Concept of Semiotic

signifier                unconsciousness          sound                                signified

Hence, Lacan is the statement that unconscious has a familiar structure to language. Like the subject has competence for constructing languages, the manly thought has an analogous pre-structure for unconsciousness becoming figurate.

        When the sound is absent in the relationship of signifier / signified the blank of the sound is taken over by the concept. In this case, the concept becomes the signifier for the function of metononymy and is longing for the sound, which has become the signified. By this rearrangement, the position of consciousness and unconsciousness has switched as result. This is the main theme of the German film “The Otherside of Silence” (Jenseits der Stille) (1996).

        signified                concept                                                                sound

        signifier          (absence of sound)                concept                                concept

        The German word “still” has double meaning of silence and secret (uncanny). These two meanings occur in the film times alternately, times together. The protagonist Martin was persistent in his quiet world, which consisted of his uncanny inside; but he encountered ceaseless with the “concept” of sound – which was opposite to his identity / subject and he could never understand. His traumatic experience was a concert on his father’s 50th Birthday, on which his younger sister had well performed on Clarinette and his father was very proud of her. For inability to conceive and jealous he interrupted the concert with wild laugh and was locked in the children room. The communication between him and his family was from then on broken and he became isolated. The sensation of hearing – for sound / music – which he desiderated to was therefore repressed in his uncanny innerside. Although he wondered the description of the thunder, the sound of flying flags and the noise of snow, he became nothing but gestures. The “real” sound / voice / music, his desire, never took place except in his traumatic memory. Hence, he was not pleased to see his first daughter playing Clarinette and hoped his daughters rather to stay in his silent world.

        For Lacan, metononymy was the signifier of desire. The things which were longing for were always substituted and postponed. In the film, the sound / voice / music which Martin had anxiety for was substituted by gestures, by words, by gazing, by touching, by vibration and were always postponed. Only when “traumatic memory” was recalled, sound / voice / music appeared with the fragments of memory. The sound which was always longing but could not be gained showed the meaning equal to the unconsciousness during the process of exchange between “signifier – signified”. This sound became alternative “the discourse of the Other” – which could not be identified by himself. Only when he stand outside from himself (on the other polemic), the silence (and what in it repressed) articulated.