The Monologue of Laparole Alain Miller

THE MONOLOGUE OF L'APPAROLE
Author(s): Jacques-Alain Miller and M. Downing Roberts

Source: Qui Parle, Vol. 9, No. 2, Special Issue on Lacan (Spring/Summer 1996), pp. 160-182
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
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THE MONOLOGUE OF L'APPAROLE*
Jacques-Alain Miller
A small plan of the labyrinth.

The will-to-say.
Jouissance speaks.
Language, apparatus of jouissance.
Interpretation introduces the impossible.
Interpretation?
speech l'apparole
language lalangue
the letter lituraterre
I provided you last time with this small table of orientation, com
posed of six terms,' matched pairs, and divided up into two sets of
three. It is an apparatus, a small assemblage.
I can tell you where these six terms come from, for inasmuch
as you may not know this. I repeat it to myself.
The first set, vertical, is made of three terms borrowed from
titles by Lacan from the first part of his teaching. You know the "Func
tion and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis." Take
* Seventh lesson of The Flight of Meaning (1995-96). The Lacanian orientation, teach
ing delivered at the Department of Psychoanalysis of Paris VIII. [French] text estab
lished by Catherine Bonningue, and published with the agreeable authorization of J.-A.
Miller. [For details] one should consult the previous lesson published in Les feuillets du
Courtil, as well as two other lessons to appear in Quarto and Letterina Archives.
Qui Parle vol. 9, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1996
THE MONOLOGUE OF L'APPAROLE 161
'speech' and 'language' out. You are also familiar with "The Agency
Of The Letter." The first two are the key terms, the founders, of Lacan's
teaching, presented as a return to Freud, making these two terms
work over both the ouvre of Freud and the concept of analytic prac
tice.
Some years later, under the heading of the "Agency of the Let
ter," you know that Lacan began a reorientation which resulted in
evacuating intersubjectivity of its references, inscribing these laws
of language that metaphor and metonymy would be alongside the
laws of speech.
With these three terms we've got the essential coordinates which
condition both Lacan's teaching and much of what we've retained
of it. With regard to these three terms, I have written three others,
more dubious, neologisms of sorts, which fiddle with our vocabu
lary. I adopted these terms from the final or penultimate Lacan, the
Lacan who reorients his teaching in the '70s, giving it a noticeably
distinct turn, one all the more surprising if we refer it to his begin
nings.
They are: I'apparole- we are obliged to give an indication of
the way in which it is written, specifying it with "I" and an apostro
phe or with two "p"s in order to mark the difference, since it is pro
nounced in the same way as the term under consideration -lalangue,
all one word, and lituraterre, the only one of these three terms to
constitute by itself alone a title of one of Lacan's writings.
I note these points of reference to indicate that the new turn
Lacan gave to his teaching in its last phase touches on fundamental
coordinates. This new turn imposes a new discipline, to which we
need to be broken in, especially if we are trying to establish the new
regime of analytic interpretation conditioned by it.
Here I could add "interpretation?" - with a question mark.
What happens to interpretation when we meddle with these
original basic coordinates? We must follow Lacan, who was the only
one to advance in the direction he took.
We are about to catch something of his design, a design that is
not without detours, contradictions, which make it rather difficult to
weave Ariadne's thread in this labyrinth. This is a small plan of the
labyrinth still seen from afar.
162 JACQUES-ALAIN MILLER
Let's try to weigh - as I started to do last time - the gymnas

tics that passing from one of the terms on the left to one of the terms
on the right imposes on us.
Let's begin - why not? - with the term language. What is
language with respect to what traces itself as lalangue? - a term
whose possibilities I illustrated last time by a reference to Michel
Leiris.
Let's begin by saying, as we often do, some simple things. Lan
guage, as Lacan approaches it at the beginning of his teaching, is a
structure. What does that mean? An interdependent whole of differ
ential elements, with diacritic elements, relative to each other, so
that any variation in one element affects the others and brings about
attendant changes.
That will do for the moment. It holds together, it's tight, rigor
ous. It evidently doesn't have as its object the plasticity of lalangue.
We must say more. The way Lacan proposes it at the begin
ning of his teaching, structure is par excellence linguistic structure.
Lacan began by formulating that the unconscious was structured like
a language - which means at least three things.
Firstly, the unconscious is structure. It is not a matter of a con
stant, imperceptible flux, nor of a storehouse of heterogeneous things,
independent of each other, put together in a sort of sack. We discern
elements in it, and these elements make up a system.
Secondly, the unconscious is language. These discernible ele
ments are precisely those of language.
Thirdly, the unconscious is structured like a Saussurean lan
guage. We can distinguish within it signifier and signified.
We are formed by, broken in by, accustomed to this object
language, which, when we approach it as structure, implies a sus
pension, and even a methodical foreclosure of the temporal, or
diachronic, factor. The perspective taken on object-language is es
sentially that of synchrony, which presupposes, when it is referred to
history, that we make a cut, a synchronic cut. We are dealing with a
state that Saussure called language [/a langue].
This perspective is also essentially trans-individual -

