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Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan, Kojve and Hyppolite on the concept of the subject
Caroline Williams Published online: 30 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: Caroline Williams (1997) Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan, Kojve and Hyppolite on the concept of the subject, Parallax, 3:1, 41-53, DOI: 10.1080/13534645.1997.9522373 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13534645.1997.9522373

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Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan, Kojve and Hyppolite on the concept of the subject
Caroline Williams

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...when one is made into two, there is no going back on it. It can never revert to making one again, not even a new one. The Aufhebung /Sublationy is one of those sweet dreams of philosophy. Jacques Lacan, "A Love Letter'"

Introduction This essay will explore the relationship between the experience of subjectivity, and the production, or formation of knowledge. It thus begins with the assumption that die structure tiiat knowledge may take is inseparable from the conditions of possibility for subjectivity. Arguably, the form of die subject can reflect or reveal its contents as knowledge only when two conditions are fulfilled: first, there is an assumed boundedness and containment of subjective experience, and second, tiiere is an epistemological contract between subjectivity and the means of representation. The writings of Jacques Lacan have brought the terms of this philosophical relationship into new relief. Philosophical discourse cannot reveal me subject, neither can it simply reflect die contents of consciousness. For Lacan, subjectivity is not only an effect of a complex formation of imaginary, symbolic and real dimensions, it is also enmeshed in the structure of language, both of which delimit the possibility of knowledge. It is die linguistic component of Lacan's conception of the subject that is usually privileged. But the dieoretical configurations of Lacanian thought are more complex. Lacan has, arguably, incorporated a first reading of the subject influenced by Hegel, and a second reading derived through an interest in the fundamental structuring role of language which owes much to Saussure. T h e first reading (begun in die 1930s and 1940s, but undergoing continuous repositionings and retractions) creates a complex pattern of interference with the later structuralist reading of the subject, so much so that it is often difficult to trace the development of Lacan's concepts to any single philosophical source.2 Furthermore, given that psychoanalysis is primarily orientated towards clinical practice, to pose the question of the inter-relation of philosophy, psychoanalysis and the concept of the subject, may seem misplaced. Lacan spoke of his own recourse to philosophy to be of propaedeutic value only.3 However, as Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe point out, Lacan's

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psychoanalytic conception of the subject is also a philosophical project, one which creates contradictions and inconsistencies in his position. 4 T h e consideration of the intersection between philosophy and psychoanalysis proposed here, aims to produce a richer, non-reductive understanding of some aspects of the Lacanian conception of the subject.

I
Lacan's use of Hegelian categories is clear throughout his work, but what is more important is his interpretation of Hegelian phenomenology in relation to his conception of the subject. Lacan, it seems, finds a 'natural ally' in Hegel. 5 David Archard goes as far as to say that there is a "grafting of Hegel onto Freud". 6 In The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis (1953), Lacan writes: ...it is impossible for our technique to fail to realize the structuring moments of the Hegelian phenomenology: in the first place the master-slave dialectic... and generally everything which permits us to understand how the constitution of the object is subordinated to the bringing to realization of the subject.7 In his essay "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in Psychoanalytic experience" (1948), Lacan makes an important distinction between the subject as ego or T , that which may achieve an elusive sense of wholeness and autonomy of self, and the subject as primordial being, which lies in a place 'beyond' the ego-as-subject and may be approached through analysis. The experience of the formation of the T is opposed to "...any philosophy directly issuing from the Cogito."8 There is no thinking subject prior to the recognition of the T ; this ego requires an identification with an image before it can function as subject, that is, before it can become a social animal. The event of the mirror-stage, through which the subject perceives an image which is other than the largely mute, discordant being that it is, offers the subject itsfirst apprehension of bodily unity. This gestalt, which fixes the image, engenders the subject of desire; it charges the subject with an impulse, a libidinal energy which translates itself into a narcissistic fantasy of wholeness, and an aggressivity towards the other who may challenge theform of this imago. The mirror thus allows the fragmented being to become an T , to be harnessed to an ontologica! structure according to which the ego or Ideal-I may think, perceive and recognise itself as a permanent, coherent structure. This imaginary ego becomes the support for a division, Spaltung, of the subject, which remains forever divided between a seemingly coherent self and a mode of being which is always other to the subject.

