Page 197 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

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Theories of language and subjectivity

Chris Weedon, Andrew Tolson, Frank Mort

In the first two chapters of this section, we looked at semiological theories of
language through the work of Saussure and the early Barthes, where language is
conceptualized as a system of arbitrary signs. These signs are neither transparent
reflections of referents in the ‘real’ world, nor more complex, class-based
reflections or refractions of an ‘underlying material reality’, as in Vološinov.
Signs are, however, representational, since they have fixed meanings, at
Barthes’s level of denotation, prior to their articulation in any particular speech
act. These meanings are fixed within the language system itself through the
arbitrary linking of signifiers (sound images) to signifieds (concepts). The
meaning of the individual sign lies in its difference from all other signs in the
language chain. Saussure’s theory of language relies implicitly on a rationalist
theory of meaning and consciousness, since it rests on a notion of signs as
representing ideas which precede any actual utterance and are, consequently,
timeless and context-free. It is this aspect of Saussure’s theory, with its implicit
reliance on a notion of unified, fixed, rational consciousness, which is subject to
criticism by John Ellis (Chapter 15). His critique comes from the perspective of
psychoanalytic theory, which offers a radical alternative to rationalist-based
theories of language and the speaking subject.
In this chapter we intend to look in greater detail at the questions of
representation and subjectivity. We begin with Saussure and with Derrida’s
critique of Saussure and all rationalist-based theories of language. Derrida’s
alternative theory displaces the centrality of individual consciousness, the
speaking subject and spoken language. We then move on to consider Lacan’s
parallel, psychoanalytic critique of language theory, based on a concept of
unified, rational consciousness and the ‘Tel Quel’ group’s reformulation of the
problem of representation on the basis of Lacan’s theory. We look at the work of
Julia Kristeva, who formulates a text-based approach to language on the basis of
psychoanalysis, in which the speaking subject is constantly in process. Finally, we
reconsider the problems inherent in these general theories of language when it
comes to the historically specific analysis of signifying practices. In the light of
this we turn to the questions of language and subjectivity in an alternative
theoretical approach—that of Michel Foucault—which insists on historical
specificity.