Divergent Reveiw: Reading Beatrice/Tris Through Lacan's Mirror Stage

Beatrice at mirror in Abnegation gif

Beatrice gets her hair trimmed the second day of every third month. At that time she may look in the mirror for a minute or so. That's FOUR times a year she gets to see her image in a mirror, from the chest up.

Beatrice at Mirror at Abnegation

Beatrice entering aptitude test room sneaking a look at herself

Tori: What's with Abnegation and mirrors.
Beatrice: We reject vanity.
Tori: Yes, I know. Sit down.

Here's a clip of that scene with commentary by director 
Neil Burger

So now you have seen that she lies in the chair and looks to her left that is a mirror, seeing herself. She gets up, walks over and sees herself standing for the first time - that is 

her entire physical body for the first time, not just from her chest up for a few seconds.

She gestures by raising her right hand as her image mirrors her in the mirror.

Reading through Lacan's Mirror Stage:

This EVENT takes place at six months usually. The mother plays with her baby in front of the mirror as the baby experiences an image that also waves its arms, jiggles its legs, moves in the excitement of its image, before words, before walking, before experiencing any SELF. 

Jacques Lacan

Beatrice - and Tobias and Caleb - have never experienced the Mirror Stage in the development of the SELF - the ego.

Beatrice has experienced herself as not selfless enough for Abnegation. She doesn't fit in. She doesn't belong.

How is it possible to feel or be selfless if you don't have a self.

Caleb fakes it by assuming a false self.

Tobias constructs a self at Dauntless.

A ZEN story:

A student goes to the zen master wanting to lose his ego.

ZEN master: First bring me an ego to lose.

___________________________________________________________________

"This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject." (Lacan ECRITS)

Lacan likens the EVENT to Kohler's Aha! of the ape grasping the stick to get the banana, the beginning moment of intelligence.

The moment as GESTALT!

____________________________________________________________________________

Beatrice has just experienced herself completely in the mirror then looks to her left, where she is multiplied into infinity.

This is an EVENT!

For Beatrice it has never occurred until the Aptitude Test when she experiences the 

EVENT of the Mirror Stage,

which sheds its light on the formation of the I  the Imago that ancient term - as experienced in psychoanalysis. (p.118 Ecrits)

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

Turning to the left she sees herself multiplied into infinity and turning around again multiplied.

And there are multitudes of images of Beatrice. 
To echo the Walt Whitman quote, "I am multitudes." 
That there is no one person you are. There are changes and they can be made.

Turning around behind her to respond to the command "Choose"

Choose (Now we have had 3 Beatrices)

Beatrice says, "Tell me." She doesn't understand. Choose what as she looks at the luscious raw steak and shiny knife on the pedestal surface.
"Choose before it's too late."
And then it is too late as the growling ferocious dog comes at her and she looks at the now empty pedestal tables. She has missed her chance by refusing to choose.

But how can one choose between options if there is no SELF to do the choosing?

Now she must respond to the simulation - aptitude test - with her instincts, responding to what occurs. Trusting herself to choose now since she is alone with the situation in the simulation. Only now does she experience a self that responds instinctively, rather than complying obediently to demands.

As the multiple ferocious dogs get ready to attack multitple Beatrices, Beatrice assumes the position of satyagraha - passivity in the face of violence. At this moment all the multiples disappear and there is just one Beatrice who now responds in multiple ways to the problems in the Simulation. At this moment Beatrice experiences a SELF who chooses, and who chooses instinctively. 
In a few moments Beatrice has embraced the entire Mirror Stage.

In other words we have TWO egos (at least), if you will. Or rather an unexplainable, pre-linguistic core of a bodily and mental and emotional self that has no words to define it. Just a GESTALT. Identity is irrelevant here. And on this "self" is built the social self, our many identifications, our tweaking of it to present ourselves to our world, our presented and performative self to others.

Exiting from the simulation Tori tells her she must trust herself. The test didn't work on her, she is divergent.

She leaves the building and on the way home sees some "factionless" outside rummaging through the dumpsters. A woman is there that she looks at. For the first time Beatrice sees the Other as a person, not a nameless outcast. And the factionless woman turns, knowing that she is not only being looked at, but that Beatrice SEES her, and she feels shame, quietly walking away from her gaze.

At home she will reflect Caleb's questioning of her result in the test by inverting his question,
"What were your results?"
And Caleb smiles.
Beatrice has felt her SELF and its will to know/power
She will continue questioning at the dinner table.

The infant repeats the Mirror Stage up until 18 months and then tires of it. The chimp tires of it almost immediately as the mirror is empty.
Beatrice repeats it during dinner at home as she turns her spoon over and regards her face in the curved reflection of her spoon. 

