Lacan's Engagement with an Other

Rather than watch this in class, I thought I would share this with you over my blog this week. It is a documentary about Lacan, Jacques Lacan parle. I encourage you to watch parts of it.

As the documentary commences, and Lacan enters a hall to begin a public lecture, you get a real taste of his style. It is something of a spectacle--a fact which he seems to enjoy. And which he turns to his pedagogical advantage. (Or does he? What is Lacan’s pedagogy in this video?)

Watch as much of this as you like. However, I would like you at some point to move forward in the video to approximately minute 21:30. 

There, you will see a young student radical, who walks up to Lacan, picks up his pitcher of drinking water, and dumps it all over the table. What do people do? 

Not much.

What does Lacan do?

Nothing. 

In fact, he encourages the student to speak his mind, and seems quite intent on listening to him.

Now, this student in some sense is just “performing the revolutionary.” The words he speaks contain some truth; yet you sense in watching the student that it is not so much his words that matter here, but the stage from which they are launched.

When the student is done with his speech, Lacan says, “yes, shall I carry on?” The student, somewhat annoyed says, “what do you mean? I want you to respond!” Lacan peacefully assures him, though not very convincingly, that he will indeed reply. All the same, he does calm the student. The student asks if he should sit down. Lacan, answering in a very friendly voice, indicates that he should sit down--and why not?  Puffing on his cigar and thinking about his next move (like some chess master), he paces a bit, and then turns to the student, and asks: “what was it exactly that you wanted to do?” 

Now that question, that one really angers the student. “That’s the question which parents, priests, ideologists, bureaucrats and the cops always ask the growing number of people who act like me.” He has no particular answer, seemingly no real insight into what Lacan is asking of him (to read from his facial expressions); as he later states: “I want to do just one thing--make revolution.” 

The student then starts another uninvited speech before the audience. Eventually, he turns to Lacan and accuses him of making justifications for the audience’s “miserable lives.” Lacan, calm as ever, exclaims “ahh, pas de tout!” Not at all! 

It gets a huge laugh from the audience. 

This gets the student really really mad, and now he starts throwing ice cubes at Lacan--at which point he is forced to leave the lecture hall.

What do we learn from this?

Let us assume that Lacan is being othered here, in this moment, by the student radical. Let us assume too that Lacan is aware of this. His attitude seems to be one of open listening, but not too open. Lacan allows the student, for a moment, to use Lacan’s own person as a screen, on which and against which the student can work out his own identity project. 

But not for too long. 

What was it exactly that you wanted to do?

Now that is something I can imagine my dad saying to me when I was little. But it is not quite a fatherly tone that Lacan takes. Rather, it is the tone of the analyst. Of the person who wants to prod the other into a deeper awareness of the “place” from which he acts. 

Imagine yourself in Lacan’s shoes. Would you have acted differently? Did Lacan, in this brief passing moment, engage in an ethical exchange with his Other? In what ways does Lacan’s confrontation with the student invoke a larger problem for the ways in which teachers relate to, and get related to by, students? Do we engage in a game of “image branding” with our students, or, do we, as Lacan suggests, disabuse them of the images they project upon us?