Lacan - Television

Television Author(s): Jacques Lacan, Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson Reviewed work(s): Source: October,
Vol. 40, Television (Spring, 1987), pp. 6-50 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778337 . Accessed: 25/12/2012 03:40
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded on Tue, 25 Dec 2012 03:40:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Television
I. I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth,because there'sno way, to say it all. Saying it all is literallyimpossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibilitythat the truthholds onto the real. I will confessthen to having triedto respond to the present comedy and it was good only forthe wastebasket. A failurethen,but thereby,actually,a success when compared with an error,or to put it better: with an aberration. And withouttoo much importance, since limited to this of occasion. But first all, which? The aberrationconsistsin thisidea of speaking so as to be understood by idiots. An idea that is ordinarilyso foreignto me that it could Beware. only have been suggestedto me. Through friendship. For there'sno difference between televisionand the public beforewhom I've spoken fora long time now, a public known as my seminar. A single gaze in both cases: a gaze to which, in neithercase, do I address myself,but in the name of which I speak. Do not, however, get the idea that I address everyone at large.2 I am speaking to those who are savvy, to the nonidiots, to the supposed analysts.
2. The expression Lacan uses is h la cantonade, which, to reinforcethe pun on his own name, he had allowed the transcription his XIth seminar to read as, &la canof tonade. See The Four Fundamental ed. Conceptsof Psycho-Analysis, Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York, Norton, 1978, p. 208.
S(s()
(a K $)
:::i:?::::i: :iiiiiii::iii:~l~~ii~~~~~as~sss~L?~i:;;:
__:_:_iii :::::::::: ;::::::: :i-i-i :::::-: ::::::::: ?--: :::::-::::----:----:-_--_ -::_:: _:-:: ::::':::::'':i: --: ::-:--:---:--_:-:--_-:?I :-?:_:i: ::~2: :::: ::::::::: ;-:::::: --:-:--;::::-::_:-:-::.:i:i:~i -i:--2:-: :_ :::d:j::::i:::::: :-:i --i-i --:::bi: ::::?:::: :' :::::::':: ;--?? ,:::::.i:::i::::: .:
::::,:::::::::
:8-r
-----::::::_:-si.:_. :::-:::~:: ::
-e:_-a :j::i: ::: :::::::
:::(:?::::_:::: : ::
OCTOBER
If we consider only the overcrowding,experience shows that what I say there engages many more people than those whom withsome reason I suppose to be analysts. So why then tone here than for my seminar? should I use a different I may reasonably suppose there to be analysts Besides, listeningnow also. I I will go further: expect ofthe supposed analystsnothing more than theirbeing this object thanksto which what I teach is not a self-analysis.On this point, they alone, among those who are listening, are sure to understand [entendre] But me. even in understandingnothingan analystplays thisrole I have just defined, and as a consequence televisionthus assumes it just as well. I would add that these analystswho are such only insofar as they are object- the object of the analysand-it happens that I do address them, not that I am speaking to them, but that I speak about them: ifonly to disturbthem. Who knows? of This could have some effects suggestion. Si - S2 Would you believe it? There is one situationin which suggestion is powerless: when the analyst owes his defaultto the other,to the person who has broughthim to "thepass," as I put it, of assertinghimselfas analyst. "passes" pass foran Happy are those cases in which fictive leave room forhope. incompletetraining; they
a
S2
Television
II. that not witticisms my --I think, deardoctor, I am here to trade to to all with Therefore you theoccasion reply. you . . . , butonly give the most even commonmearethe willget thinnest, elementary, from you one I'll place,ofquestions. throw outatyou. "Theunconsciouswhata word!" strange - Freud didn'tfinda betterone, and there'sno need to go back on it. The disadvantage of thisword is thatit is negative, which allows one to assume anythingat all in the world about else as well. Why not? To that which goes it, plus everything the word everywhere unnoticed, applies just as well as nowhere. It is nonethelessa very precise thing. There is no unconscious except for the speaking being. The others, who possess being only throughbeing namedeven though they impose themselvesfromwithin the realhave instinct, namely the knowledgeneeded fortheirsurvival. Yet thisis so only forour thought,which mightbe inadequate here. This still leaves the category of homme-sick animals, who therebycalled domestics [d'hommestiques], for that reason are shaken, howeverbriefly, unconscious, seismic tremors. by It speaks, does the unconscious, so that it depends on language, about which we know so little: despite what under I thetermlinguistery group whateverclaims- and thisis new-
"Theprecondition of theunconscious is language, "
10
OCTOBER
to intervenein men's affairsin the name of linguistics. Linguistics being the science that concerns itselfwith lalangue,3 which I writeas one word, so as to specifyits object, as is done in every other science. This object is nonethelesseminent,since the veryAristotelian notion of the subject comes down to that more legitimatelythan to anythingelse. Which allows forthe grounding of the unconscious in the ex-sistenceof one more subject for the soul. For the soul as the assumed sum of the body's funcanalytic hypothesis tions. A mostproblematicsum, despite the factthatfromAristotle to Uexkiill, it has been postulated as though with one voice, and it is stillwhat biologistspresuppose, whetherthey i(a) know it or not. In factthe subject of the unconscious is only in touch with the soul via the body, by introducing thoughtinto it: here conAristotle.Man does not thinkwith his soul, as the The onlyrelation tradicting has thought tothe is soul-body oneof Philosopher imagined. ex-sistence. He thinksas a consequence of the fact that a structure, that of language - the word implies it- a structurecarves up his body, a structurethat has nothing to do with anatomy. Witness the hysteric. This shearing happens to the soul throughthe obsessional symptom:a thoughtthat burdens the soul, that it doesn't know what to do with. Thought is in disharmonywith the soul. And the Greek voVsis the mythof thought'saccommodatingitself the soul, to with the world, the world accommodating itselfin conformity for which the soul is held responsible, whereas the (Umwelt) world is merelythe fantasythroughwhich thoughtsustains itThe little thatreality self-"reality" no doubt, but to be understood as a grimace of derives the from real the real.
. whichex-sists . through lalangue:
- It'sstillafactthat comes you, the one to in psychoanalyst,order,

