The Lacanian Subject (according to Fink): The Barred S: Alienation

Posted: 13 June 2008 by Ryan/Aless in État, Bandwagon, Bar, Désirant, Lack N(Existing)t, Languaged, Mirror, Ontologist, Operations, Subject

Bruce Fink presents in The Lacanian Subject his interpretation of Jacques Lacan’s theory of subjectivity. In contrast to the ego (in its many
guises: the individual, the conscious subject, the mirror image, the subject of the statement), Fink states that Lacan’s subject—the subject of the
“return to Freud,” the true subject of psychoanalysis—is none other than the split subject: the barred S (symbolized by an S marked by a slash—a
character unfortunately untypeable).

The Lacanian subject is barred in two senses (i.e. the barred S signifies two things). First, the bar—literally—splits the S, divides it into two
(parts/aspects). We can imagine the S literally being split apart, its two parts and/or aspects detaching, going their separate—opposite—ways,
diverging in their irreconcilability, never meeting. The bar functions here as and/or. The elements split by the bar convey exclusive meanings,
only one of which can be taken at a time. Either “the S is divided into two parts” or “the S is divided into two aspects.” One side of the bar—an
exclusive choice—must be chosen. Thus the subject—S—is split into two (parts/aspects), only one (path) of which can/must be chosen/followed.
This is how the bar, in the capacity of (i.e. as) and/or, functions as an (is translatable into) or.

And/or expressions (in this case, the part/aspect), of course, also provide an economical way to express/signify that the (two) options on both
sides of the bar—i.e. both “part” and “aspect”—are applicable to the (one) statement. Both (exclusive) choices, in other words, confer sense on
the (same) statement. Thus, even as the S is split (signified by the bar), the two parts/aspects are collected in the same S (signified by the barred
S). This is how the bar, in the capacity of (i.e. as) and/or, functions as (is translatable into) and.

Despite this capture (into one statement/subject), however, the exclusive choice—the difference, the irreconcilability—is retained. The meaning
(of the statement/subject), by virtue of the bar (in the either . . . or sense), depending on which option is taken, differs—even as both meanings
are (via the bar’s both . . . and sense) retained/applied. Hence the (same) statement means two (different) things. The (one) subject has (two)
parts/aspects. Thus the Lacanian subject—the barred S—constitutes one subject that has two sides, irreconcilable in its/their difference but
nonetheless unified.

The two parts/aspects into which the S (the subject) is split are consciousness and the unconscious. Superficially, we can say that the subject is
divided between thinking—where the subject functions as a conscious agent (an ego) (as when s/he performs a task alertly)—and the unthinkable
—that which is beyond the subject, that which s/he cannot think (in the sense of conceive, reflect, understand, articulate, and thus control)
consciously (if anything, the subject is driven by it). Contrary to this, however, Lacan insists that there is thought in the unconscious, that the
unconscious, as it were, thinks (for the subject). Thinking, Lacan argues, is not the exclusive activity of consciousness. There is thinking that is
not conscious. There is unconscious thought. The split is thus not between thinking and the unconscious.

The split, Fink argues, is really between “I am not thinking” and “I am not” (45). “I am not thinking,” Fink asserts, (counterintuitively and
contrary to above) refers to consciousness (conscious thought)—what, for Lacan, results to a false sense of self, the ego. The ego supposedly
constituted by conscious processes (that the resulting ego then retains as an inherent ability (hence the implied assumption that the ego thinks
consciously)), in Lacan’s ontology, is but constituted through a mirror image that originates not from the conscious self but from the Other. In
what can be referred to as an extended mirror image mechanism (with the Other as mirror), the ego is an image determined/read by others (i.e.
other people), libidinally invested through words—i.e. through the use of language, the Other—that is then conveyed back to the subject (also in
words) (as others tell the subject what/who s/he is), constituting the active unity that the subject comes to think s/he is (the ego) (36).

Following Lacan, the ego is thus but an image, something imaginary—determined/constituted by the Other (i.e. other people and the Other as
language) and not actively nor by itself. Contrary to the dominant assumption, then, active agency and the self are involved in subjectivity (if at
all) only belatedly, taking place after the fact, after the subject has already been constituted. The subject, unlike what the notion of the ego
suggests (and despite its pretensions), thus has nothing to do (much less actively, consciously) with its own constitution. Rather, it is but a result,
a thing constituted.

Thus the ego, argues Lacan, amounts to a false being. It is a false sure sense of self—false in its sureness, false in its presumptive
consciousness/activeness/agency, false in its self—all around just a faulty constitution. Hence consciousness, true to Fink’s designation, is “I am
not thinking”—because the subject it supposedly constitutes (the ego) is false and because thinking that consciousness constitutes it (or anything,
for that matter) is, to put it simply, false thinking: “not thinking.” Thus, consciousness—because it does not originate, because the ego only
arrives/emerges later (and with no thanks to consciousness)—while leading to (a sense of) being, an (ability to say) “I am”—constitutes being
(says “I am”) falsely. Consciousness does not really constitute being but merely assumes (after the fact, as a sort of defense mechanism, a
rationalization) a presumptive ego—an entity that is false to begin with: a false being. Thus the first side of the bar—“I am not thinking”—
although there, although part of the subject—is false. It is not really a choice and it cannot be chosen.

