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The Agency of the Letter

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[ ] [[Work]] on [[The Agency of the Letter]]

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The [[Agency ]] of the [[Letter ]] in the [[Unconscious ]] or [[Reason ]] Since [[Freud]]

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The agency of the letter in the unconscious</h3>

<h4 align="center">or reason since Freud</h4>

'Of [[Children ]] in Swaddling Clothes

O cities of the sea, I behold in you your citizens, [[women]]

as well as men tightly bound with stout bonds around

their arms and Iegs by folk who will not [[understand]] your [[language]]; and you will only be able to give vent to your griefs and [[sense ]] of [[loss ]] of liberty

by making tearful complaints, and sighs, and

lamentations one to [[another]]; for those who [[bind ]] you will not understand your

language nor will you

understand [[them]].'

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Although the [[nature ]] of this contribution was determined by the theme of the [[third ]] volume of La [[Psychanalyse]], I owe to what will be found there to insert it at a point somewhere between [[writing ]] (l'écrit) and [[speech ]] - it will be half-way between the two. Writing is distingiushed by a prevalence of the [[text ]] in the 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 way in, which I prefer to be difficult. In that

sense, then, this will not be writing.

Because I always try to provide my [[seminars ]] each [[time ]] with some. [[thing ]] new, I have refirained so far from giving such a text, with one exception, which is not particularly outstanding in the context of the series,

and which I refer to at all only for the general level of its argument.

aim only masks the difficulty that, in trying to maintain it at the level at

which I ought to [[present ]] my teaching here, I might push it too far from

speech, whose very different techniques are essential to the formative

effect I seek

.

That is why I have taken the expedient offered me by the invitation

to lecture to the [[philosophy ]] group of the Fédération des étudiants dès lettres to produce an [[adaptation ]] suitable to what I have to say: its necessary generality matches the exceptional [[character ]] of the audience, but its

sole [[object ]] encounters the collusion of their common [[training]], a [[literary]]

one, to which my title pays homage.

Indeed, how could we forget that to the end of his days Freud con-

stantly maintained that such a training was the prime requisite in the

[[formation ]] of [[analysts]], and that he designated the eternal universitas litterarum as the [[ideal ]] [[place ]] for its institution.

Thus my recourse (in rewriting) to the movement of the (spoken)

marks even more clearly those for whom it is not intended.

I mean that it is not intended for those who, for any reason whatever,

in [[psychoanalysis]], allow their [[discipline ]] to avail itself of some [[false]] [[identity ]] - a fault of habit, but its effect on the [[mind ]] is such that the [[true]] identity may appear as simply one alibi among [[others]], a sort of refined

reduplication whose implications will not be lost on the most subtle minds.

So one observes with a certain curiosity the beginnings of a new direc-

tion concerning [[symbolization ]] and language in the Internationl Journal

of Psychoanalysis, with a great many sticky fingers leafing through the

pages of Sapir and Jespersen. These exercises are still somewhat un-

practised, but it is above all the tone that is [[lacking]]. A certain'seriousness' as one enters the [[domain ]] of veracity cannot fail to raise a smile. And how could a [[psychoanalyst ]] of today not realize that speech is the key to that [[truth]], when his [[whole ]] [[experience ]] must find in speech alone its [[instrument]], its context, its [[material]], and even the background noise

of its uncertainties.

I The [[Meaning ]] of [[the Letter]]</center>

As my title suggests, beyond this 'speech', what the [[psychoanalytic ]] ex- petience discovers in the unconscious is the whole [[structure ]] of language.

Thus from the outset I have alerted informed minds to the extent to

which the [[notion ]] that the unconscious is merely the seat of the [[instincts]]

will have to be rethought.

But how are we to take this 'letter' here? Quite simply, literally.

By 'letter' I designate that materia1 support that [[concrete ]] discourse

borrows from language.

This simple definition assumes that language is not to be confused

with the various [[psychical ]] and somatic functions that serve it in the [[speaking ]] [[subject ]] - primarily because language and its structure [[exist]] prior to the [[moment ]] at which each subject at a certain point in his [[mental]] [[development ]] makes his entry into it. Let us note, then, that aphasias, although caused by purely [[anatomical]] lesions in the 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 letter' in the

creation of [[signification]]. A point that will be clarified later. Thus the subject, too, if he can appear to be the [[slave ]] of language is all the more so of a discourse in the [[universal ]] movement in which his place is already inscribed at [[birth]], if only byvirtue of his proper [[name]]. Reference to the experience of the [[community]], or to the substance of this discourse, settles [[nothing]]. For this experience assumes its essential [[dimension ]] in the [[tradition ]] that this discourse itself establishes. This

tradition, long before the drama of [[history ]] is inscribed in it, lays down the elementary [[structures ]] of [[culture]]. And these very structures reveal an

ordering of possible exchanges which, even if unconscious, is inconceiv-

able [[outside ]] the permutations authorized by language. With the result that the ethnographic [[duality ]] of nature and culture is giving way to a ternary conception of the [[human ]] condition - nature, [[society]], and culture - the last term of which could well be reduced to

language, or that which essentially distinguishes human society from

[[natural ]] societies.

But 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]], for my little

jab at the general function of praxis in the genesis of history, to point out

that the very society that wished to restore, along with the privileges of

the producer, the causal hierarchy of the relations between production

and the [[ideological ]] superstructure to their [[full ]] [[political ]] rights, has none

the less failed to give birth to an ^esperanto in which the relations of lan-

guage to socialist realities would have rendered any literary formalism

radically [[impossible]]?

For my part, I shall trust only those assumptions that have already

proven their [[value ]] by virtue of the fact that language through them has attained the status of an object of [[scientific ]] investigation. 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 re- grouping 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 </center>

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 [[formula]]- tion S/s by which, in spite of the differences among [[schools]], the begin-

ning 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 ]] con-

cerning 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¦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).

pher, 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 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:

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 unexpec-

ted 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 im-

material, 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

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 resis- tance 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

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 ideolo-

gical warfare, relentless for families, a torment to the Gods. For these

children, Ladies and Gentlemen will be hen¦forth two countries to-

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 ventila-

phonemes; but we must not expect to find any phonetic constancy in the

modulatory variability to which this term applies, but rather the syn-

chronic [[system ]] of differential couplings necessary for the discernment of

sounds in a given language. Through this, one sees that an essential

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 con- stitutive inclusions of the signifier to the level of the [[verbal ]] locution.

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 the

of the units con¦rned.

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

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 dis-

course, 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 direc-

tion 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 con-

sonants, it can still call up with the robur and the plane tree the significa-

tions 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 '`

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