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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e<strong>in</strong>g. Lacan captures this foundational loss, or lack, with his concept of castration. To be clear, it has<br />
noth<strong>in</strong>g to do with the physical act of mutilation; we are not here <strong>in</strong> the realm of the real here but<br />
rather with<strong>in</strong> the symbolic. This is <strong>in</strong> fact the concept that centrally underp<strong>in</strong>s. It captures the orig<strong>in</strong>al<br />
forsak<strong>in</strong>g that each of us undergoes <strong>in</strong> order to accede to language.<br />
Subsequently, however, we forever uncomfortably straddle these two realms, the realm of<br />
immediate, preverbal experience (the world of raw needs, impulses, frustrations, anger and joy; of<br />
the imag<strong>in</strong>ary and the real); and the mediated realm of the symbolic, <strong>in</strong>to which we must first be<br />
<strong>in</strong>tegrated <strong>in</strong>to <strong>in</strong> order to express that experience. But to be able to express it is also to loose it <strong>in</strong> its<br />
raw, immediate form; here<strong>in</strong> lies the constitutive split that marks the tragedy of the human condition.<br />
Words can never completely convey exactly what the speaker wants to say. For it to be said it must<br />
be mediated by words that belong to everyone, words that hold generic mean<strong>in</strong>gs and are thus<br />
fundamentally ill-fitted for that unique and immediate impulse that led the subject to want to speak<br />
<strong>in</strong> the first place. As Lacan put it <strong>in</strong> his (1977) famous quips, ‘the th<strong>in</strong>g must be lost <strong>in</strong> order to be<br />
expressed’, or aga<strong>in</strong> that ‘speech is the murder of the th<strong>in</strong>g’. The ‘th<strong>in</strong>g’ <strong>in</strong> its orig<strong>in</strong>al, raw<br />
<strong>in</strong>dividualised form must be rel<strong>in</strong>quished so as to be fitted <strong>in</strong>to exist<strong>in</strong>g signifiers and thereby<br />
communicated. This forsak<strong>in</strong>g is a condition of entry <strong>in</strong>to the symbolic; it is what one gives up <strong>in</strong> order<br />
to be able to become a social, speak<strong>in</strong>g be<strong>in</strong>g. ‘Man [sic] speaks, then, but it is because the symbol<br />
has made him man’ (Lacan 2006, 72)<br />
The Social Contract as Castration and the Leviathan as the ‘Name of the Father’<br />
This symbolic debt casts a new light on the depths that, I argue, Hobbes plumbs with the<br />
understand<strong>in</strong>g of the social contract he puts forward. First, <strong>in</strong> contract<strong>in</strong>g with the Leviathan, the<br />
<strong>in</strong>dividual forsakes her liberty <strong>in</strong> exchange for secur<strong>in</strong>g her life and, centrally, be<strong>in</strong>g rid of the fear of<br />
death. That fundamental freedom, I argue, is that which perta<strong>in</strong>s to the realm of immediate<br />
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