Lacan’s Cybernetic Theory of Causality: Repetition and the Unconscious in Duncan Jones’ Source Code

Abstract

Wright’s chapter outlines how Lacan’s early engagement with cybernetics and game theory informed his psychoanalytic theory of causality. At times, Lacan seems close to a posthumanism avant la lettre in his emphasis on the machinic or combinatorial aspects of the psyche. However, through a Lacanian interpretation of Duncan Jones’ Sci-fi film Source Code (2011)—in which the main character’s cyborg status allows for an exploration of posthuman themes—Wright argues that Lacan stresses the temporality of desire and the act in human subjectivity, rather than machinic repetition. In this way, Lacan’s theory of causality contributes to a critical posthumanism attuned to the fantasies that animate both celebratory and dystopian transhumanism.