synchronic and trans-individual. This definition of language implies
that it have an Other, that it be correlative to another concept, the
concept of speech [/a parole] which, itself, is essentially diachronic
and individual.
This concept is Saussurian, but while Lacan essentially takes
his reference to la langue from the ceuvre of Saussure, he dresses up
his reference to la parole, and even organizes it, orders it as Hegelian
speech - fundamentally intersubjective, hence always dialogical,
marked by the structure of dialogue - even when Lacan superim
poses on his Hegel his own version of Austin's speech-act.
As for the letter - I brought this up quickly last time - which
designates, at least in "The Agency of the Letter," the signifier in its
isolated structure, the letter introduces with respect to the function
of speech -that it thereby belittles -the function of writing, which
is completely at the center of this paper, "The Agency Of The Letter."
The structure in question conditions one phenomenon and only
one - perhaps this is saying a lot - an essential, initial phenom
enon and by virtue of that, determinative for whatever this phenom
enon can attract like a magnet. This essential phenomenon is the
phenomenon of meaning [sens] that Lacan's "Agency of the Letter"
sends back to being in the position of an effect.
This triad - speech, language, the letter - has as a primary
consequence that the essential phenomenon thus conditioned is put
back into place as an effect. On this account, structure, as Lacan
uses the term, is essentially the relation among signifiers, under the
two forms of combination and substitution, meaning [sens] appear
ing as the effect of this or that combination, or of this or that substi
tution, as a restrained effect [effet retenu] in metonymy, a positive
emergent effect, in metaphor.
Within these coordinates -which I mention briefly, but firmly,
in order to assure our grasp of them, before entering a more uncer
tain zone - interpretation doesn't pose a problem. Interpretation is
a matter of the signifier. The question is that of knowing which signi
fier must be added, brought, injected, by the interlocutor-analyst.
Which meaning-effect this gives rise to - that remains to be seen.
But the problematic of interpretation plays between this signifying

addition and the specific modality of an anticipated meaning-effect
which is variously described in Lacan's teaching.
Here is where we need to be a bit careful. Especially when it's
very simple, astutely perceived, appropriately placed, pleasantly ar
ranged and structured.
Structuring presumes discernment in placing the elements, set
ting some beside others, putting them into their proper relationships.
Here, we must ask ourselves if it suffices, if it is persuasive enough,
despite all the support that we can find for it in Lacan's teaching on
this subject, only to place meaning at the end of the chain, in the
position of effect, the way we find it in "The Agency of the Letter."
There are signifiers here which are combined or are substituted, and
then - I'm simplifying - a certain effect of meaning, which either
finds itself held in check or else finds itself emerging.
f(S ... S')S ~ S(-) s
f S ~S(+) s
Is this enough? Does it account for what the triad at the begin
ning implies?
Well, it is misleading to present things thus, to present mean
ing only as an effect, whereas, in necessity - a necessity that Lacan
doesn't misrecognize at all - meaning is initial as much as it is
terminal.
There are bound to be some people here who have thought
about what Lacan calls his graph of desire. We cannot fail to notice
what is clearly acknowledged in the construction of this graph which
organizes the elements determined by the first triad. This graph is
established as a schema of communication.
However complex, refined, varied, it may be, the structure of

this graph is no more than a variation on intersubjective communi
cation, a variation on the structure of dialogue. This structure is still
driven, at its point of departure - because there is a point of depar
ture, and only one, fundamental point - by what Lacan himself
calls the intention of signification. This machinery, this apparatus -
as Lacan himself will call it at the moment when he separates him
self off from it - won't function for even one second if this initial
intention of signification is missing.
What does that mean? It means that the energy of the begin
ning, necessary for the functioning and the animation of this graph,
is furnished by a wanting-to-say [vouloir-dire].2 From whatever angle
we take it, we cannot do without this wanting-to-say. And the phe
nomenology of the elementary analytic experience supports it.
It's not worth entering analytic experience if we don't want-to
say. We believe we want-to-say, and when we perceive, from within,
that we don't want to say, that we express ourselves as wanting-not
to-say, well, the analyst is there in order to point out that this want
ing-not-to-say is all the same a wanting-to-say. Try to convince yourself
of this.
Meaning [vouloir dire] has a certain materiality - it is not a
fiction - even a certain self-evidence. This evidence circulates in
Lacan's teaching. The wanting-to-say takes us back to the subject,
the complete subject, the barred subject, the split subject, the di
vided subject. The subject wants to say [veut dire]. And the subject,
complexified, multiplied, and canceled by Lacan, remains a will-to

say [volont6-de-dire].
Here I insist strongly. It is necessary to insist strongly in order to
transmit something in the mass of the commentaries, signifiers,
signifieds which cover all this up. I'm not treading lightly here. I'm
pacing off this ground laboriously. Later on, our steps will begin to
be more muddled, so I'll take advantage of this to lay out the ques
tion.
Doubtless, Lacan's barred subject is not the will to recogni
tion, as it is at the very beginning. As long as the essential point for
Lacan is the intersubjective relationship, the subject is will to recog
nition by the Other, and desire for recognition. All of which Lacan
questions, and finally disproves. But the subject remains a will-to
say to the Other, the Other with a big "0" - a point that changes
nothing - or will-to-say for the Other, toward the Other, and even
from the Other - and even if this big 0 Other such as Lacan comes
to define it is no longer, itself, defined as a subject. That doesn't
prevent the subject, who speaks, from being a will-to-say as a func
tion of this Other.
The heart of the function of speech is given by what I am call

