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Lacan 302

This document provides an overview of Jacques Lacan's views on language and the unconscious. It introduces Lacan's concept of "the letter" to refer to the material aspects of language that concrete discourse borrows from. It discusses how language and its structure preexist the individual subject and how the subject is inscribed in the universal movement of discourse from birth. It highlights Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between the signifier and the signified as laying the foundation for modern linguistics and the emergence of linguistics as a science centered around this algorithm.

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Chun-hsiung Chen
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60 views5 pages

Lacan 302

This document provides an overview of Jacques Lacan's views on language and the unconscious. It introduces Lacan's concept of "the letter" to refer to the material aspects of language that concrete discourse borrows from. It discusses how language and its structure preexist the individual subject and how the subject is inscribed in the universal movement of discourse from birth. It highlights Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between the signifier and the signified as laying the foundation for modern linguistics and the emergence of linguistics as a science centered around this algorithm.

Uploaded by

Chun-hsiung Chen
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lacan 302

The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious


or Reason Since Freud

自佛洛伊德以降，在無意識界或理性界，
字母的代理

Lacan 301 訂正
And how could a psychoanalyst of today not realize that speech is the key to that truth,
when his whole experience must find in speech alone its instrument, its context, its
material, and even the background noise of its uncertainties?

今天的精神分析師怎麼可能沒有體會到，言談是那個真理的關鍵所在？既然他
的整個精神分析經驗，僅僅是在言談中，找到它的工具、它的內涵、它的材料、
甚至它的不穩定狀態的背景的噪音。

The Meaning of the Letter


字母的意義
As my title suggests, beyond this 'speech', what the psychoanalytic experience discovers in
the unconscious is the whole structure of language.

如我文章篇名「字母的代理」所表明，精神分析經驗在無意識界所發現的，就是
語言的整個結構，但是真理在這個「言談」之外。

Thus from the outset I have alerted informed minds to the extent to which the notion that
the unconscious is merely the seat of the instincts will have to be rethought.

因此，從一開始，我就反覆再三地提醒過有識之士，我們需要重新再思考
「無意識僅僅是本能的所在」這個觀念。

But how are we to take this 'letter' here? Quite simply, literally.

但是我們在此應該如何看待這個「字母」?很簡單，按字面索解。

By 'letter' I designate that material support that concrete discourse borrows from language.

所謂「字母」，我指的是，真理的論述從語言借用過支撐素材。

This simple definition assumes that language is not to be confused with the various
psychical and somatic functions that serve it in the speaking subject - primarily because
language and its structure exist prior to the moment at which each subject at a certain point
in his mental development makes his entry into it.

這個簡單的定義認為，我們不應該將語言，跟服侍言談主體的諸般心理與生理
的功用混為一談。主要是因為語言及其結構的存在，時間上早先於每個主體的心
智發展進入之前。

Let us note, then, that aphasias, although caused by purely anatomical lesions in the
cerebral apparatus that supplies the mental centre for these functions, prove, on the whole,
to distribute their deficits between the two sides of the signifying effect of what we call
here 'the letter' in the creation of signification. A point that will be clarified later.

因此，我們需注意到，雖然失語症的病變原因，純粹是語言機能的心智核心，
在大腦器官遭受的生理損害，大體上，它已經被証明是，我們在此所謂的「字
母」，以意符代理意旨，意義的創造受到意符化的影響，意符與意旨兩邊無法結
算，產生的赤字狀態。這一點，容我以後我再詳細澄清。

Thus the subject, too, if he can appear to be the slave of language is all the more so of a
discourse in the universal movement in which his place is already inscribed at birth, if only
by virtue of his proper name.

因此，假如主體似乎成為語言的奴隸，相對於真理的論述而言，主體一出生的
處境，即使自己是一個獨特的個體，就被語言的普遍運作所鐫刻，他也更加是
處於失語症的狀態。

Reference to the experience of the community, or to the substance of this discourse, settles
nothing. For this experience assumes its essential dimension in the tradition that this
discourse itself establishes. This tradition, long before the drama of history is inscribed in
it, lays down the elementary structures of culture. And these very structures reveal an
ordering of possible exchanges which, even if unconscious, is inconceivable outside the
permutations authorized by language.

但是怪罪到社會的背景，或怪罪到真理論述的本質，於事無補。因為這個社會的
背景，跟這個真理的論述所建立的傳統息息相關。早在人類的歷史發展之前，這
個傳統就奠定文化的基本結構。這些結構顯示互相交換的秩序，這個秩序在語言
認可的的領域之外，是無法被理解的，何況是無意識的交換秩序。

With the result that the ethnographic duality of nature and culture is giving way to a
ternary conception of the human condition - nature, society, and culture - the last term of
which could well be reduced to language, or that which essentially distinguishes human
society from natural societies.

