Cleavage and split within the human subject

CHEMAMA Roland

The proposition that the inconscious is structured like a language or that language is the condition of the unconscious necessarily implies that the human subject is split. The notion of an irremediable split within the human subject is a major concept in Lacan's extention and reformulation of psycho-analysis. In this paper, I propose to investigate this notion from an angle which is not very often taken into consideration.
A number of reasons account for the split within the human subject. The mere fact that he speaks, that speech - the structure in which his desire shapes itself - is necessarily equivocal an polysemous may give rise to a gap between what the subject believes he is saying and what is heard. Thus appears a split between the subject of the statement and the subject of the enonciation. Lacan then connects his views on the split with what he defines as alienation. If the subject is placed between being and meaning - i.e. by the Other - what is the alternative? Should the subject, rejecting the Other's signifiers, opt for being, he will lose everything. Should he opt for meaning, he will lose the particular meaninglessness that is the very place of the subject. Thus appears a split between being and meaning.
Let us now be more accurate and consider the basic split - that between two signifiers -, which stems from the fact that the subject is represented by a signifier to another signifier : while the second signifier ought to give the representatation of the subject genuineness, it has indeed the opposite effect, pinning down the subject and suppressing him through aphanisis. Thus appears a split between S1 and S2. Yet another split is to be observed : when a subject wishes to reach a pleasure giving object, the Other's request and signifiers always stand in the way, so that the object-cause of desire is always already lost, irretrievely lost. Thus appears a split between a subject and his object.
Let us now try and analyse the reasons for such complexity : what the phrase " a split within the human subject " refers to is not a juxtaposition of different realities : it rather suggests the pre-eminence of speech, with its various consequences. What is more, Lacan seems to identify "split" with "cleavage", though he does not give a dialectical presentation of the two terms. Now, that is precisely the point I wish to discuss, basing myself upon a few passages in which Lacan, while dealing with the split within the human subject, refers to the article entitled Die Ichspaltung im Abwehrvorgang, written by Freud in 1938.
By the way of exemple, let us quote a short passage from "La signification du phallus"" ça parle dans l'Autre (...), c'est là que le sujet, par une antériorité logique à tout éveil du signifié, trouve sa place signifiante. La découverte de ce qu'il articule à cette place, c'est-à-dire dans l'inconscient, nous permet de saisir au prix de quelle division ( Spaltung ) il s'est ainsi constitué. " And again, in "La direction de la cure", " Ici s'inscrit cette Spaltung dernière par où le sujet s'articule au Logos, et sur quoi Freud (...) nous donnait à la pointe ultime d'une œuvre aux dimensions de l'être la solution de l'analyse " infinie ", quand sa mort y mit le mot Rien. "
Let us now examine Lacan's reasoning. While presenting his view on the split within the human subject, he connects it with the Other - the place of signifier - and, using parentheses, he specifies the German word used by Freud "Spaltung".
Lacan emphasizes the fact that "Spaltung" is the very word with which the works of Freud come to an end, indicating thereby the crucial role played by this concept to which he himself pays particular attention.
Note that, while the German word "Spaltung" was rendered into French by "clivage" (cleavage), Lacan preferes using the word "refente" ("splitting", and speaks of a "refente du sujet"( a splitting within the human subject) rather than of a "clivage du moi" (cleavage of the ego). That is what enables him to connnect his own views about the split - a split between two signifiers as well as one between the subject and the object - with the very last point in Freud's elaboration.
In the French word "refente", the prefix "re" is probably reminiscent of the double loop shaping the slip which splits off "objet petit a" in the cross-cap figure.
The difficulty however is that in the 1938 article the term "Spaltung" refers to something very specific, which Freud had already introduced in "Fetischismus", written in 1927. Fetishistic people refuse to acknowledge the castration of woman, but they also do acknowledge it, hence a cleavage. Cleavage is obviously a concept that can also apply to such other pathological phenomena as obsessional neurosis or psychosis, but Freud mostly associates it with fetishism.
The question may be asked why Lacan thus connects his theory on the split within the human subject - which applies to any subject - with Freud's view on cleavage, hence on denial, which is associated with fetishism and probably with perversion as well. The question may rather concern what new prospects are thus opened up to us today.
If the split within the human subject - which applies to each one of us - may assume the shape of cleavage, then psycha-analysis can easily concern the subjects who substitute cleavage and denial of castration for neurotic repression. Now that point is of capital importance in a society in which, through the decline of Names-of-the Father, the force and scope of the symbolical law are decreasing.
But reversely, the connection established by Lacan may lead us to think that the split within human subject is indeed what ought to be apprehended in a new light. In fact, the subject, who is brought into existence by the signifier, may imagine he is the one who brings the signifier into existence, and the process involved is well-known : the subject turns some signifiers - incluing signifiers specific to psychoanalysis - into fetishes and makes banners of them. There is no doubt that countering such recourse to fetishes is an essential duty for us today.