Abstract

In a recent article published in Theory, Culture & Society Michael Billig proposed a formal, rhetorical method of evaluating Lacanian theory, applying it in a critical reading of Lacan’s early work on the ‘mirror stage’. What is crucially at stake in this reading is Lacan’s citation practices: indeed, Lacan is credited with significant omissions. Central among them is the ‘repression’ of the work of the French psychologist Henri Wallon in Lacan’s article on the ‘mirror stage’. Furthermore, it is also argued that such omissions have been instrumental in the creation and reproduction of a whole Lacan mythology, which is supposedly uncritically accepted by Lacanian scholars. What this note attempts is a brief assessment of this critical method and of its conclusions. Is Lacan’s ‘repression’ of Wallon as straightforward as it seems? What criteria should be employed in evaluating Lacan’s complex citation practices? Is the assumed complicity of Lacanian scholars in Lacan’s mythologization really representative of the current status of Lacanian bibliography? Billig’s own repressions seem to cast serious doubts on the validity of his proposed method of evaluating Lacan. But his critique does open a much-needed debate on issues of intellectual debt and repression, and on the relation between psychoanalysis and academic discourse.