Difference between revisions of "Méconnaissance"

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{{Top}}misrecognition|méconnaissance{{Bottom}}
  
The name [[Lacan]] gives to this [[process]] of [[identity]] construction is [[méconnaissance]]: "self-knowledge (''me-connaissance'') is synonymous with misunderstanding (''méconnaissance''), because the process by which the [[ego]] is formed in the [[mirror stage]] is at the same time the institution of [[alienation]]."<ref>Evans 109</ref>
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===Translation===
In a typically Lacanian play on words, Evans points to the fundamental constitutive feature of the imaginary order and of all imaginary processes.  
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Translator, Alan [[Sheridan]], has decided to retain the French [[word]].  The [[sense]] is of a "failure to recognize", or "misconstruction". The [[concept]] is central to [[Lacan]]'s [[thinking]], since, for him, [[knowledge]] (''conaissance'') is inextricably bound up with ''méconnaissance''.
The logic which lends this pun more weight that simply that of a clever word-play is that of an implicit grammar behind the imaginary [[identification]] of ego with [[specular image]].
 
In contrast to the [[ego-ideal]] ("I want to be that"), the ego is a version of "I am that."11
 
The [[symbolisation]] of this identification in this way allows us to see clearly into the irrationality governing the [[imaginary]].
 
The predicate "that" in the ego characterisation "I am that" deprives the subject ("I") of its content; the descriptive verb "am" effectively becomes a transitive that reveals the hollowness of the ego in its attempt to attain wholeness through the identification with and assimilation of an endless variety of "thats."
 
The [[illusion]]s of identification produced in the imaginary, "those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity"<ref>Evans 82</ref> thus turn out to be "surface appearances which are deceptive, observable phenomena which hide underlying structure."<ref>Evans 82 12</ref>
 
  
This process of méconnaissance, originally conceived of by Lacan as merely a stopping point on the path of psychic [[development]] (in his work from 1936-1949), becomes a constitutive feature of the mental life of the individual as the mirror stage loses its temporal focus and takes on a spatial reference (from 1950 on)<ref>Evans 115.</ref>
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The [[French]] term ''[[méconnaissance]]'' corresponds roughly to the [[English]] [[words]] "[[Méconnaissance|misunderstanding]]" and "[[Méconnaissance|misrecognition]]". However, the [[French]] term is usually [[left]] untranslated when translating [[Lacan]] into [[English]] in order to show its close [[relationship]] with the term ''[[connaissance]]'' ("[[knowledge]]").
The "stade" of the original French formulation "stade du miroir" expands its meaning to include not only the temporal "stage" of routine translation, but also the spatial "stage" or "arena" of its secondary meaning.<ref>Evans 115</ref>
 
In this expanded conceptualization of the lasting effects of the mirror stage as the inaugurating moment of the imaginary order, the original méconnaissance that engenders the ego is compulsively repeated in a series of identifications with (and potentially disabling fixations on) objects in their imaginary capacities (i.e. imaginary objects):
 
  
The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation – and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic – and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental development.<ref>Ecrits 4</ref>
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===Neurotic Self-Knowledge===
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Thus, in the [[imaginary]] [[order]], [[knowledge|self-knowledge]] (''me-connaissance'')  is synonymous with [[méconnaissance|misunderstanding]] (''[[méconnaissance]]''), because the [[process]] by which the [[ego]] is formed in the [[mirror stage]] is at the same [[time]] the institution of [[alienation]] from the [[symbolic]] determination of [[being]].
  
