기표의 물질성과 메타포-라캉의 의미론 다시 읽기

• 영문명: The Materiality of the Signifier and Metaphor : Rereading the Semantics of Lacan
• 발행기관: 한국비평이론학회
• 저자명: 박찬부(Chan-Bu Park)
• 간행물 정보: 『비평과 이론』제10권 제2호, 245~267쪽, 전체 23쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2005.12.01

영문 초록

This essay is concerned with what Lacan meant by the primacy of the signifier or 'the incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier.' As is well known, Lacan's concept of the signifier is derived, but appreciably modified, from Saussure's concept of the linguistic sign which is composed of the sound-image(signifier) and concept(signified). The principle of the arbitrariness fo the sign for the latter does not necessarily account for its aleatory nature for the former, for example, a number of signifieds associated with a single signifier. A specific instance of this aleatoriness of the sign is seen in the metaphorical process in which the first sign(S1/s1) substitutes for the signified of the second sign(S2/s2), which disappears temporarily. Thus, metaphorization as a signifying substitution involves a sign rather than a signifier alone, which is not a Saussurean "intimately united" sign(S/S), but a Lacanian unstable, unmatched one(S/s). While mentioning the primacy of the signifier or the sliding of the signified, Lacan never claims in any of his texts that there is no discernible signified of a signifier, and thus that we cannot interpret the analysand's discourse because what he says can mean anything and everything. He unequivocally says, "It is false to say that interpretation is open to any and every meaning." It is with this in mind that we disagree with any doctrine of the hegemony or empire of the signifier which claims that 'a signifier is only a signifier for another signifier.' A signifier has a discernible significance, and a signifying or significant power; we know that there is a signifying somewhere, even if there is not necessarily any explicit signified. In other words, it has a certain 'materiality.' This is what Lacan and Laplanche call 'the enigmatic signifier.'