In our last class, Jonathan asked something like, “what are we supposed to do while Marcel is masterbating? What is the reader’s role in Marcel’s life?” For, so often as he is narrating about everyday events and observations, he will slyly lead us into situations that find him finishing off in “pleasure.” We, his shocked readers, then feel as though we have been tricked into reading about his insomnia, only to discover that he has actually been fondling his “misplaced thigh” in front of us. Like children, we are curious, but shocked. The readers-turned-voyeurs are constantly assigned the role of Marcel’s onlooker, as though he wants us to objectify him.
After considering Jonathan’s interesting presentation I decided that perhaps the reader is the person off whom Marcel reflects his thoughts, feelings and desires in an effort to be recognized as a sexual subject—perhaps we are the mirror in his sexual “mirror stage.” Lacan discusses the fantasies “that proceed from a fragmented image of the body to … [a] form of its totality” (78). As Darcy mentioned during his presentation, Proust’s writing is fragmentary, and in light of Lacan, the “misplaced thigh” is also quite the fragmented image, that, with our help, Marcel makes one with his body of words.
Marcel approaches his “I” with both confusion and fascination. The entire In Search of Lost Time could be considered an exploration into his own selfhood, as well as the universal selfhood of all people. In other words, his musing, his “comedy of manners”—as Jonathan has quipped—his curiosity toward human behaviour is very similar to the study of psychoanalysis itself. Indeed, he is searching for himself, or the closest thing to himself: his reflection. He mentions in The Captive that he was starting to make efforts to react less angrily toward Albertine, as she had described to him the ugly faces and terrifying voices he adopted at times of conflict. He had had no idea, and needed her to reflect back to him an image of himself. He constantly constructs his self-image out of the reaction of others toward him. Evidently, he was conscious that he was unconscious of some aspects/behaviourisms of himself.
In fact, I might argue that the mirror stage in our early development teaches us just that: that we are unconscious of many aspects of ourselves. Not only does a six-month-old become aware of his* body as being a separate entity from the people and things in the space around him, but he might also become aware of the fact that all he knew up to this point took place in his life without a consciousness of the self, which tells him that maybe there are other things yet to be discovered, other things that he is unconscious of, other “mirror stages” to go through.
But, according to Lacan, one’s coming into subjectivity during the mirror stage is the site of the development of the ego—the “I”. The once fragmented body now becomes one cohesive and “jubilant” subject. The infant’s joy at achieving selfhood places the ego, “in a fictional direction that will forever remain irreducible for any single individual” (95). However, Lacan points out that this “fiction”—the belief that we are granted complete consciousness thanks to the gestalt mirror reflection—is merely an instinctual response which is then further cemented by socialization and, of course, language. The truth is, we can never fully know ourselves or be completely conscious of everything we are because our knowledge is always based on duplicate evidence: a reflection that doubles what we are. The fiction is the belief that we can be totally conscious of ourselves.
Contrary to this “fictional direction” of the ego in most people, it seems that Marcel is not satisfied with his own perceptions of himself and is rather interested in being viewed by others; in being objectified. This desire parallels the moment at which, according to Lacan, “the specular I turns into the social I” (79), that is, when we start to see ourselves as others see us, compare ourselves to others and develop new emotions such as jealousy. Only in Marcel’s case, and in response to the question Jonathan asked in his presentation, it seems that he assigns his readers another role, a very queer, third person role. And we don’t tell him what image of himself he portrays to us, so we are a mirror that doesn’t reflect, or he pretends to hear our comments or reactions and plays our role along with us.
No, no. I think we are putting to much emphasis on ourselves. I think that it is the text itself that is the mirror that reflects back to him what a real mirror never could: all that he thinks and feels on the inside, his self-image that is much more warped than his body-image.
But what do you think, dear reader of mine, if Marcel perhaps never seems “jubilant” in his own self-awareness, could it be because he was so self-conscious that he was conscious of all that which is unconscious about himself? For that matter, why does he force us to witness his “coming” into sexual being?
*I am a huge feminist, I promise. I only use the male pronoun here for brevity and because I am, in my own way, referring to Marcel.
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