Passwords

‘For Lacan the exemplary case of empty speech is the password. How does a password function? As a pure gesture of recognition, of admission into a certain symbolic space, whose enunciated content is totally indifferent? If, say, I arrange with my gangster–colleague that the password that gives me access to the hideout is ‘Aunt has baked the apple pie’, it can easily be ‘Long live comrade Stalin!’ or whatever else. Therein consists the ‘emptiness’ of empty speech: in this ultimate nullity of its enunciated content. And Lacan’s point is that human speech in its most radical, fundamental dimension functions as a password: prior to its being a means of communication, of transmitting the signified content, speech is the medium of the mutual recognition of its speakers.’

Perfectly clear. Just a footnote:

I wonder when, under what historical conditions, 'empty speech' becomes visible, or capable of being conceptualised? Isn't it the case, after all, that the emergence of a concept points back to and reveals something about the historical conditions of its emergence. And the possibility of conceptualisation always marks a particular stage in the development of the thing conceptualised (Marx, for example, accounts for his ability to conceptualise capitalism).

This is a slight problem I have with the whole Lacanian conceptual repertoire*. Its as though the 'Big Other', 'Symbolic Order' 'object a, ' (et al) were just inertly there awaiting 'discovery' and, once discovered, can be used retrospectively to decipher anything from Greek Tragedy onwards. Perhaps some of you, who know Lacan better than me, might point me in the direction of occasions where he attempts to account for possibility of his own thought.

(*not just him of course)

Please see Alphic comments below on Lacan & Judaism