ABSTRACT
In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan introduces an odd entity by means of a myth. The “myth” of the lamella, from which Lacan derives this entity’s name, appears to give the libido substance and shape as an organ of the body. The lamella is a relatively insignificant construct in Lacan’s writing. One could think of it as a brief thought experiment, a metaphor Lacan offers his listeners and readers to think with as he elucidates the operations of libido in the subject’s formation. Nevertheless, the myth raises an intriguing question that serves as a catalyst for the preoccupations of this chapter. Given how antithetical such a seemingly concrete, bodily notion of the libido is to the main principles of Lacan’s broader oeuvre, what is the work that the lamella is doing for Lacan? In this chapter, I suggest that the drive generally, and the lamella specifically, become sites for the brief appearance of corporeality as psychic phenomenon in Lacan’s broader schema. And it is precisely the opening that this provides onto the broader question of the materiality of the embodied psyche that allows us to think with Lacan about race (Figure 14.1).
