The Lacanian Subject (according to Fink): Beyond the Bar: Separation
[Mother and Child by Esther Leli]
[Continues "The Barred S"]
The coming-to-be of the Lacanian subject does not end with alienation. The process of becoming a subject, that is, goes beyond the location—the pointing out/to—of the place where it is not (the place where it can potentially be). Differentiating Lacanian psychoanalysis from structuralism strictly speaking, Fink states that “the split [of the subject, the split that is the subject] stands in excess of the Other” (here referring to the Other as language) (46). The subject as the split, in other words—i.e. the Lacanian subject as a split subject, the subject as the split—even though, in the face of language, disappears—remains. More precisely, the subject as a split (as split between consciousness and the unconscious, the subject and the Other; either . . . or) is retained. The subject (even though a choice is always already made) is retained as a split.
This is the same thing that happens in the bar (in its first sense, i.e. as it functions as and/or). In that capacity, the bar presents two choices on opposite sides, and although both choices/meanings are unified by the bar (by virtue of both . . . and)—and although in reality only one side can be—is—chosen, i.e. the unconscious over consciousness, the Other over the subject—the difference between the two is retained. The subject is thus both overcome/overwritten by the Other (as language) and either (under the said conditions) totally disappears or remains (as a possibility (to become a subject), a potential, or even just a choice not (yet) made, a choice deferred for later (who knows when? who cares?)).
The subject’s remaining is not merely (endless) deferral, however. Somehow, through the conflict that ensues between the two sides of the bar, one side (the losing side: the ego, the subject), even as it loses, (through disappearing) penetrates the Other territory (the winning side, the triumphant victor). Fink gestures to this infiltrator (a spy! a sneak!) as an unconscious I. This I, Fink explains, is an I in unconscious thought (different from the I as ego in consciousness) paradoxically excluded from the (i.e. not properly considered) unconscious (46). (This is perhaps what makes possible the utterance of I (even though only to be negated) in the statement “I am not.”) This I, Fink claims, is the I of Freud’s wo Es war, soll Ich werden, namely the I that (psycho)analysis “aims to bring forth” (the goal of therapy, as it were) (46).
In contrast to the permanent unconscious (as a locus of a particular (part of language as a) signifying chain), this I—the unconscious subject, as it were, or, as Fink calls it, “the subject of the unconscious”—is not an “underlying substance or substratum,” but is fleeting, appearing only on propitious moments (which analysis thus targets) (46, 41). It functions (announced or made manifest by expressions such as the French ne and the English but, but also by jokes, slips of the tongue, bungled actions, dreams . . .) as a kind of breach (a breakout! a path-breaking (hence creating a new path)!) (Uh oh . . . it may get caught . . . But how else to communicate? What else to do to make its voice heard? How else to fight? . . .) in discourse to defy it (i.e. to defy language, the (established) Symbolic order) (39-41). The ne, the but, etc.—i.e. all these slips, these pulsations/interruptions/disruptions in which the subject is able temporarily to express itself, to emerge—it must be pointed out, are also signifiers, the very medium/weapons/chains of the (established) Symbolic order. (This perhaps intimates the fact that there really is no Other of the Other, i.e. no other way (to express oneself, including in opposition to, against the order) except (through, by the mediation/representation/use of) language, i.e. the (Symbolic) order itself).
Now, the goal of the breach is to make reemerge (even though only temporarily) the subject replaced/barred by the signifier (41). Thus, even as the subject is barred (by language) (in the second mathematical sense, i.e. prohibited, marked), at least (at certain moments, and even though only fleetingly, and even though by the very use of language, the very (Symbolic) order that prevents it to emerge in the first place, that represses/oppresses it) it is able to break out (to break the path and hence create new ones). Lacan stresses, however, contrary to Freud, that there is nothing conscious about this breach. Even the unconscious subject (even as it is referred to as an unconscious I) as a disruption (from the language/thinking in the unconscious) is divorced (as always!) from any conscious intention (42). In other words, even what goes against the grain in (language in) the unconscious is not conscious, is itself unconscious. Consciousness, argues Lacan, is in truth but rationalization after the fact (43).) Even then as the losing/disappearing subject is retained at the mercy of the incommensurate/indomitable/intimidating/overwhelming Other (i.e. language, the Symbolic order), Lacan is ambiguous (and perhaps does not care) as to whether, like the subject (in its conflict with the Other), consciousness (with its conflict with the unconscious) is retained, except after the fact (i.e. as rationalization).
