Date: Sat, 4 Feb 1995 09:19:14 -0500 (EST)
From: James Douglas Penney <jdp10-AT-acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: suddenlyseymour


Actually, Malgosia, I think your comment about the Terminator illustrated 
my point about the fundamental misunderstanding going on about Metzian 
primary identification.  *Of course* you're going to object to its 
antifeminism and racism (at least I hope so), but the point is that in 
order to object, film qua apparatus has to have already duped you.  If 
you didn't "believe" in the camera, you wouldn't say, "This makes me 
angry," but rather, "Pshaw!"  Primary identification has absolutely 
nothing to do with film content.  It is instead a purely "formalist" 
operation by which you identify with the camera qua perceptual agent.  As 
Lacan has said (he in fact did a seminar about this) "les non-dupes 
errent" (a pun meaning simultaneously "those who are not duped err," and 
"the names of the father.")  In other words, pretending that film doesn't 
effect you is not a way of resisting its ideological interpellation.

And to Seymour: I rather like my navel, actually, but I doubt that I look 
at mine more regularly than you do.  Perhaps if you actually read 
psychoanalytic theory you would no longer feel the need to make such 
naive, condescending remarks.  But maybe that's too much to ask...

James. Lit. Duke. jdp10-AT-acpub.duke.edu


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