SEXUATED TOPOLOGY AND THE
SUSPENSION OF MEANING

A NON-HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL
APPROACH TO TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

WILLIAM J. URBAN

7.2 The Breakdown of the Meaning-relation

At the start of the final section in the chapter Žižek sets aside to discuss the Lacanian notion of sexual difference in his monumental book Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (2012), he writes the following:

'So, to conclude, one can propose a "unified theory" of the formulae of sexuation and the formulae of four discourses: the masculine axis consists of the master's discourse and the university discourse (university as universality and the master as its constitutive exception), and the feminine axis of the hysterical discourse and the analyst's discourse (no exception and non-All). We then have the following series of equations:

S1 = Master = exception
S2 = University = universality
$ = Hysteria = no-exception
a = Analyst = non-All

We can see here how, in order to correlate the two squares, we have to turn one 90 degrees in relation to the other: with regard to the four discourses, the line that separates masculine from feminine runs horizontally; that is, it is the upper couple which is masculine and the lower one which is feminine.'666

As his interests run in a decidedly different direction, Žižek does not further develop his unified theory. But the little that has been written here is highly suggestive and permits the Lacanian logical square to be entirely expressed in terms of the four discourses. This is captured in Figure 7.1.

A momentary glance at the Lacanian logical square as originally presented in Figure 6.2 will confirm that its overall structure has been carried forward to Figure 7.1 to allow for direct comparison. This is because the placement of the four quadrants and their propositions has been strictly maintained across the two versions. The differences between them thus extend only to their respective contents. As can be seen, the arrows designating the relations between the quadrants have been dropped from the new logical square, as well as all verbal descriptors. But that which is subtracted is nevertheless still operative behind the scenes, and indeed the analysis of the logical square undertaken in Chapter 6 and Section 7.1 is still valid. So the two additional ways in which each quadrant is marked simply enhances what can be understood of the logical square. First, each quadrant can now be referred to by one of the four mathemes from discourse theory. Second, each quadrant is now inscribed with one of the four discourses. These writings should all be familiar from the discussion in Section 5.3 above except for the three arrows and parallel lines which now attend each discourse. The significance of each of these additions is taken up in turn.

It should be readily recognizable from the foregoing chapters why S2, S1, $ and a should come to mark quadrants , , and respectively. Recall how S2 denotes a series of signifiers which inscribes both meaning and knowledge within its chain, but a chain which only 'completes' itself when the phallic S1 constitutes it as such. Together they constitute the contradiction inherent to the right deixis between All signifiers and the One signifier which nevertheless eludes this universal dimension through its exceptional particularity. In the Other deixis to the left there is no better matheme than the subject $, the empty lack between signifiers devoid of any substantive meaning, to designate the void of the upper quadrant. While the uncanny objet a as the impossible objectal correlate to the empty subject functions in a similar fashion as the Not-all of the lower quadrant which directly negates or impossibly ontologizes the void of the ens imaginarium.

With the four mathemes thus distributed to the four quadrants the entire logical square can effectively be treated as a single discourse; that is, so long as each quadrant is taken as one of the four places of discourse theory (cf. Figure 5.7). Subsequent rotations of the entire square, 90° at a time, would then produce each of the remaining three discourses in turn. This is provided, of course, that quadrants and are interchanged.667 Thus, with no rotation the logical square is read as the Hd: , but by making a 90° counterclockwise turn the Md: emerges. Two additional turns will produce first the Ud: and then the Ad: . These substitutions can also be inverted, inscribing instead the propositions themselves into the discourses. This has the advantage of bringing into discourse theory what is known of the relationships internal to the logical square. For instance, the Md would be written as and here it is clearly seen how the proposition occupying the position of truth exposes the utter pretense of the master's claim to be the One since it directly negates the exceptionality of his position of agency. Similar substitutions could be made for the other three discourses and already much could be fruitfully read from these writings. To take the fullest advantage of them, however, a better theoretical understanding of the relations in play within a discourse is needed.

