What is a Master-signifier?

S1 → S2
To accept a given nodal point is to retroactively
confer meaning and significance on a cross-
section of previously existing ‘free-floating’
signifiers’.
 Being ‘framed’
 In the US television show ‘Boston Legal’, an
older, seasoned attorney gives advice to a
younger lawyer he has just defeated at trial:
‘Never let your opponent frame your
argument’.
 This means that I can make a perfectly
coherent and compelling argument, but still
be defeated by someone able to frame the
articulation between the component parts of
my discourse.
 Because I do
 If one is to interrogate one’s own deepest
values, and to press on with question
after question as to ‘why?’, as to what
lies behind, what justifies the single most
important belief we claim to have –
whether it is a spiritual, an emotional, a
political commitment – this chain of
values will ultimately lead to an empty
‘because I do’, ‘because it is’.
 Because I say so
 The potentially endless succession of
words seemingly stops here, with a
master-signifier, an “idiotic” signifier
which can never be fully explained.
 This is a signifier which must not be
relativized, and – as in the mother’s
response to the disobedient &
questioning child: ‘because I say so’ –
must obeyed.
 Descending from above
 In the 3rd movement of Mozart’s
Serenade No. 10 a beautiful introductory
melody, played by the winds, is joined by
another, played by oboe and clarinet.
 At first this 2nd melody seems to be an
accompaniment to the 1st, but after a
while we realize that this first is in fact
the accompaniment to the 2nd which
‘descends from above’ (Zizek).
 Descending from above
 What we have here is a seemingly
dominant element – a ‘what comes
before’ - that becomes articulated within
a broader, as of yet unseen frame, which
retrospectively determines its meaning.
 It is not simply that the 2nd motif
retrospectively converts the 1st into a
variant of it, but that both are ultimately
variants of another, as of yet ungiven
theme.
 A 2nd reframing motiff
 In Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ we have a
similar procedure: a ‘bird’s eye’ view of a
the burning town. Initially this appears as
an unclaimed point of view, but gradually
one then another bird enters the scene.
 The birds which originally appeared to be
the subject of the shot now provide its
point of view.
 The making of the ‘off-screen’

 We have something analogous here to

the Mozart example: the fact of a second
motif that re-marks, reframes anew, an
initial motif.
 We have, more importantly, an
imposition of a frame from outside.
 Crucially, in ‘The Birds’, the ultimate
point of view is not that of the birds, but
that of an off-screen space itself.
 The effect of the not-present

