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The Lacanian Gaze and the Role of theEye in Early German RomanticismVolker Langbehn

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To cite this article: Volker Langbehn (2005): The Lacanian Gaze and the Role of the Eye in EarlyGerman Romanticism, European Romantic Review, 16:5, 613-626

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European Romantic Review,Vol. 16, No. 5, December 2005, pp. 613–626

ISSN 1050–9585 (print)/ISSN 1740–4657 (online) © 2005 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/10509580500420506

The Lacanian Gaze and the Role of the Eye in Early German RomanticismVolker LangbehnTaylor and Francis LtdGERR_A_142033.sgm10.1080/10509580500420506European Romantic Review1050-9585 (print)/1740-4657 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis165000000December 2005VolkerLangbehnlangbehn@sfsu.edu

This essay traces the philosophical precursors of Lacan’s theory of the gaze back to thesemiotic theory of representation developed by the German philosopher Friedrich vonHardenberg (1772–1801), and his questions about the contours of the self or what happensto the self when it begins to seek consciousness of itself.

The field of “visuality” has become one of the central terrains of modern criticalthought. As Ian Heywood recently noted, “the past decade witnessed a veritable explo-sion of interest in the phenomenological, semiotic and hermeneutic investigation ofthe textures of visual experience.”1 While Heywood views this development withexcitement, and predicts many creative exchanges ahead, Craig Saper, on the otherhand, in evaluating the research on Jacques Lacan’s theory of the gaze, simplyconcludes, “[t]he gaze is in trouble. After enjoying many years as one of the most influ-ential concepts in film theory, it now seems to suffer repeated efforts to extend, reverse,or simply debunk its scope of explanation” (Saper 33). With the primary focus on filmtheory and questions of spectatorship, it should come as no surprise that Lacan’stheory of the gaze suffers under a certain degree of compartmentalization and manip-ulation.2 In following Heywood’s call for a more interdisciplinary approach to thestudy of “visuality,” and in response to Saper’s concern about the compartmentaliza-tion of the gaze, I will attempt to trace the philosophical precursors of Lacan’s theoryof the gaze. My focus will be the semiotic theory of representation of the Germanphilosopher Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), better known under the pseud-onym Novalis, and his questions about the contours of the self or what happens to theself when it begins to seek consciousness of itself. Novalis belonged to a group of writ-ers called the Jena Romantics that included Ludwig Tieck, the brothers Friedrich andAugust Wilhelm Schlegel, and the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher.3 This group

Correspondence to: Volker Langbehn, Department of German, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA94132, USA; email: langbehn@sfsu.edu

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contributed to a journal called the Athenäum and were active around the turn of thenineteenth century.

The purpose of this contribution to this essay collection is to make familiar to schol-ars of Lacan an author whose writings I consider a welcome addition and response toinquiries about subjectivity or questions of nonclosure. More importantly, Novalis’writings are particularly insightful regarding Lacan’s contention that the self is consti-tuted by its relationship to an other, with the experience of viewing oneself in a mirroras his primary image. Contemporary discussions about subjectivity or the crisis ofidentity tend to focus on its eruption at the end of the nineteenth century in the theo-ries of Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. However, specula-tions in German literature and philosophy about the self had already begun in the wakeof the Kantian revolution in which an unusually coherent and central interest in thepsychology of aesthetic response and the significance of fine art emerged. ImmanuelKant dispelled the notion of the subject as a self-present perceiving entity and set offdiscussions about the process of knowledge as taking place between the subject andobject, and its eventual (re)-creation of the object through representation. In the after-math of Kant, there was a continual and creative interchange between German poetsand philosophers, most notably among the early Romantics, the Schlegel brothers andNovalis that from a contemporary perspective appears to be impossible. A readerfamiliar with the German literary and philosophical tradition will immediately point toFriedrich Schelling, Johann G. Fichte, Georg Friedrich Hegel or the brothers Schlegelas important figures in the history of consciousness.4 Their cooperation produced anendless reexamination of the question of representation, a key term that remained atthe core of the discussions about consciousness and subjectivity.

