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Law
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=====Jacques Lacan===============[[Lacan]]'s discussions of the "[[Law]]" (which [[Lacan]] often writes with a capital '"L'") owe much to the work of [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]].
=====Fundamental Principles of all Social Relations=====
As in the work of [[Lévi-Strauss]], the [[Law]] in [[Lacan]]'s work refers not to a particular piece of legislation, but to the fundamental principles which underlie all social relations.
=====Universal Structures of Society=====
The [[law]] is the set of universal principles which make social existence possible, the [[structure]]s that govern all forms of social exchange, whether gift-giving, kinship relations or the formation of pacts.
=====Symbolic Exchange==========Law of the Signifier==========Legal-Linguistic StructureSince the most basic form of exchange is [[communication]] itself, the [[law]] is fundamentally a [[linguistic]] entity -- it is the [[law]] of the [[signifier]]:
<blockquote>This law, then, is revealed clearly enough as identical with an order of language. For without kinship nominations, no power is capable of instituting the order of preferences and taboos that bind and weave the yarn of lineage through succeeding generations.<ref>{{E}} p.66</ref></blockquote>
This [[legal]]-[[linguistic]] [[structure]] is in fact no more and no less than the [[symbolic order]] itself.
<blockquote>"([[Human]] [[law]] is) the primordial Law... which in regulating marriage ties superimposes the kingdom of culture on that of a nature abandoned to the law of mating. The prohibition of incest is merely its subjective pivot."<ref>{{E}} p.66</ref></blockquote>
=====Oedipus Complex=====
=====Paternal Function=====
=====Symbolic Father=====
It is the [[father]] who imposes this [[law]] on the [[subject]] in the [[Oedipus complex]]; the paternal agency (or paternal function) is no more than the name for this prohibitive and legislative role.
=====Second Time of the Oedipus Complex=====
====="Father of the Primal Horde"=====
In the second time of the [[Oedipus complex]] the [[father]] appears as the omnipotent "father of the primal horde" of ''[[Totem and Taboo]]''.<ref>{{F}} 1912-13. ''Totem and Taboo'', [[SE]] XIII, 1.</ref>
=====Third Time of the Oedipus Complex=====
In the third time of the [[Oedipus complex]] the [[father]] is included in his own [[law]], the [[law]] is revealed as a pact rather than an imperative.
=====Regulation of Desire=====
The [[Oedipus complex]] represents the regulation of [[desire]] by the [[law]].
=====Pleasure Principle=====
It is the [[law]] of the [[pleasure principle]], which commands the [[subject]] to "Enjoy as little as possible!", and thus maintains the [[subject]] at a safe distance from the [[Thing]].
The relationship between the [[law]] and [[desire]] is, however, a [[dialectic]]al one; "desire is the reverse of the law."<ref>{{Ec}} p.787</ref>
If, on the one hand, [[law]] imposes limits on [[desire]], it is also true that the [[law]] creates [[desire]] in the first place by creating interdicitoninterdiction.
=====Desire to Transgress=====
[[Desire]] is essentially the [[desire]] to [[transgress]], and for there to be [[transgression]] it is first necesary for there to be [[prohibition]].<ref>{{S7}} p.83-4</ref>
=====Desire Born Out of Regulation=====
Thus it is not the case that there is a pregiven [[desire]] which the [[law]] then regulates, but that [[desire]] is born out of the process of regulation.
<blockquote>"What we see here is the tight bond between desire and Law."<ref>{{S7}} p.177</ref></blockquote>
If the [[law]] is closely connected to the [[father]], this is not only because the [[father]] is one who imposes the [[law]], but also because the [[law]] is born out of the murder of the [[father]].
=====Myth of the Father of the Primal Horde=====This is clearly illustrated in the [[myth ]] of the [[father]] of the [[primal horde ]] which [[Freud]] recounts in ''[[Totem and Taboo]]''. In this myth, the murder of the [[father]], far from freeing the sons from the [[law]], only reinforces the [[law]] which [[prohibit]]s [[incest]].
In this [[myth]], the murder of the [[father]], far from freeing the sons from the [[law]], only reinforces the [[law]] which [[prohibit]]s [[incest]].
==See Also==
