The Reflection of Lacanian Mirror-Gase and Thought in Orhan Pamuk s The Black Book

The theme of identity in Orhan Pamuk s works, and in specific to this study in The Black Book is prominent. This article aims to approach this work of Pamuk in a psychoanalytic Lacanian criticism. Lacan as a psychologist with a post-structuralist viewpoint, believes that the unconscious is structured like a language. He explains that the language, the signifying chain with a perpetual sliding of the signified under the signifier, never provides ultimate meaning or a transcendental signified . Accordingly, this article, provides a Lacanian reading of Orhan Pamuk s The Black Book with emphasis on the main roles of the other , and language in forming of the unconscious and individual identity. Galip , the protagonist of the novel, is in search of his lost wife Rüya . But in fact, following this lack, he starts his search for knowing himself through a chain of signifiers. His search does not lead him to reach to a complete ultimate meaning of his self . His bewildered subject cannot anchor at a fix point of integrated and wholeness of the self .