Hegel Ko Je Vela Can

7/31/2019 Hegel Ko Je Vela Can

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HEGEL, KOJVE AND LACAN - THEMETAMORPHOSES OF DIALECTICS - PART II:HEGEL AND LACAN

Radostin Kaloianov

1. THE POINT OF CONTACT BETWEEN HEGEL AND LACAN: THEDIALECTICAL DYNAMICS OFTHE SUBJECT.

*"(...) the letter killeth while the spirit giveth life" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 158)

** I think that in saying Lacan against Hegel, you are much closer to thetruth (...)"(Lacan, 1977b, p. 215)

It would be incorrect to speak about a point of contact between Hegel andLacan. One would in vain look after such a point. Its absence can beexplained only by the presence of a mediating interpretation. AlexandreKojve transmits to Lacan, in a considerably modified form, Hegel's viewson dialectics in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The result of this transmission

is that it institutes the notion of negativity as differentia specifica of Hegel'sdialectic. It equates negativity with its manifestations in man. It reduces theHegelian dialectic to the phenomena of desire, struggle, labor, speech anddeath. Kojve's lectures imply that the only dialectical formation in Hegel'sphilosophy and particularly in his Phenomenology of Spirit is the humansubject ("a nothingness that 'nihilates' in being"). This "anthropological"presumption is the guideline of the Kojvian interpretation of Hegel, andbecomes easily adoptable in various human sciences and philosophicaltraditions: sociology, psychoanalysis, marxism, existentialism.

It can be hardly surprising, then, that Jacques Lacan readily applies some ofthe results of this "anthropological" and negativistic interpretation of Hegel.Lacan qualifies as dialectical all acts and relations in the psychoanalyticfield, which are or simply resemble those modes of human negativitypostulated by Kojve. The desire for recognition, the struggle for prestige,the master-slave relationship, speech and death are the elements of Lacan'sdialectical code. These help him ascertain and clarify the meaning of almostall major concepts concerning the subject matter of his psychoanalysis: the


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mirror-stage, the Imaginary, the Symbolic, the Oedipus complex, theformation and the manifestation of the unconscious, the psychoanalyticaltreatment, etc..1 It turns out that the Kojvian modes of human negativityexhaust the whole register of negations inherent to the subject of Lacan'spsychoanalysis. There is an essential difference between Kojve and

Lacan. Lacan does not refer to man as a historical being. He studies manas a mental entity, the elements of which exist and relate to one anotherpredominantly in synchrony. These elements and the negations whichconstitute them do not belong to reality, as they do for Kojve, but to theorder of images and symbols, which is of interest for Lacan. Lacan does notemploy literally the Hegelian figures of negativity but readapts them to thefield of psychoanalysis.

There is even a more profound difference between the Kojvianinterpretation of Hegel and its use by Lacan. Negation and negativity are the

characteristics ofdialectics. Negation, according to Kojve, is the splitting ofa certain unity - the unity of the self or the unity of its world. This breakingapart has a positive outcome for Kojve. It leads immediately to a highersynthesis of the separated elements. So, when Kojve defines man, thehuman subject as "a nothingness that 'nihilates' in being", he emphasizesman's nature as an "act", he suggests man's openness to future positings,he implies man's ability to create himself in the future other than he is in thepresent. Though in a downgrade position the positive aspects of Hegel'sdialectic are still at hand in Kojve's interpretation.

Lacan, however, performs a radical reversal in respect to the subject of thisnegative dialectic.

"Indeed, Kojve proposed a humanist and anthropological interpretation ofHegel in his course, and that was how he ended up stumbling onto theproblem of death and finitude, dragging his most eminent listeners into asort of strange Hegelianism of pure negativity, which rather quickly swervedinto a virulent anti-Hegelianism (and antihumanism)" (Jacobsen, 1991, p.12).

We have to correct slightly this remark. The Lacanian reversal is anti-humanist but not anti-Hegelian. It is rather anti-Kojvian, for it is Kojve whorelated the dialectic of negativity to man, and it is Lacan who transgressesits only limit - the finitude of man. While the dialectic of negativity for Kojve


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manifests Man's freedom, individuality and historicity, the "same" dialecticfor Lacan annihilates man, suspends his identity and the very possibility forhim to have an identity. Lacan pulls the moderately negative dialectic ofKojve down to its limit. Lacan not only describes various psychoanalyticalproblems in terms of the Kojvian modes of functional negativity (as desire

for recognition, struggle, labor, speech and death), he also promotes asubstantive negativity, which can be better expressed by the term"nothingness" (but not the Kojvian "nothingness", which designatesmetaphorically that the human subject is always something more than itsobjectifications). Lacan eliminates the human subject as the only positivereality in the dialectic of negativity. He defines the subject as a void, as anempty space which is supposed to be filled in by the signifiers of thesignifying chain.2

We can not say that Lacan's anti-humanist reformulation of Hegel's dialectic

is a direct consequence of its humanist interpretation by Kojve. There arealso other influences on Lacan alongside Kojve's: linguistics and structuralanthropology. The immediate effect of Kojve's negativistic interpretation ofHegel is that it suggests the primacy of the function over the elements it actsupon. Since the functional has a priority, and since this functional aspect ismanifested in the modes of negativity, it is hardly surprising that Lacanfocuses his attention on the hollow space, on the gap between the elementssplit up by a negation. That is how the Kojvian reinterpretation of Hegelcontributes to the Lacanian conception of the subject as a void, as a "Beingof non-being" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 300), which perfectly accords with the

analogous effects of linguistics and structural anthropology.

Lacan's conception of the subject is polyvalent, yet we can distinguish twodominant meanings of the term "subject". A subject, in the widest meaningof the term, is the subject of desire. A subject, in the narrowest meaning ofthe term, is the subject of speech. The subject of speech: "is defined as theeffect of the signifier" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 207). The effect of the signifier isexercised by "the function of the cut" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 206).Correspondingly,

"(...) from the fact of being born with the signifier, the subject is born divided.The subject is this emergence which, just before, as subject, was nothing,but which, having scarcely appeared, solidifies into a signifier" (Lacan,1977b, p. 199).

The subject of desire is also a lacunary formation: "The self (...) of desire is


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not identical to himself. He is now 'something other' than himself. He isnothing or dead" (Jacobsen, 1991, p. 90). In other words the subject ofdesire is a lack, a void, which is filled in by various images or signifiers, butwhich can never be completely overcome. In fact, the image or the signifieronly sharpens the division of the subject. Consequently it is justified for

Lacan to conclude that:

"The subject is an apparatus. This apparatus is something lacunary, and it isin the lacuna that the subject establishes the function of a certain object, qualost object" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 185). 3

Thus, it is quite obvious that the five modes of negativity, recognized by

Kojve as the principles of historical dialectics, extend their function inLacan's psychoanalysis to being the principles of the divisions or thesplittings, constitutive of the subject as a void. Lacan himself admits:

"(...) in the term subject (...) I am not designating the living substratumneeded by this phenomenon of the subject, nor any sort of substance (...)nor even some incarnated logos, but the Cartesian subject, who appears atthe moment when doubt is recognized as certainty except that, through myapproach, the bases of this subject prove to be wider but, at the same time

much more amenable to the certainty that eludes it" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 126).

Lacan's conception of the subject, however, does not reside peacefully inthe Cartesian tradition but rather, being an analytical conception, carries thistradition and the conception of the subject it gives birth to, to its very limit - tothe emptiness of the subject.

"When carried to the limit, the process of this meditation, of this reflectingreflection, goes so far as to reduce the subject apprehended by theCartesian meditation to a power of annihilation" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 81).

It is precisely this limit, which Lacan unhesitatingly transgresses, for he doesnot belong to the Cartesian tradition any more (unlike Kojve). It is this limit


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which is the point of contact and at the same time the point of separationbetween Lacan and Hegel (and Kojve). Such a limit is the negativity of thesubject, which Lacan inflates into the nothingness of the subject. Torecapitulate, the Lacanian reversal of Hegel's dialectic consists not only inthe overestimation of the aspects of negativity and forcefulness in it, but

mainly in the introduction of something quite new and non-Hegelian. Thefigures of dialectics in Lacan's psychoanalytical theory, do not have asynthetic and creative outcome, but rather result in an irrevocabledisjunction and splitting of what they represent. The Lacanian reformulationof "the fundamental identity of the particular and the universal" in Hegel'sphilosophy, postulates that:

"(...) it is certainly psychoanalysis that provides it with its paradigm byrevealing the structure in which that identity is realized as disjunctive of thesubject" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 80). 4

Negativity, forcefulness and above all disjunctivity (the emptiness of thesubject) are the indices of (the Hegelian) dialectic. And that is already aparadox (certainly not the only one in Lacan): something non-(or evenanti-) Hegelian becomes an index of what is properly Hegelian.

