The Word Made Flesh, The Subject Divided: A Lacanian Reading of the Gospel of John
The Gospel of John, often considered the most theological and mystical of the four canonical Gospels, offers a fertile ground for exploration through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Far from diminishing its spiritual and historical significance, a Lacanian reading illuminates the profound interplay of language, desire, and the formation of subjectivity that underpins its unique portrayal of Christ and his ministry. Central to this approach are Lacan’s tripartite registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real, alongside concepts such as the Name-of-the-Father, the Other, and the foundational split of the subject, all of which resonate deeply within John’s narrative.
John’s prologue, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), immediately establishes the primacy of the Symbolic order. The “Word” (Logos) here is not merely a concept but the very structuring principle and origin of existence. This aligns profoundly with Lacan’s understanding of language as preceding and constituting the subject. Before any individual subjectivity can emerge, there exists a pre-existing Symbolic Law, a divine discourse that gives form and meaning to all reality. Jesus, as the incarnate Word, embodies this ultimate Signifier, a living manifestation of the Name-of-the-Father that structures the cosmos. His profound “I am” statements – “I am the light of the world,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life” – are not just declarations of identity but performative utterances that establish a new Symbolic order, challenging and re-ordering the established legal and religious systems of his time. He speaks with an authority that derives directly from this foundational Symbolic position, an authority that frequently baffles and infuriates those bound by a more rigid, pre-existing law. His identity is not self-derived but constantly refers back to the Father, the ultimate guarantor of this Symbolic Law, creating a chain of signification that grounds all meaning.
The concept of the “Other” is paramount in understanding the dynamics of faith, doubt, and misunderstanding throughout John’s Gospel. For Lacan, the Big Other represents the repository of language, law, and social norms – the symbolic order from which the subject derives its identity and meaning. In John, God the Father functions as this ultimate Other, the absolute source of authority, truth, and meaning. Jesus constantly refers to the Father’s will, his Father’s works, and the glory he shares with the Father. However, the divine Other, by its very nature, is not immediately accessible or fully graspable. There is a fundamental lack, a necessary distance that precludes direct, unmediated apprehension. This inherent gap manifests powerfully in the widespread disbelief and profound misunderstanding that Jesus encounters. Their existing Imaginary identifications – their fixed ideas of who the Messiah should be, based on their desires and historical expectations – and their established Symbolic frameworks are simply insufficient to contain or comprehend the radical nature of the Real that Jesus embodies. They attempt to fit him into their pre-conceived categories, and when he resists this reduction, when he insists on a truth that transcends their Imaginary grasp, their anxiety and hostility emerge, often escalating into violent rejection.
The mirror stage, where the infant identifies with a unified, albeit illusory, image of itself, leading to the formation of the ego and a fundamental alienation, can be subtly traced in the various encounters within John. The persistent demand for signs and wonders, the insistence for Jesus to “prove” himself through visible spectacles, speaks to an Imaginary demand for a perfect, unified image that can be readily grasped, controlled, and thus provide immediate gratification. When Jesus refuses to be reduced to such an image, often performing signs that require a deeper Symbolic interpretation rather than simple observation (such as the raising of Lazarus, which signifies resurrection rather than merely a return to life), it creates deep-seated anxiety and often hostility. The crowds follow him for the bread he offers, but recoil when he speaks of eating his flesh – their Imaginary understanding of sustenance clashes with his Symbolic discourse of spiritual life. The disciples themselves wrestle with their own Imaginary identifications of Jesus, initially clinging to expectations of an earthly king or a purely miraculous figure, gradually moving towards an acceptance of his more complex Symbolic authority, often only fully after his resurrection. The resurrection shatters their pre-conceived notions of a conquering Messiah and forces them to confront a reality that defies their prior Imaginary projections. The encounter with the resurrected Christ, who is simultaneously familiar yet radically altered, pushes them beyond the limitations of the Imaginary into a more complex, faith-based Symbolic relationship. His wounds, visible yet no longer causing pain, are signifiers of a triumph that defies straightforward Imaginary understanding, demanding a leap of faith into the Symbolic realm.
