라캉으로 『햄릿』 읽기

Rereading Shakespeare's Hamlet from a Lacanian Perspective

The purpose of this study is to reread Hamlet from a viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, especially focusing on how desire and death are involved in the life of the Lacanian subject. Accordingly, I attempted to analyze Hamlet applying Lacan's middle and late theories on the subject as well as referring to his analysis of the play. What Lacan pays attention to in his analysis of Hamlet is not so much Hamlet's incestuous desire per se, but rather the (m)Other's desire that dominates his own desire. He explains the process by which Hamlet enters the symbolic order after solving the Oedipal conflict using the paternal metaphor. For Hamlet, the symbolic father, who functions as the Name-of-the-Father is his own dead father, namely his father's ghost. Through the paternal metaphor, he moves from a point where he wants to be the imaginary phallus(φ) to a point where he wishes to acquire the symbolic phallus(Ф); namely, his transformation follows a trajectory from 'being the phallus' to 'having the phallus.' This movement corresponds to the experience of separation after overcoming alienation. In this drama, the ghost, who is a perverted father content to enjoy jouissance as well as a strict superego blocking the subject's approach to his mother's desire, reminds us of the reason why Lacan calls perversion "pere-version." Just as Hamlet, wounded by the poisoned sword, and Laertes accidentally exchange blows with their swords, the protagonist is able to identify himself with the phallic signifier. This drama, through Hamlet, who finally comes to his own desire by giving up his life, demonstrates that only a tragedy culminating in death can give us an adequate image of desire, and at the same time shows the indivisible relation between death and desire.