ing today the will-to-say. Speech always carries with it a strategy
which envelops the Other, insofar as the partner of the subject, which
is always there, is this big 0 Other. It is on this support (which puts
in place both the subject and its wanting-to-say in speech, and the
Other, its partner), that, for example, demand and desire can be dis
tinguished.
But speech, when we begin from these premises, is always an
affair of question and answer. The interpretation of the analyst al
ways appears in this configuration as a reply. Lacan can say rightly
that this interpretative response, the interpretive response par excel
lence, is a question, it is the famous Che Vuoi? The "What do you
want?" would be the minimal interpretation, what an interpretation
always means, even when it assumes other expressions.
We can rightly say that the answer is a question, a question
about desire. The formula "What do you want?" is one of the formu
las particularly suggested in this graph, a formula which would give
the minimal text of the analytic interpretation as long as it were to

revolve around desire.
Here a principal, central path to the clinic suggests itself, which
consists of wondering about what the speech of the subject reduces
the other, its partner, to; or which figure of the Other the subject has
for its explicit, implicit partner in this dialogue. This is really a very
large part of analytic consideration, of the study that can be made of
clinical cases, even in the framework of case supervison, which passes
through these assessments. I am not there in order to say - it's not
working, it's all a put-on. I am there to indicate, on the contrary, how
it holds together, how it makes a system.
Speech, the speech of that first triad, is always taken in by such
a strategy of the Other, always decipherable as a strategy of meaning
[sens].
Let's take some examples. Begin thinking from this starting point.
What can we say about hysteric speech? Hysteric speech is the
speech of the analysand par excellence, insofar as it is that speech
which makes itself enigmatic, which offers itself to the Other as some
thing to be interpreted, which needs an analyst as partner. It is really
within the modern disaster and before the closing of all the recesses
where we could, all the same, find the analyst, the pre-analyst, the
proto-analyst, the para-analyst - as civilization had always offered
them down to modern times - it is in this great desert that it was
necessary to invent the analyst proper, in order to provide for this
task of interpretation offered by this speech. Hysteric speech brings
to light a wanting-to-say distinct from the said; it underlines the gap
between the saying and the said.
Let's go further in this direction. Hysteric speech is a speech
always dissatisfied with the said. In this speech, the subject feels in
the dissatisfaction, in the suffering, indeed in the guilt, the impossi
bility of speaking the truth about the truth, of speaking the whole
truth. The subject feels this impossibility according to various mo
dalities, ranging from the fatality of the lie to the pleasure of role
playing. Moreover, it is not at all incompatible, on the one hand, to
be sometimes overjoyed with the role-playing, and then sometimes
to collapse under the fatality of the lie it bears with it. This speech is
indeed the one which gives its place to the performer, and which
energizes and gives cause to this performer.
What could we say about obsessional speech in comparison
with hysteric speech, starting from these coordinates? It is rather a
speech which dries up interpretation, which silences the performer,
and which aims at a certain annulment of this subjective division,
and therefore at an adequation of wanting-to-say to what is said. We
might say, in forcing the line, by caricaturing it, that it is a speech
whose message is forever silent - there is nothing to be added to
this speech. In any case, the Other has nothing to add. Obsessional
speech is all the same a kind of gag on interpretation.
To continue with the gallery of great categories: what could we
say about psychotic speech? Here, it is speech itself which takes
charge of interpretation, at least on the paranoiac side, and which
claims to be the mistress of meaning, to the point, in schizophrenia,
of denouncing its social semblance down to its last entrenchments.
As for perverse speech - perhaps we will make a separate
place for it later - let's say that it makes fun of meaning [sens].
When pure, perverse speech deploys itself, it doesn't allow a lot of
room for analytic interpretation.
I'm drawing these little vignettes quickly in order to call to
mind the terrain that we can cover in the analytic experience; that is,
the extent of the account that we can give of this terrain, by consid
ering structure-language and its essential phenomenon, meaning,
even when this meaning is baptized as desire. The substance of our
analytic clinic moves around in these coordinates, of course with
some variations, some internal oppositions. It is this substance which
is displaced when we move from language to lalangue.
II
Lalangue, as I began to illustrate, to touch on, last time, doesn't

appear to be a structure. If structure is what I said at the beginning, I
can't manage to say, "Lalangue is a structure." Moreover, the word
that Lacan forges, in joining the article to the substantive, is rightly
made in order to indicate that, there, the elements that we believe to
be discernable in language, are not as discernable as we thought.

