Lacan’s insistence upon the pre-eminence of the operation and effects of
language as the primary insight of Freud’s psychoanalytic opus resulted in a ‘return to Freud’ during the 1950s with a practice of close-reading Freud’s texts. To achieve his
reconfiguration, Lacan employed two influential, contemporaneous analytical tools; structuralism and linguistic theory. The two had been brought together and utilised as an analytic strategy by structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in his analyses of cultural systems of marriage and kinship. Much of this structural approach was based upon the work of Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. As a contemporary interlocutor, it was Lévi-Strauss who brought Lacan’s attention to Saussure’s linguistic theory and its
potential analytic efficacy (E, p.676).
During the late-nineteenth century, the work of Saussure not only laid the foundation for the establishment of linguistics as a scientific discipline, but also
facilitated much of what was to develop in later twentieth-century linguistic theory and structural analysis. To outline his theoretical innovations as succinctly as possible, Saussure formulated a distinction between three aspects of language: langage, language
in the broadest sense ‘as a universal human phenomenon of communication’; la langue, a particular language system - such as French or German; and parole, language use in performative practice as particular speech acts, which encompasses both speech and writing (Homer, 2005, p.37). Saussure’s primary concern lay with la langue, language as a particular system, understood as a matrix of associated differential signs that at any particular time (the synchronic dimension) constitutes a set of rules and conventions that underpin what can and cannot be enunciated. Thus construed, language is a juxtaposition
of differential elements that form a foundational ‘operating system’. Without such a
structured foundation, any utterance that is spoken or written is unable to cohere or function as meaningful. Saussure proposed that such a system was made up of a set of relational signs. Each sign, however, did not refer directly to any specific object in reality. Rather than a direct referent, he asserted that the sign was an arbitrary
assignment of a particular sound pattern or written image that was inextricably linked to a particular concept. He defined the two entwined aspects of the sign as the signified
(concept) and the signifier (sound pattern or word image) (Figure 1).
SIGN
Signified (signifié) [concept]
Signifier (signifiant) [sound pattern / word image]
Figure 1: Saussure’s sign
Note. Adapted from Homer, S. (2005). Jacques Lacan. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, p.38.
The signified (signifié) constitutes the ideational component, or concept, that the signifier conjures up in the mind as a category. As such, it is to be distinguished from the referent of a sign, which is the specific real object in the world to which the sign refers. The signifier (signifiant) encompasses the auditory and visual components of a sign; the soundscape of a word as it is uttered as a series of phonemic elements, and the visual
‘shape’ of a word composed of written or printed characters. Saussure (as Figure 1 illustrates) gave precedence to the signified, the idea or category of object, over the phonemic utterance or visual image that represents it in speech or writing. The relation
between the two, he asserted, was purely arbitrary but ‘intimately’ linked like the
opposite sides of a piece of paper. The sign, in itself, however, did not harbour any particular meaning. For Saussure, the sign became imbued with meaning through its relational juxtaposition within the structure of any particular language as a total system:
‘Language creates a differential system whereby any given sign acquires its meaning by virtue of its difference from other signs’ (Homer, 2005, p.38). This differential
juxtaposition functioned upon two axes; the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic axis. The paradigmatic axis is one of choice where a particular sign is selected from a range of possibilities. For example: in a phrase such as ‘he walked down the street’, the word ‘street’ is selected from a list of possibilities such as ‘track’, ‘road’, ‘avenue’, ‘cul-de-sac’ or ‘boulevard’. All possibilities imply a roadway of some variety, but each
has a particular contextual meaning. Conversely, the selected word could be substituted with any of the other choices, thus establishing that the paradigmatic axis, on a
conceptual level, is one of substitution.
The syntagmatic axis is one of combination where the words are ordered and chained together according to a system of syntax and grammar. If the words are not combined in the correct manner –‘the walked street he down’ – the phrase or sentence no longer makes sense as a whole. Not only do individual words or signs have to be selected (the paradigmatic axis that subtends the symbolic chain), they have to be combined into a correctly ordered relational chain (the syntagmatic axis of the symbolic chain). Thus, for language to function, both axes are employed: ‘what a person says
depends not only upon the words they use and those they exclude but also upon the
place of those words within an overall structure’ (Homer, 2005, p.39).
