THE BODY AS RIM-BOT
The created body, marking the edge of space-time?
This series was held over four Saturdays during July
Register below for the recordings, the slides and the readings
The “assubjet” is stuck in the void of formlessness (Lacan uses the term trou-réel, real-hole) unless they can enter via the gateway of the imaginary, with its organising mechanism of the mirror stage, to anchor spatial relations into a specular field, within which they can recognise themselves and be recognised. Simultaneously, the machine of language provides the gateway to anchoring the subject in language and discourse. I am calling these gateways “bots” as they are machine devices which are by their very function denaturing, but nonetheless necessary for constructing our sense of bodily-being. A body which despite this dependence cannot be fully included in the machine, and as such it becomes a body we suffer from, and/or a source of alien jouissance.
The symbolic and imaginary internalisations, in our language, identifications, confer an organising principle from which the infant can structure their relation to the umwelt/external world. But the external world only produces the locus of the Other if the mark of the unary trait can be discovered there, ie. the absence/presence of a mark necessary for the binary system to be built and thus the locus of the Other to operate and facilitate our entry into discourse. There is no machine inside the subject, simply the orientation each of us are given by passing through these gateways. The mechanisms or bots of the imaginary and the symbolic engender a rim/border/edge for the body from which something of a body-surface is organised. But we can’t assume this is a universal experience. Lacan was able to extend the Freudian topology of the drives and the ego to show there are no givens, simply one by one solutions to building a body for the speaking being.
Serena Smith has been a student and practitioner of psychoanalysis for over thirty years, and she has taught in various programs of psychoanalytic studies across the last fifteen years. She has an active research interest in the Lacanian object, clinical work with children and adolescents and the practice of psychoanalysis in current times. Serena is a registered psychoanalyst with the ACP and an accredited mental-health social worker (AMHSW).
Contact the Lacan Circle here
Contact Serena Smith here
Register below to receive the four recordings, Serena’s slide presentations, and the readings
Winter Webinar: The Body as Rim-Bot
Privacy policy:
These webinars were audio and video recorded and live broadcast through Zoom. Those present agreed to the collection and processing of their personal data, and the publication of the audio and video recordings and stills.
Visit our current seminar on psychosis, by David Ferraro and Serena Smith, here
Visit our calendar for other events and activities here
Return to our home page here