Before turning to such a discussion, it should be noted how the above has effectively isolated the hermeneutical field of meaning to the two quadrants of the right deixis and, moreover, delimited the potential suspension of this field to the subversive quadrant of the Not-all in the left deixis. To recognize this, rotate the logical square 90° counterclockwise so that these two quadrants appear across the top. What results is the Md: and suddenly the analysis of meaning with respect to this discourse (cf. Section 5.3) is readily applicable to the logical square: there is the retroactive trajectory of meaning production which swims against the tide of signifiers moving left to right (S1 → S2), the subjectivization of the subject $ which emerges at the end of this trajectory fully imbued with meaningful content, and the uncovering of the objet a which falls out of the signifying chain and which can potentially put an end to meaning production. However, because of this falling away only the three mathemes of alienation (recall how Figure 5.3 only references S2, S1 and $) are effectively in play. To put objet a into play would require an additional 180° turn. Doing so results in the Ad: or and the potential of objet a to suspend meaning would become actualized. But note that while all four mathemes of separation (cf. Figure 5.4) are now in play, the placement of objet a in the position of agency places the two quadrants associated with meaning along the bottom of the discourse. The significance of occupying these bottom positions is only had by making sense of the three arrows (and parallel lines) which denote the direction (and termination point) of the mathemes as they turn from one discourse to the other.

The significance of one of these arrows is already generally known. This is the arrow which links S1 and S2 running across the top of the Md. Taken together the matheme S1 → S2 represents the chain of signifiers within which meaning subsists. The split between these two levels, between what psychoanalysis calls the symbolic and the imaginary registers, could readily be acknowledged by (post)structuralism itself. This split provides a valuable clue on how to read this matheme newly found in each quadrant of the logical square, a square now defined in terms of discourse theory. Since the logical square concerns the phallic function , the question to ask is how one might understand S1 → S2 in relation to this function. The answer is approachable by recalling that to speak is to be symbolically castrated. Whatever we say we often experience how our saids fall short, failing to articulate our intended meaning with any kind of precision, while simultaneously also recognizing how these saids say too much, carrying meanings entirely unintentional. Actually experiencing or consciously recognizing the castrating effects of language is not strictly necessary; this phenomenon is registered in the Other regardless. Examples abound, from Epimenides who fully intends to include himself in the fact that 'All Cretans are liars' yet does just the opposite by uttering it, to the man who likewise unknowingly castrates himself when affirming how 'All men are mortal.' Being submitted to the thus involves the disjoint between what one intends to say and what one actually says or in matheme terms, between the 'betweens' of signifiers (marked by the arrow) and the level of the signifiers themselves (S1, S2). The three mathemes of alienation thus stand quite appropriately arranged as , which is Lacan's definition of a signifier as that which represents a subject for another signifier (cf. Figure 5.7). This arrangement visually confirms how the subject presenting himself in his own words is out of synch with the meaning of those words. Having reached this point it can now be speculated that if the relation between S1 and S2 somehow breaks down, if the arrow suggesting their relation gives way instead to parallel lines which block that relation, the meaning inscribed between them breaks down as well. This would put into play a full separation of the subject from meaning.

