2-1-11 Lacan, Ecrits

“The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud”

Lacan shifts the discussion of the unconscious from biological underpinnings to linguistic ones, primarily those of metaphor and metonymy.

“The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious”

Summary: The subject and the unconscious are not unified totalities as Hegel would have us believe via the dialectic but is instead composed of a chain of signifiers.

Close Reading:


“An enunciation that denounces itself, a statement that renounces itself, an ignorance that sweeps itself away, an opportunity that self-destructs—what remains here if not the trace of what really must be in order to fall away from being?” (678)

Starting off with a series of four nouns with restrictive clauses attached, Lacan describes the utterance that brings one into being (“I can [peut] come into being by disappearing from my statement [dit].” (678)).  Yet, all of these “utterances” aren’t quite so, because of the fact that the restrictive clauses that are attached to them restrict their ability to utter.  The difference here between a noun followed by a verb and a noun followed by a restrictive adjective clause is important.  Instead of saying, “An enunciation denounces itself, a statement renounces itself, an ignorance sweeps itself away, an opportunity self-destructs,” Lacan says the above, which indicates that the utterances aren’t just doing these things, they are these things. If they are these things, then they aren’t the things we might expect them to be.  While both enunciations and denouncements are utterances, denounce gives more nuance to enunciation because it declares itself to be evil rather than just giving expression to itself.  The statement is also an abandonment, rejection, or refusal of itself, rather than just . . . a statement.  Ignorance/sweeps away is an interesting part of this series, considering that the couplet seems to reaffirm itself rather than repudiate itself as the previous couplets have done.  At first, an ignorance that sweeps itself away makes sense together because ignorance can be a lack of knowledge and sweeping away is getting rid of something.  In this sentence, though, ignorance isn’t so much a lack as a state of being, which asserts itself by getting rid of itself.  An opportunity that self-destructs is an opening or an advantage that can’t fully become one of these things because it is restricted by its tendency to destroy its own advantage.  Where it seems like these couplets negate or reverse each other, the restrictive adjective clause construction tells us otherwise.  The noun retains its qualities even though it is being restricted by the adjective clause, but it also can’t fully attain those qualities because it is restricted.  The noun’s being is simultaneous and multiple, not a totality or unity.

The dash breaks into the sentence and renames the series with emphasis, with just a bit of violence.  The interrogative sentence that follows it emphasizes itself even more; it asserts itself by asking a question, calling attention to the answer that isn’t quite there or that lies just beyond its appearance on the page.  The subject of the sentence is an interrogative pronoun, which also calls attention to the “what” or to the unanswered question.  The remainder is the “what”, which is that which is left over after the denouncement, renouncement, sweeping away, or self-destruction.  That remainder is also the trace, which echoes back to what the interrogative portions of this sentence are doing.  It is the presence that is also an absence.  The sentence gets more complicated from there, as it follows with a a barrage of layered prepositional phrases.  Trace (of what really must be) (in order to fall away) (from being).  Here, there is a trace of what really must be, which seems to indicate that there is an authentic aspect to being, considering that “really” is an adverb that modifies “be”.  The next two phrases are closely connected, as something is falling away from being.  The key here is then figuring out what that something is. 

I picked this sentence this week because I really had no clue what was going on in it.  My confusion mainly comes from its construction rather than its idea, as I think the prepositional phrase sequence obfuscates what is going on.  I do, however, recognize that it might have a lot to do with this: “Their authors are now far too concerned with obtaining a respectable position to leave any room for the irremediable ludicrousness the unconscious owes to its roots in language” (687).  It might be fair to say that this construction is ludicrous in such a way that it calls attention to the unstable being of the unconscious.  Like Lacan says, it’s not a unity, so the difficulty of putting these phrases together

points toward the difficulty of defining being in the unconscious and what exactly the trace is.