Lacan discusses the non-verbal, pre-verbal imago as the unalterable core of the self before all social identifications are piled on top of it, obscuring it to our knowing, enabling us to forget it.
And this is where Lacan brings in the concept, that again ancient concept, of
THE DOUBLE. THE SHADOW. The reflection in the mirror

Reading through Baudrillard-LINK Beatrice will encounter her DOUBLE as Tris, when in a life threatening situation, during her fearscape. She is not alienated, as we are, from her DOUBLE, but converses with it as primitive cultures do.
This isn't real.

Returning to Lacan, the SELF in The Mirror Stage begins to repeat and to imitate others, building up with social identifications a social or second self. Beatrice after entering Dauntless begins by observing how others are running down the stairs, climbing to the platform, getting on the train, jumping off onto the roof.
Copying the others.

And then comes the moment, the EVENT for Beatrice. 

Eric: Who's it gonna be?
Beatrice: Me.

And Beatrice climbs clumsily up on the ledge, gathers her courage, and she jumps first.
Upon landing in the net, Four lifting her out and suggesting a new name, she becomes 
TRIS

She has condensed the Mirror Stage into 2 days.
She now begins the journey of building a social self in Dauntless where she will meet her Double a number of times.
First in warning in fearscapes, then in joy as she "flies" down the zipline and sees herself reflected in the windows of the buildings, 

lastly when expecting to be shot, in acquiescence, at her moment of impending death. The Double appears at the moment of Death. Her Double is silent as she looks at her reflection in a puddle of water as Narcissus did.

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that psychoanalysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

REVIEW DIVERGENT: A Leap Into the Unknown:

Beatrice and Her Family - Abnegation Dinner

This dinner scene is that of a simple, more or less religious family quietly eating their dinner. Sort of pre-bourgeois. Not unlike eating dinner with an Amish family here in the Ozarks. Conversation is limited, and the focus is on the meal and eating, then carrying the plates to be washed.There is the Foucauldian Grid in Abnegation, The Matrix, a Dominating Discourse, a standard of Normality within the Grid of Power/Knowledge.

Agnes Martin Painting

The control in Abnegation is by repression: Inscription of the Body; censoring of words and gestures, actions of selflessness, etc. It is irreversible, accumulative, metastasis 
Foucault doesn't want to talk about repression: but what else is that slow, brutal infection of the mind through sex, whose only equivalent in the past was infection through the soul (see Nietzsche - the infection through sex is nothing anyway but the historical and mental reversal of the infection through the soul under the sign of materialist parousia!) (Baudrillard - Forget Foucault p.44)

Dauntless - First Night in Cafeteria After Dinner 

Here is Tris happy at last. For the moment.

From the constraints of Abnegation and its confinement of body/mind she jumps into Dauntless, a facsimile of ancient Sparta, with its communal life of living at the edge. Living, not surviving as she was in Abnegation. A life of inversion.

Dauntless Manifesto:

We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 

And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Dauntless never give up.

Only life pushed to the limit, to moments that escaped the system of equivalence, could render power powerless. 

Giving one's life away - a counter-gift - was the only present that couldn't be reciprocated.

Baudrillard in Forget Foucault p. 15

Tris will be more Dauntless than the Dauntless. 

Hyper-Dauntless; 

She gives the gift, following the ideology to its final consequences: 

Death

Dauntless can only respond with the counter-gift and if not then it must commit suicide. The Symbolic Order must be obeyed.

FOUR

Dauntless has given Four the gift of life. He now has an unpayable debt. The counter-gift must be repayed (not right away but it must be repayed) and it must be greater than the gift. Four's counter-gift is the destruction of Dauntless. The Death of Dauntless. 

Leading to the Death of the faction system.

He will lose Four, his identity as Four, his self, his everything that made him so exceptionally Four.

Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Be very careful about the life you save.

DIVERGENT: Reading Tris as a Nietzschean Revolutionary Through Baudrillard's Forget Foucault

Power/Knowledge are in a Functional Relation Known as the Foucauldian Grid- The Matrix

Power does not come from the top down. It is not something you can have, take, give away, barter, lose, share or anything else of that order. Power comes from below, through the interstices of the Foucauldian Grid. It seeps from below and we see Beatrice caught in that, being denied her "will to know."

Agnes Martin Grid Painting 

Foucault advocates applying resistance pressure locally where it can be most effective. Of course, power does the same.

Jeanine is fusing the power of Dauntless with the Knowledge of Erudite
She is fusing the power/knowledge Foucauldian Grid which will keep the system static

Don't get me wrong. There is a certain beauty in your resistance. But we cannot afford that beauty. Each person in their faction must submit their independent will to their faction, for our peaceful coexistence.

