욕망의 탄생과 존재의 역설

• 영문명: The Birth of Desire and the Paradox of Being : Lacan's Reading of Hamlet
• 발행기관: 한국비평이론학회
• 저자명: 양석원(Seokwon Yang)
• 간행물 정보: 『비평과 이론』제14권 1호, 51~83쪽, 전체 33쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2009.06.30

영문 초록

This essay arms to examine closely the process through which Jacques Lacan makes a breakthrough in the psychoanalytic theory of desire in his reading of Hamlet Lacan's interpretation of Hamlet is as original and innovative as Freud's interpretation of Oedipus Rex. Just as Freud discovers in Sophocles's tragedy that man has Oedipal desire for his mother and antagonism toward his father, Lacan discovers in Shakespeare's tragedy that man is destined to face the question "to be or not to be" and his desire is desire of the (m)Other. If Freud reveals what a man desires at the depths of his being, Lacan shows how a man becomes a desiring being in the first place. Unlike Freud and his successors, Lacan argues that the central meaning of tragedy hinges not on the question of revenge but on the question of being Lacan translates Hamlet's famous question "to be or not to be" into the question "to be or not to be the phallus." Man should give up being the imaginary phallus, the phallus as a signifier. Hamlet dramatizes this process of human evolution from the imaginary to the symbolic order. The question "to be or not to be the phallus" is also the question "to have or not to have desire" since giving up the imaginary phallus and entering the symbolic order involves the acquisition of one's own desire. The dialectic of desire forces man to acquire his own desire through the interpretation of the (m)Other's desire, that is her lack. Hamlet's drama fleshes out this dialectic. Man becomes a desiring subject only through the interpretation of the (m)Other's desire and only by bring deprived of and mourning his phallus. Gertrude, however, reveals neither lack nor mourning since she indulges in the enjoyment of Claudius's real phallus, thus preventing Hamlet from being born as a desiring subject. Loss, symbolic castration, and mourning pave the way for the birth of desire. Only by losing and mourning the phallus does man take his position as a barred subject deprived of part of his being the symbolic order this is the paradox of being. Being dead and becoming the impossible object of Hamlet, Ophelia recovers her position as objet a, the object cause of desire in Hamlet's fantasy. It is her death that makes Hamlet confront and mourn the inevitable loss and become a desiring subject. Hamlet's mourning and subsequent death complete his tragedy as the drama of the linguistic animal who is inevitably subject to symbolic loss and castration. Lacan's reading of Hamlet at once developes and subverts Freud's Oedipal interpretation of Hamlet and explores the universal fate of the human being as a desiring subject in the symbolic order. Lacan's emphasis on the lack the Other and the nothingness of the phallus, however, makes him ultimately move beyond the symbolic order. A unique psychoanalytic account of Hamlet's tragedy as the birth and death of the subject of desire in the symbolic order, Lacan's seminar also marks his theoretical shift from the symbolic to the real, a shift that appears more clearly in his next seminar on Antigone.

키워드

햄릿 존재 욕망 해석 오이디푸스 콤플렉스 남근 상실 거세 대타자(엄마) 오필리아 대상 소타자 애도 상징계 실재계 Hamlet being desire interpretation Oedipus complex phallus loss castration m(Other) Ophelia objet a mourning the symbolic the real