an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 2, April 2005, ISSN 1552-5112
In part one of this article, the development of film theory was outlined,
and the influence of Lacan made apparent.
However, the disciplines of psychoanalysis and film theory have not
always as compatible as they may appear.
Part two will address the various criticisms that have been leveled at
film theory for its use and abuse of Lacanian psychoanalysis. These tensions function both to shed light on
various aspects of psychoanalysis, and also highlight possible problematic
areas. In the following sections, these
debates are addressed in relation to notion of the filmic gaze and the
interjections of feminist film theorists.
In
her article, ‘The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of
Lacan’, Joan Copjec harshly criticizes what she sees as film theory’s
misinterpretation of Lacan, and her critique centers around two figures who are
generally regarded as being in the ranks of the founders of film theory, Michel
Foucault and Jean Bachelard. Copjec
claims that film theory has performed what she terms a ‘Foucauldization’ of
Lacan. For Foucault, psychoanalysis is
like any other discourse: it functions as a means through which ‘the modern
subject is apprehended and apprehends itself, rather than…processes of apprehension’ (Copjec 2000, 440). Moreover, the fallback position of the screen
as a mirror, espoused by eminent critics like Baudry, Comolli and Metz is
regarded by Copjec as intrinsically flawed.
This traditional standpoint, as outlined in part one of this article,
positions the subject in a relation of recognition, and thus as master of the image
that he/she sees. This is a drastic
simplification of Lacan’s theory, as the mirror stage experience is essentially
a traumatic one that disrupts the subject’s relationship to the world. It produces a subject that is congenitally
split or divided, and one that is in contrast to the stable subject of film
theory, who is master of the image.
Copjec claims that this difference between the Lacanian subject and its
re-interpretation in film theory rests on the issue of the relationship between
desire and the law. For Lacan, desire is
both encouraged and prohibited by the law.
Desire can only emerge through a possibility offered by the law, because
the symbolic structures desire. Since
desire demands to be realized, it can only be prevented from doing so by an
external force. So conversely, the law also functions to prohibit desire, as is
evidenced by the Oedipus and castration complexes, or Levi-Strauss’s incest
prohibition. Foucault however, conflates
these two elements, perceiving desire ‘not only as an effect, but also as a realization
of the law’ (Copjec 2000, 443). The
subject of traditional film theory is therefore based more on Foucault’s
panoptic gaze than on the Lacanian gaze, causing Copjec to state that, ‘[t]he
relation between apparatus and gaze creates only the mirage of
psychoanalysis. There is no
psychoanalytic subject in sight’ (Copjec 2000, 444).
Zizek also criticizes film theory’s
misinterpretation of the Lacanian gaze on the same grounds as Copjec and his theorizations
are a significant development of the early theories of Metz and others. Zizek agrees with Metz that before the
spectator identifies with characters from the diegesis, he/she first identifies
with himself/herself as pure gaze. He
contends however, that ‘the viewer is forced to face the desire at work in
his/her seemingly neutral gaze’ (Zizek 1992, 223). In his later work, The Fright of Real Tears, Zizek explains this idea more fully. Arguing for the antagonistic relationship
between the eye and the Gaze, he states that, ‘the Gaze is on the side of the
object, it stands for the blind spot in the field of the visible from which the
picture itself photo-graphs the spectator’ (Zizek 2001, 34). In other words, ‘when I am looking at an
object, the object is already gazing at me’ (Zizek, 2000, 530). The function of interface occurs when
subjective and objective shots in the film fail to produce a suturing
effect. In the usual process of suture,
the first shot generates a feeling of anxiety in the spectator, which is
alleviated by the second shot which shows the first to be from the point of
view of a particular character. Thus the
second shot attempts to represent the absent subject S. Interface is the point at which this
representation fails. Zizek defines
interface as ‘the internal element that sustains the consistency of the
‘external reality’ itself, the artificial screen that confers the effect of
reality on what we see’ (Zizek 2001, 54).
This internal element, which is necessary for external reality to appear
a consistent whole is the object petit a.