Thus far only one of the three relational arrows which accompany discourse theory has been discussed, the one which links S1 → S2 across the upper horizontal plane of the Md. Given that this upper level arrow is found in each of the discourses which have now come to define the quadrants of the logical square, what can be generally said of it? The answer is that the relation between the agent and the other in any of the four discourses should be characterized by the modality of impossibility. A defining modality of discourse theory, this has already be noted during the discussion of Verhaeghe in Section 5.3 above and Fierens equally observes how the social bond between the two partners in a discourse is fundamentally disparate such that no true dialogue can take place between them.668 This is easily seen in the Md of quadrant where the fact that an exceptional S1 must articulate an S2 to actualize the latter's potential meaning is truthfully revealed by $ to be impossible; that is, with no such exception any hopes for a full actualization of this potentiality are dashed. Faced with this impossibility each of the two sides of a discourse must sustain itself on its own. For its part the agent is sustained by a truth which necessarily determines it in its address to the other. The arrow to the left that marks the relation between truth and the agent in any discourse thus marks a relation characterized by the modality of necessity. Illustrating again with S1 → S2, the basic matheme of the meaning-relation, we find this pair related in the mode of necessity in the Ud of quadrant . The necessity of this relation in this discourse is easily understood as well, for an S1 is clearly needed to actualize the potential meaning of a battery of signifiers S2 if that meaning is to be addressed to the other (in the same way that a p is needed to release the essence of 'If p then q '). Because of this, meaning and the being of meaning subsist in the quadrant of the universal affirmative more than in any other single quadrant, which also implies that the single most basic matheme of discourse theory concerning meaning is S2. On the other side of the divide within a discourse is the other, which can only respond to the agent's address by producing a contingent product. Here is the arrow to the right marking the relation between the other and the product of each discourse, a relation characterized by the modality of contingency. The Hd of quadrant inscribes the pair S1 → S2 in such a contingent relation, with S1 in the place of the other and S2 in the place of the product. This S2 can be read as a meaning produced by the S1 in an attempt to appease the hysterical provocation by $, but a meaning immediately lost since the desire behind that provocation cannot be satisfied. More generally speaking this product is always simultaneously also a loss since it is merely a possible result dependent on the truth, which originally determined the agent. But in being characterized by the modality of possibility this relation between the product and the truth of any discourse is ultimately marked by powerlessness or impotency. For this product is utterly powerless to return to the truth of the discourse which produced it. The symbol of such a relation is thus no longer an arrow but the parallel lines // which visually confirms the blockage in effect between any two mathemes that find themselves occupying the lower horizontal plane of a discourse. Now, it is the Ad of quadrant where the meaning-relation thoroughly breaks down, so instead of S1 → S2 we find there S2 // S1. With this discourse of the nonsensical Not-all where an S1 is produced but cannot return to the S2 which occupies the place of truth, the meaning-relation is thoroughly exhausted. This is certainly connected to the fact that S2 and S1 are ontologically distinct due to the former's lack of existential import. But what the Ad captures is a more primitive dimension which provides the a priori force behind the fact that saying cannot return to the level of the said prior to it having been said.

By way of summary of the immediately foregoing the turn of the discourses proceeds as per the direction of the arrows, moving through the quadrants sequentially → → → , whereupon it reaches the Ad, which puts an end to the meaning-relations to be had in each of the previous three discourses. Yet it is already known from previous discussions of this sequence (discussions which took up this sequence in terms of the logic of negation and the Kantian nothings) that upon reaching the fourth component the analysis in a sense has only really just begun. For that which paradoxically comes at the end of the sequence is to be recognized as having haunted the previous three components which lead up to it. This is still the case when this sequence is defined in terms of discourse theory. Recall that Lacan in his late period considers the real qua impossible. Each discourse thus concerns the real inasmuch as a real relation runs between agent and other in the form of the impossible. This also makes the Ad the privileged discourse. With objet a as its agent and objet a being real, the Ad should be seen as haunting or manifesting itself in the other discourses through their impossible (and impotent) relations. Thus the Ad is the science of the real, the very science of the discourses as they revolve around the real. More specifically, the Ad pushes each discourse to constitute itself from its impossibility and to further demonstrate its ultimate impotence. Faced with its impotence each discourse is then lead to reverse itself and attempt a new social bond. The logic of this reversal is further discussed below. For now it is enough to get a sense of the Ad as the real engine of the (clockwise, and then counterclockwise) turns of the discourses which constitute it. And again it should be acknowledged how Lacan stands in stark contrast to classical Aristotelian logic, which does its best to avoid logical impossibilities and impotencies. Instead, Lacanian discourse utilizes a logic which attempts to accommodate itself to these aporia and further tries to establish the impossibility of each discourse so as to demonstrate its impotence. In this way all roads lead to the Ad just as readily as they lead away from it.

