Grasping the Site/Sight/Cite of the Image: A Lacanian Explication

Reading images psychoanalytically from a Lacanian perspective has its challenges. The first task of this essay is to provide a way through what is often taken to be difficult and impenetrable theory, to explicate how the homology site/ sight/ cite can be understood in any act of critical perception. Its second task is to make distinctions between a psychoanalytic understanding of the subject as being \u27split\u27 or divided (as represented by the matheme \u27$,\u27 Lacan\u27s symbol for this form of subjectivity) when applied to art, as opposed to a naive realist subject of representation or a savvy poststructuralist (decentered) subject of postmodernity. For this second task, the question of what constitutes an \u27object\u27 for a subject in psychoanalysis comes front and center when discussing visual culture