Ideas for Bilkent: Lacan and Cindy Crawford

A few of you have expressed an interest in going to the undergraduate conference at Bilkent in April (see my earlier post about this, below). I've been asked by a couple of you for links to sites that might help you think about the main themes. To be honest, I think the best way to do this is for you to tell me what you'd like to give a paper on, and together we can work something out. The topic is so broad that almost anything can fit it. Alternatively, simply look at the list of topics in the earlier post, and think about how these are relevant to what you have been studying, or are interested in.

If you are struggling for ideas, one obvious place to start might be with Jacques Lacan's concepts of the big Other and the little other. Wikipedia actually is not a bad place to start - look at the entry for 'Other/other' under 'Jacques Lacan'. Then, if you're still interested, you might want to look here, at Lacan's own introduction to the idea of the other, or here, at a very good short introduction to Lacan's idea that 'desire is the desire of the other' (scroll down to section 2b). Lacan is famously difficult, but worth struggling with, I think.

Also definitely worth a look is this, where Slavoj Žižek introduces Lacan's idea of the big Other via a discussion of Mexican soap operas!

Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25 minutes episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear ("Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!..."). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by the "big Other".

A little further on, Žižek describes how the big Other

can be personified or reified in a single agent: "God" who watches over me from beyond and over all real individuals or the Cause which addresses me (Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which I am ready to give my life. While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others," the big Other always has to be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low class joke about a poor peasant who, after enduring a shipwreck, finds himself on a lone island with Cindy Crawford. After having sex with her, she asks him if he is fully satisfied; his answer is yes, but nonetheless he still has a small request to make his satisfaction complete - could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a moustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a hidden pervert, as she will immediately see if she carries out the request. When she does, he approaches her, elbows her ribs and tells her with the obscene smile of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze.

Excuse the reposting of the smutty joke, but I think it makes the point very well. Do look at the rest of the website, and do let me know if you are interested in participating at the conference.