3. Lalangue,as one word (without an article or with the article soldered onto the substantive; instead of la langue): general equivocation, universal babble, or "Babelonian."
Television
11
to to that this The within world you reduce fantasy, getbetter. cure is also a fantasy? that - The cure is a demand that originatesin the voice of the of fromhis body or his thought. sufferer, someone who suffers The astonishing thing is that there be a response, and that time medicine, using words, has hit the bull's-eye. throughout How did thishappen beforethe unconscious was located? In order to work, a practice doesn't have to be elucidated; this is what can be deduced fromthat.
Powerof words
be then, only distinguishedfrom -Analysis would therapy, by"beThis isn'twhat mean.Let mephrase question the ingenlightened"? you and like this: "Bothpsychoanalysis psychotherapy onlythrough act words.Yetthey in conflict. are How so?" --These days there is no psychotherapythat is not expected to be "psychoanalytically inspired."My intonationis to indicate the quotation marks the thingdeserves. The distinction maintained thereis it not based solelyon the factthat in the one you don't hit the mat . . . I mean the couch? This gives a running start to those analysts who have same quotation marks here-stayed in their "institutes"-for a "pass," who, because they don't want to know waiting anythingabout it- I mean the "pass"- compensate forit with formalities rank, an elegant way forthem to establishthemof selves- those who demonstratemore cunning in theirinstitutional relationsthan in theiranalytical practices. I will now show why this analytical practice is prevalent withinpsychotherapy. There are, insofaras the unconscious is implicated, two sides presentedby the structure,by language. The side of meaning, the side we would identify thatof as
Thereis no structure except through language.
12
OCTOBER
"There no sexual is " relation.
analysis, whichpours out a floodof meaning to floatthe sexual boat. that this meaning reduces to non-sense: the It is striking non-sense of the sexual relation, somethingthat love stories time, made obvious. Obvious to the point of have, throughout stridency;which gives a loftypicture of human thought. There is, moreover,meaning thatis taken forgood sense, as thateven assertsitself common sense. This is the high-point ofcomedy, except thatin comedy awareness ofthe nonrelation involved in gettingit off,gettingit offsexually, must be included. Thereby our dignityis recharged, even relieved. Good sense is the formsuggestiontakes, comedy, that of laughter. Setting aside their quasi-incompatibility,does this mean that theyare the whole story?That's the point at which in psychotherapy, any form,breaksdown, not thatit doesn'tdo some good, but it's a good that's a returnto what's worse. Whence the unconscious, namely the insistencethrough which desire manifestsitself,in other words the repetitionof the demand workingthroughit- isn'tthatwhat Freud says of it at the very moment he discovers it? whence the unconscious, if it is true that the structure as producing, as I say, language out of lalanguerecognized does indeed order it, reminds us that to the side of meaning that fascinatesus in speech-in exchange for which being-this being whose thoughtis imagined by Parmenides- acts as speech's screenreminds us, I conclude, that to the side of meaning the study of language opposes the side of the sign. How is it thateven the symptom, thatwhichis so called or in analysis, failed to mark out a path in this matter?Such was the situation until Freud, whose docility before the hysteric was needed forhim to read dreams, slips, even jokes, as one deciphers a message in code. - Provethatthatis actually whatFreudsays,and all he says.
d - ($O
D)
Television
13
- Let one simplygo to Freud's textsgrouped under those three headings-their titlesare now trivial- and one will see that it is about nothingotherthan a decipheringof pure signifyingdi-mention[dit-mension]. Namely that one of these phenomena is naively articulated: articulatedmeans verbalized, naively means according to vulgar logic, lalanguesusage as it is commonly received. To see also that by making his way througha tissue of puns, metaphors, metonymies,Freud evokes a substance, a fluidicmythtitratedforwhat he calls libido. there rightbefore our But what he is really performing, very eyes glued to the text, is a translationwhich reveals that thatFreud impliesthroughthe termprimaryprothejouissance cess properlyconsistsin the logical straitsthroughwhich he so leads us. artfully All you have to do, as the wisdom of the Stoics had achieved so early on, is to distinguishthe signifier fromthe signified translate,as did Saussure, theirLatinized names), (to so as to witnessphenomena of equivalence appearing therein such a way thatone can understandhow, forFreud, theycould provide the figureof the machineryof an energetics. An effort thoughtis needed to found linguisticsout of of that. Out of its object, the signifier. There is no linguistwho isn'tattachedto theproject ofdetachingit, as such, and in particular, frommeaning. I've talked about a side ofthe sign in orderto markwithin it its association withthe signifier. But the signifier from differs the sign in that its inventoryis already a given of lalangue. To speak of a code doesn't work, preciselybecause it presupposes meaning. The signifyinginventory of lalanguesupplies only the cipher of meaning. According to context,each word takes on an enormous and disparate range of meaning, meaning whose heteroclitecondition is oftenattestedto by the dictionary. This is no less trueforwhole partsof organized sentences.
Freud's practice
Lalangue is the precondition of meaning.
14
OCTOBER
As in this sentence: les non-dupes with errent,4 which I've geared this year. myself No doubt theirgrammar is buttressedby writing,and it bears witness,forall that,to a real, to a real which remains, as we know, an enigma as long as in analysis the pseudo-sexual L'objet (a) springdoesn'tpop out: thatreal which,capable only oflyingto the partner,is marked as neurosis, perversion,or psychosis. "I do not love him [or her]," is sustained, Freud teaches withinthis series by reverberating us, against the real. In fact,it is because every signifier, fromthe phoneme to the sentence,can serve as a coded message (a "personal,"as the radio was wont to say during the war), that it emerges as obthatin the Is onesignifier enough ject and thatone discoversthatit is what determines tofoundthesignifier world- the world of the speaking being- One occurs [ily a de One? l'Un], that is to say, element occurs, the Greek arroix~ov. What Freud discoversin the unconscious- here I've only been able to inviteyou to take a look at his writingsto see if I different fromrealizing that speak truly is somethingutterly one can give a sexual meaning to everything broadly speaking one knows, forthe reason that knowinghas always been open to the famous metaphor(the side of meaningJung exploited). It is the real that permits the effective unknottingof what makes the symptomhold together,namely a knotof signifiers. Where here knottingand unknottingare not metaphors, but are really to be taken as those knots that in fact are built up material. throughdeveloping chains of the signifying For these chains are not of meaning but of enjoy-meant which you can writeas you wish, as is implied by [jouis-sens]5 the punning that constitutesthe law of the signifier. I thinkI have given to the specificrecourseofpsychoanal4. The titleLacan gave to his 1972-73 seminar--his XXIst--was "Les non-dupes du errent"(the non-dupes err), a homophonic play on lesnorns pkre (the names of the father), which was the titlehe had announced ten years earlier forwhat was to become in 1963, his last seminar at Sainte-Anne. A seminar of only one meeting, its transcript is published on pp. 81-95. 5. jouis-sens, homonym ofjouissance.
Television
15
ysisquite anotherdimensionthan thatofthe generalconfusion we're used to.
. ..
..... .:.
ME,:~
-_:l: :i:::i ::jI:;-:::............ ............
...............
::........... ..........::: ...........:::: ......... ... ... ....
.. or :::: ........ .
Television
17
III. - Thepsychologists, psychotherapists, all the the psychiatrists, the and whoareroughing rank file,those mental-health workers it'sthe it, their shoulders. onto all burdens theworld's whoaretaking the misery of meanwhile? And theanalyst, One thing is certain: to take the misery onto one's shoulders, as you put it, is to enter into the discourse that determinesit, even if only in protest. Merely to say this puts me in a position that some will locate as a condemnation of politics. That, so far as I'm concerned, I take to be out of the question for anyone. Anyway, the psycho-so-and-soes,of whatever sort they may be, busying themselves at your supposed burdening, oughtn't to be protesting,but collaborating. Whether they know it or not, that'swhat they'redoing. an It's ratherconvenient though I may be offering easy means of retaliation against myself--all too convenient, this idea of discourse, forreducingjudgment to its determinants. better I'm struck the way in whichtheyactuallyfind'nothing by to oppose me with; "intellectualism," theysay. This carries no when one wants to know who's right. weight, Even less, because in relatingthismiseryto the discourse of the capitalist, I denounce the latter. Only, here, I point out that in all seriousnessI cannot do
-
18
OCTOBER
this, because in denouncing it I reinforceit--by normalizing it, that is, improvingit. At this point I will interjecta remark. I do not base this idea of discourse on the ex-sistenceof the unconscious. It is the unconscious that I locate throughit- it ex-sistsonly througha Onlyanalytic discourse. discourse gives You understand this so clearly that you've annexed, to ex-sistence the to as unconscious, this project I've acknowledged as a vain one, a question conFreudian,. . . cerning the futureof psychoanalysis. The unconscious thereby ex-sistsall the more in thatsince it is witnessed clearly only in the discourse of the hysteric, else is just graftedonto it: yes, what's to be found everywhere as even, astonishing itmay seem, in the discourseoftheanalyst, where what is made of it is culture. was ... which By way of a parenthesishere: does the unconscious imply listened before, to but that it be listened to? To my mind, yes. But this surelydoes else. as something not implythat,withoutthe discourse throughwhichit ex-sists, one judges it as knowledge that does not think,or calculate, or judge--which doesn't prevent it frombeing at work (as in This knowledge dreams, forexample). Let's say that it is the ideal worker,the is at work of .. one Marx made the flower capitalisteconomy in thehope of him take over the discourse of the master; which, in efseeing fect,is what happened, althoughin an unexpectedform.There a w.ithout master. are surprisesin these mattersof discourse; that is, indeed, the S2 // S1. point of the unconscious. What I call the analyticdiscourse is the social bond determined by the practice of an analysis. It derives its value from its being placed amongst the most fundamentalof the bonds which remain viable forus. - Butyouyourself excluded are makes social fromthatwhich for bonds between aren't . . analysts, you - The Association--so-called International, although
Television
19
that is a bit of a fiction, having been forso long now limitedto a familybusiness- I stillknew it in the hands of Freud's direct and adopted descendants; ifI dared - but I warn you thathere hence partisan--I would say I am both judge and plaintiff, that at present it is a professional insurance plan against analytic discourse. The PIPAAD. Damned PIPAAD! They want to know nothing of the discourse that determines them. But they are not therebyexcluded from it; far as fromit, since theyfunction analysts,which means thatthere are people who analyze themselvesbymeansofthem. thisdiscourse, even ifsome of its effects So theysatisfy go them. On thewhole, theydon'tlack prudence; unrecognizedby and even ifit isn'tthe true kind, it mightbe the do-good kind. Besides, they are the ones at risk. So let's turn to the psychoanalystand not beat about the bush. Though what I am going to say is to be foundunder that bush just as well. Because thereis no betterway of placing him objectively than in relation to what was in the past called: being a saint. During his lifea saint doesn't command the respectthat a halo sometimes gets forhim. No one noticeshim as he followsBalthasar Gracian's Way of Life-- that of renouncing personal brilliance--something thatexplains whyAmelot de la Houssaye thoughthe was writing about the courtier. A saint's business, to put it clearly, is not caritas.Rather, he acts as trash[dichet]; business being trashitas dicharite]. Theobjet(a) his [ il So as to embody what the structureentails, namely allowing incarnate the subject, the subject of the unconscious, to take him as the cause of the subject's own desire. In fact it is throughthe abjection of this cause that the subject in question has a chance to be aware of his position, at least within the structure.For the saint, this is not amusing, but I imagine that fora fewears glued to thisTV it converges with many of the oddities of the acts of saints.
20
OCTOBER
of That it produces an effect jouissance- who doesn't "get" the meaning [sens]along with the pleasure [joui]? The saint alone stays mum; fat chance of gettinganythingout of him. That is really the most amazing thing in the whole business. Amazing forthose who approach it withoutillusions: the saint is the refuseofjouissance. Sometimes, however, he takes a break, which he's no more contentwiththan anyone else. He comes [jouit]. He's no longer working at that point. It's not as if the smart alecks fromit so as to pump themaren'tlyingin wait hoping to profit selves up again. But the saint doesn't give a damn about that, any more than he does about those who consider it to be his just deserts. Which is too sidesplitting. Because not givinga damn fordistributive justice eitheris where he most oftenstartedfrom. The saint doesn't really see himselfas righteous,which doesn'tmean thathe has no ethics.The onlyproblemforothers is that you can't see where it leads him. I beat my brain against the hope that some like these will didn'tmanage to make it. reappear. No doubt because I, myself, The more saints, the more laughter; that'smy principle, to wit, the way out of capitalistdiscourse- which will not constituteprogress, if it happens only forsome.
Television
21
IV.
- For thetwenty you havebeen forward yearsthat putting your like is phrase theunconscious structured a language6 whatis said in are is: to words, words, forms, "Those merely opposition you, in various that Andwhat youdo with do words. up get anything doesn't mixed with or or words?Whatofpsychic energy, affect, thedrives?" the - You are now imitating gestureswithwhichone puts on the appearance of an heir in the PIPAAD. Because, as you know, at least in the Paris PIPAAD, the only elementsof sustenance come frommy teaching. It filters throughfromeverywhere;it's a draft,which becomes a blizSo zard when it blows too strongly. you revivethe old gestures, and calling that a Conyou get warm by snuggling.together gress. Because I'm notjust thumbingmy nose today forthe fun of it, pulling out the PIPAAD storyto make people laugh at theTV. It's the way Freud purposelyconceivedofthe organization to which he bequeathed this analytic discourse. He knew followers thatit would be a hard test; the experienceofhis first had already been edifyingin that regard.
This phrase first 6. appeared in Lacan's Report to the Rome Congress of 1953, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis." See Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York, Norton, 1977, pp. 30-113.
22
OCTOBER
Let'stakethequestion natural of energy first.
The libidinalmyth
- Natural energy --that's another medicine ball used to that on that point as well one's got ideas. Energy--it's prove because in what they say, it you who added the tag natural, withoutsayingthatenergyis natural: somethingto be exgoes pended, insofaras a dam can storeit and make it useful. However, it's not because the dam looks picturesque in a landscape that energy is natural. That a "lifeforce"should constitutethat expenditureis a crude metaphor. Because energyis not a substance, which,for example, improvesor goes sour withage; it's a numerical conhas to findin his calculations, so as to be stantthat a physicist able to work. To work in accordance withwhat has been fostered, from Galileo to Newton, as a purely mechanical dynamics-with what formsthe core of that which is called, more or less corverifiable. rectly,a physics- somethingstrictly Without this constant,which is merelya combination of calculations . . . you have no more physics. It's generally business and thattheyadjust thoughtthatthat'sthe physicists' the equivalences between masses, fields,and impulses so thata number gets pulled out that complies with the principleof the conservation of energy. But still, such a principle has to be stated in order fora physicsto meet the requirementof verifiability; it is, as Galileo put it, a factexperimentally produced by a theory.Or, to put it better:the conditionthat the system be mathematicallyclosed prevails even over the assumption that it is physicallyisolated. That's notjust ofmy own devising. Each and everyphysicist knows clearly, that is to say, in a readily articulatedmanner, that energy is nothing other than the numerical value of [chiffre] a constant. Now, what Freud articulatesas primaryprocessin the unconscious- and this is me speaking here, but you can look it up and you'd see it--isn't something to be numerically ex-
Television
23
but I pressed [se chiffre], to be deciphered [se dichiffre].mean: No meansof an itself.In which case it doesn't result in energy, and establishing jouissance of energetics can't be registeredas such. jouissance The schemas of the second topography through which Freud trieshis hand at it, the celebrated chicken'segg, forexample, are on the order of a "pudendum" and would deserve analysis, ifone were to analyze the Father. Now, I hold thatit is out of the question to analyze the real Father; farbetterthe cloak of Noah when the Father is imaginary. So that I preferto ask myself what distinguishesscientific discourse from the hysteric'sdiscourse, in which it must be said thatFreud, in gathering her honey, was not out of thepicture. Because what he inventsis the workof the bee, who does not think,nor calculate, norjudge - namely,what I've already referred here; when, afterall, that mightnot be what von to Frisch thinksabout it. I conclude that scientific discourse and the hysteric's discourse have almost the same structure, which explains our error, induced by Freud himself,in hoping that one day there would be a thermodynamic able to provide- withinthe future of science- the unconscious with its posthumous explanation. We can say thatafterthree-quarters a century,thereis of not the slightesthint of such a promise's bearing fruit,and even thatthe very idea recedes of backing the primaryprocess up with the principle which, if pleasure were its only claim, would demonstratenothing,save thatwe cling to the soul like Being Well-spoken the say a tickto a dog's hide. Because what else is the famouslowering doesn't where Good is. of tensionwithwhichFreud linkspleasure, otherthantheethics of Aristotle? This cannot be the same hedonism as thatwhich the Epicureans used as theirinsignia. To be insultedand called swine forthis insignia, which now means only the psyche, theymust have had somethingquite precious to hide, more secret even than the Stoics had. However thatmay be, I've limitedmyself Nicomachus to and Eudemus, thatis to Aristotle,so as strongly distinguish to
a a I"5
$--w S,
24
OCTOBER
from it the ethics of psychoanalysis --a path I spent a whole year clearing. It's the same old thingwhen it comes to the storyof my supposed neglect of affect. I just want an answer on thispoint: does an affect have to do with the body? A discharge of adrenalin--is that body or not? It upsets its functions,true. But what is there in it that makes it come fromthe soul? What it discharges is thought. So you have to consider whether my idea that the unlike a language allows one to verify conscious is structured affectmore seriously than the idea thatit is a commotionfrom which a betterarrangementemerges. Because that'swhat they oppose me with. Does what I say about theunconscious go further than exaffect fall, adequate, into your lap? This adaequatio, to pecting being even more grotesque by coming on top of yet another one - really stacked- this time conjoining rei- of the thing-with affectus-the affect wherebyit will get repigeonholed. We had to make it into our centuryfor doctors to come up with that one.
No harmonyfor the in being theworld...
. . . if it speaks.
All I've done is rerelease what Freud statesin an articleof 1915 on repression,and in others that returnto this subject, namely that affectis displaced. How to appreciate this disFor thebody, placement, if not so the basis of the subject, which is presupis metonymythe posed by the factthatit has no bettermeans of occurringthan rule .. throughrepresentation? All that business I explain in referenceto his "gang"- to pinpoint it the way he did, since I'm forcedto recognize that I'm also dealing withthe same one. Except I've demonstrated, . . because the by turning his correspondence to withFliess (in theexpurgated ? subject thought edition of this of the only one we have) that the correspondence, is metaphorized. said representation, repressed,is nothingless than specifically the structure, and precisely insofar as it is linked to the
Television
25
