Monday, January 24, 2011
Lacan
In all honesty, this is my first encounter with Lacan and I can't say I love the guy. I didn't really understand his message so that's why I'm deciding to blog about it. I may be totally off in my interpretation so please don't judge me, here it goes. In "The instance of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud", Lacan presents the concept that language and structure are entities of their own, leading to the difference between the algorithm "signifier/signified". In this, the signifier is the meaningful unit and the signified is a concept denoted by a sign..."the signifier answers the function of representing the signified, or better, that the signifier has to answer for its existence in the name of any signification" (191). So then we're given the example of the signified when the children on the train both see different words that are given meaning by society and therefore are interpreted by those children. All in all, the letter expresses the signifier because at this stage, it has not given the signified the denotation of the sign because letters take signification when we put meaning to them...just like words. So my question here would be could a word exist without a letter? and more so, can literature exist without letters? I really don't know because I want to say the answer is no because everything we speak on a daily basis are letters put together that make words, therefore, not much could be done without them. However, this also leads me to think of numbers and symbols and how they too can create a language of their own. And this is where I get lost...so for the moment that's it for my blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm with you, cynth. It was an opaque text for anyone outside Lacan's field. To your question, "could a word exist without a letter?" I think of languages (like many found in Asia) that do not use letters; Chinese characters, for instance. And what of braille? Or sign language? I don't know the answers, but your point raises more questions, certainly.
ReplyDeleteI think a better example of the meaningfulness of the signifier vs. that of the signified is the '30 sails' example. I think we all come up with a similar image in our mind, even though as Lacan points out, this doesn't represent the reality of '30 sails'. This shows the connection we give to a certain signifier and assume that the signified embodies this idea before we look to the signified for identification. Lacan really doesn't explain (on purpose I know) the mental representation that we accord to a signifier, and this idea shapes our vision of the signified thereafter. Wittgenstein (again the dude rocks)explains this concept much more thoroughly, although I don't understand why Lacan hardly touches on it when it really supports his argument when he talks about how "we cling to the illusion that the signifier answers to the function of representing the signified."
ReplyDelete>>>numbers and symbols and how they too can create a language of their own.
ReplyDeleteGood remark!
Maybe that is what L is getting at: math functions like a language, but does not represent anything else other than math. So rather than saying that the letter has no signified, maybe it is better to say that the letter has itself as signified.
"I think of languages (like many found in Asia) that do not use letters; Chinese characters, for instance."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, and both Freud and Lacan refer to hieroglyphs.
It's clear that what's at issue here is *not* alphabetic writing.