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THEORIES OF LANGUAGE AND SUBJECTIVITY 197

fixed signifieds) only if the speaking subject were its source rather than its
effect. Fixed meaning could come only from the source of the laws of human
culture, the position of the ‘Other’. Since the pre-given structure of language is
the precondition for signification by the speaking subject, and since signification
is motivated by desire and the wish to control its satisfaction, which the
individual subject can never do, fixed meaning is constantly subverted.
Metaphoric relations, which correspond to Freud’s concept of condensation,
function according to a principle whereby, under the force of repression, a
signifier is replaced by a new one. In so far as the new signifier stands in place of
the previous signifier and represents it, the first signifier acquires the status of a
signified. In effect, it has become a signifier in a repressed chain of signification.
A conscious idea may well be linked, via metaphor, to a number of unconscious
chains of meaning, and it is the associated chains of repressed signifiers which
make metaphoric relations so powerful in conscious language. The other mode
of language operation is metonymy (cf. Freud’s concept of displacement).
Metonymy describes the relation of a signifier to the rest of the signifying chain
—that is, to a relation whereby meaning is constantly deferred and can only be
said to reside in the relations between elements of the signifying chain as a
whole. The metonymic movement of language is motivated by desire, which is
constantly striving for satisfaction. While there are no fixed signifieds in
language, signification within the symbolic order is made possible by the
privileging of certain key signifiers to which the drives, organized around non-
incestuous heterosexual sexuality, become attached. Lacan calls these key
signifiers points de capiton (raised buttons on a mattress) in an attempt to give a
visual image of the structure of the unconscious. They act as nodal points which
link signifying chains to one another and prevent an indefinite sliding of
meaning. Via their attachment to the drives, which have been organized in a
culturally acceptable way, these nodal points structure the unconscious in terms
of the positions from which any individual can speak. These positions are
organized in terms of gender.
In Lacanian theory the mode of entry into the symbolic order and positioning
within language is gender-specific. Speaking subjects are always gendered, and
sexual identity relies on possible, imaginary modes of access to the control of the
satisfaction of desire, which Lacan calls possession of the phallus. It is only men
who, on account of their penises, can realistically imagine themselves possessing
this power. For women the imaginary control of desire can only be mediated
through the position of the mother bringing forth a male child. In relation to
language it is through the primary difference penis/no penis and the ensuing
resolution of the Oedipus Complex that incestuous and homosexual attachments
are repressed—a conjunction which acts as the unspoken condition of
signification within the symbolic order. The eternal privileging of the penis/
phallus in the structure of the symbolic order and the unconscious makes
Lacanian theory necessarily patriarchal, like that of Lévi-Strauss, on which, to
some extent, it draws. It has been argued that Lacan’s phallus is theoretically a