Demian and the Lacanian Gaze

The character of Demian is widely read as a literary embodiment of the Jungian archetype of the "self". Using the theories of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, this paper considers him in terms of an analysis of discourse. Lacan discussion of the sublime is derived not only from a psychoanalytic theory of desire but also from the Kantian "Thing-in-itself" beyond phenomena. Accordingly, the sublime object can be regarded as an object elevated to a traumatic level which remains inaccessible to symbolic discourse. This is exemplified by the uncanny interstices between two deaths that occur in the novel, between symbolic and real annihilation. A comparison with Lacan reference to Antigone, whose symbolic death in the wake of her exclusion from the community is not matched by her real death, sheds new light on the motif of the mark of Cain in Demian, which conveys exclusion from a community. Outside of yet dialectically dependent upon the symbolic order Demian can be aligned with the sublime-uncanny interstices of discourse. The Lacanian notion of the "gaze" in opposition to the "eye" is a further aid to analysis. Lacan conceives the gaze as the subject objective correlative, a material correlative to the master signifier at the core of a symbolic identification. Subverting the distinction between inside and outside, it describes the point in a tableau from which the subject gaze is returned, the point where a viewer is "hooked onto" a picture without being able to assume the position of a neutral observer.