Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis 61in its apparent ineffability,^23 but which, through introjection and the reflectivity that it
enables, we may come to understand. Through a process of inaugurated rather than aberrated
mourning we have a path from melancholia to (comic) self-awareness. This awareness is
awareness of the limits defined by our origins, but limits that we can come to know and which
ultimately we can bring into the domain of an expanded agency. This in my view is where the
unrealised potential of the symbolic order resides.
What the philosophy of the subject provides beyond this is an awareness of the political
nature of the fulfillment of the symbolic order. I have described the impasse that is civil
society, suspended as it is between two unfree subjectivities. On the one hand is the official
morality of the state that supposedly is reflected in its legal processes, but which the cunning
subject can see through, to a world of indexical signs that defines the actual makeup of civil
society as a law of the jungle, and which official morality is quite unable to shape. This world
is the habitus of the cunning subject, who, being compelled by its intrigues and the apparent
impossibility of any other way of life, is not free. This antinomian world can also be seen by
the beautiful soul, for whom it is an utterly alien world, and for whom the official morality,
while perhaps essentially right, is a lost cause. The beautiful soul is also at an impasse as a
result, and therefore is despairingly melancholic. These two major types of subject, and
innumerable variations between them of course, have been portrayed over and over in modern
literature, so that the question then must arise: What does it mean to have a deep awareness of
subjectivity itself? What does it mean politically?
For one thing it suggests to us that semiosis, having produced these shapes of subjectivity
historically, does not end there. It suggests further potentials in that we, having become aware
of historical subjectivities, through literature, religion, philosophy and so forth, become
educated about our selves and our origins. This Bildung is clearly part of the unrealised
potential of the symbolic order. I cannot adumbrate the political implications of this here, but
I would point to the symmetry between the healing power of symbolised introjection in
psychoanalysis and the role that a similar process may play in society as a whole. This to me
is the future of semiotic research, in helping us to understand how subjectivity may be
enhanced through education in its broadest sense, in a process of social healing.
REFERENCES
Abraham, N. (1994). Notes on the phantom: A complement to Freud‘s metapsychology. In N.
Rand (Ed.), The shell and the kernel: Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok (pp. 171-176).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Abraham, N. and Rand, N. (1979). The shell and the kernel. Diacritics, 19(1), 16-28.
Abraham, N. and Torok, M. (1994). Mourning or melancholia: Introjection versus
incorporation. In N. Rand (Ed.), The shell and the kernel: Nicolas Abraham and Maria
Torok (pp. 125-138). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Austin, J. L. (1992). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Benzon, W. L. (1993). The evolution of narrative and the self. Journal of Social and
Evolutionary Systems, 16(2), 129-155.
(^23) E.g. the ̳crypt‘ and the ̳phantom‘ in the Abraham and Torok work already cited.