From Homunculus to Lamella

If the Theory spot is supposed to tell us the metaphysics, the how the world is, then it is necessary to address the status of the 'subject' in psychoanalysis. We are told, variously, that the subject is a "split subject," that the subject is a "subject-with-holes," that the subject is a stain, a spot, a knot, an irreducible kernel of non-sense, that nonetheless enacts a force. The subject is not: transparent self-consciousness who represents a world view, mind/body split, a subject fully in control (the unconscious surprises us). Lacan gives an excellent image of these two types of subjects.

1.) The Homunculus: "I will pinpoint the function fo the Cartesian cogito by the term monster or homunculus. . .whenever one has wished to account for inanity or psychological discordance by the present, inside man, of the celebrated little fellow who governs him, who is the driver, the point of synthesis we now say. The function of this little fellow was already denounced by pre-Socratic thought" (141). 

The homunculus is the idea of the "soul" separate from the body or the mark. In contrast to the homunculus. 

2.) The Lamella: "The lamella is something extra flat, which moves like the amoeba. It is just a little more complicated. But it goes everywhere. And as it is something--I will tell you shortly why--that is related to what the sexed being loses in sexuality, it is, like the amoeba in relation to sexed beings,  -- because it survives any deivison, any scissiparous intervention. And it can run around." (197)

Because we have sexed reproduction, the objet a are the libido's "representatives" (its ambassadors) -- "And ti is of this that all the forms of the objet a that can be enumerated are the representatives, the equivalents. The objets a are merely its representatives, its figures.  The breast--as equivocal, as an element characteristic of the mammiferous organization, the placenta for example--certainly represents a part of himself that the individual loses at birth, and which may serve to symbolize the most profound lost object" (198). 

Ulmer reads this as the metaphysical principle that our "organs," our sense organs, are OUT THERE IN THE WORLD. As he humorously put it recently, "My trailer is in Tallahassee, but my scrotum is in Tennessee" (Ulmer, Facebook). 

We are connected to the lamella (and by extension our partial objects) via our drives, the drive that circulates around the objet @. 

Instruction: Find part of ourselves externally in the lamella

A Lamella roof is "used to cover wide, open areas with no supporting members (domes). 

A Lamella roof is "used to cover wide, open areas with no supporting members (domes)

"Lamella" is also used in mycology (Mushrooms): "a papery rip beneath a mushroom cap.

All of these images are incredibly suggestive of the structure of the lamella. The Lamella has a "rim," as we can clearly see in the mushroom lamella. There are, furthermore, Lamella of the lower eyelid, which further links Lacan's use of it to the "opening and closing" of the unconscious, like the opening and closing of a camera shutter.