LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 3
LACAN ON MEANING
— page 59 —
into account work from his final two decades, an adequate sense of Lacan’s project can nevertheless be had by endeavoring to keep their examination strictly oriented towards the linguistic structures discussed therein.
The “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’” (1956) recommends itself for a variety of reasons. Throughout this écrit the insights gained from structural analysis are juxtaposed to their imaginary meaning-effects which are liable to lead one astray. From the very first page Lacan announces how
‘[t]he teaching of this seminar is designed to maintain that imaginary effects, far from representing the core of analytic experience, give us nothing of any consistency unless they are related to the symbolic chain that binds and orients them. I am, of course, aware of the importance of imaginary impregnations (Prägung) in the partializations of the symbolic alternative that give the signifying chain its appearance. Nevertheless, I posit that it is the law specific to this chain which governs the psychoanalytic effects that are determinant for the subject – effects such as foreclosure (Verwerfung), repression (Verdrängung), and negation (Verneinung) itself – and I add with the appropriate emphasis that these effects follow the displacement (Entstellung) of the signifiers so faithfully that imaginary factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections therein.’20
As his use of Freudian terminology suggests, Lacan posits a parallel between the workings of the symbolic order and the functioning of the unconscious. This paper must have held special importance for Lacan, as he placed it at the very beginning of his Écrits whose compiled papers are otherwise generally presented in chronological order. Such importance is indirectly confirmed by the attention it has received by literary criticism. The brilliant structural analysis of Poe’s short story has easily made this the most popular of all of Lacan’s works for English departments across academia. Its main themes are well-known, like how the repetition of scenes in Poe’s text proceeds according to which character possesses the feminizing letter, which in turn makes them possessed by its meaning.21 The possession of this letter further determines the spatial disposition of all the characters and even dictates how much insight they can draw from each scene. Less known are the how and why of these structural movements.
To address the underlying mechanism which accounts for these movements, one must turn to the latter half of the paper. There Lacan supplements his English department-friendly literary analysis with a scientific exposition. It comes complete with strange diagrams and figures inscribed in obscure notational shorthand. Together with his confusingly laconic writing style, the exposition is sure to give initial pause to even the well-versed in mathematics and logic. What Lacan illustrates is that there is a certain autonomy to the
20 Lacan, “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’” 6.
21 Ibid., 21.
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