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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>
In a typically Lacanian play on words, Evans points to the fundamental constitutive feature of the imaginary order and of all imaginary processes.
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>
Picking up where Freud left off, Lacan proposes to make this lesson inescapable.
==More==
<i>[[Méconnaissance]]</i> is a French word which I am obliged to use because there is no equivalent in [[English]]. <i>[[Méconnaissance]]</i> precisely implies the [[subject]] in its [[meaning]]; and I was also advised that it is not so easy to talk about the "[[subject]]" before an [[English]]-speaking audience.
==See Also==
