Abstract
This chapter focuses on the core idea that the production of meaning is a hauntogenic event, as the process that creates meaning also creates spectral traces of the original events and entities that are made sense of. As infants develop they master the creation of symbols to represent sense impressions of external and internal events, entities and experiences; followed by the ability to communicate such representations in the social space of a symbolic system. Through each wave of elevated representation spectral traces of the signified entities and experiences are also produced, silent/negative references to an original object which “haunt” the new signifier. The process of transformation of a “thing in itself” to a signifier is examined here with specific attention to the role played by phonemes, which serve as gateways between somatic and cognitive levels of experience. The discussion continues with an examination of the psychoanalytic notion of Nachträglichkeit. Freud introduced Nachträglichkeit to explain the clinical observation that some old and forgotten events find a way of returning to life to assert traumatic impact, often with more devastating force than did the actual experience. This chapter will serve as the foundation for upcoming discussions of the higher levels of representation, as these semiotic structures make possible the emergence of desire and its psychological economy in tandem with death drive through higher level linguistic functions such as metaphoricity and metonymy.
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense, and as they please,
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
—John Milton
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Lacan, 1953, p. 228.
- 4.
Hegel, 1975.
- 5.
Hegel, 1975, p. 219.
- 6.
Heidegger, 1967, p. 128.
- 7.
Hegel, 1975, p. 220.
- 8.
Blanchot, 1981, p. 43.
- 9.
See Ricoeur, 2003. I will reintroduce this connection later in discussing metaphoricity.
- 10.
“Phonic elements by means of which words are differentiated [but] have no positive and fixed meaning of their own.” (Jakobson, 1978, p. 69)
- 11.
Jakobson, 1978, p. 67.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
See Saussure, 1959.
- 15.
Quoted in Jakobson 1978, p. 76.
- 16.
- 17.
“If one of the terms is given, then the other, though not present, is evoked” (Jakobson, 1978, p. 76).
- 18.
See e.g. Jakobson 1978, pp. 76ff.
- 19.
Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 270.
- 20.
Eickhoff, 2006.
- 21.
- 22.
Freud, 1895, p. 356. See case of Emma.
- 23.
See e.g. Laplanche, 1999.
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Rahimi, S. (2021). Meaning, Language, and Subjectivity. In: The Hauntology of Everyday Life. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78992-3_2
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