Page 104 - Decoding Culture

SITUATING U B J E C TS 97
S
In this way a congruence is established in Screen theory between
the Althusserian account of ideology and other of Screen's influ­
ences of the period, most notably Brecht, Barthes' intensive
reading strategy in S/Z, and, influenced by Barthes and psycho­
analysis, the much-trumpeted Cahiers du Cinema symptomatic
reading of Ford's film Y o ung Mr Lincoln (Editors of Cahiers du
Cinema, 1972) .
The question then arises, as it does also for Althusser: what are
the mechanisms of subject formation? In both Althusser and Screen
theory the answer is to be found in the application of psychoana­
lytic concepts in general, and in the work of Lacan in particular. For
psychoanalysis, in its focus upon 'the extraordinary adventure
which from birth to the liquidation of the Oedipal phase trans­
forms a small animal conceived by a man and a woman into a small
human child' (Althusser, 1977: 189) , is no more (or less) than the
science that studies the basic formation of human subjects. And
although so much of the focus of psychoanalytic theory is upon the
earliest stages of that formation (Lacan's 'mirror stage'; the Oedipal
phase; etc.) the concepts which are developed in this context give
access to the later operations of the unconscious and to later
processes of subject constitution. It is this which gives rise to the
emerging strategy, already seen with Metz, of applying Lacan's
ideas metaphorically to the circumstances of film spectatorship. I
shall pick up that thread later, in Chapter 6. For the present, how­
ever, we must give a little more thought to the role of
psychoanalytic concepts in the further development of Screen
theory.
This is not easy. Lacan is famously difficult to understand, let
alone to summarize, and while it is one thing to recognize a prima
f a cie case for psychoanalytic concepts in examining subject forma­
tion, it is quite another to grasp the full detail of their application
when faced with the style in which Lacan typically presents his

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