Zizek’s argument echoes Lacan’s original objections
to the use of suture in film theory outlined in part one. On the surface, suture closes the gap of
representation, hiding the traces of its own production. But in psychoanalysis, nothing can be fully
hidden, or fully repressed. This leads
Zizek to argue that there is no clear opposition between subjective experience
and objective reality: rather there is ‘an excess on both sides’ (Zizek 2001,
59). To illustrate this point, Zizek
uses the example of the empty master signifier ‘Nation’. It is a signified that contains an ostensible
fullness and completeness of meaning, yet which also fails on the level of the
signifier, since it is incapable of definition.
The master signifier, of which the phallus is an example, could perhaps
be perceived as threatening this endless instability of meaning, as it is an
anchoring point in the symbolic order.
This is not the case however, because the phallus is a signifier of its
own impossibility. Zizek points out that
Lacan has likened the phallus to the square root of -1, a number whose value
cannot be calculated, but which nonetheless exists and functions within the
system of mathematics. Although Lacan
has often been criticized for his use of mathematical symbols, it must be borne
in mind that he does not purport to perform a mathematically accurate
algebra. He uses mathematics for his own
purpose, which is the illustration of his theories. This equation is aligned with the phallus
because it too represents an impossible fullness of meaning. The signified is ‘sustained by the void…at
the level of the signifier’ (Zizek 2001, 60).
The square root of -1 represents a concept which is theoretically possible
but which fails at the level of the signifier, because it cannot be
calculated. It represents, as Fink
suggests, ‘what the subject is that is unthinkable about him’ (Fink 2004, 125):
the real, the overflow of signification into the void beyond language. In the case of the phallus, this void is its
castrating dimension, and means that its fullness of meaning is supplemented by
its own impossibility. It is the
feminist branch of film theory that has interrogated the phallic aspect of the
Lacanian subject most thoroughly.
In
feminist film theory, issues surrounding the phallus and sexuality play a
significant role, but to a much lesser extent than in conventional
psychoanalytic feminism. This is
primarily due to the fact that all theorizations of selfhood in film theory
(not just feminist ones) are part of its broader function, which is the dual
interrogation of self as spectator and self on screen. Like mainstream film theory, feminist film theory
too is marked by a focus on the occasion of consumption: the act of watching a
film and the identifications that this act engenders. As well as examining the psychical experience
of the spectator, feminist film theory also studies the representation of women
in filmic discourse. Since this activity
is by its nature confined to specific films, it is the analysis of the
spectator that consequently forms the central topic for this section.
Feminist film theory began as part of the general
social and political feminist movement, but it is useful at the outset to set
out the main objections of feminists to film theory in particular. Most theorizations of the relationship
between spectator and film depicted the gaze as male, evicting the female
spectator from the possibility of identification. As regards films themselves, it was felt that
women functioned primarily as objects of desire for the male gaze. Hence, the basic problem occurs in feminist
film theory: whether woman (as spectator or character) can be conceptualised
outside of the dominant hegemony. This
section will examine the responses of several feminist critics to these issues.
Anne Friedberg is a useful beginning
point for the interrogation of feminist film theory, as her essay ‘A Denial of
Difference: Theories of Cinematic Identification’ outlines patriarchal
identificatory processes and sets out to critique them. Friedberg divides identification into three
stages: pre-cinematic identification, cinematic identification, and
extra-cinematic identification.
According to Friedberg, cinematic identification is prefigured by the
unconscious identification processes that are cultivated in early
childhood. In her opening paragraph she
states that in psychoanalysis,
Identification is a
process which commands the subject to be displaced by an other; it is a procedure which refuses and recuperates the
separation between self and other, and in this way replicates the very
structure of patriarchy. Identification
demands sameness, necessitates similarity, disallows difference. (Friedberg 1990, 36)
Here
Friedberg takes the vast, overarching concept of self and other in Lacan and
Freud’s work and reduces it to an example of the mechanisms of patriarchy or
female subordination. Yes,
identification does mirror the structure of patriarchy, but it would seem
apparent that the blurring of boundaries between self and other is an essential
part of any identification, and is
central to every relationship:
colonizers and colonized, lover and beloved, master and slave. Friedberg displays the blinkered nature of
her viewpoint by failing to acknowledge the universality of the identificatory
experience.