2. THE DIALECTICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE SUBJECT'S EXPERIENCE.

2.1 The dialectic of identification.We have to note that identification and the desire for recognition have anindisputable priority over possession, over need and the demand for loverelated to it, with regard to their significance for the formation of the subject.The central articulation of the subject is based on the vector of identification.Lacan describes the main units of that articulation: the Real, the Imaginary,and the Symbolic, predominantly in terms of identification, though neverentirely excluding the aspects of possession linked to these forms ofindividual existence. This is why we choose to present the dialectic of the

Imaginary and the Symbolic (and also of all the subsequent phenomenaLacan deals with) with regard to their identificatory dimensions.

2.1.1 The dialectic of the imaginary identification.The most essential trait of the imaginary identification is best expressed bythe Hegelian term - immediacy. This seems to be the most general featureof all the processes and relationships taking place at the level of the


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Imaginary. There is still no order, no limitations, no reliable defenses, noprotective resistances, there is not any complicated network of repressions.The immediacy of the Imaginary is partly due to its specific "medium", whichis the gaze. The gaze, according to Lacan (and M. B.-Jackobsen), is theperfect "conductor" of desire, because it does not have any resistance, and

because it can satisfy desire as quickly as possible (through an imaginativeobjectification). The gaze can see imaginatively what the ego desires. Thegaze can play incessantly (and as Lacan assumes it plays at battle) with theimagos it generates. The gaze also separates the desire from its object (apole of identification), thus introducing a gap, a hollow space in the subjectand between the subject and the external world.

The other main aspect of the imaginary identification concerns its dynamics,a dynamics sustained by desire, which on its turn is interpreted in a Kojvianmanner.

"So when we want to attain in the subject what was before the serialarticulations of speech, and what is primordial to the birth of the symbols, wefind it in death, from which his existence takes on all the meaning it has. It isin effect as a desire for death that he affirms himself for others; if heidentifies himself with the other, it is by fixing him solidly in themetamorphoses of his essential image, and no being is ever evoked by himexcept among the shadows of death" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 105).

This fragment presents the Imaginary as a fight of death and life, as a pureand direct discharge of the libido, the imaginary or specular immediacy ofwhich introduces the impossibility of its satisfaction. This already brings uscloser to the circularity and the dialectic of the Imaginary. Lacan insistentlyrecognizes in this dialectic the Hegelian struggle for recognition and itsKojvian reinterpretation. Lacan even elucidates the distinction between theImaginary and the Symbolic by means of two of the figures of Hegel'sPhenomenology:

"But for this desire to be satisfied in man requires that it be recognized,through the agreement in speech or through the struggle for prestige, in thesymbol or in the imaginary" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 68).

For the time being we will leave aside "this desire", which in fact is the desirefor recognition. The only thing we will have to bear in mind is that this


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Hegelian reinterpretation of the sexual desire which already presupposesthe anteriority of the Symbolic, serves as an axis of the psychic developmentof the subject, either supporting its continuity or disrupting it. Thus the"struggle for prestige" (this is a strictly Kojvian formulation) seems to be thesole representative of what Lacan sometimes ambiguously defines as a pre-

Oedipal, pre-genital, imaginary or specular dialectic. The two basicimaginary constellations: the mirror-stage, which runs along the vector ofidentification, and the child-mother relationship, which represents the vectorof possession, are also interpreted with view to the struggle for recognition.We can exemplify this Hegelian-Kojvian matrix of Lacan's conception of theImaginary by focusing our attention on its most clear and distinct version -the mirror-stage.

The mirror-stage is the earliest and, therefore, a determinative manifestationof the desire for recognition 5. The mirror-stage is an episode in the

development of the child and does not cover the whole field of theImaginary, which Lacan also refers to as co-existent to the Symbolic. Themirror-stage provides the matrix of all subsequent imaginary identificationsand represents their dialectical dynamics in its purest form.

"We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification (...)", thatis as "(...) the transformation that takes place in the subject when heassumes an image(...)" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 2).

This statement informs us that Lacan thinks of the mirror-stagepredominantly in terms of identification and that he also regardsidentification not as an innocent or harmless imitation of an other, but that hetreats it as the process which forms the subject and which imprints its own"logic" on the subject. On the other hand, the results of the mirror-stage

justify completely the Kojvian formula, that man's desire is a desire for thedesire of the other. Human desire may be satisfied, according to Kojve andLacan, only if man (or the object of his desire) is desired (and is therefore

recognized as desirable) by the desire of another. The mirror-stage is thebirth-place of desire, in so far as it reduplicates desire (not only the ego butthe other is also a desiring agent) and points to its real but unattainableobject (the desire of the imaginary other).

As a first manifestation of the struggle for recognition the mirror-stage evenrepresents for Lacan "an ontological structure of the human world that


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accords with" his reflections "on paranoiac knowledge" (Lacan, 1997a, p. 2).As a pattern of such a primitive ontology, the mirror-stage generates astructure, a micro-universe inhabited by paranoiac agents connected ordisconnected through aggressivity or other manifestations of destructiveforce. These agents are the ego and its mirror doubles.

The mirror-stage identification is usually associated with the child's jubilationat his image in the mirror. Lacan relates the jubilation of the child to thecompleteness of its mirror image. "The mirror stage is a drama whoseinternal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation." (Lacan,1977a, p. 4). The completeness of the image compensates for the "realspecific prematurity of birth in man" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 4). The mirrortransforms the immaturity (which is experienced) into a maturity (which isseen), it reshapes the infantile insufficiency into an imagined self-sufficiencyof the ego, it ascends the perception of a fragmented body to the vision of a

whole body. The mirror has a magic function, it makes real the unreal, itenforces a sudden transfiguration. The precipitation provided by the mirrorhas a dialectical function, it negates what the child really is and constructsan imagined reality, which captures the ego and makes it believe that it (theego) is there (in the mirror). It institutes a gap between the imagined and thereal (the real here is not the Lacanian Real). It offers a recognition whichappears to be a miscognition. The mirror image of the child identifies andalienates the child. This simultaneity of identification and alienationconstitutes the prominent dialectical "impasse" of the Imaginary. Themirrored ego is simultaneously itself and someone else. "Thus, this Gestalt

(...) symbolizes the mental permanence of the I, at the same time as itprefigures its alienating destination" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 2). The mirrorintroduces identificatory discord, which in fact intensifies the struggle forrecognition.

There is also another aspect of the mirror spectacle which relates it to thestruggle for recognition. The child jubilates at its reflected image alsobecause it has been recognized by the other whom it sees in the mirror. Thisother is the miscognized ego (moi). The specificity of this other is that he

jubilates while looking at the child. The reflected jubilation of the child is a

proof of its recognition by the other. Thus the actual self-recognition isimagined to be a recognition by an other. This primal mirror experienceshapes the circular structure of the imaginary identification: the more jubilantis the child, the more jubilant becomes the one (the mirrored ego, the"other") whose recognition makes the child so jubilant.

The mirror experience of child arouses and sharpens its desire for recognition. This


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initial identificatory drama forms the anticipations of the child in respect to all

possible imagined others. The mirror-stage identification results in a very

complicated constellation of self-referential and external relations of the subject,

whose entire coming-into-being is thought of in terms of the dialectic of the struggle

for recognition. The ego can never imagine itself without the presence of the other,

and without his recognition. On the other hand, the other comes-into-existence 6 only as an imaginary construct of the ego, only in so far as theego's want-to-be allows him to be. The ego desires the desire of the other, itexpects to be desired by his desire, it substitutes its own desire by theimagined desire of the imagined other. Consequently, it miscognizes itselfas an other and can never achieve what it expects. Since an imagined othercan not have any desire at all, the desire for his desire is in vain. It cannever be satisfied.

The inappeasability of the desire for recognition is the last important aspect

of the mirror-stage identification seen as a struggle for recognition. M.Borch-Jacobsen comments on this imaginary impasse of the mirror-stage:

"If desire must be 'satisfied' [that is recognized] (...) it would not be throughany recognition in a mirror (...) Simply because the desire to be recognized(...) is not any longer, for Lacan, a desire to be oneself. The 'self' (...) ofdesire is not identical to himself. He is now 'something other' than himself.He is nothing, or dead." (Jacobsen, 1991, p.90).

These statements outline the missing element of the imaginary circle. Thesatisfaction of the desire for recognition is impossible not only because theimagined other does not have any autonomous desire, that is does notdesire by himself, but also because he does not have anything to desire orto recognize. The ego (moi) is not an object, is not completely objectifiableor recognizable, for it is above all the desire for recognition. The latter urgesit to objectify, to alienate itself incessantly, to try to escape itself. The more ittries to find recognition, the more it desires to be recognized, the more

impossible it is to be recognized as desire, which is "nothing", which is notanything. A false way out of this identificatory circle is the rivalry betweenthe ego and its imagined other mediated by some object. If the other desireswhat the ego desires then the latter's desire becomes desirable.

