Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2004. 104
A symbolic relationship to the other: symbolic identification
Lacan proposes another form of identificatory relation besides that of narcissistic, imaginary incorporation: symbolic identification. For Lacan, identification in the symbolic register is both part of the formation of the subject, and a psychic process of the subject. As I described earlier in this chapter, for Lacan symbolic identification is a process of introjection of the trait unaire – the unitary trait – of the symbolic Father In that process, the subject identifies with the phallic signifier as the mark of the Father, and thereby incorporates the Symbolic father as an I (Lacan 1964c: 256– 257). In the later Lacanian theory of the four discourses, the phallic signifier is the master signifier – the signifier that represents the subject as subject.
However, in primary and secondary feminist identifications, there does not appear to be an introjection of the paternal signifier as a representative of the Father’s Law. Therefore, either symbolic identification is absent from the production of the feminist subject, which condemns her to the narcissistic reflection of imaginary relations, or else it does operate, but not as an identification with the paternal signifier.
While Lacan proposes that symbolic identification is an assimilation of the paternal figure, he also describes it more generally as a process of introjection of a signifier. For this reason, it is possible to reformulate symbolic identification in these more general terms as the psychic assimilation of a symbolic element.
That symbolic element is a master signifier, which shapes the structure of the discursive chain and produces the subject. Reformulating symbolic identification in this way permits us to understand its role in feminist identificatory relations, and to provide a fuller account of those relations. In particular, the reconception of this process of introjection of a master signifier further explains the operation of ego-ideal feminist identifications.
By using this concept of symbolic identification, we can understand how the ego-ideal identifications with feminist politics and persons are a process of introjecting the signifier ‘feminism’. In that process, a subject identifies with the signifier ‘feminism’ and introjects it as an ego-ideal.
This explanation provides a conceptual basis for Brennan’s description of the feminist ego-ideal, because symbolic identification explains the process by which the subject assimilates the signifier ‘feminism’, thereby changing the paternal super-ego.
Lacan argues that the master signifier represents the subject as a subject, both to itself and to others. Therefore, the horizontal tie of identification can be reformulated as a process in which ‘feminism’ functions as a signifier which represents the subject to itself and to other subjects, and by which those subjects recognize each other’s signifier.
In this process of symbolic identification, the subject introjects the signifier ‘feminism’, and the signifying chains that attach to it. In that process, the subject enters those signifying chains of feminist discourses. By entering these discourses, a subject enters into a symbolic relation to other women.
Symbolic identification permits the subject to engage in a process that exteriorizes affect in intersubjective dialogue. By incorporating feminist discourses, the subject is able to enter into a symbolic exchange between women. The signifying elements of these discourses provide the representational material for that exchange. This intersubjective dialogue renders in signification the affective identifications between women that form the nucleus of feminist identifications. Those affective relations shift from being an emotion of the individual subject to being a dialogue between subjects, and from object relations to subject relations. 103
In this way, symbolic identification permits the subject to acknowledge the differences between herself and other subjects. It does not construct a relation between subjects as an imaginary desire for unity that entails a méconnaissance of others, but as the representation of the difference of an other that enables a relation to the other.
Symbolic identification forms political relations that do not require that an other is loved as self, but rather that subjects engage with each other as speaking subjects. Imaginary identification is a means of seeing the self in an other, and an other in the self. Symbolic identification marks an entry into discourse with the other. Discourse is a means of speaking with, and listening to, the other in intersubjective dialogue. Feminist discourses mediate the relations between women because they symbolize relations to others. In the recognition of the other as a speaking being, conversation can take place between two subjects who have equal entitlement to take up a position in a discursive exchange. Discursive exchange opens feminism to negotiation and thereby to change, rather than being frozen in imaginary relations.
If symbolic identification makes possible the recognition of an other woman, it also makes possible the recognition that at least two subjects participate in a dialogue. Importantly, that recognition moves past an ethics of reciprocal identification to a symbolic identification with the other as speaking subject
That shift constructs a collective that the negotiations of coalitional politics form. These intersubjective dialogues enable the articulation of new and different discursive social links between women.
If feminism is ‘phantasmic’, it is a phantasm that has political effect because it produces political subjects and collectivities. Feminist identifications are not established once and for all, but are constantly made and remade in the affective, imaginary and symbolic relations between women. However, this account also suggests that there is a link between symbolic relationships between women and the production of feminist discourse. In the next chapter, I explore this relationship by examining the discursive practices of feminist knowers and developing a model of feminist discourses. 104