A Contemporary Return to the Lacanian Mirror: You Are That

A Contemporary Return to the Lacanian Mirror is a discussion on The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, a capital text within Lacanian thought and psychoanalytic history.

Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian concepts, Sergio J. Aguilar Alcalá explores the consequences of the mirror stage for human subjectivity: an alienation of any remains of animal nature, an aggressive drive at the heart of our relationship to others and to ourselves and an introjection of the desire of the other as our own desire. These consequences allow for a critique of, among other things, the test zoologists use to ‘prove’ that animals can recognize themselves in the mirror, the notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘agency’ that mainstream communication and media studies ascribe to selfies on social media, and the neoliberal uses of labor psychology and identity politics to flatten the intricacies and contradictions within our/selves. The book begins with consideration of the imago and identification, then discusses the consequences of Lacan's three crossroads for our conception of human subjectivity. Aguilar Alcalá concludes by discussing how the Lacanian mirror stage enables us to go beyond the Imaginary traps provoked by today’s media and cultural landscape, using the aphorism mentioned at the end of the mirror stage text: thou art that.

A Contemporary Return to the Lacanian Mirror will be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, communication and media studies. It will also appeal to those working within the humanities, and specifically in the philosophy of the human-animal relationship, images in digital culture and critical theory.