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LACANBERRA
Project
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Bulletin for psychoanalysis and social sciences
Volume I Issue 1
Autumn-Winter 2011
Lacanberra Project is a professional group in Canberra (ACT), dedicated to the study of Lacanian psychoanalysis and social sciences. Lacanberra Project is connected to the Lacan Circle
Consultant: Dr Russell Grieg, Associate Professor, Deakin University Melbourne/Geelong, Faculty of Arts and Education, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, President of the Lacan Circle Melbourne
Practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis: Dr David Westcombe, Curtin Consulting Rms, Canberra
Theory of Lacanian psychoanalysis and social fields: Dr Milan Balazic, Associate Professor, University of Ljubljana, Faculty for Social Sciences, Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia in Australia and New Zealand
EVENT
Monash Science Centre, Monash University , Melbourne
SLOVENIA CELEBRATES TWENTY YEARS
Dear ladies and gentleman,
Fellow Slovenians,
Esteemed Australians,
Distinguished guests,
In the last twenty years, from the day when on 23 December 1990, 88,2 % of the country voted in a plebiscite to make its own way in the world, Slovenia has travelled a long and successful path. Sometimes we simply cannot believe how quickly twenty years can pass. The first twenty go pretty quickly. What, then, could one say about a country? Is twenty the age at which it, too, is no longer a teenager?
On a warm evening on 25 June 1991 an entire nation was on their feet – including me, at that time member of the first democratic Slovenian parliament. The day started not with a pomp and a marching band, but with a convention room full of politicians and press. We unanimously declared and signed the Fundamental charter of independence, breaking al ties with Belgrade and Yugoslavia Slovenia as a sovereign nation and a declaration of independence has been sent to Belgrade Slovenia Europe . We liberated our part of Europe . We broke away in two key ways: with Communist totalitarianism and with Yugoslavia
Although Slovenia Slovenia Slovenia
We needed wisdom and courage for independence. We had both. We lived in heroic times and faced serious threat with violence. We had to take up arms in self defence – in defence of human rights and our nation’s wilsonian self-determination. Twenty years ago, in circumstances of great peril, we understood and accepted the necessity for change and this ultimately directed us towards our great common objective – our independence. Today, Slovenia
Who would have dared, twenty years ago, to say that we would, even before the twentieth anniversary of independence, be part of the European and global community? Slovenia Slovenia Australia – now know where Slovenia Slovenia Slovenia says: Slovenia
People believed that they could travel that path. Of course, this would not have happened without the support and leadership of politicians, intellectuals, cultural figures, thinkers, businesspeople and many other – last but not least: our Australian Slovenians and their substantial help to the motherland in the decisive days of thunder. Some historic fragments of that are included in the book “From Dreams to Reality”, represented today in Melbourne
Dear gathered,
Today, twenty years later, we are justly proud of our many achievements during our first two decades. Our country celebrates its first twenty years as a successful state for all its citizens, as a state, which has achieved much in all areas, and as a state which is well respected by international community. In times of crisis we should not underestimate the achievements of the past twenty years. During this time, Slovenia Slovenia
The twentieth anniversary of our country – of Slovenia , Slovenians, Australian Slovenians and all our friends in Australia
Let me, together with you, extend my best wishes to both countries – Slovenia and Australia Australia and Slovenia
LECTURE
THE SOCIAL SYMPTOM
In his renowned work on 'devil neurosis' (1923), Freud names not only God but also devil as a substitute for father. The original identity of both entities was later parsed into two images with opposing features: "It is a well known process of parsing an image that comprises contradicting – ambivalent - content into two highly contrasted poles. However, contradictions regarding the original nature of God are a reflection of ambivalence which controls one's attitude toward his own father. If the good and just God is a substitute for father, it comes as no surprise that the creation of Satan conveys its opposing orientation, the one which is hated, feared and complained about. Hence, father was an individual archetype both for God and the devil"[1]. The quoted Freud's example was used by Lacan as a starting point to underline the importance of the polymorphic attitude toward father and the root of the Oedipus myth in the 'devil neurosis'. With the end of the 17th century, the Name–of-the-Father started to disappear, but not the attitude. Father evaporated but the bits left behind multiplied like wounds in everything that falls under the category of segregation.
