Lacan and Phenomenology (4): Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, the Gaze

We continue our exploration of Lacan's use of phenomenology by turning to his comments on his friend Maurice Merleau-Ponty's posthumously published 'The Visible and the Invisible'. While Lacan clearly opposed any reading of the Mirror Stage that reduced it to phenomenological experience, and any phenomenological attempts to re-conceptualize the Freudian unconscious as merely 'an other side' of consciousness, he did utilize one of Merleau-Ponty's central insights in his theorization of the gaze in Seminar XI. We expand upon how a basic phenomenological idea - to see various points in the world implies that I can myself be seen from all such vantage-points - is developed and further articulated with Lacan's notion of the gaze as opposed to the eye. The concepts of the stain in the visual field and the role of gaze as instantiation of object a are discussed.

[@arjunkumar2971]

Thank you very much Derek for making these videos,

[@kerycktotebag8164]

i find that the feeling of could‐be‐seen somehow helps me self regulate (co regulate?), as opposed to the complete open‐endedness of being by myself

[@psychoanalyticthinking153]

Thank you. Will share on the group

[@joaoboechat7637]

Great video! Please talk about Lacan's concept of truth and it's relation with Heidegger's alethea.

[@kerycktotebag8164]

the stain is how our senses always involve salience because of how our senses are part of a system that isn't merely just for the sake of sensing. Kind of like there's no such thing as an unbiased idea