The Lacanian Unconscious (4 of 4): The signifying chain
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- Опубликовано: 8 июл 2024
- One conceptual leap required by Lacan's notion of the unconscious is the idea that agency applies not most fundamentally to the ego but to the symbolic. Language, signifiers, have agency, they speak through us, they insist, they have momentum. We consider how the unfolding of speech over time involves just such a moment via the example of predicative texts. The notion of the 'signifying chain' alerts us to this agency within language. We briefly examine the idea of symbolic efficacy and the related idea that although I may not subjective believe, there may be a structure of believing of which I am a part.
Link to board:
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The comment about “the momentum of language” and the way we predict where a given sentence is heading around 7:20 reminds me a lot of how large language models work w/r/t statistical prediction or whatever. I would love to hear a lacanian’s thoughts on LLM AIs!!!
This is really great, thanks for this!
Hi Derek, keep returning to your videos, very helpful when I despair of making any inroads into Lacan. On a tangent; do you know the painting by Giorgio de Chirico called “The Uncertainty of the Poet”? I was wondering if it isn’t very Freud/Lacanian? The train in the background could represent temporal metonymy (as the masts which jut up from behind walls in his paintings, with no boat visible, represent metonymy), and the bunch of bananas would then be the synchronous axis of metaphor (from which the uncertain poet would have to choose). The proliferating bananas are positioned suggestively, phallus like, and of course Freud’s comment about Medusa and multiplications of phallic objects as representing castration comes to mind, Lacanian symbolic castration in this case. The bananas are positioned in relation to a dismembered torso of a statue (female), ‘death of the thing’, lack and desire, signifiers carving up the body all come to mind. Is there a nod to Magritte here? A statue is not a body, and this is not even a statue, but a painting etc (simulacra). The huge empty space like a public square in front of some huge gallery/courthouse suggests the Big Other as such. Then of course the title seems to scream for these things to be interpreted in such a way.
Can someone perhaps get Bruce Fink onto camera for an interview?
Why are images not signifiers as well, as roland barthes would seem to have them be (if I'm understanding him correctly)?
6:44 FYI I'm really enjoying this explanation, but theres an awkward cut at this point in the video. Thought you'd appreciate knowing...
Yes, I manage to get through most video's without having to delete my errors but this one was glaring and had to go :)
when you tied signifiers to racism, you blew my mind
"The shift one needs to make in grasping what fenan..."
- Is the name related to grasping? the shift maybe? is it a male's name? what are you trying to say? :p
it is still beyond me why Lacanians like to refer to linguistical signs (in particular words) as ‘signifiers’, when in fact they are just 'signs'. It makes no sense, especially from a Saussurean understanding of language, which is supposedly Lacan’s.
Bashed your head against the toilet bowl??? hhahaha (9.23)