ABSTRACT
Key concepts: Continuity among instinctual unknown-knowing, unary traces/traits, signifiers, the paternal metaphor (NoF, desire of the mother), Peirce’s firsts, seconds, and thirds.
There are those who separate semiotics from the theory of the signifier, and the semiotic or the trace would be more representative of a pre-symbolic, proto-symbolic system presided by the mother more than the father. This chapter argues that in Lacan, one finds continuity across unary traces and traits, the early forms of the signifier, and the later forms of the signifier. In addition, the Name of the Father and the signifier of the mother’s desire are interrelated. One cannot really split them – split the mother as the focus of psychoanalysis, from the father as the focus of psychoanalysis because they are both part of an equation or a metaphor.
The ‘unmarked’ refers to the work of the late Spencer-Brown in “The Calculus of Indications”. Spencer-Brown was an English logician, and apparently Lacan did not know about the work of Spencer-Brown, but a lot of Lacanians do. The ‘unmarked’ refers to what in the Real doesn’t have a sign or a mark: the ‘unmarked’. The ‘marked’ is always the sign of the ‘unmarked’. And we can say what is ‘unmarked’ is what is repressed, although the repressed also breaks down into the signifiers that are repressed and the unconscious of the Real which is outside the ‘mark’.
Here, we have a differentiation between two types of unconscious that we find in Lacan. So the ‘unmarked’ then will occupy the empty place of a placeholder function that will be filled or stuffed by other symbols or signifiers. So the ‘unmarked’ tends to get replaced by other signifiers. The ‘unmarked’ is really this empty place of a ‘placeholder function’ that corresponds to the void. And once a symbolic system has emerged, the sign will represent a signifier S1-S2 relation that will define the nature of the object. The signifier and the signified will define the relationship to the object more than the sign representing an iconic part or trace of the object. So that connection to the object world is lost – and it will remain in the form of the Real. The sign and the signifier will retain a relation to the Real of the object in the form of jouissance. So, even though we lost the original connection between the sign and the object, meaning the sign representing a part of the object, we still relate to that object world in the Real through jouissance.
Peirce was on to something when he laid out the notion of icon, index, and symbol, and when he talks about symbols being ‘thirds’. Because he has a metaphysical schema based on ‘first’, ‘seconds’, and ‘thirds’, he claimed that we always deal with ‘thirds’. So, we are always using our signs and representations to ‘get at’ objects that we ultimately cannot know. It seems that Lacan has a better sense of the loss and the repression of the object and how it links with jouissance, which Peirce would not have thought of. The ‘first’ would be the ‘object’ for Peirce but the reality object is not the undetermined Real in Lacan. For Lacan, the undetermined Real is not the object but the thing in itself. The first ‘S1’ is a signifier of jouissance. When the S2 enters the scene, then the meaning comes from another signifier rather than from the Real of a bodily jouissance. That’s the paradox between what we call the S0 and the S1, because in mathematics you derive the ‘zero’ from the ‘one’. So, first the ‘one’ existed, and mathematics only had the concept of ‘one’ in Europe until they got the ‘zero’ from India from the Sanskrit cipher. Then the ‘zero’ became more fundamental than the ‘one’. So you only know the zero by first knowing the one.
The zero (S0) then becomes whatever the ‘one’ (S1) doesn’t really capture in a relationship to S2. The S1 is defined by S2, which is the interpretant, the signified or the second signifier. But when the S2 defines the S1, when the second representamen or the second signifier, or ‘the second’ functioning as interpretant defines the S1, (which in Peirce’s system would be the ‘second’), there is something in the S1 that is left undefined as a residue undefined by S2. That’s where we find zero as a function of ‘one’ without the two.
This is the same logic he will use to understand femininity – in terms of whether femininity indicates a lack of a signifier, a lack of the phallus, or whether that is just one way of talking about femininity in the Real from the point of view of the Symbolic. But if you think of femininity separate from the Symbolic in relationship to the Real, then there is nothing missing in femininity. So, from that point of view, the concept of penis envy would not mean anything. It both means something and doesn’t mean anything at the same time, so that is his way of reconciling those antithetical claims of Freud and feminism.
In Freud’s ‘Metapsychology’, there are different types and energetic qualities in the representations. So not only are there different types of representation – meaning representamen, interpretant, signifier, signified, signification – there is also the energetic quality of the representation or the jouissance that is not there in Peirce. So, in the ‘Metapsychology’ we have three systems. The perception consciousness is the first system (that I call awareness). Then the preconscious consciousness is the second system, or consciousness proper including ego or self-consciousness. Then the third system is the preconscious unconscious system.
If the narrative is S2 and the narrative is having the function of representing something – a story – at the same time, this expression has the function of concealing something. This could mean concealing other signifiers where the scene or the conversation of the narrative could have a different meaning. So, the S2 is replacing the links that the S1 could have to other signifiers because there is a link between S1 and S2, but the link is both a connection and a separation at the same time. Something gets linked and something gets separated. So, even though there is a link between the narrative and whatever the S1 could represent, the fact that S1 is connected to S2 functions to repress other connections that the S1 could have. Those connections appear by the associations, for example, the associations that “a daughter” may have to this or that word or signifier, which are used in reference to the branches of a tree.
For example, a bumblebee can be a signifier for another scene taking place between a mother and a daughter. So, there is the original signifying context that is latent underneath the manifest content – which is the narrative that they are talking about – and then the bumblebee as the signifier of that other scene. And then the bumblebee functions as a signifier both in this new scene and in the meaning that it may have within the context of the story that they are talking about. So, whatever they are talking about, there is the signifier of ‘bumblebee’, and the signifier ‘bumblebee’ refers both metonymically first to the other scene and to this current scene. So, metonymy is the horizontal movement of signification and the metaphor is the vertical replacement of one signifier for another.
