Semiosis versus Signification and Symbolization
03/02/2022
Semiosis and Osmosis
In an ecological context, semiosis happens at the level of the Greimasian semiotic square. This is prior to any perception or understanding of communication in general, let alone between organisms. Life-forms can communicate with their environment and with one another, without any necessity or need for “understanding” the very concept of communication itself. What matters at this level is therefore whatever “works”, whatever performs its function at the material level in order for matter to get predisposed towards organ-ization.
For this kind of natural occurrence of semiosis, it doesn't matter much where the given terms are placed on the Greimasian “semiotic square” (pictured above), since any four terms, in an authentically “semiotic” relation to one another, will both imply and contradict one another simultaneously as structured signs, so long as their corresponding term is “contrary” because it is something different.
Additionally, the comparison between two signs (S1 → S2 and ~S1 → ~S2) is a “structuration” between their respective terms. This organic set of relations is not merely linguistic or even conceptual, but purely metaphysical, chemical, and scientific. In other words, the contrast between any authentically different things in the world is what creates their mutual, logical understandability. The universe can show any side of the understanding(s) involved in the process of osmosis, for instance, that resolves the tensions intrinsic to the heterogeneity of matter, a heterogeneity which the universe actually contains as existent within itself, and the relation of S to ~S is still the same as ~S to S. (Since they genuinely pertain to the nature of existence, furthermore, this semiotic relation between signs may also be called “existential”.) All this belongs to the order of what is properly called “metaphysical”.
Signification within Organ-ization as “Counter-Metaphysical”
Signification, on the other hand, may be considered “counter-metaphysical”. This is because the sign, denoted in the semiotic square as either S or ~S, is no longer equivalent to itself (within signification) as both value and other-value, as both object and other-object, terms interacting in an existential way that is totally neutral, wherein what is “understood” is purely indicative of what is simply and naturally there.
Rather, within signification, the understanding corresponds to an established organ-ization of matter wherein signals must be understood in a way that is economical, in a way that is phenomenological, towards a greater, organic unity of the posited whole. This “whole” is fundamentally illusory, but as such it “organ-izes” material communication into the categories of transmissions and exchanges.
Such organ-ized transmissions are “functional”, because they respond to a signal reflexively, and negate the understanding (on behalf of an organic “whole”) of a reason for transmitting or dispatching. And in turn, organ-ized exchanges are “purposive”, because they respond to a signal reflexively, and negate the understanding (on behalf of an organic “whole”) of a perception of exchanging, or the perception of being solicited, by a transmitted signal.
The “Signal of a Signal”? The Sign in Linguistics and Signification
Hence, in Saussurean linguistics (as I understand it), a “sign” is split in two by signification, into signifier and signified:
This kind of “sign” has lost both its natural and its metaphysical ambivalence. It is no longer the behavior of matter “understanding” the presence of other matter by a signalling reaction, but a signal signalling itself as such. The interactions between signals which can signal themselves qua signal to one another is the physical elaboration (within reality) necessary for the initialization of an organization towards the structuration (S and ~S) of any “organ-ism”.
In contrast to the vertical lines on either side of the semiotic square, which are both pointing upwards from the lower level to indicate “implication” (found in semiosis), in signification, the direction of the vertical line on the right side of the semiotic square has been reversed, now pointing from S2 to ~S1. Another way of putting it is that the semiotic square has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise, and the two terms on the bottom level have been inverted, or switched around. Furthermore, the difference between S1 and S2 has been neutralized into the signified, and correspondingly, the difference between ~S2 and ~S1 has been neutralized into the signifier.
Thus, S2 now points to ~S1 in a reversal of semiotic “implication” that makes natural semiosis no longer applicable to both signs (S and ~S) on the semiotic square. Rather, in signification, ~S now depends on S for its very substance as a potential sign that can signal itself to other signs, other signs that are also capable of signaling themselves in their capacity as signs, and now also in the form of signifiers.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, this (Saussurean) structure of signification is denoted thus:
uppercase “S” over lowercase “s”, or signifier (in French, signifiant) over signified (in French, signifié). This reversal of the position of one term to the other from Saussure’s drawing (the ellipse divided in two resembling the semiotic square) into Lacan’s denotation, S over s, ratifies how the arrow of “implication” from ~S1 to S2 is reversed, because the signified must now be assimilated to the signifier in order to give the signifier the primacy it is due within the domain of signification proper.
In other words, if an arrow pointing up from the signifier to the signified is only one half of the semiotic square, it is because the signified, in addition to its respective meaning, must also have its originating signifier as its referent in order to be authentically signified. This “signified” therefore also corresponds to the structure of an object, because it is convertible, and figuratively speaking, “two-sided”.
