Los miembros del CAAT

to their

concepts.29

In

1964,

it was not difficult to add Lacan to the pan­

theon. He had recently been removed by the

International

Psychoanalytic

DAVID MACEY

Association from its list of approved training analysts, and had openly likened his situation to that of Spinoza when he was expelled and excom­ municated from the synagogue on. 27 July 1656.30 Althusser clearly iden­ tifies with his pantheon and would later speak with nostalgia of the 'marvellous times' when he at- last achieved his one desire: 'Being alone and right in the face of all'.31 Theoretical work obviously does not suspend the working of the imaginary.

At the end of 'Freud and Lacan', Freud is credited with the diScovery 'that the human subject is decentred, constituted by a structure which has no "centre" either, except in the imaginary misrecognition of the "ego", i.e. in the ideological formations in which it "recognizes" itself.'31 The formulation occurs after a reference to Fteud's comparison of his discovery of the unconscious to the Copernican Revolution, that

locus cltJssi�

of his heroic history of the sciences and a crucial element in his self-image {or self-misrecognition), Freud speaks of the realization that 'the ego is not master in its own house', meaning that the unconscious has reasons of which the reason of the ego knows nothing.

Althusser ls projecting onto Freud Lacan's theory of the mirror-stage, as described in two of the best-known

€crits,33

The mirror-stage describe!' that crucial stage of development in which a child of approximately eighteen months recognizes its own image in a looking-glass. The image is unified and presents a leveJ of co-ordination that the child has yet to achieve in

its actual life; it is therefore greeted witb. jubilation. It also represents, however, an imaginary other - and an image of the other - and the child's identification is therefore an alienation, a misrecognition. Identification,

alienation and misrecognition combine to produce a characteristic pattern of behaviour: the child identifies with others, crying when it sees another child fal!, and complaining that it has been struck when it is in fact the aggressor. Lacan finds in this pattern the origins of all subsequent alienations and identifications: the identification of master with slave, of seduced with seducer. It is the prototypical situation that will lead to man's desire being defined as the desire of/for the other. This is the mirror to which Althusser turns in his description of ideology as an imaginary order.

Whilst he draws on Freud's theory of narcissism and the description of the

fort-da

game irr

Beyond the Plettsure Principle,

Lacan's text. also makes it clear that his sources are not confined to the psychoanalytic tradition. The behaviour of a. child- is contra�ted with that of a chimpanzee of s'imilar age - an animal with better motor coordination and no lasting interest in mirror-images. Primate ethology provides t-he contrasting modelt and itli

findings are combined with those of child psycholog'ists such as Wall.on.34 Far from signalling a rejection of homo

p$ychol'ogiCus,

the mirror-stage represents the introduction of elements -of psychology and ethology into psychoanalysis,

AL THUSSER AND LA CAN 149

with a human·anlmal contrast or differentiation; the same concern appears in his frequent referenceB to Levi-Strauss' nature/culture transition. And his concern here is overdetermined by his most powerful and lascing philosophical influence - namely, Hegel - for whom the break-up of a col� lectivity of individLtals associated as 'a communi�y of animals' is a major momem in the development of individuality, and according to whom 'self· consciousness , . , only has real existence so far as lt alienates ·itself from itself.'3s Th� Hegel in q1,1estion is the creation Qf Alexandre Kojeve, whose seminar, held at the Ecole Pratique des Haures Etudes from 1933 to 1939

and regularly attended by Lacan i n the years 1933-37, influenced a gen· eration.38 {A renewed interest in it recently triggered a debate about the 'end of hiJ;tory' ,37) It was Kojtve who provided the particularly violent reading of the

Phenomenology

of

Spirit

and the conceiltration on the master­ slave dialecti-c;. that so marks Lacan, Kojeve and not Hegel himself supplies, for instai1ce, rhe notion of a struggle for recognition aud pure prestige, and virtually every mention of the name 'Hegel' in the

