CONTENTS 16 Figure and Substitution 207 17 The Problem of the Word 212 Figure/trope 213 The rhetorical and the iconic 217 The isolating 'nature ofthe word 222 18 Force and meaning 229 19 Condensation 235 Condensation in the language system 236 Short-circuit, short circuit 240 Condensation-metonymy 242 20 From the Dream-work'to the Primary Process 245 21'Censorship: Barrier or Deviation? 253 Uncensored marks of censorship 254 Getting past or not getting past: the gap between the conscious and the unconscious 256 Primary/secondary refraction 260 Confict, compromise, degrees 263 22 Displacement 266 Meaning as transit, meaning as encounter 267 Displacement-metaphor 270 23 Crossings and Interweavings in Film: the Lap-dissolve as an Example of a figuration 274 24 Condensations and Displacements of the Signifier 281 On the notion of the operation of the signifier 282 Condensation/metaphor, displacement/metonymy overspill 286 The spilling over of the image 28 25 Paradigm/ Syntagm in the Text of the Cure 293 Notes and References to Part Iv 298 ndex 315
Acknowledgements The four texts which make up this book were written between 1973 and 1976. the first in 1974, the second and third in 1973 and the fourth in 1975-6. They first appeared in book form under the title le signifiant imaginaire. Psychanalyse et cinema(Paris: Union Generale d Editions, 10/18)in 1977 Part I, 'Le signifiant imaginaire,, and Part III, 'Le film de fiction et son spectateur, were first published in Communications, 23(1975), pp 3-55 and pp. 108-35. Part II, Histoire/discours was first published in Langue, Discours, Societe- Pour Emile benve niste(Paris: Editions du Seuil)1975, pp. 301-6. 'Metaphose Metonymic ou le referent imaginaire appeared for the first time in Le signifiant imaginaire. Part I, 'The Imaginary Signifier, is translated by Ben Brewster; Part II, ' Story/Discourse(A Note on Two Kinds of Voyeurism) by celia britton and annwyl williams; Part Iil, ' The Fiction Film and its Spectator: a metapsychological study, by alfred Guzzetti; and Part IV, 'Metaphor/Metonymy, or the Imaginary Referent, by Celia Britton and Annwyl Williams. The index was compiled by Ben Brewster Part I, The Imaginary Signifier, was first published in Screen vol. 16, no. 2( 1975)pp. 14-76; Part Ill,"The Fiction Film and its Spectator: a Metapsychological Study, in New Literary History vol. VIIL, no. 1(1976)pp. 75-105. Both of these translations appear here in a marginally revised form
mtm eg bl g tms, d g um
The Imaginary and the 'good object in the Cinema and in the Theory of the cinema Reduced to its most fundamental procedures, any psychoana- lytic reflection on the cinema might be defined in Lacanian terms as an attempt to disengage the cinema-object from the imaginary and to win it for the symbolic, in the hope of extending the latter by a new province: an enterprise of displacement, a territorial enterprise, a symbolising advance; that is to say, in the field of films as in other fields, the psychoanalytic itinerary is from the outset a semiological one, even(above all)if in comparison with the discourse of a more classical semiology it shifts its point of focus from the statement [the nonce] to the enunciation [the enunciation f Those who look superficially or who share the ritual eagerness to detect changes'as often as possible will perhaps think that i have abandoned certain positions or turned away from them when in fact, more simply -less simply, of course-I am accept- ing the temptation(the attempt) to drive a little deeper into the very procedures of knowledge, which constantly symbolises new fragments of the real in order to annex them to reality.There are formulae that are not imagined For a time at least they range themselves with the real. For a time, at least: let us there fore attempt to imagine some of them It has very often, and rightly been said that the cinema is a tech- nique of the imaginary. A technique, on the other hand, which is peculiar to a historical epoch(that of capitalism)and a state of society so-called industrial civilisation a technique of the imaginary but in two senses. In the ordi- nary sense of the word, as a whole critical tendency culminating
THE IMAGINARY SIGNIFIER in the work of edgar Morin has demonstrated because most films consist of fictional narratives and because all films depend even for their signifier on the primary imaginary of photography and phonography. In the Lacanian sense, too, in which the im aginary, opposed to the symbolic but constantly imbricated with it, designates the basic lure of the ego, the definitive imprint of a stage before the Oedipus complex(which also continues after it the durable mark of the mirror which alienates man in his own reflection and makes him the double of his double the subter- ranean persistence of the exclusive relation to the mother, desire as a pure effect of lack and endless pursuit, the initial core of the unconscious (primal repression). All this is undoubtedly reacti vated by the play of that other mirror, the cinema screen, in this respect a veritable psychical substitute, a prosthesis for our pri mally dislocated limbs. But our difficulty-the same one as every where else- will be that of grasping in any detail the intimately ramifying articulation of this imaginary with the feats of the sig nifier, with the semiotic imprint of the law(here the cinematic codes )which also marks the unconscious, and thereby man's pro- ductions, including films The symbolic is at work not only in these films but equally in the discourse of anyone who discusses them, and hence in the articl I am just beginning. This certainly does not mean that the sym- bolic is enough to produce a knowledge, since the uninterpreted dream, the phantasy the symptom, are all symbolic operations Nevertheless, it is in its wake that we can find hope for a little more knowledge, it is one of its avatars that introduces under standing, whereas the imaginary is the site of an unsurpassable opacity, almost by definition. Thus as a beginning it is absolutely essential to tear the symbolic from its own imaginary and to return it to it as a look to tear it from it but not completely or at east not in the sense of ignoring it and fleeing from it( fearing it) the imaginary is also what has to be rediscovered precisely in order to avoid being swallowed up by it: a never-ending task. If here I could manage a small part of this task(in the cinematic field),I should by no means be displeased For the problem of the cinema is always reduplicated as a problem of the theory of the cinema and we can only extract knowledge from what we are(what we are as persons, what we