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| − | Since the symbolic order is necessarily so central to any language-oriented discussion, we need also to be aware of its conceptual genealogy, the sources upon which Lacan drew for his basic formulations of the symbolic’s structure and functions. The first of these influences is the structural anthropology of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose conceptions of society and social functions as symbolic structures and functions form the ground on which Lacan erected his conception of a symbolic order (Evans 201). More than simply borrowing the concept of a symbolic function from Lévi-Strauss and Mauss, however, Lacan adapted wholesale the informing principles of their approach, "prais[ing] Marcel Mauss for having shown that ‘the structures of society are symbolic’" (Evans 201) in the body of his most famous collection of work, Écrits. This open acknowledgment of Mauss and Lévi-Strauss as influences both broadens our understanding of how Lacan conceived of the symbolic order and opens the way for considering other important points of reference in situating it.
| + | {{Top}}langue]]'', ''[[langage{{Bottom}} |
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| − | Indeed, it is precisely in Lacan’s adaptation of Lévi-Strauss that we find Ferdinand de Saussure, the next major influence on the conception of the symbolic:
| + | =====Translation===== |
| | + | It is important to note that the English word "[[language]]" corresponds to two [[French]] [[words]]: ''[[langue]]'' and ''[[langage]]''. |
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| − | Lacan takes from Lévi-Strauss the idea that the social world is structured by certain laws which regulate kinship relations and the exchange of gifts (see also Mauss, 1923). The concept of the gift, and that of a circuit of exchange, are thus fundamental to Lacan’s concept of the symbolic (S4, 153-4, 182). | + | These two words have quite different [[meanings]] in [[Lacan]]'s [[work]]: ''[[langue]]'' usually refers to a specific [[language]], such as French or [[English]], whereas ''[[langage]]'' refers to the [[system]] of [[language]] in general, abstracting from all [[particular]] languages. |
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| − | Since the most basic form of exchange is communication itself (the exchange of words, the gift of speech; S4, 189), and since the concepts of law and of structure are unthinkable without language, the symbolic is essentially a linguistic dimension. (Evans 201)
| + | =====Jacques Lacan===== |
| | + | It is fundamentally the general structure of [[language]] (''[[langage]]''), rather than the differences between particular languages ('''[[langue]]s'') that interests [[Lacan]]. |
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| − | Lacan’s conception of the symbolic as "essentially a linguistic dimension" draws heavily on Saussure’s distinction between signifier and signified such that the symbolic is the realm of the signifier while the imaginary is the realm of the signified. The key aspect of Saussure’s conception of this relationship is that the link between any given signifier and signified is arbitrary. Signifiers only gain value (i.e. content or a claim to a particular signified) in the process of opposition and relation to other signifiers. Since the connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, the only way any kind of stability can be obtained is if the signifier habitually associated with a particular signified retains its claim through a process of differentiation not from other signifieds, but from other signifiers – it asserts its claim to meaning not by declaring a positive connection to the signified, but by declaring a negative relationship to all other signifiers.16 And since direct access to the signified (the imaginary) of any given signifier is either impossible or incommunicable, we are restricted to the endless play of signifiers as we try to use language to manage our world, an approach which is suprisingly effective given the arbitrariness of the signifier/signified connection in any given instance.17 Lacan’s conception of the symbolic, though it is informed by this concept in its totality, focuses on the realm of the signifier, locating the signified in the imaginary and that which is excluded from this binary in the real.
