The Lacanian Mirror: Reflections on Oldboy

According to Jacques Lacan in the “The Mirror Stage”, the stage is “an identification” in which the subject undergoes a transformation by assuming an image in the mirror (34). There is a “jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child” (34) as he admires the wholeness of the reflection and longs to identify with it. At the same time, however, the wholeness of the image is compared to the fragmented condition of the child’s body and is, thus, met with envy and a desire to dominate the threatening and sinister double. This early stage of development “situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual alone” (34). As Lacan elaborates, “this moment in which the mirror-stage comes to an end inaugurates, by the identification with the imago of the counterpart and the drama of primordial jealousy… the dialectic that will......

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Title: The Lacanian Mirror: Reflections On Oldboy
Approximate Word Count: 3184
Approximate Pages: 13 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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