Pre-cinematic identification as described by Freud
and later by Lacan, is problematic for feminists like Friedberg who practice a
feminism of difference, since identification is built upon a denial of
difference from early childhood. For
example, the child in the mirror stage disavows the discrepancy between his
image in the mirror as a unified body, and his experiential chaotic
reality. This characteristic of
identification is repeated in cinematic identification. As one of the first exponents of
psychoanalytic identificatory processes in cinema, it is Christian Metz who
comes under criticism from Friedberg. In
opposition to Metz, Friedberg contends that the ego-ideal offered by the cinema
is ‘not unified or whole, but a synecdochal signifier’ (Friedberg 1990,
41). The actor/actress is not
represented in his/her entirety. Rather,
different parts of the body become part-object commodities: a voice, a face, a
pair of legs, etc. Secondly, she points
out the problems that occur when gendered identification is considered. The woman is forced either into identifying
with ‘the woman who is punished by the narrative or treated as a scoptophilic
fetish OR…identifying with the man who is controller of events’ (Friedberg
1990, 42). Friedberg launches her final
attack on Metz by claiming that secondary identification need not necessarily
involve a human form at all, emphasizing her argument that identification
processes are based upon a denial of difference. Considering the range of animal, alien and
robot characters that it is possible to identify with, Friedberg concludes that
‘any body offers an opportunity for
identificatory investment, a possible suit for the substitution/misrecognition
of self’ (Friedberg 1990, 42).
This third point would seem to open Friedberg onto a
path of identification that is not founded on gender divides, but she chooses
to utilise it only to further emphasise the denial of difference that she
contends is the mechanism of patriarchy.
Friedberg argues that extra-cinematic identification serves to further
entrench the spectator in the pattern of recognition as other, and subsequent
misrecognition as self. The economic
structures which support the cinema encourage consumers to buy film star
merchandise or products that are endorsed by film stars, enabling them to
purchase and therefore own or consume the star.
In this way, Friedberg argues that cinematic identification produces normative
gender figures, which must be critiqued under patriarchy. Friedberg’s account is useful in setting out
the opposition that feminists have to traditional theories of cinematic
identification, but her analysis is considerably hampered by her own political
project, which makes her unable to look beyond the gender divide.
Mary Ann Doane voices similar
objections to apparatus theory. Using
the character of Gaby Doriot as an example, she argues like Friedberg that the
cinema produces stereotyped representations of women. Gaby Doriot as the eponymous La Signora di tutti of the film’s title
is a perfect example of how many on-screen female characters are indeed
‘everybody’s Lady’. That the same may be
said about many stereotyped male characters does not enter Doane’s
argument. Instead she concentrates on
illustrating the sexism of apparatus theory.
Unlike Friedberg however, Doane does propose a solution to this feminist
dilemma. Recognizing the often-neglected
historical application of psychoanalysis, Doane sees this as a way to crack
open the deterministic structure of apparatus theory, and allow for ‘the
possibility of change or transformation through attention to the concreteness
and specificity of the socio-historical situation’ (Doane 1990, 48). Doane reservedly suggests that
‘[p]sychoanalysis is, in some sense, the construction of history, and history
in its turn, an act of remembering’ (Doane 1990, 59). It hardly seems necessary to point out here
that psychoanalysis is in every sense
the construction of history, from its clinical methodology to its own
historical development in Lacan’s reconstruction of Freud. Although Doane sees history as related to a
social past that transcends the subject, she believes that its co-relative –
memory – is firmly anchored to the individual.
In this way she envisages feminism escaping from the deadlock of
apparatus theory. However, Doane does
not explicitly state exactly how this
is to be achieved, remarking rather vaguely that ‘[t]he task must be not that
of remembering women, remembering real women, immediately accessible – but of
producing remembering women; with memories and hence histories’ (Doane 1990,
60). Her concluding analysis of the
feminist film The Gold Diggers would
suggest that remembering women are to be produced on the screen by an
alternative feminist cinematography.