| + | When [[reading]] [[Lacan]] in English it is therefore essential to be aware of which term is used in the original French; most of the [[time]] the French term will be ''[[langage]]''. |
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| − | == def == | + | =====Psychoanalytic Experience===== |
| − | f. 3. Lacan's Philosophy of Language
| + | Between 1936 and 1949 references to [[language]] are sparse, but they are significant; already in 1936, for example, [[Lacan]] emphasizes that [[language]] is constitutive of the [[psychoanalytic]] [[experience]],<ref>{{Ec}} p.82</ref> and in 1946 he argues that it is [[impossible]] to [[understand]] [[madness]] without addressing the problem of [[language]].<ref>{{Ec}} p. 166</ref> |
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| − | Perhaps the component of Lacanian theory for which it is most famous, and which has most baffled its critics, is the emphasis Lacan laid on language in his attempt to formalise psychoanalysis. From the 1950's, in complete opposition to any Jungian or romantic conceptions, Lacan instead described the unconscious as a kind of discourse: the discourse of the Other. There are at least three interrelated concerns that inform the construction of what I am terming Lacan's 'philosophy of language':
| + | [[Lacan]]'s comments on [[language]] at this time do not contain any references to a specific [[linguistics|linguistic theory]], and instead are dominated by [[philosophy|philosophical allusions]], mainly in [[terms]] derived from [[Hegel]]. |
| − | - The first is the central argument that the child's castration is the decisive point in its becoming a speaking subject - The second is his taking very seriously what might be termed the 'interpretive paradigm' in Freud’s texts, according to which Freud repeatedly described symptoms, slips and dreams as symbolic phenomena capable of interpretation. - The third is Lacan's desire to try to understand the efficacy of psychoanalytic interpretation as a curative procedure that relies solely on what Freud called in The Question of Lay Analysis the 'magical' power of the word.
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| − | Back to Table of Contents
| + | Thus [[language]] is seen primarily as a mediating element which permits the [[subject]] to attain [[recognition]] from the other.<ref>{{E}} p. 9</ref> |
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| − | a. Language and Law
| + | Above and beyond its use for conveying information, [[language]] is first and foremost an appeal to an interlocutor; in [[Jakobson]]'s terms, [[Lacan]] stresses the connative function above the referential. |
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| − | In Part 1, in recounting Lacan's view on the resolution of the Oedipal complex, one reason why Lacan allocated language such importance was touched upon. For Lacan, it is only when the child accedes to castration and the Law of the father, that s/he becomes fully competent as a language-speaker within his/her given social collective. By contrast, individuals suffering from psychosis, Lacan stresses (in line with a vast wealth of psychological research), are prone to characteristic linguistic dysfunctions and inabilities. Already from this, then, we can outline a first crucial feature of Lacan's 'philosophy of language'. Like the later Wittgenstein, Lacan’s position is that to learn a language is to learn a set of rules or laws for the use and combination of words. Accordingly, for him too, 'learning is based on believing' [Wittgenstein]. Particularly, Lacan asserts a lasting link between the capacity of a subject to perceive the world as a set of discrete identifiable objects, and his/her acceptance of the unconditional authority of a body of convention. I will return to this below.
| + | Thus he insists that [[langage]] is not a nomenclature.<ref>{{Ec}} p. 166</ref> |
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| + | =====Anthropology and Phenomenology===== |
| | + | From 1950 to 1954 [[language]] begins to occupy the central [[position]] that it will hold in [[Lacan]]'s work thereafter. |
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| − | b. Psychoanalysis as Interpretation: the Unconscious Structured Like a Language
| + | In this period, [[Lacan]]'s [[discussion]] of [[language]] is dominated by references to [[Heideggerian]] [[phenomenology]] and, more importantly, to the [[anthropology]] of [[language]] ([[Anthropology|Maus, Malinowski, and Lévi-Strauss]]. |
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| − | Lacan's contention concerning human-being as a parle-etre, put most broadly, is that when the subject learns its mother tongue, everything from its sense of how the world is, to the way it experiences its biological body, are over-determined by its accession to this order of language. This is the clearest register of the debt that Lacan owes to phenomenology. From Heidegger, he accepts the notion that to be a subject is to experience the world as a meaningful totality, and that language is crucial to this capability. Aligning Freud with the theories of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, Lacan developed a psychoanalytic conception of how the body is caught in the play of meaning-formation between subjects, and expressive of the subjectivity that 'lives' through it, as well as being an objectificable tool for the performance of instrumental activities. For Lacan, that is, 'the unconscious' does not name only some other part of the mental apparatus than consciousness. It names all that about a subject, including bodily manifestations and identifications with others and 'external' objects that insist beyond his/her conscious control.
