The Agency of The Letter....



Speed TD Cleat



Since the beginning of high school the swarm of Nike apparel has taken over the industry of athletic attire, most commonly within the realm of football. It seems as though each year there are new shoes coming out, new styles of clothing, and most commonly for football, a new premiere football cleat. When I was a junior in high school, Nike came out with a new cleat called the Speed td’s which offered a light weight cleat that was flashy and comfortable. The next year Nike came out with a new style of cleat called the Vapor Jet td, which other than the newer style offered nothing different than the cleat I wore the year before. Now that I am in college the trend of Nike still continues to have an  effect me as an athlete. The new Pro Combat style has become very popular in the college football era due to its flashy apparel, unique style and color, and comfort; however offer’s nothing significantly different than the cleats I purchased in high school.

So why is that I continued to purchase the newer model of cleat each year when I knew that the cleat didn’t offer anything considerably different than the cleats I already owned? This may seem like a rather pointless question with no real significance, there has to be a reason outside of the flashiness that sparked my interest to get a new pair. Although I couldn’t seem to come up with an even remotely logical explanation, after reading the Jacques Lacan’s Agency of The Letter In The Unconscious, I started to get a better sense of my addiction for new football cleats.

Vapor Jet TD Cleat

In his writing he portrays his disagreements with the famous and well known psychologist Sigmund Freud. Instead of agreeing with Freud’s theory of the unconscious human as being the id, ego, and super-ego, he instead believes that the unconscious is structured like language. You may be asking yourself now how exactly language is structured then, and he answers by use of metonymy and metaphor.

Lacan describes metonymy by saying that we as humans do not know exactly what we want, but rather the objects that we desire dictate what we want. In other words he says that we are never satisfied…because metonymy is never complete. In regards to metaphor, Lacan depicts it as being how all of this metonymy’s become subjects to our desires. Although this may seem very confusing and hard to understand, the theme of Lacan’s writing is that we as humans do not desire objects, but rather we desire the right to

desire.



Nike Pro Combat Cleat



When looking at my unhealthy addiction to purchasing the newest model of Nike football cleats, Lacan would say that I don’t actually need the new cleat in reality, however I enjoy the fact that I desire to purchase them. Although I have good quality cleats each year, the reason that I continue to purchase the newest pair of cleat is not due to lack of quality, but rather because I am never satisfied with the old pair; and seem to always be looking for the next new pair to come out. In other words this goes hand-in-hand with Lacan’s idea that we are never satisfied…because metonymy is never complete.