The Parallax View between Merleau-Ponty and Lacan

Abstract

Since Narcissus sees himself seeing himself, i.e., comes to self-consciousness and plunges into self-destruction under the gaze, thinkers have problematized the Delphic maxim of “knowing thyself” from a visual perspective. In this trend, psychoanalysis joins the self-criticism of phenomenology in subverting the “myth” of the self-reflective consciousness. Whereas Lacan relegates the mirror stage to the Imaginary and interprets the gaze as objet a to account for the split in the subject, Merleau-Ponty overcomes the narcissistic enclosure of the tacit cogito by appealing to the self’s abandonment to the gaze of the other in an open-circuit of the reversible flesh. Through the lens of the topological concept of parallax, this study illuminates the fundamental distinctions between these two perspectives and proposes a promising future of psychoanalytic phenomenology.