Metonymy
Metonymy (métonymie), in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is a fundamental structural operation of the unconscious and the primary linguistic mechanism governing the nature of desire. While derived from classical rhetoric—where it designates a figure of speech based on contiguity or association—Lacan elevates metonymy to a constitutive principle of the signifying chain.
Lacan introduces the concept in the 1950s during his "return to Freud," specifically by rereading Sigmund Freud’s concept of displacement (Verschiebung) through the structural linguistics of Roman Jakobson and Ferdinand de Saussure. Alongside metaphor, metonymy forms one of the two axes of language: the axis of combination and horizontality.
Where metaphor operates through substitution to produce new meaning (the "vertical" crossing of the bar), metonymy operates through the linear connection of signifiers (the "horizontal" sliding beneath the bar). This ceaseless movement, which defers the final production of meaning, provides the structural basis for Lacan’s famous aphorism: "Desire is a metonymy."[1]
Classical and Linguistic Foundations
To understand Lacan's radical reformulation of metonymy, it is necessary to situate the concept within its rhetorical origins and its transformation by structural linguistics.
Rhetorical Tradition
In classical rhetoric, metonymy is a trope in which one term is substituted for another based on a relation of contiguity, association, or contextual proximity. Unlike metaphor, which relies on similarity or analogy, metonymy relies on a pre-existing connection between terms in reality or logic. Common classifications include:
- Container for the contained: "The White House released a statement" (meaning the President/Staff).
- Effect for cause: "He is the ruin of her" (meaning the cause of her ruin).
- Part for whole (synecdoche): "All hands on deck."
Traditionally, rhetoric viewed metonymy as a "poverty" of speech compared to the poetic richness of metaphor, serving a primarily utilitarian or descriptive function. Lacan, however, valorizes this "poverty" as the essential state of the subject's inability to fully articulate their being.
Saussure: The Bar and the Chain
Lacan’s theory relies heavily on Ferdinand de Saussure, who posited that meaning is not intrinsic to words but arises differentially within a system. Saussure defined the linguistic sign as the union of a signifier (signifiant, the sound-image) and a signified (signifié, the concept).[2]
Lacan modifies Saussure’s algorithm () by emphasizing the primacy of the signifier over the signified. He formalizes the separation between them as a resisting "bar" that signification must cross. For Lacan, metonymy represents the failure to cross this bar. It illustrates the syntagmatic dimension of language—the linear unfolding of speech where one signifier follows another without immediately arresting meaning.
Roman Jakobson: The Two Axes of Language
The immediate catalyst for Lacan's theory was Roman Jakobson’s 1956 essay, Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances. Jakobson proposed that all linguistic activity occurs along two perpendicular axes:[3]
- The Axis of Selection (Paradigmatic): Associated with Metaphor. This involves choosing one term over another based on similarity (e.g., saying "lion" instead of "warrior").
- The Axis of Combination (Syntagmatic): Associated with Metonymy. This involves linking terms together based on contiguity to form a sentence (e.g., "ship" implies "sail," "crew," "sea").
Jakobson supported this distinction with clinical data on aphasia. He observed that patients tended to lose the ability to function on one axis while retaining the other:
- Similarity Disorder: Patients could not substitute terms (metaphor) but could keep talking in endless, empty sentences (metonymy).
- Contiguity Disorder: Patients could name objects (metaphor/substitution) but could not string them together grammatically (metonymy).
Lacan adopted this binary to map the mechanisms of the unconscious, equating the syntagmatic/metonymic axis with the endless drift of desire.
From Freud’s Displacement to Lacan’s Metonymy
Lacan’s primary innovation was to map Jakobson’s linguistic axes onto the two "great mechanisms" of the dream-work identified by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900): Condensation and Displacement.[4]
The Mechanism of Displacement (Verschiebung)
Freud described displacement as a process where the psychic intensity (cathexis) of an important idea is detached and passed on to a trivial or loosely associated idea. In a dream, a central emotional conflict might be represented by a minor detail in the background, effectively "centering off" the meaning to evade censorship.
For Freud, displacement explains why the manifest content of a dream often seems bizarre or irrelevant compared to the latent thoughts. The connection between the latent and manifest elements is purely associative—a chain of links.
Lacan’s Synthesis
Lacan argues that Freud’s "displacement" is structurally identical to the linguistic trope of metonymy. Both operate via contiguity:
"Displacement is strictly speaking that which linguists distinguish as metonymy... it constitutes the most appropriate means used by the unconscious to foil censorship." — Jacques Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter"[5]
By redefining displacement as metonymy, Lacan strips the concept of its biological or energetic qualities (libidinal "energy" moving around) and recasts it as a logic of the signifier. The unconscious does not move energy; it moves signifiers along a chain. This displacement ensures that the "truth" of the subject is always elsewhere, located in the neighbor of the signifier actually spoken.
