Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

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Seminar 12: 17 May 1977People in the middle were not able to hear me; I would like to be told this timewhether I can be heard. It is not because what I have to say is of extremeimportance. Can you hear me? Would someone mind telling me if, perchance, Icannot be heard?Good. So then to say things in order of growing importance, I had the pleasure ofnoticing that my teaching has reached l’Echo des Savanes! (laughter). I will onlyquote two lines for you: ‘Psychoanalysis is no more complicated than that;anyway, that’s Lacan’s theory’. There you are. L’Echo des Savanes, number 30, inwhich you can read this text is all the same a little bit porno (laughter). That Ihave succeeded – indeed I have succeeded..., I did not do it deliberately – that Ishould have succeeded to going as far as porno, is all the same what can be calleda success! Good. There you are. I am always careful to get l’ Echo des Savanes asif I was only waiting for that, but it is obviously not the case. So then in order ofgrowing importance, I am going all the same to signal for you the publication bySeuil of a text called Polylogue, which is by Julia Kristeva. I really like this text, it isa collection of a certain number of articles. It is no less precious for that. I wouldall the same like to be informed, by Julia Kristeva, since she has made the effort,this morning, to be good enough to put herself out, how she conceives of thisPolylogue. I would really like her to tell me whether this Polylogue, as perhapsanyway it appears to me insofar as I was able to read it – because I did not get ittoo long ago – if this Polylogue is a polylinguisterie, I mean whether linguistics isthere in some sort of way – what I believe is that it is, as far as I can see - , morethan scarce, is that what she meant by Polylogue? She is moving her head up anddown in a way that appears to approve me, but if she had still has enough voice togive a little yelp, I would all the same not be displeased. It is?..J. Kristeva: It is something other than linguistics. It passes by way of linguistics,but it is not that.122
J. Lacan: Yes. Only the annoying thing is that one only ever passes by way oflinguistics. I mean that one passes by way of it, and if I enunciated somethingvalid, I regret that people cannot base themselves on it. To tell the truth, I don’tknow, I heard it said by someone who came like that to pull my sleeve, thatJakobson wanted me to participate in an interview. I am very embarrassed and Ifeel myself completely incapable of doing so. It is not that...and nevertheless Ihave, as Julia Kristeva has just said, I have been through it. There you are.I have been through it, but I have not remained there. I am still at the stage ofinterrogating psychoanalysis about the way in which it functions. What ensuresthat it holds up, that it constitutes a practice that is sometimes effective?Naturally there, one must all the same go through a series of interrogations. Doespsychoanalysis work, since from time to time it does work, does it work by whatpeople call an effect of suggestion? For the effect of suggestion to hold up, presupposesthat language, - here I am repeating myself -, that language depends onwhat is called man. It is not for nothing that at one time, I manifested a certain,like that, preference for a certain book by Bentham which talks about theusefulness of fictions. Fictions are orientated toward service, which is...that hejustifies in short. But on the other hand, there is a gap; that this depends on man,presupposes that we should clearly know, that we should know sufficiently whatman is. All that we know about man is that he has a structure; but it is not easy tosay what this structure is. Psychoanalysis has given a few squeaks about thissubject, namely, that man leans towards his pleasure, which has a quite clearsense. What psychoanalysis calls pleasure, is to suffer, is to suffer the leastpossible. Here all the same one should remember the fashion in which I definedthe possible, this has a curious reversal-effect, since I said that the possible iswhat ceases to be written. That is how at least I clearly articulated it, at the timewhen I was speaking about the possible, about the contingent, about thenecessary and the impossible. So then if one transports the word the least, likethat, quite clumsily, quite brutally, well then that means what ceases to be theleast written. And in effect, that does not cease in an instant. Here indeed iswhere I would like to pose again a question to my dear Julia Kristeva. What doesshe call – that is going to force her to get out a little bit more from this quiet voicelike earlier – what does she call the metatongue (metalangue)?What does the metatongue mean if not translation? One can only speak of atongue in another tongue, it seems to me, if what I said formerly is a fact, namely,that there is no metalanguage. There is an embryo of metalanguage; but onealways skids away from it, for a simple reason, which is that I know nothing aboutlanguage except a series of incarnated tongues. People strive to reach language123
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Seminar 1: Wednesday 16 November 19
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after all noticed that to consist m
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It would be enough for you to take
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There had therefore been a turning
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Supposing that we have a torus in a
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topology encourages us to do so. Th
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and me, and I who, in short, by din
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we cut it in two, the front and the
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is itself a hole and in a certain w
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Everyone knows that this is how thi
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Seminar 3: Wednesday 21 December 19
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proceed to this double cut, a doubl
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The inside and the outside in this
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egards the structure of the body, o
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inspired by it and its inspiration,
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music on you, is that it has this p
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from the beloved to the lover. What
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that the little o-object is not uni
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Seminar 4: Wednesday 11 January 197
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short I called the discourses; the
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It is flattened out, and in a way t
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astonishes me still more, is not th
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Seminar 5: Wednesday 18 January 197
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see it here, namely, something that
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namely, that everything that concer
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Let’s see. Let us try to see here
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- X: You can’t hear me because pr
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Seminar 6: Wednesday 8 February 197
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its relationship to the body that w
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that in the position B1, would be t
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is in the position of maintaining t
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Effectively the problem of primary
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which I will return later, what is
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Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

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