Lacan

I found the 'What is a Picture' reading by Lacan to be interesting insofar as I was actually able to decipher what he was saying. It is difficult to read because just as I feel like I am starting to grasp a concept he is presenting, he says something that I cannot make any sense of. I feel like in order to really understand this I would have to completely immerse myself into the world of literature and philosophy that he makes references to. There were a few parts of the reading that I felt made a little sense to me and interested me. I liked the part near the beginning where he talked about the doubling of the self and how in both the reproductive act and in the struggle to the death there is a difference between “the being and its semblance”. The idea that we wear metaphorical masks and present a facade of ourselves is something that I'm interested in and is relevant to my own work I feel. I may be missing something of Lacan's point, but I'm not sure why he chose to single out the sexual union and the struggle to the death here. It seems to me that this concept could apply to almost any type of relationship with another. I also thought his discussion of Plato and Trompe l'oeil was interesting- the concept that rather than being truthful in representing something, a painting is untruthful. It is pretending to be something it is not.