Structure
Discourse, in the first place, refers to a point where speech and language intersect. The four discourses represent the four possible formulations of the symbolic network which social bonds can take and can be expressed as the permutations of a four-term configuration showing the relative positions—the agent, the other, the product and the truth—of four terms, the subject, the master signifier, knowledge and objet petit a.
The four positions in each discourse are:
Agent = Upper left. This is the speaker of the discourse.
Other = Upper right. This is what the discourse is addressed to
Product = Lower right. This is what the discourse has created
Truth = Lower left. This is what the discourse attempted to express.
The four variables which occupy these positions are:
S1 = the master signifier
S2 = knowledge (le savoir)
$ = the subject (barred)
a = the objet petit a or surplus-jouissance
S1 refers to "the marked circle of the field of the Other," it is the Master-Signifier. S2 is the "battery of signifiers, already there" at the place where "one wants to determine the status of a discourse as status of statement," that is knowledge - savoir. S1 comes into play in a signifying battery conforming the network of knowledge. $ is the subject, marked by the unbroken line - trait unaire - which represents it and is different from the living individual who is not the locus of this subject. Add the objet petit a, the object-waste or the loss of the object that occurred when the originary division of the subject took place - the object that is the cause of desire: the plus-de-jouir.
Discourse of the Master:
It is the basic discourse from which the other three derive. The dominant position is occupied by the master signifier, S1, which represents the subject, S, for all other signifiers: S2. In this signifying operation there is a surplus: objet a. All attempts at totalisation are doomed to fail. This discourse masks the division of the subject, it illustrates the structure of the dialectic of the master and the slave. The master, S1, is the agent who puts the slave, S2, to work: the result is a surplus, objet a, that the master struggles to appropriate.
Discourse of the University:
It is caused by an anticlockwise quarter turn of the previous discourse. The dominant position is occupied by knowledge - savoir. An attempt to mastery can be traced behind the endeavors to impart neutral knowledge: domination of the other to whom knowledge is transmitted. This hegemony is visible in modernity with science.
Discourse of the Hysteric:
It is effected by a clockwise quarter turn of the discourse of the master. It is not simply "that which is uttered by the hysteric," but a certain kind of articulation in which any subject may be inscribed. The divided subject, $, the symptom, is in the pole position. This discourse points toward knowledge. "The cure involves the structural introduction of the discourse of the hysteric by way of artificial conditions": the analyst hystericizes the analysand's discourse.
Discourse of the Analyst:
It is produced by a quarter turn of the discourse of the hysteric in the same way as Freud develops psychoanalysis by giving an interpretative turn to the discourse of his hysterical patients. The position of the agent - the analyst - is occupied by objet a: the analyst becomes the cause of the analysand's desire. This discourse being the reverse of the discourse of the master, does it make psychoanalysis an essentially subversive practice which undermines attempts at domination and mastery?
Read more about this topic: Four Discourses
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