"Mouth" in Not I is a surplus of the Real which reveals the incompleteness of the Other, hence operating as a void beyond the limit of the Symbolic Order. In the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan states that every moral and juristic dictates such as rel ...
"Mouth" in Not I is a surplus of the Real which reveals the incompleteness of the Other, hence operating as a void beyond the limit of the Symbolic Order. In the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan states that every moral and juristic dictates such as religious commands, moral codes, the law, and the good are systems of the Symbolic. It is these systems that place somebody or something at the location of the Other. Under the authority of these abstract principles, the Other oppresses man's jouissance representing itself as a universal justice which Lacan calls utilitarianism. We can emerge as a speaking subject in the field of the Symbolic only by being represented by the Other as a 'subject'. This birth, however, forces the subject to give up his or her jouissance in the service of the Symbolic order. While, on the part of individual, subjectivity is given in barter with a submission to the Symbolic order, the Symbolic order depends the preservation of itself on the suppression of the subject. Therefore, the law, or the moral codes are a kind of contract that verifies the agreement between 'I' and the Other.
"Mouth" presents us with a radically new relationship between the ego and the Other. Refusing to take the conferred "I" for granted, Mouth insists a third person, "she". According to Lacan, the rejection could be understood as an act of resistance that shakes the authority of the Other. Just as the Other demands of the subject to trade one's real body for an empty signifier, the pronoun "I", Mouth offers the adverse exchange. Thus, shifting "I" to "she" or it, Mouth is evading from the barred and castrated subject.
At this point, Mouth is elevated to the level of das Ding illustrating nothing but an embodiment of a lack that can not be signified. By waiving the signifier to mark it's existence, Mouth becomes a strange hole from which the steady stream of words like the fecal eruption flows. Revealing the lack of the 'wholeness' of the Other, Mouth becomes an unknowable and fearful sublime object in the center of the Symbolic order.