Antitheticality and Proper Names

Description: We will investigate through a close reading of the seminarist's translation of J. C. Milner’s Opposed Senses and Indiscernible Names the question of how the identity of linguistic elements are established. For the notion of the antithetical meaning of primal words implies that the identity of the said 'primal word' cannot be grounded on the identity of what it represents (i.e. the signified) and that this latter’s identity is establish by an operator of convention at the cost of a residuum. In order to account for the structure implied by this residual element it is necessary to return to the question of how the identity of a signifier is established to begin with (i.e. what is one signifier?).

In this reading we will not only try to bring into final form the translation of Milner’s text but also prepare the ground for a comparative study of the theories of the phoneme as presented by: De Courtenay, Saussure, Trubetzkoy, Benveniste, Jakobson, and Chomsky. The question of the existential identity (as opposed to the formal identity) of the phoneme will lead us directly into the theory of proper names. 

This trajectory aims to bring together and differentiate, within linguistics, the phallic operator of convention (and representation) and the Name of the Father as the address involved in the reading and writing of the singular (as what gives the universal). The general aim of this work however is the writing of the theory of the signifier, as opposed to that of the sign, in psychoanalysis.