2001: A Space Odyssey and the Anticipatory Function of the Symbolic Order in the Staging of the Beating Fantasy

This paper argues that the representation of violence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey can be interpreted as a recurrent staging of the fantasy described by Freud in his 1919 article A Child is Being Beaten. A twofold implication of the function of anticipation is retrieved in terms of Lacan's discussion of the three phased development of the beating fantasy. In Lacan's reading, the second phase of this fantasy takes up an anticipatory function with regard to the assumption of Symbolic castration in the third phase. We argue that the retroactive construction of the three different formulas in the description of the beating fantasy in itself implies the pre-existence, and thus anticipatory function of the Symbolic Order. The anticipatory function of the Symbolic Order is retrieved in Kubrick's particular mode of staging the beating fantasy, as it both implies the signifier of the Name-of-Kubrick's-Father and the phallus as signifier of a structural lack.