The erstwhile transformative stage of ego development thus becomes an enduring psychic structure which constitutes the unsymbolised interiority of "identity."  
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===Paranoid Delusions===
Coeval with the ego, the imaginary thus persists as the ground on which it thrives, holding its own against the violent encroachments of the real and the divisive incursions of the symbolic.
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As well as being the [[structure]] of ordinary [[neurotic]] [[knowledge|self-knowledge]], ''[[méconnaissance]]'' is also the [[structure]] of [[paranoiac]] [[delusions]], which are described in [[terms]] of a ''[[méconnaissance|méconnaissance systématique de la reéalité]]''.<ref>{{L}} "[[Works of Jacques Lacan|Some Reflections on the Ego]]," ''Int. J. [[Psycho]]-[[Anal]].'', vol. 34, 1953 [1951b]. p. 12</ref>
  
Perhaps the best example of the concrete instance of the imaginary identification between the ego and imaginary objects is provided by the way in which advertising works to create irrational but compelling associations with objects, even in the face of the obvious incommensurability between the objects and that which is associated with them. Thus most commonly clothing or automobile commercials will use only slim, attractive spokespeople in clean, hygienic, and affluent surroundings as a way of creating matrices of imaginary associations around the objects for which they wish to create a desire. When the individual sees these associations made, he or she "recognises" some aspect of himself or herself in the imaginary field created around the object, identifies with it, and seeks to possess it as a concrete way of declaring his or her identity.
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===Paranoiac Knowledge===
The force of these imaginary identifications is manifest in the fact that even though they collapse into insipid manipulations with the least attempt at symbolisation (that is, representation in language, rather than merely by associations of images), they nonetheless persist as powerful determinants of individual ego-formations and behaviour patterns.13
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This [[structural]] homology between the ordinary [[constitution]] of the [[ego]] and [[paranoiac]] [[delusions]] is what leads [[Lacan]] to describe all [[knowledge]] (''[[connaissance]]''), in both [[neurosis]] and [[psychosis]], as "[[knowledge|paranoiac knowledge]]."
In more theoretical terms, the original identificatory procedures which brought the ego into being [i.e. the mirror stage] are repeated and reinforced by the individual in his relationship with the external world of people and things.  
 
The imaginary is the scene of a desperate delusional attempt to be and to remain ‘what one is’ by gathering to oneself ever more instances of sameness, resemblance and self-replication; it is the birthplace of the narcissistic ‘ideal ego.’<ref>Bowie 92</ref>
 
  
The circularity and self-referentiality of this process is abundantly clear in Bowie’s articulation, as the ego both constructs an ideal version of itself on the basis of various imaginary features with which it would like to be identified, and then acts as though it unpremeditatedly "recognises" itself in objects that bear an imaginary correspondence to that ideal.  
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===Ignorance===
Basically, the imaginary is the scene in which the ego undertakes the perpetual and paradoxical practice of seeking "wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity" through identification with external objects.
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''[[Méconnaissance]]'' is to be distinguished from [[knowledge|ignorance]], which is one of the [[three]] [[affect|passions]]. Whereas [[knowledge|ignorance]] is a [[affect|passion]] for the [[absence]] of [[knowledge]], ''[[méconnaissance]]'' is an [[imaginary]] [[misrecognition]] of a [[symbolic]] [[knowledge]] (''[[savoir]]'') that the [[subject]] does possess somewhere.
Each such identification is necessarily illusory, however, as it is but a pale imitation of the originary wholeness that was sacrificed in the primal identification of the ego with its specular image in the mirror stage.
 