The Origin of (so-called) “Evil”
It is no coincidence how this operation resembles some metaphysical or anti-natural structure of “evil”, since it forcefully abbreviates the moral world of matter, whether organic or inorganic, into a world of words which must submit to the developments of language and the rules of proper grammar. The intrinsic morality which belongs to metaphysical concepts in the natural world is thereby betrayed, turned upside-down, and becomes confusing (literally, “fused-together”) to all beings who must submit to the limits of communication through language.
This is because signification functions by implementing a seemingly backwards system of thought, based on trivial things such as “belief” and “expression”, in place of a system of communication based on simple transmissions and exchanges of matter, both organic and inorganic, between living organisms.
The Origin of Structure, and of Truth: Signification as Semiosis within Symbolization
A symbolization, according to Lacan's interpretation of Roman Jakobson in his fifth seminar Formations of the Unconscious, must have four terms. Since this relates to the Oedipal triangle later in the seminar, one might say of a symbolization: “you have to have four to have three”.
Does this mean of such a seemingly primal symbolization, as it relates to signification, that the three terms of the Oedipus complex (father, mother, child) are really four terms, somehow fused together into three by the apparently perverting mechanisms of signification itself?
One known symbolization, as it appears on the L-schema (pictured above), and which illustrates that “the unconscious [inconscient] is the discourse of the Other [Autre]”, is devoid of the vertical lines of the semiotic square which indicate “implication”.
Rather, the two signs, S → a’ (S) and A → a (~S), relate to one another via the imaginary relation between a’ and a, or the objet petit “a” and the ego (moi). This obstructs the unconscious relation between the Other (A) and the signifier (S) from being directly produced as language that is fully arbitrary (from one's own imagination), and illustrates how the signifier is actually imposed from without, where the Other is not, where it does not speak.
This is the symbolization which structures the emergence of signifiers, but only merely “structur-ates” signification in general.
The relation between S and a’ is thereby established in the form of a philosophical skepticism, in Immanuel Kant’s usage of the term. The Kantian “thing-in-itself” in this case, however, which is not what is signified by the signifier, but rather what escapes all nomination, is not the object of skepticism. The true object of this skepticism is the relation of the id (S) [in German, das Es] to the object a (a’) [in French, objet petit a], but which is a relation without substantiation if the signifier is not first discovered in “the cry”.
This does not mean, as skeptical, that it is a relation subjected to doubt, or somehow cast in a light of suspicion. Rather, it means that the structure of belief (in signification) originates from a previously established success at this form of communication and obtaining some form of satisfaction. This kind of success pertains to the respective dialectics of need and demand, and enter into a mammalian register of consideration when it comes to the organic subsistence of the terrified human child, who must rely on the untrustworthy mechanisms of love and pitifulness in order to found a solid faith and reason in its own existence.
It is with a view to this understanding of signification that I propose my own theory of the two symbolizations which bear upon the political and psychological problematic of sexual orientation: castration–frustration and castration–privation. These two symbolizations are relations between the “moments” of the Oedipus complex, of which there are three: castration, frustration, and privation.
However, the connection between the imaginary object and the real father within the moment of castration, analogous to the connection between S and a’ in the L-schema, is not a “skeptical” connection. Rather, it is a properly logical connection, one which governs rational, visual understandings of reality, and retroactively organ-izes experiences of pleasure in relation to the scopic drive. (Additionally, the vertical arrows, which were once the support of the semiotic square discussed above, are still null and void for symbolization, even at the scopic level. You can mostly disregard the solid black arrows in the symbolizations illustrated below, but it is obvious why they were needed in the first place.)
Castration–Frustration:
Castration–Privation:
This is why the line pointing from imaginary object to real father is not dashed, but solid. Additionally, the scopic drive is a drive that can treat the symbolization(s) as more versatile arrangements between terms, and attain to a truly scientific form of cognition capable of repudiating the dominance of the signifier over abstract concepts belonging to the understanding.
Just these two symbolizations, however, are not enough to de-tangle the ambiguity of a “moment”, wherein or whereby objects are disjunctively joined from the left column to their respective agents on the right column (of the symbolization). The moments which occur to the understanding in relation to castration, whether frustration or privation, must point to either term of castration (imaginary object or real father) from “outside” the symbolized configuration, while also becoming part of it, as the “other side” of castration. Real father and symbolic mother never truly “understand” one another, and neither do real father and imaginary father. There is no possibility of a semiotic “implication” within a symbolization, no equivalency between objects, nor between agents. What works instead, in the pursuit of scientific and philosophical truth, is how these two symbolizations may “subvert” one another.
This dimension is opened up by the occurrences of misrecognition whereby an object takes on the qualities of an agent by its relation to another symbolization, and the terms of the symbolization are de-stabilized and subjected to the confines of a discourse. This is what initiates the 90-degree counter-clockwise turns which characterize what Jacques Lacan called "the four discourses", and defines a discursive "revolution" within speech. How this bears upon the pre-supposed truth of thought becomes evident later on.
