| Summary: | Lost is a polysemic show which mobilizes, for that purpose, the trope of homonymy. Many characters go by the name of great historical figures. This process questions the theme of utopia and ideal society. Yet Benjamin Linus, the main antagonist from the 2nd season to the 5th, is impersonated by an actor named Michael Emerson, whose name is the same as the American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, on whom Cavell says that is one of the repressed founding father of American thought. Under what circumstance can we consider that this homonymy constitutes a reference to understand the fictional narrative without taking the risk of confusing our desires with reality? Our thesis is that Lost encourages this sort of risk-taking. The story is a narrative experience, in the wake of Emerson’s self-titled essay. It incites us to rely on ourselves, to dare claim that each of us is special, in order to think a televised subjectivity and intimate recognition at odds with the egocentric voyeur’s posture of the standard viewer.
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