| + | [[Language]] is thus seen as [[structure|structuring]] the [[law|social laws of exchange]], as a symbolic pact, etc. |
| − | Freud had already commented in the Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis that the unconscious can be compared to a language without a grammar. Lacan, using structuralist linguistics, attempted to systematise this contention, arguing that the unconscious is structured like a language, and that 'it speaks'/ ca parle. A symptom, Lacan (for example) claimed, is to be read as a kind of embodied corporeal metaphor. As Freud had argued, he takes it that what is at stake within a symptom is a repressed desire abhorrent to the consciously accepted self-conception and values of the subject. This desire, if it is to gain satisfaction at all, accordingly needs to be expressed indirectly. For example, a residual infantile desire to masturbate may find satisfaction indirectly in a compulsive ritual the subject feels compelled to repeat. Just as one might metaphorically describe one's love as a rose, Lacan argues, here we have a repressed desire being metaphorically expressed in some apparently dissimilar bodily activity. Equally, drawing on certain moments within Freud's papers "On the Psychology of Love", Lacan argues that desire is structured as a metonymy. In metonymy, one designates a whole object (eg: a car) by naming one part of it (eg: 'a set of wheels'). Lacan’s argument is that, equally, since castration denies subjects full access to their first love object (the mother), their choice of subsequent love objects is the choice of a series of objects that each resemble in part the lost object (perhaps they have the same hair, or look at him/her the same way the mother did …). According to Lacan, the unconscious uses the multivalent resources of the natural language into which the subject has been inducted (what he calls 'the battery of the signifier') to give indirect vent to the desires that the subject cannot consciously avow. Lacan's Freudian argument is that a directly comparable process occurs in formations of the unconscious as in jokes. As Freud detailed in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, the 'punch line’ of jokes pack their punch by condensing in one statement, or even one word, two chains of meaning. The first of these is what the previous words and cues of the joke, and our shared norms for interpretation, lead us to expect. The second is a wholly different chain of associations, whose clash with what we had expected produces our sense of amusement. In the same way, Lacan observed that, for example, when an analysand makes a 'slip of the tongue', what has taken place is that the unconscious has employed such means as homonymy, the merging of two words, the forgetting or mispronunciation of certain words, or a slippage of pronoun or tense, etc., to intimate a whole chain of associations which the subject did not intend, but through which his unconscious desire is given indirect expression. Lacan argues that what the consideration of jokes, symptoms and slips thus shows are a number of features of how it is that human beings form sense in language. The first thing is that the sentence is the absolutely basal unit of meaning. Before a sentence ends, Lacan notes, the sense of each individual word or signifier is uncertain. It is only when the sentence is completed that their sense is fixed, or- as Lacan variously put it- 'quilted'. Before this time, they are what he calls floating signifiers, like to the leading premises of a joke. The sense of this position can be easily demonstrated. One need only begin a sentence by proferring a subject, but then cease speaking before a verb and/or predicate is assigned to this in accordance with linguistic convention. For example, if I say: 'when I was young I…' or ‘it’s not like …’, my interlocutor will be understandably want to know what it is that I mean. At the end of the sentence, by contrast, the sense of the beginning words becomes clear, as when I finish the first of the above utterances by saying 'when I was young I ran a lot', or whatever. This understanding of sentences as the basic unit of sense, and of how it is that signifiers 'float' until any given sentence is finished, is what informs Lacan's emphasis on the future anterior tense. Sense, he argues, is always something that 'will have been'. It is anticipated but not confirmed, when we hear uttered the beginning of a sentence (see transference below). Or else, at sentence's end, it is something that we now see with the benefit of ’twenty twenty hindsight’ to have been intended all along. This is why, in Seminar I, Lacan even quips that the meaning of symptoms do not come from the past, but from the future. Before the work of interpretation, a symptom is a floating signifier, whose meaning is unclear to the analysand, and also to the analyst. As the analytic work proceeds, however, an interpretation is achieved at some later time that casts the whole behaviour into relief in a wholly different light, and makes its sense clear.
