Theory, Culture & Society

http://tcs.sagepub.com Wallon, Lacan and the Lacanians: Citation Practices and Repression
Yannis Stavrakakis Theory Culture Society 2007; 24; 131 DOI: 10.1177/0263276407080399 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/4/131

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Wallon, Lacan and the Lacanians

Citation Practices and Repression

Yannis Stavrakakis

HERE CAN be no denying the importance of Lacan within cultural studies. This is how Michael Billig starts his evaluation of Lacans theorization of the mirror stage, recently published in Theory, Culture & Society (Billig, 2006: 1). There is no doubt that the increasing centrality of Lacanian psychoanalysis in critical theory and the social sciences makes such an evaluation necessary and Billigs effort is, from this point of view, most welcome. However, given the distance between Lacans style and the overall orientation of his teaching, on the one hand, and standard academic discourse, on the other, one is obliged to carefully delimit the terrain on which such an evaluation could meaningfully take place. As Billig acknowledges: from what basis might a critique be made? (2006: 2). It is clear that, for him, theoretical arguments can only be evaluated on the basis of their evidential bases (2006: 2). What allows Billig to apply such an approach which initially sounds incompatible with Lacanian epistemology is the fact that Lacan himself has referred in some of his early work to mainstream psychology and the evidence it presents. Without accepting the validity of such evidence per se, without necessarily having to accept the theories and methodologies of orthodox psychology, Billig can thus enter the business of assessment and critique precisely because Lacan himself makes them relevant (2006: 3). Within this framework, the work of critical evaluation is ultimately reduced to what purports to be an objective examination of Lacans citation practices, practices which, according to Billig, raise some awkward questions (2006: 3). One would be entitled to question straight away certain aspects of this formal, rhetorical approach to Lacans work. For example, it is obvious that the same approach cannot be applied to an evaluation of Lacans teaching following his early mirror stage paper precisely because, as Lacan will be

Theory, Culture & Society 2007 (SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore), Vol. 24(4): 131138 DOI: 10.1177/0263276407080399

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132 Theory, Culture & Society 24(4)

leaving behind his mainstream mainly psychiatric background to develop his own psychoanalytic research, references to this sort of evidence will be minimized. In that sense, this type of criticism is, by necessity, limited within a period in which Lacan is not yet the Lacan of the 1960s and 1970s.1 To be fair, Billig does register this limitation (2006: 2). In any case, however, and this would be a second plausible objection, the way analytical/theoretical discourse deals with evidence the way evidence is discursively produced out of the undifferentiated mass or the traces of the real is never given a priori. In other words, even when Lacan does refer to such evidence, this does not tell us very much about the particular use he makes of it and this use should not be taken for granted insofar as evidence cannot be constituted as such outside the discursive conditions of its emergence. Is it then possible to judge a theorys evidential justication in isolation from the theory itself? Certainly not, unless one subscribes to a positivist, objectivist conception of reality and scientic endeavor, to what Althusser would call ideological empiricism (1996: 51). Third, since what appears to be at stake here is the use of Lacanian theory in cultural studies, it might be equally worth examining what is the relevance of Lacans work in making sense of evidence emerging in this particular area. No matter what the basis on which Lacan initially formulated his conclusions might be (analytic experience, creative misunderstanding, serendipity, eclecticism, orthodox and/or unorthodox evidence, orthodox and/or unorthodox use of the above evidence, etc.) surely their usefulness for other areas of research can only be judged through their productivity in interpreting evidence pertaining to these other areas. In this short article, however, I shall bracket all these possible objections and, for the sake of argument, will accept Billigs method of critical evaluation, an evaluation he extends beyond Lacans own work onto recent Lacanian literature. Simply put, I will not start by disputing its premises, but by examining the way it has been applied. Hence, my commentary will focus on Billigs claims regarding the deeply problematic nature of Lacans practices of citation and the ease with which they often pass unexamined (2006: 3). According to this argument, Lacan is guilty of signicant omissions. Most important among them the repression this is the exact word used by Billig of the work of the French psychologist Henri Wallon in Lacans paper on the mirror stage (Lacan, 1977). Indeed, the demonstration of Lacans failure to cite Wallon constitutes the culmination of Billigs line of rhetorical criticism. But this is not the end of the story. Moreover, it is argued, such omissions have helped construct and sustain the mythology of Lacan as the lone creative genius (Billig, 2006: 20): the textual concealment of Wallon ts the mythology of the Lacan phenomenon (2006: 20). The claim here is that Lacanian scholars have generally been unable or unwilling to register the genealogy of Lacans ideas; their complicity in Repressing Wallon is presented as proof of their uncritical acceptance and reproduction of the aforementioned Lacan mythology:
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Stavrakakis Wallon, Lacan and the Lacanians 133