“I am not,” on the other hand (more precisely, on the other side of the bar), rather than (consciously) constituting being, “pay[s] attention to the
thoughts unfolding in the unconscious” (since, as established, there is thinking there). Fink renders these unconscious thoughts equivalent to “the
automatic functioning of language (the signifying chain)” that supposedly constitutes the unconscious (i.e. what the unconscious (as a realm, a
space) is made of) (45). Choosing/following the unconscious thus involves giving due attention to—letting free, as it were—the signifying
operations at work there. In this way, the unconscious is the true agent—or, at least, the true agent is in the unconscious (37). That is to say, the
signifiers in the unconscious (i.e. language, the Symbolic) are what constitute the subject (37).

Thinking in the unconscious renders irrelevant/unimportant any sort of constitution of the self (as a being (much less an active, conscious one, i.e.
an ego)). Hence, “I am not.” Unlike in the first preliminary formulation, however, this utterance (“I am not”) is caused not by the
inability/impossibility to think but is on the contrary the direct implication/effect of thinking, which, Lacan argues, is (at its truest) unconscious.
Thus in the same stroke Lacan is able to render thinking unconscious (or is at least able to legitimate the thinking that goes on in the unconscious
(i.e. the undeterminable interplay of language there)) and (the conscious constitution of) being (as an ego) false.

This is the first sense of the barred S, the sense in which the subject is split. Fink elaborates that “a speaking being’s two ‘parts’ or avatars share
no common ground: they are radically separated (the ego or false being requiring a refusal of unconscious thoughts, unconscious thought having
no concern whatsoever for the ego’s fine opinion of itself)” (45). This is the sense in which the two parts/aspects are mutually exclusive since the
consciously determining (consciously being, as it were) ego (at least in its presumption) is contradictory with unconscious thought that constitutes
the subject, and vice versa. Thus emerges, in Fink’s metaphor, “a surface [. . .] with two sides: one that is exposed and one that is hidden, [. . .] a
front and a back, a visible face and an invisible one” (45).

True to the other nature of the bar, however (i.e. that which collects the exclusive/different two into one), for Lacan (as Fink reads it), this split,
this double-sidedness, is the subject. As Fink says, “The [Lacanian] subject is nothing but this very split” (45). There is, as it were, no subject
other than the split. Thus, the Lacanian subject is but that: a subject with two parts/aspects: consciousness/ego and the unconscious. Putting it in
terms of the Other, Fink writes that the subject is “nothing [. . .] but a split between two forms of otherness—the ego as other and the unconscious
as the Other’s discourse” (46). The Lacanian subject is thus but the (one) subject split (into two): the barred S.

There is a second sense to the barred S, however, the barring of the subject, properly speaking. The momentous split in/of the subject, Fink
explicates, “is a product of the functioning of language [. . . taking place as people] first begin to speak” (45). Language (the Symbolic), in other
words, (as in other phenomena in Lacan’s ontology) is what causes the splitting of the subject, what causes the split that, as established above,
constitutes the subject. (Fink associates the splitting of the subject with what he calls the “splitting of the I,” I being a term/placeholder that
variously refers to the ego, a shifter, or the subject, depending on the context. (45)) In short: Language splits (constituting the subject) (as it does,
it seems, everything else (that enters the Symbolic order)).

On top of this, the two parts/aspects (the “two sides”) that result from the splitting are, in Fink’s description, “not ultimately [. . .] made of
radically different material” (45). In fact, as Fink asserts, they are made of the same material, “linguistic in nature” (45). True enough, it is words
(more precisely, signifiers) (of others) that unify the mirror image into an ego and (likewise) signifiers that compose unconscious thought.

Language is thus encountered whichever side of the bar is chosen. Both sides of the bar are composed of language (which, it must be
remembered, is an Other). Both sides of the bar are constituted by language. This in addition to the fact that it is language that (as people begin to
speak) causes the process of splitting that creates the two sides—on top of the fact, in other words, that language is what puts the bar on the S—
what bars the S—in the first place. Language (its learning/speaking) as the cause that splits the subject; the result (the two parts/aspects into
which the subject is divided into) of the split/bar as (also!) language (i.e. signifiers).

