<blockquoteBLOCKQUOTE>'''Of Children in Swaddling Clothes'''''O cities of the sea, I bchold behold in you your citizcnscitizens, womenas wcll well as men tightly bound with stout bonds aroundthcir their arms and Icgs Iegs by folk who will not understandyour language; and you will only bc be able to givcgive vent to your griefs and sense of loss of libertyby making tearful complaints, and sighs, andlamentations one to another; for those whobind you will not understand yourlanguage nor will youunderstand them.'Leonardo Da Vinci''</blockquoteP> Although the nature of this contribution was determined by the theme of the third volume of <i>La PsychanalyseLEONARDO DA VINCI</iP>, I owe to what will be found there to insert it at a point somewhere between writing (<i>l'écrit</i>) and speech - it will be half-way between the two.
<hr>
Writing is distinguished by a prevalence of the text in Although the sense thatthis factor nature of discourse will assume in this essay a factor that makespossible contribution was determined by the kind theme of tightening up that I like in order to leave the readerno other way out than the way inthird volume of ''La Psychanalyse, which '' I prefer owe to what will be difficult. In thatsense, then, this found there to insert it at a point somewhere between writing (l'écrit) and speech - it will not be writinghalf-way between the two.<hr>
Because I always try to provide my seminars each time with some.thing new, I have refrained so far from giving such Writing is distingiushed by a prevalence of the text, with one excep-tion, which is not particularly outstanding in the context sense that this factor of discourse will assume in this essay a factor that makes possible the kind of tightening up that I like in order to leave the reader no other way out than the seriesway in,and which I refer prefer to at all only for the general level of its argumentbe difficult. In that sense, then, this will not be writing.<hr>
For the urgency that I now take as a pretext for leaving aside such anaim only masks the difficulty that, in trying to maintain it at the level atwhich Because I ought always try to present provide my teaching hereseminars each time with some. thing new, I might push it too have refirained so far fromspeechgiving such a text, with one exception, which is not particularly outstanding in the context of the series, whose very different techniques are essential and which I refer to at all only for the formativeeffect I seekgeneral level of its argument.<hr>
That is why For the urgency that I have taken now take as a pretext for leaving aside such an aim only masks the expedient offered me by the invitationto lecture difficulty that, in trying to maintain it at the philosophy group of the <i>Fédération des étudiants deslettres</i> to produce an adaptation suitable to what level at which I have ought to say: its neces-sary generality matches the exceptional character of the audiencepresent my teaching here, but itssole object encounters the collusion of their common trainingI might push it too far from speech, a literary one, whose very different techniques are essential to which my title pays homagethe formative effect I seek.
<hr> Indeed, how could we forget that to That is why I have taken the end of his days Freud con-stantly maintained that such a training was expedient offered me by the prime requisite in invitation to lecture to theformation philosophy group of analysts, and that he designated the eternal <i>universitaslitterarum </i>as the ideal place for its institution.<hr> ''Fédération des étudiants d egrave;Thus my recourse (in rewriting) s lettres'' to the movement of the (spoken)discourse, restored produce an adaptation suitable to its vitality, by showing whom what I meant it for,marks even more clearly those for whom it is not intended.<hr> I mean that it is not intended for those who, for any reason whatever,in psychoanalysis, allow their discipline have to avail itself say: its necessary generality matches the exceptional character of some falseidentity - a fault of habitthe audience, but its effect on sole object encounters the mind is such that thetrue identity may appear as simply one alibi among otherscollusion of their common training, a sort of refinedreduplication whose implications will not be lost on the most subtle minds.<hr> So literary one observes with a certain curiosity the beginnings of a new direc-tion concerning symbolization and language in the Internationl Journalof Psychoanalysis, with a great many sticky fingers leafing through thepages of Sapir and Jespersen. These exercises are still somewhat un-practised, but it is above all the tone that is lacking. Acertain'seriousness' as one enters the domain of veracity cannot fail to raise a smile.<hr> And how could a psychoanalyst of today not realize that speech is thekey to that truth, when his whole experience must find in speech aloneits instrument, its context, its material, and even the background noiseof its uncertaintieswhich my title pays homage.<hr>
I The Meaning of the Letter <hr> As my title suggestsIndeed, beyond this 'speech', what the psychoanalytic ex-perience discovers in the unconscious is the whole structure of language.Thus from the outset I have alerted informed minds to the extent towhich the notion that the unconscious is merely the seat of the instinctswill have to be rethought.<hr> But how are could we to take this 'letter' here? Quite simply, literally.<hr> By 'letter' I designate that materia1 support that concrete discourseborrows from language.<hr> This simple definition assumes forget that language is not to be confusedwith the various psychical and somatic functions end of his days Freud constantly maintained that serve it such a training was the prime requisite in thespeaking subject - primarily because language formation of analysts, and its structure existprior to the moment at which each subject at a certain point in his mentaldevelopment makes his entry into it.<hr> Let us note, then, that aphasias, although caused by purely anatomicallesions in the cerebral apparatus that supplies he designated the mental centre for thesefunctions, prove, on the whole, to distribute their deficits between thetwo sides of the signifying effect of what we call here eternal ''universitas litterarum'the letter' in as thecreation of signification. A point that will be clarified laterideal place for its institution.
