Towards a Logic of the Signifier

Abstract

The current 12-page article is only Part I A of a three-part presentation, A, B, and C, all of which provide the material for constructing a logic of the signifier.

Part I. A provides the background for this construction. It will primarily be concerned with giving an introduction to the material on which an analysis of the signifier may be based.

Part I.B discusses the risk of a too formalistic approach to the Lacanian mathemes.

Part I.C. returns to an examination of Karl Abel’s Über den Gegensinn der Urworte in light of our previous analysis of the signifier and letter.

Once this basic philological and linguistic material is presented, we will proceed to Part II, which presents a clinical presentation that extends the material of Part I: passing from Gegensinn to the problem of Gegenstand and Gegenbesetzung.

Part III generalizes the method and material in an explicit construction of a logic of the signifier from the ground up in propositional and predicate logic. What will be aimed for through all three parts, I, II, and III, is a presentation of the same structure with a change of writing.