THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

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3.2 Double Whammy: Mixed Doubles The Avatar in Panamasubject’s fragmentation and there is no longer a coherent self to bealienated. Individuals are now schizophrenic in the sense that eachindividual is many subjects; there is no real stable identity, only a seriesof different roles to which the individual unconsciously aspires. Thedeath of the subject is the end of the autonomous ego and the stress ofdecentring the formerly centered self. “To speak of the self in terms offragments, flux and an endless process of self-creation is to adopt a […]postmodern slant on identity”. 114 There are three conditions prominent inliterature which define the contours of postmodern selfhood. The firstdeems the contemporary self to be fragmented, multiple, and shatteredas the consistency of identity disintegrates. The second stateacknowledges an increasing narcissistic preoccupation withappearance and image which becomes self absorbed and cut off. In thethird, fantasy becomes centralised and dreams, hallucinations, andmadness take on an added importance at the expense of rationality(136). These three are all found in literature of the double, and JaramilloLevi's stories.Jacques Lacan’s discussion of the postmodern condition refersto the “Mirror Stage”. 115 In terms of the psychology and development ofa perception of identity, Jacques Lacan is to reflection what Freud is tonarcissism and although the former severed himself professionally fromthe latter, they remain inexorably connected as Lacan’s Stade du Miroir,goes some length to describe the visual version of Freud’s notion ofnarcissism. The establishment of the conception of self through thesubject’s visual identification with their mirror image is Lacan’scontribution to the study of selfhood in “The Mirror Stage as Formativeof the Function of the I”. This examination of the mirror’s impact on theemerging sense of selfhood has patent ramifications for the analysis ofliterature of the double especially as the mirror is a recurring modernand postmodern image through which the device is represented.Freud showed how one may become alien to oneself throughthe rupturing and fragmentation which accompanies repression. Theeffect of this continual splitting provoked by the unconscious and thefact that identity becomes divided between the conscious ego andunconscious desire is, according to Lacan, the discovery of Freudianpsychoanalysis. 116 It is from Freud’s theory of narcissism that Lacanfocuses on the mirror image in identity construction. The infant’s114 Elliott, Concepts of the Self 131.115Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I asRevealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”, Literary Theory: An Anthology. eds. JulieRivkin and Michael Ryan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) 178-205.116 The notion that a person may know something without being aware of it is,according to Lacan, the revolutionary and original contribution of Freud to westernthought. Martha Noel Evans, “Introduction to Jacques Lacan's Lecture: The Neurotic’sIndividual Myth”. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 48.3 (1979): 389.218
3.2 Double Whammy: Mixed Doubles The Avatar in Panamaimaginary identification with its reflection initially generates a narcissisticsense of self-unity, however this is contrary to what the childexperiences and the cause lies in the mirror’s properties of distortionand deception. The recognition is imaginary because the reflectedimage is in direct opposition to the child’s real experience. The initialencounter with the reflection is at once positive and negative: the imagepresented in the mirror is of a completely cohesive and coordinatedcharacter, a misleading two-dimensional reflection far removed fromthat which the subject feels. The creation of this misrecognised sense ofidentity, a false sense of self, is a split that stays with the individualforever, is carried throughout adulthood and becomes the basis for allsubsequent experiences of interpersonal relationships. 117 Thisconstructed self is an idealised projection and this premise hasimplications for the emergence of doubles as the manifestation itselfproduces a self-destructive streak common in most protagonists inliterature of the double. 118Lacan’s mirror stage theory is influential as it provides anaccount of how something outside the self, the mirror, is able to definethe contours of the self which does not exist. During this developmentalstage the child recognises itself as self when it sees itself as other --asa reflected object in the mirror-- as if it were someone else andconsequently comes into being as an alienated object. 119 Paradoxicallythis unifying moment occurs as a rupture: the subject is required toseparate their image from the object as to assume it as their own, themirror image needs to be viewed as distinct from the individual. Identityis therefore alienating because what gives a sense of wholeness ofidentity is in fact the split into two. For Lacan, there is no unity withoutthis division as subject identity is constituted on the basis of this split. 120Unlike Freud, Lacan’s self is constituted from without and allperceptions of it are structured according to an external image; thus thesense of self is merely a reflection of itself. So if the self does not exist,neither does the mirror image double. There is no depth or interior toLacan’s conceptualisation of the mirror as it is a flat surface reflectingtwo dimensions and has its origins in otherness; the self is therefore adelusion.117 Elliott, Concepts of the Self 53-55.118 “The perception of oneself out there as a unified whole in contrast with the internalsense of oneself as a fragmented and disordered agglomeration, results in thesimultaneous formation and alienation of the self. This produces a dialectic of identity:a jubilant recognition of oneself and the aggressive wish to destroy that self since itsapparent wholeness evokes a threatening sense of inner fragmentation anddeficiency.” Evans, “Introduction to Jacques Lacan's Lecture”: 393-394.119Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freudto Kristeva (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) 127-128.120 Juliana de Nooy, “Reconfiguring the Gemini: Surviving Sameness in Twin Stories”AULLA 36.219
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To my other half
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2.3 Dobles and Duplos: Latin Americ
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Psychiatry’s fugues are literatur
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I certify that this thesis does not
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Introducing the Double:The Seductiv
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1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Troubl
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1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and th
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2.1 The North American Double The A
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2.2 Modernismo and its Masters: Dar
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3.1 Shoes and Mirrors: Images of Do
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Appendix A1:Double-Speak: Interview
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Appendix A2:Dentro de los zapatos:
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Appendix B: Enrique Jaramillo Levi:
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Appendix C:Thematic Taxonomy of Dou
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List of Works CitedThe Avatar in Pa
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