 This “off-screen space”, this implied

frame of reference that is not itself
explicitly present - or given any concrete
presence - gives a heightened aesthetic
effect.
 The ‘divine’ aspect of Mozart’s music: to
imply that any given musical motif only
stands in for another, as yet unheard one
that is greater than anything we could
imagine.
 Absence of substance
 The Hitchcockian ‘suspense’ lies in what
is left out of the scene, what does not
happen; this other place or possibility for
which what we do see stands in.
 Part of the key to what we are trying to
grasp here lies with the idea that it is
precisely the lack of a fixable,
substantive content that makes a certain
element operate as a master signifier.
 Why meaning is possible
 We have thus something tantamount to
an ‘empty space’, a ‘ground’, which
enables the inscription of all other marks,
without itself being a meaning, a
signified. Without such an operation,
meaning cannot emerge.
 The master signifier (S1) is just such a
‘ground’, a signifier-without-a-signified
which always supplements the chain of
‘knowledge’ (S2) and makes it possible.
 The logic of the re-mark
 In ‘the universe of the signifier’, we need
at least one element that represents the
place of inscription for all other elements.
 Without the inscription, within the series
of elements, of an element which re-
marks their very place of inscription, the
distance between ‘figure’ and ‘ground’
cannot be established (Zizek).
 This element holds meaning together,
articulates the component parts.
 Sliding of signifieds
 We know about the arbitrary relationship
between the signifier and the signified.
 For psychoanalysis this means that the
signifier often determines meaning, that
there is often a sliding of signifieds under
the signifier (jokes, slips of the tongue)
where the pun or ambiguity of a word
leads us away from expected meaning to
a different destination.
 From one signifier to another
 If I want to work out the meaning of a new
signifier, I cannot access its signified
automatically, but I need rather relate it to
other signifiers (look in a dictionary, etc).
 The signified is thus always potentially
slipping out of reach, escaping any attempt
to keep it fixed.
 Lacan however is not advocating the
impossibility of any fixity of meaning, an
unending fluidity of unconnected differences.
 Point de capiton
 There is something like a point de caption, a
quilting-point which fixes, retrospectively,
the meaning of whole chains of signifiers.
 Such a point of fixity arrests the sliding of
the signifieds under the signifiers, although,
like an upholstery button, some degree of
movement is still possible.
 The existence of points de caption never
produce an eternally stable meaning, only a
relative and temporary – albeit necessary –
fixation.
The identity of an ideological field
 “What creates and sustains the identity
of a given ideological field beyond all
possible variations of its positive
content?”
 “the multitude of floating signifiers,
proto-ideological elements is structured
into a unified field through the
intervention of a certain nodal point
which quilts them, stops their sliding and
fixes their meaning” (Zizek).
Different ecologisms
 The meaning of ‘ecologism’ is not the
same in every ideological system but
shifts btw several possible meanings:
feminist ecology (the exploitation of
nature is masculine); socialist ecology
(capitalism is to blame for exploitation of
nature); conservative ecology (urging us
to go back to the cycles of nature).
(Zizek)
Different ecologisms
 Ideology is the struggle over which of these
elements not only is defined by its
relationship with the others but also allows
this relationship, is that medium through
which they are organized.
 It is the struggle not only to be one of those
free-floating ideological signifiers whose
meaning is ‘quilted’ or determined by
another but also that signifier which gives
those others their meaning, to which they
must ultimately be understood to be
referring.
Totalizing the field
 The idea of a signifier that that totalizes
an ideological field, which constructs an
identity by connecting free-floating
ideological elements can lead to a
misunderstanding that this signifier is
itself an ‘essential’ fixed point of
reference, a point of supreme plenitude
of meaning.
 The status of the nodal point is truly
paradoxical.
The tautological element
 This nodal point is not a point of excessive
density of meaning, a perfect guarantee of
meaning. On the contrary, its role is purely
structural, its nature is purely performative.
 Zizek: “The crucial step in the analysis of an
ideological edifice is to detect behind the
dazzling splendour of the element that holds
it together (God, country, Class) this self-
referential, tautological, performative
operation”.
 Privileged signifiers
 In a critique of Derrida, Žižek (1994b)
warns that one cannot reduce the
Lacanian symbolic “to the balanced
economy of exchange” (p. 195).
 The reason for this is that such a system
inevitably yields one or more privileged
signifiers; not all signifiers, we might say,
are equal in such an economy.
 Disproportionate values
 We need move beyond the classic
Structuralist conception of a differential
system of components to an appreciation
that certain key ideas – the motifs of a
given ideology for instance - attain a
disproportionate hold upon us.
 How are we able to account for the fact
that certain signifiers appear to maintain
a massively amplified ‘value’?
 Hollow markers
 Any symbolic or social system will yield
certain prioritized values and notions.
 These are the anchoring-points, the
apparent fixities – the exceptional
signifiers - around which a great many
other signifiers coalesce and come to
gain meaning, a semblance of fixity.
 The irony is that these signifiers are
‘undecidable’, they can’t be totalized.
 A ‘navigational principle’
 Ultimately there is no natural primacy to
these markers – they remain forever
hollow, insubstantial, empty.
 This is less important than the fact that
the social or symbolic system in question
needs an unquestioned assumption as a
centring point, their navigational principle
- their ‘magnetic north’- in terms of
which all surrounding signifiers gain a
sense, a location, an identity.
 Positivization of a void
 Any notion of structure, far from being
simply differential, a balanced matrix of
permutations, necessarily gives rise to a
‘Master Signifier’, a structural function
that power gets hold of, but which is in
itself empty, devoid of meaning, a pure
positivization of a void (Dolar, p. 87).
 Undecidability
 Such Master Signifiers are not easily
contested, refuted, or denied because
they play a crucial role in fixing
meanings, in providing co-ordinates for
surrounding signifiers.
 These Master Signifiers emerge precisely
at those points where meaning can never
be fully determined.
 Undecidability
 Such Master Signifiers are not easily
contested, refuted, or denied because
they play a crucial role in fixing
meanings, in providing co-ordinates for
surrounding signifiers.
 They emerge precisely at those points
where meaning can never be fully
determined. It is no coincidence that
undecidability and primary signification
occur at the same place.
 Mediation of empty signifiers

