Quantitative Hints Of The Big Other
Lacanian theory can be justified simply as an approach that reveals interesting problematics and generates tensions with conventional wisdom. But that's almost certainly unnecessarily modest. Lacan's ontological assumptions are philosophically rigorous, especially when refracted through Zizek's Hegelian rereading of the real as the Night of the World, etc. Far downstream, Lacanian social theory converges with the contemporary canon of rhetorical theory - and especially with the Burkean architectonic - at multiple theoretical points. So there are multiple places where a theorist can post up and point to intuitive structures or conclusions in Lacan.
Critics and particularly orthodox Lacanians sometimes argue, however, that a lot of that work is being done by contemporary Lacanian theorists who take Lacan away from clinical psychoanalysis and bring him into contemporary critical theory. The implied problem is that these gestures go not only beyond Lacan but make moves that are in contradiction with Lacan. One way of articulating this question is as: "how rigorous are people's use of Lacanian architectonic?"
To the extent that these charges are tenable they should be taken seriously. It should never be forgotten that Lacan was first and foremost a clinician - he had patients. Less than rigorous theorists often use of Lacan's mere name as a shiny amulet for whatever theoretically and politically palatable conclusions they're in the mood to assert. Zizek often complains that it's amazing how people find whatever they want in Lacan, no matter how fundamentally their conclusions are in tension with Lacan's basic premises or statements.
But there are other places where Lacan's psychoanalytic work can demonstrably be linked to contemporary Lacanian social theory. The theory of the Big Other, for instance, is a fundamentally a psychoanalytic concept. The Oedipal Complex is resolved non-pathologically to the extent that the toddler gives up trying to be the perfect object of the mother's desire and seeks instead to be the object of the generalized Other's desire.
Starting from the top of social theory and working downwards, the Frankfurt discussions of the Law also map on to the Lacanian Big Other. These are socio-linguistic structures that subjects identify with, that are interpolated, and that are transmitted and reproduced. The similarities are so striking that it's difficult not to treat them as homologies. But the question then becomes: why bother with the theory of the Big Other? Is there any reason to believe it independent of this potential convergence between Lacanian theory and neo-Marxist theory.
After the jump, an explanation of the Big Other in psychoanalytic terms and then the clinical evidence for why Lacan's theory of the drives must be part of any account of interpolation.
The child moves through the Oedipal phase by realizing that the father's physical attributes - which the child has attempted to coopt in order to become the mother's object of desire - are not what organizes the mother's libidinal economy. Rather, the mother's desire is aroused and circumscribed by socio-linguistic norms - a rather intuitive point about desire, but one that requires the infant to begin to appreciate the efficacy of the Symbolic. This is how Lacan transforms Freud's narrative about the physically imposed Law of the Father into a symbolic relationship - the "father" who intervenes to block the Oedipal relationship is the child's encounter with and internalization of socio-linguistic norms. And so, continuing with this straightforward Lacanian rereading of Freud, the infant's identification with the castrating father is identification with the Symbolic socio-linguistic network itself - identification with the Big Other.
Now desire proper intervenes - to identify with the Big Other, the subject must know how she stands in relation to the Big Other. This is homologous with the question of desire: "what does the other desire that I be." Interpreted scopically, this gives rise to the question of the gaze: "how does the other desire to see me?" (this question is actually "how can I make myself completely visible to the other," but that doesn't really make a difference at this point).
But if we're to hold on to the psychoanalytic thread in Lacan, then we have to maintain a tie to the corporeal nature of the drives - or more crudely, there has to be some sex involved. It doesn't actually have to be sex, but it has to merge the Big Other with the actual Imaginary (that is, visible) organs that humans use to see and feel.
Lacan's discussion of the gaze happens in Seminar XI on the Four Fundamental Concepts Of Psychoanalysis. The subject is disturbed by the gaze precisely when she is aware that she's being watched but doesn't know how she's being watched (or rather, she doesn't know how the watcher wants to see her). One of the more basic ways to experience the gaze is to be watched without knowing who is doing the watching - not knowing who's doing the seeing obviously prevents the subject from knowing how they desire to see her. This should be contrasted with the Foucauldian gaze, which relies on the subject not knowing whether she's being watched at all).
How might the subject know she's being watched by not knowing who's watching here? Here Lacan starts off relatively grounded and everyday - the subject might be alerted to the presence of another by a cough of a rustle of leaves. That would be an aural awareness of the gaze. But there's also a - more powerful - scopic awareness. The subject might see herself being watched, but the nature of the eyes that are watching her might be so strange that she can't wrap her mind over how exactly she's being watched.
Read back into the structure of the Big Other, then, the gaze of the Big Other is felt when the subject begins to feel like social norms themselves are "watching" her. The traditional way to do this was to instill in children the idea that God sees everything images and sounds that work because they're tied to the fundamental Imaginary structure of desire - that social norms are activated even in the absence of explicit prohibitions in behavior. According to Lacan, (a) the gaze should do its own work and (b) one should be able to arouse it in the subject through objects of the drives that are recognizable as libidinal objects.
Now peep this:
When subjects feel watched, or think of agents, even supernatural ones, they tend to be much more altruistic. When a pair of eyes is displayed in a computer screen, almost twice as many participants transfer money in the dictator game (Haley & Fessler, 2005), and people contribute 3 times more in an honesty box for coffee' when there is a pair of eyes than when there is pictures of a flower (Bateson et al., 2006). The sole fact of speaking of ghosts enchances honest behavior in a competitive tasks (Bering et al., 2005), while priming subjects with the God concept in the anonymous dictator game (Shariff & Norenzayan, in press).
Lacanian psychoanalysis is obviously not falsifiable in the sense of classic social science methodology (any more than are Aristotle's descriptions of genres). But it's not nothing that some of Lacan's most counterintuitive suggestions - in this case, that the mere specter of disembodied eyes or incoherent voices can arouse the gaze and enforce social norms - are being borne out by rigorous clinical investigation.
References:
* Psychoanalytic Theory - Come For The Answers, But Stay For The Questions [IIS]
* What If The Lacanian Gaze Wasn't Totally Stupid? [IIS]
* Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. 1st American Ed ed: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.
* Strong reciprocity, altruism and egoism [Natural Rationality]
Previously:
* Cog Sci Blog Roundup
* Disturbingly, Quantitative Analysis May Have Methodological Shortcomings - Medical Studies Edition
* Rhetoric Not So Much With the Revolution Thing