Commentators, in reproducing the mythology, regularly repeat claims that Lacan makes about his own ideas. His citations are accepted as accurate both in terms of the authors who are cited and in terms of what is purportedly described. The general neglect of psychology protects the mythology. Few commentators seriously question whether the mirror stage theory is supported by evidence, as Lacan suggests, or whether it was a wholly original concept. (Billig, 2006: 20)2

Of course, there are many arguments one could enlist in order to defend or criticize Lacans idiosyncratic style and his complex practices of citation, although this may not be the most imaginative way to evaluate his intellectual contribution to psychoanalysis and/or cultural studies. Either way, Billig is entitled to question these practices and even to stigmatize what he calls the repression of Wallon. In fact, as I will try to show, this issue is already and widely debated within Lacanian circles, although this is something that would not t the conspiracy theory regarding Lacans mythologization and is thus rather conveniently missing from Billigs account. Most crucially, his rhetorical evaluation of Lacans mirror stage and of the surrounding Lacan mythology is not without its own problems and I would like to briey highlight some of them since at least in my view they raise serious doubts regarding the validity of the whole enterprise. Although the starting point of my commentary is obviously Michael Billigs article, my discussion will encompass a set of wider questions concerning the proper way of evaluating Lacans complex work, the issues of intellectual debt and repression, and the relation between psychoanalysis and academic discourse. (1) Since the WallonLacan connection seems to constitute the climax of Billigs criticism lets start from here. I think we can all agree that Wallons work was one of the main sources of inspiration for the development of Lacans mirror stage. As has been observed, Lacans paper synthesizes three main lines of thought: experimental psychology (mainly Wallon), phenomenology (Hegel and Kojve) and, of course, Freudian psychoanalysis (Barzilai, 1999: 168). We also know that Wallons inuence is not acknowledged in Lacans text. What we dont know is why the reference to Wallon is missing. I cannot offer a solution to this problem; and we would probably need a lot of good detective work just to start contemplating one. However, the hypothesis of plagiarism is probably less plausible than other hypotheses one can construct. And thus to suspect a motive of self-interest (Billig, 2006: 20) may not be entirely justied. Let me briey explain why I think one should be very careful not to jump into quick conclusions. It is important to note that an early version of the arguments Lacan puts forward in the mirror stage article had been already included in the famous article on the family commissioned by Henri Wallon and published in 1938 in the Encyclopdie franaise (Roudinesco, 2003: 26). Indeed, anybody who reads this article on the family complexes cannot fail to notice the resemblance with the mirror stage argument. This resemblance extends
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134 Theory, Culture & Society 24(4)

to the failure to cite Wallon. This is how Lacans biographer comments on this failure:
However, Lacan neglects to cite his main source. Wallons name is not mentioned either in Lacans lecture or in the bibliography of the Encyclopdie franaise. As I have had occasion to show, Lacan always tried to obliterate Wallons name so as to present himself as the inventor of the expression. (Roudinseco, 2003: 27; see also Billig, 2006: 19)

