Sometimes I just can’t help noticing phenomena that could be mere coincidences. For instance, if a mediocre movie called Number 23 makes me realize that it is a manifestation of a Lacanian-Joycean interpretation of le sinthome. As soon as I realized that the Baader Meinhof phenomenon is present when I talk about the movie and the sinthome (FYI it was Lacan’s 23rd Seminar, where he dealt with this Order), it suddenly struck me: isn’t it just the same proble Joyce was involved in, or what the notebooks connote for Paul Auster?
The movie may uncounsciously play with the breakdown of the external self-representing/defining mediums that constitute and guarantee the subject’s coherence. With Joyce, these mediums are veiled so psychoses was to be avoided, but the more interesting part in the movie is that they’re not hidden anymore: as our hero realizes his trauma that actually haunted him in the form of nightmares or in a certain number; so this trauma is revealed and the Symbolic veiling is shattered.
On the other hand, the character,played by Jim Carrey wants to identify himself with the main hero from the book, entitled “Number 23″, which is the opposite case as in the example of Joyce.
