‘Thus, we find in the earthly city a double significance: in one respect it displays its own presence and in other it serves by its presence to signify the Heavenly City. But the citizens of the earthly city are produced by a nature which is vitiated by sin, while the citizens of the Heavenly City are brought forth by grace, which sets nature free from sin. That is why the former are called ‘vessels of wrath’, the latter ‘vessels of mercy’.—St. Augustine of Hippo, City of God [39, p. 599]
Abstract
This paper constitutes a critical exploration of the functional features underpinning the unconscious of institutional attachment—namely an attachment which is understood in terms of the subject-infant’s love for his institutional parent-power holder, and the indefinite need for a subject to remain within its infantile condition under the parenthood of the State. We venture beyond the Paternal metaphor and move towards the neglected metaphor of the Mother, so focal in the individual process of identification, assumption of language and the permanent attachment to the space of prohibition and Law. A new position in Language is defined. To understand how the psychic space of the infant is artfully subjugated in the making of the Western culture and domination of the Western system of legal interpretation, an enquiry into the legal emblematic history of representations is necessary to map the process through which the subject learns its legal self and relationship with otherness through what Pierre Legendre coined as the Occidental Mirror and the triangular logic of reflexivity. A final enquiry interrogates the way the legal institution places itself in the position of the specular image that captivates the subject-infant within a procreated legal order, a law-giving and law abiding life starting from the laws of the familial structure reinforced by the role of the parents and by analogy, by the State assuming that role in the institutional life of the ad infinitum infant.
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Notes
The reference to vessels of wrath does not represent an originary condition of the humanity as lying on a sinful act. Sin denotes a birth in the course of nature. In contrast, the vessels of mercy are those ‘children’ born out of the result of a promise symbolising the citizens of a free city. The re-birth as second birth in law and rationality involves the exposition of a fundamental statement in relation to the condition of the subject—namely, that it is ‘a child of the flesh’ (through the established laws of nature), yet it can become the ‘child of the promise’ (the one bestowed with grace and ‘freedom’) as long as it attests to the pre-arranged order.
The term is understood through the work of Pierre Legendre in ‘Le droit romain, modele et langage: De la Signification de l’Utrumque ius’ in Pierre Legendre’s work Écrits juridiques du Moyen Age occidental. The question of ‘infancy’ is addressed through an exploration of the function of ‘re-birth’ and kinship taking as a starting point the casuistic tradition and patristic literature.
The assumption of the Oedipal function as a‘re-birth’ in speech is necessary according to Goodrich for the subject to be placed in ‘its genealogically constituted position in the order of kinship’ [10, p. 141].
The glorified history of the subject through remembrance of the past and the future is identified within St Augustine and St Paul’s texts through the metaphor of the ‘vessels of wrath’ and the ‘vessels of promise’. This story reminds the subject its past condition, who it was. Yet, it also invites the subject to remember its future. The future as a ‘promise’, as a child of mercy and Reason, entails an always already existing expectation which the subject ‘remembers’ in its present—that the ‘city of God’ [as against the earthly city inhabited by wrath and procreation] is on pilgrimage in this world yet ‘salvation is accomplished only through a citizenship’ in an eternal and divine republic 628–631. This choice of citizenship calls for a different genealogical recognition and the existence of other parens who can serve as a Mirror for the infant. In Letter 138-Augustine to Marcellinus (411/412 AD), Augustine emphasized that although the Roman State was successful without the Christian element; its salvation lied on the prerequisite of the beyond—another citizenship accomplished through ‘regeneration’.
The analysis on the representation of absence refers to the function of absence as a binary correlation with presence and not only on terms of what is readily offered to the perception of the subject.
As against real infancy, we introduce here the concept of symbolic infancy used hereinafter, which represents the unremitting persistence of infancy throughout the symbolic existence of the subject.
In Lacan, the mirror stage is defined in a twofold way—as a historical development of the infant’s mental state and the moment that the infant’s own image captivates it absolutely. Although a preoccupation with the formation of the ego and the subject’s alienation is minimal in this context, what is deemed important for further analysis is the symbolic dimension of the mirror stage as a device of captivation.
This matches our conceptualisation of the stade du mirroir as a ‘space’ (in its literal translation is a ‘stage’, a ‘stadium’ within which the infant is captured) as against a measurable developmental stage.
Lacan’s ‘stade du mirroir’ is considered as a constitutive and inextricable element of infancy, whether real or symbolic. For the originary mirror stage to exist there must be infancy and vice versa. Similarly, for the mirror stage to persist throughout the subject’s, symbolic infancy must exist as well [17, p. 160].
