{"id":10465,"date":"2013-02-22T14:08:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T19:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=10465"},"modified":"2013-02-22T17:50:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T22:50:17","slug":"eyers-r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/02\/22\/eyers-r\/","title":{"rendered":"eyers signifier in isolation signifier in relation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eyers, Tom. Lacan and the Concept of the ‘Real’<\/em> New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.<\/p>\n

it is my contention that Lacan\u2019s work, early and late<\/strong>, and following Freud\u2019s example, maintains<\/strong> the immanence of the Real in the Symbolic,<\/span> against the arguments of those who see a gradual displacement of questions of language in the later seminars in favour of accounts of the Real, jouissance, etc. Underlying this chapter, indeed the totality of this book, is the contention that Lacan always considers language as fundamental to the Real, to sexuality and so on, and vice versa<\/span>.\u00a0 (note 34, pg. 179)<\/p>\n

Lacanian reinvention of the notion of the signifier tout court, predicated as it is on a displacement of any Saussurian certainty as to the signifier\u2019s connection to the signified. 37
\n:)Yes, I agree that Lacan broke this tight relationship between signifier and signified. Scary?<\/p>\n

:)constitutive interpenetration of Symbolic and Real<\/span>,<\/p>\n

Lacan, far from being a thinker of a hypostatized linguistic lack or void, insists on the singularityand substan-tial persistenceof those elements in the Symbolic that immanently escape any negative constitution of reference and that point to the ultimate overdetermination of the Symbolic by the Real<\/span>,… Overdetermination, to be clear, signifies in this instance the absolute reliance of the production of meaning on those Real elements of the Symbolic that, while inherently meaningless, nonetheless provide the ground for meaning\u2019s emergence.\u00a037<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42talks about Real elements of the Symbolic that although meaningless provide the ground for “meaning’s emergence.” Booya<\/em><\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s philosophy of language will accordingly be distinguished from both the structuralist emphasis on complex totalities and the post- structuralist logic of a potentially limitless semiotic freeplay; Lacan, I will argue, manages, in part through his codevelopment of the relationality of the signifier and the material underside of the same, to avoid theorizing language either as an internally complex but exhaustive totality or as an endlessly creative, pliable resource.<\/p>\n

The rich paradox at the heart of Lacan\u2019s Symbolic is precisely the simultaneous insistence, then, on the irrecuperability of the rift between signifier and signified, and the equal insistence that a limited, contingent and material \u2018stopping up\u2019 of significatory freeplay is inevitable, with the notable caveat that such points of consistency are guaranteed not through the ruse of a transcendental signifier or an external guarantor of meaning, but by the repetitive, contingent iteration of the signifier\u2019s materiality<\/span>, its tendency to slip loose of or withdraw from networks of relation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Terms including \u2018letter\u2019, \u2018unary trait\u2019, \u2018phallic signifier\u2019, \u2018empty signifier\u2019 and others are used, if not interchangeably, then to designate different aspects of the same phenomenon, namely the material insist-ence of the signifier beyond any significatory function. As a result, in this chapter I begin to develop what will be a central typology to be used throughout the rest of the book, namely the distinction between what I call the \u2018signifier- in-relation\u2019<\/span> and the \u2018signifier- in-isolation\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

These concepts are intended to condense Lacan\u2019s multifarious terms relating to language into their most pertinent, opposing characteristics: the \u2018signifier- in-relation\u2019<\/span> designates the signifier as it exists negatively, defined purely by relation to other signifiers and producing meaning as the result of its perpetual displacement along the axes of metaphor and metonymy, while the \u2018signifier- in-isolation\u2019<\/span> designates the signifier as Real<\/span>, isolated in its material element away from the networks of relation that render it conducive to meaning.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42Eyers is now using the above distinction to claim that psychotics are not entirely outside the Symbolic.<\/em><\/p>\n

Must psychosis be explained as entirely outside the ambit of Symbolic logic, or is it rather just an unmediated dyadically organized Symbolic logic that prevails in psychotic subjectivity? 39-40<\/p>\n

Here, we come to recognize that, far from the Symbolic being radically foreclosed or revoked by the phenomena of psychosis, the rejection of the paternal signifier makes operative and primary those<\/span> Real<\/span>, aspects of signification \u2013 which is to say, <\/span>signifiers torn away from the negative constitution of meaningful communication and tied to the aggressive movements of primary identification<\/strong> \u2013 that, as we shall see, must be presupposed, if kept at bay, for ANY signification to be operative for the subject.<\/span> 41<\/p>\n

For the common variety of neurotic<\/strong>, which by the end of Lacan\u2019s teaching must be considered to be anyone who has acceded fully to the Symbolic, the dyadic logic of demand that accompanies primary narcissism<\/span> has been nuanced with the <\/strong> metonymy of desire in the signifier;<\/span> desire,<\/span> properly speaking, is absent for the psychotic precisely by virtue of the lack of a full installation of the paternal law.<\/strong>\u00a0 42<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42The materiality of the signifier is Eyers’ Signifier in Isolation.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It is worth asking about the \u2018nature\u2019 of these isolated elements of the Symbolic<\/strong>, for it is partly in Lacan\u2019s elaboration of this most material<\/span>, which is to say most insistent and non- relational<\/strong>, aspect of signification<\/strong> that he most fully departs from, and subverts, Saussure\u2019s insistence on the inevitability of the relationship between the signifier and the signified.<\/span> 42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eyers, Tom. Lacan and the Concept of the ‘Real’ New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. it is my contention that Lacan\u2019s work, early and late, and following Freud\u2019s example, maintains the immanence of the Real in the Symbolic, against the arguments of those who see a gradual displacement of questions of language in the later seminars … Continue reading “eyers signifier in isolation signifier in relation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,81,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-materiality","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10465"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10467,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10465\/revisions\/10467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}