Furthermore, John’s recurrent emphasis on “seeing” and “believing” can be analyzed with remarkable clarity through a Lacanian lens. “Seeing” often aligns with the Imaginary – the immediate, empirical, and often deceptive perception of appearances. It is the desire for a direct, tangible confirmation, a form of visual mastery over the object of one’s gaze. This is the “seeing” that leads Nicodemus to confusion or the Pharisees to blindness. “Believing,” however, requires an engagement with the Symbolic, a commitment to the Word (Logos) even when it defies empirical verification or Imaginary coherence. It involves a submission to a truth that transcends immediate sensory input and demands a recognition of the Other’s discourse. Thomas’s famous demand to “see and touch” before believing exemplifies the powerful pull of the Imaginary – he needs the empirical evidence, the tangible proof, to bridge his doubt. Jesus’s subsequent blessing, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29), points to the primacy of a faith that transcends the immediate gaze and enters the realm of symbolic recognition. The true vision, in John, is not of an objective image to be consumed by the eye, but of a truth that resides beyond the immediate visible, deeply embedded within the Symbolic structure of the divine. It is a recognition of the gaze of the Other – God’s gaze – that constitutes the subject’s truth, rather than the subject’s own Imaginary gaze constructing the truth.
The Tower of Babel: The Fragmentation of the Symbolic and the Eruption of the Real
The biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11, presents a pivotal moment in human history, often interpreted as an explanation for the diversity of languages. However, viewed through a Lacanian psychoanalytic lens, the story reveals a profound commentary on the very nature of language, community, the Symbolic order, and the inevitable irruption of the Real when Imaginary unity is pursued to its destructive end.
The initial state described in Genesis 11:1 – “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words” – depicts a pre-lapsarian (in a linguistic sense) Imaginary unity. This single language represents a fantasy of complete intersubjective transparency, where meaning is supposedly immediate, unambiguous, and universally shared. In Lacanian terms, this signifies a community living under the illusion of a perfectly closed Symbolic order, where there is no fundamental lack, no necessary misrecognition. This unity fosters an almost narcissistic communal ego, a collective identification with a seamless linguistic and social fabric, much like an infant’s blissful merger with the mother before the intervention of the Name-of-the-Father. It’s a desire to bypass the inherent fragmentation of existence, to remain perpetually in a state of pre-division and blissful self-sufficiency.
The people’s ambition, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4), perfectly illustrates an Imaginary quest for mastery and self-sufficiency. The tower is a clear phallic symbol, representing the collective attempt to literally bridge the gap between humanity and the Big Other (God/the ultimate Symbolic authority), to become their own source of meaning and order, to achieve an ultimate enjoyment (jouissance) without external mediation. “Making a name for ourselves” is an act of profound defiance against the Name-of-the-Father, the foundational Symbolic law that positions humanity as inherently subordinate, desiring, and subject to castration (symbolic lack). They seek to constitute their own, self-referential Symbolic order, one that excludes external divine authority and internal linguistic slippage, to create a perfect, unbreachable enclosure of meaning. This desire for total control, for a unified and unassailable collective ego, is precisely what Lacan warns against as inherently pathological, leading to stagnation and ultimately, rupture. Such a closed system, devoid of the necessary gap that fuels desire and meaning, becomes a suffocating trap.
God’s intervention – “Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:7) – can be interpreted as the irruption of the Real into this attempted Imaginary-Symbolic closure. The confusion of tongues is not merely a punishment in the conventional sense; it is a restoration of the fundamental lack and division inherent in language itself. It shatters the illusion of a perfect, shared Symbolic field, exposing the arbitrary nature of the signifier. The multiplicity of languages introduces a necessary split in the signifier, meaning is no longer immediate, but constantly deferred, always requiring translation, interpretation, and thus, always inherently prone to misinterpretation. This fragmentation forces subjects to confront the inherent arbitrariness of the sign and the impossibility of a pre-established, universal harmony of understanding. The Real of linguistic difference bursts forth, demonstrating that no Symbolic system can ever be truly closed or self-sufficient.
The scattering of the people (“from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth,” Genesis 11:8) is the direct, inevitable consequence of this linguistic fracture. Without the illusion of a shared, unproblematic Symbolic space, the collective Imaginary collapses. The community’s cohesive ego, built on this linguistic sameness, disintegrates, and subjects are forced into distinct, often mutually incomprehensible, Symbolic orders. This act, therefore, serves as a powerful reassertion of the Name-of-the-Father, reminding humanity of its limits, its inherent finitude, and its inescapable dependence on an Other that transcends its self-made structures. The Tower of Babel, in this light, is a quintessential cautionary tale about the dangers of attempting to construct a totalizing Symbolic order that denies the fundamental lack at the heart of language and being, leading inevitably to a violent confrontation with the unmanageable Real.
