Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

transmitted to it to advance the crucial problems of psychoanalysis. The circuitthat I am going to put in place before you claims to metaphorise by a long circuitin which there would be representable the fundamental movements – you seethat I am designating precisely three of them – at the issue of which a subject andhis Other can arrive at a precise point, very locatable, that I will call B4-R4 – youwill see why – and starting from which I will articulate what seems to me to be,both the problem of the passe, and that of, perhaps, the nature of the shortcircuit, of what could topologically short circuit what is supposed to happen at thelevel of the jury d’agrement. Good, I commence therefore.The subjects that I chose to presentify for you our two analytic partners, can bemade familiar to you in that they are supposed to correspond in a certain way totwo protagonists most absent in the story of The purloined letter which you know,the very ones, about whom from the beginning to the end there is question,namely, the emissary, the one who is the emissary with the letter who is so farexcluded that Poe even, I believe, does not even name him and namely, thereceiver of the letter, who – as we know – Lacan showed it to us – is the King. Ifyou allow me, I baptise for the convenience of my presentation, the subject by thename of Bozef and I will keep the name of the one it is destined for, that of theKing. My whole montage is going to consist in substituting for the short circuit bywhich Poe’s story keeps his two subjects outside the journeying of the letter, along zigzag circuit by which the letter starting from position B1 will end by arrivingat position B4. The numbering of 1 and 4 that I indicate to you indicate alreadythat I will be led to distinguish 4 places which will differentiate 4 successivepositions of the subject and of the Other. I begin therefore with B1.You see that B, the series of Bs, responds to the subject Bozef, this series of R1,R2, R3 correspond to the progression of the knowledge of the king, R1, R2, R3. ByB1, if you wish, I am qualifying the state, of innocence of the subject indeed theinfantilism of the subject, when he is uniquely supported by this subjectiveposition which is the following: the Other does not know, the king does not know,does not know what? Well then, quite simply, the content of the letter does notmatter, quite simply does not know that the subject knows something about him.R1 represents therefore the radical ignorance of the king; therefore one could say62