Cf. postulateof the signifier. letter52: thispostulate is written there.7 oneselfup so To accuse me of neglectingaffect, as to puff as the one who stressesit--could you make the claim unless that I'd devoted one year, the last year of my you'd forgotten commitmentat Sainte-Anne, to dealing with anxiety?8 Some people know the constellationin which I placed it. as Flutter, blockage, distress, differentiated such and from that affectis not something I each other, prove sufficiently make lightof. It is true that it was forbiddento analysts in trainingin PIPAAD to listen to me at Sainte-Anne. the I don't regret it. Indeed, I affectedmy world so deeply thatyear, by foundinganxietyon the object to which it relates - far frombeing objectless (which is what psychologists have than its distinctionfromfear)stuckto, unable to go further foundingit, as I was saying, on the abject [abjet]that I have come to call my object petita9- so deeply that someone from my circle got dizzy to the point (a repressed dizziness) of almost dropping- in the formof such an object- me. on Reconsidering affect the basis of my sayingsleads one back in any case to the secure part of what has been said about it. The mere subsectioning of the passions of the soul, as Saint Thomas more accuratelynames these affects, subsecthe tioningsince Plato of these passions on the model of the body:
Now unexpurgated in J. M. Masson, ed., The Complete 7. Letters Sigmund Freud of to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, Cambridge, Harvard UniversityPress, 1985, p. 207, letterdated December 6, 1896. Sainte-Anne is the psychiatrichospital where Lacan gave his seminars until 8. the 1963 break (see note 4). The 1962-63 seminar (the Xth) was devoted to "Anxiety." 9. a: Objet petit the object small a. Since the lettera stands forthe initial letterof autre a (the small otheras opposed to the big one, the Other), objet has been anglicized by some translatorsas object o. Phonetic considerations, however, led us to retain the French: objet becoming abject;the privative functionof the prefixa; the homa's onymy with petittas, littlepile.
26
OCTOBER
or over-heart;doesn't head, heart, even, as he says ELrtOvioda, to this already testify the need to approach them via the body, a body which is, I say, affected only by the structure? I shall indicate fromwhichend one could projecta serious follow-up,understoodas serial, to what can be claimed by the unconscious in such an effect. For example, we qualify sadness as depression, because we give it soul for support, or the psychological tension of PierreJanet, the philosopher. But it isn'ta state of the soul, it is simplya moral failing,as Dante, and even Spinoza, said: a sin, which means a moral weakness, which is, ultimately,loThereis no ethic cated only in relation to thought, that is, in the duty to be beside thatof the to find one's way in dealing with the unconWell-spoken, . . Well-spoken, . with the structure. scious, And if ever this weakness, as reject of the unconscious, ends in psychosis, there followsthe returnto the real of that which is rejected, that is, language; it is the manic excitation throughwhich such a returnbecomes fatal. In contrast with sadness there is the Gay Science [gay which is a virtue. A virtue absolves no one from sfavoir],10 sin--which is, as everyoneknows, original. The virtue that I it, designate as the Gay Science exemplifies by showingclearly ofwhat it consists:not understanding, a divingat themeannot S . knowledge ing, but a flying no over it as low as possible withoutthe mean. besides thatof non-sense. ing's gumming up this virtue, thus enjoying [jouir] the deciphering,which implies thatin the end Gay Science cannot but meet in it the Fall, the returninto sin. Where in all thisis what makes forgood luck [bonheur]?" Strictlyspeaking everywhere.The subject is happy-go-lucky It [heureux]. is his very definitionsince he can owe nothingif In the"rendez-vous"not to luck, to fortune otherwords, and any piece of luck is in withthe(a), as somethingto maintain him, insofaras it repeats itself. .. good What is astonishing is not that he is happy without
10. Provengal troubadours used the expressiongai savoir[gay science] to designate their poetry. 11. For thishomophonic play on bonheur (happiness), see Lacan's VIIth Sbninaire: Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1986, p. 22, "Happiness,afterall, L'thique de la psychanalyse, that's also happen,an encounter."
Television
27
suspectingwhat reduces him to this state- his dependence on the structure--butthat he gets an idea of beatitude, an idea which is forceful enough forhim to feelhimselfexiled fromit. on this point we have the poet giving the game Happily, away: Dante, whom I've just cited, and others, apart from those sluts who use classicism to filltheirpiggy-banks. A gaze, that of Beatrice- that is to say, a threefold nothof a fluttering the eyelids and the exquisite trash that reing, sults from it- and there emerges that Other whom we can her identify only throughherjouissance: whom he, Dante, cannot satisfy, because fromher, he can have only thislook, only her thisobject, but ofwhom he tellsus thatGod fulfills utterly; it is preciselyby receivingthe assurance of that fromher own mouth that he arouses us. To which somethingin us replies: annoyance [ennui].A word fromwhich, by making the lettersdance as in the cinein matographuntiltheyresettle a line, I've composed theterm: which I designate the identification of "oneyance" [unien].By the Other with the One. I would say: the mysticalOne whose crude equivalent is given to us through its comical other-Aristophanes, to name him, struttinghis stuffin Plato's that he acSymposiumpresenting the beast-with-two-backs cuses Zeus, who is not responsible for it, of bisecting: it's rather wicked; I've already,said that this is not done. One doesn't involve the real Father in such unseemly behavior. Still, Freud also stumbles on this point: because his allegation with respect to Eros, insofar as he opposes it to Thanatos, as the principle of "life,"is that of unifying,as if, apart froma briefcoiteration,one had ever seen two bodies unite into one. befallsa body whose essence it is said is Affect, therefore, to dwell in language--I am borrowing plumage which sells betterthan my own'2 - affect, repeat, befallsit on account of I
12. The plumage is Heidegger's. See his "Letter on Humanism," Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Kress, New York, Harper & Row, 1977, p. 204, "Only fromthis dwelling 'has' he 'language' as the home that preserves the ecstatic forhis essence"; or, p. 239, "Language is at once the house of Being and the home of human beings."
. . .f it's woman's jouissance, . . .
theOther finds . . . ex-sistence,. .
. . . butnot substantial Oneness.
Because "nothing is in everything"the defiles the of sign fier, . . .
28
OCTOBER
is . theaffect . discord, . .
its not findingdwelling-room,at least not to its taste. This we call moroseness,or equally, moodiness. Is thisa sin, a grain of madness, or a true touch of the real? You see that with regard to affect theywould have done the PIPAAD, if that'sthe tune theywanted to play, to better, use my old fiddle. That would have got them fartherthan standing around gaping.
Your inclusion of the drives among the confusionof gesturesused in defenseagainst my discourse lets me offso easily as to preclude my feelinggrateful.For, as you well know- you who transcribedmy XIth seminar withan impeccable brush'3 - who else otherthan myselfmanaged to take the riskof even talkingabout it? For the first time, and particularlywith you, I feltI was listenedto by ears thatwere otherthan morose: namely, being the ears thatdidn'thear me Otherizing[Autrifiais] One, as even the person who had invitedme to teach at the Ecole, allowing me to be heard by you, hastened to think."4 Who, upon reading chapters6, 7, 8, 9, and 13, 14 of this Seminar XI, does not sense the advantage of not translating and thedrive Triebby instinct,of keeping close to this drive by calling it drift. drift,of dismantlingand then reassembling its oddity, sticking, all the while to Freud? If you followalong with me there,won't you feel the difference betweenenergy whichis a constant thatcan be marked each time in relationto the One, on the basis of which what is experimentalin science is constructed and theDrangor drive
13. Lacan's 1964 seminar, his XIth, The FourFundamental Concepts Psycho-Analyof to sis, which was also the first be given afterhis leaving Sainte-Anne, had been published by J.-A. Miller in early 1973, a few months before the Television interview. 14. "Ecole" is not to be confused with"my Ecole" (see pp. 96-105 below), which is the Ecole Freudienne. Here it refersto the Ecole Normale Superieure (also E. N. S. or, metonymically,"Rue d'Ulm") which, followingLacan's departure fromSainteAnne, housed his seminar (from then on institutionallysponsored by the Ecole difficulties withRobert Pratique des Hautes Etudes). At about the time of Television, Flaceliere, Director of the E. N. S., obliged Lacan to findyet another dwelling for his seminar, this time in the Law School buildings (see Lacan's letter to Le monde, pp. 114-115). In 1964, J.-A. Miller was a student at the Ecole Normale.
Television
29
of of the drive which,jouissance course, only derives its permanence fromthe rims- I went so faras to give themtheirmathematical form ofthe body? A permance thatconsistssolelyin the quadruple agency by whicheach drive is sustainedthrough coexistence with three others. It is only as power that four opens onto the disunion that must be warded off,for those to whom sex is not sufficient render partners. What I've just done here is not, of course, the mapping throughwhich I would distinguishneurosis, perversion,and psychosis. That I've done elsewhere, proceeding only according to the detours that the unconscious, in retracingits own steps, transforms into directroutes. Little Hans's phobia I showed as precisely that: the lane down which he took Freud and his fatherfora walk, but where, ever since, it's the analysts'turn to be frightened.
I Thereforecan'tsay what you arefor me.
-j?IB? L'fl~'ll~si~ Ij-,-:i-iil-~-ii-.::i-i-i-i.:i:i- I?i?~~ ~~::~.~;:F~,:I';~~i~-i-i::i-i:-:iii iii-i-i: i-i:~-_-~i-i ;~D':::--:::s::-j:_:::: :i:i::--i-::-:-'--i:i:_--:: -:: ~~--iicB:-iii-ai:i::: -i-i-:-----:--"i..R?i~ii "~~~??~d -::Iii i ~~M?a--..a;ii-_i- i :--. ~.~j-- i .,:-::---:dri--i~"-i :--1:::::i:--:( :::-i-::::-:::..::::i_::i::::::-i:::~:l:::_:: i----::::;:: :::-:--l:--:--.-:--i: ?~i:~l~l~i~:il:l;i:::-----::--:-:;:-::: -?-:-_;-i:i-i_-iiiaii:i ::::::::: :::::i:_:-::i:i:::-i:iiliil:~_-l----:-::i-? ii-i:ii.i .: ?illiri: i~:--i-.i ii--? -iiilili -~ i-iii ii-ii-?-ii:iii:iii-ii-i:--iii-:iiii::i:i-::...s -:,i.:::: ?-:----::--::iiiiiiiiliri_:i::--:-:ii?' -::?:::ii i?i'ii:~ ii-i: il'i::i-: i... ':~:-iiiiiiiiii ii::ii:i-_ :::i:i::i:l: ::::::::_ :-::: il-:~:iii~i::-?ir:-~:::r: ... --:::_::?_ii:-l:-:-: -:::::::-::I::j::::::
~::::::::-:j;-:m j?:g . ---:_-lr_ !I:-.
-~ii;::~:-i--:::-:i::i: :. iiiiiii 'i~ii:-ii~_ii-g-i ::i _....: ::-:::::::: .::-:-:: ii-':--~--_-:--i--i -:-. ~::_-~--:::---::::-; :: :::-: ::-:-:;:::::_::::-:?i-:::i-~::-ii-_r-:,: i::::::i--::--::-::::: -:-::::-:-:'-~ *.?.~ iii::-i:i:i?iiiiii-i :::--:. ..::a :::::: :.-
l?di~:d~;i
:::i-?'E~aF~~ -I::::::lii:~~:--~-~ i:- :. i -i:l-
g:~e~,~g~i
ii;iiiii~ i-iiiiiiiiiiiii-ii :.:i-iii;ii.~'i ,-i-ii::~-::li_ ~;.._-iii_ I:: ::i?~: iiiiii?i:i-:i----i-i~si:i:-::::-; aiiiii:i"'"'ili?'i:?-iiil.: .:.. :iiiii: i-ii;i:i i,i_ .:ii:iiiiiii_~i:iiiii . :-:..-:-'...-:
si-ii -i:i