人種誌具有自然與文化的雙重特性，逐漸產生人類處境的第三個特性的觀念：
自然、社會、與文化三足鼎立。最後一個特性，文化，我們可以用語言作為表達
基本上，區別人類的社會，跟自然的社會的不同。

But I shall not make of this distinction either a point or a point of departure, leaving to its
own obscurity the question of the original relations between the signifier and labor. I shall
be content, for my little jab at the general function of praxis in the genesis of history, to
point out that the very society that wished to restore, along with the privileges of the
producer, the causal hierarchy of the relations between production and the ideological
superstructure to their full political rights, has none the less failed to give birth to an
esperanto in which the relations of language to socialist realities would have rendered any
literary formalism radically impossible.

但是，我並非特意要發揮這個不同的區別，而將意符與文化累積的原先關係置
之不理。因為我探討歷史的起源，人類作為本體的功用，我確信地指出，即使有
社會希望要恢復生產與意識形態的超級結構，相互之間的因果關係，以及生產
者的特權，還給它們充份的政治權利，這個社會仍然無法產生一個世界語。使用
這樣的世界語，語言跟社會主義的現實之間的關係，本來會使文學的形式主義
完全不可能產生。

For my part, I shall trust only those assumptions that have already proven their value by
virtue of the fact that language through them has attained the status of an object of
scientific investigation.
就我而言，我只相信那些已經被證明其價值的學說。透過這些學說，語言獲得科
學研究的客體的地位

For it is by virtue of this fact that linguistics is seen to occupy the key position in this
domain, and the reclassification of the sciences and a regrouping of them around it signals,
as is usually the case, a revolution in knowledge; only the necessities of communication
made me inscribe it at the head of this volume under the title 'the sciences of man' -
despite the confusion that is thereby covered over.

語言學被認為在這個領域居舉足輕重的地位。依循知識進步的慣例，環繞語言學
的諸項文理學科的重新分類，意味著知識的革命。我只是為了溝通的需要，才將
它列為本書的首篇，篇名為「人文科學」。但是如此一來，語言學是人文或是科
學的混淆，反而遭到漠視。

To pinpoint the emergence of linguistic science we may say that, as in the case of all
sciences in the modern sense, it is contained in the constitutive moment of an algorithm
that is its foundation. This algorithm is the following:

S/s

which is read as: the signifier over the signified, 'over' corresponding to the bar separating
the two stages.

為了強調語言科學的出現，我們不妨說，如同所有科學的現代意義，語言學包
含其規則系統的組成作為基礎。這個規則系統的標示如下：

S/s

意符與意旨分成兩個階段，中間有一橫槓，意符是意旨的分子，放置在上面。

This sign should be attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure although it is not found in exactly
this form in any of the numerous schemas, which none the less express it, to be found in
the printed version of his lectures of the years I906-7, I908-9, and I9I0-11, which the piety
of a group of his disciples caused to be published under the title, Cours de linguistique
génerale, a work of prime importance for the transmission of a teaching worthy of the
name, that is, that one can come to terms with only in its own terms.

這個符號應該歸功於佛帝蘭、索緒爾，雖然被運用到無數的模式時，形式略有些
差異。索緒爾在 I906-7 年, I908-9 年, 及 I9I0-11 年的出版的著作上，都還是用這個
符號表達。他的一些忠實的門徒將這些著作出版，書名為「語言學教程」 。這是一
本非常重要的著作，對於學術的影響名聲卓著，簡言之，我們無論如何推崇，
亦不為過。

That is why it is legitimate for us to give him credit for the formulation S/s by which, in
spite of the differences among schools, the beginning of modern linguistics can be
recognized.

那就是為什麼我們對於意符與意旨 S/s 的公式化推崇有加。儘管各學派的主張各


有不同，這個公式已經被公認為是現代語言學的開端。

The thematics of this science is henceforth suspended, in effect, at the primordial position
of the signifier and the signified as being distinct orders separated initially by a barrier
resisting signification. And that is what was to make possible an exact study of the
connections proper to the signifier, and of the extent of their function in the genesis of the
signified.

事實上，這們科學的主題，因此被擺放在意符與意旨的原初位置，中間有一條
橫槓，作為鮮明秩序的區分，表明意義的抗拒。換言之，意符本體的關係的研究
讓我們有可能探索意旨的起源。

雄伯譯

[email protected]

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