This does not, however, solve the problem of representations of women in
mainstream cinema or the gender bias in apparatus theory.
The question may fruitfully be
proffered as to why the apparatus is supposed to be male in the first
place. Any answer to this question
cannot fail to make reference to Laura Mulvey’s foundational essay, ‘Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema’ originally published in Screen, which was to become the main reference point for much of
the feminist film theory that was to follow.
Mulvey begins her article by stating that ‘the unconscious of
patriarchal society has structured film form’ (Mulvey 2000, 483). This is a view shared by many feminist film
theorists. Cowie goes as far back as
Levi-Strauss to argue that ‘[k]inship is …part of a system which produces woman
as object of exchange’ (Cowie 2000, 60).
Mulvey explains this state of affairs by way of psychoanalytic theory
that in her account allocates woman two main functions: symbolizing the threat
of castration by her absence of a penis, and bringing the child into the
symbolic. Doane cites this as the reason
that the male spectator is destined to be fetishistic: in his sexual
indoctrination there is a distance between his look (at the female genitals)
and the boy’s understanding of his look as sexual difference, which comes about
retrospectively with the advent of the castration complex. For this reason, Doane states that, ‘the male
spectator is destined to be a fetishist, balancing knowledge and belief’ (Doane
2000, 501). Mulvey argues, as many
feminist do, that it is woman’s lack, set down during this formative period of
the infant’s life, which ensures the symbolic presence of the phallus.
The phallus is certainly a symbolic presence, but is
as pointed out in the earlier discussion in this article on Zizek, an empty signifier. It is necessary in order to hold together the
structure of sexual development; it is a privileged term, which both sexes must
relate to, but it means little in itself.
In fact, it is the pre-Oedipal castrations that prove to be the most
definitive in both male and female subjectivity, castrations that are realized
only retroactively, après coup, when
the child enters the symbolic. The
castrations ‘produce a subject who is structured by lack long before the
“discovery” of sexual difference’ (Silverman 1988, 16). Mulvey goes on to say that once woman has
successfully ushered her child into the symbolic, ‘her meaning in the process
is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and language except as a
memory of maternal plenitude’ (Mulvey 2000, 483). A statement of this sort not only steers her
down a path of inevitable despair, it is also blatantly untrue. Her position is based upon the unspoken
belief that the symbolic order is masculine.
Although this may have been true in the past, it is
surely now an outdated standpoint in contemporary society where women contribute
to all aspects of society and culture.
The other main issue arising from this article that
was to become highly influential is Mulvey’s assertion that the cinema plays on
both the scopophilic instinct and ego libido.
Moreover,
[t]he
image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the
argument a step further into the structure of representation, adding a further
layer demanded by the ideology of the patriarchal order as it is worked out in
its favorite cinematic form – illusionistic narrative film. (Mulvey 2000, 493)
In
Mulvey’s article, the cinema represents and exaggerates the very worst aspects
of society from a female point of view.
Although the premises that her argument is based on are themselves
dubious and subjective, and sometimes grossly outdated, Mulvey further adds to
the negativity of her account by failing to offer any way forward. Following the widespread critical interest
that this article generated, she did however produce a follow up article where
she addresses some of these flaws.
Having been criticized for only dealing with the male
gaze and ignoring the female spectator, her second article sets out to examine
‘how the text and its attendant identifications are affected by a female
character occupying the center of the narrative arena’ (Mulvey 2000a, 24). Mulvey quotes at length from Freud and the
famous passage in which he proclaims that there is only one libido, which is
masculine. Once again, she criticizes
psychoanalysis by criticizing Freud. It
is not difficult or even particularly illuminating to point out that a
Victorian psychoanalyst appears sexist a century later, and Mulvey appears to
deliberately ignore any advances made by Lacan.
In ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ she attacks Freud for
providing an explanation of female sexuality that is based on anatomy, without
recognizing that this is not the case for Lacan.