Against this backdrop, David Levin’s examination of the history of vision serves asan excellent introduction into the different discourses of vision and for the study athand.5 In his study on the role of vision in the constitution of subjectivity, space andtime, David Levin observes that Descartes’s mode of vision inaugurates “the modernsciences and technology; and it could be argued that the Cartesian gaze is not a philos-opher’s fiction-that it not only exists, but actually, in today’s world, prevails” (96).Thus, Descartes’s “vision became the source of our historical paradigm of knowl-edge.”6 Having assumed a theoretical and instrumental characteristic, the nature of thegaze was to prioritize its “primordial ontological potential” over “its detached, dispas-sionate, theoretically disinterested power to survey, to compass, and calculate orcategorize with one sweep of a glance.”7 Following this development, the predominanttendency of Western Metaphysics in our understanding of vision was to privilegenotions such as permanence, constancy, substance or totalization. In the seventeenthcentury, seeing was equated with fitting every event into a scientific plan of nature. TheCartesian gaze altered the history of the subject as visionary being and grounded amodern ego-subject whose vision was “disembodied and essentially detached fromfeeling.”8 Establishing the primacy of the sight, whose superior status dates back to thesixteenth century, the modern subject, characterized through its body–mind split,becomes the incarnation of a fixed identity always in control manifesting the Cartesianego as a cogito dissociated from its embodiment.9

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Yet it is Heidegger, who, according to Levin, exposes the problematic of objectifica-tion of vision as theoretical and instrumental advanced by the Metaphysical tradition.In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Heidegger argues that“theory entraps objects in order, for the sake of representation, to secure those objectsand their coherence in the object-area of a particular science at a particular time” (179).Tracing the root meaning of the word “theory” to the Greek theorein, Heideggerobserves that theory refers to “the outward look, the aspect, in which something showsitself.”10 To theorize originally also meant “to look at something attentively, to look itover, to view it closely.”11 These findings allowed Heidegger to argue that “it followsthat theorein is…to look attentively on the outward appearance wherein whatpresences become visible and, through such sight—seeing—to linger with it.”12 In thetransition of theoria to the Latin contemplatio, Heidegger notes a paradigm shift whichhe describes as follows: “there comes to the fore the impulse, already prepared in Greekthinking, of a looking-at which sunders and compartmentalizes.”13 From there on, this“comes to the fore” degenerates into vision as a normative viewing or product andcalculation. Contemplatio lost its mediative quality by becoming, as Heidegger calls it,enframed, that is, rationalized and strictly calculative of which Hobbes, Locke orDescartes are some of the first representatives.

Without doubt, Levin’s precise account of the history of vision focuses on centralfigures in German philosophy: Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Unfortunately, Levin’saccount remains insufficient without considering the early Romantics, specifically theSchlegel brothers and Novalis. Like Heidegger, Novalis and the early Romantics respec-tively reacted to the metaphysics of objectivity when reflecting on what constitutessubjectivity. As I will demonstrate Novalis theory of representation supports the argu-ment that vision not only must be seen in connection with notions such as desire andidentification but also as a mode of reflection represented by the creative imagination.In view of Heidegger’s observation that vision as contemplatio lost its mediative quality,I will show that Novalis reintegrates the notion of contemplatio as “Betrachtung,” as aviewing propelled by desire, that subverts the ocularcentrism of the seventheeth- andeighteeth century. Novalis proposes the possibility to represent identity as both same-ness and difference. Any attempt to reflect about the self has to consider the image ofthe other.

As I have said, the end of the eighteenth century marks a profound shift in the under-standing of the subject as a self-present entity. In the history of consciousness, Kant’sKritik der reinen Vernunft (1781) undoubtedly symbolizes a milestone in discussions inGerman literature and philosophy about what constitutes subjectivity. Kant, forinstance, argues that the thinking self always has to guide its perceptions: “The state-ment: I think must be able to accompany all my perceptions” (136).14 For him, thesubject appears as unified and whole. With the unifying powers of perception andconception, the subject synthesizes its multifarious experiences and assumes controland self-determination: “I am aware of my identical self, in the face of the multiplicityof the impressions provided to my preceptive faculty, because I call them together myperceptions which make up one perception.”15 But as much as the Kantian subject gainsin agency and independence, it remains without direct access to objective reality

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because of the world being synthesized via its perception. How can the subject assumea sense of autonomy when simultaneously its experiences of the self derive fromperceptions?16

