The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan

Abstract

Through his appearance in Television, Lacan parodies the image of himself -of his teaching that we have, to a large extent, received and accepted. Standing alone behind his desk, hands now supporting him as he leans assertively forward, now thrown upward in some emphatic gesture, Lacan stares directly out at us, as he speaks in a voice that none would call smooth of quelque chose, n'est-ce pas? This quelque chose is, of course, never made specific, never revealed, and so it comes to stand for a fact or a system of facts that is known, but not by us. This image recalls the one presented to Tabard by the principal in Vigo's Zero for Conduct. It is the product of the childish, paranoid notion that all our private thoughts and actions are spied on by and visible within a public world represented by parental figures. In appearing to us, then, by means of the mass media,' Lacan seems to confirm what we may call our televisual fear-that we are perfectly, completely visible to a gaze that observes us from afar (tele meaning both distant and [from telos] complete).2 That this proffered image is parodic, however, is almost surely to be missed, so strong are our misperceptions of Lacan. And, so, the significance of the words with which he opens his address and by which he immediately calls attention to his self-parody--I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way to say it all. Saying the whole truth is materially impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.' the significance of these words may also be missed, as they have been generally in our theories of representation, the most sophisticated example of which is film theory. Let me first, in a kind of establishing shot, summarize what I take to be the

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