In light of her criticisms of Freud, it is ironic
that Mulvey comes full circle to agree with him. In an attempt to answer the question of how
the female spectator identifies in cinema, she concludes that Hollywood genre
films, structured around masculine pleasure allow woman to identify with active
male sexuality: ‘that lost aspect of her sexual identity, the never fully
repressed bedrock of feminine neurosis’ (Mulvey 2000a, 26). This trans-sex identification is examined in
relation to King Vidor’s western, Duel in
the Sun, which dramatizes the situation of a woman caught between two
conflicting desires: passive femininity and regressive masculinity, which are
offered to her by her two male counterparts in the film. One allows her to be a tomboy in the ‘male’
world of rivalry and violence; the other, a man of culture and learning shows
her the ‘correct’ path to becoming a lady.
Mulvey argues that the position of the female spectator is similar to
that of Pearl in Duel in the Sun, as
she ‘temporarily accepts “masculinisation” in memory of her “active” phase’
(Mulvey 2000a, 35). Although she
recognizes that this position is not ideal, Mulvey nevertheless shows a certain
amount of solidarity with Freud, which proves to be the thread that unravels
her entire argument. In spite of her
obvious objections to Freudian psychoanalysis, her own theory of female
cinematic identification is constructed within its confines.
Theorist Constance Penley offers an
account of the problems with and possible solutions to apparatus theory for
feminists that is more influenced by Lacan than Freud. Penley borrows the term ‘bachelor machine’ to
describe the cinematic apparatus; an appropriate metaphor in light of her
stance that the cinematic apparatus cannot properly accommodate or represent
the woman. In her article ‘Feminism,
Film Theory and the Bachelor Machines’, Penley takes on several eminent film
theorists, disputing their theorizations of the cinematic apparatus. The first theorist she discusses is
Jean-Louis Baudry. Baudry believes the
cinema to be the most accurate representation of the unconscious in history,
claiming that ‘all the other art forms…are simply rehearsals of a primordially
unconscious effort to recreate the scene of the unconscious, while cinema is
its most successful achievement’ (Penley 2000, 458). Both Baudry and Metz describe the cinematic
scene (the darkness, the projection from behind) as a duplication of
unconscious phenomena, producing hallucinatory satisfaction in the case of the
former, and ideal subjective unity and visual mastery in the case of the
latter.[1] Penley
criticizes both theorists however, for failing to acknowledge the ‘economic,
social, or political determinations of cinema’ (Penley 2000, 459). In short, their analyses overlook the
position of the cinema within the symbolic order. This is the point at which Penley returns to
a specific attack on Metz, whom she criticizes for claiming that the cinema is
primarily imaginary, which subsequently becomes the crux of her argument.
Metz’s justifications for this claim have already
been outlined, based on the fact that the cinema experience centers around the
scopic drive and the cinema is presence in absence, but Penley argues that
Metz’s conception of the imaginary is over-simplified, pointing out that in
Lacan’s later work he emphasizes that ‘the imaginary is always permeated by the
desire of the Other, and that it is a triangular rather than a dual relation’
(Penley 2000, 460). Penley’s argument is
well-founded. The imaginary is always
subordinate to the symbolic, even if the subject himself is unaware of this
fact. This is why Lacan found in
Jean-Paul Sartre such a valuable model for the theorization of vision: Sartre
too believed that the look is subject to the look of the Other, and
consequently to the symbolic order.
Penley uses this argument to attack feminists like Kristeva, Michele
Montelray and Irigaray, who are overly focused on the body. Their objections to the construction of
female sexuality in relation to a third term, the phallus, and their solutions
to this problem which paradoxically return to the body, ignore the prevailing
influence of the symbolic order in the development of both female and male sexuality:
“The risk of essence”
unabashedly taken by these alternative theories of the feminine typically
involves…ignoring the important psychoanalytic emphasis on the way that sexual
identity is imposed from the “outside”.