<hr> Thus the subject, too, if he can appear my recourse (in rewriting) to be the slave movement of languageis all the more so of a (spoken) discourse in the universal movement in whichhis place is already inscribed at birth, if only by virtue of his propername.<hr> Reference to the experience of the community, or restored to the substance ofthis discourse, settles nothing. For this experience assumes its essentialdimension in the tradition that this discourse itself establishes. Thistradition, long before the drama of history is inscribed in itvitality, lays downthe elementary structures of culture. And these very structures reveal anordering of possible exchanges which, even if unconscious, is inconceiv-able outside the permutations authorized by language.<hr> With the result that the ethnographic duality of nature and culture isgiving way to a ternary conception of the human condition - nature,society, and culture - the last term of which could well be reduced tolanguage, or that which essentially distinguishes human society fromnatural societies.<hr> But showing whom I shall not make of this distinction either a point or a point of de-parture, leaving to its own obscurity the question of the original rela-tions between the signifier and labour. I shall be content, meant it for my littlejab at the general function of praxis in the genesis of history, to pointout that the very society that wished to restore, along with the privileges ofthe producer, the causal hierarchy of the relations between productionand the ideological superstructure to their full political rights, has nonethe less failed to give birth to an ^esperanto in which the relations oflanguage to socialist realities would have rendered any literary formalismradically impossible?<hr> For my part, I shall trust only marks even more clearly those assumptions that have alreadyproven their value by virtue of the fact that language through them hasattained the status of an object of scientific investigation.<hr> For for whom it is by virtue of this fact that linguistics is seen to occupy the keyposition in this domain, and the reclassification of the sciences and a re-grouping of them around it signals, as is usually the case, a revolution inknowledge; only the necessities of communication made me inscribe itat the head of this volume under the title 'the sciences of man' - despitethe confusion that is thereby covered overnot intended.
<hr> To pinpoint the emergence of linguistic science we may say I mean that, asin the case of all sciences in the modern sense, it is contained in theconstitutive moment of an algorithm that is its foundation. This algorithmis the following <pre><center>S______s</center></pre> which is read as: the signifier over the signifiednot intended for those who, 'over' corresponding tothe bar separating the two stages.<hr> This sign should be attributed to <a href="theorists.htm">Férdinand de Saussure</a> although itis not found in exactly this form in for any of the numerous schemasreason whatever, whichnone the less express itin psychoanalysis, allow their discipline to be found in the printed version avail itself of his lecturessome false identity - a fault of the years I906-7habit, I908Ð9, and I9I0-11, which but its effect on the piety of a group ofhis disciples caused to be published under mind is such that the title, <i>Cours de linguistiquegénerale</i>true identity may appear as simply one alibi among others, a work of prime importance for the transmission of a teachingworthy sort of refined reduplication whose implications will not be lost on the name, that is, that one can come to terms with only in itsown termsmost subtle minds.
<hr> That is why it is legitimate for us to give him credit for So one observes with a certain curiosity the formulabeginnings of a new direc-tion S/s by which, concerning symbolization and language in spite of the differences among schools, the begin-ning ''Internationl Journal of modern linguistics can be recognized.<hr>The thematics of this science is henceforth suspendedPsychoanalysis'', in effect, at theprimordial position of the signifier and the signified as being distinctorders separated initially by with a barrier resisting signification. And that iswhat was to make possible an exact study of the connections proper tothe signifier, and of the extent of their function in the genesis of thesignified.<hr> For this primordial distinction goes well beyond the discussion con-cerning the arbitrariness of the sign, as it has been elaborated since theearliest reflections of the ancients, and even beyond the impasse which,great many sticky fingers leafing through the same period, has been encountered in every discussion pages of thebi-univocal correspondence between the word Sapir and the thing, if only inthe mere act of namingJespersen. All this, of courseThese exercises are still somewhat unpractised, but it is quite contrary to above all theappearances suggested by the importance often imputed to the role of theindex finger pointing to an object in the learning process of the infanssubject learning his mother tongue, or the use in foreign languageteaching of so-called tone that is lacking. A certain'concreteseriousness' methods.<hr> One cannot go further along this line of thought than to demonstratethat no signification can be sustained other than by reference to anothersignification: in its extreme form this amounts to the proposition thatthere is no language (<i>langue</i>) in existence for which there is any questionof its inability to cover the whole field of the signified, it being aneffect of its existence as a language (<i>langue</i>) that it necessarily answers allneeds. If we try to grasp in language one enters the constitution domain of the object, we veracity cannot fail to notice that this constitution is to be found only at the level ofconcept, a very different thing from raise a simple nominative, and that thething, when reduced to the noun, breaks up into the double, divergentbeam of the 'cause' (<i>causa</i>) in which it has taken shelter in the Frenchword chose, and the nothing (<i>rien</i>) to which it has abandoned its Latindress (<i>rem</i>)smile.
<hr> These considerations, important as their existence is for the philoso-pher, turn us away from the locus in which language questions us as toits very nature. And we will fail to pursue the question further as longas we cling to the illusion that the signifier answers to the function how could a psychoanalyst ofrepresenting the signified, or better, today not realize that the signifier has to answer forits existence in the name of any signification whatever.<hr> For even reduced to this latter formulation, the heresy speech is the same -the heresy that leads logical positivism in search of the 'meaning ofmeaning', as its objective is called in the language of its devotees. As aresult, we can observe that even a text highly charged with meaning canbe reduced, through this sort of analysis, key to insignificant bagatelles, allthat survives being mathematical algorithms that are, of course, withoutany meaning.<hr> To return to our formula S/s: if we could infer nothing from it but thenotion of the parallelism of its upper and lower termstruth, each one taken when his whole experience must find inspeech alone its globalityinstrument, it would remain the enigmatic sign of a total mystery. Whichof course is not the case.<hr> In order to grasp its function I shall begin by reproducing the classiccontext,yet faulty illustration by which its usage is normally introducedmaterial, and onecan see how it opens the way to even the kind background noise of error referred to aboveits uncertainties.<hr> In my lecture, I replaced this illustration with another, which has nogreater claim to correctness than that it has been transplanted into that TREE
[Image] incongruous dimension that the psychoanalyst has not yet altogetherrenounced because of his quite justified feeling that his conformismtakes its value entirely from it. Here is the other diagram:<hr> LADIES GENTLEMEN [Image] where we see that, without greatly extending the scope of the signifierconcerned in the experiment, that is, by doubling a noun through themere juxtaposition ==The Meaning of two terms whose complementary meanings oughtapparently to reinforce each other, a surprise is produced by an unexpec-ted precipitation of an unexpected meaning: the image of twin doorsLetter==symbolizingAs my title suggests, through the solitary confinement offered Western Man forthe satisfaction of his natural needs away from home, the imperativethat he seems to share with the great majority of primitive communitiesby which his public life is subjected to the laws of urinary segregation.<hr> It is not only with the idea of silencing the nominalist debate with alow blow that I use beyond this example'speech', but rather to show how in fact what thesignifier enters the signified, namely, psychoanalytic expetience discovers in a form which, not being im-material, raises the question of its place in reality. For unconscious is the blinking gazewhole structure of a short sighted person might be justified in wondering whether thiswas indeed the signifier as he peered closely at the ]ittle enamel signsthat bore it, a signifier whose signified would in this call receive its finalhonours from the double and solemn procession from the upper navelanguage.
