Psychoanalytic Subject and Audience

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical problem and potentiality of psychoanalytically based audience theory. The impasse of "screen theory" regarding the spectator of cinema is that the subject is only a function of ideology. This difficulty is equivalent to that of the Arthusserian notion of the ideologically constituted subject. To break through the impasse, the Lacanian notion of subject divided in language is useful. After reviewing Stephen Heath and Slavoj Zizek whose theories depend on the Lacanian subject, it is stressed that the paradoxical nature of subject should be taken into account for psychoanalytically based audience theory.