The unconscious I—the subject of the unconscious “excluded at the level of unconscious thought”—through the breach, as Fink reads/translates it, amounts to the assumption/acceptance “of responsibility for that which interrupts, a taking it upon oneself,” a recognition that “one is always responsible for one’s position as subject” (even though it is in (the signifying chain of) language that the subject is positioned and language (through the words of others, by virtue of everything having to be mediated by language, by virtue of the world being structured by language, i.e. by virtue of there being language) that positions the subject there (in a particular position in the signifying network (of language)) (46, 47). The I in the unconscious (that analysis aims to bring forth, which is what allows for progress in the therapeutic process) is thus, in Fink’s words, “an I that assumes responsibility for the unconscious, that arises there in the unconscious linking up of thoughts which seems to take place all by itself, without the intervention of anything like a subject [which is why it is called unconscious thought]” (46).
If we follow Fink’s reading of Lacan, then, what is unconscious (the interplay of signifiers there), constituted and continuing (in its operation) without the intervention of the subject, is assumed—taken responsibility for—by the I that emerges: take responsibility in the sense of assuming whatever the unconscious does/causes as the subject’s own doing/causing; and accepting responsibility for it, i.e. owning up to the unconscious’ (acts/effects), whatever consequences it may have. What is Other (as unconscious, thanks to the workings of language), in other words, made as one’s—the subject’s—own. Constitution of the subject. Becoming-subject. Subjectification.
Since psychoanalysis wants this I to emerge, since, in fact, it targets it, aims for it to emerge (or at least to gain insight on it, even though only temporarily), it can be said that the task of psychoanalysis is to get the subject to assume/take/accept responsibility for the signifying operations at work in the unconscious—no matter what (i.e. language, the Symbolic) put them (which, it must be pointed out again, make up not all (i.e. the whole signifying chain) of language, but only certain parts of it, the repressed parts) there in the first place and regardless of the fact that these unconscious operations—which, after all, in psychoanalysis’ own term, are unconscious—are beyond (the knowledge, doing, and control of) the subject.
This, Fink claims, is the way in which the subject—formerly split—“is able to go ‘beyond’ or ‘overcome’ th[e] division,” the bar that at the same time divides him into two and bars his/her subjectivity (48). This is how the subject, in other words, overcomes (steps over (to the unconscious)? removes (the mark/branding of language)?)—separates itself from—the bar. Which, to Lacan (according to Fink), comprises the second step to the subject’s constitution. The constitution of the subject thus involves after “the condition of the possibility of the existence of the subject [through the split (i.e. alienation) . . .] the pulsation-like shift seeming to be its realization,” the process that Fink calls separation (because in this step the subject supposedly separates itself from the Other (as language))” (48).
There is a key difference between these two steps (which is what makes possible the second step). If in alienation, the Other that the subject submits to is language, in the second step, in separation, the Other that the subject confronts (which allows him/her to take responsibility of/for it) is desire (50).
In this move Lacan demonstrates not only the economy and potency but also the appropriateness of the concept of the Other. With one term/concept/signifier—the Other—Lacan is able to designate (ambiguously) both language and desire—with good reason. By virtue of the structuralism that he causes to explode in psychoanalysis (which he claims was already there, latent in the thought of Freud), Lacan connects language and desire by making the two (signifieds) implicit/complicit in/with each other, intertwining them in one signifier: the Other.
Lacan has already established this in an elementary way in his analysis of the (physical) birth of the subject and the mirror stage that follows it. As Lacan interprets it, the subject’s very presence in the world (i.e. his/her birth) is caused by desire (of his/her parents) culminating into the sexual act and which had to be articulated somehow through the use of words (i.e. through language) (50). Likewise, a person’s learning and using of language (i.e. his/her entrance into the Symbolic order) (specifically, his/her motivations for doing so) and, more importantly, the image s/he forms of him/herself (as in a mirror) (i.e. the ego) (by which s/he thinks of him/herself as a unified entity motivated/moved/driven to some purpose) is influenced/shaped by the desires of those around him/her—as articulated (again!) in language. Hence Lacan’s pronouncement: “The subject is caused by the Other’s desire,” with the Other referring to (signifying) both other people/subjects (especially the parents) and (the) language (in which their desire is articulated).
Thus we see how, in Fink’s paraphrase, language and desire “are clearly but warp and woof of the same fabric, language being ridden with desire and desire being inconceivable without language, being made of the very stuff of language” (50). The same mechanism is at work in the subject’s transition from alienation to separation. The reason that the subject is able—i.e. the means that enable the subject—to handle (deal with) what was language in the first step as desire in the second is the fact that language and desire are, in the first place, intertwined/implicit—translating—flowing over, as it were—into each other.
The precise meaning of taking responsibility of/for the Other is thus, in Fink’s words, “the attempt by the alienated subject to come to grips with that Other’s desire as it manifests itself in the subject’s world” (50). In other words, even though it is unconscious (the desire found in the unconscious (as space/realm) articulated by the interplay of the signifiers there)—i.e. not originated by the subject him/herself, whose shape and future is beyond the subject’s will/control—the subject, in the second step of separation, (at least according to Fink’s reading) learns to deal with this unconscious, external Other’s desire. To come to his aid, of course, is the psychoanalyst, whose task is to help the subject cope with this desire, make it possible for him/her to function/work with it. (It is, after all, an unconscious, Other desire. The difficulty of dealing with it thus necessitates a (paid!) professional/expert!)
