Friday, October 27, 2006

Sense and Reference

There can be no doubt that one of the key terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis is that of the phallus. It is not often clear, however, how we are to approach this term in its structural functionality. In his 18th seminar, Lacan clarifies one possible approach through a remark on the German title of his 1958 essay, 'The Signification of the Phallus':

"I insist that 'Die Bedeutung des Phallus' is in reality a pleonasm. In language, there is no other Bedeutung than that of the phallus" (1971/06/09).

'Bedeutung' means reference. I suggest here that this category should be treated in as technical a manner as possible, in the tradition of Frege's distinction between sense and reference. This initial analysis can take us a long way, and I want to affirm it as one starting point.

Jacques-Alain Miller ('The Symptom: Knowledge, Meaning and the Real') has already taken such an approach, associating sense with the matheme S2 whereas reference is tied to the matheme S1 (the master-signifier, homologous to the phallic signifier):



For now, I will only go as far to say that this framework gives us a great deal to work with, particularly since these two terms are manipulable through the permutations of the four discourses. The possibility of a rigourous logical analysis of the Lacanian orientation is at hand, informed by a logical analysis of language.

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