Transcendental Signifier

In God we trust.  The motto of the United States, inscribed on every coin and paper bill.  The same phrase that saved old Kris Kringle from being deemed psychologically unfit in Miracle on 34^th Street.  How was this so?  If the American people could stand by a phrase that mentioned a being no more material than Santa Clause, how could they say that the jolly, round man didn’t exist?  The transcendental signifier at work again!

            The transcendental signifier has been a key tool in western thinking for a long time and continues to be in use today.  Essentially the transcendental signifier is an image, concept, idea, etc., which is used as leverage in an argument.  Sounds simple enough.  However, this signifier is extremely complicated in that it is always a presentation of something, which cannot be evoked into being, something we have no ability to personify, something… like God.  Usually associated with political or religious ideologies, the transcendental signifier is used to establish a natural order, to create a hierarchal relationship that suits the self-interests of its employer.  This puts the reader/listener at a disadvantage, as they become subject to the will of this irrevocable figure.  The speaker or text tells you how to read/listen and thus we are subject and controlled.

            After reading and discussing King James’s The True Law of Free Monarchies, it was slightly disturbing (or perhaps a little more than slightly) how often this tactic was deployed. As the full title suggests (The True Law of Free Monarchies: or The Reciprock and Mutual Duty Betwixt a Free King and His Natural Subject… a mouthful), James’s text is looking to establish evidence to support the King’s dominance over the people.  If the seven transcendental signifiers in the title aren’t enough to disadvantage the reader, James, while also using the laws of the kingdom and of nature, builds his argument through what is found in the scriptures – the book of God. 

Michaelangelo's, "The Creation of Adam"
            (... is that James on the left? Wait, no the right?)

            There are a number of things that can be flagged as problematic in this argument.  First, and most obvious, is the fact that James is declaring his superiority has been given to him through the words of God.  Since God is a transcendental signifier, who cannot be interrogated on the matter and is purely subjective, there is no way for the reader to challenge this.  Supplementary to this, as King, James was given the privilege to be one of few to actually have the power interpret the word of God.  This being said, of course he would use the text in his favour.  After listing from the book of Samuel that the King will, “take your sons…also take your daughters…take your fields, and your vineyards and your best olive trees, and give them to his servants… he will take your manservants, and your maidservants…and your asses, and put them to his work… and ye shall be his servants” (qtd. in Fischlin and Fortier 58), James then goes on to say that Paul says (in the scripture) this is “ground no good Christian will, or dare, deny” (58).  Does it sound like the people have much of anything to use in defense?  Just to put the icing on the cake, James adds later that they should acknowledge him as “a judge by God over them, having power to judge them but to be judged only by God” (66).  Yah, that sounds fair.  Scary to think that the King James Version of the Bible is the most popular English translation of the text…

            I think it is interesting to note that Jacques Derrida, who coined the term “transcendental signifier,” also created its oppositional term “différance.”  Différance basically determined that meaning is never absolute when someone speaks it into being.  Derrida asserts that meaning is created out of difference, in a yin-yang effect and if this is true, the fact that these opposing views exist destabilizes meaning, as certain views can accept or reject various aspects of a meaning.  Take that James!