Lacan and the Event of the Subject

Anumber of relatively recent readings have attempted to trace Lacan back to a certain subjectivist (and substantialist) tradition in philosophy, claiming that the Lacanian theory of the subject remains deeply indebted to, indeed determined by, a whole series of metaphysical presuppositions. ¹ Such a case can no doubt be made (and I will try here to account for its necessity), but the question remains whether these interpretations do sufficient justice to what Lacan’s work attempts to articulate in a way that is admittedly contradictory and uneven. My concern here is with the radicality and scope of the so-called Lacanian “subversion” or “destitution” of the subject with respect to its ability to disengage itself from such a tradition. Can one, for example, equate the Lacanian re-elaboration of the notion of subjectivity to a mere displacement (that is, from the ego to the unconscious) which would nonetheless maintain the value, function, and status of the classical subject? Can one interpret Lacan’s expression “subject of the unconscious” as a substantification of the unconscious? Or, rather, should one see there the elaboration of an original figure of Selfhood, which is still called “subject,” but which remains similar to the traditional subject in name only? Such questions, which might seem to be transposed from an order external to that of psychoanalysis (namely from philosophy), are in fact neither arbitrary nor forced. They emanate from the very definition Lacan gives psychoanalysis:

Psycho-analysis is neither a Weltanschauung, nor a philosophy that claims to provide the key to the universe. It is governed by a particular aim, which is historically defined by the elaboration of the notion of the subject ²

Lacan elaborates a theory of the subject, but this elaboration amounts to a calling into question of the subject, insofar as it “poses this notion in a new way, by leading the subject back to its signifying dependence.” (FFCP, 73/77). The Lacanian subversion of the subject, we know, resides in this very “leading back,” in the sense that the subject finds itself thereby stripped of all the “privileges” that would constitute it as autonomous self-consciousness, master of itself, a subjectivity transparent to itself, and no longer able to “appear” except in and by the signifier. Indeed, Lacan has always maintained that the subject must be thought as a linguistic being, that is to say, defined by and on the basis of language. Among many examples, let us cite this one:

Indeed, whether it is a question of being a self, being a father, being born, being loved or dead, how can one fail to see that the subject, if it is the speaking subject, sustains itself only on the basis of discourse? ³

Consequently, and radically: “There is no pre-discursive reality whatsoever, for the very reason that what constitutes community, which I have referred to as men, women and children, are nothing but signifiers.” ⁴ This conception of the subject, symbolized by Lacan as # in order to mark both its secondary character with respect to the signifier ⁵ and its division (to which we will return), leads however to a circle, which we find in the very definition of the terms subject and signifier:

The subject is that which the signifier represents.

The signifier is that which represents a subject.

If the subject is no longer defined except in relation to the signifier, it is nevertheless also true that the signifier, in turn, is only defined in relation to the subject. This circle could be thought of in various ways, either as the very hermeneutic position of the Lacanian theory, ⁶ or, more critically, as the sign of a certain presupposed subjectivism in the Lacanian theory. ⁷ If we develop the circle, we find the following situation: to the extent that the subject “is what the signifier represents,” it finds itself subjected in this very subordination to a division which brings about its alienation, and to a “fading” which brings about its disappearance. The “subjective destitution” performed by Lacan’s work lies in this two-fold effect of alienation and fading. But to the extent that the signifier is only ever the signifier of a subject, since a signifier is what represents a subject for another signifier, ⁸ the subject seems to maintain itself at the horizon of Lacan’s theory, a horizon both presupposed and unsurpassable. Lacan’s treatment of the subject seems then to oscillate between two poles: on the one hand, the subject “disappears as subject under tine signifier it becomes” (E, 835). On the other hand, paradoxically the subject is preserved:

If psycho-analysis is to be constituted as the science of the unconscious, one must set out from the notion that the unconscious is structured like a language.

From this I have deduced a topology, the aim of which is to account for the constitution of the subject. ⁹

Does this circle in which the subject and the signifier are reciprocally presupposed in effect either leave the subject unquestioned or does it make the subject precisely what is in question? The examination of this issue proceeds in three stages: