Page 162 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes But this whole signifier can only operate, it may be said, if it is present in the subject. It is this
objection that I answer by supposing that it has pass over to the level of the signified.
For what is important is not that the subject knows anything whatsoever. (If Ladies and Gentlemen
were written in a language unknown to the little boy and girl, their quarrel would simply be the
more exclusively a quarrel over words, but no less ready to take on signification.)
What this structure of the signifying chain discloses is the possibility I have, precisely in so far as
I have this language in common with other subjects, that is to say, in so far as it exists as a
language, to use it in order to signify something quite other than what it says. This function of
speech is more worth pointing out than that of "disguising the thought" (more often than not
indefinable) of the subject; it is no less than the function of indicating the place of this subject in
the search for the true.
I have only to plant my tree in a location; climb the tree, even project on to it the cunning illumination
a descriptive context gives to a word; raise it (arborer) so as not to let myself be imprisoned in
some sort of communiqué of the facts, however official, and if I know the truth, make it heard, in
spite of all the between-the-lines censures by the only signifier my acrobatics through the branches
of the tree can constitute, provocative to the point of burlesque, or perceptible only to the practiced
eye, according to whether I wish to be heard by the mob or by the few.
The properly signifying function thus depicted in language has a name. we learned this name in
some grammar of our childhood, on the last page, where the shade of Quintillian, relegated to
some phantom chapter concerning "final consideration on style," seemed suddenly to speed up his
voice in an attempt to get in all he had to say before the end.
It is among the figures of style, or tropes - from which the verb "to find" (trouver) comes to us - that
this name is found. This name is metonymy.
I shall refer only to the example given there: "thirty sails." For the disquietude I felt over the fact
that the word "ship," concealed in this expression, seemed, by taking on its figurative sense,
through the endless repetition of the same old example, only to increase its presence, obscured
(voilait) not so much those illustrious sails (voiles) as the definition they were supposed to illustrate.
The part taken for the whole, we said to ourselves, and if the thing is to be taken seriously, we are
left with very little idea of the importance of this fleet, which "thirty sails" is precisely supposed to
give us: for each ship to have just one said is in fact the least likely possibility.
By which we see that the connexion between ship and sail is nowhere but in the signifier, and that
it is in the word-to-word connexion that metonymy is based.
I shall designate as metonymy, then, the one side (versant) of the effective field constituted by the
signifier, so that meaning can emerge there.
The other side is metaphor. Let us immediately find an illustration: Quillet's dictionary seemed an
appropriate place to find a sample that would not seem to be chosen for my own purposes, and I
didn't have to go any further than the well-known line of Victor Hugo:
His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful…under which aspect I presented metaphor in my
seminar on the psychoses.
It should be said that modern poetry and especially the Surrealist school have taken us a long way
in this direction by showing that any conjunction of two signifiers would be equally sufficient to
constitute a metaphor, except for the additional requirement of the greatest possible disparity of
the images signified, needed for the production of the poetic spark, or in other words for metaphoric
creation to take place.
It is true this radical position is based on the experiment known as automatic writing, which
would not have been attempted if its pioneers had not been reassured by the Freudian discovery.
But it remains a confused position because the doctrine behind it is false.
The creative spark of the metaphor does not spring from the presentation of two images, that is,
of two signifiers equally actualized, it flashes between two signifiers one of which has taken the
place of the other in the signifying chain, the occulted signifier remaining present through its
(metonymic) connexion with the rest of the chain.

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