Lacan analyzes the mirror-stage and the imaginary identification with analter ego, with view to the dialectic of the Hegelian struggle for recognition.


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This already implies that the Imaginary does not precede the Symbolic, butis rather determined latently by it. "In other words the pact is everywhereanterior to the violence before perpetuating it, and what I call the symbolicdominates the imaginary" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 308). The stakes of theimaginary struggle for recognition are "mastery" or "slavery" - the

paradigmatic roles of the symbolic order. "The imaginary gains its falsereality (...) starting off from the order defined by the wall of language"(Lacan, 1988, p. 244). Indeed, Lacan very often presents various imaginaryconstellations in terms of the dialectic of master and slave, the imaginaryembodiments of which, however, do not constitute an order, but ratherappear and disappear in the vicious circle of the Imaginary. The solefunctional master-slave relation within the Imaginary (including the mirror-stage), is the relation to the Absolute Master (Death). Jacobsen promotesthis reinterpretation of the imaginary identification. According to him, thenumerous metamorphoses of the image of the other can be viewed as

attempts at selfobjectification and self-recognition of the ego; a process inwhich the ego tries to escape or to cover up the nothingness of its desire.The imaginary ego mediates its relation to itself as nothingness (as puredrive or desire) by the creation of imaginary others, whom it expects torecognize it (the ego) as something. Thus the imaginary ego works (in orderto please) for its invisible master (Death). It remains, however, disputablewhether it is justified to equate Death (as an Absolute Master) to thenothingness of desire. This basic assumption of Jacobsen could be criticizedin another context.

2.1.2 The dialectic of the symbolic identification.

Now we focus our attention on the Oedipal stage. This stage provides thematrix of the subject's symbolic existence, predetermines his symbolicinterrelations with the others and finally constitutes the subject as a subjectof speech, and the analytic treatment.

Lacan insistently characterizes the Oedipus complex as a dialecticalformation. The Oedipal dialectic, however, is not the dialectic of the strugglefor recognition. Lacan thinks of it in terms of the Hegelian dialectic of the

master and the slave. We have to make it clear that the Oedipal stage doesnot suspend the imaginary identifications of the ego. It, rather, rearrangesthe imaginary constellation of identifications. It reorders the main elementsof the Imaginary: the ego, the alterego, the Father, the Mother and death. Itrestructures the Imaginary, and, as Lacan suggests, it does this inaccordance with the Hegelian (and Kojvian) dialectical pattern - the master-slave dialectic. Finally, the Oedipal stage creates an order, or better to say it


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reproduces an order, introducing the subject into it, and imprinting this orderon the subject (the testimony and the source of this process is the subject'sspeech). Lacan's reflections on the Oedipal stage illustrate better thananything else the relevance of Jacobsen's qualification of Lacan's theory: "a'Freudian' rereading of Hegel" (Jacobsen, 1991, p. 29). 7

First of all, we have to bear in mind that the Oedipal identification is atransition from an imaginary to a symbolic identification: " (...) the Oedipalidentification is that by which the subject transcends the aggressivity that isconstitutive of the primary subjective identification" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 23).This transition, however, is not always successful, and in so far as themodern man is concerned, it is more likely to be unsuccessful (on this issue,see Jacobsen, p. 40). The failure of the Oedipal identification is what distortsthe symbolic objectification of the subject and what intensifies the tensionbetween the Imaginary and the Symbolic as co-existent structures of the

subject. The failure of the Oedipal "normalization" is something which theanalytic treatment tries to overcome and compensate. When we discuss thedialectic of the analytic treatment we will see how close it is to the Oedipaldialectic. We shall leave aside the Oedipal failure and its various reasons.Let's focus, instead, on the exemplary Oedipal identification, which is difficultto perform in the age of Modernity, but which nevertheless is the backboneof symbolic identification. Lacan thinks of it entirely in terms of the Hegelianmaster-slave dialectic.

The Oedipal stage preserves or at least does not disrupt the continuity of the

desire for recognition:

" (...) for this desire itself to be satisfied in man requires that it berecognized, through the agreement in speech or through the struggle forrecognition" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 68)

The transformation that takes place in the Oedipal drama is complex - it

affects the direction of the desire for recognition, the referents of this desire,the medium of recognition (the speech replaces the gaze), and the results ofthe recognition (agreement instead of rivalry).

The desire for recognition at the Oedipal and the post-Oedipal stage is notdirected to the other (small "o") but to the Other (capital "O"). It is a desirefor the desire of the Other. Who is the Other? How does the Other come into


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existence?

The Other is both an image (though an unimaginable one) and a function.Lacan usually presents the Other as a function (and rarely and ambiguouslyas an image). The resolution of the Oedipal drama converts the image ofthe parent of the same sex, with whom the subject is in an imaginary rivalry,into an unimaginable (and even ineffable) function. The specular image ofthe other (small "o") now becomes something more than a mere appearance(the visible father, for instance, becomes the Name-of-the-Father, whichrepresents the invisible Other), it is now transformed into a functionrepresentative of something invisible - namely of the Other.

a) The Other has an ambivalent legislative function. As a super-ego he 8prohibits, while as an ego-ideal he indicates the adequate objects of desire.The Other institutes the order of the permissible and the impermissible. Theidentification with the Other is tantamount to a recognition of the Other as amaster, to an obedience to his order, to a credulity to his word. The subjectrecognizes the Other as his master expecting to be recognized in return. Asa source of the "symbolic law" the Other recognizes the subject by givinghim a legal (symbolic) status in the symbolic order. The subject's desire ofthe desire of the Other is satisfied not by way of imaginary struggle but byway of the symbolic pact of recognition. The subject on his turn has to workfor his master. His labor is his speech, which enforces the subject'sobedience to the Other. The Lacanian Other is not so much a figure whichrepresents a law but a locus of a certain (the symbolic) function.

b) The Other is not only a legislator. He has also an executive function. Heenacts his legislation by means of signification. The Other directs thediscourse and the desire of the subject through the two most generalmechanisms of signification: metaphor and metonymy. Just like theHegelian slave, the subject is reduced to a mere tool of utterance of thediscourse of the Other.

One of the performative effects of speech and, therefore, one of the aspectsof the executive function of the Other is mediation. The Other, the mastermediates the subject's relations to the others, to the things and to death. TheOther protects him from the reality of the things, from the aggressivity of theothers, and from the nothingness of death. The Other is the mediating term,the protective shield in various symbolic triads: child-Father-Mother, child-Father-others, child-speech-things, child-Other-death. Through the Oedipalidentification (if it is successful) the "ego differentiates itself, in jointprogress, from the other and from the object" (Lacan, 1984, p. 94). This


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splitting of the imaginary immediacy, which is at the same time anormalization and a pacification of the subject's relationships with the others,with the Mother and the external objects, is achieved through the mediationof the Other (of the Symbolic order, which is both symbolic and an order):

"Thus the symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing, andthis death constitutes in the subject the eternalization of his desire" (Lacan,1977a, p. 104).

The protective function of the Other refers also to Death. M. Borch-Jacobsentends to ascribe priority to this aspect of the function of the Other:

"And so the 'dialectic of the Oedipal drama', with its classically triangularstructure, was nothing but a defense intended to occult the undialecticizable'fourth element' that is death" (Jacobsen, 1991, p. 94).

We can add furthermore that it is exactly the specificity of the defenseagainst death, instituted by the Other, which distinguishes the symbolicOther from the Hegelian master. Unlike the latter who is a master of a slave,and is not a master of himself, and who, as Kojve suggests, is subordinateto the absolute master (Death) just as the slave is (in fact death mediatesthe superiority of the master over the slave), the Other, the Lacaniansymbolic master is identifiable with death (as a representation, not as afunction). The Other is always dead, and at the same time he threatens withdeath. This is a strictly psychoanalytical reversal of the Kojvian idea of thenegativity of death, which is one of the most polyvalent symbols in thepsychoanalytic myth about the Oedipus complex.

Anyway the dead master, usurps the function of death and becomes anabsolute master:

"(...) the death of the father, whenever it occurs, is felt by the subject as thedisappearance (...) of that shield of intervention, or substitution, that thefather [forms between the subject and] the Absolute Master - that is death"(Lacan, 1958, quoted from Jacobsen, 1991, p. 94).


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Lacan's reflections on the dead master have various implications. The first isthat the dead master does not belong to the Real or even to the Imaginary(he is scarcely visible or imaginable). He is first of all the symbolic Other. Hisrepresentations and functions belong to the Symbolic (the Name-of-the-Father, the "locus of speech", the conscious). The symbolic Other is nevercompletely imaginable or utterable, since he is the absolute condition whichmakes a discourse possible. Its symbolic representatives or imaginaryappearances are never complete, which already implies that the deadMaster, the symbolic Other always transcends the Imaginary or theSymbolic of the individual subjects and performs its function as atranssubjective or even intersubjective agency of signification and symbolicpower.