<hr> But no contrived example can be as telling as Thus from the actual experience oftruth. So outset I am happy have alerted informed minds to have invented the above, since it awoke in theperson whose word I most trust a memory of childhood, which havingthus happily come extent to my attention is best placed here.<hr> A train arrives at a station. A little boy and a little girl, brother andsister, are seated in a compartment face to face next to the windowthrough which the buildings along the station platform can be seenpassing as the train pulls to a stop. 'Look', says the brother, 'we're atLadies!'; 'Idiot!' replies his sister, 'Can't you see we're at Gentlemen'.<hr> Besides the fact notion that the rails in this story materialize the bar in unconscious is merely theSaussurian algorithm (and in a form designed to suggest that its resis-tance may be other than dialectical), we should add that only someonewho didn't have his eyes in front seat of the holes (it's the appropriate imagehere) could possibly confuse the place of the signifier and the signifiedin this story, or not see from what radiating centre the signifier sendsforth its light into the shadow of incomplete significations.<hr> For this signifier instincts will now carry a purely animal Dissension, destinedfor the usual oblivion of natural mists, have to the unbridled power of ideolo-gical warfare, relentless for families, a torment to the Gods. For thesechildren, Ladies and Gentlemen will be hen|forth two countries to-wards which each of their souls will strive on divergent wings, andbetween which a truce will be the more impossible since they are actuallythe same country and neither can compromise on its own superioritywithout detracting from the glory of the other.<hr> But enough. It is beginning to sound like the history of France. Whichit is more human, as it ought to be, to evoke here than that of England,destined to tumble from the Large to the Small End of Dean Swift's egg.<hr> It remains to be conceived what steps, what corridor, the S of thesignifier, visible here in the plurals in which it focuses its welcomebeyond the window, must take in order to rest its elbows on the ventila-tors through which, like warm and cold air, indignation and scorn comehissing out belowrethought.
<hr> One thing is certain: if the algorithm S/s with its bar is appropriate,access from one to the other cannot in any case have a signification. Forin so far as it is itself only pure function of the signifier, the algorithmcan reveal only the structure of a signifier in this transfer.Now the structure of the signifier is, as it is commonly said of languageitself, that it should be articulated.<hr> This means that no matter where one starts to designate their recipro-cal encroachments and increasing inclusions, these units But how are subjected tothe double condition of being reducible to ukimate differential elementsand of combining them according to the laws of a closed order.<hr> These elements, one of the decisive discoveries of linguistics, arephonemes; but we must not expect to find any phonetic constancy in themodulatory variability to which this term applies, but rather the syn-chronic system of differential couplings necessary for the discernment ofsounds in a given language. Through take this, one sees that an essentialelement of the spoken word itself was predestined to flow into themobile characters which, in a jumble of lower-case Didots or Gara-monds, render validly present what we call the 'letter'here? Quite simply, namely, theessentially localized structure of the signifier.<hr> With the second property of the signifier, that of combining accordingto the laws of a closed order, is affirmed the necessity of the topologicalsubstratum of which the term I ordinarily use, namely, the signifyingchain, gives an approximate idea: rings of a necklace that is a ring inanother necklace made of rings.<hr> Such are the structural conditions that define grammar as the order ofconstitutive encroachments of the signifier up to the level of the unitimmediately superior to the sentence, and lexicology as the order of con-stitutive inclusions of the signifier to the level of the verbal locution.<hr> In examining the limits by which these two exercises in the under-standing of linguistic usage are determined, it is easy to see that only thecorrelations between signifier and signifier provide the standard for allresearch into signification, as is indicated by the notion of 'usage' of ataxeme or semanteme which in fact refers to the context just above thatof the units concernedliterally.
