When you buy a Louis Vuitton bag for $4000 (I actually found one right away for $4,360 on their site by typing in "bag" in the search engine), what is occurring? What appears to be happening is that you just have to have that bag, but there is really something else going on: a displacement is demonstrated, a metonymy, because buying that bag is a reassurance of status.
In class, it was brought up that Jacques Lacan, in his “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious” points to the idea that we are terrified that we are nothing. We are insecure and looking for assurance that we are worth something, or even worth more than everyone else. It would seem like this fear results in much of our displacement, and money demonstrates displacement in this is a pretty visible way, as with “Silk Stockings” and with the Louis Vuitton bag. It could be the fundamental reason for gluttonous consumption, and the complete saturation of our society with logos and brands that we had discussed before.
I’m still not entirely sure I know what’s going on with metonymy vs. metaphor, so I would appreciate comments letting me know if I’m on the wrong track. Thinking back to a lot of books I’ve read, it seems the displacement associated with metonymy shows up a lot. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby uses his riches to fashion an elite lifestyle when what he wants is Daisy, who is put up on a pedestal in his mind; in Dubliners, a father abuses his small son because he gets belittled at work; even in Bridget Jones’ Diary, Bridget smokes, drinks, and eats away her body image woes and her depression of being a single woman.
We just read “Home Sweet Home” by Hannah Tinti for Creative Writing Class. I loved this short story and recommend reading it, she apparently has a book called Animal Crackers of short stories, which I saw we have at the CSB lib. Anyways, I thought that it possibly was another example of metonymy but I’ll try not to spoil too much. It begins with the line, “Pat and Clyde were murdered on pot roast night,” which is fantastic, don’t you think? It turns out that Pat and Mr. Mitchell, the neighbor, had a raunchy affair going on. Mr. Mitchell’s wife is portrayed as being a pretty saintly woman, and Mr. Mitchell is constantly worrying that she will leave him because she is too good for him, and eventually he grows to actually hate her for it. The metonymy might be present because he displaces his feelings of powerlessness and insecurity by having sex with the next door neighbor in increasingly public places like parks and movie theaters, and even on a welcome mat that says, “Home Sweet Home.”
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Nice post. Since you asked for some clarification on metonymy, I'll try to give some. But let's start with metaphor, since you are already familiar with that I assume. A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things. For instance, my love is a rose. Or, in The Great Gatsby, since you mention it, the green light is a metaphor for the American dream, his hope for the future, and his love for Daisy. In other words, all of these ideas are condensed (to use Freud's term for metaphor) onto the green light.
ReplyDeleteBefore we think about metonymy in psychoanalytic terms, let's first think about it in more simple literary terms. Originally, before Lacan wrote about it, the word simply meant "name change," and it was a figure of speech whereby something is called not by its own name but by something associated with it. So, instead of saying "President Obama signed the bill," we say "The White House signed the bill."
Synecdoche is a specific kind of metonymy in which the part stands in for the whole. For instance, instead of saying "there were many hungry children to feed," we might say, "there were many hungry mouths to feed."
So, that's the basic way people have been using terms like metonymy for over two thousand years. But what about the psychoanalytic sense that Lacan gives it? This is where it gets more confusing. Lacan notices that Freud's concept of displacement is essentially a metonymic process. I may desire something or someone (like Gatsby desires Daisy) but that desire is displaced onto an object associated with that something (like the wealthy society that Daisy belongs to.)
In conclusion, I think your analysis of the story "Home Sweet Home" is quite right. Mr. Mitchel displaces his anxieties onto the sex-act. If you were writing a paper about this for another class, I think you'd just want to use the word "displaces" (or mis-places) and not the word metonymy. Metonymy is usually used for a specific turn of phrase, not a whole plot. But you're right that Lacan is extending the logic of metonymy to include a much broader sense... in the same way that an allegory is an extended metaphor.
And I hope you and your blog group can see why the story is not an example of metaphor. Could you really say that his having sex with his neighbor'd wife is a metaphor for his anxieties about home? Of course not. Sex is not a metaphor for marriage, obviously. Sex is associated with marriage, so it's an example of metonymy.
But now here's where it gets tricky, because metonymy and metaphor slide into each other. Sex with his neighbor may be a metonymic displacement of his desire, but it is at the same time a metaphor (or psychological symptom, as Lacan points out metaphors are) for his feeling of power. (Sex and a feeling of security are two unlike things, right? And metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things.)
The first half of your blog relating to Lacon's idea that we are always searching to be something--and are scared of being nothing--is entirely true, and I think as young adults we are especially affected by this. Many consumers hope that by buying these high-end products that they will be able to define themselves. That others will be able to see their possessions and automatically have an idea of who they are and what they are like.
ReplyDeleteBut in a situation like this will the signifier and the signified ever switch places and slide creating a different meaning through context?
Some people think that these brands and logos represent someone who is focused on and cares about the wrong things (status and money) but many consumers continue to perpetuate the idea of status by sporting these high end logos and brands.
Is society becoming more or less involved with representing these ideals through consumerism? It's hard to know, but I am very curious to know, if the meaning of these brands will ever truly mean something besides wealth and status to the majority of society.