An initial discussion is now complete of the discourses found in each quadrant as well as how the Lacanian logical square may be taken in toto as a discourse. This provides an adequate backdrop for a more detailed examination. For instance, the legitimacy of beginning the sequence with the Ud of quadrant should be better established. By making reference to the psychoanalytic rule of free association, Fierens quite rightly reasons that since a signifier is always differentiated from itself, this implies that 'a signifier (S1) becomes necessarily other, it is always transformed into another signifier (S2).'669 This he names the 'preliminary rule' and as already seen, the necessity of S1 → S2 is found in the Ud. The further implication of self-differentiation is that any signifier whatsoever carries within itself this entire meaning-relation S1 → S2. This provides an additional justification for treating the Lacanian logical square as one 'giant' rotating discourse with four 'smaller' discourses harboring its individual quadrants. That is, each signifier of S1 → S2, which together constitute the meaning-relation circling within the right deixis, harbors within itself a discourse making use of the same meaning-relation form in necessary and impossible ways. This double inscription of the meaning-relation certainly makes Figure 7.1 more complex, but with greater complexity comes greater flexibility and an increased potential that it can be utilized for diverse purposes. But there is a general lesson to be had from this double inscription as such. In terms of textual analysis, this is the very inscription of the aporia existing between the whole and the part of the hermeneutical circle: should meaning be approached by considering the whole (by adhering to the level of the logical square) or the part (by adhering to the discourses within its quadrants)? More specifically, while the preliminary rule places the Ud of quadrant at the start of the sequence due to the modality of necessity, in terms of temporal order S2 (which also marks the same quadrant) comes after S1 of quadrant , as is clearly seen in the matheme S1 → S2. The ambiguity here does not stem from failing to distinguish a matheme coming to mark an entire quadrant and this same matheme occupying a place in a discourse within a quadrant. Additional symbols are entirely unwarranted and would mistakenly remove that which should instead be preserved. The ambiguity of Figure 7.1 in this respect is thus reflective of the self-differentiated nature of the signifier or in the specific terms of Chapter 6, of the status of the exception in its contradiction with the universal in the right deixis. Effectively what is witnessed here is the presence of a real disruption in the hermeneutical circle of meaning.

Nevertheless this circle turns, as do the discourses. The arrows of the latter point out their clockwise rotation along a specific modal path concurring with the path forged by the logic of negation and the series of vanishing nothings. As was said, reversing this rotation is equally possible. Coming up against the impotence that is the powerlessness of its product to rejoin its truth, the other of any discourse may swim against the tide of arrows to become its own agent. This sets off a new discourse. The only requirement is that the other recognize his impotence and decide to act. In this way the other of the Hd (S1) becomes the agent of the Md, while the other in this new discourse (S2) can effect an additional turn by becoming the agent in the Ud. In the face of the real disruptions which drive these turns and counterturns, what is it that allows a discourse to maintain minimal cohesion? The answer is that the meaning-relation S1 → S2 stabilizes each of the three non-analytic discourses.670 This relation might fruitfully be thought of as covering over impossibility and impotence with the substance of meaning. For instance, the meaning of the knowledge (S2) communicated in the Ud can be seen as that which binds the teacher and student; yet this bind is not permanent since the hysterical subject that is produced cannot return to the truth of this discourse (S1). More concretely and in different terms, advocating a thesis such as 'Gadamer is Heideggerian' is always (and often secretly) supported by the textual work of master-interpreters like Palmer or Betti, just as a Lacanian thesis can establish its own authority through the masterly interpretations of Le Gaufey, Fierens, Žižek or Lacan himself. Putting such authorization directly into play, as the agent in the Md, would be equivalent to offering up some Gadamerian passages in order to demonstrate their Heideggerian-like quality, despite the imperfections of these passages inclusive of their partial contradiction of this thesis. Again meaning attempts to bridge the impossibility which here takes the form of the contradiction between S1 (who, in truth, is no master) and S2 (who responds to this contradiction by producing a contingent product). A further turn to the Hd would establish another impossible relation to which meaning would again be called upon to resolve. As already stated the former master, now an other, produces meanings so as to mollify the hysteric's embrace of the truth of the master's pretence of occupying a meta-position able to offer neutral assessments of the Gadamerian opus. Of course the rotation Ud → Md → Hd just followed671 could at any point be reversed. For the other of the Hd might choose to abandon contingent meaning-relations to instead settle for those that are impossible. Yet whatever stability is provided by this latter meaning-relation might itself be disturbed by the other of the Md when he recognizes his impotence and decides to assume the position of agency. In this case the Ud emerges, a discourse which achieves stability through a meaning-relation in the mode of necessity.