:::::::::::?:::?::::-:::-: ?: i::-:_ -:: :::::::
; -:-:-. -,:::~;-::~:i -i::1;:-:a~i4:i~:i~--:~i??:::~::i_--~,:: iiogii&i2ii%:
Television
31
V. sex - There's rumor a if afoot.: wehavesuchbadsex,it'sbecause is and in the and family, place, ofthe first suppressed, that's fault, in the an and thesecond, society, especially capitalism.This requires of of answer. - That's a question- I've been told when chattingabout your questions- thatmightwell be understoodas being about your wanting to be able to answer it, yourself,eventually. That is: if you were asked it, by a voice ratherthan by an individual, a voice inconceivable except as arising fromthe TV, a voice thatdoesn't ex-sist,because it doesn't say anything,the voice nonetheless,in the name ofwhich I make thisanswer exsist, an answer that is interpretation. To put it bluntly, you knowthat I've got an answer to in everything, consideration of which you credit me [vousme with the question: you place your faithin the proverb pretez] that one lend only to the rich. And with good reason. Who doesn'tknow thatit'swiththe analyticdiscourse that I've made it big. That makes me a self-made man.'5There have been others,but not in our lifetime. Freud didn't say that repression comes fromsuppression: that(to paint a picture) castrationis due to what Daddy bran15. Englishin theoriginal.
S2
a------
32
OCTOBER
Primary repression
dished over his brat playingwithhis wee-wee: "We'll cut it off, no kidding, if you do it again." Naturallyenough, however,it occurredto him, to Freud, to startwith that forthe experiment as understood through of the termsofdefinition analyticdiscourse. Let's say thatas he he leaned more toward the idea that represprogressedthere, sion was primary.That, on the whole, is what tipped the scales toward the second topography. The greediness by which he not an effect civiliof characterizesthe superego is structural, but "discontent(symptom) in civilization." zation, So that'swhywe have to reexaminethe testcase, takingas a starting point the factthatit is repressionthatproduces suppression. Why couldn't the family,societyitself,be creations built from repression? They're nothing less. That, however, may be because the unconscious ex-sists,is motivatedby the that is, by language. Freud is so farfromexcluding structure, this solution that it's in order to come to some decision on it thathe worksso hard on the case of the Wolf Man, a man who ends up in ratherbad shape. Still it would seem that this failure, failureof the case, is relativelyunimportantwhen compared with his success: that of establishingthe real withinthe facts. If this real remains enigmatic, must we attributethis to To the analytic discourse, itselfan institution? get to the bottom of sexuality,we have no recourseotherthan the projectof science, sexologybeing stillonly a project in which, as Freud insists,he has everyconfidence.A confidencethathe admits is gratuitous,which says a lot about his ethics. Now thisanalyticdiscourse impliesa promise: to promote a novelty. And that, awesomely enough, into the field from which the unconscious is produced, since its finesses[impasses] -among other situations to be sure, but it is still the main one - come into play in the game of love. Not that everyone isn't alerted to this noveltythat is the talk of the town- but it doesn't rouse anybody, forthe reason that this novelty is transcendental: the word is to be taken
The latest love in
Television
33
for under the same sign that it constitutes the theoryof numbers, namely mathematically. It is not withoutreason, then, that it takes supportin the name of trans-ference. In order to rouse people around me, I articulate this with "the subject supposed to know." This contransference tains an explication,an unfoldingofwhat the name only dimly the pins down. Namely: that throughthe transference subject as to is attributed the knowledgethatgives him his consistency a subject of the unconscious, and it is that which is transferred S2 onto the analyst, namely, this knowledge inasmuch as it does not think,or calculate, orjudge, but carrieswithit nonetheless the work-effect. This new path is worthwhateverit's worth,but it's as if I were whistlingin the . . . no, worse: as if I were scaring them out of theirwits. SanctaPIPAADic simplicitas.'16 don't dare. They dare they not followwhere that leads. inside-out!I declaim, "No It's not as ifI don't turnmyself "thepass" in one authorizesthe analystbut himself."I institute my Ecole, namely the examination of what decides an analyno sand to asserthimselfas analyst- forcing one throughit. It hasn't been heard outside yet, I admit, but here inside we're busy with it, and as formy Ecole, I haven't had it that long. It is not that I'm hoping that outside of here the transferencewill cease being viewed as a return-to-sender. that touches That is the attributeof the patient, a singularity in thatit demands our prudence, in evaluating it, first, us only we even more than in handling it. In the former can adjust to but in the latterwho knows where we'd be going? it, What I do know is that the analytic discourse cannot be sustainedby one person only. It is my good fortune have fol- The transfinite to of discourse lowers. Thus the discourse has a chance.
16. Lacan's acronym is SAMCDA (Soci&te d'assurance mutuelle contre le discours analytique) which, in French, sounds close enough to sancta to prompt the "sancta simplicitas."
34
OCTOBER
No amount of excitement which it stirsup as well- can The liftaway the evidence of a curse on sex, which Freud evokes in of impossibility the Well-spoken his Discontents. sex, concerning . . . If I've talked of annoyance, of moroseness, in connection with the "divine"approach of love, how can one not recognize are that these two affects betrayed- throughspeech, and even in deed - in those young people dedicated to relationswithout thingbeing that the anarepression the most extraordinary whom they claim as their impetus stare back at them lysts tight-lipped. Even ifthe memoriesof familialsuppressionweren'ttrue, they would have to be invented, and that is certainlydone. That's what mythis, the attemptto give an epic formto what is operative throughthe structure. . it'sin the exudes the fictionsthat raThe sexual impasse [impasse] . structure,. . tionalize the withinwhich it originates. I don't say impossible theyare imagined; like Freud, I read in them the invitationto the real that underwritesthem. The familial order is nothing but the translationof the S . . themyth factthat the Father is not the progenitor, read and thatthe Mother of Oedipus. remains the contaminatorof woman for man's the offspring; remainder followsfromthat.
It's not that I value the craving for order we findin this expressed when he says, "Personally (sic) I loathe offspring, of anarchy." The definition order, as soon as thereis the least littlebit, is that you don't have to crave it, since thereit is: established. The factthat it already happened somewhereis our good fortune,a fortunegood fornothingmore than demonstrating thatthingsare going badly thereforlibertyeven in its sketchiest form. That's simply capitalism set straight.Back to zero, then, forthe issue of sex, since anyway capitalism, thatwas its startingpoint: gettingrid of sex. You've given in to leftism,but not, so far as I know, to
Television
35
That's because thelatterrelies solelyon analytic sexo-leftism.'7 such as it ex-sistsat the moment. It ex-sistsbadly, discourse, managing simply to redouble the curse on sex. In which it shows itselfto be in dread of this ethic that I located in being well-spoken. - Isn'tthat that just therecognition onemust expect nothing from sofar as learning tomake goes?So that, how love underpsychoanalysis are toward standably, hopes directed sexology. As I've just suggested, it is actually sexology that you can't expect anythingfrom. There is no way, on the basis of observing just what crosses our senses, namely perversion, that anythingnew in love will ever be constructed. God, however, has ex-sisted so well that paganism has peopled the world with him withoutanyone's being aware of what it was about. That's what we're coming back to. Thank God!, as we say, othertraditions allow us to believe thattherehave been more sensiblepeople, in Tao forexample. It is a pity that what was meaningfulforthem is withoutimpact forus, leaving our jouissancecold. There's nothing surprising in that, if the Way, as I've can be said, passes throughthe Sign. If some finesse[impasse] demonstratedalong the way-and I mean: asserted through this demonstration there lies a chance forus to be in touch with the real pure and simple--as that which prevents one fromsaying the whole truthabout it.
17. Four years afterthe May'68 studentriots,leftism was stillquite strongamong intellectuals. During his stay at the Rue d'Ulm, J.-A. Miller was one of the founders of the Cercle d'epistemologie de l'Ecole Normale Superieure. The cover of their bore Lenin's phrase "Marx's theoryis omnipotent journal, Les cahiers pour l'analyse, because it is true." Lacan commented on this sentence in "La science et la verite"(his opening seminar for 1965-66), which was published in the journal's firstissue.
Wisdom?
36
OCTOBER
Th-s-ayology
There will be no eros-th-s-ayism unde [di-eu-re l'amour]'8 til this score is settled,the complex termof which can only be utteredafterbeing twisted.
- Youdon't oppose tight-lipped, put it. Certainly theyoung, asyou onedayat Vincennes on not,since with,"What youfired them you, as "19 revolutionaries, to is a Master. You will haveone. Frankly, aspire the you are discouraging young. They got on my back, which was the fashion at the time. I had to take a stand. A stand whose truth was so clear that they've been my crowdinginto my seminarever since. Preferring cool, after to the crack of the whip. all,
-
- Fromanother what to direction, gives you theconfidenceprophAnd whythedevildoyou havetospeakofit? esytheriseofracism? - Because it doesn't strikeme as funnyand yet, it's true. With our jouissancegoing offthe track, only the Other is able to mark its position, but only insofaras we are separated fromthisOther. Whence certainfantasies unheard of before the meltingpot. Leaving this Other to his own mode ofjouissance,that would only be possible by not imposing our own on him, by not thinkingof him as underdeveloped. Given, too, the precariousness of our own mode, which from now on takes its bearings from the ideal of an overwhich is, in fact,no longer expressed coming [plus-de-jouir],20
18. An amalgam of "God" [Dieu] and "what's said" [dire].The marginal note "Th-sis ayology" a renderingof Lacan's "Dieu estdire." 19. See "Impromptu at Vincennes," pp. 116-127. Both "end-of-coming/enjoying" "excess-of- coming/enjoying." 20. and
Television
37
in any other way, how can one hope that the emptyformsof disguising our extortions humanhysterianism[humanitairerie] can continue to last? should end up exEven ifGod, thus newly strengthened, sisting,this bodes nothingbetterthan a returnof his baneful past.
:i:i~~:i:i:i-i:i~ :::::?:?::'::?_::-?:
~??-?i i'?:icciiiiiii:i~aiii :,-:':I:,i::::::::::::::r:j:::: Lii:~iiii:::

