Desire Lies within

Ashley Shelden’s analysis of Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the illusion of identity in the Symbolic.   Lacan, in comparing the structure of the unconscious to language, observes that the unconscious cannot be attained, is unstable, and has no meaning.  The limits of language prevent any entrance into the Real as we constantly try and fail to attain meaning, because meaning is an illusion on the symbolic level.  Lacan’s rejection of Saussure’s signified indicates his poststructuralist tendencies, suggesting that being is not simply lost but never existed.  The connection that Shelden makes between Lacan’s adaptation of Saussure’s work and the psychoanalytic concept of desire aids in the understanding of the unattainable pursuit of meaning, not only in language but also in the mind.  Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory embraces the poststructuralist rejection of meaning in the structure, suggesting that the unstable self of the Symbolic and Imaginary must be deconstructed.

Peter Barry explains Lacan’s rejection of a stable subject.  He writes, “Lacan seeks to alter nothing less than our deepest notions of what we are,” showing that Lacan rejects that being exists in the Symbolic (Barry 108).  Lacan shatters the illusion of identity, suggesting that language constructs the “I” that manifests itself in the Symbolic, and language itself is unstable and without meaning.  Shelden grapples with this instability of the subject in her post when she discusses the linguistic aspects of the unconscious, specifically metonymy.  She describes the “slippage” associated with metonymy, as one signifier leads to another which leads to another.  The search is unending, uncontrollable, and does not lead to any truth or meaning, a clear distinction from Saussure’s idea that the signifier and signified at least have a stable relationship with each other.  Metonymy is therefore a continuous cycle and signifiers are purely relational to each other. The illusion of meaning is produced through metonymy, as signifiers have no true meanings but rather only differ from one another.  We never reach any meaning at all; rather, we reach another signifier that defers meaning endlessly, creating an unstable reality within the Symbolic. .

Shelden’s explanation of language’s role in Lacan emphasizes language’s ability to entrap subjects in the Symbolic.  Shelden writes, “Language makes us who we are, and we are nothing other than signifiers in a metonymic chain, slipping and sliding towards a sense of self.”  In highlighting that we only exist through language, Lacan deconstructs the notion of the self, suggesting that the self, trapped in the illusion of meaning pursues desires indefinitely.  Shelden’s use of the word slippage recognizes the instability in meaning but also suggests an inability to control, as we constantly want to pursue our desires even though they are unattainable and will only lead to new desires.  The search for meaning never ends as long as we exist in the Symbolic.
            Evelyn Schreiber's article, “Memory believes before knowing remembers: the insistence of past and Lacan's unconscious desire in Light in August,” further explains Lacan’s discussion of language and desire through psychoanalytic theory. Schreiber says that “people relate to each other not in their full complexity as living, feeling individuals, but in terms of significations that have come to represent them in their essential absence. Thus, a subject only appears in relationship to the socially constructed symbolic order or cultural symbolic of a particular community.” Her comment suggests individuals are interrelated and connected through language and social relationships.  For example, race is perceived as a social construct which reifies white racial domination. This idea adds to Lacan's discussion of the repetition of signifiers.  The repetition of a social construct functions approach the desire and repeatedly try to fulfill it.  Just as a signifier leads to another signifier infinitely, society perpetuates a system to prevent a lack.  Desire to fill a void can therefore cause the repetition of negative aspects of society.  Shelden’s post deepens this understanding of desire when she describes the inability to reach the objet petit a.  She writes that “The inability to be satisfied by the object of desire maintains the lack in the subject, a void that can never be filled,” showing that the persistence of the void causes a need to fill it, as society continues its behavior in order to repeatedly fill the emptiness. 

Shelden describes desire as central to psychoanalysis, as language instills each subject of the Symbolic with desire.  However, language’s limitations in reaching the object of desire causes a constant need to attempt to fulfill the desire.  Consumerism exemplifies the need to repeatedly try to reach satisfaction.  However, after the individual purchases the latest iPhone or True Religion jeans, a void will remain.  The desire cannot be fulfilled and there will be a constant presence of wanting to replace the object or find satisfaction elsewhere. In turn, the Symbolic unconscious creates a programmed drive that cannot be satisfied because nothing exists that can satisfy the drive of desire.  Individuals are kept within the Symbolic and assume meaning to exist within the Symbolic.

In the Symbolic, individuals cannot freely enter and exit the system because they are born into existence. However, within Symbolic theory the drive cannot be satisfied because no object or concept can satisfy the drive. Hence, Lacan further explains psychoanalytic theory through the mirror stage.  Shelden’s explanation of the mirror stage clarifies the functions of the Symbolic and the Imaginary.    Shelden writes, “The Imaginary can only produce the illusion of stability through the operation of the image,” showing that the Imaginary’s role is to use images, while the Symbolic produces the illusion of stability through language.  Both language and images create the illusion of the subject “I,” yet both also establish lack and anxiety.  The death drive seeks to destroy these desires in the Symbolic in the Imaginary, threatening the illusion of the Symbolic and Imaginary self and pursuing the Real.

