giambattista vico, screen theorist

The case that Giambattista Vico, the 18c. cultural philosopher, is the true precursor to the innovative French psychologist, Jacques Lacan, is difficult to make. Neither group of those who might be counted followers or scholars of these respective intellectual giants knows much about the other. This is understandable in the case of Lacanians, who trace Lacan's theories directly back to Freud and other sources mentioned by Lacan. It is doubtful that Lacan knew much about Vico, making any search seem fruitless.

Vico scholars point to influences, conscious or unconscious, that Vico's theories have had on subsequent generations of thinkers. But, Lacan has never been on anyone's list, possibly because Vico's account has been banked with philosophy. Comparisons to psychology have focused on the ways that Piaget's stages of child development parallel Vico's idealized ages of gods, heroes, and men.

Instead of interpreting this lack of mutual recognition pessimistically, the lack amounts to a 'moratorium' that has left the field clear of misconceptions. An objective assessment can proceed by pointing to the nearly complete lack of any real historical association. The value of any connection is that it points to a single truth, discovered in different ages, by thinkers with different motives, cultures, and vocabularies. The parallels between Vico and Lacan amount to what in science is called 'corroboration'. Slavoj Zizek invoked the humorous suggestion of anachronism in his analysis of the use of anamorphosis in Shakespeare: 'It is clear that Shakespeare was a reader of Lacan!' In even more examples, it is clear that 'Vico was a reader of Lacan!'

The following sequence of short essays begins with a condensed account of Vico's peculiar view of language's use of metaphor and metonymy. Using Latin terms economically, Vico held that the human perceptual world is undone by the thunder, which causes them to conceive a god of the sky, Jove, whose first word is laced into the syllables of the thunder. For the first time facing the experience of wonder (what is it that Jove means to tell us? —the factum of a demonic nature), the first humans attempt to 'quilt' the 'sliding signifiers' with the certainties made by the science of divination. The certum becomes the basis for all human institutions, based on the 'imaginative universals' of perception.

Verum, which is Latin for 'the true', not 'truth', is for Vico what lies within and somewhat 'behind' appearances. This is not like the 'reality' behind appearance. Every culture 'makes' the objects that are the standards of perception and experience. Objects and their uses are the 'made things', the cose, where names and cultural values define a complex that is primarily symbolic. Verum, according to Vico, is what holds the whole system together, what guarantees its flexibility in the face of the need for certainty. This makes 'the true' a surplus element that cannot be subsumed by symbolic networks. This does not mean that the true does not work in and with language. In fact, the verum is a product of language and the mentality language opens up.

In the following essays, the true, the certain, and the made create a complex of relationships that closely parallel Lacan's triangle of 'the symbolic, the imaginary, and the Real'. Because the meanings are reciprocal, the definition of each is problematic if detached from the whole.

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