As already noted the Ad prevents the two partners of any discourse from engaging in a full dialogue. Moreover, the disruption it introduces into a discourse is what rotates it into a new discourse. Because of this, ultimately any stability a discourse does have is precarious at best. The paradox is that its (counter)clockwise rotation is both caused by and constitutes the Ad. Indeed the Ad is included in the very rotating path it itself propels. Yet in providing illustrations above of how meaning provides stability to a discourse by covering over its inherent impossibility and impotence, a corresponding illustration for the Ad was conspicuously missing. The reason for this should be obvious. For the meaning-relation utterly fails with the Ad, straddling as it does the impotent relation between truth and product. Instead of another transformation of S1 by S2, the two are here radically disconnected; that is, instead of S1 → S2, the (non)relation is now written S2 // S1. Note that when S1 → S2 takes on the modality of impossibility in the Md there is not a similar breakdown of meaning. For an impossible meaning can cover over impossibility and impotence just as well as a contingent or necessary meaning.672 But this is not the case with a meaning-relation that operates in the modality of possibility. To be more precise, the meaning-relation in the Ad has no functional mode. For in the Ad of quadrant there is a thorough breakdown in the meaning-relation. Here meaning can no longer cover over impossibility and impotence in any sense since the meaning-relation is itself rendered impotent.

It should be clear how non-hermeneutical phenomenology is at once an interpretative approach that aligns itself with the Ad where the meaning-relation breaks down. Such an approach situates itself at the place of impotence in each of the three non-analytic discourses so as to upset their stability-throughmeaning and further drives them to tip over to a new discourse where a new impossibility makes an appearance. In this way psychoanalytic interpretation can be characterized as the science of the rotation of the discourses, a rotation which leads back to itself, the Ad, where no meaning is offered up as a stabilizing force for the interpretive endeavor. Along with the breakdown of the meaning-relation there is here the objet a, a singular point from which meaning is suspended. Before turning to a discussion of topology to better illustrate this suspension, it is worthwhile to further distinguish the psychoanalytic approach from those which become entrenched in one or more of the non-analytic discourses making use of the stabilizing meaning-relation S1 → S2, and especially from those which naïvely hold out hope that this meaning-relation can be avoided altogether and so accordingly strive to make definitive relationships directly out of incongruent meanings already in existence. Of course the theory of the four discourses is 'universal' in the sense of being able to characterize all interpretive groups and thinkers like those discussed in Part I. Thus the profound challenge to the medieval Church's centuries-old dominion over interpretative technique by the Protestant Reformers, and the subsequent response to this challenge known as the Counter-Reformation, could be characterized as so many turns and counter-turns playing out between the Md and the Hd; or else Deleuze and Nancy might be said to struggle against the Hd that so often characterizes contemporary aesthetic thought by analyzing paintings within the Ad whose dimensions emerged with Freud in his original polemic with the hysteric. Yet the above distinction is useful in drawing a significant line of demarcation in the history of thought on meaning at the dawn of the 19th century. This line was marked by Section 1.2 and concerns the transcendental turn to hermeneutics initiated by Schleiermacher. Very broadly speaking it was only after this time that interpreters can be said to properly concern themselves with the meaning-relation S1 → S2.

