Full and Empty Speech (4 of 5) : Nixon’s full speech

Martin Heidegger’s distinction between ’gerede’ (idle talk) and ’rede’ (discourse) provides a useful philosophical context for us to appreciate Lacan’s distinction between empty and full speech. Heidegger’s rede (or discourse) is, he claims, foundational to language as such, and it retains the prospect - what we might call the truth-trajectory - of disclosing the truth about objects in the world. Gerede, by contrast, is instrumental in its operation; it positions the speaker in certain ways, but does not fundamentally aim at truth. While Lacan’s concepts are importantly different - clearly psychoanalytic in nature, disconnected from Heidegger’s concerns with ontology - his idea of full speech likewise maintains a truth-trajectory, that of the truths of unconscious desire. Such truths are, importantly, only ever ’half-said’ and are typically realized rather in distortions, disruptions or gaps in empty speech. With this theoretical backdrop in place, we turn to the fi