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A purely development account of this event, whether biological or anthropogenetic, cannot appreciate the "epistemological void" 9 which characterises the structured reality of the mirror-stage, or why the subject remains captivated by its alienating

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tendencies. T h e mirror-stage situates die instance of die ego in a line oi fiction, of alienation; a function of mconnaissance, misrecognition, is tiius seen to characterize die ego in all its structures. Furthermore, such an account cannot understand die Hegelianism underlying Lacan's mirror-stage, an event which is experienced as "...a temporal dialectic that decisively projects the formation of die individual into history".10 This mode of temporality cannot be reduced to a linear development of die individual subject (or the historical process) because this subject is distributed widiin a two-dimensional structure of reality, which at diis point in our analysis we have idendfied as a duality: the (misrecognised) being of the self, and die active ego who thinks and deliberates. It is die imaginary ego which attempts to solder, to mend, the discordance created widiin the subject, who remains ignorant of its alienadon. As Lacan writes: It is this moment diat decisively tips die whole of human knowledge into mediadzation dirough die desire of die odier, constitutes its objects in an abstract equivalence by die co-operadon of others and turns die I into diat apparatus for which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even diough it should correspond to a natural maturation..." This description of die structuring moment of die mirror-stage certainly seems redolent of Hegel's description of die master-slave dialectic. In some respects, Hegel has a similar aim to Lacan: to re-situate die primacy of die knowing subject and to understand die object in relation to die movement of subjectivity in time. Hegel's depiction of the master-slave dialectic reads, in parts, like a commentary on Lacan's mirror-stage: Self-consciousness is faced by anodier self-consciousness; it has come out of itself. This has a two-fold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded die other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own selfi2 What is not to be found in die mirror for eidier Hegel or Lacan, is the subject's selfrecognition; it is an imaginary wholeness diat is experienced here. Both Hegel and Lacan would agree that die mirror cannot reflect the subject's desire. T h e life and deatii struggle leaves die desire for recognition in die subject unsatisfied and negated. However, as Wilfried Ver Eecke points out, for Hegel, die master-slave dialectic also has a positive function; tiiis Hegelian dialectic charts die development and education of consciousness; for Lacan, in contrast, "...die dialectic of the mirror-stage does not assign consciousness a crucial role in bringing about die dialectic move..." 13 Rather, Lacan limits the scope and meaning of desire to die dominant themes of law, language and dieir relation to mconnaissance. Here, die emphasis is taken away from the dialectic of desire as a (possible) moment of intersubjective recognition, and towards the symbolic structure of language (the field of die Other), a dialectic of die "incessant

sliding of the signifier under die signified",14 which appears to fix itself, through the system of differences and inter-relations between signs, as a Symbolic Order. It is via the gaps in signification that desire (as unconscious) is seen to emerge, and not dirough the speech of the speaking subject who remains ensnared by the synchronic law of language. It is thus important to question whether desire can be synthesised with die subject in a dialectical movement. In his book Lacan in Contexts, David Macey notes that one should refer not to Hegel, but to the Hegel-Kojve matrix in Lacan. "To return to Kojve after reading Lacan," Macey writes, "is to experience the shock of recognition, a truly uncanny sensation of deja vu.",h Lacan attended Kojve's lectures on Hegel between 1933 and 1939, and it is dierefore likely that Lacan's concept of desire for recognition repeats Kojvean formulas.16 This may also account for die Heideggerian conceptual motifs in Lacan's writings: these too may be filtered dirough Kojve's reading.17 Nevertheless, a direct assimilation of Lacan to Kojve may risk producing, I will argue below, a philosophical reduction of Lacan's theoretical position and his conceptions of die subject and knowledge. The lectures, translations and interpretations of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by .Alexandre Kojve and Jean Hyppolite in die 1930s and 1940s have had a profound effect upon the development of contemporary French philosophy. It may be considered a simplification to associate the former writer with a humanist reading of Hegel, and die latter with a structuralist reading, but it is crucial to emphasise the philosophical divergences of their respective interpretations and, in consequence, the markedly different conceptions of subjectivity which emerge. 18 In their interpretations of Hegel, both Kojve and Hyppolite question the totalising implications of the dialectic, and the tiieological formulation of die Absolute, and bodi expose the structuring moments of the dialectic which may in turn generate the structure of die subject. Additionally, both writers share a certain recourse to Heidegger's dioughts on time, death and the subject's finitude. However, I will argue below in sections II and III for the distinctiveness of their philosophical positions. For Kojve, time will be understood as tied to die creative action of the subject, who transforms history, whereas in Hyppolite's philosophy, time will constitute human reality and be understood as a structure of all living beings. These distinctions are important; they unravel into markedly different readings of Hegel and, necessarily, different constructions of subjectivity. They may further act to indicate Lacan's distance from the Kojvian problmatique of die subject.

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II Kojve's central thesis is that the movement of self-consciousness and subjectivity in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is first and foremost an anthropology. History and knowledge, historical becoming and the subject's gradual acquiring of a truth for self and world, are giving temporal movement only by the human act of making history.

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Like the early Marx in the Paris Manuscripts, Kojve places being and becoming, negation and negativity firmly within the historical field of human action where it becomes subsumed by the act of labour. There can be no acting self prior to social interaction with others. In the natural state, being can only be a being-for-itself Natural consciousness may achieve an isolated, singular self-certainty; it may generate a certain knowledge of objects and thus produce a simple unmediated identity with itself. However, consciousness of the other is reduced to a function of its own selfconsciousness: the other becomes a mere thing. In contrast, for Kojve, the subject who desires recognition of the other and external reality has transcended the "animalbeing" described above; its desire for transformation assimilates, negates and absorbs animal or given-being' 9 and hence creates and reveals the I. Thus, "Man is negating Action, which transforms given Being, and, by transforming it, transforms itself".20 The subject is the ground, the movement of history; it is not the passive, contemplative behaviour of natural being which transforms reality for Kojve, but the active, humanising desire (as negativity) of a subject seeking self-recognition through the recognition of the other. Kojve places desire at the centre of what it means to exist and it is the centrality of this concept to the humanist problmatique which Lacan appears to take from Kojve - although not without it undergoing a significant theoretical transformation. Kojve's philosophical discourse utilises Hegel's discussion of the master-slave dialectic. Here, it risks for some critics, turning the duality which Hegel emphasises as both an interior relation between the self and itself (perhaps most clearly expressed in the 'unhappy consciousness'), and a social relation between self and other, into a dramatic account of two distinct, clashing subjectivities.21 For Kojve, it is the master who represents consciousness existing for itself, that is, a given-being. The slave's reality, on the other hand, is constituted both by a recognition of the dignity and superiority of the master, which imparts on the slave a sense of contingency, loss (in short, the spectre of death), and by the object of its labour, which remains a negative act. However, whilst the master is fixed in his pure negativity, viewing desire of the object as an end in itself, the slave is ready for transcendence and transformation of the negative. The slave's is a non-essential activity. Here, desire or negativity, as work, modifies the natural world and in this process its own relation to the slave. As Michael Roth observes, whilst "Hegelian time is the temporality of desire, the master's time is the rhythm of satisfaction". 22 Work is time for Kojve; it exists within time and requires time; by working, the slave creates human temporality as human history, halting the evolution of nature and exceeding slavish consciousness. 23 Furthermore, the creative dimension of desire as action is expressed in speech. Knowledge is at once the expression of the experience of the acting subject in Discourse, and a transformation and revelation of nature as human knowledge of the Real. Following Kojve's distinction between the natural and the human world, knowledge is always made manifest in human action. Ideas appear as the products o/"objects and projects mediated by work and action. 24 Truth as

Totality (read absolute knowledge) can be gleaned by the subject only witfi the culmination of the dialectic, with the synthesis of action and history, and the recognition of man as free individual. 20 Kojve's anthropological reading of Hegel thus appears to have a dual significance: firsdy, it allows desire to be humanised and tied to the agency of me subject so diat it may, in turn, order die dialectical movement of history; secondly, it generates die conditions of possibility for truth/absolute knowledge in die enunciating subject. This interpretation of subjectivity and desire is grounded upon an inherent dualism between the natural and die human which Kojve insists he finds in tacit form in The Phenomenology of Spirit.26 The social ontology described above distinguishes between a natural and an historical world, a distinction which is at once incompatible widi Lacan's own symbolic construction of die human world which claims, following LviStrauss, to transcend any nature/culture opposition. T h e Spalhmg of die subject described by Lacan, does not generate two distinct ontologies; if it generates ^ o n t o l o g y of the subject and die structure of human reality, diese discursive delimitations are not dien opposed to a natural world; the former place remains unformalised, undifferentiated and unrealized, in short, re-ontological real?1 Neidier would Lacan's category of language allow for die collapse of die distinction of die structure of language into the subject's speech. Language is a formal structure which is anterior to die experience of die subject; it introduces certain structural limits upon die subject's speech (ie. die subject-as-signifier in die symbolic order). T h e subject is not, dierefore, die enunciator of discourse as Kojve proposes, but the enunciated. Finally, whilst for Lacan, "desire takes shape in die margin in which demand becomes separated from need", 28 this formulation cannot be simply subsumed into the Kojvean conception of humanised desire in action. Certainly, desire is not, following Kojve, a biological instinct but it is for, Lacan, bound to die Spaltung of die subject. Thus, desire always points to the past even as it instils in die subject die (impossible) imaginary spectacle of a fulfilled future, it always reminds die subject of tiiat which it lacks. There is no vision of wholeness and self-realization in Lacan's conception of die subject. It is die structure of the subject's experience which Lacan wishes to delineate. This is a markedly different project to the one developed by Kojve. It is a philosophical position which, I would argue, has more in common with Jean Hyppolite's interpretation of Hegel. Jean Hyppolite attended many of Lacan's Sminaires and his views are often noted in die discussions which end die sessions.29 The remaining discussion will thus seek to establish parallels between Hyppolite and Lacan at the level of dieir conceptions of subjectivity.

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Ill Hyppolite's reading of Hegel's conception of the subject emphasises the tragic component of human existence and whilst he, like Kojve, also focuses upon the historical dimension of the subject (ie. the subject's temporality), this philosophical discourse of history has no humanist component, and no interpretation of die subject

as historical actor. Hyppolite does read the condition of human experience to be the struggle for recognition, and views this struggle as fixed on desire: desire for the other and recognition by the other.30 However, there can be no dialectical recognition of these experiences by the subject. As Hyppolite writes, "...the accomplishment of the absolute is forever deferred." 31 Whilst, according to Hyppolite, Hegel privileges a retrospective point of view in the Phenomenology of Spirit, which describes the different figures of knowledge and the journey of consciousness from sensuous certainty through perception towards understanding, Hyppolite asks whether there is not a logic of consciousness, structural conditions of experience, which are constant for every historical situation. 32 This structure would not be "...the appearance of a unique subject but an original ensemble, a totality of a quite different type from Hegel's spiritual principle".33 If, then, Hyppolite maintains a focus on the existential plight of the subject in the social world, this ontology is not to be viewed anthropologically, but rather in terms of conditions which structure the possibility of self-consciousness and its experience of truth. Hyppolite writes: "It is not a question of man considered as a biological species, but of the emergence in the very heart of life of a being who becomes conscious of this life as a condition of his existence." 34 The being of life is "the disquiet of the self",35 the anxiety, suffering and alienation of a subject which will never coincide with itself "for it is always other in order to be itself".36 For Michael Roth, this is indicative of the centrality of the Unhappy Consciousness to Hyppolite's conception of the subject. This experience is one of inadequacy, infinite non-correspondence with the truth of the object; the subject always fails to reach unity with itself. However, because consciousness always exceeds itself in its reflection it is doomed to oscillate forever on the brink of self-discovery: "This feeling of disparity within the self, of the impossibility of the self coinciding with itself in reflection [the unhappy consciousness], is indeed the basis of subjectivity."3' Negativity is at the centre of being for Hyppolite; it is immanent in all content and is therefore the condition of possibility of any subject whatsoever.38 "This is why," Hyppolite notes, "the individual is the 'absolute impulse', rather than merely the tendency of being to remain in a given state, and it is this in virtue of an internal c o n t r a d i c t i o n . " 3 9 In his essay " T h e H u m a n Situation in the H e g e l i a n Phenomenology", Hyppolite considers the mode through which this impulse of life, that is, subjectivity, may be authenticated in human history. The dislocating force of negativity is the desire on the part of the subject for unity and recognition by the other. In the activity of work/labour, the subject negates itself and shapes and refashions the object; labour humanises nature and conveys a sense of coherence and universality upon human existence.10 In other words, it grounds reason as a human event. Despite the implicit references to Marx here and the evident parallels with Kojvian account above, it is important not to subsume Hyppolite's conception of