Ecrits

should Jn ·fact read 'Kojeve' .38

Althusser speaks of Lacan's 'paradoxical resore to 'philosophies com­ pl�tely foreign to his scientific undertaking (Hegel� Heidegger)',3� That he has misrecogniz:ed a vital element in Lacan can be simply demonstrated by means of two quotations pertaining to the phenomenology of 'the basic category of the unconsdou5': desire.�0 The first is from Kojev� himself: 'Desire is human . . . only if it js directed towards an other Desire and

ro.ww:ds the Desire of an other .'41 The second, from probably the greatest of France's post-war Hegelians, illustrates the ease with which a Lacanian­ sounding iormula can appear in a reading of Hegel: 'The desire for life becomes the desire for an other desire or rather, given the necessary reci­ procity of the phenomenon, human desire is always a desire for the desire of an other.'�2 In his inaugural lecture at the College de France, Foucault described the recent history of French philosophy as being the history of an attempt to .escape Hegel, via either logic or epistemology, and added that appeals against Hegel might be 'one more of the ruses he uses against us, and at the end of which he is waiting for us, Immobile and elsewhere.'43 La.can's mirror iS. the. 'elsewhere' in which Hegel wair.o; for Althu�ser.

The existence of the Hegelian-Kojf:vean strand ln Lac an is not the only problematic area. Althusser's theses on ideology are dualistic, operating with a science/ideology, real/imaginary dichotomy, whereas Lacan intro­ duces a triadic or trinitarian structure of Real, Symbolic and Imaginary. The orders interact rather than being opposed to one another, and there is certainly no question of the subject's e'scapin� thefr combined actions. And although the differences between Lacan and Althusser may appear verbal, they are conceptual. For the Marxist theort:tlcian, 'real' is presum­ .ably synonymous with 'actually existing'; for Lacan it refers to that which lies forever outside discourse, that which is unamenable

co

analysis and

150 DAVIO MACEY

akin to the deity of negative theology: susceptible to description only in terms of what it is not, 'Imaginary' is not synonymous with 'fictive', and designates the ability to create and identify with images or images. Lacan's use of rhe term 'imaginary' is no doubt affected by the characteristic tendency of twentieth-century French philosophy to think the problem of the other in purely visual terms, a classic example being Sartre's theory of

'the gaze' [!e regard]. Insofar as it is synonymous with the realm of culture, it would seem that it is in fact the symbolic which i's closest to most definitions of ideology. The identification of the symbolic with ideology is not, however, an option open to Afthusser. since it.would.create an oppo» sition between science and not only ideology, but·also the whole of human existence.

The operation of ideology and its constitution of subjects ('[a]ll ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjecu, by the func­ tioning of the category of the subject'44) is illustrated by a primal scene of Althusser's devising: an individual walking down the street is hailed -

'Hey, you there?' - and turns around. He thus becomes a subject, 'because he has recognized that the hail was "realty" address-ed to him . . • . Experience

shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings ·is such that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed'40 That an element of humour may be in play here :is suggested by the footnote in which Althusser alludes to the 'special' form of 'the policeman's . . . hal.Ung of "suspects"', but it unwittingly signals a flaw in the argument: the workings of ideology are illustrated by a state repressive practice. A sardonic Michele Barrett raises a further objection when she notes that interpellation's supposed universality is unlikely to apply to women, for whom the 'experience of being hailed (especially by whistling!) on the street more ofren has the opposite effect of denying their individual identity and interpellating them in unnervingly generic terms.'46 Nor is it likely to apply to the young blacks whose interpellation on the streets of Paris is more likely to r�ult in a beating (or even death) than in recognition. In 'terms of the relation· ship with psychoanalysis, it is, however, the superimposition of a structure of recognition upon one of misrecognition that is so disastrous. The sub· ject of Lacan's mirror-stage does nor recognize himself through the verbal interpellation of an other; he (mis-)recognizes himself in an image of the self as other.

The interpellation thesis relMes to a sort of primal ·scene,. in keepi_ng with the argument that 'ideology' (as -opposed to 'ideologies') is eternal and has no history-. The suggestion is tentatively related to 'Freud's proposition that ihe

uJ>tconscious is

etemal, i.e., that it has no history',47 No reference is given for this allusion, but it is probably to Freud's description of the 'timelessness' of the unconscious. Timelessness is, however, merely one char­ acteristic of the unconscious, which is also typified by exemption from

AL THUSSEA AND LAC AN 151

mutual contradiction, the dominance of primary processes, and the replacement of external by psychical reality.+! Whether or not the uncOn· scious (of an individual) has or does not have a history is in fact the subject of considerable psychoanalytic debate, with some arguing that it is. a phylogenetic heritage transmittlng a uni versa! content, and others that it is constituted by a process of primal repression, mythical or otherwise.