Johann G. Fichte responded to Kant’s obvious struggle to find an adequate answerto this question in his Schriften zur Wissenschaftslehre (1794).17 Pinpointing Kant’sdilemma, Fichte first maintained that the primacy of the Absolute Self consists in thevery act of positing itself, “Originally the I posits its own Being.”18 According to JochenSchulte-Sasse, this act of positing an other (non-I)—intentional objects or mentalimages (Vorstellungen)—is an absolute necessary precondition, it “precedes all indi-vidual thought and provides the foundation for identity and for thinking in identities”(Schulte-Sasse XIX). To prove the absolute power of the self, Fichte provides thesentence of identity A = A and by logical extension to the statement “I = I” (or “self” or“I”).19 For him, consciousness posits an entity other than itself against which it candefine and reflect itself: “The I originally posits its own self.”20 By positing the self asfinite, Fichte juxtaposes the finite or divided self to an equally finite and divided non-self. Thus, Fichte’s absolute self assumes an a priori status by way of being always alreadydefined by perceptions and by the always already existing division between subject andobject or I and non-I. The primary identity of the division between subject and objectprohibits any tracing of our perceptions to their origin and defers the answer to Kant’sdilemma of how authentic communication between the subject and object can takeplace. Fichte’s sentence of identity that simultaneously signifies sameness and other-ness, will become the departing point for Novalis and his theory of representation.21

I

In his Fichte-Studien (1795/96), fragments which were not published in his lifetime,Novalis challenges Fichte’s understanding of the term representation by asking, “HasFichte not placed everything in the self too arbitrarily?” (Novalis Werke, 2: 12, n5).22

According to Novalis, in Fichte’s sentence of identity, the self seems to represent onlythe self without considering the implicit limitations of the concept of representation:

We think of representation too much of that which represents …. We can easilyimagine the representation of the self–since everything is representation, any repre-sentation can easily be the material for another representation. (2: 166, n477)

Posing the problem of representation differently: if all representation entails theunmasterable task of making present what is not present, how can representation makepresence, or the subject, present to itself? If ideal representation seeks to re-presentpresence, it can do so only through indirect means such as symbols, words or images.Such argument would reveal that the belief in true, complete representation, andsubsequently, the idea of an absolute identity is a deception or illusion, since represen-tation always relies on objects that are constructions and are, therefore, not what theyrepresent. The impossibility of representing primary presence or truth to conscious-ness and the necessary development of strategies to trace and retrace the elusive natureof presence lies at the heart of Novalis’s theory of representation.

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For this reason, the early German Romantics and Novalis respectively, differentiatedbetween three different meanings of the notion of representation: Darstellung,Vorstellung, and Repräsentation. Darstellung and Vorstellung differ since, as Schlegelargues: “The inner vision can become clearer to itself and quite alive only throughexternal representation” (Schlegel Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, I.2: 306).23

Whereas Vorstellung points to an image or latent metaphor in the subject’s mind allud-ing to a visual poesis, Darstellung aspires to a material form, that is, figural representa-tion. Repräsentation, as Novalis observes, entails both the material and visual act ofmaking present allowing, for instance, poetry to represent the unrepresentable: “Allrepresentation is founded in representing presence—of non-presence and so on …”(Novalis Werke, 2: 661, n782). All three terms reveal an initial absence in the act ofmaking present. Hence, the significance of Darstellung lies in the act of invention andof creating what is not present. Schlegel’s view of romantic poetry as progessive, univer-sal poetry as expressed in the Athenäums-Fragment 116, stresses this aspect of theabsent presence: “The romantic kind of poetry is still in the state of becoming; that, infact, is its real essence: that it should forever be becoming and never be perfected”(Schlegel KA, I.2: 183). Thus literary representation is always fragmented and always ina state of becoming.

Using this differentiation as a point of reference to analyze the conditions for theproduction of meaning, Novalis situates Fichte’s theory of representation within alarger context of a semiotic theory. Calling his semiotic theory a theory of the sign,Novalis attempts to deal with the problem of representation via the medium oflanguage, a “Theory of the sign or what can be true through the medium language”(Werke 2: 12, n11). For him, representation means trying to capture the absent presentand, for that purpose, Novalis argued that only by examining the unstable relationbetween sign and symbol are we able to rid ourselves of the false belief of totalrepresentation:24

All superstition and error of all times … resides in mistaking the symbol for what itsymbolizes, in identifying them, in believing in true, complete representation, therelation between the image and the original. (2: 637, n 685)

The symbol is not identical with the thing symbolized and the original cannot transferits originality to an image. Subsequently, for Novalis, language has two distinct charac-ters. First, language is not referential but self-reflexive. Second, the image is a symbolitself, “Symbol of itself,” that is, neither allegory nor a foreign symbol, “not allegory—not a foreign symbol” (2: 352, n185). Novalis here questions the assumed mimeticnature of language and calls it an error in need to be dissolved. The polemic against thereferential character of language finds its precise elaboration in a short text called“Monologue:”

