TY - JOUR
T1 - Augustine in contexts
T2 - Lacan's repetition of a scene from the confessions
AU - Barzilai, Shuli
PY - 1997
Y1 - 1997
N2 - Jacques Lacan never seems to exhaust the full significance of a brief scenario from Saint Augustine's Confessions: 'I have myself seen jealousy in a baby and know what it means. He was not old enough to talk, but, whenever he saw his foster-brother at the breast, he would grow pale with envy' (Bk. 1, Ch. 7). References to the anecdote appear in Lacan's writings from The Family Complexes (1938) to Encore (1973). He repeatedly asserts its exemplary representation of the emergence of human consciousness. But why Augustine's 'Vide ego ...' elicited and sustained his attention over so many years presents a riddle. My examination of the privileged status of this scenario of sibling jealousy takes several factors into account: the specific content of the passage, its wider context in the Confessions, and its contextualization in Lacan's writings. Moreover, in addition to the theoretical relevance of Augustine's exemplum, it may also read as a substantive screen memory that, for Lacan, resonates with diverse personal significances.
AB - Jacques Lacan never seems to exhaust the full significance of a brief scenario from Saint Augustine's Confessions: 'I have myself seen jealousy in a baby and know what it means. He was not old enough to talk, but, whenever he saw his foster-brother at the breast, he would grow pale with envy' (Bk. 1, Ch. 7). References to the anecdote appear in Lacan's writings from The Family Complexes (1938) to Encore (1973). He repeatedly asserts its exemplary representation of the emergence of human consciousness. But why Augustine's 'Vide ego ...' elicited and sustained his attention over so many years presents a riddle. My examination of the privileged status of this scenario of sibling jealousy takes several factors into account: the specific content of the passage, its wider context in the Confessions, and its contextualization in Lacan's writings. Moreover, in addition to the theoretical relevance of Augustine's exemplum, it may also read as a substantive screen memory that, for Lacan, resonates with diverse personal significances.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=63849280777&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/litthe/11.2.200
DO - 10.1093/litthe/11.2.200
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AN - SCOPUS:63849280777
SN - 0269-1205
VL - 11
SP - 200
EP - 221
JO - Literature and Theology
JF - Literature and Theology
IS - 2
ER -