::,:::::::::::: ::,:j:::::;:::::::-: :::::::::::j.:~:~: :::i::e i-i-:,iiiz:iii:liili.~ :-::::::':ai :','~ta
I~a_-:-?lilii~ ~Di~Sia~iW~I~:B~iOi~'~ -::-iii::8:-::::::::::::~i~iii~~:i'~;k-~-i19:,:-~iii~iiiR-:-....---- ei.:-l~-:~ii;-~i-i-::-r-:i~:i-::::: :~-::_~-:~:-: -:::i-i-i--~:---: -::: ::-----::::-:-:-:i::_-::-i -li.~~~ ~~=~~~a i~---~-- i----:-i:~:ii -:'"..:.. ..-- i: ?:- I-~p-~~ ati':~r7?:;l~xi;zii~iis-i-_--:i-i-i : ::::-:::j: -iiiil--i--i: i:_::::::'i-'::-''::-?-----:. ~ :-i:~a:i-.:iii~-iiiia-_~:_::-- ~:;~ ::: -~i:::-i:i-i~ :ii.i:ixi-i-iiiiiii:i-::-::~l:_iii~-i:~ '::-: ..::iiil?i-iiiiiiii--;~~::_sii;--~~:~,-r:i:: :: i:-iii--.i-i-i:iii-i i;iiiliii:igi~iiiiiirii.i:i :-::::::_i:i:: i-: ' ---:i:l: -': ::::I i-i:i: ii :,:iii~-ii~: iii--i::iii -: ..--... i:::ii- :..: rii??-:e'-i"-iiii'ii:-:~i?i:-~-i:ii--::?--: ~i-,:::ii-~ ::: ::::: ::-ii-iii-iiiai :i-iciri;ii:iii--i:-:--:: ?i-i :-.. il:-:-"16 :''*"'"'. i -~~i~~~ ~~-bd _ii-i ~~ ii-i:iiii:iiiiiii;i ..iiiii`iiiiii ....... -::----:---~_iii-:--:.-: ii--i.?::iI-i~I~- :ii -i -I:lli?i.l :i-i!--iiiiii iii: ii-:-?-:i:i:.:::::::::: iii:--::i/iiiiiiiiii: --::_--? :ii:ii:_:::- -:: ::::-::-::::__-ii -:-. -i:l iii-i:i:i:_i::: i--i -?--l::iiiiiiiiii-:iiiii:li:ii--i:i--ii iiiili-i-iii-::::: i_~iiiiiiiiii -i-ii:i:iliiiii:i:i~i~i:i-i.i:i-isiii:,-l -:i:i'ii-iiiii-i ii--:iiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iii: -:-ii:::.i:i'i-i :-:::::::: i- : ::-:i-i:-:-li: :-:-:-:_:_:::: '~::-il:'i-i ::-:-::?::;:?:: i-i:i :?---i-:-:i-i:i?ii?-l ---?-- :_::::: -?-: ::ii~iiiii: ?ii:ii-i:iii:i::. ??i:; g?i.~:ii:ii:;ii--il_iilii iiiiiiii:i::::i.i:ii:iiiiiiiii ~~:ici~-i:-iii -ii::-?iiiiiiii:-i:~:. ?iii-i il:-i-l;:il:i-?--i:-;?:-i~-i:i-ii:i ::: i"'?":l ':::-:-' :: : '::-:-':;:; ....--~':'::::-:l~-~.-_::;i-i-:-:;I:??;i~---_i-i:ii iil: i-_--_---::ii ...:: ii - --: : ::: iii ii-i.~iii~ . : ,-: i,:iii:iiiiiiiiiii-iiii . i__: II) -:-- iii?iii-iliil::--:iii::ii:iiiiii:ii-ii:i-i:ii~ -:? : -.. .--:: ,,_i~-;~::ii~~:al-ii:ii--:li:il:-:i ::: i_-i-i.iiiiii-ii-ii:::i::-:-_:_-:-_:_-:: "'''iiii-,:i:::::_-:i.ii::?ii:i::::::gli -::-~ii:i:-:-:li - i-___::-: -:::-i_-iiiii ::::.: -_-i-i~iii0iiiii9 Bb~~l*i~-~ i-::-:-.: ::: :::::::::: :: ..... _:-:::1:::--:-:~-:ir: --: : :::-::::_::: ::,,,,c:::~:~ . :::- :-?: . -::__::-?i:::i ::-::?:~::--:: -:-i:--::::::-;:--::-:-1:::::::I ::. _~L-:i-::i:_,:,,:::_:::::-:: : _:-i~::::::-: ::-:::_--:-:-:;-:::j:::-: i:-i-?::ji:::::::::~:: :::::-:-:::::~ :.i:-:_-;:..---:-i~:::ji:::::h: -:::: -::i::;:i:: :::::_:::::-:-~_::::,,ie:j,,__~:::, ::::-::::-::::_:::::::: :::::l::-;::::l:i:: ::i:iii:i-i::;:i:i_::-:~-i~:---:::-:-~--:--::--::~:~;li-:-:::-:::: ::: --l~i~:~ _ ::::_:~::--;:: i~~~~~~~~~_:?P~-:.-;:e~:~ ~ i..- :~i~~~~~~------~:iiii-,ii~ii:--: : :i:;:--~i:: :- i-_::li~l : :-:; ::::I:'::::-:'-::::: : :':i:::ji?':--:-:2::: i:::::::-:-: ~:::::j:; .... i-iii :i'il:-;--?: ::: -::-iiii;:i :~: .:..-. ii: ii:iii~;liii---iiii:i :ii-:.::_-:_: . .iii-ii i::: -:-:::::-- ~-i-:~i-si_ii-iiiiii-:::: -?-i-i-~-i-_-:i?- :i: ::ii-idi: i:~ii:ilriiiiiii ::::-::_::-:: :::?:::::::i::::::-::-:::i-::'::j:::: ::~ -:: ii ::?-::::::::-::--:i:i-i:i iii~ i;iiii-l:i::_:i: ::'::-:-::::::: _ -I:iii-ii-iii--i ?:::-:::::-:?::::: ~_::~(I_~ ?:::-::-:::i--::_:_:--__iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ::::i-l-ii~i-i-i:i:l-i:i::::::::::::::::: iiii:::-::-.::::::::-?:i-::':- :.. --::lii-i~iii ~'-'?'''''-'' iiii--iiiliii~:ii::`::i-i:i-::-::i:i: :i:_i-iiP:i:i'i'i:i'iiii-i -: ici -::::::::::::-:::::i:::_:::il?:: ::::::--i:i::~ii-iiaciii-i-i~i:i:-i:iii:_:i: ; - -::-:i:::::::i:: _::::::a:; :~:~-i~:~:? ~Ri -::: I ???:::?:::? :::: ::j:.?:::;::j::::::i::::: ?:.:j: -"I-- ill-;i i: ?:--ii-ii- jijiii~ -i --I .:: ::i-lllii:i :i-i::i ::::-i--:--i-i:-.. i:ii -:?::il i .:. ---i:iiiiiiiiii:i-: -i:i::--?:--:iiiii--i i-iiii iii-:.::iiii :.i---? ::-::' -:-_ ?::::::-i-ii-i-i-ii:-l-i::il:::-:::iiiiiiiiiiiii :e:::::iis:iil.?~i?:-::l --i:ii:::: ii-:-I-- -:-:I-:, : :: :::.:::: :-i'i;-~-~_i~i --:::':?i-iiiiiiiiii:-i:i,?:i:ii?i~i: .:: :?iiii:-- ::: -:::-:-:? ::::: --::-;:::-:-: -_~i-:ai-~::--::i-i~;:_::-si-'ai;_:i:ic::i~:-:::-:.:.. i i;??:F ~i:i*_-i-i?i- iiii:' i -iii _--j_:,- -_::ii:ii-ii:i-u--:--- -::i -i-::iiil-::-- :-__-~ ii:i-i::li?iii :-~i-_~?-:5~_:--~--~-~ i: :,~i-i-:ai-i i:--:--~l ~:ii ~-i:iiiii_~,_, ~i~iii--~i-:-~iii ::-:iii~~~iii j::--::::: ::-i:i:-iij:----;--::: :::::::::::::'-`: ::::::i::::::::::? :::: i:::-:?:-:-:::-?::::: ''~i~:i-ii:-iii'~i-:::-:-:--::-:::.: ::,::::?::::::-:::
Television
39
VI. - Three summarize Kant (see theCanonofthe First for questions interest ourreason": "What can I know? what calls"the he of Critique) A What ought I to do? What may I hope for?" formula as which, arenotunaware, derived is medieval from exegesis, youyourself specificitesit in order criticize de to it. fromAgostino Dacie. Luther cally I to or Here'sthe task am setting reply thisinyourownturn, finda you: it wayofputting differently.
- The phrase "those who understand me" should, for those ears concernedby it, take on anotherring,fromthe very factthat your questions are echoing there,a tone so different, that the extent to which my discourse doesn't reply to them may become clear. And even if I were the only one on which theyhave such an effect, even then this effect would stillbe an objective one, since I am the one whom they make into an object, by being what is dropped out of this discourse, to the point of understanding that it excludes such questions. All of this gives me the gain (forme, a quite secondarygain: "it is true") of understandingwhat racks my brain every time I am in the midstof thisdiscourse: why it gathersa crowd, which in my eyes is out of all proportionto it. For the crowd, the benefitis one of no longer hearing them. There's enough here in your Kantian flotillato temptme
40
OCTOBER
to embark, in order that my discourse expose itselfto the test of another structure. - Well,whatcan I know? - My discourse doesn't allow the question of what one is to know, since it begins by presupposing this as the sub"I already able know it,". . . ject of the unconscious. Obviously I am not unaware of the shock that Newton delivered to the discourses of his time, and I know that Kant followfromthat. He almost pushes thingsto and his cogitatory the limit,a limitthatis a precursorof analysis,when he uses it to deal with Swedenborg. However, in giving Newton a try, he fallsback into the old rutsof philosophy,seeing Newton as only another exemplum of philosophy's stalemate. But had on Kant startedwithNewton'scommentary the Book ofDaniel we're still not certain that he would have found the source of the unconscious there. It was a matterofhaving the rightstuff. Well, after all, I'll spill my gut about the analytic disof course's response to the incongruity the question: what can I know? Reply: ... because "a-priori" nothing in any case that doesn't have the structureof is the . language,. . language; whence it followsthat the distance I can go within this limit is a matterof logic. This is expressed throughthe factthatscientific discourse was able to bring about the moon landing, where thoughtbecomes witness to a performanceof the real, and with mathematics using no apparatus otherthan a formof language. It's thisthatNewton'scontemporaries couldn'tswallow. They asked how each mass knew the distance ofthe others.To which Newton replied, "God, he knows it"- and does what's necessary. But note that once political discourse entersthe picture, you have the advent of the real, thatis, the moon landing, and
Television
41
withoutthe philosopher(forthe newspaper makes everyman a philosopher)caringabout it, exceptperhaps in some vague way. What's at stake now is what we can escape with the help what in language is not a number of the real-of-the-structure: but a sign to decipher [dichiffrer]. [chiffre], My reply,then, only repeats Kant, except fortwo points: the factsof the unconscious have been discovered since then, and even beforethat,a logic had been developed through math- it would almost seem - by "the return" of ematics, instigated these facts. It happens, in fact,despite theirwell-knowntitles, no critique in his worksdevelops a judgment of classical logic. . . . butnotthelogic classes. He therebymerelyreveals himselfas the playthingof his un- of conscious, which does not think and thereforecan neither judge nor calculate in the work that it blindlyproduces. The subject of the unconscious, on the contrary,gears into the body. Must I repeat that it is only in relationto a discourse thatsuch a subject can be trulylocated, namely in relano concretizesit ... and how There's discourse tion to somethingwhose artificiality thatis not much so! make-believe. What can be said with all that as its premise, with the premise of knowledge ex-sisting- according to us - in the unconscious (but one such thatonly a discourse can articulateit), what real can be said, ifits realness has to come to us through thisdiscourse?That is how your question gets translatedin my context,which is to say that it seems crazy. That, nonetheless, is how we must have the courage to the exput it ifwe want to suggesthow, in following instituted therecould arise some propositions stillto be demperiment, onstrated- able to sustain it. Let's go. Can one say, forexample, that, if Man [L'homme] wants Woman [La femme],21he cannot reach her without finding
n'existe says Lacan. Earlier translationschose to retain the French 21. Lafemme pas, article and to render his formula, "The Woman does not exist." But since Lacan does not comment specificallyon this article, there was no need to keep in English such a non-English way of expressing a category.
42
OCTOBER
himselfrun aground on the fieldof perversion?That is what is precipitatedas a formulathroughthe experimentinstituted by psychoanalyticdiscourse. If it's verified,can it be taught to since it's on the basis of The matheme everyone,that is to say, is it scientific, this postulate that science developed? I say thatit is and all the more so since, like Renan's hope for "the future of science," it is of no consequence because doesn't ex-sist.But the factthatshe doesn't Woman [Lafemme] T-4 fwoman ex-sist doesn't stop me from making her the object of one's desire. Quite the opposite, whence the consequences. In returnforwhich Man [L'homme], foolinghimself, in encounters a woman, with whom everything happens: namely thatusual misfiring, whichthe successfulsexual act consists. of Its protagonists are capable of the most loftydeeds, as the theaterteaches us. The noble, the tragic, the comic, the farcical(to be plotted on a Gaussian curve), in brief,thefullrange ofwhat is produced in the scene throughwhich it is staged- the scene that severs love relations fromevery social bond --the full range, whichspeakthen,is realized- producingthe fantasiesthrough subsist in what theycall - who knows why?- "life." ing beings For their only notion of "life"comes by way of the animal world, where theirknowledge is pointless. As the poetic dramatists realized, the famous you-endis life, me-baby [tu-6moigne] our clearest evidence that their their'sas speaking beings, is not a dream, nothingbesides their "You are .. . " you-logizing [tu-ent]of these animals: Baby-I'd-kill-for-you if mrme];22 therewas ever a time to use lalangue- al[tu-d-i-toiamied'etre ways amenable to my mind to be my ene-me [m'est For afterall friendship, ratherAristotle's or OtXia (Ariswhom I esteem no less forpartingwithhim), is reallythe totle, into the conjugation of point where this spectacle of love shifts
The whole paragraph involves puns related to the destructivenature oflove as 22. narcissisticidentification, and expressed in the homonymyin French of tu [you] and tue[kill], generatingthe followingvariations: tues moi[you are me]; tuer kill]; i tu [to eti toi [we say tuto each other]. At the end of the paragraph the mie(enne) should be heard as mi-haine.
mie(enne) ].
Television
43