It’s quite a peculiar thing about speaking and writing; a proper conversation is a mereword-game. One can but marvel at the ridiculous error that people make in thinkingthat they speak about things. No one realizes the very particularity of language; that itis only concerned with itself …. If one could only make people understand that it iswith language as it is with mathematical formulas … (2: 438)

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For Novalis, two languages are at our disposal, and they cannot be confused or identi-fied with each other. On the one hand, Novalis refers to language as an instrument forutilitarian (referential, communicative) use, for expressing an idea which one has. Onthe other hand, there is the language of poetry, which is intransitive. This differentia-tion opens up another problem within intransitive language: “when one speaks merelyin order to speak, one gives voice to the most splendid, original truths” (2: 439).Novalis locates the problem within the speaker who remains caught in a paradox. Theexpressions that state only themselves are invested with meaning. But when a speakerseems to speak about nothing, s/he speaks the most. The lingering conflict resides inthe differentiation of the symbol. To reproduce visible forms is a false form of imita-tion. Imitation occurs simply due to the creation of linguistic entities that are coherentand self-contained.25 Mathematical formulae are part of nature, and do not designatenature in order to express it. Still, the question arises: why does Novalis elevate spokenlanguage when the speaker can speak of things only by not speaking about them? Doesthis imply that there is something of which the speaker is not aware? Novalis providesthe possible answer, by proposing what we would now call the linguistic nature of theunconscious:

But what if I had to speak? And this compulsion to speak were a sign of the inspirationof language, of the effectiveness of language in me? And what if my will only wantedwhat I were compelled to do, then this could, without my knowing and believing it,be poetry after all, and could make a secret of language understandable? (2: 439;additional emphasis)

The language of the unconscious speaks through Novalis. For Novalis, “the true poet isalways a priest” and is not aware that as speaking subject, he is the subject of his utter-ances, of language itself (2: 260, n75). What now is the secrecy of poetry? Novalisresponds, if he could provide an answer then he would be the true artist, “and so Iwould be called to be a writer” (2: 439). The secrecy of poetry lies in the writer as theperson animated by language, “for what is a writer, but a man inspired by language”(2: 439). Language uses the writer, or to speak with Freud and Lacan, the language ofthe unconscious is the poetic inspiration.26 The magic of linguistic signification origi-nates in the unconscious, which animates the thinking of the speaker.

In his “The Universal Brouillon” Novalis provides further evidence of my reading byarguing that we can only comprehend the self through linguistic representation:

[PSYCH[OLOGY] AND ENCYCLOP[EDISTICS]. A thing only becomes intelligiblethrough representation … one understands something most easily when one sees itrepresented. Thus, one understands the I only insofar as it is represented by the Non-I. The Non-I is the symbol of the I, and its sole purpose is to serve the I’s understand-ing of itself. One understands the Non-I similarly, that is, only insofar as it isrepresented by the I, which becomes its symbol. (2: 478, n49)

There is no self-recognition without representation. It is possible only when the “I”experiences itself as something other than itself, the “non-I.” Symbolic representationof the “non-I” enables the subject to experience itself as self. The symbolic “non-I”thus anchors subjectivity through the figurality of representation. The positing of

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subjectivity (self-consciousness) in turn provides the possibility of comprehending the“non-I” through the symbolic representation of the “I.” Self-consciousness means therepresentation of the “I” through the externalization of the sign. As my explication ofthe “Monologue” shows, the externalization of the sign relies on the linguisticmechanism of the mind.

Throughout his writings, Novalis refers to psychology, using words such as desire,drive, dream, dream association, and soul, so I consider it appropriate to read Novalisthrough the writings of Freud or Lacan. A Freudian/Lacanian reading of this passagesuggests that the dialectic of the language of consciousness and the unconsciousconstitutes Novalis’ concept of subjectivity. The language of the unconscious prefig-ures self-consciousnes through the dream-work. For this reason, words are the indirectrepresentation of the language of the unconscious seeking to be deciphered, “Wordsand sounds are true images and expressions of the soul. A deciphering art. The soulconsists of pure vowels and inverted ones etc.” (2: 705, n1044). When one expressesoneself, words surface through the interpretation of the dream-work, the process ofdisplacement and condensation.27

