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PARTISAN REVIEW
eroticism and object-Iove-occurs at a point which is prelinguis–
tic, or at least not fully linguistic.
In
this sense the confusion
between self identity and identification (or the projection of the
self outward into the body of an assumed double) that character–
izes narcissism corresponds to the initial inability to grasp the
peculiar machinery of the shifters "I" and "you." I am stressing
this connection between narcissism and a specific regressed
linguistic situation at the risk of seeming to fall into line behind
the now intellectually fashionable interest in semeiology. How–
ever, the evidence of narcissism as a widespread cultural phe–
nomenon is so overwhelming that it seems ridiculous to resist
whatever theoretical models there might be to deepen our
understanding of it.
For this reason it seems important to notice that the shifter
itself is suspended between two generically separate conditions,
sharing the features of two distinct types of signs. These two
types are called "symbol" and "index." The pronouns are part
of the symbolic code of language insofar as they are arbitrary:
" I" we say in English, but "je" in French, "ego" in Latin, "ich"
in German. But insofar as their meaning depends on the
existential presence of a given speaker, the pronouns (as is true
of the other shifters) announce themselves as belonging to the
sign type called index. As distinct from symbols, indexes estab–
lish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to
their referents. They are the marks or traces of a particular cause,
and that cause is the thing to which they refer, the object they
signify. Into the category of the index we would place physical
traces (like footprints), medical symptoms, or the actual per–
sonal referents of the shifters. What I am trying
to
establish,
then, is the relationship between narcissism and a subsymbolic
form of representation which is called the index. And the reason
this is so suggestive for me is that in the case of video art we are
confronted with a medium of photography, and photography is
itself demonstrably a type of index.
If
the shifter marks off a certain domain of spoken or
written language as the territory of the index, the empty signs
whose meanings are eventually supplied by the physical or
literal presence of the object, the photograph occupies a similar