  
There is, then, no room in Lacanian psychoanalysis for a conception of the self as some essential feature of one’s identity to which one must be true, which one must "find," and above all which one must know.14
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<blockquote>Misrecognition is not [[ignorance]].  Misrecognition represents a certain organization of affirmations and negations, to which the subject is attached.  Hence it cannot be conceived without correlate knowledge... There must surely be, behind his misrecognition, a kind of knowledge of what there is to misrecognize.<ref>{{S1}} p.167</ref></blockquote>
The "self" as traditionally conceived is but a monumentalisation of the illusory ego; indeed, Lacan goes so far as to state that this notion of a coherent "self" or ego is in fact a sign of pathology: "The ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man."<ref>Lacan S1 62, qtd. in Evans 51</ref>  
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Part of Lacan’s reaction against the line of philosophical thought that descends directly from Descartes, the abandonment of the self or ego as the primary category of individual being is one with his insistence on the illusory nature of the imaginary order and his allegiance to the supremacy of the symbolic order: "Lacan sets out to inhabit the linguistic dimension that the Cartesian cogito failed to acknowledge. The subject is irremediably split in and by language, but ‘modern man’ still has not learned this lesson."<ref>Bowie 77</ref>  
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==Ego Formation==
Picking up where Freud left off, Lacan proposes to make this lesson inescapable.
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Again, this applies both in the ordinary [[construction]] of the [[ego]] and in [[paranoia]].  In the former [[case]], the [[ego]] is basically a [[Méconnaissance|misrecognition]] of the [[symbolic]] determinants of [[subjectivity]] (the [[discourse]] of the [[Other]], the [[unconscious]]).  In the latter case, [[paranoiac]] [[delusions]] always imply a [[Méconnaissance|recognition]] (''[[Méconnaissance|reconnaissance]]''), as is evident in [[Méconnaissance|systematic misunderstanding]] (''méconnaissance systématique''), where it must clearly be admitted that that which is denied is in some way [[Méconnaissance|recognized]] (''reconnu'').<ref>{{Ec}} p.165</ref>
  
 
==See Also==
 
==See Also==
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{{See}}
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* [[Alienation]]
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* [[Being]]
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* [[Delusion]]
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* [[Ego]]
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* [[Imaginary]]
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* [[Knowledge]]
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* [[Mirror stage]]
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* [[Neurosis]]
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* [[Other]]
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* [[Paranoia]]
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* [[Subject]]
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* [[Symbolic]]
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{{Also}}
  
 
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Latest revision as of 19:45, 20 May 2019

French: méconnaissance

Translation

Translator, Alan Sheridan, has decided to retain the French word. The sense is of a "failure to recognize", or "misconstruction". The concept is central to Lacan's thinking, since, for him, knowledge (conaissance) is inextricably bound up with méconnaissance.

The French term méconnaissance corresponds roughly to the English words "misunderstanding" and "misrecognition". However, the French term is usually left untranslated when translating Lacan into English in order to show its close relationship with the term connaissance ("knowledge").

Neurotic Self-Knowledge

Thus, in the imaginary order, self-knowledge (me-connaissance) is synonymous with misunderstanding (méconnaissance), because the process by which the ego is formed in the mirror stage is at the same time the institution of alienation from the symbolic determination of being.

Paranoid Delusions

As well as being the structure of ordinary neurotic self-knowledge, méconnaissance is also the structure of paranoiac delusions, which are described in terms of a méconnaissance systématique de la reéalité.[1]

Paranoiac Knowledge

This structural homology between the ordinary constitution of the ego and paranoiac delusions is what leads Lacan to describe all knowledge (connaissance), in both neurosis and psychosis, as "paranoiac knowledge."

Ignorance

Méconnaissance is to be distinguished from ignorance, which is one of the three passions. Whereas ignorance is a passion for the absence of knowledge, méconnaissance is an imaginary misrecognition of a symbolic knowledge (savoir) that the subject does possess somewhere.

Misrecognition is not ignorance. Misrecognition represents a certain organization of affirmations and negations, to which the subject is attached. Hence it cannot be conceived without correlate knowledge... There must surely be, behind his misrecognition, a kind of knowledge of what there is to misrecognize.[2]

Ego Formation

Again, this applies both in the ordinary construction of the ego and in paranoia. In the former case, the ego is basically a misrecognition of the symbolic determinants of subjectivity (the discourse of the Other, the unconscious). In the latter case, paranoiac delusions always imply a recognition (reconnaissance), as is evident in systematic misunderstanding (méconnaissance systématique), where it must clearly be admitted that that which is denied is in some way recognized (reconnu).[3]

See Also

References

  1. Lacan, Jacques. "Some Reflections on the Ego," Int. J. Psycho-Anal., vol. 34, 1953 [1951b]. p. 12
  2. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-54. Trans. John Forrester. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. p.167
  3. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p.165