To stress the power of the linguistic representation, Novalis proceeds to contend thatthe other of the self is a sign created by the I, “the necessity of the reference of a sign toa signified must lie in a signifier” (2: 13, n11). The self as signifying agent stands in adialectical relationship with the sign and the signified. Moreover, the first signifying selfselects from the second signifying agent communicating signs: “The first signifier thushas found an original schema in the second signifier—and accordingly it chooses thesigns that will be communicated” (2: 14, n11). But the second signifying agent experi-ences a limitation in its selection, since it only justifies itself through its necessity for thefirst sign: “The second signifier is free only insofar as it is necessary, and conversely, itis only necessary insofar as it is free” (2: 14, n11). Novalis continues by asking how thefirst signifying self is able to recognize the first schema as the pool for its signs, andanswers: “The first signifier will have painted its first own image, unperceived, in themirror of reflection” (2: 15, n11). The mirror image displays the first signifying self asits own representation located in the second. If the objects of consciousness interact asposited signs without restrictions, then the determination of the signified derives fromthe two signifying agents. There is no primordial absolute identity. The self is alwayssplit and cannot posit a non-self.28

Novalis and, in this instance also Schlegel restate this conclusion when speaking ofthe finite and infinite. Schlegel constantly brings out the fragmentary structure ofconsciousness: “The actual contradiction in the self is that we experience ourselves asfinite and infinite simultaneously” (KA XII: 192). The paradox of consciousness culmi-nates in the desire of the “I” to search for the “Non-I” as Novalis puts it. However, thesearch is in vain because of “a void in our Being,” and this is precisely the point of theearly Romantics (KA XII: 192). If the “I” finds itself, then it puts itself into the serviceof totality. Only the symbolic representation of the “non-I” avoids the problem ofpossible closure and succeeds in bridging this void.

Nonetheless, the primary interest of Novalis’ philosophy was to restore language toits poetic beauty and its true function. The self-referentiality of language led Novalis to

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dismiss any claims to mimetic representation, “the new principle of imitation ofnature./Realization of deception” (Novalis Werke, 2: 476, n38). All representation ofnature is symbolic in origin, obeying the law of the signifier. Novalis stresses the auton-omy of the signifier, the self-sufficiency of language as a differential system of signifiers.Poetic language focuses on the uninterrupted act of symbolization. Symbolic represen-tation must be made possible by way of indirect representation, thereby reaching theapproximate truth about poetic language. For that reason, Novalis introduces figuresand tropes such as the arabesque, irony, and allegory, as challenges to the notion oftotal representation. The Romantic notion of representation hinges upon allegory asthe contingent sign eliciting endless reflection. This process of reflection, initiated bydesire, strives for the unity of the sign in the reflecting consciousness. The desire for the“truth,” as the epistemological necessity, is always an approximation and correlates towhat Lacan in Écrits refers to as the sliding of the signifier in a quilting or nodal point:29

PSYCH[OLOGY]. All … drive or incentive can only be satiated by means of an infi-nite series of fixed actions…it is the eternal driving force of infinite, limited changes.(Novalis Werke, 2: 543, n378)

The impossibility of satisfying desire suggests non-closure, the inability of the strivingsubject to express finitude. The self experiences an absence, or “eternal lack” inciting achange through free catenation of ideas about the self (2: 181). In place of an absoluteending, the prolonged stimulation instigates a series of interruptions and displace-ments: “For every reflection presupposes another; it is an act of rupturing” (2: 112,n300). This serial suspension posits absence as an imaginary (surrogate) teleologicalpoint. Novalis underscores these breaks and caesuras as the perpetuation of mutualconditioning knowing that the self has forsaken the possibility being a self-containedintegral subject.30

II

I have said that through its entry into language, the speaking subject belongs to thedomain of the symbolic order. Self-apprehension, i.e., the attainment of subjectivity,unfolds only through the intervention of signification. My argument centered aroundthe observation that the ego-formation primarily receives its energy through a notionof desire that resulted from an experience of lack. This means that the functional statusof language ceases to be proper of speech. Thus far, I have focussed on Novalis’s semi-otic theory alluding to its affinities to Lacan’s understanding of language. Challengingfurther the self-sameness of the Fichtean world, Novalis presents another layer of argu-ment regarding the fragile primacy of the Absolute Self.

In introducing a vision-centered understanding of the self, Novalis suggests that theother outside the self indeed exists. Vision, that is, the eye assumes a central role in theformation of the self, and it is this aspect I would like to pursue further by delineatingNovalis’s theory of the gaze in his discussion of an absolute identity in his studies onFichte in that both perceive the eye as playing a central role in the representation of the‘I.’ My goal at this point is to delineate two modes of imagination. While the imaginary

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experience as a visual experience sets in motion identificatory mechanisms to experi-ence wholeness and unity, the visionary experience grants our perception of the self thepossibility of experiencing the self as desire or what the Romantics called creativeimagination. The creative imagination serves as a modus operandi to reflect about whatNovalis’ pursued as “What do we understand by “the I?” (2: 12, n5).

