How is Joyce’s Finnegans Wake a piece of lituraterre?

In Lacan’s terminology, “lituraterre” is the “literature of erasure”, that is the literature created out of
the “hole” in the letter. The conception of a hole or erasure in the letter is realized due to the
referential nature of signifiers which results in it being embedded with antithetical signifieds,
resulting in the nullification of meaning. For instance, the signifier “literature” refers to two more
antithetical signifiers “letter” and “erasure”. Therefore, the signifier is essentially emptied of all
meaning. The emptied signifier resides at the edge of the Unconscious, which is the realm of the free
play of signifieds. This edge is the littoral, a site where letter becomes litter on account of becoming
empty. Lituraterre is the literature of this litter; therefore, its language is highly convoluted and
affected, revealing the artificiality of signifiers.

Imposed language: James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is lituraterre in the sense that it transforms the
letter into litter. Lacan identifies that due to his psychotic symptoms, the Name of the Father is
absent in Joyce. Thus, his army of signifiers can never attain any meaning recognizable by the
symbolic order prevalent in society. The signifiers never leave the littoral and consequently,
Finnegan’s Wake can never be a semblative discourse. It follows that the language used in the novel
has no semblance to how we normally speak. It is a circular text starting with … and ending with …. It
does not follow the structure of the novel nor does it follow grammatical syntax or rules of
punctuation. In the title itself, we can see that the use of apostrophe is elided for no apparent
reason. Thus, the language seems imposed, as no meaning resembling reality is conveyed through it.

Neologism: If the signifier is empty, then it follows that the “letter” (written or spoken) need not be a
semblance of the symbolic order. In his essay on Lituraterre, Lacan says that the “Letter is a
consequence” and that “He who says it, inhabits it.” Therefore, the “letter” exercised by a subject is
directly reliant on the Unconscious and derives meaning from the field of Real. If that is so, then the
letter might be permutated and combined to convey the meaning of the subject, that is, the subject
inhabits the “letter”. This naturally results in neologisms peculiar to the subject’s unconscious. For
instance, in Finnegans Wake …

Lalangue: The convoluted use of language clearly shows that the text of lituraterre is detached from
the symbolic order. Therefore, it imports meaning directly from the Real. The written or spoken
“letter” resembles the incoherent mutterings of the subject’s unconscious which is like a baby’s
jibberish or as Lacan terms it, the Lalangue. As the lalangue inhabits the space of the Real, it can be
said that it narrativizes a dreamscape, particularly subjective and disjointed from reality. Thus,
contrary to literature, which is rooted in the discourse of reality, the language of lituraterre is
essentially the Lalangue. The narrative of Finnegans Wake also takes place as if in a dream. …

The experience of lituraterre by the subject marks the end of psychoanalysis in the clinic.
Significantly, Joyce achieves this end on his own by developing the practice of writing lituraterre as
his “sinthome”.