 Society lacks an ultimate signifier with

which to make it complete:
 [N]othing positive can be said about the
‘truth’ of society except that it is
incomplete – in Lacanian terms, that
there is a ‘lack in the symbolic Other’.
Thus, society exists as a totality only
insofar as the social subject posits its
existence as such through the mediation
of empty signifiers (Glynos, p. 197).
 Exceeding its reasons
 Being in love provides an example of the
totalizing effect of that element which
itself cannot be totalized.
 The reason why I love this person is
never fully rationalized by the string of
signifiers which follow on from this fact;
being in love is itself a self-justifying fact
which always exceeds the ‘reasons why I
love them’.
 Exceeding its reasons
 Lacanian theory is attentive to the
moment in which such a lack - the
inability to articulate a final justification,
a definitive substance - switches over
into something quite different, into that
which (potentially) lies behind the
meaning of everything, that which
grounds me, providing a coherent social
role and significance for my existence.
 Incapacity to full meaning
 A failure, in short – an inability to explain
– is thus translated into the positive
condition of our existence as types of
meaningful social subjects.
 As Glynos (2001) puts it: epistemological
incapacity is hence transformed into the
positive ontological condition of society
and of our social subjectivity.
 Incapacity to full meaning
 This is the conversion of undecidability of
the signified into an exceptional signifier:
 ‘Nation’, ‘Democracy’ and other causes
stand for ‘something’ about which we are
never sure what exactly, it is – the point
is, rather, that by identifying with Nation
we signal our acceptance of what others
accept, with a Master signifier which
serves as the rallying point for others
(Žižek, 1996, p. 142).
 Constitutive lack
 A master-signifier resembles a Janus
head: it is presented as a consideration
of supreme meaning, yet it is also an
empty name lacking substantive content.
 The nodal point quilts all the ideological
moments of a signifying chain together –
it hegemonizes a field of potential
meanings – and yet it can be shown to
be an impossibility, a lack covered by a
mere word, a signifier.
 Constitutive lack
 It functions as a point of supreme meaning,
fullness, objectivity (natural objectivity) and
moral value (nature’s intrinsic value).
 “The nodal point is presented as a point of
supreme density of meaning (instrinsic
value, ethical priority, etc.) while, in reality,
it only masks an ‘underlying’ constitutive
lack, thus masking the split and unstable
character of [the ideological formation]”
Stavrakakis.
 Meaning to come
 We are hence dealing with a “meaning to
come” which although it is never fully
actualized, functions as if it is already
effective.
 So, by the time ‘God’ or ‘Nation’ or any
other master-signifier works as a rallying-
point for a group, it already effectively co-
ordinates their activity, consolidates them as
a society even though each of them might
indeed have differing notions as to what
‘God’ or ‘Nation’ might in fact be.
What others identify with

 What is being identified with is not some

concrete image, some delimited object of
knowledge, but – indeed, a meaning-to-
come - that which others accept and identify
with.
 Identification with a Master Signifier is an
odd sort of identification, it is neither direct
nor with anything substantial. It is not an
identification with any concrete thing; it is
rather identifying with something that others
identify with.
 Precipitate identification
 We are plugged into a similar social network
by virtue of the fact of identifications with
the indefinite, always open Master Signifier
that others are also identified with.
 Hence the notion of a precipitate
identification that involves not a direct
relation with an object, but a relation with
an inconclusive (Master) signifier that others
have also taken on and have done so as a
means of avoiding the uncertainty of their
(our) social being.
 S1 & big Other
 So, how do we pass from the dispersed,
inconsistent collection of signifiers to the big
Other qua consistent order?
 By supplementing the inconsistent series of
signifiers with a Master-Signifier, S1, a
signifier of pure potentiality of meaning-to-
come.
 By this precipitation (the intervention of an
‘empty’ signifier which stands for meaning-
to-come) the symbolic field is completed,
changed into a closed order.