Pluth, Ed. Signifers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.
Blog post first published May 14, 2009 at 12:04
The tendency in Lacan’s work to argue against identification is something about which Slavoj Žižek is keenly aware, but Zizek takes it too far by making any kind of signifying process apparently impossible for the subject of an act. As Žižek would have it, an act is a negation of any relation to signifiers whatsoever, and not just a negation of a specific configuration of signifiers, characterized by the Other as a guarantee of meaning and recogntion (the Other as subject-supposed-to-know).
If Lacan cannot theorize the positive consequences of an act without collapsing these consequences into merely another identification that seeks recognition from an established Other ( a repetition or reinstatement of some primordial law — the exclusion of the traumatic real), then Lacan’s theory is essentially conservative, and acts are basically similar to fundamental fantasies, despite their different use of signifiers, because both do the same thing with the real — they tame it (134).
The question that needs to be asked then is whether
- Is there a theory of a “negative” signifying practice in Lacan’s work? Or
- Are all signifying practices essentially conformist, necessarily seeking recognition from some big Other, thereby requiring us to say, with Žižek, that an act, and a subject, are only purely negative moments with no real consistency?
According to Pluth neither is the case. What Žižek does not consider is that an act must be A SIGNIFYING PROCESS, and must produce some sort of consistency, even if it is a consistency that is primarily NEGATIVE with respect to the Other as a “subject-supposed-to-know,” a consistency that can be called “NEGATIVE” because it brings an impasse into the Other (134).
ACCORDING TO LACAN ONE OF THE CONDITIONS FOR AN ACT IS THAT IT MUST TRANSFORM THE SUBJECT. (135)
… saying “no” is not enough for a transformation of the subject to come about. … for a transformation to occur, some kind of further signifying production would be necessary. Such an idea is worked out quite well in Badiou’s Théorie du sujet, as well as in his later work, Saint Paul, a work that plays a central role in Žižek’s critique of Badiou.
In these works Badiou shows us how an act does more than say “no” even though saying “no” is a crucial element of any act. As Badiou describes it, an act articulates a “no … but” (1997, 67-68).
In his reading of Paul’s letters, Badiou looks at how Paul effectively managed to operate a negation of the world of Roman law by profering new signifiers. Referring to St. Paul’s famous phrase, “You are no longer under the law, but under grace,”
If we conceive of an act in terms of a “no … but” structure, then it is easier to account for how an act would transform a subject. The transformation occurs not so much through the negation produced by an act but by the articulation of something else —by the production of a new signifier that negates. According to Badiou’s argument, this new signifier in Paul’s works is “grace,” a signifier that implied an entirely different subject-position from the ones recognized by the “Roman Other.”
In fact, maybe the negation can only be sustained as a negation if it is supplemented by a “but” supporting an alternative signifying practice. This is the point that needs to be retained, and it is a point made by both Badiou and Lacan (136).
Again, this reading of an act illustrates how a subject’s relation to signifiers is not always about identification. For there to be an identification, one has to add the further idea of an Other capable of bestowing recognition. If this idea is excluded from Badiou’s theory of the subject, as well as from Lacan’s theory of the subject in an act, then what we find in both is a subject produced by a signifying practice, a subject “attached” to signifiers, without this attachment involving an identification, or what Žižek called a, “subjectivization.” This is because the signifiers used rule out any recognition by the Other and do not depend upon a consistent Other for their meaning and validity. They are rather like puns, challenging the code that organizes a particular, suppsedly consistent Other —an Other who does not desire but is a subject-supposed-to-know.