It is this primary relation which allows the entrance into a linguistic structure and the function through which ‘the meaning of each linguistic unit can only be established by reference to another’ [36, p. 56].
The logic of fainesthai bears mostly a Husserlian influence and is distinguished from the definition of phainesthai encountered in the works of other thinkers after Husserl. Fainesthai corresponds to reflective intentional experiences where ‘perception and perceived constitute an unmediated unity’ and it is this reflective function that we place gravity on.
Merleau-Ponty explains that what the speech is charged with to express ‘will be in the same relation to it as the goal is to the gesture which intends it’.
The abrupt association of infancy and Agamben’s gesture is emphasised in the current context because the constitutive moment of assumption of the latter is identified during the infancy stage, yet it persists throughout what we devised as symbolic infancy entangled with an adult’s life. Such association allows for the efficient operation of the spectacle, theatricality and the superiority of the ‘form’.
A distinction should be appended here. The experience of the mirror image of the child referring to the physical encounter with its reflection is referred to by Merleau-Ponty as ‘L’image du mirroir’. Nevertheless, the mirror image conceived as a ‘stage’ in the development of the infant, is referred to by Merleau-Ponty as ‘L’image speculaire’.
Alienation is denoted as—(a) alienation of one’s self through the image-reflection offered by the mirror and (b) alienation from the others, who visually perceive the same external image the mirror offers to oneself allowing the initiation of primary sociality.
Transgression is conceptualised here in accordance with Peter Goodrich’s analysis in relation to the social transmission of Law and its intrinsic relationship with the notion of interdiction.
The Freudian Ego Ideal is the product of the secondary identification following the primary formation of the Ideal Ego and results to what Lacan defines as the libidinal normalisation of the subject. The Ego Ideal supports the identification with a Signifier which serves as an ‘heir to the original narcissism’. Its origin can be found in the ‘influence of the parents’ [9, p. 110].
Following the suggested translation by Goodrich.
Further elaboration on the concept of paterfamilias, see in Legendre.
Therefore, the institution is the combination of both parens for the infant and within its familial embrace the subject must remain a child.
Kantorowicz elaborating on the metaphor of the personifications of the Templum Iustitiae places Justice in an intermediate position where she alone had ‘a share in both Natural Law above and Positive Law below’ though not equal to neither. ‘Iustitia herself was not Law. She was an Idea, a goddess which held the function of the mediator, an Iustitia mediatrix, mediating between divine and human laws’ [15, p. 111].
In terms of Celsus’ elegant translated definition that law is the art of goodness and fairness.
Further see the statement that ‘art imitates nature’ (ή τέχνη μιμείται τήν φυσιν) in Aristotle’s ‘Physics’.
Most importantly, what we find more interesting is not only the ‘Imitation of Nature’. Rather the functional similarity between art and nature recognised in the amalgamation of matter (ύλη) and form (είδος), revived in Renaissance philosophy of art [5, p. 116]. The concept of ‘form’, as that which is capable to accommodate the universal forces of creation (nature) in something visible, will pre-occupy us thereinafter.
This is a translation of an extract by the author of this paper from Pierre Legendre, Paroles poétiques échappées du texte: Leçons sur la communication industrielle [26, p. 163].
Eikona from the Greek eikōn, εικων (ambiguous whether it was transliterated from eikon) used in Eastern Christianity translated as "image" or ‘icon’, as referred to hereinafter, in its latin designation. In the Roman and Byzantine period εικονίζω (derivation from εικων) means to give form to any substance and more importantly to represent emblematically. A noteworthy observation is the etymology of the eikon or icon originating from the verb eikenai—in its perfect infinitive tense- which retains its meaning in all the different contexts as ‘to resemble’, ‘to be like’ or ‘to look like’. The understanding here is twofold—first, the image as resembling something or someone sacred, a visual representation of an invisible Truth. Second, the image calls for its viewer, the subject-infant ‘to resemble’, to ‘be like’ that which is artfully represented. It awaits for the subject to respond to its offering or question, it communicates with it through the dialogic format of the inscriptio. Hence the religious image becomes both self-referential and referential for the subject. Retrieving an example from the 16th century emblematic history might illustrate this function more accurately [42, p. 181].
