Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

Let’s see. Let us try to see here what would result from that, namely, that this Xwhich is at this place, would open out and that the Imaginary would continue intothe Real. This indeed in effect is what happens, because bodies are onlyproduced, in the most futile fashion, as appendices of life, in other words of thatabout which Freud was speculating when he speaks about a germen.We find there around the speaking function, something which, as one might say,isolates man, of whom at this time it must be marked that it is only in function ofthe fact that there is no sexual relationship, that what we can call on thisparticular occasion language, as I might say, may supply for it. It is a fact thatblah-de-blah furnishes, furnishes what is distinguished by the fact that there is norelationship.Yes, it would be necessary in this case that the Real, without us being able toknow where it stops, that we should place the Real in continuity with theImaginary. In other words, it begins there somewhere right in the middle of theSymbolic. That would explain why the Imaginary, traced out here in red,effectively falls back into the Symbolic, but that it is on the other hand foreign toit, as is testified by the fact that it is only man who speaks. You see here that theReal is drawn in green.Yes, I would like someone to challenge me about what today, for you, I laboriouslytried to formulate in this very unsymbolic fashion; it is something that is not easyto express. I think that as regards what is involved in this four-fold plait [Fig. V-2],it seems to me to reproduce, to reproduce very exactly what is here [Fig. V-1],55