The Reflection of Lacanian Mirror-Gase and Thought in Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book

Abstract

The theme of "identity" in Orhan Pamuk's works, and in specific to this study in The Black Book is prominent. This article aims to approach this work of Pamuk in a psychoanalytic Lacanian criticism. Lacan as a psychologist with a post-structuralist viewpoint, believes that the unconscious is structured like a language. He explains that the language, the signifying chain with a perpetual sliding of the signified under the signifier, never provides "ultimate meaning" or a "transcendental signified". Accordingly, this article, provides a Lacanian reading of Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book with emphasis on the main roles of the "other", and language in forming of the unconscious and individual identity. "Galip", the protagonist of the novel, is in search of his lost wife "Rüya". But in fact, following this lack, he starts his search for knowing himself through a chain of signifiers. His search does not lead him to reach to a complete ultimate meaning of his "self". His bewildered subject cannot anchor at a fix point of integrated and wholeness of the "self".