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| − | Back to Table of Contents
| + | There are also occasional references to [[rhetoric]], but these are not elaborated.<ref>{{E}} p. 169</ref> |
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| − | c. The Curative Efficacy of the 'Talking Cure'
| + | There are a few allusions to [[Saussure]],<ref>{{S1}} p. 248</ref> but in his famous "[[Rome Discourse]]" [[Lacan]] establishes an opposition between ''[[parole]]'' and ''[[language|langage]]'' (and not, as [[Saussure]] does, between ''[[parole]]'' and ''[[language|langue]]''.<ref>{{L}}. "''[[Fonction]] et [[champ]] de la parole et du langage en [[psychanalyse]].''" 1953a. In {{E}} p. 237-322. ("[[The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis]].") In {{E}}. p. 30-113</ref> |
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| − | Lacan's emphasis on language is also over-determined by an elementary recollection that, if Freud’s intervention promised anything, it is that speaking with another person in strictly controlled circumstances can be a curative experience for people suffering from forms of mental illness. The analysand comes to the analyst with his troubling symptoms, and the analyst, at certain decisive points, offers interpretations of these behaviours that retrospectively make their meaning clear. And this is not simply an intellectual exercise. As Freud stressed, there is knowledge of the unconscious, and then there is knowledge that has effects upon it. A successful psychoanalytic interpretation is one that has effects even upon the biological reality of the body, changing the subject's bearing towards the world, and dissolving his/her symptoms.
| + | ====="The Unconscious is Structured like a Language"===== |
| − | The need to explain this power of words and language is a clear and lasting motive behind Lacan's understanding of language. His central and basal hypothesis concerning it can be stated in the following way. In a symptom, as we saw above, an unconscious desire seeks to make itself manifest. The symptom is recounted to the analyst, or else repeated in the way the subject responds to the analyst in the sessions. Then an interpretation is offered by the analyst, which recognises or symbolises the force of the desire at work in the symptom, and the symptom disappears. So here the recognition of a desire at the same time satisfies the desire. What this can accordingly only mean is that the unconscious desire given voice in the symptom is itself, from the start, at least in part a desire for recognition. This is an absolutely central Lacanian insight, wherein he again shows the influence of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit upon his most central concepts. It synchronises exactly with the philosophical anthropology recounted above, and Lacan's stricture concerning how human desire is always caught up in the dialectics of individuals’ exchanges with others. But, for Lacan, it also shows something vital about the language in or as which the subjects' repressed desires are trying to find a vent. This is that language is above all a social pact. As Lacan wrote in the Ecrits: "As a rule everyone knows that others will remain, like himself, inaccessible to the constraints of reason, outside an acceptance in principle of a rule of debate that does not come into force without an explicit or implicit agreement as to what is called its basis, which is almost always tantamount to an anticipated agreement to what is at stake... I shall expect nothing therefore of these rules except the good faith of the Other, and, as a last resort, will make use of them, if I think fit or if I am forced to, only to amuse bad faith..." [Lacan, 2001: 154-155] Lacan's idea is that to speak is to presuppose a body a conventions that ensue that, even if my immediate auditor doesn’t 'get it', the true meaning of what I wish to convey always will emerge, and be registered in some ‘Other’ place. (Note that here is another meaning of the big Other touched upon in Part 1. The big Other is the place, tribunal, collective or single person which we presuppose will register the truth of what we say, whenever we speak). This is why Lacan's philosophy of language is to be read in strong opposition to any philosophical account (whether Lockean, descriptivist or phenomenological) which argues that meaning is formed prior to the communicative act. Lacan defines speech as a process in which the subjects get their meanings back from the Other in an inverted form. Think once more of what is involved in psychoanalytic interpretation. Here the meaning of a symptom is rendered by the analyst. What this means, for Lacan, is that the symptom not only bears upon the subject's past relations to others. If it can be dissolved by an Other’s interpretation, this is because it is formed with an eye to this interpretation from the start. To quote Slavoj Zizek on this Lacanian notion of how the symptom is from the start addressed to an Other supposed to know its truth: "The symptom arises where the world failed, where the circuit of symbolic communication was broken: it is a kind of 'prolongation of communication by other means': the failed, repressed word articulates itself in a coded, ciphered form. The implication of this is that the symptom can not only be interpreted but is, so to speak, formed with an eye to its