By deriving gendered sexuality from the body, no matter how indirectly,
what is in danger of disappearing is the sense of sexuality as an arbitrary
identity that is imposed on the subject, as a law. (Penley 2000, 469)
This
is a view that is shared by Doane who similarly criticizes French feminists for
their engagement in ‘a kind of ‘ghetto politics’’ (Doane 1993, 175). As a counter to the maleness of the cinematic
apparatus, Penley suggests that the way forward is not be found in a return to
the body, but in the analysis of fantasy, which ‘provides a way of accounting
for sexual difference but which in no way seeks to dictate or predetermine the
subsequent distribution of that difference’ (Penley 2000, 470).
Fantasy does closely resemble cinema in many of its
aspects: it is a staging of the subject’s desire, as identification in fantasy
is shifting and not fixed and the subject enters into the same contract of
temporary belief in its reality.
Elizabeth Cowie’s Fantasia is
a full-length study on the dynamics of fantasy and their relation to
cinema. Like Penley, she too posits
fantasy as the staging of desire or ‘the mise-en-scene
of desire’ (Cowie 1993, 147). The
importance of fantasy for feminist theory lies in what Cowie describes as
de-subjectivisation. She borrows this
term for Lacan who refers to it in Seminar XI.[2] In fantasy,
the subject does not occupy a fixed position, but is fluid, becoming part of
the syntax of the sequence itself.
Lacan’s theorization of fantasy opens the way for the analysis of
cinematic identification that is not dominated by the ‘male’ apparatus. Cowie argues that in the fiction film as in
fantasy, the subject’s identification is likewise not fixed: ‘[b]oth the
daydream ‘thoughtlessly’ composed and the more complex fictional narrative join
with the ‘original’ fantasies in visualizing the subject in the scene, and in
presenting a varying of subject positions so that the subject takes up more
than one position’ (Cowie 1993, 149).
Theorists like Cowie and Penley are
attempting to show the way forward for feminist film theory. Their intellectual engagement with the
concepts of psychoanalysis and their obvious desire for a theory of cinematic identification
that is not a war waged across gender lines shows a positive turnabout in
itself. Nevertheless, while the politics
of gender continue to play the primary
role in the theorization of film identification for feminists, it is difficult
to overcome the entrenchment of that position, which perhaps precludes a
broader, more inclusive analysis. As an
example of the possible effects of such a politics, I would like to conclude
this section by making reference to Doane’s article, ‘Heads in Hieroglyphic
Bonnets’. She begins by extracting a
quote used by Freud to describe female otherness: ‘[h]eads in hieroglyphic
bonnets,/ Heads in turbans and black birettas, /Heads in wigs and thousand
other/ Wretched sweating heads of humans’ (Heine, qtd. in Doane 2000, 495). By removing the quotation from its context
however, Freud omits the intended purpose of these lines for Heine, for whom
they serve to ponder not ‘”What is Woman”, but instead, “what signifies Man?”
(Doane 2000, 495). Thus, Freud’s claim
that he is investigating the otherness of woman is revealed to be ‘a pretense,
haunted by the mirror effect by means of which the question of the woman
reflects only the man’s own ontological doubts’ (Doane 2000, 496). However, it escapes Doane’s notice that
Heine’s use of ‘Man’ (he was writing in the nineteenth century, after all)
refers not to the male, but is a linguistic convention used to signify mankind
or humankind. Thus, Doane commits a
misreading based on gender prejudice that mirrors Freud’s own. This error in Doane’s article is symptomatic
of the dangers of a feminist discourse that is overzealous and which
consequently runs the risk of either repeating the gender bias that has been
suffered by women, or what is perhaps worse, blinding itself to situations of
equality when everything is seen through the lens of a feminist politics.
Examining psychoanalytic issues from
a specifically cinematic point of view has significantly added to the critical
debate on psychoanalysis itself. It has
isolated problems, clarified issues and forwarded the theory in a way that
would not otherwise have been possible.
From film theory’s idealistic beginnings with Eisenstein, it became
apparent that a conception of film that accounted for the mechanisms of power
and ideology was necessary. For a time,
Althusserian Marxism played this role until objections began to be raised
against the passive Althusserian subject.
