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Originally Posted by Lurker
Maybe my problem here is just my ignorance of philosophy/critical theory, but what is a "Fissure with reality". And what does it mean to destabilise empirical truth?
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This kind of feeds back into our problem with landfill academics - too many people who aren't asking precisely the question you've just asked, happy to be complicit in their own ignorance. But in that I'd maintain there is sense to be made (this doesn't mean I'm the person to make sense of it, as the following will likely demonstrate).
Fissure with reality - from the mirror stage of children's development, the child learns to identify themselves with the baby in the mirror - the mother says 'c'est toi'. The person in the mirror is a representation of the self, not the self 'itself', and from thereon our ontological notion of 'reality' is always representative, or rather, the 'I' becomes the 'other' of the reflection. I seem to remember Lacan calls this 'irreality'. The 'fissure' is a split, a cardinal break from a sort of 'pure' reality, a consciousness formed merely by existence; from after the mirror phase, reality remains the orientation of our consciousness, and it
is reality as classically understood, but it ought to be understood as borne of this split.
'Destabilise empirical truth' - this is again related to Descartes Cogito - the 'proofs' of existence are no longer reified once we recognise the fissure. 'Destabilise' because it no longer has the power it once had; it isn't undermined, however, because there's no escape from the split (except for in hypothetical mirrorless societies). Empirical truth remains truth, but it's a truth within the contingencies of human understanding. That's not to say there's no 'alterior' reality, but that are understanding remains (in non-Lacanian terms) anthropo-centric.
I wouldn't necessary say I agreed with Lacan, I should add.