Admittedly such a conclusion seems to corroborate the suspicions of plagiarism. However, isnt something crucial missed here? Surely, if Lacans intention was to plagiarize Wallons work and to present it as his own he would not attempt this, for the rst time, in an article published under the editorship of Wallon himself! Moreover, assuming that Lacan was nave enough to do such a thing, wouldnt Wallon object to its publication? To my mind, two hypotheses seem to follow from this. Either Wallon thought that Lacan had altered so much his own take on the role of the mirror that his argumentation qualied as an original contribution and, hence, there was no need for a formal citation or, exactly because Lacans argument was published for the rst time under his editorship and his own work on mirrors was so well known, he thought that his intellectual inuence would thus be visible to everybody and sufciently albeit indirectly acknowledged; as a result once more no formal reference was necessary.3 Either way, further research is needed to illuminate this issue and it would be rather premature to reach any conclusions at this point, including those reached by Roudinesco and Billig. This research would benet enormously from registering the intellectual climate within which Lacan was active and the ways it might have inuenced his practices of citation. One must never forget that Lacan was a practicing analyst who never hesitated to stress the distance between his work and standard academic discourse. Furthermore, in his attempt to convey something of the linguistic and transferential manifestations of the unconscious he never hesitated to blend psychoanalysis with philosophy, literature, theology, mathematics and a surrealist prioritization of paradox, ambiguity and provocation.4 Not surprisingly, such a discourse is bound to clash with established traditions, including traditions of citation, which in the French university system of the early 20th century included an often suffocating control exerted by teachers on their young students. We know, for example, that Lacan did not succumb to this standard and that may also help explain his often unusual citation games. For example, in a very early text, when quoting his teacher Clrambault generally described as a tyrant who was afraid that others would plagiarize his work Lacan adds this ironic note:
This image is borrowed from the oral teachings of our mentor, Monsieur G. de Clrambault, to whom we owe so much of both our matter and our

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Stavrakakis Wallon, Lacan and the Lacanians 135

manner that to avoid the charge of plagiarism we should really acknowledge him as the source of every expression we use. (Lacan in Roudinesco, 1997: 25)

Infuriated by this ironic reference, Clrambault publicly denounced Lacan and surprisingly enough accused him of plagiarism (Roudinesco, 1997: 25). Without taking into account this general intellectual framework and Lacans iconoclastic reaction to it,5 as well as his conscious distancing from academic discourse and his paradoxical style,6 it is impossible to make sense and do justice to Lacans complex practices of citation. Once more, further research seems to be necessary to account for this complexity. And this research would have to extend beyond the narrow rhetorical method in order to reach a fair evaluation of the Lacanian experiment. But who could be entrusted with this research? If the hypothesis concerning the existence of a Lacan mythology is right and this does constitute a widespread belief then those who are most adequately qualied to perform this task may lack the will as well as the required impartiality one has to assume that they would be neither willing to do it nor sufciently reliable. But is this really the case? (2) It is simply not true that Lacanian commentators have generally ignored Wallons work and his inuence on Lacans formulation of the mirror stage or that they have uncritically accepted some sort of mythological originality of Lacans ideas. I cannot provide a full list here, but, out of the nine books I consulted more or less randomly and which discuss Lacans mirror stage paper most of them introductions to Lacanian theory six of them include lengthy treatments of Wallons work and its inuence on Lacan. For example, Barzilais Lacan and the Matter of Origins includes a whole chapter characteristically entitled On Chimpanzees and Children in the Looking-glass: Wallons Mirror Experiments and Lacans Theory of Reexive Recognition (1999: 6899), in which the scandal of Wallons omission is thoroughly discussed. Similarly, the text devoted to the mirror stage in Dany Nobus edited collection Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, includes a whole section on Wallons psychological observations (Nobus, 1998: 1057). In the recently published Cambridge Companion to Lacan the reader will also nd a whole chapter entitled The Mirror Stage: An Obliterated Archive in which the story of how Lacan produced his paper is fully recounted, inclusive of his failure to cite the work of Wallon (Roudinesco, 2003: 2534). The paper is written by Roudinesco, Lacans biographer, and partly reproduces arguments present in her biography of Lacan (Roudinesco, 1997: 110, 326) the same biography cited by Billig. Similar discussions can be found in other introductory texts (Borch-Jacobsen, 1991: 467; Julien, 1994: 2931, etc.).7 I am not disputing that some commentators may have missed this point. Others may have considered it peripheral to other aspects of the genealogy of Lacans conceptual apparatus they preferred to emphasize. It is obvious, however, that the generalizations present in Billigs argument do

