Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

The fact that he talks only of that, is in a way something that chokes up all thenuances of its specific relation, so that La parenté en question (Kinship inquestion) – this is a book published by Seuil – that the kinship in questionhighlights this primordial fact that it is lalangue which is at stake. It has not at allthe same consequences if the analyser talks only of that because his closerelations have taught him lalangue, he does not differentiate what specifies hisown particular relation with his close relations. It would be necessary to perceivethat what I will call on this occasion the function of truth, is in a way deadened bysomething prevalent, and it must be said that culture is here stifled, deadened,and that on this particular occasion, one would do perhaps better to evoke themetaphor, since culture is also a metaphor, the metaphor of the agri of the samename. It would be necessary to substitute for the agri in question the term ofcultural soup, it would be better to call culture a soup of language.What does it mean to free associate? I am striving here to push things a little bitfurther. What does it mean to free associate? Is it a guarantee – it seems all thesame to be a guarantee – that the subject who enunciates is going to saysomething which has a little bit more value? But in fact everyone knows thatrationalisation, what is called that in psychoanalysis, that rationalisation has agreater weight than reasoning. What have what are called enunciations to dowith a true proposition? One would have to try, as Freud enunciates, to see onwhat is founded this something, as Freud enunciates, to see on what is foundedthis something, which only functions by attrition, from which the Truth issupposed. One would have to see, to open oneself up to the dimension of truthas variable varité, namely, of what, in condensing like that these two words, Iwould call the varité, with the little silent é, the varité.For example, I am going to pose something which has indeed its price. If ananalysing subject slips into his discourse a neologism, like the one I have justmade for example in connection with varité, what can one say about thisneologism? There is all the same something that one can say, which is that theneologism appears when it is written. And it is precisely why that does not mean,like that, automatically, that it is the Real; it is not because it is written, that thisgives the weight to what I evoked earlier in connection with au pied de la lettre.111