The Cogito and consciousness The scopic field and traits of the oneiric world

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the status of both consciousness and the cogito, from the point of view of the scopic field. To accomplish it, we examine the differences between waking life and oneiric experience. Methodology is theoretical, it consists on the analysis of several psychoanalytic and philosophical works. First of all, we interrogate the idea of dream as an argument for the conception of an heterotopic consciousness, taking into account both Lacan’s and Sartre’s theories. Our aim is to approach the problem of a non unitary consciousness, related to the disguising that the ego produces. As a counterpart, oneiric phenomenon is a crucial argument to support the conception of a consciousness without an ego. Discrepancy of the cogito between dream and madness lead us to conceive, from another angle, the relation between dream and the cogito. Afterwards, we analyze the idea of a voyeuristic but not exhibitionist world. We conclude that dream should be linked, as a scopic phenomenon, to the absence of a narcissistic support for the subject. The geometrical-Cartesian subject appears spread among the images of the dream, the cogito apprehension is then just scopic in the restricted sense of the waking life.