The Notion of Body in Saussure and Freud: A Paradoxical Encounter

Abstract

The proposal of this article is to indicate a meeting point between Saussure and Freud regarding the place occupied by the speaker's body in their theories. In order to discuss this proposal, we emphasize that, in the Saussurian perspective, sounds affect the ear, provoking in this organ a decision / judgment activity on similarities and differences (among sounds) or, in other words, the sound impresses the ear. From the Freudian perspective, we cut out the question of the memory, which has, as basic notion, mnemonic traces, that is, traces of sensory
impressions that are in constant movement. Thus, for both the father of Linguistics and the father of Psychoanalysis, the sensation modifies, impresses the body of the speaker, or rather, imprints its marks, which articulate, or associate themselves. This proposal of encounter is not, however, peaceful, without problems, both because the concept of body is nebulous in both authors, but also because of the disagreement effects which is paradoxically produced by
such concept.