As I seek to demonstrate that it is precisely the desire of the Other that proves theopposite because it also at the same time acts as a form of creative imagination. Thusdesire appears as conscious desire between a logical order manifested in the linguisticstructuring of our psyche and as the desire to break with this established order of think-ing through the preexisting network of signification. The experience of the fragmentarynature of our Being and the subsequent desire to fill this gap by exposing the absentpresence, and our wish to locate the mechanisms of condensation and displacement,requires a consciousness propelled through the desire of the Other and, thereby, inaugu-rates two modes of “imagination” and “imaginary”.31

For Novalis, the creative imagination anchored in the visionary experience of the selfassumes a pivotal role in his critique of Fichte’s sentence of identity. According to him,the creative imagination acts as a means for the modern subject to construct itselfobjectively to itself through an “imaginary division and unification” and becomes asubject by this very same act (2: 8, n1). The self depends on the other, as it posits itselfthrough the imagination: “We leave the identical in order to represent it” (2: 8, n1). Inthis process, the creative imagination activates a thinking about the paradoxes inherentin the construction of our subjectivity. The “I” can only imagine its identity as amomentary sign that necessarily expresses non-identity, it imagines its otherness, “Selfthrough a Non-Self” (2: 56, n97). Creative imagination is the reflection upon the divi-sion of the “I”. The subject is split into self and other in which the imagination servesas the movement that reflects upon the differentiation and unity of the “I.” It is theparadoxical simultaneity of wholeness and division, “dividing—unifying” (2: 10, n2)and of sameness and otherness, “The true divided individual is also the true individual”(2: 692, n952). Accordingly, the retroactive construction of the subject breaks down theopposition between the real I and the ideal-I and marks the imaginary experience as aprecondition for the development of consciousness.

Consciousness, and thus knowledge, occurs as the subject begins to reflect uponitself and with the recognition of it being split. Whence consciousness is the represen-tative of the other as posited object within the self. The word “represent” herereceives a different understanding. Now consciousness does not mean the depictionor portrayal of the subject but rather it is the subject’s representative or stand-in.Hence, the subject mirrors itself as an image of otherness because “It alternates imageand self. The image is always the reverse of the self” 2: 47, n63). The ‘I/eye’ sees the Ias an image or substitute of otherness that is a specular image of the self: “The view-ing self becomes its own specular self” (2: 47, n63). The recognition of this image ofitself as separate from itself is the consciousness of the split as self and other.32 Therelationship of reflection between subject and itself as an object is a visual one. It isthe desire to create a world of images reflecting images of the self to itself over andover again in a specular fashion. The visualization of the imagination here suggests

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the construction of a visual fantasy world. At the same time, the viewing of the worldthrough images manifests a source of increased differentiation since the images of theworld are always tied to the linguistic representation. If consciousness as reflectionproceeds as an infinite process of making images in the mind, and thus cementingLacan’s law of the signifier, Novalis’s notion of subjectivity is one of continuousmotion. If imagination is the precondition for consciousness, then consciousness isneither fixed nor stable, but rather an endless series of images of otherness initiatedthrough the dialectic of conscious thought and the unconscious. For Novalis,therefore, identities are unbounded and fluid. For him, truth claims disappear as theimagination reveals the codes of finite knowledge and causes the borders of our iden-tities to fluctuate.

Accordingly, in response to Fichte’s sentence of identity A = A, Novalis identifiesrepresentation of consciousness outside of the self, “a self outside of the self in the self”(2: 10, n2). The other of consciousness is an image of the self, “an image of the self inthe self itself” (2: 10, n2). Therefore, there can be no unification of consciousness, sincethe image of the self represents something outside of the self. Through the specularrepresentation of the I, Novalis posits the existence of an “eye.” Of the eye, Novaliswrites, “The eye is the speech organ of the feeling” (2: 233, n101). The analytical selfliterally posits the eye as the seeing of the other: “It posits itself for itself, by positing animage of its justification producing therefore the action of its justification” (2: 46, n53).The eye enables the analytical self to experience a synthetic character and sets up amirror of reality in which the synthetic self is able to look at itself: “The synthetic selfviews the analytical self” (2: 47, n63). As a result, representation implies first a split, andthen a synthesis. And it is precisely at this threshold where Novalis foreshadows Lacansince representation implies a split and then a synthesis. Like Lacan, Novalis developsa theory of the gaze that is characterized by the split between the eye and the gaze, inwhich the drive is manifested at the level of the scopic field.

