Lacanian Subject Formation in Garbage

As I’ve read White Noise it’s been difficult for me not to approach nearly every new development in the plot from the angle of Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly with respect to the idea of the formation of the subject. Because of this, I want to briefly talk about an idea that’s been rolling around in my head about this, one that was sharpened even more as I finished the novel.

To begin, I want to look to the scene where Jack speaks with the doctor at Autumn Harvest Farms. When the doctor questions Jack about his lifestyle, Jack hopes that the doctor will “reward [his] virtue” and “give [him] life” (279). All of this boils down to the fact Jack believes that the doctor, instead of his actual behavior in life, that will determine how long he lives. Actually, more specifically, he believes that the medical report that the doctor holds will determine the course that his life will take. Jack consciously views himself as constituted within the symbolic order of the medical report. This reminds me of Lacan’s assertion regarding the self’s radical excentricity to the self, as formed in the mirror stage when we identify with a mirror image of ourselves.

Later then, in the various scenes where Jack is struck by how quickly he can “familiarize” himself with people by way of their garbage, I feel that Delillo is playing with this idea of the external constitution of the subject (302). If, as Jack seems to believe, people are constituted in “ticket stubs, lipstick-smeared tissues, crumpled soda cans, crumpled circulars and receipts, ashtray debris, popsicle sticks and French fries, crumpled coupons, and paper napkins” then not only is our identity created by things external to us, but its also possibly defined by those things we attempt to push away from us (302). According to Jack, it seems, identity might ultimately be a product of what we push away from ourselves. Based on Jack’s thoughts and behavior in the novel, perhaps the best example of something that we attempt to push away from ourselves is death itself. This is why the scene in the supermarket where Jack and Murray discuss death and the repression of the fear of it (which, it seems, consciously brings Freudian and psychoanalytic ideas into the conversation) is ultimately quite revelatory for Jack in the way that he thinks of himself.