LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 1
PETITIONS TO MEANING
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ever making a use of the hermeneutical circle in their inquiries into the mysteries of life, history and the Will of God. In sharp contrast to its calculated exploitation, his work resituates the field of meaning as always already enveloping the inquiring subject.
Heidegger’s earlier studies in Christian theology and interpretive theory allow him to direct his attack on hermeneutics with pinpoint accuracy. Striking at the heart of the tradition, he argues how understanding is not to be recovered in the mode of knowledge but in the mode of being. That is, instead of making inquiries into the epistemological conditions for understanding, as had been done in the previous century, an ontological reversal is to take place. What is to be sought instead is the being of that finite being – what Heidegger calls Dasein [being-there] – which consists of and exists through understanding. The primordial being belonging to Dasein is found by interrogating the three ‘fore-structures’ of understanding, introduced in sections 31–4 of Being and Time. To illustrate these with a concrete example, consider a text such as Antigone. Heidegger’s point is that we could never interpret Antigone in a neutral and abstract fashion, since we always already carry with us a certain involvement with such a task. Our levels of knowledge of Greek language and literature, for instance, form part of our fore-having of this text. We also interpret from a particular point of view, our fore-sight, which might include a Lacanian disposition compelling us to treat Antigone as embodying a sublime ethical lesson. Finally, our familiarity of Sophocles and his other works form part of our fore-conception, a conceptual reservoir held in advance of any interpretation.
This path Heidegger proceeds down clearly departs from the classicals. What they held as two distinct moments is now flattened into one, since interpretation can contribute to understanding only what has already been understood. However, this sets up a potential problem. Do not the fore-structure premises presuppose what appears in the conclusion, so that a vicious circle is thereby created? Heidegger’s famous solution is to simply recognize how we are always already involved in the circle within which meaning comes to stand. So the decisive task is not to get out of it, but rather to get into it properly. In practical terms, the interpreter should not allow chance or popular conceptions to dictate the fore-structures. We should not simply accept Lacan’s word but see for ourselves if Antigone does indeed open up a new dimension of ethicality. To use more precise Heideggerian terminology, rather than ‘seeing’ we should instead ‘hear’ or ‘listen’ to what Antigone has to say. This is what constitutes the authentic openness of Dasein for its own most possibility of being.
It should also be clear how Heidegger abandons any notion of a subject (Kantian or otherwise) who actively extracts meaning from external objects. The analysis of, say, the apophantic propositional form of ‘Subject is Predicate’ by an abstract I is deemed derivative of the existential-hermeneutical context of the circular being of Dasein involved in interpreting and understanding texts. In
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