interpretation … in the psychoanalytic cure the symptom is always addressed to the analyst, it is an appeal to him to deliver its hidden message … This … is the basic point: in its very constitution, the symptom implies the field of the big Other as consistent, complete, because its very formation is an appeal to the Other which contains its meaning …" [Zizek, 1989: 73] Even the key meaning of transference, for Lacan, is this supposition that there is an Other supposed to know the truth of my communicative acts, even down to the most apparently meaningless 'slips' and symptomatic behaviours. In terms of the previous section, transference is the condition of possibility for the quilting of the meaning of floating signifiers that occurs even in the most basic sentences, as we saw. What occurs in a psychoanalytic interpretation is simply one more consequential version of this process. The subject, by speaking, addresses himself to some Other supposed to know her/his truth, and at the end of this process, the signifiers he offers to the Other are quilted, and return to him 'in an inverted form'. What has occurred at this point, on Lacan's reckoning, is that the previously unquilted signifiers finding voice in the manifestations of his unconscious are integrated into the subject's symbolic universe: the way s/he understands the world, in the terms of his/her community's natural language. They have been subjectivised; which means that now s/he can recognise them as not wholly alien intrusions into his/her identity, but an integral part of this identity. Lacan's stress is thus always, when he talks of psychoanalytic interpretation, that this interpretation does not add new content to the subject's self-understanding, so much as affect the form of this understanding. An interpretation, that is, realigns the way the s/he sees her past, reordering the signifiers in which his/her self-understanding has come to be ordered. A crucial Lacanian category in theorising this process is that of the 'master signifier'. Master signifiers are those signifiers to which a subject's identity are most intimately bound. Standard examples are words like 'Australian’, 'democrat', ‘decency’, ‘genuineness’. They are words which will typically be proffered by subjects as naming something like what Kant would have called ends in themselves. They designate values and ideals that the subject will be unwilling and unable to question without pulling the semantic carpet from beneath their own feet. Lacan's understanding of how these 'master signifiers’ function is a multi-layered one, as I shall expand in Part 3.. It is certainly true to say, though, that the importance of these signifiers comes from how a subject's identification with them commits them to certain orderings of all the rest of the signifiers. For example, if someone identifies himself as a 'communist', the meanings of a whole array of other signifiers are ordered in quite different ways than for someone who thinks of himself as a 'liberal'. ‘Freedom’ for him comes to mean ‘freedom from the exploitative practices enshrined in capitalism and hidden beneath liberal ideological rhetoric'. 'Democracy’ comes to mean ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat'. 'Equality’ comes to mean something like ‘what ensues once the sham of the capitalist "equal right to trade" is unmasked'. What Lacan argues is involved in the psychoanalytic process, then, is the elevation of new 'master signifiers’ which enable the subject to reorder their sense of themselves and of their relations to others. Previously, for example, a person may have identified with a conception of 'decency' that has led him to repress aspects of his own libidinal makeup, which then return in neurotic symptoms. What analysis will properly lead him to do is identify himself with a different set of 'master signifiers', which re-signify the signifiers he had unconsciously been addressing to the Other in his symptoms, reducing their traumatic charge by integrating them into his symbolic (self-)understanding.
| + | Between 1955 and 1970 [[language]] takes center [[stage]] and [[Lacan]] develops his classic [[thesis]] that "the unconscious is [[structured]] like a language."<ref>{{S11}} p. 20</ref> |
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| | + | It is in this period that the names [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] and [[Roman Jakobson]] come to the fore in [[Lacan]]'s [[Works of Jacques Lacan|work]]. |
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| | + | =====Structural Linguistics===== |
| | + | [[Lacan]] takes up [[Saussure]]'s [[theory]] that [[language]] is a [[structure]] composed of differential elements, but whereas [[Saussure]] had stated this of ''[[language|langue]]'', [[Lacan]] states it of ''[[language|langage]]''. |
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| | + | ''[[language|Langage]]'' becomes, for [[Lacan]], the single paradigm of all [[structures]]. |
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| | + | [[Lacan]] then proceeds to criticize the [[Saussure]]an [[concept]] of [[language]], arguing that the basic unit of [[language]] is not the [[sign]] but the [[signifier]]. |
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| | + | [[Lacan]] then argues that the [[unconscious]] is, like [[language]], a [[structure]] of [[signifiers]], which also allows [[Lacan]] to formulate the [[category]] of the [[symbolic]] with greater precision. |