This engendered a renewed interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis, for whom
the subject is constructed through ideology via the symbolic order, but who is
also a producer of meaning, après coup,
in the workings of signification.
The influence of semiotics on film criticism as
outlined in relation to Metz’s grande
syntagmatique, also bore the influence of Lacan from a different direction:
that of linguistics, in his radical re-reading of Saussure. From the dual influences of structuralism and
Althusserian Marxism that characterized British film theory, came a shift to a
mode of theory that could incorporate the psychological experience of the
spectator in the cinema. This challenge
was taken up by Heath and also by Metz, whose founding essay ‘The Imaginary
Signifier’ showed the possibilities that Lacanian psychoanalysis could offer
film theory. In spite of the criticisms
of theorists like Copjec and Zizek; that film theory has performed an
over-simplification of the Lacanian subject, their interjections into the
theory have raised fresh issues, steering film theory in a new direction,
confirming the importance of Lacan in the theorization of post-millennial
subjectivity. It is a subjectivity that
is unendingly complex and fragmented, which is at the mercy of multiple
opposing forces, but which contains a underlying bedrock of unity, perhaps
coming closer than any theory before it to explaining the multifarious,
labyrinthine nature of the human psyche.
Bibliography
Copjec, Joan, 2000. ‘The Orthopsychic Subject: Film
Theory and the Reception of Lacan’ in Film
and Theory: An Anthology, ed. by Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Oxford:
Blackwell. [pp. 437-455]
Cowie, Elizabeth, 2000, ‘Woman as Sign’ in Feminism and Film, ed. by E. Ann Kaplan.
New York: Oxford University Press. [pp. 48-49]
Cowie, Elizabeth, 1993. ‘From Fantasia’ in Contemporary
Film Theory. ed. by Anthony Easthope. New York: Longman. [pp. 147-161]
Doane, Mary Ann,
2000, ‘Heads in Hieroglyphic Bonnets’ in Film
and Theory: an Anthology, ed. by Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Oxford:
Blackwell. [pp. 495-509]
Doane, Mary Ann,
1993, ‘Subjectivity and Desire: An(other) Way of Looking’ in Contemporary Film Theory, ed. by Anthony
Easthope. New York: Longman. [pp. 162-177]
Doane, Mary Ann,
1990. ‘Remembering Women: Psychical and Historical Constructions in Film
Theory’ in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. ed.
by E. Ann Kaplan. London: Routledge. [pp. 46-63]
Fink, Bruce, 2004. Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Friedberg, Anne, 1990. ‘A Denial of Difference:
Theories of Cinematic Identification’ in Psychoanalysis
and Cinema. ed. by E. Ann Kaplan. London: Routledge. [pp. 36-45]
Lacan, Jacques, 1977. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Alan Sheridan.
London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Mulvey, Laura, 2000. 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema' in Film and Theory: An Anthology. Edited by Robert Stam and Toby
Miller. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mulvey, Laura, 1990. 'Afterthoughts on "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema" inspired by Duel in the Sun' in Psychoanalysis and
Cinema. Edited by E. Ann Kaplan.
Penley, Constance, 2000. ‘Feminism, Film Theory, and
the Bachelor Machines’ in Film and
Theory: An Anthology. ed. by Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Oxford:
Blackwell. [pp. 456-473]
Silverman, Kaja, 1988. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Zizek, Slavoj, 1992. Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to
Ask Hitchcock). London: Verso.
Zizek, Slavoj, 2000. ‘Looking Awry’ in Film
and Theory: An Anthology, ed. by Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Oxford:
Blackwell. [pp. 524-538]
Zizek, Slavoj, 2001. The Fright of Real Tears: Krystof Kieślowski between Theory and
Post Theory. London: BFI Publishing.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 2, April 2005, ISSN 1552-5112
[1] See part one of this article for a discussion of Metz’s ‘The Imaginary Signifier’.
[2] See Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, pg. 17.
[1] Part I of this essay is in Kritikos, Volume 2, February 2005: http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/%7Enr03/Psychoanalysis and Film Theory Part 1.htm