Dumb it down further for me.
Having a mental block with the very basics of Lacan: I’m reading some summaries of it (no time/inclination to fight through his writing in its entirety) in regards to how his theories have been applied to my particular academic bailiwick of intermediate hamster-fur-weaving in historical context, and. . . ok, just… ok, when he is speaking of the mirror stage-- he does write of infants recognizing themselves in mirrors as being what triggers this-- does he LITERALLY mean, like, an actual mirror? Or is he being figurative, and he means some process that could apply to, say, the optically blind, or to the 95% of human history that muddled through without infants with access to decent mirrors (like a script or image or imposition or something)? Is this idea indeed as ahistorical as it initially sounds or is there some nuance that my summaries aren’t getting across?