Abstract
This project interrogates the dubious nature and the polemic role of the other in Lacan's discourse of the subject by invoking Derrida's ideas of hauntology. The Lacanian subject, albeit baffling and elusive, has been consistently labeled as "the subject of lack" by almost all critics including Felman, Ragland-Sullivan, Wilden, Derrida, Butler, et al. Departing from this established position, I probe Lacan's subject in terms of the subject qua other; contesting that in both imaginary and symbolic orders his subject is inescapably meshed with and dispossessed by some spectral and/or specular other. The mirror stage not only fabricates an optic illusion of a total self, but also situates the specular subject as overtaken by a spectral other. Similarly, the symbolic subject appears to be under the spell of a linguistic other in a double signifying conjuration — metonymic substitution and metaphorical transfiguration — that disembodies the subject into a ghost, i. e., deprived, displaced, and decentered. Further, the essay discreetly sets apart the poststructuralist Lacan from the psychoanalyst, or particularly, the oedipalist Lacan. The symbolic order, as known, is centralized and dominated by the veiled phallus, "the master signifier" or "the transcendental signified." This attests that Lacan's locus of the other is more than merely inhabited by general "pure signifiers" or abstract "empty words;" on the contrary, the field of the other is replete with privileged "full words" from the (dead) father in terms of sacred scriptures. Aside from addressing language as a generic other (as so inclined by past critics), this project uncovers a series of phantom others that haunt Lacan's unconscious subject: the oracular other (the father's last words), the spectral other (the ghost of the dead father) , and the Holy Other ( the fetish Phallus). Intriguingly, the ontology of Lacan's subject qua other dissipates into a hauntology of Derrida's subject qua specter.
First Page
150
Last Page
161
Recommended Citation
Yuan, Yuan. 2018. "The Subject qua Other: A Hauntological Spell on Lacan." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 38, (4): pp.150-161. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol38/iss4/21
