Lacan is found mainly within the concept of orgasms because technically you lose the sense of yourself within this release. While you're not supposed to think about who you are or where you are, but rather experience "jouissance" - a blind sense of enjoyment. When Green releases he does not lose his concept of self, but rather he gains more about his identity because his release creates something. A book. A book which helps spawn Green's true sense of identity.

I'm hoping I'm on the right path with this post, but the thing about theory, is that one idea can be completely different than an idea that someone else has. It just proves the idea that there is not one specific meaning for something. In fact, there is often more than one meaning.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall....

So my thoughts on Mantissa ….

First off let me start by saying that it wasn’t quite what I expected. I can say that I was genuinely surprised to say the least, but intrigued as I get more and more into the novel.

But onto theory….

While I thought there many different aspects about theory in the novel – actually within the fist chapter alone – the one that I immediately realized was within the first sentence, “conscious of a luminous and infinite haze” – the mirror stage according to Lacan.

For those that don’t know, Lacan’s idea of the mirror stage, a stage at which someone – usually a baby – first realizes “itself,” that it is an “I.” After realization, the baby has a moment of jouissance or enjoyment and looks to in this case, the mother for confirmation. For this person or self in the story, “nothing seemed familiar.” Everything he once knew was now forgotten – “not language, not location, not cast.” I guess the best way to image this is when you wake up from a nap in which your dream throws your mind out of sorts. Where you wake up and you have to sit there and remember what exactly you were doing, but more importantly where you are. Except with that, imagine that you have no idea what anything is – everything that you thought you once knew, now makes no absolute sense. Welcome to his life.

The scene that Fowles paints for us is the first stage in the mirror stage – the imaginary. In this stage, the self relates in terms of images. This is why when we reading the first few pages, all we are greeted with is descriptive language setting this image for us about a person who is trying to distinguish its own self.

As the man appears to awaken, he seems to move into the symbolic stage through which the self and the other attempt to identify through the idea of language. When this man hears his supposed wife “announce names, people’s names, street names, disjointed phrases,” he believes that he has heard him before but yet they have meaning to him. These words or phrases made by his wife are attempts for him to create an identity using this language. Creating a self symbolically through language.

I also thought that maybe this passage in the book could briefly touch on the idea that language has no meaning because of the fact that he feels as though he had heard the language mentioned to him before, but yet they have no meeting. I could be completely wrong on that idea, but I just thought I would throw it out there to see how everyone else felt about it.

Until next time…..

pelipuff