A mancha, o quadro, o signo: sobre a imagem pictórica em Benjamin e Lacan

Abstract

This article proposes an articulation between Benjamin and Lacan, considering the Benjaminian proposition that any painting that claims the right to nomination must accomplish the entrance into the word of language in the midst of the pictorial language. The stain, as Benjamin conceives it, would approximate what Lacan treats in terms of the frame function,“ which is only accomplished by the introduction of Gaze as object a, Gaze as a hole. Benjamin, when it comes to pictorial image, formulates that the real problem of painting is that, in one hand, the pictorial image behaves as a stain, and conversely, the stain exists exclusively on the painting. The name and the stain would constitute, for both authors, categories from which they face problems that are dear to them and that revolve around the statute of the name. In both authors, there is a proposition of a dilemma between the universality of communication, the singular of pure nomination such as an occurrence, and a negative element, characteristic of the symbolic. This negative element would mark the impossibility of bringing together the two orders, of overlapping them (universal and singular) – marking a negative element at the heart of language. The name would be a response to the impossibility of man to return to God’s naming function, missed without this fall launch man into the chatter of communicable, exiling the event, the singular, history. The name would thus be found at the very heart of communication such as which that refracts itself, performing like the rest, resisting to an universal apprehension.