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| | + | In 1969 [[Lacan]] develops a concept of [[discourse]] as a kind of [[discourse|social bond]]. |
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| | + | =====Psychotic Language===== |
| | + | From 1971 on, the shift from [[linguistics]] to [[mathematics]] as the paradigm of [[science|scientificity]] is accompanied by a tendency to emphasize the [[poetry]] and ambiguity of [[language]], as is evident in [[Lacan]]'s increasing interest in the "[[psychotic]] [[language]]" of [[James Joyce]].<ref>{{L}}. "[[Joyce]] le symptôme." 1975a. In Jacques Aubert (ed.), ''Joyce avec Lacan''. [[Paris]]: Navarin, 1987.</ref> |
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| | + | [[Lacan]]'s own style reflects this [[change]] as it becomes ever more densely populated with puns and neologisms. |
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| | + | =====''Lalangue''===== |
| | + | [[Lacan]] coins the term ''[[language|lalangue]]'' (from the definite article ''la'' and the noun ''[[language|langue]]'') to refer to these non-communicative aspects of [[language]] which, by playing on ambiguity and homophony, give rise to a kind of ''[[jouissance]]''.<ref>{{S20}} p. 126</ref> |
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| | + | The term "[[language]]" now becomes opposed to ''[[language|lalangue]]''. |
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| | + | ''[[language|Lalangue]]'' is like the primary chaotic substrate of polysemy out of which [[language]] is constructed, almost as if [[language]] is some ordered superstructure sitting on top of this substrate: |
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| | + | <blockquote>"Language is without [[doubt]] made of ''[[lalangue]]''. It is an elucubration of [[knowledge]] (''[[knowledge|savoir]]'') [[about]] ''lalangue''.<ref>{{S20}} p. 127</ref></blockquote> |
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| | + | =====Lacanian Psychoanalysis===== |
| | + | =====Language in Analytic Treatment===== |
| | + | It is the emphasis placed by [[Lacan]]ian [[psychoanalysis]] that is usually regarded as its most distinctive feature. |
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| | + | [[Lacan]] criticizes the way that other forms of [[psychoanalysis]], such as [[Kleinian psychoanalysis]] and [[object-relations theory]], tend to play down the importance of [[language]] and emphasize the "non-[[verbal]] communication" of the [[analysand]] (his "[[body]] language," etc.) at the expense of the [[analysand]]'s [[speech]]). |
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| | + | This is a fundamental error, according to [[Lacan]], for [[three]] main reasons. |
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| | + | :1. Firstly, all [[human]] [[communication]] is inscribed in a [[linguistic]] [[structure]]; even "body language," is, as the term implies, fundamentally a [[form]] of ''[[language]]'', with the same [[structure|structural features]]. |
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| | + | :2. Secondly, the [[whole]] aim of [[psychoanalytic treatment]] is to articulate the [[truth]] of one's [[desire]] in [[speech]] rather than in any other medium; the [[fundamental rule]] of [[psychoanalysis]] is based on the [[principle]] that [[speech]] is the only way to this [[truth]]. |
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| | + | :3. And thirdly, [[speech]] is the only tool which the [[analyst]] has; therefore, any [[analyst]] who does not understand the way [[speech]] and [[language]] work does not understand [[psychoanalysis]] itself.<ref>{{E}} p. 40</ref> |
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| | + | One consequence of [[Lacan]]'s emphasis on [[language]] is his recommendation that the [[analyst]] must attend to the [[formal]] features of the [[analysand]]'s [[speech]] (the [[signifiers]]), and not be sidetracked into an empathic attitude baseed on an [[imaginary]] [[understanding]] of the [[content]] (the [[signified]]). |
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| | + | =====Symbolic and Imaginary Dimensions===== |
| | + | One common misconception of [[Lacan]] is that [[language]] is synonymous with the [[symbolic]] [[order]]. |
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| | + | This is, however, not correct; [[Lacan]] argues that [[language]] has both a [[symbolic]] and an [[imaginary]] [[dimension]]. |
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| | + | <blockquote>"There is something in [[the symbolic]] function of human discourse that cannot be eliminated, and that is the [[role]] played in it by [[the imaginary]]."<ref>{{S2}} p.306</ref></blockquote> |
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| | + | The [[symbolic|symbolic dimension]] of [[language]] is that of the [[signifier]] and [[speech|true speech]]. |
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| | + | The [[imaginary]] dimension of [[language]] is that of the [[signified]], [[signification]], and [[speech|empty speech]]. |
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| | + | [[Schema L]] represents these two dimensions of [[language]] by means of two axes which intersect. |
