According to Lacan, the minimal structure of language would consist of four terms:

The signifying chain develops in a dimension that implies a certain synchrony of signifiers: a signifying battery. We can raise a question: “What is the smallest possible battery?” I’ve tried to answer this little question. It seems to me that four is the smallest possible battery. Can one construct a language with four signifiers? I do not believe that it is unthinkable… But let us leave that to one side. (Seminar 6)

In his essay on language, Walter Benjamin enumerates four terms and describes their dialectic as follows:

Within all linguistic formation a conflict is waged between what is expressed and expressible and what is inexpressible and unexpressed. (On Language as Such and on the Language of Man)

Expressed, expressible, inexpressible, unexpressed: Two positive terms, two negative terms and the conflict between them.

Given that linguistic positivity is essentially phallic imposture, it is obvious that the first two terms are masculine (“language of man”) and the other two terms are feminine (“great sorrow of nature”).

The dialectic of this minimal structure consists of two intersecting operations described and depicted below [1]:

1) The suture (anchoring) of the unexpressed into the expressed: the contingent into the necessary: objet a into S₁.

2) The sudur (emanation) of the inexpressible into the expressible: the impossible into the possible: S(Ⱥ) into S₂.

Suture/sudur duality enacts particle/wave duality. They may take place either synchronously or at a distance [2]:

1) If suture/sudur takes place synchronously, the suture merely expresses what is already expressible according to the sudur, which in turn blocks the inexpressible and folds it back into the unconscious. This is the symbolic authorization of a fetish, i.e. decryption.

Example: Either Orleanists or Legitimists (never to be combined) express the wave of their particular brand of royalism.

2) If there is a distance between suture//sudur, the suture intersects itself and regresses back to the unexpressed, in turn causing the sudur to further unfold the inexpressible, which thereby gets articulated in the combination of the expressed elements. This is the real authorization of a symptom, i.e. decipherment.

Example: The “chemical combination” of Orleanists and Legitimists regress back to a nameless (unparticular) realm, which further unfolds the republican wave articulated in their combination.

The suture//sudur interaction brings entanglement and interference, whereas the sutur/sudur interaction brings clarification and tangibility.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Suture and Sudur”, “Informatic Striptease: Represent → Present → Resent → Sent”, “Jesse and Celine Shall Bring Us the Horns of Wilmington’s Cow”, “Identity and Disparity of Same and Different”, see also “Subjective Initiation and Objective Initiation”, “The Opportunistic Media Ecology Has Supplanted The Law”, Slavoj Žižek presents the Greimas square of these very terms in For They Know Not What They Do (1991) p. 136.

[2] See “Authorization and Embodiment in Fetish and Symptom”, “Symbolic Authorization of Fetishes and Real Authorization of Symptoms”, “Decryption and Decipherment”