The enquiry is based on the exploration of the visual allegorical and/or metaphorical representations within the emblematic tradition. The illustrations of Andreas Alciato (149-1550) in Emblematum Liber (Augsburg, February 1531) or Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia constitute only a snapshot of how all things related to the visible world acquire their meaning through a Reference to the invisible accompanied by short written mythological or biblical accounts (both pagan and Christian as those appear post-Ripa in the first German editions). Ripa’s Iconologia is distinguished on the fact that his quintessentially naturalistic descriptions are not confined in the boundaries of the visual. Instead as Moseley notes, Ripa produces ‘mental pictures’ not only of the objects themselves in conjunction with their symbolic qualities, but also of the spatial relationships among the objects. See [32, p. 5] and [35 at Introduction].
Essentially, the image captivates the subject through the generation of ‘feeling’ yet it retains a life of its own—it becomes a living image.
The consequent proposition is that the emblem becomes both a Mirror and a Reference.
The metaphor of the emblem as a ‘game’, seems to posit not only its pedagogic character but most importantly the element of ‘play’ which seems to resurface the natural and permanent condition of ‘childhood’ in the subject. In other words, to understand the moral truth or the legal principle or to make sense of it, you need to become a ‘child’.
On an analysis of this principle mentioned in Alciatus treatise De Verborum Significatiore see [43, p. 706].
Alciatus, being a professional jurist (or jurisconsult) and humanist, was particularly concerned with the ambiguity or even polysemousness of words and the inherent difficulty in extracting the ‘true’ meaning of the legal precedent or the ‘law giver’s intended meaning in the text of the law’. More specifically, scriptum et voluntas would arise where there was an obscuritas in the scriptum, which occurs within the context of a legal case (factum) to which the law is to applied as originally conceptualised by the legislator. Hence, a conflict of ‘norms’ arises between the scriptum and the voluntas party as to the correct ‘meaning’. The importance of the obscuritas is found on its inextricable relation to ‘the natural sense of justice’ (aequitas) which the law-giver has to abide with [24, p. 92].
Here we return to Freud’s famous statement that the unconscious is constituted in images.
One of the first emblematists to point out this correlation was Guillaume de la Perriere in Theatre des Bons Engins [34] who also suggested that what made the hieroglyph as symbol or the composition of visual signs embedded in the emblem so powerful, was the unfiltered acceptance by the viewer.
The rhetorical figura is ‘an expression of life and express emotions through their deviation from the linguistic resting position’. Here we are concerned with the figurae sententiae (dianoias)—one of the rhetorical subdivisions of the figure—which is related to the conception of Ideas and its apparent use is seen in the subscriptio of the emblem. Focusing on the renaissance emblematic tradition, we are following Quintilian’s division of elocution into and the categorisation of the figura [24, pp. 271–272].
This function finds its application in the actual use of the emblems not only as a pedagogic device but also as guidance determining the will and action of the subject. This is particularly noteworthy in the tradition of Jesuit emblematists and their understanding of the emblem as a tool of self-discipline and meditative technique or mental prayer. This theme prevails in the work of Jesuit Louis Richeome, ‘Tableaux sacres des figures mystiques du tres auguste sacrifice et sacrement de l’Euchariste’ (Paris 1601) yet it seems that it pertains to the Jesuit educational tradition in general. John Manning, in his elaboration on the tradition of the Jesuits of the Provincia Flandro-Belgica, describes the emblematic task as a spiritual exercise involving the Intellectus [Understanding], Voluntas [Will] and Memoria [Memory].This tripartite schema is perceived as the ‘Trinity in the human microcosm’ which can operate to renew the ‘defaced Image of God within man’. The basic premise of the use of metaphors in Jesuit emblems is that ‘Nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu’ (nothing is in the Understanding which is not first in the senses’) [29, pp 323, 325 and 328, respectively].
The insistence of the generalised metaphor can be traced back to the prevalence of the pedagogic tradition of the 16th century, mainly based on the Renaissance rhetoric as influenced by the work of Marcus Tullius Cicero and most importantly, the writings of Quintilian which also formed the foundation of the English renaissance rhetoric. The emblematic representation as metaphor is inextricably linked to Quintilian’s concept of Metaphora (Translatio). ‘It adds to the copiousness of language by the interchange of the words and by borrowing and succeeds in the supremely difficult task of providing a name for everything.’ [37] Quintilian’s formulation reminds us that what we can’t name, we illustrate. And therefore, what we can’t see, because of its invisible quality, (i.e. Providence, God, etc.) we ‘transfer’ its ‘truth’ to an ‘object’ of universal recognition.
