Specular Reflections: Rimbaud (Lacan, Kristeva) and “Le Stade Du Miroir” in “Enfance”

摘要

Rimbauds Enfance depicts the passage during childhood from a marvelous state of selfless absorption in the world through a process of individuation that parallels the theory of le stade du miroir proposed by Lacan and later developed by Kristeva. In part one, the child is a feminized object of feminine attention, bathing in a semiotic flux of prelinguistic images and sounds. This fragmented immersion in the Lacanian imaginary is disrupted by the childs recognition of a reflected self-image that is complete and apart, initiating the process of differentiation. The passage into the symbolic is signaled by the death of the mother and entry into the masculine world of différance, dominated by the général, who commands the patriarchy in the name of the father. Next, a series of objective anaphoras emphasizing the otherness of things signifies the childs accession to language. A second anaphoric series repeatedly asserts a fully self-conscious Je against the backdrop of an ever-receding objective world. This presages the demise of childhood, implied by the subjects withdrawal into the tomb. The poem concludes with a sense of bitterness and ambivalence, as the paranoid subject vacillates between rejection of the castrating social imperative of the symbolic and a desire for the linguistic mastery it affords.