And Leiris dumps loads of such examples on us. In any case, lalangue
is very ambiguous. It is not without a relationship to the structure,
but we shrink from saying that lalangue is a structure. Especially
because lalangue is not an object carved wholly out of synchrony. It
includes a dimension which is irreducibly diachronic, since it is es
sentially alluvial. It is made of alluvia accumulated out of misunder
standings, from linguistic creations, and by each of us.
Lacan took great care to indicate that the expressions that we
use have a precise origin, that we don't always manage to deter
mine. When we read the Dictionnaire des Prdcieuses,3 we notice
that a certain number of their most fabulous inventions became part
of our most common means of expression. One day the Marquise
Untel said "The word escapes me" [Le mot me manque]. We found
it charming, marvelous - "That's just like her!" We've repeated it,
and today it is our way of speaking. This example that Lacan picks
up has its value, discreetly, of messing up just a bit object-language
in its synchrony. It is, after all, much funnier to take language with
contributions by the Marquise Untel and by the carter from Place
Maubert. It includes a diachronic dimension, and an "individual"
dimension, with "individual" in quotation marks. This concept that
Lacan forges thus reinserts each person's invention as a contribution
to the community which inhabits Ialangue.
The essential phenomenon of what Lacan called lalangue is
not meaning - it is necessary to get used to this idea - it is
jouissance. In this displacement, this substitution, it is a whole pan
orama which changes, not just a small modification that we make to
meaning, that we slip in here, while the rest doesn't budge. When
we meddle with it, the whole edifice collapses, or in any case, tot
ters.
Let's say it another way: the principle of the second triad isn't
wanting-to-say, it is wanting-to-enjoy [ vouloir-jouir] . I've also rigged
up a little something here, I say to myself: "The Marquis Lacan said:
'L'apparole'" that's marvelous. And I adopt this term, 1 pass it on.
The second triad translates the new status of the first, when it is drive
- to take up Count Freud's invention - and not signification that is
conceived as the principle, the motor of the speaking being, to say it

in so many words. An entire conceptual system is transformed here.
From this displacement, we can see better what was at stake in
this machine of the graph of desire. This machine was - we assured
this by other means last year - an attempt by Lacan to structure
drive on the model of intersubjective communication. It was a stu
pendous attempt, which consisted in making drive a form of mes
sage, a request [une demande] without subject.4 It is a paradoxical
message, but one which, all the same, makes drive into a kind of
message. The request is a kind of message, obviously, with an absent
or eclipsed subject, or a subject which is no longer present except
through its bar or its lack, but it is still a request. In addition, this
drive is endowed in the graph with a vocabulary all its own, a vo
cabulary that Lacan writes in parallel with the treasure of lalangue.
On one side, the treasure of /alangue, on the other, the treasure of
the drive. It is really to indicate that the drive is endowed with its
own vocabulary. All the same, there is a message which finds its way
from the other side and which is formulated in terms of drive, and
then over here a meaning-effect [effet de sens], extremely specific,
but an effect of special, paradoxical, limited meaning.
We notice therefore, from the position that I invite you to take

up, that Lacan began with communication, and that he structured,
modeled, the drive on speech. In fact, he comments at length on
this, on speech and drive.
To model the drive on speech was doubtless to make its place

for drive as wanting-to-enjoy, but always under the domination of
wanting-to-say. This is done with extreme subtlety, and not without
foundation.
Here's where I undress the princess. We'll see that it depends
on a simple, elementary principle. The princess is the graph. If we
were to take everything off, what will remain is the organization
itself, the skeleton of the princess. And, for that matter, if we pulled a
little too hard, like in the story by Alphonse Allais ...
Here we grasp what is at stake when l'apparole appears in
place of the concept of /a parole. L'apparole is not something that
Lacan said often, once, twice at the most. No matter. We must re
elaborate the concept of speech when we come to the extremities
that I have just described.
Speech - calm speech - always says both one and the other,
even if the other becomes the big 0 Other, it still presupposes ques
tion and response. It is always a relation, a dialogue.
Now, l'apparole is a monologue. This theme of monologue
haunts the Lacan of the '70s - the reminder that speech is above all
monologue. Here I'm proposing l'apparole as the concept which
responds to what comes to light in the Seminar Encore, when Lacan
asks in a rhetorical way "Is Lalangue primarily of use in dialogue?"
Nothing is less certain. I said that what responds to this remark, this
interrogation - which, advanced as minimally as that, is of a nature
to make the whole system collapse - is what makes a new concept
of speech necessary, insofar as lalangue is of no use in dialogue.
With the concept of l'apparole, the body of reference to com
munication collapses; or at least, at the level where it is a question of
l'apparole, there is no dialogue, there is no communication, there is
autism. There is no Other with a big "0." L'apparole isn't grounded
in a principle of wanting-to-say to the Other, or starting from the
Other.
In Encore, Lacan touches on the term blablabla. This term is
not in Le Robert, at least not in the edition that I have, but it is listed
in the Larousse Dictionary of Slang, which I recommend to you.
Blablabla - an expression really in current use - is glossed as empty
prattle and being uninteresting. As for its origin, obviously we don't

know too much about it, it seems to be derived from joking [b/aguer]
- a joke is by no means prattle that is without interest, it is what is
interesting in communication - or it might derive from "to blab" in
English, which means "to chatter" [Fr. jaser]. You would find this use
of it in Celine (as publishers aren't reissuing all of Celine's works,
given the significance of his blablabla which isn't always of the best
sort ... I don't have the volume in question, 1937). In any case, for
me blablabla is poured out by Le canard enchaind. I believe that
some years ago this magazine claimed paternity of this expression.
We would have to make a scholarly inquiry into blablabla, into its
etymology. If someone is either in possession of this etymology or
would want to make such an inquiry, it would be most welcome.
We also say - this is noted by the Dictionary of Slang - "blabla."
Moreover, Lacan willingly used the expression blabla - only two
times. It's more refined. With blablabla, there is certainly more than
bla bla bla, but we get the impression that the one who is speaking is
letting himself get all carried away by the subject matter and that he
is precisely, blablahing. Whereas blabla is the minimum.
I ask myself if we could liken blabla to l'apparole. Not exactly,
even if Lacan calls to mind, in Encore, what is satisfied by blablabla.
Blabla is a degraded form of speech, but it is in the register of speech
and not of l'apparole. It is finally empty speech, as Lacan baptized it,
speech where it is not the semantic content which prevails, which
carries the weight. This is why the dictionary says it is empty prattle.
It is not the semantic marrow which counts, but the blabla - I don't
know what you think of it - continues to assure the essential func
tions of speech, to the point that we ask ourselves if we can make
the distinction. Blabla spreads its wings over everything that is speech.
You are thinking rightly that I settle on this question when I lecture.
Blabla secures a communication function perfectly. It secures ex
ceedingly well what Jakobson calls the phatic function, the function
of maintaining contact with the other. The emptier blabla is, the more
it demonstrates the orientation toward the Other and gets its claws
into the Other. The less information it contains, the more speech is
phatic.
L'apparole doesn't have any phatic quality. This is why, just