And this is what constrains Beatrice. She rebels in a passive/aggressive way to the pressure of power. Her brother Caleb corrects her, restrains her, introduces her to Jeanine, tells her she is wrong about Abnegation and generally controls her. Her movements are restrained as a child when she wants to run with Dauntless. Her father warns her to be careful at the dinner table. She generally exists in a bourgeois family environment eating dinner together with restrained conversation, preparing meals, dressing so as to limit her freedom of movement. 

She has grown up and lives in the Grid of Abnegation, its Dominating Discourse of language and action.

To jump or not to jump nor reason why

Tris jumps into the abyss

Where there is power, there is resistance. - Foucault

Foucault Straddling the Chasm

Baudrillard has said Foucault does not go far enough. He straddles the abyss. He does not push to excess, extremes to collapse the system. (Following Nietzsche) He does not push to the edge of the abyss and then over.

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: 

how else could you become new, if you had not first 

become ashes? - Thus Spake Zarathustra

This is what Tris does.

Tris is becoming the best Dauntless she can be. 

Tris is exemplifying Zizek's prescription for breaking the system.

 One embraces the 

idealistic pronouncements and works to make them surface, to become reality, to truly 

be what they are. 

She is excessively Dauntless in challenging each event as it escalates.

Dauntless Manifesto

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
• Dauntless never give up.

Where Caleb - eating from the trashcan of ideology -  observed the everyday prescriptions of behavior for Abnegation -  which Zizek would label as Abnegation Lite -  Beatrice sullenly complied when she had to. But her will to know was stifled. She could not grow in that environment. She wanted MORE!

Tris is more Dauntless than Dauntless. Worse as Nietzsche says. And in excessively being an excessive Dauntless, Dauntless is imploded and the entire system along with it. 

This is what Edward Snowden has done with his over-identification with the ideology of the United States of America. 

A lot is imploding all around us now.

Now Cody Wilson has come along to take it to excess and implode it.

http://youtu.be/g5fhBBipU3w

DIVERGENT REVIEW:Eric and PC Feminism

Jai Courtney as Eric

Reading Eric through Zizek

We see Eric first on the roof asking for a first jumper into Dauntless. Beatrice says, "Me." As she walks up to the wall Eric's face is not pleased but neither is he showing his displeasure that an Abnegation girl is going to go first. He is displeased though. Very much so.

Beatrice hesitates and Eric says, "Today initiate." And she gathers her courage and jumps.

The first fight between the transferred initiates is when Eric pairs The First Jumper (Tris) with The Last Jumper (Molly). Now we see how smart he really is. I said smart, not wise.

Without getting into a psychological swamp here - too deep anyway - reading through Jung we now know by this sentence that Molly is afraid of allowing herself to fall. She is then going to over-compensate by being physically strong and intimidating and in this instance cruel and sadistic. Right at the end of her beating up Tris we see Eric give her a subtle nod and she pounds the side of Tris's head and knocks her out. 

Jung's psychological theory can be used against someone as well as to help them. This is the continental philosophical position on the uselessness and danger of theory. Any theory can be turned against you.

She is then ranked next to last for losing.

We see a young woman being treated as "equal" with no allowances made for her being a woman and paired against another woman. All very PC Feminist according to the books. Eric is observing the rules while he stacks the fight against Tris. 

This is how it is done ladies. All the laws and rules will never help you while this goes on. We have surface compliance acting as a mask for a deeper deception. And Eric is planning this. He cannot be faulted in terms of Feminist political correctness.

Tris uses parrhesia to call Eric on his punishment of Al. 

"Anyone can stand in front of a target. It doesn't prove anything," says Tris

Dauntless ideology: 

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Eric tells her to take Al's place, same rules. Flinch and you're out. So Tris is challenged into an act of Parrhesia. This was the risk she took, among others.

Tris stares into Four's eyes without flinching even when nicked.

Eric: "Points for bravery Stiff but not as many as you lost for what you said. We make soldiers here, not rebels. Watch yourself."

And then Eric will treat Tris as more equal than equal.

Four is angry, telling her to be smart. Tris goes to the dorms where her friends cheer her for her bravery in standing up to Eric and being the only one brave enough to do so. This is how people become scapegoats. They say what everyone else is feeling and thinking but are afraid to say. Eric knows this and has her fight with Peter next to pay her back. She has little chance, starting strong but gets brutalized. As she is down on the floor bloody, she watches Four walking away and Eric signals for Peter to knock her out which he does with a kick. It appears that this has been his strategy since she volunteered to be First Jumper and he looked at her with hate in his eyes. She had 3 strikes at that moment: A girl; A Stiff; First Jumper

It seems that losing a fight wipes out all the points accumulated so Molly wipes out First Jumper points and Peter wipes out the rest she has earned from accomplishment. They were just skills in learning to fight. The fight itself is the real deal and Eric will gt rid of her.