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the subject within this philosophical perspective. This conception of desire is not secured by a dualist ontology, rather it is an original structure of experience. The humanising of desire is closer to the structure of recognition as an imaginary movement. Indeed, elsewhere Hyppolite describes the desire for recognition which structures the master-slave dialectic as "Self-consciousness as a mirror pUry" .4 ' Furthermore, Hyppolite posits time as the concept which supersedes all other categories; it is the condition of all human reality and it places a limit upon the subject's creative possibilities.42 This really makes the subject's encounter with the object of labour a missec encounter, conta Marx and Kojve, labouring on nature offers no resolution for the unhappy consciousness, just as desire in its infinitude, can only find an imaginary satisfaction in the object. For Kojve, time, desire and knowledge were all humanised; they could only gain meaning within a theory of human action. Hyppolite's philosophical discourse is markedly different: it is time which gives birth to the subject; temporality which is the basis of all existence. Time is the condition which structures life. It is "...the middle term which makes it possible to conceptualize life and the living relation and the means whereby the problem of knowledge and the problem of life are identifiable"." Time, moreover, cannot be annulled by the subject by whatever means; its destiny is not be be "vindicated by Spirit" as Hegel writes in the final chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit," and Kojve interprets as the end of History. Rather, it is the disquiet of the self (or the 'unhappy consciousness') which Hyppolite continues to emphasise: a subjective state of temporal disjuncture witii the world. This precludes an identity between being and knowledge and ensures that die fissure between forms of knowledge and their linguistic expression/enunciation by the subject will be ceaselessly re-encountered and re-uhought. 45 IV Lacan's psychoanalytic theorisation of die subject attempts a difficult feat which cannot easily be achieved. Lacan attempts a philosophical marriage between an account of subjectivity, which must remain non-subjective in formulation, witii a structuralist account of language and die social world. Lacan's Hegelianism, dierefore, must be tempered by his structuralism. Such a dieoretical syndiesis, if one may call it thus, is itself complex and not widiout contradiction. It does point to a more critical reading of Hegel than die one often noted by Lacan's commentators and critics. In "The subversion of die subject and die dialectic of desire" (1960), Lacan develops a number of critical points regarding Hegel's phenomenology. Firsdy, it is viewed as a "permanent revisionism", where trudi is continuously reabsorbing itself.46 In Lacanian terminology, dialectic syndiesis results only witii die conjunction of die real and the symbolic. According to the Lacanian theory of the real, such a convergence is theoretically and practically impossible. Trudi will be searched for forever in the images of others, but never attained. Lacan notes that the real, for Hegel, is "...a subject fulfilled with his identity to himself", a subject "...always already perfect".47 Lacan's subject, in contrast, is always divided and this disjuncture is perpetual; the conception that consciousness has of itself and its real content are radically

different, the concept of the real in Lacan's work is equated with the pre-discursive, the unrepresentable; it is the residue of the subject's articulations, confined, repressed in the unconscious. The 'contents' of the real furnish an element of experience which can never be fully disclosed to the subject. Its channel is the vehicle of language itself. Consciousness then, is unable to account for discontinuity through recourse to itself, because this discontinuity is part of the ontological structure of the subject. V