now, I even called it autistic, in a somewhat hasty use of the term.
L'apparole is what speech becomes when it is dominated by drive
and when it assures not communication but jouissance. Which an
swers to the formula that Lacan gives in Encore - "There, where It
speaks, It enjoys." [La o' ga parle, ga jouit]. That means, in context,
It enjoys by speaking.
Thus, there is something to be situated which is satisfied with
this blabla, and which is satisfied on the level of the unconscious.
it enjoys
it speaks
In Encore, Lacan tried to advance a radical conjunction of the

'It speaks' and the 'It enjoys' [du ga parle et du ga jouit], that is to say,
a conjunction of the Lacanian Other and the Freudian or Groddeckian
It [ga].5 It is the conjunction of what, in the graph, is distinguished
here; that is, how the structure of the ga parle imposes its structure
on the ga jouit. It's really the marriage of the earthen pot and the iron
pot. The earthen pot of the Other is shattered by the iron pot of the It.
Lacan is thus necessarily led to reexamine the axiom of the
unconscious structured like a language, which belongs to the first
triad. Therefore, it worries Lacan immensely to have said the uncon
scious is structured like a language. We have witness of this concern
in the fact that he periodically returns to this point. I said the uncon
scious is structured like a language. He simplifies the question
"Lalangue, l'apparole, there where It speaks It enjoys, that's exactly
what I said in saying the unconscious is structured like a language."
I cite him, in the chapter on "The other satisfaction," where he con

veys and demonstrates this perfectly novel conjunction.
Let's provide the essential commentary - three commentar
ies.
Firstly, when he says it and repeats it, it is not true. The uncon
scious structured like a language was formulated on the contrary, as
he says - I've often mentioned this formula of the "Function and
Field of Speech and Language," which really is a point of reference
- in order to resolve techniques of decoding the unconscious and
the theory of the drives. It was done precisely to set drive, or instinct,
aside and to isolate properly the phenomena of meaning [sens]. So,
if he repeats this formula so often, in an affirmative manner, it is
precisely because it's not true.
Secondly, who can say to Lacan: That's not true? People who
don't like him. That's not the case with me. This is a reinterpretation
of the initial formula, a creative auto-reinterpretation. Indeed, Lacan
- there we only see fireworks - with an extraordinary art, manages
to demonstrate to you that it can just as easily mean what it didn't
mean in 1953. And it is worth the trouble of following the argument
in detail, because it is fed precisely by designs which are especially
delicate and interesting.
After all, it's easy to say, "I was wrong." All these questions are
not at the level of a mistake. It's easy to say "I am forgetting what I
said, I'm starting something else." It is, all the same, much more
difficult not to leave anything behind, to take it up again, to dress the
princess in new finery after having undressed her, and to show that
now, for example, she's a republican. That is what Lacan does, and,
on the way, it's much more interesting.
Thirdly, when he says "that's what I'm saying," it suffices to
add a temporal marker "That's what I'm saying now, when I say the
unconscious is structured like a language."
Lacan's interrogation goes to the point of putting in question
this "unconscious structured like a language," and, by these means,
he recasts the work. We notice that it doesn't go back in exactly, that
sometimes you have to force it a bit. In any case, this interrogation
signals that the very foundations are in question.
What he presents as the jouissance of speech, the Other satis

faction, the one which is supported by language - this jouissance
of speech is distinct from whatever the pure jouissance of the non
speaking body might be.
But the very expression of the jouissance of speech could slip
by without our seeing the value of giving it expression. Some ortho
dox analysts - as they call themselves - were ready to put this
jouissance into the register of the oral drive. This is not the proper
value that Lacan gives to this expression of the jouissance of speech.
We must give a radical value to this expression, i.e., that
jouissance speaks. Speech is animated by a wanting-to-enjoy. Not
only in the request [demande]. We could say that this appeal aims at
a need, a satisfaction, in truth a jouissance, and therefore this want
ing-to-enjoy is already present in the notion of demande, but a want
ing-to-enjoy which goes by way of and is dominated by a
wanting-to-say.
In order to put the formula of the jouissance of speech into its
proper place, we must inscribe it in relation to the formula of "I, the
truth, I speak" [Moi, la vdritd, je parle]. That's a formula which be
longs to the context of the first triad of terms. In the first triad - the
formations of the unconscious, the analysis by Freud of the first slip
of the tongue - this is what Lacan summarizes in saying "I, the
truth, I speak." The truth speaks, and it speaks "I."
When he evokes the jouissance of speech, it is the symmetri
cal and opposite formula of the former. The unconscious structured
like a language implies that the truth speaks, whereas, in the context
of lalangue and of I'apparole, it is jouissance who speaks.
Moreover, this formula leads to an inversion of the value of
empty and of full speech, as Lacan had introduced it at the begin
ning of his teaching. Empty speech is hollow speech, and full speech
is speech full of meaning - like Mary full of grace.
Perhaps we can, in this context, find very perplexing what I
put on a line above: "interpretation" with a question mark.
When it is a question of the context of speech, when it is the
truth that speaks, in the slip of the tongue, in the failed act, interpre
tation has a ready-made place. The goal of interpretation is to make
an effect of truth emerge, which no matter which way we modalise

