Genealogy of the Lacanian subject l

This session introduces Lacan’s first register, the Imaginary, through his 1949 paper on the mirror stage. We look at how the infant’s identification with an outside image of bodily unity forms the ego, and why Lacan treats that ego as a structure of misrecognition, alienation and rivalry, not as the core of the self. We follow the paper’s intellectual sources and discuss the main objection to Lacan’s account. We then test his claims against developmental psychology and neuroscience, and close with the reception of the mirror stage in film theory.