the verb to love,including all that it implies in the economic that term husbandry, is, the law of the dwelling. As we know, man is he who dwells and, if he knows not where, he dwells on it out of habit nonetheless. The tOos, as Aristotlesays, has no more in common with ethics than the conjugal tie has, despite the homonymythat he notes, unable though he is to sever the two. but With no idea of the pivotal object in all this (not O70os a withoutthe object petit (to name it) how could you esMOos), tablish the science of it? True, you will stillface the problem of calibratingthisobwith the matheme that Science--Physics, the sole science ject that ex-sistsas yet-has found in the use of number and demonstration.But how could a betterfitbe found forit than this object I've mentioned,ifit be the veryproductof thismatheme whose site is related to the structure,as long as the latterbe to the language [1'en-gage], language pawned [1'en-gage] the mute by the unconscious? To be convincing about that, do we have to go back to what's already set out in the Meno, namely that the particular has access to truth? It's by coordinatingthe paths traced by a discourse, that (although it may proceed merelyfromthe one to the one - that is, fromthe particular) somethingnew can be conceived, and is able to be transmitted incontestably thisdiscourse as is as by the numerical matheme. This requires only that somewhere the sexual relation cease not being written,that contingency established(so to be so as to make headway on thatwhich will laterbe comspeak), such a relationto be impossible, that pleted by demonstrating it is by instituting in the real. The possibilityof that's befalling us can be anticipated, for throughrecourseto the axiomatic: a logic of the contingent which we are prepared by that which the matheme- or the mathematician as determined by it- senses as necessary: to allow oneself a free-fall fromany recourse to evidence.
Love
44
OCTOBER
off We'll go on, then, starting fromthe Other, the radical Other, evoked by the nonrelationembodied by sex--for anyone who can perceive that One occurs, perhaps, only through the experience of the (a)sexed. For us the Other is as entitledas the One to generate a subject out of an axiom. Hence, here is what the experiment thatwomen cannot escape the kind of negation suggests: first, thatAristotlediscards forthe reason thatit would apply to the As universal; namely, they are the not-all, TrdivrES.. if by the universal from its negation, Aristotle didn't protecting de simplyrender it futile:the dictus omnietnulloguarantees no as he himselfdemonstrates,when attributing this ex-sistence, ex-sistenceto the particular,but without in the strongsense of the term- accounting forit, that is to say, giving a fullaccount: the unconscious. It followsthat a woman- since we cannot speak of more ax tx than one--a woman only encountersMan [L'homme] psyin chosis. Let's state the axiom, not thatMan [L'homme] doesn't exwhich is the case for Woman [La femme],but that a sist, woman forbidsHim forherself,not because He would be the Other, but because "thereis no Other of the Other," as I put it. Hence the universal of what women desire is sheer madness: all women are mad, theysay. That's preciselywhy they are not-all, that is to say not-at-all-mad-about-the-whole accommodatingrather:to the point where there [folles-du-tout]; is no limitto the concessions made by any woman fora man: of her body, her soul, her possessions. Powerless withrespectto her fantasieswhich are less easy forher to control. Rather, she is a partyto the perversionwhich is, I mainWhich leads her into the familiarmastain, Man's [L'homme]. (Ka) querade that is not just the lie of which some ingrates,themselvesclingingto therole ofMan [L'homme], accuse her. Rather, she prepares herselfon-the-off-chance, that her inner fanso ofMan [L'homme] findits hour of truth.That's not exwill tasy
Television
45
cessive, since truthis already woman insofaras it's not-all,unable, in any case, to be wholly-spoken. But that is why truthis more oftenthan not standoffish, demanding of love sexual pretenses that it can't fulfill, as misfiring--sure clockwork. Let's leave that as shaky as it is. But you can't apply M. Fenouillard's celebrated axiom to woman: once you've gone too far,there'sstillthe limit thismustbe keptin mind.23 Thus it follows that in love it is not the meaning that counts, but rather the sign, as in everythingelse. In fact, thereinlies the whole catastrophe. And you can't say, in translationthrough analytic discourse, love slips away as it does elsewhere. However, until it is shown that it is via this thingthat is by its very nature senseless that the real enters the world of "Thereis no sexual man - namely the various paths, science and politicsincluded, relation" thatMan [L'homme], even Man-the-moon-lander, broughtto is an impasse- untilthen,there'sstillsome room formanoeuver. Because there one must assume that the real forms a have to be proved, since one can never whole, whichwould first assume a subject except fora reasonable being. Hypotheses non means that only discourses ex-sist. Jingo - Whatmust do? I --I can only take up that question as anyone else would: by posing it to myself.And the replyis simple. It is what I am doing, derivingfrommy practicethe ethicof theWell-Spoken, which I've already stressed. Take a leaf out of thisbook ifyou thinkit could do well in other kinds of discourses.
Lacan is referring Lafamille Fenouillard, series of cartoon-style 23. to a books from the 1870s which, to the immense enjoyment of the very victims of its wit, held French middle-class familylife up to ridicule.
46
OCTOBER
Although I doubt it. Because an ethic is relativeto a discourse. Let's not keep going over this. The Kantian idea that a maxim be put to the test of the of universality its application is only the grimace by which the Ask "whatto do?" real manages to save its skin, by being approached only from only someone side. of one whose is desire fading It means merely thumbing your nose in reply to the nonrelationto the Other, when you take it literallyand go no further. In a word, it's a bachelor's ethic, that ethic embodied in our own time by Montherlant. May my friend Claude Levi-Strauss give structureto Montherlant'sexample in his speech of admission to theAcadto emy,24since fortunately, comply honorably with his post, the academician need only titillatethe truth. It appears that thanks to your kindness that's my position, too. - Your not this dig'sa goodone.But ifyou've deniedyourself exerthat titilcise- and it is, indeed, ofan academician it'sbecause you're latedbyit, too.And I'll proveit toyou, since to thethird you'llreply question. As to "what may I hope for?"I'm turningthis question back on you, whichis to say, thistimeI understandit as coming fromyou. What I make of it formyself,I've already told you. How could it concern me withoutits telling me what to hope for? Do you conceive of hope as withoutan object? You, then, like everyoneelse whom I would address with
Levi-Strauss succeeded to Montherlant's chair in the French Academy after 24. Montherlant's suicide; acceptance speeches are at the same time eulogies of the predecessors. Lacan refersto Montherlant's novel, Les cilibataires.
Television
47
this formalyou, it's to you that I reply,hope forwhateveryou want. I just want you to know that more than once I've seen hope - what theycall brightnew tomorrows drive people I've valued as much as I value you to kill themselves,period. And why not? Suicide is the only act that can succeed If about it, that'sbewithoutmisfiring. no one knows anything cause it stems fromthe will not to know. Montherlantagain, to whom, withoutClaude, I wouldn't have given a thought. So that Kant's question may have meaning, I'm going to it transform into: fromwheredo you hope? You'd thenwant to know what analyticdiscourse can promiseyou,since forme it's already all sewn up. Psychoanalysiswould allow you, of course, the hope ofrethe finingand clarifying unconscious of which you're the subBut everyoneknows thatI don't encourage anyone into it, ject. anyone whose desire is not resolute. Furthermore --and I am sorry to referto some ill-bred - I thinkthe analytic discourse should be withheldfrom you's the rabble: surelythat is what's behind Freud's so-called criterion of culture. Ethical criteriaare unfortunately more reno liable. They, in any case, may be judged by otherdiscourses, and if I dare to pronounce that analysis should be withheld fromthe rabble, it's because it rendersthem dumb - certainly an improvement,but withouthope, to go back to your term. Anyway, the analytic discourse excludes the you who's not already in transference, since it exposes thisrelationto the to know- which is a symptomatic manifestasubject supposed tion of the unconscious. For this I'd require as well the demonstrationof a giftof the same kind as is used to screenone's entryintomathematics, ifsuch a gift existed; it'sa fact,however,thatsince no matheme otherthan those I've formulatedseems to have been produced by this discourse, there'sstill no testingforthe gift.
Do you wantto know nothing the of fate the unconscious prepares you?
48
OCTOBER
No chance for it to ex-sistexcept throughgood luck, by which I mean that hope won't change anything,which makes it futile,namely, by not allowing that to happen.
Television
49
VII. see Now let's you,please,titillate truth the which Boileauveras can stated."Your sifies follows.:"Whatis well conceived be clearly etcetera. style,
-
Ten years is enough for --I'll reply to you tit-for-tat. I everything writeto become clear to everyone;I saw thathap- For he whoplays of with my thesis even though my style hadn't yet become withthecrystal pen language, . . . crystalline.So that is a factof experience. Nonetheless I won't put you offuntil leap year in July. I invert it to read: what is well-spoken, one conceives clearly--clearly means that it makes its way. There is somethingeven discouragingin thispromiseof success to a rigorous ethics, in its market success, at least. This brings home to us at what cost neurosis sustains itabout which Freud remindsus thatit's not evil, but good, self, that engenders guilt. You can't get your bearings here withoutat least suspect. . there's ing what castrationmeans. And this clarifiesthe gossip about alwaysa it that Boileau did nothingto suppress, "clearly"so as to fool ganderto bitehis 'gender" us, to encourage belief.25
Afterthe publication of Boileau's misogynistic 25. satire against women, an anecdote circulated about his presumed impotence caused by his having been bitten on the genitals by eithera gander or a turkey,when he was a child (making the theoretician of French classical poetry into a negative Leda). The efforts Dr. Gendron, of from Montpellier's facultyof medicine, were deployed in vain.
50
OCTOBER
clothedin its proverbialyellow-ochre: The slander [mddit] between the medi-ochre[midi"There's no degree of difference This I findhard to attribute the author to and the worst."26 ocre] with this word. of the verse that plays so wittily All that is easy, but to hear me restoringit in my flatfootedway to what is a betterfitwith what transpires:a joke that nobody noticed. Surely we know that the joke is a calculated slip, one which takes the trickfromthe unconscious? You can findthat in Freud on jokes. And ifthe unconscious does not think,nor calculate, etc., it makes it all the more thinkable. You will catch it by surprise, in rehearing, if you can, what I was modulating forfun in my example of what can be known. Better, still--relyingless on the good luck of lalangue than bidding it up into language . It even needed a littlepush for me to see it, and that's where the site of interpretation appears, in all its precision. withthe glove turnedinside-out,you when confronted If, assume that the hand knew what it was doing, are you not throwingthe gauntlet back to someone tolerable to La Fontaine and Racine? must be prompt in order to meet the The interpretation of the interloan [entrepret] terms - between that which perdures throughpure dross, and the hand that draws only fromDad to worse [De ce qui perdure deperte purea' ce qui neparieque du pereau pire].
The verse reads, "Dans l'artdangereux rimer d'dcrire,/ n'est 26. et de du II pointde degre " au no midiocre pire. [In the dangerous art of writingand rhyming/There's degree of difference between the mediocre and the worst.]