it, contradicts the effect of prior meaning, of truth, which ensued
from what truth was saying in the patient's speech. But what can we
properly make of interpretation when it is a question of I'apparole?
when it is jouissance who speaks? To interpret the truth, certainly. To
interpret jouissance!
III
Where do the two "p"s in I'apparole come from? They come

- I indicated it last time - from the word "apparatus" [appareil].
Lacan already goes forward in this direction in Encore, when he
calls to mind the apparatuses of jouissance through which reality is
approached. Moreover, he essentially reduces this plural to language
as the apparatus of jouissance, though obviously we would just as
easily consider the phantasm as an apparatus of jouissance. Nor
mally, we don't consider that reality is reached through the contriv
ances of jouissance. We consider that reality is reached by the
apparatuses of perception, by the apparatuses of representation, by
the apparatuses of consciousness. Here, it is in relation to It [ca] that
Lacan formulates that by means of the apparatus of jouissance real
ity is arrived at. It is apprehended by everything which is of use to
enjoyment.
We could stop a moment with the word apparatus, instrument,
contraption. But there are other values to apparatus. The apparatus
is a final finish [appret], something ready for use. Le Robert says it is
what is at hand [sous la main]. That evokes Heidegger's present-at
hand, which is the utensil, what is in proximity.6 The apparatus is
what has been arranged, laid out, prepared in advance.
This word "apparatus" - it pleases me a lot - one face leans
toward appearance [le semblant] and one face leans toward utility.
On one hand, the apparatus is the external display of finishes
or dressings; it is therefore related to everything that is beautiful ap
pearance, allure, the impression produced by the totality of what is
laid out there. Thus, there is always magnificence of pomp, of osten
tation in the apparatus.
It gets more tricky when we call to mind a simple apparatus.

For us, after Racine, the words of Nero describing the amorous pas
sion for Junia which overcomes him still ring in our ears. These two
verses are like the condensation of the enunciation of a phantasm
"Belle, sans ornement, dans le simple appareil/D'une beaute qu'on
vient d'arracher au sommeil."7 'Apparatus' is never better evoked
than in this verse where all pomp and ostentation is abandoned. To
the contrary, it is the very apparatus of surprise and of nudity. Here's
one of the faces of apparatus. Here we really have the phantasm as
an apparatus of jouissance.
On the other hand, there is its useful face, since an apparatus is
an assemblage, a fitting, an arrangement, which permits the accom
plishment of a function. This arrangement forms a totality; its ele
ments are combined in order to serve.
So, there is the side of appearance, with all its nuances, and
then there is the side that is utilitarian, functional.
An apparatus is whatever serves to do something, and is not
simple. It is not a tool. A certain complexity is necessary to form the
apparatus.
I am ready to give - I'm not hesitating - all its value to this
notation of Lacan's, "Language: apparatus of jouissance." I would
even be ready to construct the concept of apparatus as a concept
opposed to that of structure.
Language is a structure, but in defining language as "apparatus
of jouissance," perhaps we are going towards replacing (at the suit
able level) the concept of structure with the concept of apparatus.
Apparatus is an assemblage, but an assemblage which can be
more heterogeneous than structure, and above all which is power
fully finalized. A structure is deciphered, it is constructed, but it is
somewhat within the contemplative element. You have to add things
like the action of the structure for it to start to function. Whereas
apparatus is connected straightaway to a finality, here to a finality of
jouissance, which outclasses the so-called finality of "knowledge of
reality." Thus, I would like to consider that the concept of structure
belongs properly to the context defined by the first triad, and per
haps I would have its matching piece on the other side with appara
tus.
When Lacan uses the word I'apparole, he presents it as a mon