Shelden’s post helps to show that Lacan’s theory works to destabilize the sense of self through the death drive.   The death drive forces a neglect of the search for meaning and identity.  Her post is useful in connecting to the idea that, according to Lacan, the unconscious cannot be accessed.  Only with the death drive, through the momentary jouissance of sexual pleasure, can we experience any sense of being in the Real.  Shelden’s emphasis on the contradiction of searching for identity in the Symbolic when it is fundamentally unattainable suggests that existence within a structure does not allow for any stable meaning.  This poststructuralist tendency within psychoanalysis demonstrates the lack of meaning within the unconscious and completely destabilizes a unified self.    

Deconstructing Derrida

The film, Derrida, records Jacques Derrida as he resists the process of creating a documentary and providing truth.  Derrida, in poststructuralism, rejects the notion of a concrete and stable identity; therefore, the search for his true self in the film is unattainable, and moments that seem to get close to answering questions quickly begin to deconstruct.  The filmmakers, well aware of the artificiality that Derrida recognizes, emphasize that they are making a film, frequently showing cameras and footage of Derrida watching the film.  The film demonstrates that, as the narrator explains, “deconstruction is always already at work in the work.”  Attempts to create a coherent documentary continue to fail, an effect which the filmmakers embrace.  The film is continually aware of its structure as a film, and this awareness causes its frequent deconstruction.  The film in itself is exemplifies Derrida’s work, showing that whenever there seems to be an answer, it needs to be questioned, allowing for deconstruction to repeatedly occur.

                Early in the film the documentary shows footage of Derrida discussing biographies.  He explains that traditionally a biography becomes representative of truth, creating a fixed and stable image of a person.  Derrida’s skepticism of the biography indicates the poststructuralist ideas that stable identity and truth do not exist.  In poststructuralism, there is no unified meaning, for meaning is fluid, unstable, and constantly shifting.  Deconstruction destabilizes the fixed image that a biography creates about a person, rejecting the stability.  The film, however, interrupts Derrida’s discussion with footage of Derrida walking along the street.  The narrator narrates aspects of his life that essentially play the role of a biography.  The film, which as a documentary is supposed to tell the story of Derrida’s life and work, knows that it cannot capture the essence of Derrida; according to Derrida’s theories, he has no essence.  Therefore, the film’s choice to insert biographical information about Derrida while he disputes the validity of a biography shows how the film chooses to embrace the presence of deconstruction in the structure.  The film even acknowledges that a biography of a philosopher encompasses the philospher’s work and life, i.e. the system and the subject of the system.  It recognizes that there is a blurred or invisible line between the two, meaning that the relationship between the philosopher and his work is unstable.  Poststructuralism breaks down binaries and finds all meaning to be unstable. 

                Derrida’s recognition of the artificiality of the situation consumes the structure of the work.  Derrida refuses to naturalize what is not natural, as he resists the interview process and constantly draws attention to the cameras and the necessity for him to perform rather than behave naturally.  He even notes that when he normally spends time alone in his home he stays in his robe, but the presence of the camera caused him to alter his behavior.  He says, “I’m not really like this,” to show that it is impossible to capture his essence in a film, or perhaps impossible to define someone’s essence at all without imposing some sort of authority and autobiography in the portrayal.  We see that Derrida himself offers very little stable interpretation, including when he is asked about the beginning of his relationship with his wife.  First, Derrida notes the artificiality of the situation when the camera workers need to pause to fix the lighting, immediately making him more unlikely to feel comfortable in front of the camera.  Not only does he say very little––only facts about how they first met-- he later comments on how important it was that both he and his wife responded that way. He said "I'm not going to tell you everything. I'm just going to tell you superficial things."  Derrida is hesitant to disclose information in front of the camera, arguing that it is difficult for him to tell a story and suggesting that telling in itself is not sufficient.  His comment on narration indicates that narration implies some sort of authority and telling of truth, but the truth is unstable and therefore impossible to tell.  Moreover, throughout the film there are images of Derrida watching footage of footage of footage of this particular scene, further deconstructing the structure of the film and its authority.  We are left uncertain as the film actively deconstructs itself, showing that deconstruction is always present in the structure and constantly destabilizing meaning.

                The film also emphasizes instability during the scene on love.  Derrida brings to question the distinction between the who and the what, meaning the unique singularity of someone versus qualities of someone.  As he discusses the struggle of knowing whether to attribute love to the who or the what, he demonstrates the instability of the binary and that love is actually in the blurred line in between the two.  Derrida hence questions the existence of an absolute essence of someone, suggesting that there is no center and that play is always there from the beginning.  The I, in existing between reality and fiction, indicates the deconstruction of the binaries and the center of the self as the source of knowledge.  Identity is therefore not inherent but created and written. 

