Dancing beyond the Mirror Stage: Jacques Lacan and the Embodied Sinthome
Abstract
“Dancing beyond the Mirror Stage” brings Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and dance into conversation and explores what each can offer the other. Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, argues that James Joyce prevented psychosis by creating, via his writing, what Lacan terms a sinthome. Lacan defines psychosis as the separation of the rings that comprise the psyche—the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic—in which the imaginary ring threatens to slip away. Lacan argues that this sinthome is a fourth element in the psyche that works on the body (which shapes the imaginary) by contacting the real, keeping the imaginary in place and the psyche connected. At the end of his seminar on Joyce, Lacan comments that dance does not work on the body in the same manner. This dissertation scrutinizes that statement; intuitively, dance seems to involve the body more than writing does. I begin by unravelling Lacan’s understanding of the sinthome to show the key element for Joyce is how his writing plays with and binds elements of the real. I then to turn to theories of dance, looking at what dance is and arguing that contrary to Lacan’s statement, dance can be sinthome. In fact, dance may be the art most likely to produce a sinthome because it is more closely connected to the imaginary (via the body) and the real. In other words, dance, like psychoanalysis, can help people contain intrusions of the real, then teach people who cannot play (because they feel intruded upon), how to play, producing a space of creativity. Thus, not only is dance like psychoanalysis but psychoanalysis might be more like (or need to be more like) dance. Therefore, having established dance can be a sinthome, I look at the implication of this conclusion—and the possibilities this offers—for both dance and psychoanalysis.