The role of the teacher is represented both as an institutional parent and the one fostering the child’s attachment to the institutional logic through the mathesis of orderly interpretation. The term mathesis (or μάθησις in its Greek root translated as ‘learning’) is understood here through its Foucauldian definition in relation to a ‘theory of sign analysing representation and the arrangement of identities and differences into ordered tables’. In the specific extract, Foucault elaborated on the totality of Classical episteme and its relation to the knowledge of order, and considering that the current paper is mainly concerned with the Renaissance period and the Interpreters, the utilisation of mathesis, might seem unrelated or even whimsical. Nevertheless, Foucault’s conceptualisation of mathesis ‘as the science of calculable order’ (or elsewhere defined as a science of judgement or ‘truth’), ‘genesis as the analysis of the constitution of orders’ and their in-between produced ‘region of signs’ make possible the correlation of a sign which bears a value with that which ‘our representation can present us with (perceptions, thoughts, desires). Hence, Foucault identifies the function of general grammar situated in this in-between region which as a ‘science of signs’ allows the subjects to ‘group together their individual perceptions and pattern the continuous flow of their thoughts’. In the 17th century, this in-between region, what Foucault denoted as ‘table’, is the ‘centre of knowledge’ and it is visible in the emerging theories of language and the way we strive to understand the science of order and ordering of the signs in emblematic representations.
The child identifies its position within the familiar order and by analogy, the designated institutional spaces. This identification creates the possibility of forming kinship relations and hence, social exchange and obedience. As Lacan argues ‘without kinship nominations, no power is capable of instituting the order of preferences and taboos that bind and weave the yarn of lineage through succeeding generations’ [22, p. 229].
This assumption is grounded on the Lacanian concept that the efficiency of the image is attributed to the operation of the psychic structure within which the ‘I’ constitutes itself in words and images.
Legendre dissects the material of narcissism in its three constitutive elements—the emergence of the image or the origin as outcome, a relation of resemblance and an irremediable loss or a separation from oneself.
Lacan had already discussed how the visual order of the imaginary is already structured by symbolic laws [16, p. 91].
The other semantic line through which the discourse can take place is the metonymic way in which ‘one topic may lead to the other through their contiguity’. We place gravity on the metaphoric axis herein after.
In its original definition, vessel is conceptualised as an ‘article designed to serve as a receptacle’. Later on in biblical accounts the ‘vessel’ is metaphorised and becomes a living receptacle in the form of the human body or the person.
Elucidating further the notion of ‘transport’ or metafora we turn to Jean Hyppolite and his use of the terms ‘pass over’ and ‘I move from (…) to’. Hyppolite suggested that according to Hegel language is an ‘exteriority’ which allows the subject to understand the ‘world of culture, the world of Spirit alien to itself’. Accordingly, language is conceived as that framework within and through which ‘thefor-itself specificity of self-consciousness enters existence in order to ‘be for others’.
Legendre’s concept of reflexivity is understood through Hyppolite as ‘self-knowledge’ and thus, only that knowledge of the self is possible to ‘pass over into another self’. To quote Hyppolite: ‘In saying ‘I’, I say what any other ‘I’ can say. I simultaneously express myself and alienate myself. I become objective. I move from self-consciousness to a universal self-consciousness’. Hence the ‘I’ is something that is ‘learned’ [12, p. 403].
Such reference to the absolute Other seems to be possible under the function of the principle of alterity subsisting within the construction of identity, with the latter being understood ‘as a mediated relation between the self and itself’, and the former ‘posited as being itself identical with itself’ [10, pp. 230–231].
The logic of the Third has been conceptualised by Legendre as referring to the ‘logic of exchange between the subject and the absolute, which takes place across the space or distance of interpretation’. Following Goodrich’s definition, to ‘communicate with the enigmatic figure of authority, the subject must address that figure’ as something absent. For the author, the Third in Legendre’s thought is ‘the absolute Other, the Image, the Emblem, the Mirror or text’ [10, p. 257].
In Hegel the specific representation is designated as Vorstellung which denotes a subjective mental state, a ‘conception or a mental picture instead of the nature of the represented object, produced by a reflexive activity (sich vorstellen—meaning to represent something to one self) [13, p. 257].
Captivation is understood as captation—a neologism adopted by Lacan to denote the captivating effects of the specular image [7, p. 20].
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Dr. Anton Schütz, Birkbeck School of Law, for his invaluable guidance, supervision and advice during the authorship of this paper. Further thanks to Dr. Thanos Zartaloudis, Birkbeck School of Law, for his thoughtful comments and guidance throughout this endeavour.
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Dokoupilova, D. Creating Legal Subjectivity Through Language and the Uses of the Legal Emblem: Children of Law and the Parenthood of the State. Int J Semiot Law 26, 315–339 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9260-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9260-2