Jacques Lacan's Symbolism

THERE is a very interesting concept that was borrowed by the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), from the Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). During a famous seminar on identification, Lacan mentioned how the 10.45 train from Paris to Lyon performed an important role in that it had the effect of creating 'a unifying trait' through the medium of symbolism. Although the 10.45 was not always exactly the same railway vehicle and would change its front locomotive and carriages every day or two, it was universally considered to be the same train for appearing at that very hour. Similarly, even if the 10.45 train did not actually arrive at the station until 11.00 it was nonetheless viewed by the passengers as the 10.45 train. The material features of the train may well have changed in terms of its physical and temporal qualities, thus stepping out of 'reality' to a certain extent, but it continued to serve a more symbolic purpose.

Using myself as an example, I think the same process can be applied to those of us who are continually vilified on account of our alleged past affiliations. As many of you know, in the mid-1980s I was a member of the National Front (NF) but the fact that the organisation had already expelled a large number of fascists from its ranks did not stop its enemies from describing it as a 'fascist' organisation. In fact the group was strongly anti-racist and also opposed the more centrist and totalitarian features of fascism itself. Meanwhile, the fact that I eventually went from being an English nationalist to an Anarchist in the late-1990s has not prevented my detractors from trying to label me a 'fascist' more than thirty years on. This, I believe, is rather like the story of the 10.45 train from Paris to Lyon, although in my case I was never on the 10.45 train to begin with and was travelling in the opposite direction on a bicycle. The point to all this, of course, is that when objects - and people - are used as symbols it becomes very easy to distort reality.