Lacan, Jacques. "The Line and Light," in The
Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis.
Translated by
Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1978. pp. 91-104.
annotation by
Alexandra Geiger (Theories of Media, Winter 2003)
Lacan begins his essay, “The Line and the Light,” by discussing
the “eye” and its relation to the subject. He argues that due
to the geometric dimension of vision, the object, or what it is we the observers
see, catches us in its “trap,” and captures us through this field
of vision.
In the first section of his essay, Lacan discusses the difference between appearance
and being. He argues light does not travel in a strait line, which is, “refracted,
diffused, it floods, it fills…” We see what we see due to geometric
optics. The light paints a picture in our eye of the object, yet we the observers
are not in the picture that has been painted. He explains this by using the example
of when he was on a fishing boat with other fishermen and he noticed a small
can out on the water. One of the fishermen said to him, “You see that can?
Do you see it? Well it doesn’t see you!” He argued that the point
of this story was to show the comparison between him and the can. Compared to
those men who earned their living this way he was so inconsequential that he
was, “out of place in the picture.” He might as well not have been
in the picture at all or if he is to be anything he would be the “screen,” which
he also refers to as the "stain” or the “spot.”
In the second part of his essay, Lacan addresses the relation between the subject
and the picture. He brings up the question of mimicry and how adaptation functions
within it. He compares the example of adaptation, where an environment that is
mostly green an animalcule will become green to reflect the light in order to
protect itself, to the example of mimicry, where a crustacean settles among briozoaires
and it imitates a stain. He argues that, “It becomes a stain, it becomes
a picture, it is inscribed in the picture.” Adaptation does not exist in
mimicry. He says that the major dimensions associated with mimicry are, travesty,
camouflage, and intimidation.
In the third section of his essay, Lacan examines the idea of painting and its
relation to gaze. He states that a painter does not wish to be seen himself,
but that he creates a painting for the eye to look it. In this process of looking,
the spectator is forced to in a sense surrender their gaze. He argues, “Something
is given not so much to the gaze as to the eye, something that involves the abandonment,
the laying down, of the gaze.” Lacan then explores the idea of the “eye
as organ,” and how it cannot be fully explained by its function. When dealing
with the eye, “various functions come together.” A gaze occurs by
the luring of the organ of the eye. “You never look at
me from the place from which I see you, “ signifies the relationship between
the eye and the gaze.
Theorists of media address this relationship constantly when referring to how
we “see” different mediums. The gaze is equivalent to what we desire
to see and masks what is actually seen by the eye. We gaze because we are lured
by the medium to see what it is it wishes us to see, by covering what is actually
there.