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Taking into account these views, I would argue that Lacan's conception of the subject is much closer to Hyppolite's reading of Hegel than the Kojvean position often linked with his conceptualisations. For Hyppolite, and Lacan too, "... the self never coincides with itself, for it is always other in order to be itself".48 Moreover, the project of attaining identity and reconciliation between the subject and the objects of its desire are always overshadowed and doomed to collapse. Lacan's understanding of the petit objet a is indicative of such a position. The object (a) of desire will always deceive the subject; its meaning will always dissipate in the light of the subject's experience of it. Desire may be viewed as having a two-fold significance. Firstly, it is a relation of being to lack; the experience of desire is a reminder of the subject's lost relation to itself which, arguable, cannot be reclaimed. Secondly, desire is always for the desire of the Other, it is linked therefore, to language and the law of the symbolic order. It is articulated within a linguistic framework which has always in effect, crossed out the subject's significance before signification occurs. Quite clearly then, desire, in so far as it is constructed through language, fails to express the being of the subject. This task is reserved for the unconscious.49

This theoretical parallel, with Hyppolite's anti-humanism rather than Kojve's impending anthropomorphism, can be extended further with reference to Lacan's interpretations of history, of the possible end of analysis, and his views on the realization of the truth of the subject. Hyppolite, Lacan and Kojve all subscribe to a Heideggerian account of temporality.50 Human temporality, for Heidegger, cannot be represented by a uni-linear time sequence. Dasein, the order of Being, is caught up in past, present and future temporal modes; to be human is to be divided between these three dimensions. Thus Malcolm Bowie writes, "Being is borne forwards on a composite tide that pulls it towards the utmost fullness of being and, concurrently, towards death, its ultimate loss."31 Time is seen to structure human existence; the discord, that which Lacan describes as a primary characteristic of the subject, is mediated by these different temporal modes. The subject becomes a subject-in-time as soon as it takes up a place within language and tries to signify absence. The oftquoted example of this temporal/linguistic moment is found in Freud's account of the Fort/Da scenario, where the small child tries to represent absence and its desire for the mother using a cotten-reel. By throwing the object out of sight {fort) and then reclaiming it (da), the child comes to terms with the temporal absence of the mother through the presence of language. According to Lacan, these two phonemes together

encapsulate the mechanism of alienation. T h e child learns to separate die thing from its name, in effect producing a division between the real and the symbolic and creating the basis for subjective meaning. Furthermore, this setting up of signifiers in a binary relationship, creates the rupture and consequentialfading of being which is effectively excluded from the temporality of the symbolic order.52 Casey and Woody attach this experience more closely to temporality when they note: ...whether through memory or through anticipation of a wished-for object... whether I project toward a past or a future horizon, temporality exhibits itself in its radically differentiating role: as allowing me to differ form my present self, to be other man myself, to be selfalien in time.53 Lacan's psychoanalytic discourse can, therefore, be seen to establish three temporal registers (symbolic, imaginary and real) which present the structure of subjectivity in markedly different ways and can never by actualised as a singular, self-bounded experience, or contained within a dialectical 'model'. Whilst the Kojvean account of time (itself a reading of Heidegger with Hegel) recognises the temporality of desire and its relation to language and speech (which certainly appear emblematic of some of Lacan's own terminology), both discourse and time are linked to authentic human action and realized with the end of history. However, in Lacan's psychoanalytic account, the subject's history exists in bits and pieces, strewn across these temporal registers, and often alienated and hidden in the form of (repressed) memory, fantasy, and psychoses. The role of analysis is not to demystify or merely reveal the subject to itself. Such an act is radically impossible given the structure of social existence and the ontological form that subjectivity may take. Time cannot be annulled by the subject. Psychoanalysis then, can only forge links between the different temporal registers. The closest die subject may come to 'authenticity', according to Heidegger and Lacan, occurs with being-towards-deatii where authenticity is itself foreclosed. It is here that the finitude and historically contingent form of the subjectivity is most dramatically exposed. Thus Lacan writes: "...when we wish to attain in the subject what was before the serial articulation of the word, and what is primordial in die birth of symbols, we find it in death, from which his experience takes on all the meaning it has." 54

