Overview

A Contemporary Return to the Lacanian Mirror is a discussion on The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, a capital text within Lacanian thought and psychoanalytic history. Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian concepts, Sergio J. Aguilar Alcalá explores the consequences of the mirror stage for human subjectivity: an alienation of any remains of animal nature, an aggressive drive at the heart of our relationship to others and to ourselves and an introjection of the desire of the other as our own desire. These consequences allow for a critique of, among other things, the test zoologists use to ‘prove’ that animals can recognize themselves in the mirror, the notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘agency’ that mainstream communication and media studies ascribe to selfies on social media, and the neoliberal uses of labor psychology and identity politics to flatten the intricacies and contradictions within our/selves. The book begins with consideration of the imago and identification, then discusses the consequences of Lacan's three crossroads for our conception of human subjectivity. Aguilar Alcalá concludes by discussing how the Lacanian mirror stage enables us to go beyond the Imaginary traps provoked by today’s media and cultural landscape, using the aphorism mentioned at the end of the mirror stage text: thou art that. A Contemporary Return to the Lacanian Mirror will be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, communication and media studies. It will also appeal to those working within the humanities, and specifically in the philosophy of the human-animal relationship, images in digital culture and critical theory.

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9781041074687

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Reviews

“The message of psychoanalysis, masterfully voiced by Sergio Aguilar, goes against the grain of our psychologized, almost zoological “self(ie) understanding”, the latter perfectly attuned to neoliberal digitalized capitalism. Look into Aguilar’s Lacanian mirror, and see another subject: alienated in its own image and body, always differing from what it says/is said to be. Behold that subject, “necessarily presuppos[ing] the other”: this perspective is indispensable for those who still believe in collective emancipation.” – Jan De Vos, psychoanalytic theorist and author of amongst others The Digitalisation of (Inter)Subjectivity (Routledge, 2020) “This book is both a rigorous reprise and a creative subversion of Lacan’s mirror scene. With A Contemporary Return to the Lacanian Mirror, Aguilar shows how the contemporary subject, far from forming a unified coherence, is fragmented, captured, and re-performed through the selfie, the neoliberal marketplace of identities, and the illusions of imaginary autonomy: to read this book is to realize that Lacan’s mirror was always an abyss. It is a rare work, in dialogue with Freud, Lacan, and cultural studies, but also with the most current avatars of technology and desire. An essential reading for libidinal Marxists, media scholars, and political psychoanalysts alike.” – Carlos Gómez Camarena, Psychoanalyst and Researcher, Forums of the Lacanian Field / Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico

Author Information

Sergio J. Aguilar Alcalá practices psychoanalysis in Mexico and has published several works at the intersections of psychoanalysis, communication theory, and film studies.

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