ster word, whose ambiguity he asks us to receive favorably. The ex
pression "monster word" cannot fail to recall that of Leiris, the one I
mentioned last time, about oral monsters which are born of lan
guage. Lacan uses "I'apparole" in a written work regarding the graph
of desire - as if by chance - of which he says - "L'apparole which
is made out of the Other is represented in the apparatus." The whole
question is to find out if I'apparole is really compatible with the
Other.
Thus, I was situating the place of interpretation in this new
context as a difficulty, where there is no place for dialogue, for
intersubjective communication, even modified by the introduction
of the big Other.
The problem is the "no dialogue," pas-de-dialogue, the PDD.
On that point, there is an indication from Lacan - I'm giving it
you - which could do for today. Calling to mind the PDD, the pas
de-dialogue, and seeing quite well that an absolute position on the
pas-de-dialogue does interpretation in, Lacan points out "The pas
de-dialogue has its limit in interpretation, through which the real is
secured."
As I said, here we are following Lacan into a zone which is not
very clearly marked out and where the circuits cross. I racked my
brains over this sentence, saying to myself that at a given moment,
this sentence could be of use to me as a compass in this quite tricky
zone, where we sometimes let ourselves be led with a bit of reti
cence once we notice that we are in the midst of absolutely taking
down the entire house that we've constructed.
It is interesting to tackle things like that. First, it's practical. If
there's no dialogue, there's no interpretation. If we want to make
room for interpretation, we have to push a bit on the pas-de-dia
logue. Don't take up all the room! Stated differently: we have to put
a limit on some part of the pas-de-dialogue, to not be confined to
saying that it's over, since in any event something like interpretation
is still going on.
There must be a limit to the autistic monologue of jouissance.
And I find it very illuminating to say, "Analytic interpretation estab
lishes the limit." Interpretation, on the contrary, has an infinite po

tentiality. We savor the infinity of interpretation; it's what feeds li
braries. As long as interpretation is interpretation of meaning, just
one more signifier will suffice, it doesn't matter which one - we
could choose it with discernment - in order to re-interpret after
wards.
You can feel it in Lacan's commentary. Open the dictionary at
random, and take a word . . . whole numbers. The whole number
and psychoanalysis: on that point we could write whole volumes.
Or, you could follow current events, which allow for perpetual re
interpretation. In other words, when interpretation has to do with
meaning, far from establishing a limit, interpretation creates the un
limited. Here, we are taking things completely to the opposite slope.
Not only does this line of argument position analytic interpretation
as finite, but it says interpretation "finitizes." Analytic interpretation
makes finite.
What I also like in the idea that analytic interpretation estab
lishes limits, is that it situates interpretation as an ending rather than
as a renewal, that is to say, the opposite of what a practice of inter
pretation might be. There is also in this sentence the notion that it is
not meaning that is secured by interpretation, as it would normally
be in the context of the first triad. It is instead the Real that is secured
by interpretation.
What can we do with this notion? In what is the Real secured
by interpretation? This notion leads us toward thinking that, in speech
as PDD, as pas-de-dialogue, in the monologue of I'apparole, there is
no Real, or in any case, on this level, the Real is not secured.
What can this really mean? What is Lacan aiming at with such
things as these? At this point, we are not entirely sure that Lacan is
addressing himself to us. We try to make believe, we try to make it
seem as if he is addressing himself to us.
This monologue, if we start free associating - which we can
nonetheless do as a certain exercise of I'apparole, of saying anything
whatever - the entire thesis of Lacan, in Encore for example, shows
that saying anything always leads to the pleasure principle, to the
Lustprinzip. That is to say: "There, where It speaks, It enjoys." [L A ou
ga parle ga jouit.] It is the commentary of the It [gal. Especially be

cause we put prohibitions, inhibitions, prejudices, etc., in parenthe
ses once It really begins to run at this level, there is a satisfaction of
speech. That means everything is going swimmingly.
Which is why, when Lacan introduces the notion of the
jouissance of speech, he reflects on "saying," "everything works,"
etc. It's the same point of view as the one he sets forth in his Televi
sion when he says "The subject is happy." Whatever his misfortunes
may be, at the level of the unconscious he is always happy, that is to
say, drive always functions suitably, unlike desire.
What does this mean? - other than that, at this level, there is
no Impossible. At the level of drive, at the level where the subject is
happy, at the level where, there where It speaks, It enjoys, every
thing is dandy, everything succeeds. In this regime, we can't be as
sured any of Real-as-Impossible. At this level, there is reality as
apprehended by the apparatuses of jouissance, that is to say,
phantasmatic reality. There is phantasmatic "meaning" [signification],
there is even an anything-goes interpretation of l'apparole, but no
Real is assured. At the level where the subject is happy, the Real is
not secured.
This indicates what the place of analytic interpretation could
be, since it would intervene on the opposite slope of the pleasure
principle. We would need to formulate, along the lines of what Lacan
suggests - only suggests! he would have had the apparatus of the
thing, but we have to reconstitute it - that analytic interpretation
introduces the impossible.
In this driven, fatal success - even in the midst of misfortune,
it works, the subject is happy - at the level determined here, ana
lytic interpretation underscores the failure present in the success of
l'apparole. Lacan indicates this failure in Encore: that all this happi
ness doesn't allow us to assure the Real of the sexual relationship. I
won't develop this idea, I'm only indicating its place in this context.
There are consequences if we take things from this angle. If
analytic interpretation is that through which the Real is secured, then
it is of the order of formalization, if we acknowledge that only math
ematical formalization reaches a Real. This is what Lacan explores.
This exploration implies that, like formalization, analytic inter

