On Recognition in Lacan

The first problem that one encounters in trying to articulate Lacan's theory of recognition and relate it to the question of school violence is that there is no single theory of recognition in Lacan. In fact, as is the case with most of Lacan's “theories,” the concept of recognition must be related both to the separate realms of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, and to the different stages of Lacan's thought. Lacan's first theory of recognition is tied to his phenomenological analysis of the ego in the 1950s. According to his early conception of the mirror stage, this ego comes into being by mis-recognizing itself in the ideal image of the other or in a reflected mirroring representation. This “imaginary” model of recognition is considered to be a mis-recognition because the subject identifies with a unified and totalized body image that is in contradiction with the subject's real sense of bodily fragmentation and lack of coordination. Moreover, Lacan claims that the subject will seek out in all of his or her objects this same imaginary level of ideal unity and comprehension. In this sense, one's ideal body image is matched by one's ideal body of knowledge. Further complicating this scenario is the fact that Lacan uses this same theory of imaginary mis-recognition to explain both the Freudian notion of narcissism and the primary relationship between the child and the mother. The theory of narcissistic recognition affirms that the subject falls in love with the ideal image that he or she sees in the other. Furthermore, the narcissistic subject is completely defined by the recognition that he or she receives from this other. In order to account for this dual task of recognition and idealization, Lacan expands the theory of the mirror stage to include both the ideal ego (the ideal image in the mirror) and the ego ideal (the Other who recognizes the subject's ideal image).

The classic illustration of this second version of the mirror stage is the child who looks