Once more, an epistemological qnalogy proves to be misleading in the extreme.

The supposed eternity of the formal structure of ideology, and the primal scene that demonstrates its gender· and race-bound operations, indi· cates the direction in which Althusser's essay seems to be moving: towards a symbol-based theory of ideology and, ultimately, towards Durkheim.

Signi'ficantly1 an earlier essay specifies that 'the firsdorm of this ideology, the realicy of this bond, i's ro be found in

religion

("bond" is one of the possible etymologie:> of the word

religion)/H

This is far removed from the

Communist Manifesto's

insistence that the history of all hitherto existing society is rhe history of class strug$1es. That history would appear, on the contrary, to have been preceded by the establishment of elementary forms of ideological life, Hence, perhaps, the neaNautology: 'Ideology has always. already interpellated individuals as subjects . . . individuals are always­ already interpellated a:s subjects . . . individuals are always-already subjects.'50

Althusser1s borrowings from Lacan are marked by a number of impor· rant misrecognitions, the most· crucial being the failure to recognize the relevance to Lacan of the Hegelian tradition. Althusser attempts ro recruit Lacan fot purposes of his own, and the form of the recruitment. (or inter· pellation?), reveal much more about the Marxist philosopher than the psychoanilyst. Founded on the basis of opposition to a host of adversaries, rhe Rejection Fmnt provides the starting-point for a new project: the epistemological liberation of Freud from the ·ideologies that beset him, just as they beset Marxism. Lacan is the vital ally here because he defends rhe 'irreducibility' of psychoanalysis and its objecr (rhe unconscious)/1 and because he 'thinks nothing but Freud's concepts, giving rhem the fonn of our sdentlficity, the only scientificity there can be'.52 This is wishful thinking ·on Alth�sser's part, As I have argued elsewhere, Lacan thinks a good .deal .more - ·and less - than Freud's concepts. He also 'thinks' sur· realism, rhe Jegsons of the classical psychiatry in which he rrained (and to which he owed

Qis

clln'iCal and diagnostic acumen), rhe disrincth·� verston of Hegelianism bequeathed him by Alexandre Kojeve, elements of phe� nomeno!ogy-. . . 53 The wishful rhinking does, on the other hand, help to locate Althusser's reading of Lacan/Freud within a specific tradition.

In an essay originally published as the preface to an __ American translat·

ion of George Canguilhem's Le Nor

m

a{

et le pathologique,

Michel Foucault describes rhe post�war history 'of French philosophy as being characterized by a division between 'a philosophy of ex_perience, of meaning and of rhe

152 DAVID MACEY

subject' and 'a philosophy-of knowledge, ratio_nality and of the concept'. The former tendency is associated '\Vith Sartre and Mer-leau·Ponty, ihe latter with Jean Cavailles, Gaston Bachelard, A1exandre Koyre and Ca.nguilhem himself.54 The representatives of the philosophy of conscious­ ness include the main shared 'adversaries' of the Lacan-Aithusser front. In a survey of the academic field of rhe 1950's, Pierre Bourdieu .outlines a very similar intellectual typology, and speaks of the 'almost universal cult' of Ca.nguilhem. The historian of science who, in the 1950s, ha:d been a symbol of serious-mindedness and rigour at a time when existentialism was triumphant, later came to be an almost totemic figure or tutelary deity for those rejecting dominant models in philosophy.55

Canguilhem is a major representative of the epistemological tt<'Jdition within the history of the sciences. His history is one of discontinuities - of breaks, ruptures and conceptual shifts - in which the sciences do not evolve in linear fashion; whilst his concept of scientificity is a matter of the constitution of a theoretical object, and neither of some empirical "10equation to the real nor of a complac;ent reference to 'experimental method\ The

normal/pathological distinction, without which modern medical practice and thought would be incomprehensible, IS not, for instance, an empirical

'fact', but a way of organizing knowledge about the body. It results .from the existence of a knot of conceprs;56

Canguilhem was Cavailles's successor at the Inst'itut d'Histolre des Sci­ ences et des Techniques. Logician, historian of the sciences, and victim of the Gestapo, Jean Cavailles argued in uncompromising terms that science was a matter of logic and therefore that

