{"id":11222,"date":"2013-06-07T18:12:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T23:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11222"},"modified":"2015-07-19T13:06:26","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T17:06:26","slug":"calum-lacanian-subjectivity-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/06\/07\/calum-lacanian-subjectivity-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"neill lacanian subjectivity 2011 pt1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neill, Calum. Lacanian Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity 2011<\/a><\/p>\n

Against what one might characterise as the \u2018common-sense\u2019 notion that language (pre)exists as a tool to be utilised by a subject (or person) in the expression of their (pre-linguistic) needs, wants, beliefs etc., the notion of subjectivity in Lacan\u2019s work posits a subject who only ever comes to be anything at all because of the signifying chain of language, because of the (pre)existence of a symbolic order in which it comes to operate.<\/p>\n

What is crucial here is that, if it is the order of signifiers which takes logical precedence, then signifiers are not arsenal to be deployed between subjects, or, to oversimplify, words are not carriers of meaning between people, but, rather,<\/span><\/strong> it is the subject which is constituted in the movement of<\/span> signifiance<\/span> between signifiers<\/span>.\u00a0 45<\/p>\n

It is in this sense that Lacan borrows Hegel\u2019s dictum that \u2018the symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing\u2019 and adds that \u2018this death constitutes in the subject the eternalization of his desire\u2019 (Ibid.).<\/p>\n

An example of this notion of the signifier representing the subject for another signifier<\/span> is already apparent in Freud when he writes, in A Project for a Scientific Psychology<\/em>, of a soldier\u2019s willingness to sacrifice himself for his country\u2019s flag or, as Freud emphasises it, for \u2018a many coloured scrap of stuff\u2019 (Freud, 1966: 349). Here, the soldier is clearly not concerned with the thing of the flag, the flag as material object. The flag only assumes its significance in relation to another signifier, in this instance, the \u2018fatherland\u2019<\/strong> (Ibid.). The soldier, the subject, is given his subjectivity through the mediating representation between one signifier, \u2018the flag\u2019, and another, \u2018the fatherland\u2019<\/span>. 45<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neill, Calum. Lacanian Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity 2011 Against what one might characterise as the \u2018common-sense\u2019 notion that language (pre)exists as a tool to be utilised by a subject (or person) in the expression of their (pre-linguistic) needs, wants, beliefs etc., the notion of subjectivity in Lacan\u2019s work posits a subject who only … Continue reading “neill lacanian subjectivity 2011 pt1”<\/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":[111,79,24,72,15],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-11222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-ethics_real","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-subjectivity","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11222","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=11222"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13305,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11222\/revisions\/13305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}