Nonetheless, the mirror image of the self experiences another twist. The abovereconstruction suggests that the reflexive self-consciousness never succeeds in bridgingthe split between reflected and reflecting self, but rather ends up potentiating the selfand postponing absolute identity. Novalis admits that a divided self cannot reflexivelycatch itself, “can never be caught by itself” (2: 36, n41). This argument reveals that in areflexive mode, self-identity is impossible to achieve, and thus introduces into theconsciousness of the self an irreducible lack. Still, Novalis continous to desire an abso-lute sphere of being in which “highest representation of the incomprehensible issynthesis” and “positing of contradiction as non-contradiction” (2: 16, n12). ForNovalis, the absolute I entails both a sphere in which the I and the non-I maintain theirdifference and a locale for overcoming the differences. And it is precisely at this pointwhere the imagination gains its significance. The imagination hovers in the sphere ofthe absolute I, both destabilizing the subject and simultaneously moving the subjecttoward wholeness: “I-ness or productive imagination, the hovering—determines,produces the extremes, that between which is hovered” (2: 177, n555). As a transcen-dent point, the absolute I fulfills the role of the desired object, a point for which thesubject strives for through the imagination but never suceeds in reaching it. Fully aware

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of this impossibility, Novalis argues, “The absolute which is given to us can only berecognized negatively, in that we act and find that through no deed can we reach thatwhich we seek” (2: 181, n566). Although the positing of an absolute I appears torelegate Novalis back to idealist thought since the absolute I presupposes the acknowl-edgment of an a priori point of wholeness, he introduces the reader to another layer inthe constitution of the self.

III

Despite these apparent similarities between the Romantic’s and Lacan and their under-standing of the gaze, their projects, however, are ultimately not compatible.33 Novalisoperated from within the assumption that there is such thing as an absolute sphere.Following the dialectic of the absolute I or synthetic self, which he equated with God,and the analytical self, defined as a person, Novalis maintained an absolute reciprocityin which the analytical self strives infinitely toward God. At the basis of this enterprise,however, Novalis necessitates the possibility of positing the self as absolute agency.Placed within the idea of thesis and antithesis, the self upholds the distinction betweensubject and object. Put differently, only by means of acknowledging its center, the selfis able to draw the conclusion of I = Non-I.

Novalis’s search for this transcendent point clearly stands in opposition to Lacan’sunderstanding of the self and the other. Lacan rejects the possibility for any transcen-dent point. The “I” always remains caught in the imaginary and symbolic order.Whereas Novalis advocated a locale for overcoming differences, Lacan abandons suchan Archimedian point and dualism, and instead focuses on the problematic inscrip-tions of consciousness by addressing the symptoms of our Being. In so doing, heattempts to reveal the mechanisms of unconscious thought processes. While Novalis’sdiscussion of Fichte’s A = A seeks the absolute I which in its final thought would beGod, and thus proceeds from the idea of a unity of the self in the first place, Lacanrejects the possibility of unity and wholeness or any desire to strive to become one self;rather because of the experience of lack, the subject attempts to bridge this lack byidentifying with the Other, such as God. Thus, from a Lacanian perspective, Novalis’sstriving for the absolute self would be the ultimate expression of the interpellativeforces of the imaginary and symbolic order and a symptom of lack.

Nonetheless, my reading of Novalis revealed that in the search of Lacan’s precursorsto his theory of the gaze one inevitably has to consider the history of consciousness.Novalis assumes a central role in discussions about the visual experience as an occasionfor self-reflexive inquiries focussing on the relationship between the gaze and theconstitution of subjectivity. Novalis’s specular conception of consciousness, knowl-edge and identity is a response to the ocularcentrism of metaphysical discourse. Whenassessing Novalis contribution to contemporary discussions about visuality, especiallyLacan’s theory of the gaze, then his many insights amounts to what David Levinconcludes in his essay “Keeping Foucault and Derrida in Sight: Panopticism and thePolitics of Subversion”: “Having understood the necessity of a critique of the meta-physics of presence …” Novalis recasts “… the visionary subject—an individual, a

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group, or an institution of the state—accept[ing] a different relationship to presenceand absence, the visible and the invisible, and the framing of the ground, within thefields of its exercise” (Levin 401).