Lacan - Television

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Lacan - Television

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Television Author(s): Jacques Lacan, Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson Reviewed work(s): Source: October,

-e:_-a :j::i: ::: :::::::

"Theprecondition of theunconscious is language, "

- It'sstillafactthat comes you, the one to in psychoanalyst,order,

"There no sexual is " relation.

Lalangue is the precondition of meaning.

ysisquite anotherdimensionthan thatofthe generalconfusion we're used to.

-_:l: :i:::i ::jI:;-:::............ ............

Let'stakethequestion natural of energy first.

No harmonyfor the in being theworld...

. . .f it's woman's jouissance, . . .

theOther finds . . . ex-sistence,. .

. . . butnot substantial Oneness.

Because "nothing is in everything"the defiles the of sign fier, . . .

I Thereforecan'tsay what you arefor me.

~::::::::-:j;-:m j?:g . ---:_-lr_ !I:-.

:::i-?'E~aF -I::::::lii::--~-~ i:- :. i -i:l-

:::::::::::?:::?::::-:::-: ?: i::-:_ -:: :::::::

; -:-:-. -,:::~;-::~:i -i::1;:-:a~i4:i~:i~--:~i??:::~::i_--~,:: iiogii&i2ii%:

The latest love in

~??-?i i'?:icciiiiiii:i~aiii :,-:':I:,i::::::::::::::r:j:::: Lii:~iiii:::

You might also like