Erotics in Lacan's Schema L

Abstract

Lacanian theory of the subjective is based on the idea that Desire is a lack that arises in the subject in the process of introduction into the symbolic world of society where all interactions are mediated by language. The subject is evicted from the immediacy and intimacy of the world of the Mother and pushed into the symbolic world of the Father. The loss translates into a condition of lack and constitutes desire as a feature/faculty of the psyche. Desire resides in the unconscious where access to it is interpolated by language. Lacanian theory of the subject provides concepts allowing us to understand the mechanisms of desire and how they play out internally within the psyche as well as socially between subjects. A principal axis of these interactions is speech - connecting the individual to the social aspect of the psyche - the Big Other. Other such axes realize the function of imagination, sublimation and unconscious construction of a path of desire navigating the subject toward the Real. The Real is the lost world of the Mother, which had been once present at the time of birth, and which the subject attempts to recover. They are represented and described graphically in Lacan's Schema L where the main points of interest relate to language. The chief goal of the paper is to demonstrate how erotic experience participates in the structure of the subject and how it fits into the interactions of Schema L. Specifically, the erotic experience is found on the axis of interaction of the Real with object a (objet petit a). In order to relate erotics to performance arts (and dance specifically), we will situate the latter within Schema L as well.