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| | + | The axis '''A-S''' is [[language]] in its [[symbolic|symbolic dimension]]], the [[discourse]] of the [[Other]], the [[unconscious]]. |
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| | + | The [[imaginary]] axis ''a'''-''a'' is [[language]] in its [[imaginary|imaginary dimension]], the wall of [[language]] which interrupts, distorts and [[inversion|invert]]s the [[discourse]] of the [[Other]]. |
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| | + | In [[Lacan]]'s words, "language is as much there to be found in the Other as to drastically prevent us from understanding him.<ref>{{S2}} p. 244</ref> |
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| | + | =====Languages and Codes===== |
| | + | [[Lacan]] distinguishes between [[language]]s and [[code]]s; unlike [[code]]s, in [[language]] there is no [[stable]] one-to-one correspondence between [[sign]] and [[sign|referent]], nor between [[signified]] and [[signifier]]. |
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| | + | It is this property of [[language]] which gives rise to the inherent ambiguity of all [[discourse]], which can only be [[interpreted]] by playing on the homophony and other forms of equivocation (''l'équivoque''). |
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| | + | ==See Also== |
| | + | {{See}} |
| | + | * [[Analysand]] |
| | + | * [[Analyst]] |
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| | + | * [[Code]] |
| | + | * [[Discourse]] |
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| | + | * [[Linguistics]] |
| | + | * [[Other]] |
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| | + | * [[Sign]] |
| | + | * [[Signified]] |
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| | + | * [[Signifier]] |
| | + | * [[Speech]] |
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| | + | * [[Structure]] |
| | + | * [[Symbolic]] |
| | + | {{Also}} |
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| | ==References== | | ==References== |
| | + | <div style="font-size:11px" class="references-small"> |
| | <references/> | | <references/> |
| | + | </div> |
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| | + | {{OK}} |
| | + | [[Category:Linguistics]] |
| | + | [[Category:Language]] |
| | + | [[Category:Symbolic]] |
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| − | [[Category:Terms]]
| + | __NOTOC__ |
| − | [[Category:Concepts]]
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| − | [[Category:Symbolic]]
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| − | [[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
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| − | [[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
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Translation
It is important to note that the English word "language" corresponds to two French words: langue and langage.
These two words have quite different meanings in Lacan's work: langue usually refers to a specific language, such as French or English, whereas langage refers to the system of language in general, abstracting from all particular languages.
Jacques Lacan
It is fundamentally the general structure of language (langage), rather than the differences between particular languages ('langues) that interests Lacan.
When reading Lacan in English it is therefore essential to be aware of which term is used in the original French; most of the time the French term will be langage.
Psychoanalytic Experience
Between 1936 and 1949 references to language are sparse, but they are significant; already in 1936, for example, Lacan emphasizes that language is constitutive of the psychoanalytic experience,[1] and in 1946 he argues that it is impossible to understand madness without addressing the problem of language.[2]
Lacan's comments on language at this time do not contain any references to a specific linguistic theory, and instead are dominated by philosophical allusions, mainly in terms derived from Hegel.
Thus language is seen primarily as a mediating element which permits the subject to attain recognition from the other.[3]
Above and beyond its use for conveying information, language is first and foremost an appeal to an interlocutor; in Jakobson's terms, Lacan stresses the connative function above the referential.
Thus he insists that langage is not a nomenclature.[4]
Anthropology and Phenomenology
From 1950 to 1954 language begins to occupy the central position that it will hold in Lacan's work thereafter.
In this period, Lacan's discussion of language is dominated by references to Heideggerian phenomenology and, more importantly, to the anthropology of language (Maus, Malinowski, and Lévi-Strauss.
Language is thus seen as structuring the social laws of exchange, as a symbolic pact, etc.
There are also occasional references to rhetoric, but these are not elaborated.[5]
There are a few allusions to Saussure,[6] but in his famous "Rome Discourse" Lacan establishes an opposition between parole and langage (and not, as Saussure does, between parole and langue.[7]
"The Unconscious is Structured like a Language"
Between 1955 and 1970 language takes center stage and Lacan develops his classic thesis that "the unconscious is structured like a language."[8]
It is in this period that the names Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson come to the fore in Lacan's work.