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The philosophical problems of the relation of time and desire to a psychoanalytic conception of subjectivity have important consequences for the interpretation of Lacan offered in this essay. There is no end of analysis, if by which we mean die realization of the subject, because the end-point can only be reached with the obliteration of die human subject. If deadi is experienced as a 'tending towards' as implied in botii Heidegger's and Lacan's readings, as well as Freud's clear presentation of the pleasure-principle, then the termination of analysis becomes impossible. As one commentary on this predicament puts it, "There is no redemption or reconciliation to be had through history because the subject of desire can never be absorbed in

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history, but only subverted or repressed tiiere"." In spite of this claim, it is often argued nonetheless that Lacan seeks the truth of the subject. It is the notion of full as opposed to empty speech which is the cause of such views. Certainly, speech imparts presence within language, but this does not align die subject's speech with truth. The unconscious after all, as Lacan points out, cannot be made continuous with language. Discourse has no criteria of truthfulness unless it is diat of conjoining the subject with its desires and introducing an awareness of this limit to the subject's speech. A distinction must therefore be made between a correspondence theory of truth which appeals to a substantial definition of reality, and a view of trudi which is always panial and contingent, what Lacan has called a "limping truth". 56 What must be emphasised here is that there can be no end-state which may restore plenitude to the subject, or mend its division. Psychoanalysis, whilst orientated towards the future, can have no hold upon the direction mat its path may take. Psychoanalysis has in other words, no metaphysical warrant to totalise experience, or limit and contain knowledge or subjectivity.

Notes
'Jacques Lacan, "A Love Letter", Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the colefreudienne, eds. J. Mitchell a n d j . Rose (London: W. Vv' Norton and Company, 1975): 156. David Macey notes that Lacan's "...relationship with, and use of, philosophy cannot be satisfactorily interpreted in any unilateral fashion". See his Lacan in Contexts (London: Verso Books, 1988): 103.
5

Noted by W. J. Richardson in "Psychoanalysis and the Being-question", Interpreting Lacan, eds. J. H. Smith and W. K. Kerrigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983): 156. * Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe emphasise an ambiguity in the diverse conceptual resources i m p o r t e d into L a c a n ' s discourse (Saussurean, F r e u d i a n , C a r t e s i a n , Hegelian, Heideggeriani which enter the constitution of the subject-as-signifier in conflicting and irreconcilable ways. For their discussion see, The Title of the Letter: A reading of Lacan, trans. F. Raffoul and D. Pettigrew (New York: S U N Y Press, 1992). ' E. S. Casey a n d j . M. Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan: T h e Dialectic of Desire", op. eft., Smith and Kerrigan, Interpreting Lacan, 77.
6

'" Op. cit., Lacan, " T h e mirror stage", 4. " Ibid., Lacan, " T h e mirror stage", 5. 12 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (New York: Oxford U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1977): 1 1 1 , emphasis added. " See W. Ver Eecke, "Hegel as Lacan's Source of necessity in Psychoanalytic Theory", op. cit., Smith and Kerrigan, 125. " Lacan, "The Agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud", o p cit., crits, 154. 15 Op. cit-, Macey, Lacan in Contexts, 98. It must be pointed out that Macey does not then proceed to reduce Lacan's conceptual apparatus to that of Kojve. His admirable study pursues no such c o m p a r t m e n t a l i s i n g of influences, r a t h e r it generates an account of Lacan as a kind of bricoleur.
16 See A Wilden's interpretative essay, "Lacan and the Discourse of the Other", Lacan, Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1968): 192-3.

D. Archard, Consciousness and the Unconscious (London: Hutchinson, 1984): 80. ' Lacan, " T h e function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis", crits:A Selection, trans. .Man Sheridan (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1977): 80, emphasis added.
8 9

Jacques Lacan, ' T h e Mirror Stage", ibid, crits, 1. T h e term is Malcolm Bowie"s, see his Lacan (London: Fontana Press, 1991): 2 3 .

" Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen's reading of Lacan's philosophical debts in Lacan: The Absolute Master, trans. D. Brick (California: Stanford University Press, 1991 ), oudines the theoretical itinerary which takes Lacan from Hegel and Heidegger to Kojve. 18 Two recent studies which have considered Kojve's a n d Hyppolite's positions a n d their relation to contemporary French thought areJudith Buder, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in TweniieuS Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987) and M. S.Rodi. Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

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M " "Given-being" is the term Kojve uses to describe Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 21 and Studies on Marx and Hegel, 154. the subject in the simple world of immediate 55 Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, ix. satisfaction where it is submerged in animal life. M Alexandre Kojve, Introduction lo the Reading of Hegel " Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 156. * Op. cit., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 149. (Ithaca: Basic Books 1969): 38. -' This is the view of Shadia Drury in Alexandre * Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 150. " Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 191. Kojhe: The Roots of Postmodern Politics (London: " O p . cit., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 14. MacMUlan Press, 1994). 39 Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 160. " O p . cit., Roth, Knowing and History, 110. 10 :J Op. cit., Kojve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 53. Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 165-6. " See Hyppolite's essay "Hegel's Phenomenology -' Ibid., Kojve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, and Psychoanalysis", trans. A. Richer, New Studies 229-230. in Hegel's Philosophy, ed. W. E. Steinkraus (USA Holt, ?i It must be noted that Kojve significandy revised Reinhart and Winston, Inc., 1976). this interpretation of dialectical synthesis. In an 13 a d d e d c o m m e n t to the second edition of his Op. cit., Buder, Subjects of Desire, 82. 13 lectures, Kojve offers a more pessimistic reflection Op. cit., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 9, on the nature of the end of History. He argues for my emphasis. the perpetual opposition of subject and object, "To " O p . cit., Hegel, Phenomenology, S. 8 0 1 , 4 8 7 . remain human, Man must remain a 'Subject opposed " H y p p o l i t e ' s later essay, " T h e S t r u c t u r e of to the Object,' even if 'Action negating the given Philosophical Language According to me 'Preface' a n d E r r o r d i s a p p e a r s . " See ibid., K o j v e , to Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind", The Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, n. 5, 158-162. Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the x Ibid., Kojve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Science of Man, eds. R. Macksey and E. Donato (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1972): 157212 and n. 15. Kojve states mat it is Kant and Heidegger who explore the dualist ontology in the 185, also draws parallels between the formal structure most developed form. Some of the problems generated of language and the project of psychoanalysis. by Kojve's ontological dualism are discussed in V * O p . cit., Lacan, crits, 2 % . " Ibid., Lacan, crits, 296. Descombes, Modern French Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980): chapter 2. * O p . cit., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 250. - ! See Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts " For Lacan, desire is alienated in the signifier. It can be retraced only by following the network of of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: displacements activated by particular signifiers with Perigline Books, 1986): 28-30. When Lacan does symbolic connection to the unconscious. See, op. draw a parallel wim non-human organisms, he cit., " T h e Agency of the letter", 146-178. refers to me ethological findings of Henri Wallon

w h i c h emphasise the formative a n d fixating tendencies of me image. Jacques Lacan, "Subversion of the subject and m e dialectic of desire", 3 1 1 . w See particularly me discussions following the seminars III, IV, V, VI a n d VII, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book II, eds. Jacques-Alain Miller and S. Tomasselli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 50 J e a n Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure in Hegel's Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974): 170, 160. " Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 145 and Jean Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel ( H a r p e r Torchbooks, 1973): 159.

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It could be argued that Kojve's anthropological reading undermines, in turn, his development of the structure of temporality. 'Jl Malcolm Bowie, Psychoanalysis and the Future of Theory (Oxford; Blackwell, 1993): 24. K O p . cit., Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts, 62; on the fading of the subject see Part IV of this text. O p . c it., Casey and Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan", 105. 41 O p . cit., Lacan, crits, 85. B O p . cit., Casey a n d Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan", 105. '* See Juliet Flower MacCannell's comments in Figuring Lacan: Criticism and the Cultural Unconscious (London: Croom Helm, 1986): 2 1 .
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Caroline W i l l i a m s is lecturer in Political Theory at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. She has published "Feminism, Subjectivity and Psychoanalysis: Towards a (Corpo)real knowledge", in K. Lennon and M. Whitford (eds) Knowing and Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology (London: Routledge, 1994), and has an essay on Lacan forthcoming in The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy. She is presently completing a manuscript on the problmatique of the subject in contemporary critical thought.

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