pretation makes itself into the opposite of meaning. Lacan even evokes
what we could call mis-interpretation, non-sense [contre-sens].
Moreover, ambiguity is precisely taking things the other way.
If one wished - let's hope - to give analytic interpretation a
place back in the second triad, it would have to have the value of
formalizing l'apparole. This means that analytic interpretation, as
formalization, accepts, assumes, supports, a certain "It doesn't mean
anything."
Interpretation is a somewhat special mode. All interpretation
consists in formulating "It means something else," while here, the
reduction to the "It means nothing" [ga ne veut rien dire] is the hori
zon.8 We could even say that, in analytic interpretation, the extrac
tion of "It wants to enjoy" [ga veutjouir] passes through an "It doesn't
mean anything" [ga ne veut rien dire], and that the unconscious, to
the contrary - this is why we can misrecognize it in this status -
masks this "It wants to enjoy" by the "It wants to say." And therefore,
in order to recover the "It wants to enjoy", we must go through the
"It wants to say nothing."
That implies still something else, which is not untimely, if it
can be constructed. Following the example of formalization, inter
pretation in the second triad is rather on the side of writing than of
speech. In any case, it must be constructed by vying with the written
work, insofar as formalization presupposes the written work.
I am about at the end today. I will continue next week.
31 January 1996
Translated by M. Downing Roberts
[Translator's Note: I would like to thank Juliet Flower MacCannell for her very gener
ous and invaluable help with the translation of this paper.]
1 [TN. The neologisms ?'apparole, ?a?angue, and lituraterre are left untranslated
throughout this essay, following the convention used by Jacqueline Rose in her
translation of Lacan's Seminar XX: Encore. For more details about the term
?a?angue, see Rose's discussion in Feminine Sexuality, (New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 1985), 46n11. For Lacan's use of the term in Encore, see Le S?minaire
XX: Encore (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1975), 126.]
2 [TN. Here Miller hypenates vouloir-dire, and so I have chosen the somewhat
literal phrase "wanting-to-say" as an English rendering of vouloir-dire, which is
the usual French way of saying "to mean" e.g, "I mean the red one," would be:
Je veux dire le rouge. This choice also brings out the way in which Miller will
juxtapose vouloir-dire with volont?-de-dire and later, vouloir-jouir. Obviously,
Miller's use of vouloir-dire also carries the resonance of "meaning" and "to mean,"
but he often uses the word sens to convey "meaning" in a literal way; while the
"vouloir" o? "vouloir-dire" retains an element of desire, or wanting-to-say.]
3 [TN. See: Somaize, Le Dictionnaire des Pr?cieuses, (Paris: P. Jannet, 1856). See
also Jacques Lacan, Seminar I, Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954 (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), 286n.]
4 [TN. "request" is used here to render the Lacanian term of art demande, because
the point at issue revolves around a mapping of drive into the coordinate system
of intersubjective communication.]
5 [TN. See Jacques Lacan, Le S?minaire XX: Encore (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1975),
95-105.]
6 [TN. Although Miller says l'?tant-sous-la-main, the terms Heidegger uses in Be
ing and Time are vorhanden, or Vorhandenheit, which are rendered in the
Macquarrie-Robinson translation as "present-at-hand" and "presence-at-hand."]
7 [TN. From Racine's ritan ?cus (1670):
Act II, Scene II:
[...]
Narcisse: vous l'aimez?
N?ron: excit? d'un d?sir curieux,

Cette nuit je l'ai vue arriver en ces lieux,
Triste, levant au ciel ses yeux mouill?s de larmes,
Qui bri Noient au travers des flambeaux et des armes:
Belle, sans ornements, dans le simple appareil
D'une beaut? qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil.
Que veux-tu? Je ne sais si cette n?gligence,

Les ombres, les flambeaux, les cris et le silence,
Et le farouche aspect de ses fiers ravisseurs
Relevoient de ses yeux les timides douceurs.
(Racine, Oeuvres compl?tes (Paris: Pl?iade, 1950), 405.]

8 [TN. See note 2, above. ?a ne veut rien dire is the usual way of saying, "That
means nothing," or "That's nonsense."]

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THE MONOLOGUE OF L'APPAROLE

Author(s): Jacques-Alain Miller and M. Downing Roberts

A small plan of the labyrinth.

Qui Parle vol. 9, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1996

Let's try to weigh - as I started to do last time - the gymnas

This perspective is also essentially trans-individual -

But the problematic of interpretation plays between this signifying

f(S ... S')S ~ S(-) s

However complex, refined, varied, it may be, the structure of

complexified, multiplied, and canceled by Lacan, remains a will-to

The heart of the function of speech is given by what I am call

the minimal text of the analytic interpretation as long as it were to

Lalangue, as I began to illustrate, to touch on, last time, doesn't

be discernable in language, are not as discernable as we thought.

conceived as the principle, the motor of the speaking being, to say it

We notice therefore, from the position that I invite you to take

To model the drive on speech was doubtless to make its place

prattle and being uninteresting. As for its origin, obviously we don't

L'apparole doesn't have any phatic quality. This is why, just

In Encore, Lacan tried to advance a radical conjunction of the

I cite him, in the chapter on "The other satisfaction," where he con

What he presents as the jouissance of speech, the Other satis

an effect of truth emerge, which no matter which way we modalise

Where do the two "p"s in I'apparole come from? They come

It gets more tricky when we call to mind a simple apparatus.

When Lacan uses the word I'apparole, he presents it as a mon

lishes the limit." Interpretation, on the contrary, has an infinite po

ga parle ga jouit.] It is the commentary of the It [gal. Especially be

This exploration implies that, like formalization, analytic inter

Translated by M. Downing Roberts

N?ron: excit? d'un d?sir curieux,

Que veux-tu? Je ne sais si cette n?gligence,

(Racine, Oeuvres compl?tes (Paris: Pl?iade, 1950), 405.]

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