Changes

Inspired by the [[notion ]] of [[facilitation]], which was central to [[Freud]]'s description of the functioning of the [[psychic ]] [[apparatus]], Jacques [[Lacan ]] defined the signifying [[chain ]] as an [[association ]] and combination of [[signifiers]], connected in diverse ways, like the "[[links ]] by which a necklace firmly hooks onto a link of [[another ]] necklace made of links" (Lacan, 2002a, p. 145). The [[unconscious ]] [[activity ]] of [[desire ]] is expressed through the associative and [[combinatory ]] links of the signifier and is repeated in a kind of succession that sets up a chain reaction.

The signifying chain originates in the [[process ]] of [[primal ]] [[repression]], during which the [[Name]]-of-the-[[Father ]] signifiers are substituted for the signifier of the desire for the [[mother]]. From then on, [[conscious ]] and unconscious signifiers are woven together through [[metonymy ]] and [[metaphor]], the two functions that generate signifieds.

The signifying chain has only one destiny: to insert the [[subject]]'s unconscious desire in the subject's utterances. Thus it constitutes the [[design ]] and the weave of the [[speaking ]] subject's psychic fabric. More generally, it is involved in all psychic [[causality]].

The signifying chain is the privileged site of Lacan’s [[situation ]] of [[temporality]], [[subjectivity]], and above all, desire. It belongs only to [[the symbolic ]] order, though it has effects in and is affected by the [[imaginary ]] as well. It is the locus of the signifier divorced from the [[signified ]] in its perpetual play of deferral and provisionally generated [[meaning]], sustaining the [[Saussurean ]] dictum that "meaning is not found in any one signifier, but in the play between signifiers along the signifying chain and is therefore unstable" (Evans 185). Whereas the meaning associated with the interaction between the symbolic and [[the imaginary ]] (via [[points de capiton]]) is only a provisional, [[illusory]], and ephemeral function of the link between the signifier and the signified, Lacan’s conception of the chain of [[signification ]] reduces meaning to a product of [[anticipation ]] and deferral: "the signifier, by its very [[nature]], always anticipates meaning by unfolding its [[dimension ]] before it" ([[Ecrits ]] 153).

The signifying chain is, therefore, fundamentally [[diachronic]], perpetually unfolding and perpetually in process: "A signifying chain can never be [[complete]], since it is always possible to add another signifier to it, ad infinitum, […] signification is not [[present ]] at any one point in the chain, but rather meaning ‘insists’ in the movement from one signifier to another" (Evans 187-188).19 None of the [[individual ]] signifiers which go to make up the signifying chain contains meaning in any positive way, but rather meaning "insists" as a function of their interaction. Lacan clarifies this [[distinction ]] as one between a conception of the signifying chain in which meaning "consists" in a given signifier and one which recognises the pre-eminence of "[[insistence]]" as the production of meaning. Like Hopkins’s poetic [[concept ]] of inscape, the meaning of a given [[instance ]] of signification can not be readily discerned from the [[external ]] [[appearance ]] of a [[sign]], but must be deduced from the outward indications of a meaning that is always elsewhere and incomplete: "it is in the chain of the signifier that the meaning ‘insists’ but that none of its elements ‘consists’ in the signification of which it is at the [[moment ]] capable" (Ecrits 153). In its fundamental [[incompleteness ]] and differential production of meaning, the signifying chain is perhaps most easily characterised by the Derridean concept of différance, to which it bears a close [[conceptual ]] affinity and [[intellectual ]] ancestry.

The incorrigible [[diachrony ]] [[captured ]] in both Derrida’s term and in Lacan’s "insistence" of meaning not only challenges traditional conceptions of signification as a process of reference and equivalence between the signifier and the signified (let alone the sign and the [[referent]]), but also harbours the profoundly [[temporal ]] nature of the signifying chain: "the ‘signifying chain’ which subsumes the [[language ]] of the unconscious and the language of ordinary [[speech]], is by definition always on the move towards a desired [[future ]] […] its temporality seem[s] oddly smooth and characterless – ‘pure’ [[displacement]], ‘pure’ continuity, a [[slippage ]] or a passage that moves ahead with unstoppable fluency" (Bowie 179). So tightly bound up with temporal movement is the signifying chain that any attempt to characterise the [[glissement ]] of signifiers over signifieds immediately evokes a correlative movement through [[time]]. Indeed, the only amendment that I would make to Bowie’s characterisation of this correlation is that Lacan’s conception of the inherent temporality of signification is not necessarily a movement "ahead." Rather, while Lacan certainly does insist on the inescapably temporal quality of the signifying chain, he does not hold that this temporality must proceed in a given direction:

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 [[position ]] in our [[writing ]] – if this linearity is necessary, in fact, it is not sufficient. 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 time when the [[terms ]] are inverted. (Ecrits 154)

The temporal flow of the signifying chain must therefore be reversible at least, if not subject to outright short-circuits that, though they maintain the linearity of temporal progression, violate the strict progression of its moments. Lacan’s variation on Saussure’s linearly conceived signifying chain thus retains its "necessary" linearity, but allows him to posit that the [[mental ]] [[structures ]] and operations (notably desire and subjectivity) which are organised by it are temporally reversible. For all intents and purposes, then, the present can actually [[change ]] the [[past ]] and a past [[event ]] can be experienced again in the present not simply as a remembered event, but as a [[repetition ]] without antecedent and without an intervening lapse of time (or in which the intervening lapse of time can be overcome instantaneously).

Indeed, part of the [[reason ]] this temporality is so fundamental to Lacan’s conception of the signifying chain is that it allows for the centrality of repetition in the process of signification and deferral. That is, each instance of signification, each [[manifest ]] signifier, only repeats the [[action ]] of deferral and flight that extends back to the infant’s first use of language to articulate the binary between [[presence ]] and [[absence ]] actualised in the coming and going of his or her mother (whether actual or as symbolised in the father’s inaugural interdiction). As a result of the felt [[need ]] to articulate the alternating absence and presence of his or her mother, the [[infant ]] breaks down his or her relation to her into two [[categories]], making her absence a present feature of the symbolic [[world ]] into which he or she has just stumbled. This ascription of a signifier to hold the [[place ]] of an [[absent ]] [[object ]] by marking its [[real ]] absence with a symbolic presence is profoundly formative, as it boomerangs back on the subject when he or she discovers that he or she has forgone the [[full ]] effectiveness of his or her [[identification ]] with his or her mother in the very process of naming her. By distinguishing between the mother’s presence and absence, the infant thus creates a binary of primal [[symbolisation ]] that instantaneously removes the immediately experienced [[body ]] and being of the mother (as an object in the world) to an irretrievable distance. Henceforth, even when the mother is present to the infant, she will always also be partly absent by virtue of her [[representation ]] in the [[symbolic order]]. The infant undergoes the [[trauma ]] of entering the symbolic order in the primal moment at which he or she (driven by the father’s prohibitory "No" – see below) names absence as something that can be given [[content ]] and presence (however illusory). This revelation also introduces, however, the fact that presence is always haunted by absence, a feature which is perpetually highlighted through the symbolic order’s insistence on supplying a signifier that (however arbitrarily) marks the incompleteness of all presence –marks it, indeed, as merely a mask for absence. The endless deferral and ephemerality of all signification thus characterises the infant’s relation to not only the mother, but to all [[other ]] [[objects ]] in the world, naturalising [[alienation ]] as an existential condition since all such relations are part of that perceptual apparatus that is always already organised by the process of symbolisation.

* [[Infantile, the]]* [[Letter, the]]

* [[Symptom, sinthome]]* [[Sinthome]]

# Lacan Jacques. (1993). The [[seminar ]] of Jacques Lacan. Book 3: The [[psychoses]], 1955-1956 (Russell Grigg, Trans.) New York: W. W. Norton.# ——. (2002a).Écrits: A selection ([[Bruce Fink]], Trans.) New York: W. W. Norton.# ——. (2002b). The function and field of speech and language in [[psychoanalysis]]. In hisÉcrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.) New York: W. W. Norton. (Original [[work ]] published 1953)

# ——. (2002d). The [[subversion ]] of the subject and the [[dialectic ]] of desire in the [[Freudian ]] unconcsious. In hisÉcrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.) New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1960)