THE ARBITRARY SIGN

Are the signifier and the signified as tight friends as Saussure thinks, as inseparable as two sides of a piece of paper? For Jacques Lacan, the sign “represents something for someone”; on the contrary, the signifier is “that which represents a subject for another signifier”. Is S really the subject or the signifier? Or in the schemas of Sade, the raw subject of pleasure? Where is the S1 here? And if it’s around, is it still the master signifier? If S2 is the signifying chain — that is, all language and knowledge, as we know them to be strung together — where are the other characters in the perplexing world of Lacan, and by association, Derrida and Deleuze? Where is the imaginary father? Who is the symbolic mother? What statement, what enunciation? What symbolic order, what field of reality?

 

In his praise for this book, Darian Leader remarks: “Drawing on Lacan and Deleuze, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has produced a charming and lively alphabet.” If Mark Haddon’s Talking Horse elevated the poem fable beyond child literature into the connoisseur’s poetic aperitif, this book does the same for the quintessential alphabet book. May your child or the adult child in you be the world’s next genius analysand. And rise from the couch a bit wiser, a bit less plain speaking about the world around us.

 

Published by Red Wheelbarrow Books

 

* These are limited author copies put up for sale. This title may also be purchased from the publisher Red Wheelbarrow Books, and various bookstores in Singapore.

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