'[I]t

is not a philosophy of con­ sciousness, but a philosophy of the concept that can supply a doctrine of science.'57 In h1S fCSthumously published autobiography, Althusser would admit to knowing relatively little about Cavailles and to having contented himself with 'a few formulations'.58 The constantly self-deprecating tone and mood of the autobiography make it difficult to know just wh<'Jt value should be attached to the disclaimer, but Althusser had cert3.inly borrowed 'formulations' that would mean a great deal to the younger theorists working with him,

Canguilhem hims�lf was a figure of enormous importance to those who pursued the implicatTons of the Althusser/Lacan alliance. In the period leading up to the publicatiOn of Lire le Capital, Canguilhem's work and that of Althusser's team overl"!p to a high degree, The Lire le Capital seminar held at the ENS in 1964-65 coincided with Canguilhem 's seminar on the prob!ema�ic of the history of the sciences at the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques. A detailed comparison of Althusser's meditations on 'the object of Capital' and of Canguilhem's on 'the object of the history of the sciences' would no doubt be illuminating, but will not be undertaken here:S9 In 1967-68, the current of influences would be reversed when Canguilhem began to re-read and reformulate Bachelard in

AlTHUSSER AND lACAN

the light of the work of Althusser <1-nd Foucault. The· result was a short­ lived enthusiasm for the topic of 'scientific ideologies' ,60 In the preface to th-e second edition of the relevant essays, Canguilhem enigmatically remarks that

'[T]o

err is hunian; to persist in error is diabolical' and leaves it to his reader to decide whether or not his work of this period was 'aberrant' .61

Although Lacan does refer to the Canguilhem tradi�ion, and was later to adopt the 'mathematization' model of sdentificity associated with some representatives of the epistemo1ogical school (notably Alexandre Koyre), h e was in fact notoriously hostile to rigorous conceptualization and objected, for instance, to the eminently conceptual

Language of Psycho­

analysis

produced by Laplanche and Pontalis - Laplanche describes. it as 'a cri�ical reflection on every concept' - on the grounds that it was 'tao scholastic',02 For a long time, Lac·an's concepts remained fairly fluid, and were subject to a constant and tactical process of redefinition. The highly conceptual index appended to Et>rlts is, of course, the work of Jacques� Alain Mil,ler and not Lacan.

Althusser himself did not pursue the tasks he had· set historical mateti-· alism vis-3.-vis psychoanalysis. They .would be taken up by

Ca.hiers pour

f'amt!yse.

The journal of the 'Eplstemological Circle' of the ENS began publication in January 1966 and continued to appear until 1968, with Jacques-Alain Miller as its principal editor. The 'AvertiSBement' to the first issue - devoted to 'Truth', no less - announced that it would publish texts dealing with logic, linguistics and psychoanalysis, with. a view to constitut· ing. a· 'theory of discourse'. That dialectical materialistn· would be of major importance. to the

Cahiers

went without saying, but the possibility of a science of social formations soon became largely irrelevant. Noth1ng in the prqject related to the 'particularity of a doctrine'; the aim was to. '[f)orm ourselves, following the example of our masters, in accordance with the rigour of concepts'. 61 As with the original Rejection Front, there was a

marked tendency to make analogies serve as arguments. Th� it could be claimed that psychomalysis, like Marxism, provides the principle for 'a new organization of the conceptual field'/4 but the analogy was now between the .fi"eld of the· statement

[fnond],

defined as the field of logic, and psychoanalysis, defined as the field of speech.�5 The philosophy of the concept was to be given a new incarnation.

To the extent that the

Cahiers

was a quasi-Marxist project, it is a dis· tinctly odd one. Categot.ies such as class are almost totally absent;; the:

econOmic and the political disappear. As formal logic is increasingly brought to bear on psychoanalysis, Lacan is re'ad in terms which obliterate his philosophical-psychological ·past and promote the image of a psycho­ analyst bor.n purely of an encounter between Freud and a formp.f theory of discourse. Par from being a specific discourse, Lacan's work now becomes part of a general instance of conceptuality. Whereas Althusser and Bali bar

154 DAVID MACEY

began by looking for 'epistemological analogies', the

Cahiers

group would search for a logic of the signifier that typified the discourse of Science, and not of the plural

sciences

of which Canguilhem was the historian. The emphasis on logic overrode the vision of a plurality of 'continents' com­

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