                The film’s emphasis on the instability of the center also manifests itself in the discussion of eyes and hands.  Throughout the film, the cameras focus on the image of Derrida’s eyes and hands, with the cameras functioning as the Other that from the outside deconstructs the cogito.  Derrida explains that the eyes and hands are, although integral parts to us, the parts that we see least easily in ourselves.  It is the Other that most easily sees them.  The eyes and the hands, therefore, are the center that exists both at the center of the structure and outside of it.  The center of a person (in this case Derrida) exists outside of him.  Derrida emphasizes this point in “Structure, Sign and Play,” when he says, “The center is at the center of the totality and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere,” (Rice and Waugh 196).  The filmmakers take on the center of Derrida as they view his eyes and hands from outside of him, destabilizing his essence while they ironically and somewhat mockingly try to tell his essence. 

                The film embraces poststructuralism as it constantly deconstructs itself throughout the process. Poststructuralism confirms play and asserts that the center never exists because it is always outside of itself.  As Derrida writes in “Stucture, Sign and Play,” “…it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the form a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play,” (Rice and Waugh 197).  Derrida doesn’t recognize the loss of the center but rather the nonexistence of it.  The film reflects Derrida’s deconstruction of the center and emphasis on instability.

                The song, “Jacques Derrida,” by Scritti Politti, embraces deconstruction with the notion that after reading Derrida’s work, the singer can understand his love for someone by deconstructing the person:

I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart

I’m in love

The song suggests the notion of repeatedly deconstructing someone, constantly unraveling the unstable meaning in poststructuralism and deconstructing the idea of any unified singularity of someone.  In deconstruction, there is no stability.  Derrida addresses the struggle between the who and the what in understanding love; moreover, the lyric suggests the instability of a person, existing unstably in between the who and the what.  The lyric deconstructs the notion of a center and assumes play. 

How do you like them apples?

Saussure suggests that in language, the bond between signified and signifier is radically arbitrary.  To understand his statement, we must first understand what the signified and the signifier are in language.  The signified refers to the mental concept of the word, or what the person thinks of when hearing the word.  It is not the real object, but rather what the signifier refers to.  The signifier is the sound of the image completely divorced from the idea; it is just the word that you see on the page or that you hear.  As Daniel Chandler says, it is a jumble of words on a page that cues thoughts and images.

A sign needs both the signified and the signifier to be possible.  While the word “dog” needs both the signified and the signifier in order for it to be a word, the signified and the signifier are arbitrary and meaning is arbitrary.  As Chandler explains it, a real object does not need to actually exist.  He defends that, in language at least, the form of the signifier is not determined by what it signifies: there is nothing 'treeish' about the word 'tree'.  A way to recognize this is to realize that different languages articulate the world with different signifiers for a signified and sometimes use the same signifiers for a different signified.  An example would be how mono in Spanish means both monkey and cute.  The same signifier creates two unrelated signifieds, showing how there is no true connection between the signifier and the signified.  Our reality as constructed through language simply allows us to place value on the signs that they make.  The point here is that the value of the sign is not the thing itself, just that language constructs it.

In addition, Barry points out that the meanings we give to words are purely arbitrary and these meanings are maintained by convention only.  In simpler terms Barry states that there is no actual connection between a word and what it signifies, therefore the signifier and the signified exist separately.

My understanding is that in describing the signified and the signifier as arbitrary, Saussure is describing how actual things like the wall in front of me are not actually what we say they are.  It is signified by what I see, and the word “wall” is what I use as a signifier but it is not actually a wall.  Another thing Saussure says is I can’t actually describe what the wall is without using signifiers which are all arbitrary and, constructed by us.  Therefore, the word “wall” is not connected to what the actual thing is.  It is as much a wall as it is a mouse, just a different “signified” comes into our mind when we see it.

In my opinion, the song has everything to do with Saussure’s opinion of Structuralism, but that is because I’m in the mindset that all of the words in the song actually have a different signified than they are signifying.  The verse in which this lyric is taken from says “I met Ferdinand de Saussure on a night like this, On love, he said, I'm not so sure I even know what it is, No understanding, no closure, it is a nemesis, You can't use a bulldozer to study orchids, he said so.”  The line “You can’t use a bulldozer to study orchids, he said so” highlights that it is only so because “he” said so.  However, if the “bulldozer’s” signified was actually a microscope and the “orchid’s” signified was a cell because “he” said so, then we could study them.  As far as this line in the song goes, I think that it is speaking to how hegemony has determined what is signified by signifiers and how that is the only reason why certain things signifiers describe as not possible could be signified as possible with different signifiers.  In other words, if the image (signified) was called something else than it actually is, then maybe a bulldozer could study orchids. 

Relating how we are nothing without love can also be considered a part of Saussure’s argument, assuming the word love does not actually mean what it is signified to mean.  The song could mean any word instead of love in relation to Saussure because again, the signifier is not actually the signified; it is just what the hegemony uses to create the image of the signified when it is heard.  Not to beat a dead horse, but if the song is in the nature of Saussure theory, then it can be assumed that all of those words have a different signifier than the one that hegemony has conditioned to pop into our heads.  How do you like them apples?