Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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Lacan, Jacques

b. 1901, Paris;

d. 1981, Paris

Psychoanalyst

A traditional psychiatric training and an in-

tense knowledge of Freud’s texts, combined

with an exposure to the avant-garde culture

of Surrealist circles and an absorption of struc-

tural linguistics and anthropology, produced

in Jacques Lacan one of the most original of

all psychoanalysts since Freud. His increas-

ingly sophisticated speculations on the signi-

fying processes that compose subjectivity have

hardened into a powerful school of analysis

whose influence notably reaches into many, if

not all, of the human sciences. The collection

of his lectures, Écrits (1966), remains a key

text of structuralist and poststructuralist

theory, in spite of (or sometimes because of)

its opacity. It manages to retain something of

Lacan’s exploitation of the oral nature of

teaching and his linguistic subversion of the

position of master. What saves this from be-

ing merely irritatingly pretentious, wit and

erudition apart, is that the operations of lan-

guage are precisely central to Lacan’s preoc-

cupations; he thus sought to renew the con-

crete approach if not the clinical objective of

‘the talking cure’. Already in his doctoral dis-

sertation in 1932, ‘Paranoid Psychosis and Its

Relation to Personality’ (‘De la psychose

paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la

personnalité’), which dutifully reproduces ex-

isting theories of paranoia and the requisite

academic references, Lacan had none the less

presented the patient ‘Aimée’ less as the object

of a psychotic condition than as the subject of

a certain discourse (Lacan quotes her literary

efforts, which aroused some interest in Surre-

alist quarters).

In later papers, such as the 1953 ‘Function

and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoa-

nalysis’ (‘Fonction et champ de la parole et du

langage en psychanalyse’), or the 1957 ‘The

Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious’

(‘L’Agence de la lettre dans l’inconscient’),

Lacan identifies his clinical approaches with

the analysis of speech as the vehicle through

which the human being is brought into an al-

ready existing social order and thus as the

means and form of expression of the uncon-

scious. This structural and linguistic vision of

the emergence of full subjectivity appropriates

and transforms particular features of Lévi-

Strauss, Saussure and Jakobson. Subjectivity

for Lacan signifies not in the individual’s will,

but only through the signifying chain to which

it must belong, as well as in the unstable rela-

tion which it must negotiate between a

signifier (or term) and its signified (or con-

cept). Lacanian analysis does not, then, oper-

ate with any sense of a final cure; the inevita-

ble immersion of the human in the Symbolic

order tends rather towards the point where

the subject of a discourse may fully inhabit

the structure of meaning. This is in direct op-

position to the aims of a psychology that

319

would wish to repair and fortify a battered

ego, in the belief it is in the ego that personal

identity is guarded and developed.

In contrast to such an instrumental ap-

proach—seemingly founded in Freud, who had

presented the ego as pitted against the id (al-

beit in a renewable and reversible way)—Lacan

began as early as 1936 to emphasize the im-

aginary identifications which take place prior

to full verbalization in the child and which are

crucial to the emergence of a first, ideal notion

of identity that anticipates the entry into the

Symbolic order. This first ‘mirror phase’, where

typically the child notices, celebrates and be-

gins to play with his or her own reflection, for

Lacan has the value of showing up the emerg-

ing ego as the result of an illusory identifica-

tion and sense of wholeness, in contrast to the

subject, which is a position arising out of the

structural acknowledgement of otherness, al-

ienation, lack and disintegration.

This direct confrontation with ego psychol-

ogy will permit Lacan henceforth to elaborate

increasingly schematized relations between the

Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real—this last

category being a convenient structural

conceptualization of whatever cannot be con-

ceptualized—in place of the dualist clashes

between ego and id, conscious and uncon-

scious, in the more biological sections of Freud.

It is this structural and linguistic revision which

accounts for the famous reformulations and

redesignations in Lacan. It is logical, if spec-

tacular, for Lacan to call the unconscious ‘the

discourse of the other’; the Law, the ‘Name- [/

No] of-the-Father’ (‘The Nom/non-du-Père’);

or the phallus, ‘the signifier of desire’. For the

same reason, his untranslatable neologisms—

méconnaissance, hainamouration, etc.—and

their later topological equivalents—knots,

chains and other schemata—are all attempts

to make manifest the essentially intricated na-

ture of subjectivity.

What the benefit of hindsight shows, fi-

nally, is the degree to which Lacan’s practice

both illustrates and tests the structurality it

presents. His systematizations try to embed,

yet never fully control, his exploitation of a

succession of word systems, each one fashion-

able and at odds with the others, all the way

from Politzer through Kojèvean Hegelianism

and Heidegger to topological theory. At best,

this approach was inspirational; at worst, op-

portunistic. Certainly Lacan the sorcerer never

stopped being the precocious apprentice.

