master-signifier
In Lacanian theory, a signifier which stops the
slippage of the signified under the signifier and fixes meaning, thereby forming a stable symbolic order. It is a particular signifier with no signified of its own, which stands in for the "fullness" of the meaning of the symbolic system itself. However, since contingency and lack are taken to be primary in Lacanian theory, it is necessarily arbitrary and is unable to guarantee its own
primacy except through arbitrary and ungrounded violence. It is always haunted by the
return of the Real.