Line 2:

+

RSI and the Borromean Knot The Real     The Imaginary Mirror Stage Méconnaissance    The Symbolic 

+

Symbolic Order and Language  Metaphor and Metonymy  Point de Capiton   Chain of Signification   The Law 

The Subject     DesireHegel (Master/Slave)    Death Drive   Objet aThe Graph of Desire (phase II)

The Subject     DesireHegel (Master/Slave)    Death Drive   Objet aThe Graph of Desire (phase II)

________________________________________

________________________________________

Line 128:

Line 130:

Figure 3

Figure 3

−

Pictured above is Graph II in the series of four graphs that make up Lacan’s topology of desire (taken from Zizek The Sublime Object of Ideology 103). Before laying out how the graph depicts the movement of desire, I will first take a moment to define the symbols it uses. On the far left of the graph is the term "Signifier," designating the starting point of the act of signification and proceeding to the "Voice," which is the final outcome of the process of signification. At the bottom left hand corner of the graph is the symbol I(O), indicating the ego-ideal, the imaginary version of itself with which the ego would like to be identified. Further up on the left hand side is "e," designating the ego itself, caught halfway between the signifying chain ("Signifier" to "Voice") and the ego-ideal. On the bottom right hand side of the graph is "S/" (S with a bar through it), designating the barred subject, the subject split by his or her entry into the symbolic and finally never coincident with its own signification. Immediately above the barred S is a delta which feeds directly into the parabolic line which ends at I(O). This delta is the Lacanian algebra for "the prelinguistic mythical subject of pure need" which must "pass through the defiles of the signifier" in the course of producing the barred subject (Evans 76). That is, the delta designates the embryonic subject prior to the intervention of the paternal interdiction ("the defiles of the signifier"), after which time it simply denotes desire, the urge to return to the time and place preceding that

+

Pictured above is Graph II in the series of four graphs that make up Lacan’s topology of desire (taken from Zizek The Sublime Object of Ideology 103). Before laying out how the graph depicts the movement of desire, I will first take a moment to define the symbols it uses. On the far left of the graph is the term "Signifier," designating the starting point of the act of signification and proceeding to the "Voice," which is the final outcome of the process of signification. At the bottom left hand corner of the graph is the symbol I(O), indicating the ego-ideal, the imaginary version of itself with which the ego would like to be identified. Further up on the left hand side is "e," designating the ego itself, caught halfway between the signifying chain ("Signifier" to "Voice") and the ego-ideal. On the bottom right hand side of the graph is "S/" (S with a bar through it), designating the barred subject, the subject split by his or her entry into the symbolic and finally never coincident with its own signification. Immediately above the barred S is a delta which feeds directly into the parabolic line which ends at I(O). This delta is the Lacanian algebra for "the prelinguistic mythical subject of pure need" which must "pass through the defiles of the signifier" in the course of producing the barred subject (Evans 76). That is, the delta designates the embryonic subject prior to the intervention of the paternal interdiction ("the defiles of the signifier"), after which time it simply denotes desire, the urge to return to the time and place preceding that rude awakening. Midway up the right hand side of the graph is the symbol "i(o)," designating the specular image which the ego encounters in the mirror stage and throughout life; it is non-coincident with either the ego or the ego-ideal, though it is more accurate than the ego-ideal. Everything in the lower half of the graph, below the signifying chain, is located firmly in the imaginary order. The two circles at the points where the trajectory of S/<-> I(O) are points de capiton, points at which the signifying chain is anchored to the imaginary by the crossing trajectories of desire and signification. Within the left point de capiton is the symbol "s(O)," the signification of the other, the temporally prior point in the act of signification that bears the meaning of the Other (language) but does not yet articulate it. Inside the right point de capiton is the symbol "O," indicating the Other itself, language in its ever-expanding entirety. The appearance of the Other at this point retroactively punctuates the temporally precedent s(O), allowing it to bring forth its meaning as a particular portion of the "‘treasure of the signifier’" (Bowie 190) which it guards. As the points de capiton, these two intersections represent the arbitrary but stable points in the signifying chain at which meaning appears to dangle vertically from the process of signification as well as inhering in its syntactic or horizontal movement. 