At stake in the period prior to this time, from the exegetical thought of the medieval period up to and including the rationalist hermeneutics of Chladenius, is the bringing together and the putting into relation anomalous meanings caught up in two or more signifying chains. Here the effort is not to orient the meaning-relation S1 → S2 into a modality best able to provide stability but rather the mediation of differing series of S2 through the particular subjectivization of the interpreter. In other words a meaningfilled interpreter acts as a conduit, setting out to resolve disparate meanings by making appeals to a realm of ultimate meanings that have already subjectivized him and stabilized his universe. Thus pre- Enlightenment biblical exegetes resolve textual difficulties in the name of the one true God who assures the wholeness of Scripture while Chladenius' unwavering faith in reason similarly guarantees that the rational whole of a work is never in question. But this faith in reason soon becomes seriously shaken in the hands of Kant. Indeed there are good grounds for holding Kant to have closed out the Age of Reason. The very title of his revolutionary work of 1781 alerts his reader to the fact that what will be contained therein is nothing short of a critique of the pure objects of this faith, and in accomplishing just that Kant delivers a fatal blow to the legitimacy of any effort to reconstruct a limited number of primordial meanings from which all other meanings might flow. In simple terms Kant recognized that reason – a faculty of the mind whose work stands at the apex of the cognitive enterprise such that if the desired grand unity were attained, this would constitute the completion of knowledge – aims at the unconditional. In the first book of the Transcendental Dialectic he writes how the unconditional can 'be arranged in three classes, the first containing the absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject, the second the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearance, the third the absolute unity of the condition of all objects of thought in general.'673 Kant calls these the transcendental ideas, which accordingly break down into the objects of psychology, cosmology and theology, viz., the soul, the universe as a whole, and God. Yet far from endorsing unconditionals as missing links connecting all other meanings, Kant proceeds to demonstrate their illusory nature. In terms discussed in the previous section, these Gedankendinge [German, things of thought] are nothings of the type previously discussed: entia rationis ratiocinatae [Latin, beings of reason]. This is not to say that Chladenius and those who preceded him were simply duped so that a Schleiermacher or anyone else having read Kant simply avoids these errors in their own use of the universal. For Kant further argues how the appeal to such illusory objects is entirely natural and unavoidable. In his terminology the transcendental ideas are considered 'regulative ideals,' a set of principles that operates as a supposed knowledge of the inherent rational order. Although entirely unprovable, such unconditioned universals must be presupposed if we are to acquire a positive knowledge – and meaning – of our reality. In a word the transcendental ideas are necessary illusions and as specifically noted in Section 1.1, Chladenius completely fails to grasp universality as a regulative ideal. Overlooking the illusory and necessary work of reason as it aims for ultimate meanings is a methodological defect generally shared by all hermeneutical approaches prior to the Kantian turn. In a world where meaningful existence is assured, their projects largely remain outside the meaning-relation S1 → S2 that seeks in contingent, impossible and necessary modes to cover over the real fault running through the otherwise ontologically consistent universe, a fault which makes its first sustained appearance only after the Kantian critique. So despite appearances that the pedagogy of Chladenius puts in play that most basic of the hermeneutic (and non-analytic) discourses, the university discourse with its necessary meaning-relation cannot be said to characterize his project (or else, his pre-critical thought renders the Ud so stable that it cannot be made to turn, which amounts to the same thing). Generally speaking, the best critiques of hermeneutical thought prior to Schleiermacher aim not at how it misses the illusory quality of the universal, but how it misses its necessary illusory quality. Such critique is at once self-critique and Schleiermacher's recognition of this effectively announced that the new interpretive era of discursive turns had arrived.

