Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

of his time as a formidable cleric and this is quite true. He had religiousconvictions. People completely forget this adventure, this adventure of theaforesaid Pasteur, people forget it. People forget it and the fact of beingreduced to thinking that there is life, more or less pulsating life onmeteorites does not resolve the question. The fact that we do not find theslightest trace of life on the moon, or on Mars, does not help matters. Forwhy, in the name of what, if not in the name of a being that must all thesame be situated somewhere, of a being who might have done that explicitlylike a man, as if man who, for his part, manipulates and fiddles with things,as if man all of a sudden had seen that there was an ape, an ape-God – Imean that God is supposed to ape him – as if everything in short startedfrom that, which in fact loops the loop. Everyone knows that the ape-God,is more or less the idea that we can construct for ourselves of the idea and ofthe way in which man is born and that this is not something which iscompletely satisfying. For why does man have what I call parl’être,namely, this way of talking in such a fashion that nomina non suntconsequentia rerum, in other words that there is somewhere somethingwhich is not working in the structure as I conceive it, namely, the so calledBorromean knot.This is indeed the case, and it is worthwhile evoking by this nameBorromean a historic date, namely, the way in which there was elucubratedthe very idea in short of structure. It is altogether striking to see that thismeant at the time that, if one family withdrew from a group of 3, the 2others by that very fact found themselves free, free to no longer agree withone another. Of course, this sordid aspect of this history of the Borromeansis worthwhile recording.Not alone are names not the consequence of things, but we can explicitlyaffirm the contrary. I have a grandson, I have a grandson called Luc – it is afunny idea, but it was his parents who baptised him – he is called Luc andhe says quite appropriate things. He says, in short, that he strives to saywords that he does not understand, and he deduces that this is what makeshis head swell, because he has like me, - it is not surprising since he is my96