The death of the Other is neither real nor natural. It is an imagined orsymbolic and forcible death. "This image of the master, which is what hesees in the form of a specular image, becomes confused in him with theimage of death" (Lacan, 1988, p. 149). On the other hand the symbolicmurder of the Father, of the master institutes the symbolic debt of thesubject to the dead master, and respectively enacts the absolute mastery ofthe Other over the indebted subject. Following Freud's analyses on thegenesis of the feeling of guilt, Lacan defines the murder of the Father (andhis sublimation to the Name-of-the-Father, to the Absolute Master) as:

"(...) the fruitful moment of debt through which the subject binds himself tothe law". Lacan concludes that: "the symbolic Father is, in so far as hesignifies this law, the dead Father" (Lacan,1977a, p. 199).

The dead Father is the sacrifice as well as the addressee of this sacrifice.With view to all preceding reflections on the Other we can say that the Otheris the all-encompassing agency (the Other is not entirely symbolic) of Deathand Life (of symbolic Death and Life, which are the only modalities of life

and death possibly accessible to humans). The Other represents the mostimpossible of all syntheses - that of Life and Death - which already defineshim not only as a legislator of the living and speaking subjects, but as amaster whose power transgresses the limits of symbolic life, and which isextended over the still non-existent and over the already non-existent. Inother words, the Other rules and acts even where the Symbolic has beendisrupted or rejected - in the cases of neuroses and psychoses. This is why


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Lacan insists on an adequate interpretation of the place and the function ofthe Other in the numerous failures of the Oedipal identification. We have toknow who the Other is, in order to grasp the various revolts against Him thatare implicit in most of the psychical disorders. Despite of its displacementsand rejections, the Other still retains his absolute mastery:

"The Other as a previous site of the pure subject of the signifier holds themaster position, even before coming into existence, to use Hegel's termagainst him, as an absolute Master" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 305).

We have analyzed the dialectic of the Oedipal identification only in regard toone of its elements: the master, simply because unlike the Hegelian "real" or

limited master, the Lacanian Other is (signifies) an absolute Master, and thewhole dynamics, order and structure of the Oedipal, social or symbolicdialectic depends entirely on Him. Both of the elements of the master-slaverelationship are sources of negativity: the mastery of the master and thelabor of the slave. While Kojve emphasizes the negativity of labor, Lacanfocuses on the negativity of the Other. This negativity is imprinted on thesubject of speech (the slave), and is often undistinguishable from thenegativity of desire, speech or death.9 We have all good reasons to assumethat the dialectic of the symbolic identification is centered around thenegativity of the Other, that holds the master position in the master-slave

structure of the Symbolic order:

"The concrete field of individual preservation is structured in this dialectic ofmaster and slave, in which we can recognize the symbolic emergence of theimaginary struggle to the death in which we earlier defined the essentialstructure of the ego: it is hardly surprising, then, that this field is reflectedexclusively in this structure" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 142).

2.1.3 The dialectic of the Imaginary and the Symbolic The Imaginary and theSymbolic are not only stages in the psychical maturation of the subject.Lacan also regards them as co-existent components of the psyche, whichinterfere with each other by way of substitution, repression or foreclosure.Moreover the priority of the synchronic over the diachronic perspective inLacan's psychoanalysis implies that the co-existence of the Imaginary andthe Symbolic is of primary importance for Lacan. There is no pure Symbolic


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and no pure Imaginary. The question is which is superior and in what way.We have seen in the preceding subsection that the Symbolic and theImaginary are mutually exclusive. The Symbolic institutes itself only at theexpense of the Imaginary. Their co-existence, therefore, has to take placepredominantly in the modes of negativity, forcefulness and destructiveness,

which are the indices of the dialectical for Lacan.

In some way or another, most of the mental deviations psychoanalysis dealswith are related to the dialectic of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. We cannot examine such a great number of problems. Therefore, we shall illustratethis dialectic by two examples.

Our first example comes out of Anika Lemaire's monography on Lacan(Lemaire, 1991). In Chapter VI, she indicates that the accession of thesubject to the Symbolic results in one of the subsequent splittings of thesubject. A splitting which lasts as long as the subject resides in theSymbolic. This is the splitting between the reality of the subject and itsrepresentation. It threatens the identity of the subject (better to say that itruins this unity). The self is represented for itself by a set of signifiers:

"(...) in discourse the subject experiences his lack of being, as he is no morethan represented in discourse, just as his desire is no more thanrepresented there" (Lemaire, 1991, p. 73).

Confronted with a symbolic lack of being, the subject of discourse may try toreidentify himself with an image, may find the homogeneity he strives after inhis imaginary constructs.

"The drama of the subject in the verb is that he faces the test of his lack ofbeing. It is because it fends off this moment of lack that an image moves intoposition to support the whole worth of desire: projection, a function of theImaginary" (Lemaire, 1991, p. 72; quoted from Lacan, 1966).

The symbolic lack of being leads to an ever greater lack of being, justbecause the return to the Imaginary will not be able to overcome the splittingof the subject, experienced in the Symbolic. The subject of discourse will not


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be able to regain his true reality in the image, because the Imaginary is alsoan order of representations which makes impossible a direct access to thesubject's being. The dialectics of this whole process consists in the fact thatthe symbolic alienation induces an even sharper imaginary alienation.

Lemaire, however, does not draw a clear distinction between a healthy andpathogenic reaction to the symbolic lack of being. She also does not takeinto account the fact that the symbolic lack of identity has a normative valuein Lacan's theory, and that its overcoming advances along the vector ofmetonymy in speech. Our second example of a dialectic of the Imaginaryand the Symbolic is taken from Lacan's conception of psychosis. Psychosisis one of the possible reversals of what Lacan defines as a "phallocentricdialectic" (Mitchell, 1982, p. 93). It is a radical break through of theImaginary into the Symbolic. Apart from this it is not a partial repression of achain of signifiers by an image (such is the case in our first example), it is a

really dialectical substitution of the Symbolic by the Imaginary. In psychosis,the Symbolic is converted into an Imaginary; it does not change its contentbut its function. Psychosis is a state of "a-symbolization" (the symbol isconsidered to be a thing) and of oversymbolization (all things becomemeaningful). The genesis of psychosis is associated with an event takingplace at the Oedipal stage - the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father.

"For psychosis to be triggered off, the Name-of-the-Father, verworfen,foreclosed, that is to say, never having attained the place of the Other, mustbe called into symbolic opposition to the subject" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 217).

The foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father is precipitated by a crucialrestructuring of the Oedipal triad: Father-child-Mother. Such a restructuringtakes place when the two parents fight against each other for the love oftheir child, when the mother instead of being subordinate to the father,instead of recognizing him as the Other, fights against him. In other wordsthe foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father presupposes a replacement of the

master-slave relationship between the two parents by a struggle forrecognition between them.

The foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father distorts the function of theSymbolic which is to mediate between the subject and the thing. TheSymbolic acquires an imaginary function for the psychotic, who believes thesymbol to be something real. There is no longer a distinction between the


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symbol and the thing. Thesymbol is imagined to be the thing. Beingdispossessed of its symbolic function, the symbol can hardly be called asymbol any more.

"It is the lack of the Name-of-the-Father in that place which, by the hole itopens up in the signified, sets off the cascade of reshapings of the signifierfrom which the increasing disaster of the imaginary proceeds, to the point atwhich the level is reached at which signifier and signified are stabilized inthe delusional metaphor" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 217).

The "delusional metaphor" Lacan refers to, is precisely the substitution ofthe signifier by the signified (the symbol is assumed to be a thing).

We have examined just two of the manifestations of the dialectic of theImaginary and the Symbolic. There are certainly many others. We can notview them all. The important thing for us to know is that such a significantinterrelation like the one between the Imaginary and the Symbolic isstructured dialectically in the sense of reflecting the dialectical figures of thestruggle for prestige and the master-slave relationship.

2.2 The dialectic of desire

Desire is the most important factor in the dynamics of the negativity of thesubject, which enforces and maintains its permanent dissolution. It is almostimpossible for us to reconstruct a coherent doctrine, in Lacan, on thedialectic of desire, which overlaps with the dialectic of the unconscious andthe dialectic (the negativity) of speech. Nevertheless, we shall try toexamine the negativity of desire in respect to its emergence and unfolding.

2.2.1 The emergence of desire.

Desire emerges as a result of the sublation of need by demand. It ispossible to satisfy need, which is a want-to-have one particular object oranother (the source of pleasure). It is absolutely impossible to satisfydemand, which "constitutes the Other as already possessing the 'privilege'of satisfying needs" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 286), and which is a want-to-have theOther (the Mother) or "that which the Other does not have, namely, its love"(Lacan, 1977a, p. 286). It appears that the satisfaction of needs depends onthe satisfaction of demand. The child can not satisfy its thirst and hunger,


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unless it is sure of the love of the mother, who provides their satisfaction forhim. The impossibility to satisfy the child's demand for love results in animpossibility to have its needs satisfied. The division between need anddemand forms a vicious circle, for demand can not be satisfied unless thesatisfaction of need appears as a proof of the Mother's love, and needs can

not be satisfied if demand is frustrated. What follows is that the want-to-have can not be satisfied neither by the objects of need, nor by the object ofdemand.