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136 Theory, Culture & Society 24(4)

not stand up to scrutiny (unless, of course, one represses a very substantial part of existing Lacanian bibliography). Wallons inuence on Lacan is far from ignored in contemporary Lacanian research and Lacans originality is usually evaluated against the background of a variety of psychoanalytic, psychological and the two are far from identical philosophical, linguistic, mathematical and other traditions from which he draws. Thus, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Billigs own repression operates on at least two levels: rst, his argument fails to consider other plausible hypotheses regarding the lack of a Wallon citation in Lacans work on the mirror stage; second, it ignores a substantial part of Lacanian scholarship in evaluating its role in the reproduction of what he perceives as a Lacan mythology. But this conclusion is not meant as a wholly dismissive evaluation of Billigs work and of the themes raised in it.8 For citation practices and academic arguments are very rarely awless: we all know from our own experience and the experience of others that they are always consciously and/or unconsciously distorted by a variety of factors making us forget or disavow what ideally should be remembered and registered; indeed, for all those taking psychoanalysis seriously, repression is constitutive. It does, however, and precisely for the same reasons, cast serious doubts on the particular method Billig employs in his evaluation of Lacan. I hope, thus, I have managed to illustrate how shaky the ground is upon which this rhetorical approach has been erected, and to show that maybe this is not the most productive way to criticize Lacanian scholarship and advance important debates. Paradoxically, this conclusion will also give me the opportunity to end on a point of (relative) agreement with Billig. Precisely because the thesis regarding the constitutivity of repression draws extensively on his own work. Not only on his recent article on Lacan where it is claimed that language is both expressive and repressive (Billig, 2006: 22) but also on his book Freudian Repression, where it is rmly acknowledged that people are repressing as they go about their everyday business (1999: 38) and that, as a result, for everything which is said, other things are not being said (1999: 512). Even Freud, who is very much admired by Billig, has not managed to avoid repression: Freuds genius itself needed to be part of the very selfdeceptions and denials which he courageously exposed (1999: 215). If, however, both Freud and Lacan engaged in repression, why is Freud described as a genius and Lacan exposed as a charlatan? And why is something that is acknowledged as constitutive stigmatized and condemned only when Lacan is supposed to engage in it? Maybe the solution is that there are acceptable and unacceptable forms of repression. Billig himself considers this possibility: Some forms of repression are to be exposed and found wanting. Their routine practice then becomes an obstacle to be overcome. Other forms of repression will be deemed benecial (1999: 260). However, he doesnt seem entirely satised with this solution: A danger always stalks such analysis. As we talk about repression, so we are using
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Stavrakakis Wallon, Lacan and the Lacanians 137

