Hegel, Lacan, and Orange: Reflection as Identity in 'There There' Eve Mandel College

In Tommy Orange’s There There, several unique characters show acute awareness of their “otherness” as members of a minority American culture, yet struggle to uncover their personal identities. In “Phenomenology of Spirit,” German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel asserts that the development of the self relies on interactions and experiences with others; there is no self without everything that’s not the self. Possibly inspired by Hegel’s work, French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan posits that a baby’s understanding of itself and its reflection is heavily influenced by those around him and is primarily “imaginary” or aesthetic. He asserts that this “misrecognition” affects the child’s entire life because the ‘Other’ permeates the ego. The difficulties with self-consciousness that the characters in There There experience can certainly be explained by both Hegel and Lacan’s theories, but Orange appears more optimistic than the philosophers, suggesting that we can control our identities by using our reflections as a tool for introspection.

At the beginning of There There, the characters’ struggles with self awareness are tied to their interactions with others, in accordance with Hegel’s ideas. Tony Loneman is...