Formalization: The Metonymic Algorithm
In his seminal essay The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud (1957), Lacan provides a matheme (algebraic formula) for metonymy. This formalization differentiates it strictly from the formula for metaphor.
The formula for metonymy is written as:
Where:
- denotes the signifying function
- represents the signifying chain
- indicates the maintenance of the bar (no crossing)
- The result is a deferral of the signified
Interpretation of the Formula
The crucial element in this formula is the minus sign () in the parenthesis. In the formula for metaphor, the sign is a plus (), indicating the crossing of the bar and the emergence of new meaning.
In metonymy, the bar is not crossed. The signified is not produced or pinned down. Instead, the meaning "slides" beneath the signifiers. This corresponds to the "sliding of the signified" (glissement du signifié), where the subject keeps talking, moving from word to word, circling the truth but never quite hitting it.
Metonymy and Desire
"Desire is a Metonymy"
Lacan famously asserts that "Desire is a metonymy" (le désir est une métonymie). This is meant literally, not metaphorically.
Desire is structurally metonymic because it is eternally displaced. Unlike Need (which has a biological object) or Demand (which asks for love), Desire appears in the gap between them. It targets an object that is permanently lost—the Object a.
Each specific object (money, a lover, a credential) acts as a signifier that stands next to the lacking object.
- The subject thinks: "If I get X, I will be whole."
- Upon getting X, the lack remains.
- Desire displaces to the next signifier (Y).
The Metonymy of Lack (Manque)
Metonymy is the linguistic instantiation of lack. If metaphor is the "presence" of meaning (creation), metonymy is the "absence" or deferral. It circles the void.
Metonymy vs. Metaphor: A Structural Comparison
| Dimension | Metonymy | Metaphor |
|---|---|---|
| Linguistic Axis | Syntagmatic (Combination/Contiguity) | Paradigmatic (Selection/Substitution) |
| Freudian Mechanism | Displacement (Verschiebung) | Condensation (Verdichtung) |
| Direction | Horizontal (Diachronic movement) | Vertical (Synchronic moment) |
| Operation on the Bar | Maintenance of the bar () | Crossing of the bar () |
| Effect on Meaning | Sliding/Deferral of the signified | Production of new meaning |
| Psychic Equivalent | Desire (eternal movement) | The Symptom (fixation/knot) |
| Defining Aphorism | "Desire is a metonymy" | "The symptom is a metaphor" |
| Function | Sustains the chain; resists closure | Anchors the chain; creates a "Quilting Point" (Point de capiton) |
Later developments and historical reception
Lacan’s emphasis on metaphor and metonymy is characteristic of his “structural linguistics” period (1950s–early 1960s). Later developments—alienation and separation, the elaboration of objet petit a, the focus on jouissance, and eventually topological formalizations—shift the center of gravity of the teaching. Secondary discussions of Seminar XI note that, by 1964, Lacan’s introduction of new operations (alienation/separation) was read by some as a break with an earlier overemphasis on metaphor and metonymy, and that critics (including François Lyotard) contested any reduction of Freud’s dream-work to those two categories.[6]
Within Lacanian schools, however, metonymy remains a standard operator for describing:
- the persistence of the signifying chain;
- the structural restlessness of desire;
- the clinical necessity of listening to the chain rather than imposing fixed meanings.
Even where Lacan’s later work stresses what escapes symbolization (the Real of jouissance), metonymy continues to function as a minimal model of how desire “keeps going” in language—how the speaking being is caught in signifier movement and in the deferral of any final signified.
Criticisms and limits
Critics of Lacan’s linguistic framing sometimes argue that it risks reducing affect, embodiment, or social practice to language. From within Lacanian work, a standard reply is that metonymy names not a total explanation of subjectivity but a structural constraint: insofar as analysis proceeds through speech, the unconscious is encountered in signifier linkages, cuts, and substitutions. Moreover, later Lacan’s emphasis on jouissance, drive, and topology can be read as an attempt to address limits of linguistic formalization without abandoning the structural insight that signification is produced—and resisted—by signifier operations.
See Also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006, p. 175.
- ↑ de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics (1916). Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959.
- ↑ Jakobson, Roman. “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances.” In Selected Writings, vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton, 1971, pp. 239–259.
- ↑ Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vols. IV–V. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1954.
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud.” In Écrits. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006, pp. 412–441.
- ↑ Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus (eds.), Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), discussion of the 1964 context, Lyotard’s criticism, and Lacan’s later response (as summarized in the text).