The unappeasability of the want-to-have leaves plenty of room to the child'swant-to-be to unfold 10.

"Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes

separated from need" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 311).

"Desire is that which is manifested in the interval that demand hollows withinitself in as much as the subject, in articulating the signifying chain,brings tolight the want-to-be, together with the appeal to receive the complementfrom the Other" (Lacan, 1977a, p.263).

"Thus desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love,but the difference that results from the substraction of the first fromthesecond, the phenomenon of their splitting (Spaltung)" (Lacan, 1977a, p.

287).

There is a qualitative difference between demand and desire, not so muchbecause of their objects (they may have a common object like the Phallus)but because of their modes of reference to them - possession (demand),identification/recognition (desire). The impossibility of the want-to-have isreplaced by the necessity of the want-to-be, which explains the priority of thevector of identification over that of possession in Lacan's psychoanalysis.

An essential advantage of the want-to-be over the want-to-have, whichmakes its satisfaction possible, is that it is directed to the representations(imaginary or symbolic) of what the want-to-have fails to achieve. That iswhy, as a representative of the want-to-be, desire is deployed mainly in theSymbolic, which is superior, as an order of representations, over theImaginary.


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In accordance with the Lacanian dialectical code, the emergence of desiremay be viewed as a dialectical one, not so much because of the negation (ofneed by demand) it comes from, but because of the outcome of thatnegation - desire as a lack.

2.2.2 The unfolding of desire

The whole dialectic of desire spins around the overthrowing of every filling-inof the gap it is.

"In the Lacanian doctrine, it is clear, desire can not really have any object atall, if desire is to remain what it is: the pure negativity of a subject whodesires himself in his objects, and who can do so by perpetually negating

himself in them, by negating them as what he is not (?)" (Jacobsen, 1991, p.199).

Desire maintains its gap-like structure in its unfolding in the Symbolic. Desireis: "(...) the mark of the iron of the signifier on the shoulder of the speakingsubject" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 265). Lacan's most prominent formula on desireis that "man's desire is the desire of the Other" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 264). It isexactly in this formula where we can grasp the meaning of what Lacandefines as a "dialectic of desire". We can not be sure what the "desire of the

Other" is. Lacan tries to articulate the questions posed by the desire of theOther in his article The subversion of the subject (Lacan, 1977a).11 It isbetter, however, to interpret the formulation "man's desire is the desire of theOther" in regards to the "how" of the Other's desire. The Other is the locus ofspeech and that implies that its desire unfolds as speech. The same holdsfor the desire of man. Thus the negativity of desire almost coincides with thenegativity of speech in Lacan's theory. Speech, which is universal, does notbelong to a particular subject. It is rather the individual who is subjected tospeech in so far as it is represented in it. Speech negates and posits theindividuality and the identity of the individual.

Respectively desire can never be an individual desire. It unfolds itself as atransindividual want-to-be, oriented to various cultural or social, and in anycase supraindividual symbols or identifications. It is not surprising at all thatfor Lacan desire operates mainly at the level of the unconscious, which is asupra-individual agency. On the other hand, desire finds its expression inspeech, because speech, as an order of meaningful representations,


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accommodates most naturally the want-to-be of the subject. According tous, however, speech cannot be desire because unlike desire it does nothave a teleological structure. Speech, therefore, only mediates andalienates desire. At the same time it makes its satisfaction impossiblebecause it does not strive after something (as desire does). Speech does

not share the finitude of desire. It follows, then, that desire is trapped in the"defiles of the signifier". Desire is not absorbed peacefully in speech butrather tries to escape it ...by means of speech. This "revolt" of desire isanother aspect of its dialectic.

The desire of man unfolds by means of the mechanisms of language -metaphor and metonymy. Metaphor uncovers desire as a symptom.Metonymy ["man's desire is a metonymy" (Lacan,1977a, p. 175)], theconstant sliding from one signifier to another, structures the unfolding of thesubject's want-to-be. Through metonymy, speech reduces the subject who

speaks to that which is in-between two signifiers, and which emerges as aresult of their connection. The want-to-be of desire can not be satisfied bythe what-is-said in speech, precisely because the what-is-said is a functionof a constantly increasing number of signifiers. The sliding of speech neverstops, and respectively the insatiability of desire never diminishes.

Speech offers the subject an infinitude of identifications all of which arecentered around the symbolic Phallus.

"The Phallus is the privileged signifier (...) in which the role of the logos isjoined with the advent of desire" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 287).

According to Lacan, the Phallus represents both desire and its insatiability, itillustrates the power of the Other, of speech, of the annihilating signifier, andat the same time, it represents the prohibition to identify with it. It can besaid, therefore, that the "phallocentric dialectic", which Lacan does notdefine any further, is interrelated with the dialectic of desire and probably

with a possible dialectic of demand which is a manifestation of the want-to-have.

The dialectic of desire, in Lacan's doctrine, is based upon the negativity ofspeech, which definitely goes beyond the Kojvian conception of thenegativity of speech (more on this in 3.1.c). This dialectic can besummarized by the paradoxical formulation: desire, which is a manifestation


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of the want-to-be, is, being trapped in discourse, the barrier to its ownsatisfaction.

2.3 The dialectic of the analytic treatment

The analytic cure is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Respectively, thedialectic of the treatment is a polyvalent concept. Its particular meaningdepends on the concrete function or aspect of the treatment that is beingemphasized in one case or another. The most important aspect of thisdialectic is that it goes beyond what is purely subjective in analysis. Thedialectic of the treatment concerns the psychoanalytic conception ofintersubjectivity.

According to the particular problem it has to solve, the treatment is always

concrete, it is a case. Nevertheless, there are aspects common to all cases:the structure, the participants, the task of the treatment.

a) Who takes part in the treatment? The analyst and the patient play the keyroles in the treatment. They, however, are not the only participants in it. Thereason for this is that the treatment does not involve anything real. It ratheradvances along the axes of the Imaginary and the Symbolic of both theanalyst and the analysand. "The only object that is within the analyst's reachis the imaginary relation that links him to the subject qua ego"; the attentionof the analyst: "is certainly not directed towards an object beyond the

subject's speech" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 45). The analyst does not deal with thehistory of the patient conceived of as something real, but is confronted withits imaginary or symbolic reactualization in the process of the treatment.This already implies that the dialectic of the analytic cure involves some ofthe dialectical figures and functions mentioned so far.

Lacan defines the analyst as a "pure dialectician" (Mitchell, 1982, p. 72), oras the "sole master" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 228) of the analytic treatment. Thepatient, respectively, is represented as the slave (of more than onemaster).

"But we analysts have to deal with slaves who think they are masters, andwho find in a language whose mission is universal the support of theirservitude, and the bonds of its ambiguity" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 81).


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The encounter between the analyst and the analysand does not simplyresult in a one-dimensional master-slave relationship. In fact, each of the

two main participants in the treatment follows a specific dialectical trajectory.According to Lacan the mastery of the analyst consists in the fact that he is:"(...) always free in the timing, frequency and choice of (...) interventions."(Lacan, 1977a, p. 228). The analyst has to have such a freedom justbecause the target of his actions is not a reality outside his concreterelationship with a particular patient. This relationship revolves aroundcertain imaginary or symbolic identifications of the analysand revived by thephenomenon of transference. The "initial knot of the analytic drama" is thenegative transference of the patient, which "represents in the patient theimaginary transference on to our person of one of the more or less archaicimagos" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 14). The negative transference appears to be ahindrance to the successful progress of the cure. Its overcoming evokes anessential change in the strategy of the analyst. He has to suspend hisinterventions, or at least revise their tactics. The neutrality of the analystrequires a justification.

"(...) we efface ourselves (...) we become depersonalized (...) we wish toavoid the trap that already lies concealed in the appeal, marked by theeternal pathos of faith, that the patient addresses to us. It carries a secret

within itself. 'Take upon yourself' the patient is telling us, 'the evil that weighsme down; but if you remain smug, self-satisfied, unruffled as you are now,you won't be worthy or bearing it" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 13).

Trying to counteract the transference of his patient:

"(...) the analyst is bringing to his aid what in bridge is called the dummy (lemort), but he is doing so in order to introduce the fourth player who is to bethe partner of the analysand here" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 229).