Thus, no agent other than language constitutes the subject. The subject so constituted, likewise, is constituted as (a subject of) language. This,
then, is the second sense of the bar: the bar not as in and/or expressions, but the bar (symbolized by the slash) of mathematical operations (as in
the multiplication of fractions) that indicates cancellation, marking. The subject does not—cannot—constitute him/herself—s/he is barred from
doing that (hence s/he is barred: barred S). When s/he is able to do so, it is only to be marked by language (with a bar: barred S). Language (the
Symbolic) (the Word), as it were, does not constitute the subject—except by it and in its own image. Thus the subject is constituted—determined,
defined, constricted—by language. Whatever else the subject may/could have been is barred and (at the same time) the subject is marked as a
subject of language. The Lacanian subject, then, is not only barred in the sense of split, but, moreover, barred in the sense of disallowed (to be),
prohibited (from becoming), and marked (as something else (than itself): i.e. as the subject of language). The Lacanian subject as doubly barred.
Truly a barred S.

Fink relates this barring of the subject (in the second sense) with Lacan’s notion of the subject as manqué-à-être (the subject as lack of (or lacking
in) being). Fink explains the phenomenon:

The subject fails to come forth as a someone, as a particular being; in the most radical sense, he or she is not, he or she has no being. The subject
exists, insofar as the word has wrought him or her from nothingness, and he or she can be spoken of, talked about, and discoursed upon—yet
remains beingless (52).

The inherent contradiction, in other words, between being and language leads to a being/subject of language. As the subject desires to be—a
process that (by virtue of how the world is/works, as Lacan sees it) can be accomplished only by entering the Symbolic (the realm of language),
the very realm that cancels (Real) being—the subject becomes a being only through (merely as) language. The subject thus becomes only to the
extent that s/he is signifiable, i.e. only to the extent that s/he is expressed by/in signifiers—and only in the signifiers allowed by the (established)
Symbolic order.

The barring of the subject (this time, both the splitting and the barring proper) is referred to by Fink as alienation, roughly equivalent to the
Real’s entrance into the Symbolic. As with the bar, there is a second sense to the splitting. As the subject is split between consciousness and the
unconscious, there is a second—in fact more fundamental—split: namely, that between the subject and the Other (as language). There is thus
another exclusive either . . . or choice, this time between “either the subject or the Other/language.”
The choice, however, (as with the first, i.e. that between consciousness and the unconsciousness) has (always already) been made. The subject,
Fink explains, is from the beginning “assigned the losing position” (51). Upon “confrontation with the Other,” Fink continues, “the subject
immediately drops out of the picture” (51). The necessary first step “in acceding to subjectivity [. . . thus] involves choosing ‘one’s own’
disappearance” (51). Again, (this time through alienation) a barred subject—this time, with emphasis on the second sense, i.e. on language
barring (prohibiting, marking) the subject. The subject cannot challenge the (Symbolic) order. The subject—with no choice in it—is to be marked
—in the process making him/her disappear—by language. Thus, as Fink/Lacan says, “Prior to the onset of alienation, there was not the slightest
question of being: ‘it’s the subject himself who is not there to begin with’” (52) (my emphasis).

Even as it leads to his/her disappearance, however, alienation does provide the subject something (hence making it a first step to subjectivity): a
potential. Fink explains:

Alienation gives rise to a pure possibility of being, a place where one might expect to find a subject, but which nevertheless remains empty.
Alienation engenders, in a sense, a place in which it is clear that there is, as of yet, no subject: a place where something is conspicuously lacking.
The subject’s first guise is this very lack (52).

In other words, by virtue of the subject not being there and by virtue of alienation pointing it out—pointing to it—the first step towards
subjectivity is paved. Thus is lack (as psychoanalysis likes to assert) “the first step beyond nothingness” (as desire calls attention to it, desires that
something be in it?) (52). Thus even as the subject is empty, it is implied that the subject “has some sort of existence above and beyond its being
full or empty” (52). Thus from manqué-à-être, the subject becomes (merely) manqué à sa place, i.e. a subject “out of place [in the sense of] not
where it should be or usually is; in other words, something [. . .] missing” from what is, it must be remembered (and this Lacan does not question,
this Fink complies with), a symbolic structure, i.e. the signifying chain (i.e. language, the Symbolic order) (52).

Fink elaborates:

Alienation represents the instituting of the [S]ymbolic order—which must be realized anew for each new subject—and the subject’s assignation
of a place therein. A place he or she does not “hold” as of yet, but a place designated for him or her, and for him or her alone. [. . .] The subject’s
being is eclipsed by language, [. . . s/he] slips under or behind the signifier, [barring him/her. However, this is only] because the subject is
completely submerged by language, his or her only trace being a place-marker or place-holder in the [S]ymbolic order. [. . . This is because] the
signifier is what founds the subject; the signifier is what wields ontic clout, wresting existence from the real that it marks and annuls. What it
forges is, however, in no sense substantial or material (52).

In the very submission/submersion to language (the Symbolic), Fink claims, lies the very possibility for assigning/finding a place for the subject,
making possible his/her becoming a subject in the first place. In other words (as articulated above): the Lacanian subject as the barred S—i.e.
barred by language—except when—so as to be—constituted by/in language.