From Element to Structure
Changes in Jacques Lacan’s Theory of the Signifier Based on the Unary Trait
Abstract
The aim of this article is to discuss the changes in the conception of language in Jacques Lacan’s teaching based on the transformation of its minimum element, the signifier. We will begin by reconstructing the first definition of the signifier that we find in the Seminar of the 1950s with anthropological-linguistic structuralism, approaching its transformation at the beginning of the 1960s with the introduction of the unary trait. In this paper, we will try to extract each comprehension of language that follows or are derived from the different definitions of signifier. Doing so, we will indicate the solidarity between the element and the structure, that is, how the properties of one interfere in the consistency of the other and how, in the change operated by Lacan on the element, a modification is extracted in the structuring of language.
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