This depersonalization reduplicates the analyst. The analyst willinglyalienates himself, pretending to be a "dummy". His aim is to drag the patientout of his transferential delusion. If he is active or in any way responsive to


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the imaginary demand of the patient, then his words "will still be heard ascoming from the Other of the transference", and "the emergence of thesubject from the transference is thus postponed ad infinitum" (Lacan, 1977a,p. 231). If the analyst plays a dummy, the projected image is also dead andthe patient will be able to reabsorb it as what it really is - an image, a

construct of his imagination. The rivalry with the images (or symbols)projected onto the figure of the analyst will thus be overcome by a possibleself-recognition of the analysand in the "mirror" of the impartial analyst. Theanalyst's neutrality will lead to "the subject's assumption of his own mirages"(Lacan, 1977a, p. 43).

Even such a simplistic representation of the reaction against thetransference uncovers the dialectical figures of rivalry, mastery andservitude that are at work in it, and the dialectical multiplication of theparticipants in the treatment: the analysand, the other/Other, the analyst, the

"dummy". The very counteraction of the analyst is of a dialectical nature. Hehas to neutralize the transference by making use of it.

Another aspect of the "dialectical" "rectification" of the subject concerns theintervention of the analyst and the timing of analysis. Lacan presents both ofthese functions as forms of negativity, as acts which interrupt the imaginaryor symbolic continuity of the delusion of the analysand, and re-formulate itsmeaning. The intervention of the analyst aims at a restructuring of thepatient's discourse, at a rearrangement which eventually can change thedirection and displace the accents of that discourse. Moreover Lacan

equates paradoxically the intervention and the nonintervention of theanalyst.

"(...) the analyst intervenes concretely in the dialectic of analysis bypretending he is dead (...) either by his silence when he is the Other with acapital "O", or by annulling his own resistance when he is the other with asmall "o". In either case, and under the respective effects of the symbolicand the imaginary, he makes death present" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 140).

The mastery of the analyst is in the art of playing skillfully with his freedomto intervene. In other words, the discourse of analysis is the discourse of theanalysand. The role of the analyst is to introduce the "dialecticalpunctuation" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 95) of that discourse. There is anotheralmost Hegelian justification of the nonintervention of the analyst, which


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reveals how deeply imprinted and how well disguised some basic Hegelianconcepts are in Lacan's thinking.

"(...) the analyst's abstention, his refusal to reply, is an element of reality inanalysis. More exactly, it is in this negativity in so far as it is a purenegativity - that is, detached from any particular motive - that lies the

junction between the symbolic and the real (...) this non-action of the analystis founded on our firm and stated knowledge of the principle that all that isreal is rational, and on the resulting precept that it is up to the subject toshow what he is made of" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 97).

b) Lacan characterizes the process of the treatment as a labor performed by

the patient and directed (managed) by the analyst.

"For in this labor which he undertakes to reconstruct for another, herediscovers the fundamental alienation that made him construct like another,and which has always destined it to be taken from him by another"(Lacan,1977a, p. 42).

There can not be a more resourceful allusion to the master-slaverelationship reproduced in, and, therefore, structuring the analytic treatmentitself.

What is the desired outcome of the patient's labor? Certainly it is not his"freedom" or the reappropriation of his "true" self. The labor of the patient isa regression back into his past, which allows "the signifiers in which hisfrustration is bound up to reappear" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 255). It is areabsorption of all his mirages and fantasies. It is a recognition of the IT,speaking through the subject, and of the subject as the medium (and the

referent) of the unconscious.

"In order to free the subject's speech, we introduce him into the language ofhis desire,that is to say, into the primary language in which, beyond what hetells us of himself, he is already talking to us unknown to himself" (Lacan,1977a, p. 81).


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Correspondingly, the goal of analysis is: "(...) the advent of a true speechand the realization by the subject of his history in his relation to a future"

(Lacan, 1977a, p. 88). This true, free or full speech (as opposed to theempty or "imaginary" talk of the patient) tells the analysand somethingunknown but determinative of his own discourse. It uncovers somethingunderrepresented so far, or it simply reorders the chain of signifiers in orderto indicate the key-signifiers, representing the desire of the analysand.

The dialectic of empty and full speech in Lacan's psychoanalysis has beenstudied by M. Borch-Jacobsen (1991, p. 137-145). His view on emptyspeech is that:

"speech remains desperately 'empty' - not because it says nothing, but onthe contrary, because its unstoppable babbling fills - and, by the sametoken, occults - the void of the subject" (Jacobsen, 1991, p. 138).

The most important effect of full speech is that it makes the speaking subjectaware of himself as a subject of speech - that is as the one who is in so faras he speaks about himself and the others. The subject is supposed toarrive at the conclusion: 'I am what I say I am; I am nothing beyondlanguage; I am the nothingness situated between the elements of thatlanguage, between the signifiers of my speech'. The therapeutic effect of the"dummy", therefore, may be sought also in the fact that the patient mayrecognize the nothingness he himself is in the frozen face of the analyst (hewill see that detached from his speech he will be just as dead [anothingness] as the silent analyst). Through the silence of the analyst thepatient can hear himself talking. He will hear not so much what he-is-talking-about, but that-he-is-talking. Thus, he can remain at a distance from thecontent of his speech, and may be able to experience his authenticemptiness as a subject erased by the signifier.

These Jacobsenian reflections on the outcome of the treatment do notnecessarily match with Lacan's conception on it. They, however, stress abasic assumption of Lacan. The recovery of the patient is possible only if herecognizes the real place and function of the Other (language, speech), andhis real position (of servitude) in regards to the Other. The success of theanalytic cure, therefore, comes out of the reconciliation of the analysand


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with his real master (the Other). The labor of the patient does not bring himcloser to his freedom, which is absolutely unattainable. It is a transition froman unconscious state of servitude to a false master into a conscious state ofservitude to a real one.

These are some of the aspects of what Lacan ambiguously defines as adialectic of the treatment. Ambiguously, because the dialectic of thetreatment may also be related to the ancient Greek idea of dialectics, whichis the art to reach the truth of something (of a metaphysical problem) in adialogue. The analyst must be an experienced dialectician, that is, he mustbe able to bring the patient closer to his truth by means of a specific strategyin the dialogue with him, or if the analyst is as an experienced dialectician asSocrates is, to reveal the vanity of the patient's search for truth and truthitself. Psychoanalysis, therefore, is a dialectical venture, not only because ofthe Hegelian structures involved in it, but also because it operates solely

with words (and not with real entities), and has to develop a dialoguetechnique adjusted to its peculiar purpose. Lacan's negativisticacknowledgement of this background dimension of the dialectic of theanalytic cure is quite unambiguous.

"The fact that a dialectical conception of psychoanalysis has to be presentedas an orientation peculiar to my thinking, must surely, indicate a failure torecognize an immediate given, that is, the self-evident fact that it dealssolely with words" (Mitchell, 1982, p. 63).

3. LACAN'S ALTERNATIVE RE-INTERPRETATIONS OF THE HEGELIANDIALECTICAL FIGURESVIEWED SO FAR. LACAN'S REFERENCES TOOTHER DIALECTICAL FIGURES OF THE PHENOMENOLOGY.

We have already examined all those problems in Lacan's psychoanalyticaltheory related to the dissolution of the subject in an imaginary rivalry or asymbolic servitude, through speech and desire, and finally through the

intersubjectivity of the analytic cure. We shall focus now on the moresignificant alternative references of Lacan to the Phenomenology of Spirit.

3.1 Alternative re-interpretations of the Hegelian dialectical figuresviewed so far.

The five Kojvian modes of negativity adopted by Lacan do not appear in his


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writings in the well-articulated form in which we have presented them. It isalso impossible for us to uncover all their connotations and metaphoricalreversals. The negativity of desire, struggle, mastery (of the Other), speechand death is very often only alluded to or supplies certain theoreticalreflections with a context of a higher order (more universal and

philosophical).

a) The struggle for recognition (or prestige), which designates the imaginaryidentification of the subject (the ego), may alter its permanent designation ifthe participants in it are not the ego and its imaginary double, but the egoand the Father, or the neurotic (the obsessional) and the Other, or themother and the father of the psychotic.

b) The most widely spread and most polysemantic Hegelian dialecticalfigure Lacan refers to, is the master-slave relationship, which appearsinterwoven with the negativity of desire, speech or death.

b. 1 The master-slave dialectic as an ontological model.

"Hegel had provided the ultimate theory of the proper function ofaggressivity in human ontology (...) From the conflict of the Master andSlave, he deduced the entire subjective and objective progress of our history(...) Here the natural individual is regarded as nothingness, since the human

subject is nothingness, in effect, before the absolute Master that is given tohim in death. The satisfaction of human desire is possible only whenmediated by the desire and labor of the other. If, in the conflict of the Masterand Slave, it is the recognition of man by man that is involved, it is alsopromulgated on a radical negation of natural values, whether expressed inthe sterile tyranny of the master or in the productive tyranny of labor"(Lacan, 1977a, p. 26).

