
Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Berlin
Year: 2013
Pages: 291-309
Series: Continental Philosophy Review
Full citation:
, "The cornered object of psychoanalysis", Continental Philosophy Review 46 (2), 2013, pp. 291-309.


The cornered object of psychoanalysis
Las meninas, Jacques Lacan and Henry James
pp. 291-309
in: Thomas Brockelman, Dominiek Hoens (eds), The object of psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy Review 46 (2), 2013.Abstract
Long recognised as a painting "about' painting, Velázquez's Las Meninas comes to Lacan's aid as he explicates the object a in Seminar XIII, The Object of Psychoanalysis (1965–1966). The famous seventeenth century painting provides Lacan with a visual mapping of the "ghost story' he discovers in the Cartesian cogito, insofar as it depicts the unravelling of the Cartesian representational project at the moment of its founding gesture. This article traces Lacan's argument as he turns to art, linear perspective and topology to model how the object a persistently eludes the grasp of scientific knowledge. Following a discussion of distance-point perspective in Renaissance Italy and the role this innovation played in enabling distorted depictions of objects in space, I propose Henry James's ghost story, "The Jolly Corner," as the sequel to Lacan's reading of Las Meninas. In James's tale, we obtain a narrative account of what the figures in Velasquez's painting might "see' as they return our gaze towards us.
Cited authors
Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Berlin
Year: 2013
Pages: 291-309
Series: Continental Philosophy Review
Full citation:
, "The cornered object of psychoanalysis", Continental Philosophy Review 46 (2), 2013, pp. 291-309.