ABSTRACT
The mirror phase is one of the few bits of Lacanian thinks we might have a hope of explaining to a stranger at a bus stop. It's a theory that's potentially mind-blowing in its complexity and reach, but is also comfortingly simple. One of the problems Webster finds with Lacan's theory of the mirror phase is that it doesn't line up with "reality", as he sees it. He takes an argument from Raymond Tallis's Not Saussure; a critique of post-Saussurean literary theory, 1988. Lacan introduces Caillois while speaking about the transformative power of the image. He mentions the example of the pigeon that becomes fertile when it sees another pigeon, or even if it catches sight of itself in the mirror. "The function of the mirror stage thus turns out, to be a particular case of the function of imagos, which is to establish a relationship between an organism and its reality—or, as they say, between the Innenwelt and the Umwelt".