<hr> But it is not because the undertakings of grammar and lexicology areexhausted within |rtain limits that we must think that beyond thoselimits signification reigns supreme. That would be an error.<hr> For the signifier, by its very nature, always anticipates meaning byunfolding its dimension before it. As is seen at the level of the sentencewhen it is interrupted before the significant term: By 'letter'I shall never...','All the same it is...', 'And yet there may be. ..'. Such sentences arenot without meaning, a meaning all the more oppressive in that it iscontent to make us wait for it.<hr> We are forced, then, to accept the notion of an incessant sliding of thesignified under the signifier - which Ferdinand de Saussure illustrateswith an image resembling the wavy lines of the upper and lower Watersin miniatures from manuscripts of Genesis; a double flux marked by finestreaks of rain, vertical dotted lines supposedly confining segments ofcorrespondence.<hr> All our experience runs counter to this linearity, which made me speakonce, in one of my seminars on psychosis, of something more like'anchoring points' ('points de capiton') as a schema for taking into accountthe dominance of the letter in the dramatic transformation designate that dialoguecan effect in the subject.<hr>The linearity materia1 support that Saussure holds to be constitutive of the chain of dis-course, in conformity with its emission by a single voice and with itshorizontal posidon in our writing - if this linearity is necessary, in fact,it is not suflicient. It applies to the chain of concrete discourse only in thedirection in which it is orientated in time, being taken as a signifying factorin all languages in which 'Peter hits Paul' reverses its dme when the termsare invertedborrows from language.<hr>
But one has only to listen to poetry, which Saussure was no doubt inthe habit of doing, for a polyphony to be heard, for it to become clearThis simple definition assumes that all discourse is aligned along the several staves of a score.<hr> There language is in effect no signifying chain that does not have, as if attachedto the punctuation of each of its units, a whole articulation of relevantcontexts suspended 'vertically', as it were, from that point.<hr> Let us take our word 'tree' again, this time not as an isolated noun,but at the point of one of these punctuations, and see how it crosses thebar of the Saussurian algorithm. (The anagram of 'arbre' and 'barre'should be noted.)<hr> For even broken down into the double spectre of its vowels and con-sonants, it can still call up confused with the robur various psychical and the plane tree thesignifications somatic functions that serve it takes on, in the context of our flora, of strength speaking subject - primarily because language and majesty. Drawing on all the symbolic contexts suggested in the Hebrew of the Bible, it erects on a barren hill the shadow of the cross. Then reduces its structure exist prior tothe capital Y, the sign of dichotomy moment at which, except for the illustrationused by heraldry, would owe nothing to the tree however genealogicalwe may think it. Circulatory tree, tree of life of the cerebellum, tree ofSaturn, tree of Diana, crystals formed in each subject at a tree struck by lightning, is ityour figure that traces our desdny for us in the tortoise-shell crackedby the fire, or your lightning that causes that slow shift certain point in the axis ofbeing to surge up from an unnamable night his mental development makes his entry into the '`rlanguage:<hr> No! says the Tree, it says No! in the shower of sparks Of its superb head .
<hr> lines Let us note, then, that require aphasias, although caused by purely anatomical lesions in the harmonics cerebral apparatus that supplies the mental centre for these functions, prove, on the whole, to distribute their deficits between the two sides of the signifying effect of what we call here 'the tree just as much as their con-tinuation:<hr> Which letter' in the storm treats as universally As it does a blade creation of grasssignification. A point that will be clarified later. (Paul Valéry) <hr>
For this modern verse is ordered according to Thus the same law of theparallelism of the signifier that creates the harmony governing theprimitive Slavic epic or the most refined Chinese poetry.<hr> As is seen in the fact that the tree and the blade of grass are chosenfrom the same mode of the existent in order for the signs of contra-diction - saying 'No!' and 'treat as' - to affect themsubject, and also so as tobring abouttoo, through the categorical contrast of the particularity of'superb' with the 'universally' that reduces it, in the condensation of the'head' (<i>tête</i>) and the 'storm' (<i>tempête</i>), the indiscernible shower of sparksof the eternal instant.<hr> But this whole signifier if he can only operate, it may be said, if it is presentin the subject. It is this objection that I answer by supposing that it haspassed over appear to the level of the signified.<hr> For what is important is not that the subject know anything whatso-ever. (If LADIES and GENTLEMEN were written in a language unknownto the little boy and girl, their quarrel would simply be the more ex-clusively a quarrel over words, but no less ready to take on signification.)<hr> What this structure slave of the signifying chain discloses is the possi-bility I have, precisely in so far as I have this language in common withother subjects, that is to say, in so far as it exists as a language, to useit in order to signify something quite other than what it says. This functionof speech is more worth pointing out than that of 'disguising all the thought'(more often than not indefinable) so of the subject; it is no less than thefunction of indicadng the place of this subject a discourse in the search for the true.I have only to plant my tree universal movement in a locution; climb the treewhich his place is already inscribed at birth, even projecton to it the cunning illumination a descriptive context gives to a word;raise it (arborer) so as not to let myself be imprisoned in some sort ofcommuniqué of the facts, however official, and if I know the truth, makeit heard, in spite of all the between-the-lines censures by the onlysignifier my acrobatics through the branches byvirtue of the tree can constitute, provocative to the point of burlesque, or perceptible only to the practised eye, according to whether I wish to be heard by the mob or by the fewhis proper name.
<hr> The properly signifying function thus depicted in language has a name.We learned this name in some grammar Reference to the experience of our childhood, on the lastpagecommunity, where or to the shade substance of Quintilianthis discourse, relegated to some phantom chapterconcerning 'final considerations on style', seemed suddenly to speed uphis voice in an attempt to get settles nothing. For this experience assumes its essential dimension in all he had to say before the end.It is among the figures of style, or tropes - from which the verb 'tofind' (<i>trouver</i>) comes to us - tradition that this name is founddiscourse itself establishes. This name tradition, long before the drama of history ismetonymy.<hr> I shall refer only to the example given there: 'thirty sails'. For thedisquietude I felt over the fact that the word 'ship', concealed inscribed in thisexpression, seemedit, by taking on its figurative sense, through lays down the endlessrepetition elementary structures of the same old example, only to increase its presence, obsured(<i>voilait</i>) not so much those illustrious sails (<i>voiles</i>) as the definitionthey were supposed to illustrateculture.<hr> The part taken for the whole, we said to ourselves, and if the thing isto be taken seriously, we are left with And these very little idea structures reveal an ordering of the importanceof this fleetpossible exchanges which, which 'thirty sails' is precisely supposed to give us: foreach ship to have just one sail is in fact the least likely possibility.<hr> By which we see that the connexion between ship and sail is nowherebut in the signifiereven if unconscious, and that it is in inconceivable outside the word-to-word connexion thatmetonymy is basedpermutations authorized by language.
