The Belfast Agreement, the Purloined Letter and the ``Politics of the Ostrich''

Abstract

Jacques Lacan's Seminar on The PurloinedLetter gives centrality to the operation ofthe signifier in the construction of thesubject, rather than to any `content' thatmight pertain to the signifier. In Lacan'saccount, the trajectory of the signifier isorganised around three intersubjectivepositions: seeing, not seeing and seeingoneself not being seen. This article, in anexamination of the operation of `the nation' asan origin for legal authority in the 1998Belfast Agreement, will explore the relevanceof Lacan's insight to the questions ofsovereignty and authority thrown up by legaltransition in Northern Ireland. In particular,this article will explore the way in whichnation is `suspended' as a foundation of legalauthority from the administrative discourse ofthe Belfast Agreement, but remains a potentpoint of legal and political identification.This will be done by treating `the nation' notin terms of its capacity to represent thefoundation of legal authority, but as asignifier whose displacement from `grand'aspirational constitutional discourse to themore `banal' administrative discourse of theBelfast Agreement operates to reconfigure legaland political identification.