In this particular case the master-slave conflict does not represent the

pacification of the subject in the Symbolic, just as this same conflict explainssocial revolution for Kojve, it accounts here for the function of aggressivityviewed from an ontological perspective (that is as a constituting structure ofman's existence). This passage from Lacan's article on aggressivity, alsocasts some light on the outcome of the masterslave conflict, in which the"human subject" is reduced to a "nothingness", or merely evaporates beforethe absolute master (which, in Lacan's doctrine, may be death, language or


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the symbolic law). Such is the ultra-negativistic standpoint on the master-slave relationship, persistently followed by Lacan, whenever he refers to thisHegelian figure.

b. 2 A purely psychoanalytical reformulation of the master-slave dialectic.

"In fact the obsessional subject manifests one of the attitudes that Hegel didnot develop in his dialectic of the master and the slave. The slave has givenway in face of the risk of death in which mastery was being offered to him ina struggle of pure prestige. But since he knows that he is mortal, he alsoknows that the master can die. From this moment on he is able to accepthis laboring for the master and his renunciation of pleasure in the meantime;and, in the uncertainty of the moment when the master will die, he waits"

(Lacan, 1977a, p. 99).

The negativity of death (which, according to Kojve, is the ultimate form ofnegativity in Hegel's dialectic) here plays a central role, depriving the masterof his mastery, which is possible only if what Lacan means here as a masteris the particular master (the Father, the psychoanalyst) and not the universalmaster (the universal Other - language).

b. 3 Lacan offers us even a more radical re-interpretation of the master-

slave dialectic, which provides him with "(...) a legitimate justification for theterm alienating vel" (Lacan, 1977, p. 212). As a matrix of "primary alienation"(Lacan, 1977b, p. 212) the master-slave relationship represents theinevitable division or splitting of the human subject (of both the master andthe slave). Here Lacan does not regard the master and the slave, as heusually does, as the poles of the Symbolic order - the language and thespeaking subject; here he views them ontologically, as real human subjects,who occupy interchangeable social roles. In respect to their alienation themaster and the slave are equal, and this is what matters for thepsychoanalyst interested in the structure of the subject's splitting.

"When the slave is confronted with the choice of his freedom or his life, hedecides, no freedom without life - life remains for ever deprived of freedom(...) we will see that the alienation of the master is structured in exactly thesame way. For if Hegel shows us that the status of the master is establishedin the struggle to the death of pure prestige, it is because it is to bring his


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choice through death that the master also constitutes his fundamentalalienation" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 219).

b. 4 Thanks to his suggestive and enigmatic style of speaking and writing,Lacan refers to the master-slave dialectic as well as to the other Hegelianfigures employed by him, mainly by way of allusions and metaphors, which,without changing their dialectical structure, replace their ontological meaningwith a plentitude of nonontological (or even poetic) designations. It isimpossible to bring out and decipher all those allusions and metaphors. Anexample of such an allusive and metaphorical reference to Hegel's master-slave dialectic can show us how well disguised and how deeply rooted it isin the Lacanian discourse.

"Man's freedom is entirely inscribed within the constituting triangle of therenunciation that he imposes on the desire of the other by the menace ofdeath for the enjoyment of the fruits of his serfdom - of the consented tosacrifice of his life for the reasons that give to human life its measure - andof the suicidal renunciation of the vanquished partner, depriving of hisvictory the master whom he abandons to his inhuman solitude" (Lacan,1977a, p. 104).

This passage also uncovers the decisive influence of Kojve, for just likehim Lacan assumes that death is the utmost manifestation of negativefreedom, of the freedom not to be what one is, of the freedom to negateoneself. The three modes of appearance of death in the quoted text: themenace of death, the sacrifice and suicide, evidently determine three formsof negativity undermining the self, transforming him into something otherthan what he really is through the negativities of slavery, mastery and thedesperate (self-destructive) revolt.

c) The negativity of speech and language, in Lacan's theory, is primarily

oriented toward the subject of speech. Speech hollows out the subject ofdiscourse as the gap between what the subject is and what the subject sayshe is, between the conscious and unconscious discourse of the subject,between the Imaginary and the Symbolic, between the various signifiersrepresenting the subject. "A signifier is that which represents a subject. Forwhom? - not for another subject, but for another signifier" (Lacan, 1977b, p.198). This basic Lacanian conviction accords with Hegel's view on the


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negativity of language and speech, which is that speech mediates and, bymediating, negates the thing it represents. Lacan is aware of this morelimited (the verbal representation negates only the sensible external things,see Phenomenology of Spirit, A.I, p. 58-66, 1977) standpoint on thenegativity of speech: "(...) the symbol manifests itself first of all as the

murder of the thing (...)" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 104). Lacan extends thisconception of the negativity of speech beyond the mere disappearance ofthe referent of speech (of the thing referred to by speech), into thedisappearance of the sender (or receiver) of this speech. This extensioncomes out of the fact that he reflects on analytic speech, where referent,sender and receiver coincide (the analysand speaks about himself, and, inthe silence of the analyst, hears his own speech). Thanks to his linguisticbackground Lacan also re-thinks the negation inherent to speech. Thisnegation is not merely a substitution of the real referent of speech by itsverbal representation. It is a dissolution of the referent/sender/receiver of

(analytic) speech into a nothingness. A single signifier does not representanything. It does so only when related to another signifier. Thereferent/sender/receiver of speech is not any more behind its signifier, but isratherbetween its signifiers (it is an effect of their interrelations). Many ofthe psychoanalytical problems spin around the negativity of speech, whichdoes not only mediate (between the subject of speech and the referent ofspeech) but constitutes its own referents/senders/receivers in the voidwhich it itself turns them into.

Another Lacanian theme, related to the negativity of speech, is the

emergence and the functioning of the unconscious. The most prominentformulations of Lacan about the unconscious are that it is "structured like alanguage" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 147), that "the unconscious is the discourse ofthe Other" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 193), that the "unconscious is the sum of theeffects of speech on a subject (...)" (Lacan, 1977b, p. 126). As an effect ofspeech the unconscious is structured like a language (through metaphorand metonymy), and is considered by Lacan as a "gap" (hollowed out byrepression), or as a "discontinuity" of repressed imaginary and symbolicelements "at all points homologous with what occurs at the level of thesubject" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 24).

"The unconscious is that part of the concrete discourse, in sofar as it istransindividual, that is not at the disposal of the subject in re-establishing thecontinuity of his conscious discourse" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 49).


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Being a discourse beyond the cognition of the subject, the unconsciousplays an essential role in the negativity of speech in Lacan's theory. Itwidens and deepens the gap that the conscious subject of speech is. Themost significant effect of the unconscious discourse on the subject is that itnegates the referent/sender/receiver of speech without letting him control or

conceive of his own dissolution. The unconscious accedes to the consciousdiscourse of the subject only in an inverted form. There is always a missingor a hidden (repressed) signifier in the message of the unconscious. Thusthe negativity of unconscious discourse is directed to discourse itself. Theelements of unconscious discourse represent (and negate) anotherrepressed discourse.

The negativity of speech in Lacan's doctrine appears to be reduplicated onthe levels of conscious and unconscious discourse, which is an essentialreversal in respect to the Kojvian point of view.

d) Death has a special place in Lacan's psychoanalytical theory. It is a verypolyvalent concept. First of all, it is a part of the Freudian myth about theOedipus complex which Lacan takes into consideration. We have alreadyseen in the preceding sections that death may appear either as an image or(mainly) as a symbol, which may be attached to the symbol of the Father orto other representatives of the Other. Though a polyvalent concept, deathadheres in Lacan's theory to the Kojvian conception of the negativity ofdeath. The quotation in 3. 1. b. 4 illustrates Lacan's awareness of therelationship between death and human freedom (which is a basic idea of

Kojve). Death, however, does not only represent human freedom (or theabsolute freedom man is able to attain). It is at the same time the hindranceto the achievement of such freedom. It has a pacifying function (which takespart in the Oedipal normalization). It institutes and guarantees the pactbetween the slave (the subject) and his master (the Other). Itfunctions like arestraining risk, that no one is willing to take.

"(...) in the Hegelian myth, death is not even structured like a fear, it isstructured like a risk, and, in a word, like a stake. From the beginning,between the master and the slave, there is a rule of the game" (Lacan,1988, p. 249).

3.2 Other Hegelian figures referred to by Lacan.


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a) The dialectic of the belle me. Lacan's scarce references to the dialecticof the belle me relate this figure of the Phenomenology of Spiriteither tothe structure of neurosis, or to the structure of mental disorder in general. Inthe Phenomenology the (romantic) beautiful soul revolts against a world ofdisorder which is simply a projection of its own disorder. It resides in a

permanent delusion about itself and the world. Its revolt will bring it an evengreater dissatisfaction, which will intensify, in its turn, the disorder projectedonto the world.

The neurotic, according to Lacan, is trapped in such a vicious circularity.The disorder he suffers from does not belong to the world around him but isproduced by himself. All his attempts to overcome this disorder increase it,

just because they are the driving forces of that disorder.

