Pluth, Ed. Signifers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007.
Is the unconscious an eternally existing, deep nether-region that contains the true intentions and meanings of the subject? Lacan is vehemently opposed to such an interpretation of the unconscious, such that, according to his view, the unconscious cannot even be said to express itself. It does NOT consist of a region of intentions that can only achieve expression between the lines, as it were, of a conscious, spoken discourse. The unconscious “consists” of nothing but interruptions, bursts, and gaps in signifying practices: “Discontinuity, then, is the essential form in which the unconscious first appears to us as a phenomenon — discontinuity, in which something is manifested as a vacillation” (XI, 34/25). If this is the case for the unconscious, then what must we think about the subject of the unconscious?
I have been saying that the subject is a product of signifiers. This still needs to be explained. For now, it should be noted that if it is a product of signifiers, then we have no reason to suppose that this subject has any intentions whatsoever, or that it is a subject that uses signifiers in an attempt to communicate something (44).
If a subject is something like a signified effect, then this means that it never has a hard and fast place in a signifying chain and is not reducible to any point, any signifier, of a signifying chain. But a subject is also represented nonetheless, and there are certain signifiers to which a subject gets fixated. Certain signifiers are more important for the subject than others, and these are the signifiers involved in the identity of the subject (45-6)
The subject in Lacan’s theory is a function of signifiers. In order to gain clarity on what this means, the structures involved in using signifiers have to be studied. What structures are involved in using signifiers? …
The subject is indeed represented by a signifier. But it is not its intentions that are represented. Rather, its mere existence as a desired subject is what gets represented. So representation and identity are closely related (46).
What does it mean to say that subjects are produced by signifiers? According to Lacan’s theory, a flesh-and-blood individual is not the same as a subject. Certainly a subject is not possible without flesh and blood. But, curiously, there can be an individual without this individual being a subject. This a least is one consequence of Lacan’s theory of the subject. The subject is a particular kind of effect of signifiers on a real individual.
I am saying that a subject is a particular kind of effect of signifiers on a real individual because it is possible for signifiers to have effects on an individual that do not bring about a subject. According to Lacan, psychosis is an example of such a phenomenon. One of the limitations for my study is that what is being said about the subject does not hold for the psychoses, and probably not for perversions either. This study is restricted to neuroses (Note 1, 168).