To clarify, the path travelled by pre-Kantian interpretation is not contingent, never merely possible and certainly not impossible. Rather, it is conceived as necessary. But since Reason and/or the Divine assures a complete Meaning, the Necessity involved here is quite different than the necessity at stake in discourse theory. After the Kantian turn it is no longer a transcendent entity but the subject who is held to account for meaning. A thesis such as 'Gadamer is Heideggerian' is thus not divinely inspired but enunciated by a subject in a meaning-relation that can, of course, be taken as necessary. But not strictly so, for it can also be seen as impossible or contingent, or even as having entered a dimension in which the very relation itself breaks down. As discussed, these four modes concern the meaning-relation S1 → S2 as it circulates through revolving discourses. Yet it is important to recognize how this relation is internal to the signifier itself. Such an insight only becomes possible after Kant. For the demonstration of the necessary illusory quality of the transcendent Signified implies that any signifier which comes to mark its empty place is itself rendered internally divided, as captured by the definition of the signifier as that (S1) which represents for another signifier (S2) its absence ($). It may seem that the pre-Kantian concern for finding the Signifier has simply been substituted by a new conception of the infinite dispersal of signifiers; indeed there is no signifier which does not represent the subject, as implied by Lacan's definition. However, recall from Section 5.3 how the phallic signifier coincides with its own impossibility since it is nothing but the void opened up by its failed representations. Putting this notion into play places S1 and S2 on radically different levels and so allows for their relation S1 → S2 to take on different modalities. For instance, the relation of the enunciation (S1) to its enunciated 'Gadamer is Heideggerian' (S2) is in the modality of contingency when S1 'dominates' in the sense of announcing the import of S2 or in other words, when S2 is conceived as the subject of S1 (visually confirmed in the arrangement of the terms in the Hd where S2 is positioned below S1). Now, is contingency not the predominate mode the meaning-relation takes up today? We may readily grasp the meaning of the thesis an interpreter develops from his reading of a particular textual passage, but are we not quick to add that, in the end, this meaning is entirely dependent on that particular reading by that particular interpreter? All too often ending in a smug Nietzschean-like perspectivism from which meaning is deemed (absolutely) relative, what this assessment neglects in the meaning-relation is its necessity: in the Ud a thesis like 'Gadamer is Heideggerian' thoroughly eclipses its enunciation, making instead S1 the subject of S2. However, the passage between contingency and necessity proceeds from the impossible, both in the sense of having to pass through the Md where the meaning-relation is precisely in the modality of impossibility (concerning the contradiction between an enunciated thesis and its enunciation) and in the sense that impossibility deeply characterizes each discourse and links it internally to its own impotence, an impotence capable of provoking a turn into a new discourse.

This is at once to say that such a passage involves the Ad which, as already stated, is the very science of the rotation of the discourses. Now if it does act in this capacity, the impotency of its own discourse becomes its own resource. This impotency of course involves the thorough absence of the meaningrelation: S1 fails to enter into relation with S2, a failure written as S2 // S1. Not reducible to a putting into relation of S1 and S2, or to a putting into relation a series of established meanings, the type of interpretation concomitant to psychoanalytic discourse instead concerns itself with the circulation of the meaning-relation as the Ud, Md and Hd rotate and counter-rotate into one another; while at the same time such interpretation is also consciously aware that what drives these rotations is the failure of the meaning-relation to be definitively established. The fact that the relation between S1 and S2 is ultimately rendered impotent so that the meaning-relation thoroughly breaks down is part and parcel of the radical otherness inherent to the signifier as such. Moreover, the tautological nature of the definition of the signifier is what prevents finding in the Ad the promise of a meta-language since the inscription of the signifying pair as S2 // S1 in this discourse is a writing every bit as internal to the signifier as the meaning-relation S1 → S2 itself. This makes the Ad as caught up in the rotation of the discourses as any of the other three. Nevertheless, by writing the absence of this relation the discourse of the analyst does offer respite from the pursuit of meaning. For in its place of agency is the nonsensical objet a, a paradoxical point from which meaning can be suspended. The final section begins from where this section leaves off, from the breakdown of the meaning-relation S2 // S1, and proceeds by way of the meaningless twists, cuts and sutures of space that is topology to arrive at a conception of this nonsensical suspension point.

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