The Word Reconciles, Babel Fragments: A Dialectic of Symbolic Orders
When placed in direct conversation, the Lacanian readings of the Gospel of John and the Tower of Babel reveal a profound and complementary theological and psychoanalytic dialectic concerning language, subjectivity, and the divine. Both narratives pivot on the Symbolic order and its relationship to the Imaginary and the Real, yet they offer contrasting movements: Babel describes a catastrophic fragmentation of the Symbolic due to an overreaching Imaginary desire for total mastery, while John presents a re-establishment and re-orientation of the Symbolic through the incarnate Word, offering a new, more profound path to navigate the inherent divisions of being.
At Babel, humanity attempts to consolidate a singular, self-sufficient Symbolic order, believing they can bypass the Name-of-the-Father and construct meaning entirely on their own terms. Their “one language” is an Imaginary fantasy of total transparency, a desire to eliminate the very lack that fuels desire and the signifier itself. This desire for total linguistic and social mastery, for a closed Symbolic loop, leads to the irruption of the Real – the chaotic multiplicity of tongues that shatters their illusion. The punishment is not arbitrary but a forced confrontation with the inherent finitude and fragmentation of language, reminding humanity that the Symbolic order is always mediated by an external Other and can never be fully mastered or made whole by the subject. The result is dispersion and incomprehension, an embodiment of the alienated subject caught in a fractured linguistic landscape, perpetually striving for a lost unity.
In stark contrast, John’s Gospel enters a world already experiencing this Babel-like fragmentation. Humanity is divided by language, culture, and understanding, constantly struggling with misrecognition and an inability to fully grasp divine truth. Into this fractured landscape steps Jesus, the Logos, the Word made flesh. He is not attempting to restore the singular, pre-Babel language, nor is he offering a simple return to an Imaginary unity. Instead, he endeavors to establish a new, universal Symbolic order not based on a superficial linguistic sameness, but on a shared Signifier – himself – who points back to the ultimate Big Other (God the Father). He offers a Symbolic anchor in a fragmented world, a truth that transcends the multiplicity of languages and Imaginary projections, promising a new form of communication and communion.
While Babel shows humanity trying to build a tower up to God, attempting to capture the divine within their own Symbolic construct, to make God subject to their own naming, John shows God’s Word descending into humanity. Jesus, as the ultimate Signifier, functions as a new Name-of-the-Father, providing a structuring principle for subjectivity that acknowledges the inherent split of the subject (the very “castration” that makes desire possible), rather than denying it. He calls for a “belief” that moves beyond the Imaginary demand for immediate signs and visible proofs, inviting subjects to engage with a Symbolic truth that requires faith and interpretation, rather than simple assimilation. The misunderstanding he faces is precisely the difficulty of individuals to dislodge their Imaginary fixations and enter this new, more profound Symbolic relationship, one that demands a surrender to the Other’s Word.
Ultimately, both narratives speak to the fundamental Lacanian insight that the subject is always split, always desiring, and always constituted by language. Babel represents the hubris of attempting to overcome this split and lack through an Imaginary consolidation of the Symbolic, leading to catastrophe. It is the story of humanity’s attempt to erase its own castration, to achieve a fantasy of full being through self-creation, which inevitably fails. John, conversely, offers a path to integrate this split, to find meaning and connection not in a false, Imaginary unity, but in a relationship with the ultimate Other mediated by the incarnate Word. It is a re-ordering of the Symbolic that acknowledges the Real of human fragmentation, offering a way for disparate subjects to nonetheless find a common ground in the shared Signifier of Christ, transcending the linguistic chaos inaugurated at Babel. The confusion of tongues might scatter humanity, highlighting the inherent division of the speaking being, but the Logos, in John’s vision, offers a means to re-gather it under a different, more profound, and ultimately salvific Symbolic order, one that embraces the fundamental lack and opens the way for true desire and communion.
Opinions of one T. Watt 