The mechanics of this linguistic structuring of language were advanced further
through the work of Lacan’s colleague, Russian linguist Roman Jakobson. For Jakobson, the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of language became synonymous with the
rhetorical devices of metaphor and metonymy, a discovery made when he was
2001, pp.16-18). Metaphor, as an associative substitution, correlates with the paradigmatic synchronic axis. Metonymy, on the other hand, correlates to the
syntagmatic axis of contiguity, combination and displacement of the signifying chain. In turn, Lacan utilised metaphor and metonymy as the linguistic devices that structure the unconscious as demonstrated by Freud through the mechanisms of condensation and displacement evident in his analysis of dreams. The unconscious can thus be seen to operate like linguistic structure through the primary processes of condensation and displacement, which underpin the secondary processes of conscious thought (Homer, 2005, pp.42-3).
The pertinence of linguistic theory to psychoanalysis can thus readily be
identified with Saussure’s notion that there is an underlying structure that dictates and
frames what can and cannot be said. That structure, however, is something we are largely unaware of, and, for Lacan, this corresponds to the unconscious. As a simple
example: we learn how to speak our ‘mother tongue’ much like a musician learns ‘by ear’, but in general, we remain unaware of the structures and rules that dictate what can be said and how it can be said. Indeed, it is often not until we attempt to learn a second language with divergent rules and structures that we gain an appreciation of the
grammatical and syntactical rules and conventions that shape the use of our ‘mother tongue’. Similarly, for a musician, it is only when a shift occurs from performing
particular compositions either by ear or from a written score – as a repetition or
replication – to the modes of improvisation and composition that a greater apprehension of the structures and conventions that underpin musical endeavour, irrespective of genre, become more apparent. Indeed, it is in the performative modes of improvisation and composition in any language system – be it linguistic or musical – that restrictions and constraints, as well as the indeterminacy and parameters of malleability can be
apprehended and approached. The aspects of linguistic theory outlined and discussed above, are pertinent to the discussion to follow, however, there are two aspects of
Saussure’s theory that Lacan took issue with, and it is important to keep them in mind.
Firstly, Lacan did not adhere to the notion of a system as a whole. Although it might be construed that the Lacanian register of the Symbolic and the concomitant
language system, la langue, Lacan insists that it is not a hermetically sealed and
structured whole. Secondly, Lacan inverts the relationship between the signified and the signifier. Not only does he elevate the Signifier (the sound pattern/written image
designated by Lacan with a capitalised ‘S’) to a position of primary importance as that
which creates the signified (concept), but he also rejects Saussure’s claim that signifier and signified are inextricably joined. In this respect, it can be appreciated how Lacan’s
theoretical move begins to displace the teleological notion of cause and effect. The signified (concept) is not only a linguistic substitution for an object in reality, but it is created through the relational juxtaposition of the Signifier. Rather than the inextricable entwinement of the two aspects of the sign, Lacan proposed that the bar between them constitutes a barrier (Figure 2).
Signifier (signifiant) [sound pattern / word image]
signified (signifié) [concept]
Figure 2: Lacan’s signifier
Note. Adapted from Homer, S. (2005). Jacques Lacan. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, p.41.
For Lacan, the bar between Signifier and signified creates a barrier such that any
consistent or ‘natural’ one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified is precluded. Instead, a chain of signification is set in motion where each signifier can only be related to another signifier. To illustrate this point, the oft-quoted analogy of looking up the meaning of a word in a dictionary cannot be bettered. The dictionary can only specify the meaning of any given word or signifier in relation to other words or
signifiers. Although Lacan maintained the fluidity of language and meaning with his re- conceptualisation of the linguistic sign, he proposed that there were points of fixation or suture –points de capiton– where signifying elements knot together to enable the
system to function. As the discussion will shortly demonstrate, Lacan represents this process of suturing on the first graph of the elementary cell.
Lacan’s reconfiguration of the psychoanalytic understanding of language in the
terminology of structural linguistics not only highlights a disjuncture in the traditional notion of cause and effect relation, but also subverts any simple dialectic and resolution of binary oppositions. Moreover, as we shall come to understand through reading the graph of desire, this departure does not vanquish the biological, but seeks to apprehend it as a process of effects and traces that map the diversion of the human organism through the defiles of the signifier. Accordingly, the conundrum of the body/mind duality of philosophical rumination takes a radical and complex reconfiguration. The most pivotal concept involved in the psychoanalytic hypothesis described above, is the notion of the unconscious.