This intellectual slippage was also played

out over the years in his ritualized formation

and dissolution of the groups and circles bear-

ing his message. This institutional dramatiza-

tion of hysteria, still evident in some academic

disciples, is one added level on which the phe-

nomenon of Lacan is itself one of the most

telling symptoms of French intellectual life in

the twentieth century, and especially in the

postwar period.

SEÁN HAND

See also: poststructuralism; psychoanalysis;

structuralism

Further reading

Benvenuto, B. and Kennedy, R. (1986) The

Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction,

London: Free Association Books (clear guid-

ance through major essays and themes).

Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan, London: Fontana (an

accessible and authoritative introduction).

Mitchell, J. and Rose, J. (eds) (1982) Femi-

nine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the

‘École freudienne’, London: Macmillan (a

good presentation of the Lacan seminars

most important to feminists).

Roudinesco, E. (1993) Jacques Lacan: esquisse

d’une vie, histoire d’un système de pensée,

Paris: Fayard (the essential biography).

——(1997) Jacques Lacan: His Life and

Work, New York: Columbia University

Press.

Lacroix, Christian

b. 1951, Arles

Fashion designer

Lacroix, Christian

320

In 1987, Lacroix launched the first French

couture house for twenty-six years, with the

backing of French textile conglomerate,

Agache. His career in fashion began at Hermès

and Guy Paulin, followed by a spell as a de-

signer for the house of Patou from 1981.

Lacroix is best known for his spectacular

shows and his exotic designs, inspired by a

wide range of influences. His most spectacu-

lar effects are created with luxurious fabrics

and surface treatments, such as intricate em-

broideries. His creations attract sufficient pub-

licity to support the sale of a range of subsidi-

ary products.

NICOLA WHITE

Further reading

Hunter, M. (1990) Les Jours les plus Lang,

Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob (a critical as-

sessment of Lang’s career).

Looseley, D.L. (1990) ‘Jack Lang and the Poli-

tics of Festival’, French Cultural Studies 1,

1:5–19 (on Lang’s theatrical career).

——(1995) The Politics of Fun: Cultural

Policy and Debate in Contemporary

France, Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg

(a detailed study of Lang’s career at the

ministry).

Langlois, Henri

b. 1914, Izmir, Turkey;

d. 1977, Paris

Cultural figure

Langlois was the co-founder and director of the

Paris Cinémathèque, with which his name is

imperishably associated. His undeniably disor-

derly and financially imprudent management of

the institution was more than offset by the pas-

sion with which he hoarded films and by his

stimulating programming. The Cinémathèque

(housed first in the rue d’Ulm, then in the Palais

de Chaillot) was the place where the Nouvelle

Vague and the Cahiers du cinéma critics received

their cinematic education.

Criticism of Langlois’s methods led to

Malraux’s decision to dismiss him in Febru-

ary 1968. This sparked off an immense wave

of protest; major film-makers banned the

screening of their work at the Cinémathèque,

outside which there were regular demonstra-

tions, often brutally broken up by the police.

Langlois was finally reinstated at the end of

April. The ‘Langlois affair’ clearly appears in

retrospect to be a curtain-raiser for May 1968.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Langlois, G.P. and Myrent, G. (1986) Henri

Langlois, premier citoyen du cinéma, Paris:

Denoël (a comprehensive biography, coau-

thored by Langlois’s brother).

language and the French

regions

France, despite centuries of policies designed

to eradicate varieties other than standard

French, preserves within its frontiers several

language and the French regions

322

other languages of differing status and with

survival prospects ranging from good to dis-

mal. These function as vernaculars, used pre-

dominantly in informal situations, and in all

cases the norm is bilingualism among speak-

ers of regional languages (with French as the

higher-status variety).

The extant regional languages may be sub-

divided into several separate categories:

1 non-Romance languages which survive as

minority languages in certain regions;

2 other Romance dialects;

3 French dialects (dialects of French); and

4 the subsidiary question of français regional.

In the case of (1), obvious examples are

Breton or Alsatian; other cases are Flemish

and Basque. The exact number of speakers of

these languages is hard to ascertain reliably:

most surveys fail to differentiate between dif-

ferent types of speaker (level of fluency and

competence) and many omit data about real

language use—about how many people of

what age, sex and socioeconomic class speak

a language, but also when, to whom and un-

der what circumstances. The most flourishing

of the languages in this category is probably

Alsatian. It is supported by the hinterland of

Germany, is closely related to the dialect spo-

ken in the adjacent Black Forest area, and has

an ‘official’ or written form in Hochdeutsch

(standard German). A substantial proportion

of the inhabitants of Alsace speak Alsatian as

a first or second language, with very few

monolingual speakers. The status of the other

minority languages of this type is more pre-

carious. Basque is more secure than Flemish,

which for a variety of reasons is fast disap-

pearing from the corner of northeastern

France where it once existed. The position of

Breton is uncertain. Despite vigorous efforts,

it has not succeeded in re-establishing itself to

the extent that (say) its sister Celtic language,

Welsh, has, and the relatively small number of

speakers, predominantly concentrated in the

west and southwest of Brittany, is probably

not enough of a critical mass to ensure genu-

ine, vernacular survival.