language. We will be looking in a particular direction, unaware of what we are overlooking, unaware of our own silences (1999: 260). In that sense repression is unavoidable and so is the analysis of repression (1999: 2601). So the paradox of the differential treatment reserved for Freud and Lacan remains, unless one were to look for a clue in an admission present in his Freudian Repression: I have never enjoyed reading Lacan (1999: 7). Maybe Lacan is right then when he stresses that there is no repression without a return of the repressed.
Notes 1. Indeed, one could even argue that if the use of psychological evidence in this early phase is incorrect then it is clearly a good thing that references to this sort of literature (and evidence) were minimized as his teaching progressed. 2. My own study, Lacan and the Political (Stavrakakis, 1999), is presented by Billig as an example of such mythologizing (2006: 20). 3. Which reminds me of an anecdote mentioned by Julian Barnes: When Brahms wrote his rst symphony, he was accused of having used a big theme from Beethovens Ninth. His reply was that any fool could see that (Moss, 2005). 4. A contributor to the surrealist journal Minotaure, Lacan developed his style in dialogue with surrealism. Even in his early mirror stage paper, surrealism is mentioned as a resource together with the dreams and visions of Hieronymous Bosch (Lacan, 1977: 4). 5. It should also be noted that Lacans reaction was not the most radical within the French cultural milieu. From Duchamps artistic practices to Guy Debords theoretical articulations, one can hear echoing the famous phrase coined by Isidore Ducasse, self-styled Comte de Lautramont: Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. In fact, Debord seems to have plagiarized this phrase, which appears as aphorism 207 in his Society of the Spectacle without any reference to Lautramont (Debord, 2006). 6. It is this style, especially designed to disturb established orthodoxies and stimulate the desire of the reader for creative interpretation beyond ready-made identications and simplistic explanations, that makes Lacans texts writerly and not readerly, to refer to Barthes well-known opposition. This is why they have attracted the praise of such a diverse list of intellectual gures willing to respond to their challenge, from Althusser to Derrida. Indeed, the complexity of Lacans discourse is the result of a desire to correspond to the complexity of the subject, and [to show] that the work of understanding the subject should be seen as work to be carried out on oneself (Foucault in Roudinesco, 1997: 332). It is not, thus, unrelated to the conditions of the exercise of his pedagogy, a pedagogy beyond sedimented academic standards: . . . having to teach the theory of the unconscious to doctors, analysts or analysands, Lacan gives them, in the rhetoric of his speech, the mimed equivalent of the language of the unconscious, which, as we all know, is in its ultimate essence Witz, pun, or metaphor, whether failed or successful, the equivalent of what they experience in their practice as either an analyst or a patient. (Althusser, 1996: 21) Obviously this discourse is not addressed to everybody and will not attract everybody. Furthermore, I cannot exclude the possibility that some readers may have

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138 Theory, Culture & Society 24(4)

found this style threatening, humiliating or even terrorizing. It seems to me, however, that Foucaults observation is right in this particular context: the inuence someone exerts can never be a power he imposes (Foucault, in Roudinesco, 1997: 332). Simply put, Lacan terrorized only those who were afraid (Roudinesco, 1997: 332) and can humiliate only those desiring and/or deserving humiliation. 7. In my aforementioned 1999 book it is also noted that the Lacanian theory of the mirror stage, marking Lacans rst signicant contribution to analytic theory . . . is inuenced by the work of the famous French psychologist and friend of Lacan, Henri Wallon, who was apparently the rst who described in detail the dialectic developed between the human infant and the mirror image (Stavrakakis, 1999: 147). 8. Nor does it imply an unconditional endorsement of everything Lacan has said or done. References Althusser, L. (1996) Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan. New York: Columbia University Press. Barzilai, S. (1999) Lacan and the Matter of Origins. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Billig, M. (1999) Freudian Repression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Billig, M. (2006) Lacans Misuse of Psychology: Evidence, Rhetoric and the Mirror Stage, Theory, Culture & Society 23(4): 126. Borch-Jacobsen, M. (1991) Lacan: The Absolute Master. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Debord, G. (2006) The Society of the Spectacle. URL (consulted April 2007): http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/ Julien, P. (1994) Jacques Lacans Return to Freud: The Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. New York: New York University Press. Lacan, J. (1977) The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I, in crits: A Selection. London: Tavistock. Moss, S. (2005) A History of Plagiarism (Not my Own Work), The Guardian 23 November. Nobus, D. (1998) Life and Death in the Glass: A New Look at the Mirror Stage, in D. Nobus (ed.) Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Rebus. Roudinesco, E. (1997) Jacques Lacan. Cambridge: Polity. Roudinesco, E. (2003) The Mirror Stage: An Obliterated Archive, in J.-M. Rabate (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stavrakakis, Y. (1999) Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge.

Yannis Stavrakakis is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the author of Lacan and the Political (Routledge, 1999) and The Lacanian Left (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester University Press, 2000) and Lacan and Science (Karnac, 2002).

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