Structural Linguistics
Lacan takes up Saussure's theory that language is a structure composed of differential elements, but whereas Saussure had stated this of langue, Lacan states it of langage.
Langage becomes, for Lacan, the single paradigm of all structures.
Lacan then proceeds to criticize the Saussurean concept of language, arguing that the basic unit of language is not the sign but the signifier.
Lacan then argues that the unconscious is, like language, a structure of signifiers, which also allows Lacan to formulate the category of the symbolic with greater precision.
In 1969 Lacan develops a concept of discourse as a kind of social bond.
Psychotic Language
From 1971 on, the shift from linguistics to mathematics as the paradigm of scientificity is accompanied by a tendency to emphasize the poetry and ambiguity of language, as is evident in Lacan's increasing interest in the "psychotic language" of James Joyce.[9]
Lacan's own style reflects this change as it becomes ever more densely populated with puns and neologisms.
Lalangue
Lacan coins the term lalangue (from the definite article la and the noun langue) to refer to these non-communicative aspects of language which, by playing on ambiguity and homophony, give rise to a kind of jouissance.[10]
The term "language" now becomes opposed to lalangue.
Lalangue is like the primary chaotic substrate of polysemy out of which language is constructed, almost as if language is some ordered superstructure sitting on top of this substrate:
"Language is without doubt made of lalangue. It is an elucubration of knowledge (savoir) about lalangue.[11]
Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Language in Analytic Treatment
It is the emphasis placed by Lacanian psychoanalysis that is usually regarded as its most distinctive feature.
Lacan criticizes the way that other forms of psychoanalysis, such as Kleinian psychoanalysis and object-relations theory, tend to play down the importance of language and emphasize the "non-verbal communication" of the analysand (his "body language," etc.) at the expense of the analysand's speech).
This is a fundamental error, according to Lacan, for three main reasons.
- 1. Firstly, all human communication is inscribed in a linguistic structure; even "body language," is, as the term implies, fundamentally a form of language, with the same structural features.
- 2. Secondly, the whole aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to articulate the truth of one's desire in speech rather than in any other medium; the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis is based on the principle that speech is the only way to this truth.
- 3. And thirdly, speech is the only tool which the analyst has; therefore, any analyst who does not understand the way speech and language work does not understand psychoanalysis itself.[12]
One consequence of Lacan's emphasis on language is his recommendation that the analyst must attend to the formal features of the analysand's speech (the signifiers), and not be sidetracked into an empathic attitude baseed on an imaginary understanding of the content (the signified).
Symbolic and Imaginary Dimensions
One common misconception of Lacan is that language is synonymous with the symbolic order.
This is, however, not correct; Lacan argues that language has both a symbolic and an imaginary dimension.
"There is something in the symbolic function of human discourse that cannot be eliminated, and that is the role played in it by the imaginary."[13]
The symbolic dimension of language is that of the signifier and true speech.
The imaginary dimension of language is that of the signified, signification, and empty speech.
Schema L represents these two dimensions of language by means of two axes which intersect.
The axis A-S is language in its symbolic dimension], the discourse of the Other, the unconscious.
The imaginary axis a'-a is language in its imaginary dimension, the wall of language which interrupts, distorts and inverts the discourse of the Other.
In Lacan's words, "language is as much there to be found in the Other as to drastically prevent us from understanding him.[14]
Languages and Codes
Lacan distinguishes between languages and codes; unlike codes, in language there is no stable one-to-one correspondence between sign and referent, nor between signified and signifier.
It is this property of language which gives rise to the inherent ambiguity of all discourse, which can only be interpreted by playing on the homophony and other forms of equivocation (l'équivoque).
See Also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p.82
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p. 166
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 9
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p. 166
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 169
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-54. Trans. John Forrester. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. p. 248
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques.. "Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse." 1953a. In Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 237-322. ("The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis.") In Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977.. p. 30-113
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p. 20
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques.. "Joyce le symptôme." 1975a. In Jacques Aubert (ed.), Joyce avec Lacan. Paris: Navarin, 1987.
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XX. Encore, 1972-73. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1975. p. 126
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XX. Encore, 1972-73. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1975. p. 127
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 40
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.306
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p. 244
