Tyler Durden represents a post-modern double that departs from historical precedents. He is introduced through cinema rather than literature and is not associated with traditional doubles from Gothic fiction that symbolized supernatural concepts. Tyler possesses his own agency and can act independently from the narrator whether he is awake or asleep. Fight Club reimagines the double through influences from Freud, Lacan, and film to establish a new paradigm of the double that is freed from older symbolic meanings and stigmas.

2. Tyler Durden is the enigmatic anti-
hero, serendipitously born at the
end of a century framed by
capitalism and corruption,
dominated graft and greed, and
punctuated by the emasculation, or
the second castration, of the
working class male..

3. Tyler Durden represents
the every man – he is all
the things we wish we
could be. He looks like we
want to look, he f**ks like
we want to f**k, he is
smart, capable, and most
importantly, he is free in
all the ways that we are
not.

4. No matter how mythic or
fantastic Tyler Durden
seems, the truth remains
the same – he represents
nothing more than a
recycled motif; a
throwback to the literary
double made famous by
18th century Gothic
fiction.

5. According to Homer, man has
dualistic existence, the one in his
visible appearance, the other in his
invisible image which becomes free
only after death – this, and no
other, is his soul. In animate man
there dwells as a strange guest a
more feeble Double – his other Self
in the form of his Psyche – whose
kingdom is the world of dreams.
When the conscious self sleeps, the
Double works and watches1.

6. In its inception, Homer gives the double
total dominion through duality. Not only
does the double have immortality by
being the soul in death but also has a
kingdom in the psyche of animate man.

7. New Soul Belief
• Genesis 2:7
– Soul
– 1 Part Dust
– 1 Part Breath2
Old Soul Belief
• Immortality is a right of the
Church
• Separates Good from Bad
• Devil is personification of
moralized double3
New Soul Belief vs. Old Soul Belief

8. The Doppelganger returned to
prominence during the 18th
century as a manifestation of the
conflict between empiricism and
religious orthodoxy. The
doppelganger, I theorize, is a
symbol of that initial internal
struggle taking place during this
time.

9. However, the doppelganger was assimilated into the
hegemony, losing all political or iconoclastic significance
becoming a repetitious trope of Gothic Fiction. Forever
associated with the supernatural, the doppelganger
eventually became a symbol of parody and farce.

10. • Twins
• Shadows
• Sibling empathy and
rivalry
• Reflections4
• Ghosts
• Living Portraits
• Statues, dolls, and
automatons
• Vampires and
werewolves
• Homunculi and golem
• Guardian angels and
devils4
Natural Doubles Supernatural Doubles

11. Sigmund Freud Jacques Lacan

12. Fight Club establishes a new paradigm for the
doppelganger by introducing the
doppelgangers double. In other words, Fight
Club completely re-envisions the
doppelganger, parting from historical
precedent in favor of a post-gothic synthesis of
historical, psychological, and literary
influences in order to establish a post-modern
paradigm of the doppelganger.

13. What makes this double different?
• Ontology comes from cinema and not literature
• Mortal
• Relegated to the unconscious much like the
subject, but possesses agency
• Is not in binary temporal opposition with the
subject, can act while the subject is both asleep
and awake
• No association with the original stigma of the
double, natural or otherwise

14. The Post-Modern Double owes its existences to the
same men who deconstructed the Homeric double,
Lacan and Freud.
• Lacan provides ontological methodology
• Freud provides ontological structure

15. Lacan’s contribution to the Double in
Fight Club:
The Mirror Stage
Set Theory
Extimacy

16. Freud’s contribution to the Double in
Fight Club:
The Dream of the Wound
The Play of Substitution
The Game of Disappearance
The Romance of Death
The Romance of Life5

17. The Dream of the Wound
• The explosion on the plane marks the double’s
entry into to the imaginary.
• The apartment explosion marks the double’s entry
into the symbolic.
• Represents what Julia Kristeva would call a thetic
rupture6

18. The Play of Substitution
“I fell down some stairs”
“This conversation is over”
“Is Tyler my bad dream, or am I Tyler’s?”

19. The Game of Disappearance
“Where did you go psycho-boy?”
“And then, Tyler was gone”
“Tyler not here, Tyler gone”
“Following an invisible man”

20. The Romance of Death
“... is chemical burn.”
“Guys, what would you wish you'd done before you died?”
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone
drops to zero.”

21. The Romance of Life
[Tyler points a gun into the Narrator's mouth]
Narrator: [voiceover] People are always asking me if I
know Tyler Durden.
Tyler Durden: Three minutes. This is it - ground zero.
Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?
Narrator: ...i... ann... iinn... ff... nnyin...
Narrator: [voiceover] With a gun barrel between your
teeth, you speak only in vowels.
[Tyler removes the gun from the Narrator's mouth]
Narrator: I can't think of anything.
Narrator: [voiceover] For a second I totally forgot about
Tyler's whole controlled demolition thing and I wonder
how clean that gun is.

22. Ultimately, by creating a double of the double, Fight Club resurrects
the double, removing it from the stigma of the supernatural,
returning it to a symbol of resistance, and making it once again
relevant. Through a synthesis of Lacan and Freud, the double has
been re-signified as a viable and valuable psychoanalytic tool. While
this exposition is limited to Fight Club, it establishes a precedent for
the future study post-modern cinematic doubles in hopes of
developing a post-modern paradigm of the double or to return
significance to the original double.