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Ripped-up Words. VORONOVSKY Diana In the last stages of Lacan’s work, such linguistic borrowings as had contributed to lay down the conceptual foundations of his theory yielded their ground to topology, logic and poetics, giving rise to the poetic quality; that is to say, to a place where something is grasped in its very reference to language. Considering the structure of the unconscious as homologous to the structure of language, the following considerations will focus on the "structure of a language". Lacan puts into use a flexible, elastic language, a "speakage" -parlage-, pointing out that if, from the point of view of linguistics, the phonemic system constitutes the matrix of a language, this is not equivalent to saying that two languages will be consonant with each other, in some sort of particular equivocation. Language belongs in the realm of the general; if it is to become unique, it must unfold in the effects of language that Lacan names "speakage", which is to be distinguished from communication and stands far apart from expression. Unlike language –the object of linguistics- "speakage" comes into being as it discards the phenomena of remains, thus generating a new language. (1) In what way does language become lalangue as it unfolds into the effects of language? So as to become lalangue, language supports itself on the corporeity of the voice and on the close relation between sound and body. It is in this way that the word turns into a means with which our praxis operates under conditions that define its singularity, since neither lalangue nor Woman can admit of any generalization whatsoever. Its uniqueness/singularity makes it not whole, at the same time it acknowledges its status of Real as shown by the impossibility written on its side. This is why lalangue in each analysis exempts the analyst from a lucubration resulting from the totalizing contradiction of dialectic logic. Homonymy and polysemia inherent to the metaphoric sliding of the chain. Delimiting the metaphor, profiting from that condition of language that allows division: as from the mother tongue, language is broken up and partial languages are created. The concomitant decomposition introduces an alien element into what is familiar. Hence the impossibility of the sexual relation stems from parlêtre, because of the very fact that it is parlêtre; the difference will be established by the written word. A word is needed; a portmanteau word, for instance. Because of its homophony, it requires the letter – several words embedded into one. These words are composed in such a way that the homophonic tie among them make up nonsense/s. They are grounded on a disjunctive synthesis and branch out into the series in which they are included. It is thus that we authorize ourselves to read in a different way, "autrement lire"; or to effect the lack differently so as to render a different reading. "The analyst is a part in the concept of the Unconscious"; then, it is necessary to say in some other way. We make use of negation in formulas meant to attribute sexual status, since in this respect Lacan takes one step further to indent an advance within a logic other than that of phallic – castrated, opening a path that enables us to consider the word and its function in our praxis in the light of a different standing. We sustain that it is not "the analyst" who is a part in the concept of the Unconscious, for "being a part" means "playing" his part. It is what "there is of the analyst", his function, whenever he, through his words, exists to what has been said. We find "the efficacy of negation marking an absence as an act of discourse".(2) It is this that, on being substracted, paralizes the codified sense. Such is the efficacy of negation, for it enacts a foreclosure with no psychotic effects on the chain of signifiers. There is discompletion in the very word that paralizes sense, a word which we locate, as Lacan does, between I and S. To say in a different way, with transference as its effect. Towards the end, Lacan says that "words make the body; that is the Unconscious"; our practice consists in "approaching the way words operate".(3) Words "make the body" - a body of letters – that’s why "mots" are broken; they knot up, drive-like. Mots in their phonic aspect, not in the structural aspect (parole). What Saussure deprecates about the body reappears in the said mots, broken, ripped up, remains of words withdrawn from the word-play, removed from the series; unique words that cannot be repeated, nor can they be ignored; "so that what was made by the word may be undone by the word".(4) To effect the lack differently, not without the semblante; the function of distinguishing among letters so that "something of the language" will echo in the body. Not everything; something, lalangue "It is about the effects of language, and we underscore the "s", for it is not one univocal effect, another standing for language whose starting point is not the Other, since that means there is no metalanguage. Effects of the language that are made out one by one, passing over the polysemia of the signifier, which admits of plays upon words generalized through scanning."(5) We differenciate the above from the singular "effect of language" which is presented in "The Position of the Unconscious" as the first movement "of the fading that constitutes the identification of the subject where the signifier’s cause splits it. " In this particular text, "effects of language" allows a view of the discontinuous nature of the unconscious tissue which, because it is on the order of the letter, reaches; piece-meal, into something of the Real; a writing dissociated from speech, with a different standing and function. The letter in the real, because of its phonetic value/capacity to be voiced and of its value in translanguage. We regard effects, in the plural, as the second movement in separation; a cut; still, not one operated by the subject from himself, but a cut from the field of the Other, whose inexistence is far from rendering it ineffective. Drive as boundary, since "separare" means both engendering oneself and bringing something new into the world. That lalangue is one by one is due to the fact that its condition lies in the language being self-referent; therefore analysis will lead the way to the nonsensical that constitutes us, for it is all about arriving at ab-sense. It is not poetry creating either the beautiful or the ugly, but poetic writing, owing to its characteristic operational modes, Real rendering of the hole in its traumatism, a Real, not a Symbolic, hole; hole traumatism; one letter changes and the sense changes too, the effect of a hole that pierces the sense. "The unconscious are words"(6), ripped-up, unconscious words, not free from the jouissance such words entail. ‘Ripped-up words’ means that something must be withdrawn, set aside, so as to work an effect. Something must be removed from the words themselves, disjointed and frayed as such. "Hors-sens" words, a cut in sense inviting to invention and to the signifier Lacan calls "new", different from those received from the Other which the analyst’s intervention will attempt to reduce (not without resorting to the Imaginary-Symbolic). A New Signifier (a concept appearing in Seminar 24); not something to be found anew, to re-sound, but something that will sound for the first time. Thus we understand that a path is opened for enunciation - that beyond what has been said – to operate an interpretation that speaks of acceptance of the Other’s inexistence. The broken, ripped-up word harbors the unheimlich, for in introducing sound it establishes the phonic element as the living matter of language. The condition to strain the sense we have located between I and S is to mortify the word, to spoil it; far from sacrificing it, this dignifies the word and raises it to the status of lalangue. So jouissance settles in lalangue by means of a real that opens a pathway leading from what is referential in language to what is self-referent in lalangue. Jouissance economy makes way for the sexual element in lalangue, dividing realms that have nothing to do with one another. Such aspects of language as echo in the body, allowing due importance to sound; not the signifier modulated by the voice, but those tones, distinctive intonations and quality of the tones through which the voice effectively introduces the real into our praxis. If "Psychoanalysts are part in the concept of the unconscious, since they are that which the unconscious addresses [...]".(7) Our reading intends to account for this mutual involvement, bringing into play the making of lalangue –since we are a part- in our hearing, with transference as its effect, as long as something else is heard. Turning the letter into phonetic material forces the identity of phonemes. This is a privilege of an invocative drive, since the voice, as its object, is defined by the alternation that constitutes its very structure. Thus, by means of sound, the analyst’s intervention numbs the drowsing power of the signifier, opening the path of the Real. Being a part in the concept of the Unconscious, the analyst "makes" lalangue, both setting a limit to words and putting ripped-up words to use. Transference will be the outcome achieved. Bibliography. |