1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...

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This explains, second, the diachronic or developmental perspective by which he seeks to understand how an individual is born into these structures, driven by that imperative to diagnose the source of her contemporary ailments. In this he positions himself in a somewhat similar stance to Hobbes’s, at the origin of the social order. Both similarly develop diachronic perspectives, in Hobbes’s case, to retrace the passage from a pre-social to a social order. In Lacan, the trajectory of the individual’s development and her account of it become the analytical material itself. Timelines are thus central operative principles both in Hobbes’s treatise and in Lacan’s clinical practice, but theirs are diachronic rather than historical perspectives since history is mythical in both instances. What matters is not the accuracy of the narrative so much as history’s function as a myth at the collective level (in Hobbes) or its narration by the speaking subject as that which the analyst and analysand can work on (in Lacan). The Three Axes of the Lacanian Symbolic The symbolic is then, is the social order in a simplified sense. Having etched out the logic of Lacanian theorising now enables us to flesh out this complex concept more substantially, along three axes. It was coined to capture, first, the ensemble of symbols that constitute a culture, apprehended as a structured totality. At a more generic level, it designates the matrix or organizing principle undergirding all social life. Language and the law are its primary sites of expressions, and they are tightly bound up. Indeed, Lacan developed the concept by building on Freud’s (1913) analysis of the incest taboo and the role of the father figure as the founding stone for the social order at large. 14 The father’s initial, symbolic (rather than actually pronounced; and therefore forever potentially reiterated) pronouncement of the incest prohibition is the mythical founding speech act that, by drawing the first line between the forbidden and the authorised, founds the law and thus the 14 To be clear this father figure, or symbolic father, does not refer to the actual, real genitor; but rather simply to an instance constitutive of the human psyche. As such, there is no implication whatsoever that this person need be a male; but rather any person who simply takes on this symbolic function in the development of the child. 20
possibility of social life. The symbolic designates the broader grid onto which the individual is hooked, as it were, as part of her becoming a social, which is to say political being. This process of hooking onto or inscription is illustrated by the function of naming (Lacan 1977, 74). The acquisition of a proper name marks the moment when the child is inscribed into the symbolic order. This is the constitutive moment for the individual’s identity, the one that makes possible all ulterior identities. Centrally, this passage from the biological, or the state of nature, to the social order is operated by a signifier. Second, the symbolic constitutes one of three ontological categories that structure the individual’s relationship to the world, or her ‘reality’. It is thus best understood in relation to, on the one hand, ‘the real’ (which is thus not to be confused with ‘reality’), and ‘the imaginary’ on the other. The category of the real has been considered Lacan’s central contribution to philosophy (Juranville 1984). It designates that which is irreducible to words and thus to our efforts to apprehend the world around us. For to know is to put words to things; it is an act of symbolisation. The real thus marks the hard limit of symbolization; grossly simplified, where words flounder. Examples would be the experience of death or natural disasters. The imaginary and the symbolic for their part stand in relation each another as the orders of nature and culture respectively. The imaginary constitutes the realm of identifications and imaginary projections. It is what which humans share with animals. In the animal kingdom imagos and lures form an integral part of the biological mechanisms of survival and reproduction, notably in the use of camouflage. In a developmental perspective, the imaginary is where the individual dwells before she enters the social order and which she never completely leaves behind. In that sense it remains the individual’s primary domain, ruled by images and lures, rather than by symbols, which are distinctly human trait. The imaginary is thus, as will be shown more extensively in the next section, the individual’s very own state of nature. 21
Page 2 and 3: 2001). As the seat of human agency,
Page 4 and 5: foundation for elaborating a type o
Page 6 and 7: ones; to the extent that it is dire
Page 8 and 9: away from the ‘Hobbesian traditio
Page 10 and 11: Classical realism thus cast its len
Page 12 and 13: Gauthier is right to find in Hobbes
Page 14 and 15: he mobilises Searle’s distinction
Page 16 and 17: What did carry over from Hobbes , m
Page 18 and 19: within and beyond the text, it is i
Page 22 and 23: The imaginary is also the site wher
Page 24 and 25: or signification. 17 The word does
Page 26 and 27: Part III: The Leviathan as the sign
Page 28 and 29: subject that function as anchoring
Page 30 and 31: in terms of what the Leviathan achi
Page 32 and 33: The symbolic, as we have seen, is t
Page 34 and 35: experience and unimpeded desires. H
Page 36 and 37: Reading Hobbes through Lacan shines
Page 38 and 39: imagination of the discipline’s f
Page 40 and 41: Citations Aron, Raymond (1966 [1962
Page 42 and 43: Hansen, L.(2006), Security As Pract
Page 44 and 45: Morgenthau, Hans J. (1960), Politic
Page 46: Wolfers, Arnold (1962), Discord and

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