1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
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signifier takes center stage <strong>in</strong> Lacan. But what is known as ‘the primacy of the signifier’ <strong>in</strong> Lacanian<br />
thought (la primauté du signifiant) implies someth<strong>in</strong>g more. <strong>In</strong> Saussure, the world out there rema<strong>in</strong>s a<br />
distant referent for the signified. Lacan goes one step further still <strong>in</strong> shear<strong>in</strong>g the relationship between<br />
the signifier and the signified, and <strong>in</strong> cast<strong>in</strong>g the focus upon the signifier alone. Lacan f<strong>in</strong>ds that what the<br />
signifier uttered by the <strong>in</strong>dividual is conjur<strong>in</strong>g is not always merely the world out there. Recall here that<br />
his perspective is the <strong>in</strong>dividual and her speech (la parole, <strong>in</strong> the Saussurian term<strong>in</strong>ology), as opposed to<br />
the collective perspective of Saussure and the philosophers of language (la langue). Not only does it not<br />
straightforwardly mirror the world out there (as <strong>in</strong> Saussure 1916), but, for Lacan, that speech also<br />
po<strong>in</strong>ts <strong>in</strong>stead to the <strong>in</strong>ner world of the speak<strong>in</strong>g subject, the unconscious level of <strong>in</strong>articulate desires.<br />
Hence what the signifier can capture, and <strong>in</strong> fact what it alone can capture, is her desire; that same<br />
desire that the analyst seeks to tease out from amidst the mesh of images, identifications, and<br />
repressive mechanisms, <strong>in</strong> order to shepherd it towards symbolization. Bound up as it is with vital<br />
energy and basic needs, that desire is forever express<strong>in</strong>g itself; often at the <strong>in</strong>dividual’s expense, notably<br />
<strong>in</strong> so called Freudian slips or actes manqués. The task of the analyst is thus to hear the desire that<br />
sometimes eludes the analysand and yet expresses itself <strong>in</strong> her speech. The analyst is listen<strong>in</strong>g out for<br />
the key signifiers, expressive of another level of signification, that erupt at times through the<br />
analysand’s speech, and work both at the surface level of what the analysand <strong>in</strong>tends to say (often<br />
someth<strong>in</strong>g about the world), while also offer<strong>in</strong>g a w<strong>in</strong>dow onto her unconscious. Piec<strong>in</strong>g these together<br />
she can beg<strong>in</strong> to map out the cha<strong>in</strong>s of significations structur<strong>in</strong>g the person’s desire.<br />
On the one hand Lacan’s analytical thought and practice foregrounds primacy of the signifier, on<br />
the other Hobbes’s political treaty features one primary signifier, the Leviathan. These Lacanian<br />
conceptualizations of the symbolic and the signifier provide the start<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>ts for develop<strong>in</strong>g the first<br />
part of my argument, which is that the Leviathan is the signifier of the symbolic order at large.<br />
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