The Thames Is a Teacher: Lacanian Metaphor and Meaning in Writing About Art

Abstract

Abstract This essay explores the potential for a Lacanian approach to metaphor to provide insight into meaning making in the reception of writing about art and artistic practice. Although the relevance of metaphor for an understanding of contemporary art and artmaking has been questioned, I suggest metaphor remains a useful and relevant concept when exploring understandings about artistic practice as they are expressed linguistically. Jacques Lacan’s unique approach to metaphor as a process of psychic repression and identification opens spaces within language to explore relationships between conscious and unconscious knowledge and the impact they have on the reception of writing. Focusing on Daniel Birnbaum’s article “Stream of Conscience” (1999), which explores Mark Dion’s development of his 1999 piece Tate Thames Dig, I explore ways metaphor enables a reading of tension, intertextuality, and desire within an identifactory framework.