Bar

French: [[barre]]

)

The bar (barre) is a graphic and conceptual operator central to structural linguistics and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Originating in Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology, the bar’s significance was radically transformed by Jacques Lacan into a structural marker of lack, division, and the limits of signification. Across both traditions, the bar demarcates a non‑coincidence between dimensions of signification, indicating that meaning is neither intrinsic nor fully resolvable.

The Bar in Saussurean Semiology

In Course in General Linguistics (1916), Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure articulated the foundational structure of linguistic signs as composed of two inseparable but distinct elements: the signifier (a sound pattern or graphic form) and the signified (the mental concept associated with the signifier) — a relationship famously depicted as signifier / signified with a horizontal bar separating the two.

Saussure’s bar is not a mere notational convenience. Rather, it signifies that meaning is not a unidirectional link to external objects but emerges from a system of relational differences within language. Signs are defined not by reference to extralinguistic reality but through their differential relations to other signs in the linguistic system (langue), a principle central to structural linguistics.

In Saussure’s theory, the bond between signifier and signified is arbitrary and conventional, and neither term fixes meaning independently of the overall system. The bar expresses this structural gap — it separates the planes of expression and content and underscores that meaning arises only through systemic differences, not innate referential transparency.

Thus in Saussure, the bar underscores:

• the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign (no natural link between signifier and signified),
• the systemic interdependence of signs (meaning through difference), and
• the synchronic nature of linguistic structure (relations present at a moment of language).

Lacan’s Reformulation: From Saussure to the Barred Signifier

Jacques Lacan’s work transforms Saussure’s structural insight into a psychoanalytic principle. In his influential essay The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious (L’instance de la lettre dans l’inconscient, 1957), Lacan asserts that “the unconscious is structured like a language” — meaning that unconscious processes operate through signifiers that are not transparent reflections of stable meanings.

Lacan retains Saussure’s bar but relocates its theoretical weight. Whereas Saussure used the bar to draw a distinction within the linguistic sign, Lacan uses it to mark an irreducible separation between:

• the signifier (S) — the chain of linguistic elements,
• and the signified (s') — that which is attempted to be signified.

He writes:

The signifier and the signified are separated by a bar... There is never an easy correlation between signifier and signified; meaning arises only from the failure of language to coincide with itself.

In Lacan, the bar marks that signifiers never achieve final signifieds; they always reference other signifiers in an ongoing differential chain. This implies that meaning is not only relational but inherently deferred and incomplete — there is no final term where the subject or signified rests. The signifier governs the signified, and the bar visually and conceptually encodes this gap.

The bar thus signals:

• the lack of stable reference,
• the sliding of signifiers over signifieds, and
• the absence at the heart of signifying processes — a core notion in Lacan’s theory of the symbolic order.

The Barred Subject: Linguistic Division and Subjectivity

Lacan’s notation for the barred subject — typically written as $\overline{S}$ — designates the psychic subject as fundamentally divided. Unlike an ego centered on unity and consciousness, the Lacanian subject is constituted by language and exists only through relationships between signifiers. This subject is never fully present to itself, since it is articulated within the symbolic order, whose structures pre‑exist and exceed any individual subject.

Lacan asserts that:

The signifier is that which represents a subject for another signifier.

This means the subject is not situated at the level of meaning (signified) but rather is an effect of differential relations among signifiers.

This barred subject arises from Freud’s insights into repression and displacement, where unconscious processes resist full conscious articulation. For Lacan, then, the bar represents not merely a linguistic delimiter but the structural gap that makes desire, division, and misrecognition inevitable in language and psyche.

Metaphor as Crossing the Bar

In Lacanian linguistics, metaphor is the operation by which one signifier substitutes for another in a signifying chain. This substitution is described as a crossing of the bar: a signifier takes the place of another, thereby traversing the structural gap that separates signifiers from stable signifieds. The bar, in this context, is not a static delimiter but an operator that makes metaphorical movement possible.

The way out of the metonymical chain of desire is the crossing of the bar by a signifier. This crossing is constitutive of the emergence of signification. When a signifier crosses the bar, it takes the place of another, leaving a gap above the bar: this gap is the place of the subject.

Crossing the bar thus symbolizes the creative, transformative economy of the unconscious: it is how meaning is displaced and desire articulated, even though it can never be fully captured. This parallels Freud’s account of condensation in dreamwork, where multiple ideas coalesce in a single image, and metaphor operates across structural divides.

Metonymy as Maintaining the Bar

By contrast, metonymy links signifiers along the chain, preserving the bar between them. Metonymic extension maintains separation and deferral—one signifier points to another without ever collapsing their difference. In Lacanian terms, metonymy thus reinforces the bar’s resistance to signification, maintaining the structural gap and the endless deferral of final meaning. Metonymy illustrates how the symbolic order sustains the bar as a locus of lack rather than resolving or eliminating it.

The Barred Other and Symbolic Incompleteness

The bar also appears in Lacan’s notation for the Other (Autre), written as $\overline{A}$, the barred Other. This signifies the incompleteness or lack of the symbolic order itself—language, law, and social structures (the Other) are never fully closed systems.

There is no Other of the Other.

This idea is central to Lacan’s algebraic formalization of lack: the subject is constituted in relation to a symbolic order that can never provide full presence or final meaning. The bar in $\overline{A}$ is thus a mathematical signifier of the impossibility of a complete Other.

Sexual Difference and the Barred “Woman”

In his 1973 Seminar XX: Encore, Lacan provocatively asserts that “la femme n’existe pas” (“the woman does not exist”), with emphasis on the French definite article la that could itself be conceptually considered as barred.

Woman does not exist. There is always something in her that escapes discourse. There is a jouissance that is hers, beyond the phallus, which is not whole and cannot be said.

This is not a denial of empirical women but a formal claim about sexual difference as inscribable only in terms of lack. There is no singular, essential Woman because no signifier can capture such an essence.

The Bar in Lacanian Algebra

Lacan deploys the bar systematically in his algebraic notation (mathemes) to formalize lack, division, and resistance within the symbolic order. For example:

• $\overline{S}$: the barred subject
• $\overline{A}$: the barred Other
• $S(\overline{A})$: the signifier of the barred Other

These notational devices are not ornamental; they perform logical work in Lacan’s mathemes such that structural assumptions about subjectivity, desire, and language are made explicit.

Clinical and Interpretive Significance

Clinically, the bar alerts the analyst to what is structurally absent in the analysand’s discourse: desires that resist articulation, signifiers that fail to stabilize meaning, and deficits in symbolic elaboration. The barred subject is encountered in analytic listening as interruptions, slips, and repetitions—symptoms of a subject split by language and unconsciously oriented to what cannot be fully said.

Later Developments and Topological Reformulations

In Lacan’s later work (1970s onward), his algebraic bars were supplemented and in some cases superseded by topological formulations (e.g., the torus, Möbius strip, Borromean knot). The bar’s earlier function of marking lack remains, but the geometry of lack becomes central.

See Also

Algebra Castration Division

Language Other Sign

Signification Signified Signifier

Split Subject Woman