On the signifier in drift and segmentation as a place of stabilization

Abstract

One of the most challenging questions in the language sciences deals with the relationship between signifier and segmentation. By taking as a presupposition the notion of the signifying chain of Lacanian psychoanalysis, this research dealt with the formalisms of the language sciences in the sphere of ideological interdiction regarding the possibility of dealing with linguistic marks as constitutive of saying, and not properly as disturbances or instabilities. Through a theorization about language and the signifier in interface with discourse studies, this article shows how in an oral narrative told by a non-literate woman, entitled ‘Good morning my carnation, good morning my rose’, the cutting of the slave signifier contributes to the control of the drift of the senses. In the narrative flow, by enunciating ‘carnation’ (cravo), the subject-narrator mobilizes, in the interdiscourse, the signifier ‘slave’ (escravo). This way of saying in a displaced way is debated in Psychoanalysis as a way of redirecting the drive through negotiation with repression. In this case, in the collective memory there is a symbolization of ‘slavery’. On the imaginary level, this symbolization refers to the evidence that the slave works under the condition of servitude to a master, as a convict, as appears in the narrator's speech. The need not to be reminded about this condition is what ensures that this repressed content makes the subject remain in the position that is expected of an enslaved person, that of the one who does not question his condition. In this way, we discuss how the place of the subject-narrator is crossed by this collective memory; also under the effect of oblivion number one in Pêcheux.