"The moi, the ego, of modern man, as I have indicated elsewhere, has takenon its form in the dialectical impasse of the belle me who does notrecognize his very own raison d'tre in the disorder that he denounces in theworld" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 70).

Similar references to the dialectic of the belle me may be found on p. 20, p.126-127 (1977a). Lacan also relates the dialectic of the belle me to theDora case in Intervention on Transference (Mitchell, 1982, p. 65). The

outcome of the conflict of the belle me is the tyrannical imposition of the"law of the heart" on the world: "(...) the protest of the 'beautiful soul', (...)rises up against the world in the name of the law of the heart" (Mitchell,1982, p. 65). Through the law of the heart Lacan alludes to the aggressivityresulting from the neurotic's delusion.

Finally, Lacan even regards the dialectic of the belle me and of the law ofthe heart as the most successful representation of madness in Hegel'sPhenomenology.

"The madman (...) wants to impose the law of his heart on what appears tohim as the disorder of the world, a "mad" enterprise (...) in that (...) thesubject does not recognize in the world's disorder the very manifestation ofhis present being, and in so far as what he feels to be the law of his heart isonly the image, both inverted and virtual, of that same being (...) his being isthus enclosed in a circle, unless he breaks it with some act of violence in


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which, directing his blows against what seems to him disorder, he strikes outat himself by way of social repercussion. Such is the general formula ofmadness that we find in Hegel" (Lacan, 1966, p. 171-172).

b) The Hegelian "cunning of reason" signifies for Lacan an illusion inherentto all rational knowledge (including the Phenomenologyof Hegel). It is theillusion that there is a truth or an absolute knowledge, which is beyond allverifications and doubts. "Hegel's 'cunning of reason' means that, frombeginning to end, the subject knows what he wants" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 301).Such an absolute knowledge or a unconditional cognitive position isunattainable for the subject of discourse: "(...) there is no Other of the Other"(Lacan, 1977a, p. 311). All claims for an absolute truth lead the subject ofdiscourse to a miscognition of his own status in the Symbolic order.

"The cunning of reason is an attractive notion because it echoes with apersonal myth that is very familiar to the obsessional neurotic, and whosestructure is often found among the intelligentsia" (Lacan, 1977a, p. 308-309).

c) Lacan's reformulation of the Hegelian "unhappy consciousness"12 throwslight on a very important distinction between the Phenomenology of Spirit

and psychoanalysis. The separating line between them coincides with theseparating line between knowledge and sexuality. The dialectical figuresemployed so far by Lacan, structure a field of experience which ispredominantly a sexual one (whereas the field of the Phenomenology,according to Lacan, is a cognitive one).

"Who can not see the distance that separates the unhappy consciousness -of which, however strongly it is engraved in Hegel, it can be said that it is stillno more than the suspension of a corpus of knowledge - from the'discontents of civilization' in Freud (...)

that marks for us what, on reading it, can not be articulated otherwise thanthe 'skew' relation that separates the subject from sexuality?" (Lacan,1977a, p. 297) The most important implication of this distinction for our


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thesis is that the Hegelian dialectical figures, which structure in thePhenomenology a realm of knowledge and self-knowledge (a view sharedalso by Lacan), can not be treated ontologically by a psychoanalyst likeLacan who is mainly interested in human sexuality, and in theepistemological problems correlated with it. What makes this distinction

between Hegel's Phenomenologyand psychoanalysis special is that Lacanis aware of it, which makes us suppose that he is also not unaware of thetransformations he introduces in the Hegelian dialectical figures.

d) Lacan's critique of Hegel has been implied by many of his references tothe Phenomenology analyzed so far. The main point of dissent betweenLacan and Hegel is the Hegelian idea of a synthetic truth, of an absoluteknowledge, of a synthetic reshaping of the subject of knowledge. We shallnot discuss here why Lacan assumes that the subject matter of thePhenomenology is the subject of knowledge, and not the spirit. What

interests us now is Lacan's fundamental disbelief in the synthetic (positive,constructive) outcome of dialectics in the Phenomenology. The mostcomplete summary of Hegel's dialectic to be found in Lacan's writingsreveals his sensitivity to the major problems of the Phenomenology.

"This dialectic is convergent and attains the conjuncture defined as absoluteknowledge. As such it is deduced, it can only be the conjunction of thesymbolic with a real of which there is nothing more to be expected. What isthis real, if not a subject fulfilled in his identity to himself? From which onecan conclude that this subject is already perfect in this regard, and is thefundamental hypothesis of this whole process. He is named, in effect, asbeing the substratum of this process; he is called the Selbstbewutsein, thebeing conscious of self, the fully conscious self" (Lacan, 1977a,p. 296).

A simplification of the dialectic of the Phenomenologyor not, this passagestresses its most vulnerable point, its outcome - the absolute knowledge, thefully conscious self. Absolute knowledge, the conjunction of the (Lacanian)

Symbolic with the (Lacanian) Real is something unattainable.13 There willalways be a gap between knowledge and truth, because knowledge,according to Lacan, is series of miscognitions which undermine the identityof the subject and make any correspondence of knowledge to the reality ofthe subject impossible.

The synthetic progress of the "fully conscious self" involves the function of


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sublation (Aufhebung), which, according to Lacan, is the hindrance to anypossible synthesis of something new, higher, better or more truthful.Sublation, which is the pattern of a dialectical negativity for Kojve, is anentirely destructive function in Lacan's view. Lacan emphatically rejects theconstructivity attributed to sublation by Hegel:

"(...) when one is made into two, there is no going back on it. It, can neverrevert tomaking one again, not even a new one. TheAufhebung (sublation)is one of those sweet dreams of philosophy" (Mitchell, 1982, p. 156).

Correspondingly, as products of the constructive sublations of thePhenomenology, absolute knowledge and the fully conscious self belong to

the same sweet dream of philosophy.

CONCLUSION

We have already examined some of the more important problems andaspects of the transition from Hegel's conception of dialectics to its Lacanianreinterpretation. We have been regarding this transition as a transformativeprocess, heavily marked by Kojve's influence on Lacan. The Kojvianreversal of Hegel's idea of dialectics has been displayed in the paper:Hegel, Kojve and Lacan - The Metamorphoses of Dialectics - Part I:Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and its Kojvian interpretation as a point ofreference for the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. The currentsecond part of this paper deals with the Lacanian references to Hegel'sdialectic and reveals that all of them refer not directly to it but to itsnegativistic and anthropological Kojvian version.14 There are, however,considerable differences between Kojve's version of Hegel's dialectic andits Lacanian inversion. Two general questions, opposite to one another,should be raised if we want to draw the distinctions between Kojve's andLacan's conceptions of dialectics.

a) The first question is: What is the impact of the dialectical figuresemployed by Lacan on his psychoanalytical doctrine? As modes ofnegativity, these dialectical figures accord with Lacan's linguisticreinterpretation of Freud, which overemphasizes the splitting (die Spaltung)of the subject and its emptiness as a subject of speech. The dialecticalfigures from the Phenomenology, the selection of which is determined by


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Kojve, designate the conflicts and the divisions operative in Lacan'spsychoanalytical theory of the subject. They help Lacan elaborate thematrix of his radically negativistic (and why not postmodern) reformulation ofpsychoanalysis. These figures, however, are not the matrix itself. They arepart of the symbolic context in which it is worked out. We can not be sure to

what extent Lacan's "dialectic" distorts or restructures the Freudian patternof his theory. This may be a task of a separate study. The one thing we maybe sure of is that the dialectical figures referred to by Lacan do not have onlya decorative function in his thinking.

Since we are interested in the metamorphoses ofdialectics in the transitionfrom Hegel to Lacan, we shall go on directly to our second question, whichrequires a more detailed answer than the first one.

b) The second question is: What changes do the Hegelian dialectical figuresundergo in the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan? Lacan employsthe same dialectical figures from the Phenomenology, which Kojve haspromoted into principles of dialectics. He considers them as dialectical foralmost the same reasons as Kojve does - they all designate modes ofnegativity. Lacan, however, goes beyond the Kojvian reformulations ofHegel's dialectic in two main respects.

b. 1 According to Kojve the five modes of negativity (of desire, struggle,labor, speech and death) are the principles of the dialectic of history. Heregards them as the phenomena around which revolves human history andprogress. These particular dialectical figures refer to the historical existenceof man. As phenomena they represent the modalities of human activity andcreativity. The five modes of negativity are the principles of one of thebranches of Kojve's "dualist ontology" - history. They are ontologicalprinciples for Kojve; they refer to man's being. Furthermore we can say thatHegel's phenomenological survey is also (but not only) an ontological one.

All the phenomena in the Phenomenology, including those overemphasizedby Kojve, illuminate certain forms of human existence. The unambiguity ofthe phenomena of negativity in Hegel's Phenomenology or in Kojve'sthinking results from the fact that they are regarded ontologically, that they

represent some form of being (non-being) or another.

Contrary to Hegel and Kojve, Lacan views dialectics from an entirely non

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