But Eric has also taught her to be Dauntless and Dauntless never gives up. It is Eric who has put the finishing touches on Tris's expertise. Never Give Up. She goes into the Control Room to stop the simulation and she cannot expect herself to come out alive from THAT! So Eric's training has boomeranged on him and we can expect the same from some returning Middle East vets. 

She misses a day in a hospital bed and Chris and Will come in to say good-bye before going to war games, telling her she can't go, that she is "out" now. Eric has dropped her as she fell below the line. 

This was clever and subtle plotting by Eric and quite in line with the "equality" feminists scream about. This is what happens when your demands are turned against you. You demand equality and you get it in spades. So be ready. 

Tris runs and makes the train for the war games. Eric confronts her and asks, "Who let you out?"

Tris replies, "I did." Softly, non-aggressively, assertively as she looks him in the eye non provocatively. Eric is nonplussed for a minute then says, "OK." He can't look stupid in front of everyone here. Four picks Tris for his team to be able to watch her - ? - keep her safe from Eric? - because he values her deadly intelligence?

 Tris shines, winning the game for her team. She is initiated with the zip ride.

Tris will be the one Eric personally injects the tracker chip into. This is a man who cannot tolerate an assertive woman who does not flirt. Chris flirts a little with him and then he hangs her over the chasm. To frighten her. But Tris he is out to destroy. These men are everywhere. Learn to recognize them and watch them. Avoid if you can. Deal with them if you have to. But learn to recognize them even when they paste smiles on their faces.

Zizek would say Tris over-identifies with Dauntless ideology. She is more Dauntless than Dauntless as Nietzsche might phrase it. And by pushing the ideology to the breaking point she destroys the faction system as it works at this point. Zizek tells us this is the way to force the system to be what it says it is or crumble. Tris is exposing the mask of Dauntless that presents the "floating sign" of "lite," all nourishment and value gone. 

An empty sign exposed by Tris leading to its collapse. This is her revolutionary act. This is how anyone becomes revolutionary. Push it to the edge of the abyss then push it over. 

DIVERGENT: Tris as a PARRHESIASTES in Divergent

Tris Standing as Target in Place of Al

"Anyone can stand in front of a target.

It doesn't prove anything." Tris Prior

The context: Al has been told to stand in front of the target and he is trembling with fear.

Dauntless Ideology: 

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
• Dauntless never gives up.

tt

Tris stands watching as Four gets knives ready for throwing at Al. She wants to say something and is afraid to say it. 

But she believes in Dauntless Ideology.

 Ordinary acts of bravery and the courage that drives one person to stand up for another. 

Have you ever been in this situation?

This is the challenge to a PARRHESIASTES.

Compared to Snowden it is a small personal thing. But beginnings start somewhere.

The Meaning of the Word Parrhesia

• Frankness
• Truth
• Danger
• Criticism
• Duty

...the commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk, and so on.

By inverting the paradigm, the searchlight is thrown on the Other, the more powerful entity, and we see that the parrhesiastes using parrhesia discloses the character and “truth” of the “sovereign” to the people. In that respect parrhesia lifts the mask of the “sovereign.”

If there is a kind of “proof” of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous — different from what the majority believes — is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes.

Danger: Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him in telling the truth.

So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk….Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger; it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the “game” of life or death.

When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself; you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to the Other. But the parrhesiastes primarily chooses a specific relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.

so, you see, the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism: criticism of the interlocutor….Parrhesia is a form of criticism either toward another or towards oneself, but always in a situation where the speaker or confessor is in a position of inferiority with respect to the interlocutor. The parrhesiastes is always less powerful than the one with whom he speaks. The parrhesia comes from “below,” as it were, and is directed towards “above.”…But when a philosopher criticizes a tyrant, when a citizen criticizes the majority, when a pupil criticizes his teacher, then such speakers may be using parrhesia.

Duty: The last characteristic of parrhesia is this: in parrhesia, telling the truth is regarded as a duty. The orator who speaks the truth to those who cannot accept his truth, for instance, and who may be exiled, or punished in some way, is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak, but he feels that it is his duty to do so. …Parrhesia is thus related to freedom and duty.

in parrhesia the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy. (FS pp.11-20)

Foucault - Fearless Speech

This is the context that Tris finds herself in Dauntless training. Four would prefer that she keep quiet. She cannot. Her position is dangerous with Eric and she risks it all in doing this. Eric will pair her in a fight with Peter who can beat her and hurt her badly, which Eric gives the OK for by nodding his head at the end of the fight, and Peter kicks her into unconsciousness. 

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The part Foucault does not discuss is the assignation of scapegoat that falls on the Parrhesiastes. When Tris returns to her friends they cheer her for daring to speak out to Eric. The Parrhesiastes often says what the others are thinking and feeling but dare not say themselves. 

This was Snowden's dilemma. Who was going to tell the truth? Then he realized that he was going to have to be the one. And the fires of hell from the empire came down on him to kill him.

Tris