ABSTRACT
The previous chapter traced the contours of the Freudian I King as the uncognizable dimension of every object, the empty site in which judgment seeks to close the gap between memory and perception. Seizing upon this point of Freud's text and radicalizing its reference to the fellow human being, the Nebenmensch, Lacan locates in the negative space of das Ding the impenetrable nucleus of what is most unknowable in the Other, the enigma of the Other's desire. Lacan then passes beyond anything Freud says of das Ding by associating it with the power of language to articulate a pure potentiality-for-meaning. The cardinal function of language resides in the projection of an essential indeterminacy, the establishment of an open horizon of meaning as-yet-to-be-determined. We went on to locate in the structure of the phoneme the most elemental point at which linguistic signification evokes the dimension of das Ding. As a hinge between sound and meaning, the pivot point between a level of nonsignifying structure (of differential features) and higher levels of semantic content (of morphemes, words, and sentences), it is the phoneme that makes possible the miracle of linguistic symbolization. Just as the Freudian Thing serves to hold open the site of judgment when comparison to the subject's own body fails to provide adequate orientation, the phoneme functions to link a system of oppositions modeled on a logic of embodiment with a domain of meaning that transcends all reference to the body.