Under (2), the most striking case is that of

Occitan, often erroneously categorized as a

‘French dialect’, which it is emphatically not.

It is a Romance dialect (or possibly language—

this distinction is not a matter of typology but

of status), related to French, but not ‘French’

any more than (say) Corsican is. Occitan is

the most widely spoken of non-French lan-

guages in France and extends across much of

southern France with its heartland in the Tou-

louse-Albi area. How much it is genuinely spo-

ken is another matter altogether. In common

with the minority languages of type (1)—per-

haps even more so—Occitan has been politi-

cized. It shares with Catalan in Spain a link

with the autonomist and regionalist tradition

of the postwar period, and its prospects have

been improved by internal developments in

France (in 1981 the Socialist government pro-

claimed, even if it never really implemented,

le droit a la difference, and a measure of re-

gional independence was established) and by

external European changes (the role of the EU

in breaking down the role of the nation-state

and the concomitant rise of the regions as

political and economic units). Occitan suffers

acutely both from the exode rural (depopula-

tion) which is so dramatic a feature of many

areas of southern France, and from the after-

math of repressive French government poli-

cies in respect of minority (non-French) lan-

guages. These go back to the French Revolu-

tion and, in the case of Occitan, to the fif-

teenth century; only since the middle of this

century has there been any attempt to modify

(let alone reverse) them, and to introduce edu-

cational programmes which would enhance

rather than eradicate such linguistic varieties.

Recent sociolinguistic studies in the Tarn and

Cantal reveal a consistent and worrying pat-

tern of use of Occitan diminishing sharply in

the younger generations, to an extent that sug-

gests that the language can have no real future

as a vernacular. Set against this is a resurgence

of interest among the educated (and often ur-

ban) middle classes in towns like Montpellier

and Toulouse. Whether this constitutes ‘real’

language survival is a moot point, and there

must be the suspicion that this resuscitation

language and the French regions

323

programme—largely detached as it is from the

language as it is still (just) used by rather dif-

ferent groups—will remain an artificial exer-

cise, the twentieth-century equivalent of Mis-

tral’s Félibrige which (ironically) the modern

Occitanist movement so derides.

Category (3) refers to dialects which are

recognizably related to standard French (origi-

nally the French of the Île-de-France) and thus,

by definition, dialects of the northern half of

France. These are not in a good state of health.

It is very rare to hear genuine dialect (or pat-

ois, though the latter word is laden with val-

ues which are singularly unhelpful for objec-

tive discussion). Exceptions (perhaps, and then

only among the older generations) are enclaves

of the northeast and the east of the country. In

the main, what is now encountered (by the

casual visitor or the sociolinguist alike) is (4),

français regional, namely French with a dis-

cernible and localizable regional accent. In

parts of Normandy, for example, vestiges of

Norman French survive in the retention of

vowel length as a feature permitting audible

distinctions between masculine and feminine

past-participle endings (donné vs donnée). In

the ‘minority language’ areas where category

(1) applies, the français régional will similarly

be influenced—sometimes heavily—by the lo-

cal non-French language spoken, and often

even in the case of those who do not speak it,

because their French will have been inherited

from those who do.

D.A.TROTTER

See also: Deixonne law; linguistic regulation;

regional economic development; regional

press in France; regional writing: Breton; re-

gional writing: Occitan; regionalism

Further reading

Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (1986) Lin-

guistic Minorities in Countries Belonging

to the European Community, Luxembourg:

Commission of the European Communities

(statistical information, details of broad-

casting and educational provision).

Marcellesi, J.B. (1975) L’Enseignement des

‘langues régionales’, Langue française 25

(history of reintroduction of regional lan-

guages via educational system).

Lartigue, Jacques-Henri

b. 1894, Courbevoie;

d. 1986, Nice

Photographer

Born into a wealthy middle-class family,

Lartigue began taking photographs as a child

and, while he later became a professional

painter and illustrator, photography remained

for him the most delightful and important of

hobbies. Although he took very few posed

portraits, preferring the instantané (snapshot),

he worked with extraordinary precision, leav-

ing nothing to chance, but his work is charac-

terized by a sense of spontaneity. In 1974, he

was chosen by Giscard d’Estaing to take the

official presidential portrait.

MICHAEL WORTON

Further reading

Fishman, R. (1977) Urban Utopias in the

Twentieth Century, New York: Basic

Books.

