Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004. p 53.
I read the formulae of the four discourses as a dynamic representation of the discursive social link; as devices that formalize and elucidate fundamental forms of intersubjectivity. These models of the four discourses are a conceptual apparatus that can be used as skeleton keys to open the complexities of discourse.
In the theory of the four discourses, Lacan describes the different relations of the knower to other subjects and to its objects, and the different forms of those epistemological relations. Each discourse formalizes a position of a knowing subject, its relation to that which its discourse excludes, to its master signifier, and to its knowledge. The formulae represent the structural relation of these key elements, so that each represents a stable structure of discourse. Each schema describes a particular and specific form of knowledge. For example, the Discourse of the University attempts to know all, including that which it excludes. A desire for mastery and control of its objects dominates this discourse, which at the same time operates to reproduce the exclusions of its knowledge (S17: 70– 71). The foundational discourses thus articulate possible combinations of discursive elements, representing four possible positions of the knowing subject and four possible epistemological relations (53-54).
However, the position of the knower and the form of its knowledge cannot be understood by simply examining the place of the barred subject ($) or of knowledge (S2) in the formulae of the discourses. The knower does not take up the position of the $, just as S2 does not represent its knowledge (54).
Rather, Lacan suggests that a knowing subject takes up a particular speaking position (for example, that of the master, the hysteric or the analyst) and so produces a particular type of knowledge (mastering, hysterical, analytic). The discourses describe four possible forms of knowledge. (54)
The four discourses present a theory of specific forms of knowledge. However, they also constitute an epistemological metatheory. Underlying these four models is a radical imbrication of knowledge and discourse because ‘[d]iscourse is a fundamental apparatus which is prior to and which determines the whole relation of subjects to subjects and subjects to objects’ (Adams 1996: 72). For Lacan, discourse produces knowledge. It gives meaning to the world, and so how that world is known is contingent upon its symbolic network. Lacan’s formulae do not represent a formal description of the conditions of true belief abstracted from reality. Rather, as speaking beings we are always already within the world of discourse. Reality is a function of discourse, for discourse produces both the world that is known, and the only world that can be known (S17: 13). In this model, discourse has a necessary and stable structure which shapes the interplay of its elements and which produces signification. Lacan analyses discourses in terms of their constitutive elements, and the operation of those elements. The different combinations of a knowing subject, the barred subject, the signifying chain, the excluded from discourse (the a), and the master signifier, produce different forms of knowledge. Lacan reduces each discourse to its constituent components. In this way, Lacanian epistemology describes the structural logic or symbolic economy of knowledge. In this model, knowledge is contingent upon the discursive position of the knower. However, that subjective structure is necessarily an effect of discursive structure. By taking up a speaking position, the knower thereby is enmeshed in the fundamental relations of discourse. In the Lacanian account, it is inscribed in every act of enunciation of a subject (S17: 11).
In each of Lacan’s schemas, the knower exists in a particular relation to S2 – knowledge or le savoir (S20: 16). The knowledge of the Master differs from that of the Hysteric, and these subject positions articulate a different relation to that knowing. For example, Lacan contrasts the ignorance of the Master who does not want to know with the desire of the Hysteric to know. The discourse of the knowing subject produces its relation to the known object. This relation is inscribed in an order of signifiers such that ‘knowledge’ is a representation or signification of what is known. Accordingly, the different operations of discourse produce different forms of knowledge. Lacanian epistemology therefore posits knowledge as a signification of a known object. The object is signified, rather than known in and of itself. Discourse produces the known object, since the object can only be represented through signifying structures. This model of knowledge conceives it as a signifying act. The act of knowing is an act of representation that the stable structures of signifying chains produce. Therefore, knowledge itself has a discursive structure and thereby is rethought as the product of signification.
The later Lacanian epistemology does not describe the propositional content of knowledge, but instead describes how discursive networks produce a known object, and the relation between the knowing subject and its known object. In the later Lacanian epistemology, what is known is inseparable from how it is known. Knowledge describes a relation to the real, and the structuring of that relation in discourse. Lacan argues that the world is known through the meaning given to it, and that meaning is always bound up in discourse (S17: 13), because every ‘reality’ is presented in discursive networks (S20: 32). Discourse describes the symbolic structure through which the knowing subject represents the world to itself and to other subjects.
Knowledge is therefore a symbolic practice because it is an act of meaning of the knowing subject. This act of signification is the insertion of the known object into the signifying chain, placing it within a symbolic field that enwraps the object and gives it meaning. Lacanian epistemology posits knowledge as a signification given to the object.
What is known is therefore radically contingent upon the discourse of the knowing subject, and accordingly radically limited by it. If discourse produces knowledge, then discourse is a necessary condition of knowing. Forms of knowledge are therefore contingent upon discursive forms. In this way, Lacan’s theory suggests that there exists a causal, if not determinative, relation between knowledge and discourse (S17: 13). Lacan does not argue that these concepts are identical or reducible to each other. However, his account does suggest that what can be known is conditional upon discursive networks.
In this sense, discursive structures delimit what is thinkable and signifiable as knowledge, such that to change those structures is to change how we know the world (S20: 16). (55)
In Lacan’s theory, discourse produces signification. It structures signifiers by ordering their relation and so producing meaning. Discourse enables the otherwise arbitrary signifier to mean something not only to the knowing subject but also to other subjects. Discourse knots the signifier and signified together by functioning as the link that enables the circulation of the signifier between those who speak (S20: 30). The signifier is an arbitrary symbolic element that does not produce meaning until it is brought into relation with other signifiers.
Because subjects exist in a symbolic relation to one another, they are able to exchange meaning. In this model, different knowing subjects may use the same symbolic element to name a known object but each may attribute it with a different signified. For Lacan, what enables other knowing subjects to ‘read’ the signifier is the social link between knowing subjects.
The social tie is language because its discursive chains form the link and the relationship between speaking subjects. For Lacan, discourse is not a transparent relation between subjects. It does not imply that its addressee receives the message sent by the sender, as Lacan starts out from the position that communication is necessarily a failure (Verhaeghe 1997: 100). Rather, discourse is a particular arrangement of signifiers that enables symbolic exchange between subjects (56).
For Lacan, the practice of language ‘dominates’ the social because the social order is founded in the structures of language, the Symbolic order. The Symbolic order produces a number of stable discourses, which represent fundamental intersubjective relations. The four discourses therefore articulate four different and foundational social bonds (which in turn raises the possibility of the existence of other discourses) (56).