The ‘liberation’ of the signifier vis-á-vis the signified — the very precondition of hegemony — is what the Lacanian bar attempts to express. The other side of the coin, the contingent imposition of limits or partial fixations — without which we would be living in a psychotic universe — is what the notion of ‘point de capiton‘ brings about (66).
The Lacanian real resists symbolization.
This double condition of necessity and impossibility makes possible, among other things,three endeavours:
- to understand the logics by which each of the two dimensions subverts the other
- to look at the political productivity of this mutual subversion — that is, what it makes possible to understand about the workings of our societies which goes beyond what is achievable by unilateralizing either of the two poles;
- to trace the genealogy of this undecidable logic, the way it was ALREADY subverting the central texts of our political and philosophical tradition (75).
Any normative order is nothing but the sedimented form of an initial ethical event (82).
The subject who takes the decision is only a PARTIALLY a subject; he is also a background of sedimented practices organizing a normative framework which operates as a limitation on the horizon of options (83).