{"id":3931,"date":"2009-10-08T21:24:08","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T02:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=3931"},"modified":"2009-10-08T22:04:18","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T03:04:18","slug":"pluth-signifiers-signs-signfieds-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/10\/08\/pluth-signifiers-signs-signfieds-chapter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"pluth signifiers signs signfieds chapter 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan\u2019s theory of the subject<\/em> New York: SUNY Press, 2007.<\/p>\n

Traces … were self-sufficient. Signs implied the ruin of this self-sufficiency by subordinating traces to objects. Signifers go even farther: signifiers are not dependent upon merely one object but upon every other signifier<\/em>.<\/strong> For this reason, it is not entirely appropriate to speak of a signifier “referring” to other signifiers: it does not refer to them as a sign refers to an object. Rather, all other signifiers absorb it, and its particularity is always vanishing because of this absorption.<\/p>\n

What is being described in this movement from traces to signs to signifiers is a movement from the self-sufficiency of the trace to the referential structure of the sign to the radical difference constitutive of the signifier. Of course, this radical difference could just as well be called a “hyper referentiality”<\/strong> … A signifier’s reference is not to a specific object or to a specific sign but to all other signifiers, or to the mere fact that signifiers exist (26).<\/p>\n

The signifier then is a purely meaningless<\/strong> and purely differential unity, and unlike the trace, it is not self-sufficient but hyper-referential<\/strong> (29).<\/p>\n

Although there may never be a strict union of signifier and signified, signifiers, according to Lacan, give the impression<\/em> that there is meaning somewhere, however elusive it may be.\u00a0 In fact, this is precisely what signifiers do: they give an impression<\/strong> of meaning (30).<\/p>\n

… signifiers are not signs. They originate in a destruction of the one-to-one reference that is constitutive of signs.\u00a0 Also signifiers are constituted by difference, and their uniqueness consists of their difference from other signifiers … A signifier is moreover, meaningless<\/strong>.\u00a0 … So whatever meaning is, it is not reducible to or identifiable with a particular signifier.\u00a0 According to Lacan, signifiers generate a signified effect or meaning effect that cannot itself be situated within the order of signfiiers<\/strong> (30). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This unfixed meaning effect or signified effect is produced by an interaction of signifiers with each other in what Lacan calls … a signifying chain<\/strong> (30).<\/p>\n

A signifiying chain is nothing other than a succession of signifiers. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan\u2019s theory of the subject New York: SUNY Press, 2007. Traces … were self-sufficient. Signs implied the ruin of this self-sufficiency by subordinating traces to objects. Signifers go even farther: signifiers are not dependent upon merely one object but upon every other signifier. For this reason, it is … Continue reading “pluth signifiers signs signfieds chapter 2”<\/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":[24,119,106,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-language","category-the-act","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931","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=3931"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3937,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions\/3937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}