This is the point at which the child enters the register of the symbolic. It is at
this stage, according to Lacan, that the child also enters the “language system.”
Absence, lack, and separation characterize the language system, according
to Lacan, because language names things which are not immediately
present (“signifieds”) and substitutes words (“signifiers”) for them.
This is also the beginning of socialization, says Lacan. Just as the child realizes
that sexual identity is the result of an originary difference between
mother and father, it comes to grasp that language itself is an unending
chain of “differences,” and that the terms of language are what they are only
by excluding one another. Signs always presuppose the absence of the objects
they signify—an insight which Lacan inherited from structuralist anthropology
and linguistics.
The loss of the precious object that is the mother’s body drives desire to
seek its satisfaction in incomplete or partial objects, none of which can ever
fully satisfy the longing bred by the loss of the maternal body. People try
vainly to settle for substitute objects, or what Lacan calls the “object little a.”
Lacan’s thinking was heavily influenced by structuralist thinkers such as the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) and linguists Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857-1913) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). Lacan’s chief
claim, based upon his readings of Saussure and Jakobson, is that the unconscious
is “structured like a language.” Lacan refashioned Freud’s terminology
of psychic condensation and displacement by translating them into
what Lacan believed to be their equivalent rhetorical terms: metaphor and
metonymy. Metaphor works by condensing two separate images into a single
symbol through substitution, while metonymy operates by association—
using a part to represent the whole (such as “crown” for “king”) or using
contiguous elements (such as “sea” and “boat”).
The presence of the father teaches the child that it must assume a predefined
social and familial role over which it exercises no control—a role
which is defined by the sexual difference between mother and father, the exclusion
of the child from the sexual relationship which exists between the
mother and the father, and the child’s relinquishment of the earlier and intense
bonds which existed between itself and the mother’s body. This situation
of absence, exclusion, and difference is symbolized by the phallus, a
universal signifier or metonymic presence which indicates the fundamental
lack or absence which lies at the heart of being itself—the manque à être, as
Lacan calls it.
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) and linguists Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857-1913) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). Lacan’s chief
claim, based upon his readings of Saussure and Jakobson, is that the unconscious
is “structured like a language.” Lacan refashioned Freud’s terminology
of psychic condensation and displacement by translating them into
what Lacan believed to be their equivalent rhetorical terms: metaphor and
metonymy. Metaphor works by condensing two separate images into a single
symbol through substitution, while metonymy operates by association—
using a part to represent the whole (such as “crown” for “king”) or using
contiguous elements (such as “sea” and “boat”).
The presence of the father teaches the child that it must assume a predefined
social and familial role over which it exercises no control—a role
which is defined by the sexual difference between mother and father, the exclusion
of the child from the sexual relationship which exists between the
mother and the father, and the child’s relinquishment of the earlier and intense
bonds which existed between itself and the mother’s body. This situation
of absence, exclusion, and difference is symbolized by the phallus, a
universal signifier or metonymic presence which indicates the fundamental
lack or absence which lies at the heart of being itself—the manque à être, as
Lacan calls it.
Lacan calls it.
a.”
Lacan’s thinking was heavily influenced by structuralist thinkers such as the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) and linguists Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857-1913) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). Lacan’s chief
claim, based upon his readings of Saussure and Jakobson, is that the unconscious
is “structured like a language.” Lacan refashioned Freud’s terminology
of psychic condensation and displacement by translating them into
what Lacan believed to be their equivalent rhetorical terms: metaphor and
metonymy. Metaphor works by condensing two separate images into a single
symbol through substitution, while metonymy operates by association—
using a part to represent the whole (such as “crown” for “king”) or using
contiguous elements (such as “sea” and “boat”).
The presence of the father teaches the child that it must assume a predefined
social and familial role over which it exercises no control—a role
which is defined by the sexual difference between mother and father, the exclusion
of the child from the sexual relationship which exists between the
mother and the father, and the child’s relinquishment of the earlier and intense
bonds which existed between itself and the mother’s body. This situation
of absence, exclusion, and difference is symbolized by the phallus, a
universal signifier or metonymic presence which indicates the fundamental
lack or absence which lies at the heart of being itself—the manque à être, as
Lacan calls it.
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) and linguists Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857-1913) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). Lacan’s chief
claim, based upon his readings of Saussure and Jakobson, is that the unconscious
is “structured like a language.” Lacan refashioned Freud’s terminology
of psychic condensation and displacement by translating them into
what Lacan believed to be their equivalent rhetorical terms: metaphor and
metonymy. Metaphor works by condensing two separate images into a single
symbol through substitution, while metonymy operates by association—
using a part to represent the whole (such as “crown” for “king”) or using
contiguous elements (such as “sea” and “boat”).
The presence of the father teaches the child that it must assume a predefined
social and familial role over which it exercises no control—a role
which is defined by the sexual difference between mother and father, the exclusion
of the child from the sexual relationship which exists between the
mother and the father, and the child’s relinquishment of the earlier and intense
bonds which existed between itself and the mother’s body. This situation
of absence, exclusion, and difference is symbolized by the phallus, a
universal signifier or metonymic presence which indicates the fundamental
lack or absence which lies at the heart of being itself—the manque à être, as
Lacan calls it.
Lacan calls it.
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