+

In terms of its movement, this graph displays the oscillating movement between I(O) and S/ as the fundamental movement of desire from the initial imaginary encounter with the specular image to the formation of the ideal-ego and on to the foundation of the barred subject. Crossing that trajectory from left to right is the signifying chain, from Signifier to Voice as an instance of the speech which makes of the subject a "parlêtre." This movement is only provisionally unidirectional, however; between the points de capiton there is a retrogressive movement by which the punctuation of the Other fixes the meaning of the signification of the other in the particular utterance. This fixation is also a deflection, however, as it interferes with the direct path between the subject and the ideal-ego. Furthermore, the placement of the arc of this deflection above the signifying chain reveals that it is an unconscious process, since though we may be aware of the temporal construction of meaning in the linear development of grammar, its effect on our psyche is one of an always-already established meaning. Finally, the two smaller cells contained in the lower half of the graph play on the analogy between the imaginary identification between the specular image (i(o)) and the ego (e) and the way in which the signification of the Other (s(O)) is never quite coincident with the Other itself (O); both are imaginary relations. The first short-circuits the symbolic order by refusing to articulate its processes of identification, while the second represents the imaginary aspect of the signifying chain, the realm of the signified as the arbitrary sound-images which lend some semblance of coherence to the symbolic order. As a final addition to this graph, we might position the objet a at the center of it all as the absent still point around which the machinery of desire, signification, and identification turns in the psychic life of the subject. 

+

Back to the top. 

+

________________________________________

+

Notes

+

1 Hereafter I will abbreviate all references to the totality of these three orders in the common Lacanian shorthand of RSI. 

+

2 For various more complex versions of the Borromean Knot (though also including this one), see also Lacan “Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan.” 

+

3 For more on the relationship between the real, the objet a, the Kantian thing-in-itself, and the Lacanian la chose or das Ding, see Evans 205 and Zizek, Looking Awry 19. 

+

4 Bowie traces the genealogy of this term back to Aristotle’s Physics (102).  He goes on to state Aristotle’s own misgivings about the terms (“Aristotle himself had found the terms something of a nuisance” [103]) but concludes that Lacan’s appropriation is accurate and useful. 

+

5  One of the chief components of this ordering process is the individual’s separation of himself or herself from the flux of the real through the processes of imaginary identification and symbolic ordering, aspects which I will cover more fully in my ensuing discussion of the imaginary and the symbolic orders. 

+

6  For a discussion of the imaginary’s relationship to language and, hence, to the symbolic, see the discussion of the symbolic order below. 

+

7  Indeed, this process of symbolising the imaginary is the entire thrust of Lacanian analysis, as the analyst attempts to get the analysand to symbolise the disabling fixations that are causing his or her problems.  The end of analysis is thus “subjective destitution,” in which the analysand is no longer capable of sustaining the same relationship to his or her fixations, but recognises them as imaginary (i.e. illusory) and thus irrational.  This process of symbolising the imaginary fixations allows the analysand to re-integrate the problematic fixations into the symbolic and to govern them according to their proper status as deceptive fictions rather than truth-providing identifications. 

+

8  For more on this, see the discussion of desire below. 

+

9  Lacan contrasts this reaction to that of a monkey infant of roughly the same age.  The monkey is similarly fascinated with the mirror image, but soon loses interest once it realises that the image is empty; by contrast, the infant child remains transfixed by his or her own image (Ecrits 1). 

+

10  At this point it is absolutely necessary to remember that Lacan’s conception of this interaction and of the relationship between desire and aggressivity is heavily underwritten by and constantly refers back to the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, particularly as distilled through the lectures of Alexandre Kojève (Evans 132). 