In desire thus coming to the fore, Fink claims that “both the subject and the Other [as language] are excluded” (53). In contrast, then, to alienation’s either . . . or, Fink expresses separation as a neither . . . nor wherein “the subject’s being must come [. . .] from ‘outside,’ from something other than the subject and the Other, something that is neither exactly one nor the other” (53). Being comes from the outside because, as mentioned earlier, desire is the desire/s of other people/subjects. Though it must be pointed out to Fink that the Other as language itself comes from the outside.
What happens in the subject’s confrontation with (the situation/(non-)choice of) neither . . . nor—i.e. with the Other (as desire) (i.e. with other people’s/subject’s desire/s)—is, according to Fink, “a juxtaposition, overlapping, or coincidence of two lacks,” not in the sense of the lack/absence of lack, but to refer to the lack in/between the two subjects desiring. Citing the quintessential psychoanalytic example (i.e. the relationship between mother and child), Fink elaborates:
The mOther must show some sign of incompleteness, fallibility, or deficiency for separation to obtain and for the subject to come be as [the barred S]; in other words, the mOther must demonstrate that she is a desiring (and thus also a lacking and alienated) subject, that she too has submitted to the splitting/barring action of language, [for the subject to come/emerge] (54).
The claim is that with the revelation and juxtaposition of two such lacks (in this example, the lacks of the mother and the child), the lacks—the lacking subjects—“fill”—cause to be satisfied (knowing that the other is also lacking), match or fit together the lacks of, satisfy the lack/s of—each other.
In Fink’s words:
In separation we start from a barred Other, that is, a parent who is him or herself divided: who is not always aware (conscious) of what he or she wants (unconscious) and whose desire is ambiguous, contradictory, and in constant flux. The subject has [. . .] gained, via alienation , a foothold within that divided parent: the subject has lodged his or her lack of being (manqué-à-être) in that “place” where the Other was lacking. In separation, the subject attempts to fill the mOther’s lack—demonstrated by the various manifestations of her desire for something else—with his or her own lack of being, his or her not yet extant self of being. The subject tries to excavate, explore, align, and conjoin those two lacks, seeking out the precise boundaries of the Other’s lack in order to fill it with him or her self (54).
In other words, the subject tries to find/locate/delineate—figure out—the Other’s lack. This s/he does through (what else?) language, desire being articulated in it (i.e. via signifiers) (which to Lacan explains the child’s many and endless whys) (54). The subject thus tries to find traces in language to figure out “where [s/he] fit[s] in, what rank [s/he] hold[s], what importance [s/he] ha[s] to [others, especially the parents],” to “secure [him/herself] a place, to try to be the object of [the other’s, especially the mOther’s] desire—to occupy that between-the-lines ‘space’ where desire shows its face, words being used in the attempt to express desire, and yet ever failing to do so adequately” (54).
Thus the desire of the subject is (What??) the desire of the Other. As Lacan reiterates, “Le désir de l’homme, c’est le désir de l’Autre,” which Fink various translates as “Man’s desire is the Other’s desire,” “Man’s desire is the same as the Other’s desire” (i.e. the same object and in the same way), “Man desires what the Other desires,” and, we can add, “Man desires to be the Other’s desire” (54). These desires are of course structured in language, which in one way or another nonetheless fail to fully articulate/express/capture it.
There comes a point, however, when the subject realizes the (frustrated/unfulfillable/impossible) nature of this desire. Continuing the mother-child example, the child, at a point, realizes the (dis)illusion(ment) of the mother-child unity, i.e. realizes that the mother cannot focus full attention on the child and that the child is not—cannot be—all that the mother desires. That the mother and the child, in other words, cannot (fully) fulfill each other’s desires (desire being mobile—and many other things) (50). As Fink puts it, “There is something about [the mother’s] desire which escapes the child, which is beyond its control. A strict identity between the child’s desire and [the mother’s] cannot be maintained; her desire’s independence from her child’s creates a rift between them, a gap in which her desire, unfathomable to the child, functions in a unique way” (59).
It is this desire—unconscious, external, Other—that the subject, in the second step of separation (with the help of the psychoanalyst)—seeing as it is frustrated/unfullfillable/impossible—copes, comes to terms, with, which, Fink claims, often “leads to an expulsion of the subject from the position of wanting-to-be and yet failing-to-be the Other’s sole object of desire” (51). In separation, thus, the subject realizes and at the same time stops desiring (for the Other) to be the One, the only, and all. Thus the subject separates from the Other (both as language and as desire) and takes responsibility (for desire).
