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Introduction to the theory of the image: Narcissus and the other in the mirror

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References

  1. repercussae ... imaginis umbra”, Ovid,Metamorphoses (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1985 ed.), Book III, verse 434, 110.

  2. The verbinsto (the present participle ofinstans), derives fromsto. See Ernoult and Meillet,Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris: Klincksieck, 1979), 653.

  3. quid vident, nescit”,supra n.1, at verse 430, p. 111.

  4. “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I”, in Jacques Lacan,Écrits. A Selection (London: Tavistock, 1977), 1–8.

  5. “... postquam est inferna sede receptus, In Stygia spectebat aqua”, supra n.1, at verse 504–505, p.112.

  6. “Iste ego sum; sensi nec me mea fallit imago”, supra n.1, at verse 463, p. 112.

  7. Supra n.1, at verse 509–510, p. 114.

  8. This notion returns us to the long history of the theme of the book of nature. A classic passage from F. Schopenhauer,The World as Will and Idea (London: Kegan Paul, 1907), 284–297.

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  9. Most notably, the thirteenth century scholastic Albert the Great,Summa theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei (Libri I Pars I, quaestiones 1–50A) vol.34(I) ofOpera Omnia, 1978, Aschendorff.

  10. “totidem, quot dixit, recipit”, supra n.1, at verse 384, p.108.

  11. Isidore of Seville (deceased 630) transmitted a great deal of latin antiquity to lawyers: in particular, in hisEtymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. Lindsay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911).

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  12. “corpus putat esse quod unda est”, supra n.1, at verse 417, p.108.

  13. Jacques Lacan,supra n.5, at 8–30, “Aggressivity in psychoanalysis”.

  14. “quotiens liquidis porreximus oscula lymphis, His totiens ad me resupino nititur ore... Cum risi, adrides. Lacrimas quoque saepe notavi Me lacrimante tuas.” Supra n.1, at verses 451–452, 459–460, p.110.

  15. Supra n.12, “...humanae vocis sonum captans ...”

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  16. This term returns us both to the idea of gathering together, conserving, and to that of suppression or abolition. It plays a very important role in the development of Hegelian thought on negativity and the dialectic. See the remarks of Hyppolite, the translator ofThe Phenomenology of Spirit into French (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1947), 19–20; and also A. Kojève,Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 554–559. J. Derrida addresses the question of Narcissism and specularity in terms of the problematic ofAufhebung inMargins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 283–288.

  17. l’irreference a soi”, Derrida,ibid., at 283.

  18. Ibid., at 284.

  19. The source results here.Ibid., at 281.

  20. Thus Albert the Great expounds a doctrine of Reference through the image for the human animal: the creature which possesses a truth copied from the divine truth“(creatura ... veritatem habet exemplatam a divina veritate”). In the same way that the oath of the juror refers to God, so also a person who worships an image of a saint refers, through the image, to the truth of God. CommentarySuper Matthaeum, ch.5, verse 34 (Neque per caelum = Do not swear at all, not even to the sky ...),Opera Omnia, 1987, vol.21, Part II, 112.

  21. “It is an extraordinary fact that we talk to ourselves and that this discourse is indispensable to us ... Who speaks? Who listens? It is not exactly the same person ... This voice can become (morbidly) a complete stranger. The existence of this speech of the self to the self is the sign of a cut. The possibility of beingseveral is necessary for reason, but also used by it. Perhaps we take the image as other to the impulse of the mirror”, P. Valéry, manuscript edition (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1918–1920, 1958), vol.7, 615.

  22. The formula relates back to what Hegel says of the relation of parents to children: “the piety of the children with regard to their parents is in its turn affected by the emotional contingency of their having become form themselves, or in themselves, in the form of an other who disappears so as to attain a being-for-itself and a conscience proper to itself through its separation from its source — a separation in which this source dries up.”Phenomenology of Spirit, VI, A, vol.II at 24. One could say that the origin suppresses itself.

  23. Car, je m’aime! ... o reflet ironique de Moi! O mes baisers! lancés à la calme fontaine ... Faut-il ma vie à ton amour, o spectre cher?” Valéry, in one of the versions of “Narcicisse parle” [Narcissus speaks], in P. Valéry,Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), Vol.I, 1558–1559.

  24. Supra n.1, Book III, at verse 463, 464, p.84.

  25. P. Legendre,Le désir politique de Dieu (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 132.

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  26. On the history of this legend, see J.A. Robilliard,Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique (Paris: Beauchesne, 1964), subFace, col.27–28. Numerous other indications can be found in A. Chastel, “La Véronique”,Revue de l’Art (1978), 71–78.

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  27. Chastel,ibid., at 72.

  28. Chastel,ibid., at 75–76.

  29. Robilliard,supra n.27, at col.32.

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  30. From a poem of Emmanuel Swedenborg, reprinted in J.L. Borges and O. Ferrari,Ultimes dialogues (Paris: Zoé/Aube, 1988), 85.

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  31. Louis Marin, “Figurabilité du visuel: la Véronique ou la question du portrait à Port-Royal”,Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 35 (1987), 51–65.

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  32. Extract fromTraité de la connaissance de soi-même, which is cited fromsupra n.32.Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 35 (1987), 51–65.

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  33. See Emile Benveniste,Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européens (Paris: Editions du Seuil), II, 267–272, which shows that the derivation of the latinreligio, is not from the verbligare (to bind), but fromlegere (to collect together, bring back to oneself, recognise, and by extension, to read). It is for this reason that I have tended to understand religion as the assemblage of montages and procedures which put human beings in the position of collecting together, bringing back to one themselves, recognising and reading the discourse of Interdiction.

  34. See the general discussion in J. Laplanche and J.B. Pontalis,The Language of Psychoanalysis (London: Tavistock, 1978).

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  35. The story is related in M. Tardieu,Les Paysages reliques. Routes et haltes syriennes d’Isidore à Simplicius (Paris-Louvain: Peeters, 1990), 12.

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  36. Supra n.1, book III, at verse 350, p.80.

  37. “Revelation and Demise”, inG. Trakl: A Profile (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1984), 82.

  38. Arthur Rimbaud, in a letter to G. Izambard (May 1871): “It is false to say: I think; one ought to say I am thought. Excuse this play of words. I am an other. Too bad for the wood that turns out to be a violin, and laughs at the unconscious ones who quibble over things of which they are completely ignorant.”Oeuvre-Vie (Paris: Aléa, 1991), 183–184.

  39. Isidore of Seville,Etymologiae, II, 22: “Ipsa est philosophiae species, quae Logica dicitur, id est rationalis definiendi, quaerendi et discerendi potens.”

  40. Aristotle,Physics, Book 2, 194b.

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Translated fromDieu au mirroir: Etude sur l’institution des images, Leçons III (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 41–88, with the kind permission of the publisher.

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Legendre, P., Goodrich, P. & Pottage, A. Introduction to the theory of the image: Narcissus and the other in the mirror. Law Critique 8, 3–35 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02699759

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