<hr> I shall designate as metonymy, then, the one side (<i>versant</i>) of With theeffective field constituted by the signifier, so result that meaning can emergethere.<hr> The other side is metaphor. Let us immediately find an illustration;Quillet's dictionary seemed an appropriate place to find a sample thatwould not seem to be chosen for my own purposcs, and I didn't have togo any further than the well known line ethnographic duality of Victor Hugo:<hr> His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful . . . <hr> under which aspect I presented metaphor in my seminar on the psychoses.It should be said that modern poetry nature and especially the Surrealistschool have taken us a long culture is giving way in this direction by showing that anyconjunction of two signifiers would be equally sufficient to constitute ametaphor, except for the additional requirement ternary conception of the greatest possibledisparity of the images signifiedhuman condition - nature, society, needed for and culture - the production last term of the poeticsparkwhich could well be reduced to language, or in other words for metaphoric creation to take place.<hr> It is true this radical position is based on the experiment known asautomatic writing, that which would not have been attempted if its pioneershad not been reassured by the Freudian discovery. But it remains a con-fused position because the doctrine behind it is falseessentially distinguishes human society from natural societies.
<hr> The creative spark of the metaphor does But I shall not spring from the presen-tation of two images, that is, of two signifiers equally actualized. Itflashes between two signifiers one of which has taken the place of theother in the signifying chain, the occulted signifier remaining presentthrough its (metonymic) connexion with the rest of the chain.<hr> One word for another: that is the formula for the metaphor and if youare a poet you will produce for your own delight a continuous stream, adazzling tissue of metaphors. If the result is the sort of intoxication make ofthe dialogue that Jean Tardieu wrote under this title, that is only becausehe was giving us distinction either a demonstration of the radical superfluousness of allsignification in a perfectly convincing representation of point or a bourgeoiscomedy.<hr> It is obvious that in the line point of Hugo cited abovedeparture, not the slightestspark of light springs from the proposition that the sheaf was neithermiserly nor spiteful, for leaving to its own obscurity the reason that there is no question of thesheaf's having either original relations between the merit or demerit of these attributes, since theattributes, like the sheaf, belong to Booz, who exercises the former in disposing of the latter signifier and without informing the latter of his sentiments in the caselabour.<hr> IfI shall be content, however, his sheaf does refer us to Booz, and this is indeed the case,it is because it has replaced him in the signifying chain for my little jab at the very placewhere he was to be exal^ted by the sweeping away general function of greed and spite.But now Booz himself has been swept away by the sheaf, and hurledinto the outer darkness where greed and spite harbour him ''praxis'' in the hollowgenesis of their negation.<hr> But once his sheaf has thus usurped his placehistory, Booz can no longerreturn there; the slender thread of the little word hzs that binds him to itis only one more obstacle to his return in point out that it links him to the notionof possession very society that retains him at the heart of greed and spite. So hisgenerosity, affirmed in the passage, is yet reduced wished to less than nothingby the munificence of tke sheaf which, coming from nature, knowsneither our reserve nor our rejectionsrestore, and even in its accumulation re-mains prodigal by our standards.<hr> But if in this profusion the giver has disappeared along with his gift,it is only in order to rise again in what surrounds the figure privileges of speech inwhich he was annihilated. For it is the figure producer, the causal hierarchy of the burgeoning offecundity, relations between production and it is this that announces the surprise that the poem cele-brates, namelyideological superstructure to their full political rights, has none the promise that the old man will receive less failed to give birth to an ^esperanto in which the sacredcontext relations of his accession language to paternity.socialist realities would have rendered any literary formalism radically impossible?
<hr> SoFor my part, it is between the signifier in the form I shall trust only those assumptions that have already proven their value by virtue of the proper name of aman and the signifier that metaphorically abolishes him that the poeticspark is produced, and it is in this case all the more effective inrealizing the signification of paternity in fact that it reproduces the mythical event in terms of which Freud reconstructed the progress, in the unconscious of all men, of the paternal mystery.<hr> Modern metaphor language through them has attained the same structure. So the line Love is a pebblelaughing in the sunlight, recreates love in a dimension that seems to memost tenable in the face of its imminent lapse into the mirage of nar-cissistic altruism.<hr> We see, then that, metaphor occurs at the precise point at which senseemerges from non-sense, that is, at that frontier which, as Freud dis-covered, when crossed the other way produces the word that in Frenchis the word par excellence, the word that is simply the signifier ^'esprit';it is at this frontier that we realize that man defies his very destiny whenhe derides the signifier.<hr> But to come back to our subject, what does man find in metonymyif not the power to circumvent the obstacles of social censure? Does notthis form, which gives its field to truth in its very oppression, manifest acertain servitude inherent in its presentation?<hr> One may read with profit a book by Leo Strauss, from the land thattraditionally offers asylum to those who choose ^freedom, in which theauthor reflects on the relation between the art status of writing and persecu-tion. By pushing to its limits the sort of connaturality that links thisart to that condition, he lets us glimpse a certain something which in thismatter imposes its form, in the eflfect an object of truth on desirescientific investigation.<hr> But haven't we felt for some time now that, having followed the waysof the letter in search of Freudian truth, we are getting very warm indeed,that it is burning all about us?