+

11  Importantly, the phrasings in which I am casting this process of identification and alienation are already inaccurate, since they are symbolisations of a constitutively unsymbolised relationship; the translation from the pre-symbolised imaginary identification to the symbolised articulation of that identification is precisely the aim of analysis in its effort to undo harmful fixations. 

+

12  Despite this illusory character of all imaginary identifications, it is important not simply to write them off as ephemeral, inconsequential, and transient: “The imaginary is not the same thing as the illusory in that the phantasmatic constructions comprising the imaginary order are highly durable and can have effects in the real” (Bowie 99). 

+

13  This process has been remarked in such diverse realms as Hollywood movies like Crazy People (1990) and the cultural criticism of Horkheimer and Adorno (167), though not in precisely these terms. 

+

14  This conception of the ego as strictly governed by the imaginary formed the basis of Lacan’s disdain for ego psychology; Lacan held that by seeking only to help the analysand re-adjust his or her ego to coincide with the “non-pathological” ego of the analyst, ego psychologists performed a profound disservice by stranding their patients in the imaginary when the real path to a cure lay in the effective symbolisation of the imaginary identifications. 

+

15  This reversible diachronic logic is basic to Lacan’s thought, reappearing more explicitly and powerfully in his account of desire, the objet a, and the point de capiton (all of which are discussed below). 

+

16  This logic is already familiar to my discussion here in the imperative to define each of the terms under discussion purely in relation to the other terms that comprise the Lacanian system, a problem exacerbated and highlighted in attempts to give semantic content to signifieds (real, imaginary, etc.) that are constitutively unamenable to signification.  Indeed, this logic of differential definition is precisely that in which Lacan himself conceived of his own thought:  “My discourse proceeds in the following way:  each term is sustained only in its topological relation with the others” (S11, 89; qtd. in Evans ix) 

+

17  Again, it is just the structural impossibility of divorcing any given instance from the overall effects and strictures of the symbolic order (roughly correspondent to Saussure’s langue), that lends it an internal coherence arising from its own internal tensions. 

+

18  For a more detailed explication of the point de capiton see the section on desire, below. 

+

19  To say that the signifying chain is fundamentally diachronic is not, however, to deny that it has a synchronic dimension insofar as it is also a structure, an aspect of the symbolic order itself:  “the signifying chain is both [diachronic and synchronic] … In its diachronic dimension it is linear, syntagmatic, metonymic; in its synchronic dimension it is circular, associative, metaphoric” (Evans 188). 

+

20  The only exception to this rule governing the signifying chain for Lacan is the phallus, the signifier whose signified is lack pure and simple (the threat of castration), whose positive content is precisely that of an absent object (see Evans 140-144). 

+

________________________________________

+

Works cited

+

Bowie, Malcolm.  Lacan.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1991. 

+

Evans, Dylan.  An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis.  New York:  Routledge, 1996. 

+

Fink, Bruce.  The Lacanian Subject:  Between Language and Jouissance.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1995. 

+

Lacan, Jacques.  Écrits:  A Selection.  Alan Sheridan, trans..  London:  Tavistock Publications Limited, 1977. 

+

------------------.  Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan.  R.S.I.  1974-1975.  Texte établi par J.A. Miller.  Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1975. 

+

Zizek, Slavoj.  Looking Awry:  An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture.  Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 1991. 

+

________________________________________

+

This page created by Stephen Ross 4 February, 2002. 

+

Last updated 6 February, 2002.

←Older revision		Revision as of 10:03, 17 July 2006
Line 1:		Line 1:
		+	Lacan wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan]
		+
		+
	The Subject DesireHegel (Master/Slave) Death Drive Objet aThe Graph of Desire (phase II)		The Subject DesireHegel (Master/Slave) Death Drive Objet aThe Graph of Desire (phase II)
	________________________________________		________________________________________

Lacan - Revision history

HansaThapliyal at 11:29, 17 July 2006

HansaThapliyal at 10:03, 17 July 2006

HansaThapliyal at 10:03, 17 July 2006