Von Moos, S. (1979) Le Corbusier: Elements

of a Synthesis , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Le Forestier, Maxime

b. 1949, Paris

Singer-songwriter

Having performed with his talented sister (as

Max et Cat Le Forestier), Maxime Le Forestier

embarked on a solo career and was hugely

successful in the early 1970s in particular.

Appealing to a largely left-wing, adolescent

audience, Le Forestier had hits with, among

others, San Francisco and the anti-militarist

Parachutiste. An outstanding lyricist whose

professional stance undermines the crass com-

mercialism of show business, he was voted

best French male vocalist in 1996, having seen

an upturn in his solo career.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Bresson, G. and Lionet, C. (1994) Le Pen,

Paris: Éditions du Seuil (a recent biography

in French).

Marcus, J. (1995) The National Front and

French Politics: The Resistible Rise of Jean-

Marie Le Pen, Basingstoke and London:

Macmillan (currently the only book in Eng-

lish exclusively devoted to Le Pen and his

movement; lively and accessible).

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel

b. 1929, Moutiers-en-Cinglais,

Normandy

Intellectual

Le Roy Ladurie is the leading contemporary

inheritor of the Annales historical tradition,

focusing on long-term cultural attitudes

rather than on great men and events. A

former Communist Party militant, he first

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel

326

became famous with Les Paysans de

Languedoc (1966), which traces develop-

ments among the peasantry over the 300

years from 1450. He succeeded Fernand

Braudel at the Collège de France in 1973, but

his ‘star’ status can really be dated from

Montaillou (1975), which uses the records of

the southern French see of Pamiers as the ba-

sis for an enthralling anthropological recon-

struction. Le Roy Ladurie was director of the

Bibliothèque Nationale from 1987 to 1994.

KEITH READER

See also: anthropology and ethnology; librar-

ies; parties and movements

Léaud, Jean-Pierre

b. 1944, Paris

Actor

Actor-protégé of the film-maker François

Truffaut, he made his debut as a 13-year-old

in Les 400 coups (1959) as Antoine Doinel

and went on to star in Truffaut’s Antoine

Doinel series, which ended in 1979. Léaud

also starred in several Godard films during the

1960s when his career was at its height. Very

much identified as Truffaut’s alter ego/pseudo-

son, upon the film-maker’s death in 1984

Léaud’s fortunes went into a decline and he is

now seen mostly in small cameo roles.

SUSAN HAYWARD

Further reading

Rolfe, B. (1972) ‘The Mime of Jacques Lecoq’,

Léaud, Jean-Pierr

327

Drama Review 16, 1 (article on Lecoq’s

methods).

Le Doeuff, Michèle

b. 1948, France

Philosopher

The author of The Philosophical Imaginary

(L’Imaginaire philosophique), a 1980 study of

the imagery that philosophical discourse spe-

cifically (and unconsciously?) generates for it-

self, and of translations of Bacon and Shake-

speare, Le Doeuff is best known for her 1989

publication, Hipparchia’s Choice (L’Étude et

le rouet). This text explores in detail a theme

central to Le Doeuff’s writing: the treatment

of women by and within the philosophical tra-

dition and its discourse. Within it, space is de-

voted to a discussion of the work of Simone

de Beauvoir and its relation to that of Sartre.

Le Doeuff has also worked in the theatre.

ALEX HUGHES

Further reading

Hughes, A. (1994) Violette Leduc: Mothers,

Lovers and Language, London: MHRA (a

feminist/psychoanalytic reading of three of

Leduc’s novels).

Lefebvre, Henri

b. 1901, Navarrenx;

d. 1991, Pau

Philosopher

Lefebvre was one of the most productive

Marxist philosophers in France. After a reli-

gious upbringing in the provinces, he studied

at the Sorbonne, where he was involved in

avant-garde intellectual groups, eventually

emerging as the leading proponent of a hu-

manist Marxism inspired by the alienation

theories of the early Marx. At the Liberation,

he figured as the French Communist Party’s

leading philosopher, but fell from favour dur-

ing the Cold War. Increasingly critical of Sta-

linism, he was expelled from the party in 1958,

and went on to play a key role in non-Com-

munist left-wing intellectual circles. As pro-

fessor of sociology at Strasbourg and then

Nanterre, he was one of the inspirations for

the situationists and for the student leaders of

May 1968. Throughout his long life, he was

active in many areas of enquiry and debate,

and his popularizations of a nondogmatic

Hegelian Marxism, Dialectical Materialism

(Le Matérialisme dialectique) of 1939, and

Marxism (Le Marxisme) of 1948, were best

sellers. His best-known work is the three-vol-

ume Critique of Everyday Life (Critique de la

Lefebvre, Henri