<hr>For it is by virtue of this fact that linguistics is seen to occupy the key position in this domain, and the reclassification of the sciences and a regrouping of them around it signals, as is usually the case, a revolution in knowledge; only the necessities of communication made me inscribe it at the head of this volume under the title 'the sciences of man' - despite the confusion that is thereby covered over. To pinpoint the emergence of linguistic science we may say that, as in the case of all sciences in the modern sense, it is contained in the constitutive moment of an algorithm that is its foundation. This algorithm is the following: S/s which is read as: the signifier over the signified, 'over' corresponding to the bar separating the two stages. This sign should be attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure although it is not found in exactly this form in any of the numerous schemas, which none the less express it, to be found in the printed version of his lectures of the years I906-7, I908‹9, and I9I0-11, which the piety of a group of his disciples caused to be published under the title, ''Cours de linguistique génerale'', a work of prime importance for the transmission of a teaching worthy of the name, that is, that one can come to terms with only in its own terms. That is why it is legitimate for us to give him credit for the formulation S/s by which, in spite of the differences among schools, the beginning of modern linguistics can be recognized. The thematics of this science is henceforth suspended, in effect, at the primordial position of the signifier and the signified as being distinct orders separated initially by a barrier resisting signification. And that is what was to make possible an exact study of the connections proper to the signifier, and of the extent of their function in the genesis of the signified. For this primordial distinction goes well beyond the discussion concerning the arbitrariness of the sign, as it has been elaborated since the earliest reflections of the ancients, and even beyond the impasse which, through the same period, has been encountered in every discussion of the bi-univocal correspondence between the word and the thing, if only in the mere act of naming. All this, of course, is quite contrary to the appearances suggested by the importance often imputed to the role of the index finger pointing to an object in the learning pro #166;ss of the'' infans'' subject learning his mother tongue, or the use in foreign language teaching of so-called 'concrete' methods. One cannot go further along this line of thought than to demonstrate that no signification can be sustained other than by reference to another signification: in its extreme form this amounts to the proposition that there is no language (langue) in existence for which there is any question of its inability to cover the whole field of the signified, it being an effect of its existence as a language (langue) that it necessarily answers all needs. If we try to grasp in language the constitution of the object, we cannot fail to notice that this constitution is to be found only at the level of concept, a very different thing from a simple nominative, and that the thing, when reduced to the noun, breaks up into the double, divergent beam of the 'cause' (causa) in which it has taken shelter in the French word ''chose,'' and the nothing (rien) to which it has abandoned its Latin dress (rem). These considerations, important as their existence is for the philosopher, turn us away from the locus in which language questions us as to its very nature. And we will fail to pursue the question further as long as we cling to the illusion that the signifier answers to the function of representing the signified, or better, that the signifier has to answer for its existence in the name of any signification whatever. For even reduced to this latter formulation, the heresy is the same - the heresy that leads logical positivism in search of the 'meaning of meaning', as its objective is called in the language of its devotees. As a result, we can observe that even a text highly charged with meaning can be reduced, through this sort of analysis, to insignificant bagatelles, all that survives being mathematical algorithms that are, of course, without any meaning. To return to our formula S/s: if we could infer nothing from it but the notion of the parallelism of its upper and lower terms, each one taken in its globality, it would remain the enigmatic sign of a total mystery. Which of course is not the case. In order to grasp its function I shall begin by reproducing the classic, yet faulty illustration by which its usage is normally introduced, and one can see how it opens the way to the kind of error referred to above. [[Image:agency1.jpeg|center]] In my lecture, I replaced this illustration with another, which has no greater claim to correctness than that it has been transplanted into that incongruous dimension that the psychoanalyst has not yet altogether renounced because of his quite justified feeling that his conformism takes its value entirely from it. Here is the other diagram: [[Image:agency2.jpeg|center]] where we see that, without greatly extending the scope of the signifier concerned in the experiment, that is, by doubling a noun through the mere juxtaposition of two terms whose complementary meanings ought apparently to reinforce each other, a surprise is produced by an unexpected precipitation of an unexpected meaning: the image of twin doors symbolizing, through the solitary confinement offered Western Man for the satisfaction of his natural needs away from home, the imperative that he seems to share with the great majority of primitive communities by which his public life is subjected to the laws of urinary segregation. It is not only with the idea of silencing the nominalist debate with a low blow that I use this example, but rather to show how in fact the signifier enters the signified, namely, in a form which, not being immaterial, raises the question of its place in reality. For the blinking gaze of a short sighted person might be justified in wondering whether this was indeed the signifier as he peered closely at the little enamel signs that bore it, a signifier whose signified would in this call receive its final honours from the double and solemn procession from the upper nave. But no contrived example can be as telling as the actual experience of truth. So I am happy to have invented the above, since it awoke in the person whose word I most trust a memory of childhood, which having thus happily come to my attention is best placed here. A train arrives at a station. A little boy and a little girl, brother and sister, are seated in a compartment face to face next to the window through which the buildings along the station platform can be seen passing as the train pulls to a stop. 