Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004.
Discourse thus produces the social link between subjects, because discursive chains of signifiers structure stable intersubjective relations. In the theory of the four discourses, the intersubjective relation is a discursive relation. This concept of discourse does not therefore imply a Hegelian intersubjectivity, which Lacan always associates with the imaginary order, but rather a symbolic relation between subjects (48).
The social bond of subjects is discursive because language anchors that relation (S20: 54). For Lacan, language produces a ‘speaking being’ – l’être parlant – and the relation between such subjects (S20: 54). In this way, the term ‘discourse’ implies a relation between speaking subjects. It represents the transindividual aspect of language that structures social bonds. The Lacanian concept of discourse links the structure of signification and the intersubjective relation because it describes signifying chains that form relations between subjects.
In his theory of the four discourses, Lacan identifies four different and foundational types of social bonds of speaking subjects. Lacan describes the subject of discourse as the ‘subject of a signifier’. In a typically cryptic formulation, Lacan explains ‘this minimal formula’ further with a restatement of his earlier definition of the subject in Écrits whereby ‘a signifier represents a subject to another signifier’ (S20: 142). A signifier represents a subject for another signifier because a discursive relation between signifiers produces the subject. As in the Lacanian epistemology of Écrits, the subject describes a position in language. However, in the later Lacanian theory, specific discourses produce different subjects (49).