Primordial Symbolization

Primordial Symbolization names the zero-degree operation through which the symbolic order first constitutes itself in relation to the Real — not a subsequent inscription of an already-given Real, but the very act of differentiation that retroactively produces both terms (Symbolic and Real) as distinct. In Žižek's argument in Less Than Nothing, this concept emerges from a fourfold typology of Freudian "Ver-" mechanisms (Verdrängung/repression, Verwerfung/foreclosure, Verleugnung/disavowal, Verneinung/negation), each of which presupposes a symbolic order already in place. Primordial Symbolization designates what must come "before" all four — not temporally, but logically: it is the quasi-mythical moment at which the gap between the symbolic and the Real is first opened, and in which the Real is "named" for the first time. The contact is direct, not mediated, because there is as yet no mediation; and it is simultaneously the moment of their separation. Žižek links this to Heidegger's notion of originary naming-as-disclosure: to name something is already to bring it forth as something, not merely to attach a label to a pre-existing datum.

The political-clinical stakes of the concept concern what grounds Bejahung (primordial affirmation) — the positive symbolic inscription without which foreclosure, in the Lacanian sense, becomes possible. Psychosis, on this reading, is not simply failure to take up one's place in a pre-given symbolic order; it is the failure of subjective historicization at the level of this more originary symbolization. Because primordial symbolization is pure appearing — nomination as such — it requires no hidden ground, no pre-symbolic foundation, to guarantee it. The gap it introduces is simultaneously the gap in the subject (the subject's constitutive split) and the gap within the big Other itself (the lack in the Other). Nomination does not close this gap; it is identical with the gap's opening.

In slavoj-zizek-less-than-nothing-hegel-and-the-shadow-of-dialectical-materialism-v, Primordial Symbolization functions as a regressive limit-concept — the vanishing point that the four Freudian mechanisms all logically presuppose but cannot themselves account for. It is situated "beneath" Foreclosure (Verwerfung): where Foreclosure is the failure of primordial affirmation (Bejahung) — the non-inscription of the Name-of-the-Father into a symbolic order that already formally exists — Primordial Symbolization is the instituting act that makes the symbolic order possible at all. It therefore extends the canonical concept of Foreclosure by asking what must already have happened for foreclosure to be a possible fate. Similarly, it radicalizes the canonical concept of Language: if Language is the condition of the unconscious and the structure that both founds and robs the subject of being, Primordial Symbolization is the condition of Language itself, or rather the event of its very emergence from (and as a cut into) the Real.

The concept also speaks directly to Lack and to the Real. Lack, in the canonical synthesis, is a structural effect of signification — "nothing in the real is missing; a lack can only be introduced when there are signs and symbols." Primordial Symbolization is precisely the moment at which this introduction occurs for the first time, the hinge-point at which the Real acquires a lack by being named. It thus maps onto the logic of Appearance in the cross-referenced set: just as Appearance is not a deficient copy of some deeper reality but the site at which reality first articulates itself, primordial symbolization is not a representation of a pre-given Real but the act through which the distinction Real/Symbolic is first performed. Fetishistic Disavowal and the Name-of-the-Father each presuppose this zero-level operation without thematizing it; Žižek's move is to render it explicit as the unfounded, groundless act of nomination that sustains the symbolic order without itself being grounded.

Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical MaterialismSlavoj Žižek · 2012 (page unknown)

an even more originary (or 'primary') symbolization of the Real, the quasi-mythical zero-level of direct contact between the symbolic and the Real which coincides with the moment of their differentiation.

The phrase "zero-level of direct contact" is theoretically loaded because "direct contact" is precisely what all subsequent symbolic operations (repression, foreclosure, disavowal) eliminate — to speak of it is already to speak paradoxically; and "coincides with the moment of their differentiation" captures the retroactive logic at work, in which the Symbolic and the Real are not first separate and then brought into contact, but are produced as distinct only through the very act that supposedly "touches" them.