The mirror stage explains why images grant and destabilize selfhood

Evidence

A trope of mirroring elemental to the theory of the imaginary illustrates the role of images in generating the subject’s view of itself: an infant perceives itself as a pool of sensations, fluid and disunified and fraughtly continuous with the mother, until they encounter their own specular image in a mirror, which imposes wholeness and coherence that fuses the sense of self, the ego. The image in the mirror opens to recognition and affirmation, affording presence, fullness. But desilvering shades these benefits, volatility besets the image, and error lodes the ego: mirrors do, after all, crack. The smooth and the shattered, the immersed and the imploded—the polarities of the imaginary. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 84

Categorization

• DEFINE: The mirror-stage mechanism underlying the imaginary — the specular image as both maker and cracker of the ego.
• XREF: connects to: Cloning abolishes the mirror stage by eliminating all mediation and image — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 328; The fantasy of capturing reality live has driven image-making since Narcissus — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 349; Mirror ecstasy comes from feeling oneself a singular subject rather than generic flesh — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1795 (+3 more)