Sounds join phonemes and we have sounds that form words/ signifiers . Words/ signifiers then produce sense. But this sense is not fixed. Words/ signifiers can generate different sense. This is the stage of the pan-audicon. It is a highly developed staged. When words/ signifiers as sounds are ordered to produce fixed meanings, the play of phonemes produce language. We are born in a pan-audicon. We are thrown into a world of language and it is this house of language that we have our life and being. Just like pan-opticon produces self-policing , pan -audicon also produces self-policing and our self. But there is a difference. Pan-opticon produces self-policing of resistance. It produces a rebellious self. Pan-opticon produces self-policing of agreement or falling in line. It produced a obedient self. It builds our capacity as speakers and hence renders us political as Aristotle would teach us.
We are interested to arrive at a sense before we cross the bar of language. This is not before, we summit to the pan-audicon. But before arriving here maybe we have to consider how a play signifiers produce meaning/ sense. Following Ferdinand Sausser, we know that meaning / sense erupts as a result of the play of differential relation among the signifiers animated by the syntagmatic / metonymic axis. Jacques Derrida teaches that meaning/ sense stays in the coming and is never really closed to a decided sense. This means sense or meaning remains always in the coming. This sense of meaning staying in the coming without reaching any closure opens us to what we are trying to touch, sense before and between the arrival of full fledge language.
Perhaps, we may also have to consider the insight of Jacques Lacan in this context.
Lacan teaches that the metonymic chain or axis produces meaning at a point which is the anchoring point which he calls point de capiton or button hole at which the signifiers on the metonymic axis correspond to the anchoring concept and a sense of meaning is produced retroactively. Thus, when one speak to the other , one communicates to the other at a point when what one says matches what the other can anticipates what one will say. Thus, for Lacan communication occurs retroactively. There is what we may call fusion of horizons between the speaking one and the listening other. The anchoring point can change for different listeners and so they may get different meaning or sense. Thus, meaning or sense occurs before we cross into language. Meaning or sense is produced in the sliding of the signifiers. This does not mean we are into a pre-audicon stage. We are into the prison of audicon, the prison house of language.
The insight of Lacan enables us to enter before and between the arrival of meaning via language. It can also explain why we cannot make sense of all paroles. If someone utters a sentence in Kanada , I cannot make any sense. It sounds nonsensical to me. I do not belong to that house of language . But if someone utters a sentence in Marathi or even some basic Bengali , I may make sense. This is because the phonemes that come to produce the sounds of Bengali or Marathi are already present in my mother tongue Konkani . The phonemes of these languages and their families belong a common house of a language or pan-audicon. Hence, we naturally submit to / anticipate these sounds and are able to find a point de capiton or the anchoring point that will enable us to make sense or meaning. With Lacan, we have to agree that pan-audicon also belongs to the symbolic order, that remains as the Big Other and operates as our unconscious. Here, we move to the orders of the sounds as well as orders of significations. This is so because not all symbols are sounds. Some belong to the world of vision. But knowing what these orders of sounds or orders of vision do to us, we might be enabled to respond to the pan-opticon as well as pan-audicon emancipatively.
