Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis 53In psychological terms one might say that the dialectic of introjection and projection
brings about a synthesis in reflection, i.e. a conscious awareness, via symbolic means, of what
has previously been achieved or created in subjectivity, also through symbolic means.
Reflection is, at each moment that it appears, a further fulfillment of the symbolic, in that one
achieves a certain freedom precisely in each new awareness of what is determinate in one‘s
development. We might then say with Hegel:
As consciousness has for its object the stage which preceded it, viz. the natural soul (§
413), so mind has or rather makes consciousness its object: i.e. whereas consciousness is only
the virtual identity of the ego with its other (§ 415), the mind realizes that identity as the
concrete unity which it and it only knows. Its productions are governed by the principle of all
reason that the contents are at once potentially existent, and are the mind's own, in freedom.
(Philosophy of Mind, § 443)In the spirit of the above, and in the spirit also of psychoanalytical reflection, let us
consider the possibility that the further potential of the symbolic order lies in the achievement
of greater freedom through reflecting back on the shapes that subjectivity has hitherto
assumed.
3. SEMIOSIS AS THE HISTORY OF SUBJECTIVITY
3.1. Coercion and Suppression of Subjectivity
Let us begin this with a consideration of what lack of freedom might mean from a
semiotic point of view. Let us imagine a mode of social being based on pure coercion.
Coercion here refers to the subordination of the will to some outside force or agency, for
example the law as an imperative ("thou shalt" or "thou ought"), where this law is
experienced as a completely objective reality exterior to the individual. A community that
was based upon the law as pure coercion, in which its human constituents were faced by an
apparently inhuman force that determined their every action, would equate to slavery. To the
extent that law manifested itself as coercion, it would be symbolically empty, since the rule of
such a law would mean that even if you did not know or understand it – you had no internal
representation of it – you would nevertheless be subjected to it, physically. Thus it would not
truly be part of the symbolic order.^15
In terms of the agency triad, one might say that each moment in this triad is severely
limited in such a scenario. In terms of introjection this might approach nil, in the sense that
virtually no symbolised thought processes other than mechanical carrying out of orders is
required and the symbolic resources of the internal life of the slave must surely be restricted
accordingly. Similarly with projection; no imaginative construction of the world is posited
besides the outcome of the immediate task, and therefore it would seem that any reflection on
the part of the slave cannot be relevant to his life project, since there can be no project as
such. But Hegel‘s dialectic of the lord and bondsman in the Phenomenology shows that such
(^15) In Peircean terminology this is not yet a transition from ̳secondness‘ to the ̳thirdness‘ of semiotic activity. See
̳What is a sign?‘