( 2 ) The fact that the subjectqua ego continuously projects his own ideal image—
that is to say, his ideal ego—onto the external world not only affects his relation-
ship with other human beings but also heavily conditions his (mis)apprehension
of all external objects. As I have already said, imaginary knowledge (connaissance) is
for Lacan structurally paranoiac: this is “the most general structure of human
knowledge,” and “constitutes [both] the ego and its objects with attributes of per-
manence, identity and substantiality, in short, in the guise of entities or ‘things.’”^33
Lacan can therefore speak explicitly of a “hominizationof the planet”^34 that is valid
for both natural and manufactured entities. It is indeed clear that by continuously
projecting his own ideal image onto the external world, man “anthropomor-
phizes” animals and other organic beings; for Lacan, an animal can be individu-
ated only by man’s imaginary projections—that is to say, only if man manages to
see the image of man inthe animal, as it were. On the contrary, an animalqua indi-
vidual is in itself “always already dead,” in that it exists only to serve the repro-
duction of its species.^35 With regard to “the world of [man’s] own making,” Lacan
reminds us that “it is in the automaton that [it] tends to find completion.”^36 This
clearly epitomizes the basic “hominizing” character of technology. The imaginary
dimension that determines technological production should at this point also
throw new light on the way in which technological progress is inevitably bound
for aggressivity and war. More generally, according to Lacan, the entirety of the
external world, both manufactured and natural objects, should be considered as a
“statue in which man projects himself.”^37 The individuation of organic and in-
organic beings alike is possible only on the basis of an underlying imaginary
anthropomorphization.
( 3 ) In his first theory of the subject, Lacan clearly distinguishes the notion of ideal
egofrom that of ego-ideal: such a difference was already indicated by Freud, but he
failed fully to elucidate it. In general, if the ideal ego is a projection of the ego’s
ideal image onto the external world (equally onto human beings, animals, and
things), the ego-ideal is the subject’s introjection of another external image that
has a new(de)formative effect on his psyche. In other words, the ego-ideal adds to
the ego a new stratum that provides the subject with a secondary identification.
The subject reiterates here the first dialectical movement which he had initially car-
ried out by introjecting the specular image that gave rise to the primordial alien-
ating identification of the Ur-Ich.^38 More specifically, the ego-ideal is, in the first
instance, the consequence of the subject’s identification with the imagoof the father,
which alleviates the aggressive-narcissistic solipsism of the ego by making the sub-
ject enter the symbolic plan of the Law; thus Lacan can state that the ego-ideal lies
at “the joint of the imaginary and the symbolic.”^39 Secondary identification (post-the subject of the imaginary (other)