'Look', says the brother, 'we're at Ladies!'; 'Idiot!' replies his sister, 'Can't you see we're at Gentlemen'. Besides the fact that the rails in this story materialize the bar in the Saussurian algorithm (and in a form designed to suggest that its resistance may be other than dialectical), we should add that only someone who didn't have his eyes in front of the holes (it's the appropriate image here) could possibly confuse the place of the signifier and the signified in this story, or not see from what radiating centre the signifier sends forth its light into the shadow of incomplete significations. For this signifier will now carry a purely animal Dissension, destined for the usual oblivion of natural mists, to the unbridled power of ideological warfare, relentless for families, a torment to the Gods. For these children, Ladies and Gentlemen will be hen¦forth two countries towards which each of their souls will strive on divergent wings, and between which a truce will be the more impossible since they are actually the same country and neither can compromise on its own superiority without detracting from the glory of the other. But enough. It is beginning to sound like the history of France. Which it is more human, as it ought to be, to evoke here than that of England, destined to tumble from the Large to the Small End of Dean Swift's egg. It remains to be conceived what steps, what corridor, the S of the signifier, visible here in the plurals in which it focuses its welcome beyond the window, must take in order to rest its elbows on the ventilators through which, like warm and cold air, indignation and scorn come hissing out below. One thing is certain: if the algorithm S/s with its bar is appropriate, access from one to the other cannot in any case have a signification. For in so far as it is itself only pure function of the signifier, the algorithm can reveal only the structure of a signifier in this transfer. Now the structure of the signifier is, as it is commonly said of language itself, that it should be articulated. This means that no matter where one starts to designate their reciprocal encroachments and increasing inclusions, these units are subjected to the double condition of being reducible to ukimate differential elements and of combining them according to the laws of a closed order. These elements, one of the decisive discoveries of linguistics, are ''phonemes;'' but we must not expect to find any phonetic constancy in the modulatory variability to which this term applies, but rather the synchronic system of differential couplings necessary for the discernment of sounds in a given language. Through this, one sees that an essential element of the spoken word itself was predestined to flow into the mobile characters which, in a jumble of lower-case Didots or Garamonds, render validly present what we call the 'letter', namely, the essentially localized structure of the signifier. With the second property of the signifier, that of combining according to the laws of a closed order, is affirmed the necessity of the topological substratum of which the term I ordinarily use, namely, the signifying chain, gives an approximate idea: rings of a neckla¦ that is a ring in another neckla¦ made of rings. Such are the structural conditions that define grammar as the order of constitutive encroachments of the signifier up to the level of the unit immediately superior to the sentence, and lexicology as the order of constitutive inclusions of the signifier to the level of the verbal locution. In examining the limits by which these two exercises in the understanding of linguistic usage are determined, it is easy to see that only the correlations between signifier and signifier provide the standard for all research into signification, as is indicated by the notion of 'usage' of a taxeme or semanteme which in fact refers to the context just above that of the units concerned. But it is not because the undertakings of grammar and lexicology are exhausted within ¦rtain limits that we must think that beyond those limits signification reigns supreme. That would be an error. For the signifier, by its very nature, always anticipates meaning by unfolding its dimension before it. As is seen at the level of the sentence when it is interrupted before the significant term: 'I shall never...', 'All the same it is...', 'And yet there may be. ..'. Such sentences are not without meaning, a meaning all the more oppressive in that it is content to make us wait for it. We are forced, then, to accept the notion of an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier - which Ferdinand de Saussure illustrates with an image resembling the wavy lines of the upper and lower Waters in miniatures from manuscripts of Genesis; a double flux marked by fine streaks of rain, vertical dotted lines supposedly confining segments of correspondence. All our experience runs counter to this linearity, which made me speak once, in one of my seminars on psychosis, of something more like 'anchoring points' ('points de capiton') as a schema for taking into account the dominance of the letter in the dramatic transformation that dialogue can effect in the subject. The linearity that Saussure holds to be constitutive of the chain of discourse, in conformity with its emission by a single voice and with its horizontal posidon in our writing - if this linearity is necessary, in fact, it is not suflicient. It applies to the chain of discourse only in the direction in which it is orientated in time, being taken as a signifying factor in all languages in which 'Peter hits Paul' reverses its dme when the terms are inverted. But one has only to listen to poetry, which Saussure was no doubt in the habit of doing, for a polyphony to be heard, for it to become clear that all discourse is aligned along the several staves of a score. There is in effect no signifying chain that does not have, as if attached to the punctuation of each of its units, a whole articulation of relevant contexts suspended 'vertically', as it were, from that point. Let us take our word 'tree' again, this time not as an isolated noun, but at the point of one of these punctuations, and see how it crosses the bar of the Saussurian algorithm. (The anagram of 'arbre' and 'barre' should be noted.) For even broken down into the double spectre of its vowels and consonants, it can still call up with the robur and the plane tree the significations it takes on, in the context of our flora, of strength and majesty. Drawing on all the symbolic contexts suggested in the Hebrew of the Bible, it erects on a barren hill the shadow of the cross. Then reduces to the capital Y, the sign of dichotomy which, except for the illustration used by heraldry, would owe nothing to the tree however genealogical we may think it. Circulatory tree, tree of life of the cerebellum, tree of Saturn, tree of Diana, crystals formed in a tree struck by lightning, is it your figure that traces our desdny for us in the tortoise-shell cracked by the fire, or your lightning that causes that slow shift in the axis of being to surge up from an unnamable night into the '`'`language: No! seys the Tree, it says No! in the shower of sparks of its superb headlines that require the harmonics of the tree just as much as their continuation: Which the storm treats as universallyAs it does a blade of grass. (Paul Valéry) For this modern verse is ordered according to the same law of the parallelism of the signifier that creates the harmony governing the primitive Slavic epic or the most refined Chinese poetry. As is seen in the fact that the tree and the blade of grass are chosen from the same mode of the existent in order for the signs of contradiction - saying 'No!' and 'treat as' - to affect them, and also so as to bring about, through the categorical contrast of the particularity of 'superb' with the 'universally' that reduces it, in the condensation of the 'head' (tête) and the 'storm' (tempête), the indiscernible shower of sparks of the eternal instant. But this whole signifier can only operate, it may be said, if it is present in the subject. It is this objection that I answer by supposing that it has passed over to the level of the signified. For what is important is not that the subject know anything whatsoever. (If LAD IES and GENTLEMEN were written in a language unknown to the little boy and girl, their quarrel would simply be the more exclusively a quarrel over words, but no less ready to take on signification.) What this structure of the signifying chain discloses is the possibility I have, precisely in so far as I have this language in common with other subjects, that is to say, in so far as it exists as a language, to use it in order to signify ''something quite other'' than what it says. This function of speech is more worth pointing out than that of 'disguising the thought' (more often than not indefinable) of the subject; it is no less than the function of indicadng the place of this subject in the search for the true. I have only to plant my tree in a locution; climb the tree, even project on to it the cunning illumination a descriptive context gives to a word; raise it (arborer) so as not to let myself be