Notes

[1] See Heywood and Sandywell.[2] For a stimulating contrast with focus on cultural and historical interpretations of the gaze, see

Brennan and Jay.[3] For an overview of the Jena Romantics, see Schulte-Sasse’s essay “The Concept of Literary

Criticism in German Romanticism, 1795–1810”.[4] Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762), a German philosopher, was the first in the history of

consciousness who reintroduced the word aesthetics from the Greek. The word aesthetics itselfalready indicates its significance to Lacan’s thinking. In his excavation of the word, Baumgartenpreserved the actual reference contained in the Greek root that influenced thinkers to come.He regarded aesthetics as the whole science of knowledge as it is gained through the senses:cognitionis sensitivae.

[5] See also my discussion of visuality in the writings of postwar German writer Arno Schmidt.[6] Levin 97.[7] Levin 98.[8] Levin 125.[9] See also Donald Lowe.

[10] Heidegger 163.[11] Heidegger 163.[12] Heidegger 163.[13] Heidegger 166.[14] All translations from Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft are mine unless indicated otherwise.[15] Kant 138.[16] Slavoj [Zcaron] i[zcaron] ek pinpoints Kant’s paradox when arguing, that “[t]he fundamental paradox of

symbolic fictions is therefore that, in one and the same move, they bring about the “loss ofreality” and provide the only possible access to reality: true, fictions are a semblance whichoccludes reality, but if we renounce fictions, reality itself dissolves” (91).

[17] All translations from Fichte’s Schriften zur Wissenschaftslehre are mine unless indicated other-wise.

[18] Fichte 70.[19] Fichte 66.[20] Fichte 72.[21] See also Mary Strand. Her book serves as an excellent contribution to discussions about the

affinities between the early German Romantics and contemporary theories dealing with theconstitution of subjectivity.

[22] All translations from Novalis Fichte-Studien of the Werke in drei Bänden are mine unless indi-cated otherwise. Abbreviated here as Werke.

[23] All translations from Schlegel from the Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe are mine unlessindicated otherwise. Abbreviated here as KA.

[24] See Azade Seyhan 28.[25] See also Seyhan 88.[26] cf. Kristin Pfefferkorn, esp. 60–74.[27] Although Novalis articulates the subordination of the subject to the signifier and resembles

contemporary semiotic theories, he does not remain without contradictions. For instance, inhis studies of Fichte, the subject retains some control by the power to form signs. For adetailed account of this contradiction see Elizabeth Mittmann and Mary Strand.

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[28] Winfried Menninghaus observes: “Zwei Motivationen treffen hier zusammen: dieZurückweisung eines, mit Derrida zu reden, transzendentalen Signifikats und dieErschließung des selbstreflexiven Spiels des Sprachsystems in sich” (Menninghaus 82).

[29] Lacan 154.[30] See also Alice Kuzniar 81–85.[31] Manfred Frank stresses this point in his reading of Lacan, yet his explanation that “for in

order to be misapprehension, consciousness would first of all have to be consciousness”ignores Lacan’s emphasis of the always already implicated subject into the symbolic orderbefore speaking about consciousness (Frank 314).

[32] This act of reflection is also known as the ordo inversus rule. For a detailed account seeManfred Frank’s Einführung in die Frühromantische Ästhetik, esp. 248-261.

[33] See also Mary Strand 19.

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Baumgartner et al. Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1997.Frank, Manfred. What is Neostructuralism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988.Frank, Manfred. Einführung in die Frühromantische Ästhetik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989.Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row,

1977.Heywood, Ian and Sandywell, Barry. “Introduction. Explorations in the hermeneutics of vision.”

Interpreting Visual Culture. Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual. Ed. Ian Heywoodand Barrry Sandywell. London: Routledge, 1999. ix–xviii.

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Pfefferkorn, Kristin. Novalis: A Romantic’s Theory of Language and Poetry. New Haven, CT: Yale UP,1988.

Saper, Craig. “A Nervous Theory: The Troubling Gaze of Psychoanalysis in Media Studies.” Diacritics21.4 (1991): 33–52.

Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. “The Concept of Literary Criticism in German Romanticism, 1795-1810.” AHistory of German Literary Criticism, 1730-1980. Ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl. Lincoln, NE: U ofNebraska P, 1988. 99–177.

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Schlegel, Friedrich. Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Ed. Ernst Behler et al. Vol. 1.2. Munich:Schoening, 1958.

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[Zcaron] i[zcaron] ek, Slavoj. Tarrying with the Negative. Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology. Durham, NC:Duke UP, 1993.

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