imprisoned in some sort of ''communiqué ''of the facts, however official, and if I know the truth, make it heard, in spite of all the ''between-the-lines'' censures by the only signifier my acrobatics through the branches of the tree can constitute, provocative to the point of burlesque, or perceptible only to the practised eye, according to whether I wish to be heard by the mob or by the few. The properly signifying function thus depicted in language has a name. We learned this name in some grammar of our childhood, on the last page, where the shade of Quintilian, relegated to some phantom chapter concerning 'final considerations on style', seemed suddenly to speed up his voice in an attempt to get in all he had to say before the end. It is among the figures of style, or tropes - from which the verb 'to find' (trouver) comes to us - that this name is found. This name is metonymy. I shall refer only to the example given there: 'thirty sails'. For the disquietude I felt over the fact that the word 'ship', concealed in this expression, seemed, by taking on its figurative sense, through the endless repetition of the same old example, only to increase its presence, obsured (voilait) not so much those illustrious sails (voiles) as the definition they were supposed to illustrate. The part taken for the whole, we said to ourselves, and if the thing is to be taken seriously, we are left with very little idea of the importance of this fleet, which 'thirty sails' is precisely supposed to give us: for each ship to have just one sail is in fact the least likely possibility. By which we see that the connexion between ship and sail is nowhere but in the signifier, and that it is in the word-to-word connexion that metonymy is based. I shall designate as metonymy, then, the one side (versant) of the effective field constituted by the signifier, so that meaning can emerge there. The other side is metaphor. Let us immediately find an illustration; Quillet's dictionary seemed an appropriate place to find a sample that would not seem to be chosen for my own purposes, and I didn't have to go any further than the well known line of Victor Hugo: His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful . . . under which aspect I presented metaphor in my seminar on the psychoses. It should be said that modern poetry and especially the Surrealist school have taken us a long way in this d;rection by showing that any conjunction of two signifiers would be equally sufficient to constitute a metaphor, except for the additional requirement of the greatest possible disparity of the images signified, needed for the production of the poetic spark, or in other words for metaphoric creation to take place. It is true this radical position is based on the experiment known as automatic writing, which would not have been attempted if its pioneers had not been reassured by the Freudian discovery. But it remains a confused position because the doctrine behind it is false. The creative spark of the metaphor does not spring from the presentation of two images, that is, of two signifiers equally actualized. It flashes between two signifiers one of which has taken the place of the other in the signifying chain, the occulted signifier remaining present through its (metonymic) connexion with the rest of the chain. ''One word for another:'' that is the formula for the metaphor and if you are a poet you will produce for your own delight a continuous stream, a dazzling tissue of metaphors. If the result is the sort of intoxication of the dialogue that Jean Tardieu wrote under this title, that is only because he was giving us a demonstration of the radical superfluousness of all signification in a perfectly convincing representation of a bourgeois comedy. It is obvious that in the line of Hugo cited above, not the slightest spark of light springs from the proposition that the sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful, for the reason that there is no question of the sheaf's having either the merit or demerit of these attributes, since the attributes, like the sheaf, belong to Booz, who exercises the former in disposing of the latter and without informing the latter of his sentiments in the case. If, however, his sheaf does refer us to Booz, and this is indeed the case, it is because it has replaced him in the signifying chain at the very place where he was to be exal^ted by the sweeping away of greed and spite. But now Booz himself has been swept away by the sheaf, and hurled into the outer darkness where greed and spite harbour him in the hollow of their negation. But once ''his'' sheaf has thus usurped his place, Booz can no longer return there; the slender thread of the little word hzs that binds him to it is only one more obstacle to his return in that it links him to the notion of possession that retains him at the heart of greed and spite. So his generosity, affirmed in the passage, is yet reduced to less than nothing by the munificence of tke sheaf which, coming from nature, knows neither our reserve nor our rejections, and even in its accumulation remains prodigal by our standards. But if in this profusion the giver has disappeared along with his gift, it is only in order to rise again in what surrounds the figure of speech in which he was annihilated. For it is the figure of the burgeoning of fecundity, and it is this that announces the surprise that the poem celebrates, namely, the promise that the old man will receive in the sacred context of his accession to paternity. So, it is between the signifier in the form of the proper name of a man and the signifier that metaphorically abolishes him that the poetic spark is produced, and it is in this case all the more effective in realizing the signification of paternity in that it reproduces the mythical event in terms of which Freud reconstructed the progress, in the unconscious of all men, of the patemal mystery. Modern metaphor has the same structure. So the line ''Love is a pebble laughing in the sunlight,'' recreates love in a dimension that seems to me most tenable in the face of its imminent lapse into the mirage of narcissistic altruism. We see, then that, metaphor occurs at the precise point at which sense emerges from non-sense, that is, at that frontier which, as Freud discovered, when crossed the other way produces the word that in French is ''the'' word ''par excellence'', the word that is simply the signifier 'esprit'; it is at this frontier that we realize that man defies his very destiny when he derides the signifier. But to come back to our subject, what does man find in metonymy if not the power to circumvent the obstacles of social censure? Does not this form, which gives its field to truth in its very oppression, manifest a certain servitude inherent in its presentation? One may read with profit a book by Leo Strauss, from the land that traditionally offers asylum to those who choose ^freedom, in which the author reflects on the relation between the art of writing and persecution. By pushing to its limits the sort of connaturality that links this art to that condition, he lets us glimpse a certain something which in this matter imposes its form, in the eflfect of truth on desire. But haven't we felt for some time now that, having followed the ways of the letter in search of Freudian truth, we are getting very warm indeed, that it is burning all about us? Of course, as it is said, the letter killeth while the spirit giveth life.We can't help but agree, having had to pay homage elsewhere to a noblevictim of the error of seeking the spirit in the letter; but we should alsolike to know how the spirit could live without the letter. Even so, thepretentions of the spirit woult remain unassailable if the letter had notshown us that it produces all the effects of truth in man without involvingthe spirit at all.<hr> It is none other than Freud who had this revelation, and he called hisdiscovery the unconscious. . . . <hr>[from <i>Écrits</i> Lacan's ''Écrits, ''Norton, 1977 pp. 146-59159]<a></a><a></a> </blockquote>