If anything, the 20th century proved, and the 21st seem even worse, that the belief in universalism, in communication within civilisation with the view of homogenisation of human relations has failed. Quite the opposite has emerged: segregation in the form of hatred toward the Other has become even more diversified, strengthened and renewed on all levels. Hatred on its rampage multiplies barriers generating sterile relations to the extent where nothing can happen in any field[2]. An event that cannot happen can take place only in the extimate relation to the existing – in a relation to the object when structures go to the street[3]. Here rises the position of what constitutes an act: the subject realises oneself in the knowledge of what he is within the structure – a loss[4].
The psychoanalytical knowledge and the act are not locked in the Pandora box but rather open and ready for transference whereby the following contextual fact must be taken into account: "No teaching says what psychoanalysis is. Elsewhere, they are only explicitly trying to enforce its conformity"[5]. Psychoanalysis itself is not immune to conformity required by some form of Aufhebung of Lacan's thought: as they are unable to think of transitions dialectically, they maintain that with time whole sections of Lacan's doctrine "have become incomprehensible or irrelevant if not inapplicable to this era in the sense of Nietzsche's unzeitgemässig"[6]. It is impossible to address psychoanalysis and not remember "that at the beginning of psychoanalysis there is psychoanalyst Fleiss, a quack, a nose tickler, a man who discovers the male and the female principle in numbers 21 and 28, in short, the kind of knowledge that psychoanalyst scientist Freud refutes, as lips of souls enthusiastic about ecumenism say, with full force of the oath that ties him to the Helmholz's program and his disciples"[7].
There are two types of ecumenism that threaten psychoanalysis: the first type refuses to recognise its scientific status yet it is willing to give it some of its own room as an anti-oedipal ideology of the existing globalised urbanised family and society in a civilisation driven by science; the second type – e-communism – is quite happy to recognise its status of a scientific field as opposed to its more sceptical ancestors, bur requires that it is included in the totality of the Event motivated by the fantasy of the new red tide. Both situations are realistic enough to be shyly promoted through hardly utterable expression of 'concentration camp'. Creative minds behind e-communism who continue to wander between humanism and terror did not pay enough attention to this – matched by thinkers of the capitalist ecumenism who are now appalled by the developments resulting from the restructuring of society by science. The reality of universalisation in the process of globalisation has more than confirmed the prophecy of the saint crying out in the desert: "Our future of common markets will be balanced by the ever more unfriendly dimension of the process of segregation."[8].
In the political theory – on the other side of psychoanalysis and as a bypass around the trouble with the segregation theory, transcendence of fantasy through a plagiaristic accommodation of Lacan ('progressive') in the face of ('conservative') identification with the symptom has always been the preferred option, as it "signifies the subject's (symbolic) re-birth, his (re)creation ex nihilo, a leap through the 'point zero' of the death drive into an entirely new symbolic configuration of its being"[9]. Theorists of truth like to include in their gospel a motif of Freudian psychoanalysis - the patricide: the master must me destructed in order to create foundations for equality of sons. The fading of the master figure will on the other side give birth to a new correlate of universality: θεου συνεργοί (St. Paul
The new being denies the old one where, according to Marx, the worker was forced to trade the substance of his being as goods: the valuable core of his being, the treasure, had to be reduced to the object of trade. Once the ideal functionality is defined, centuries become orders in accordance with the horror of the real which is tied to the Lacan's invention only by its name: the 20th century will be the real of what in the 19th century was imaginary, or the real of what the 19th century was symbolic. The fascination by the Badiou's real is the continuation of a passion for the real of the 20th century: on one side, there is a construction of restoration which refuses to have anything to do with the real – with the exception of number in democracy, on the other, the terror of truth militants. This passion for the real wages a war with the semblant by using a new semblant[10].
Lacan highlights semblant against which he fights by using an example of a "small area in the South West Asia": the Vietnam War in the 60s of the previous century. What is the purpose of the play of semblant: people should be convinced that they are wrong in their refusal to acknowledge benefits of capitalism; moreover, their wish to be rejected by it. This necessity and perhaps even benefit from rejection has its parallel in a neurotic person: this is not a desire in the sense of the desire of the Other through which, for example, Eastern European countries sought to join the EU family. Rather, it is a desire not to yield to the demand of the Other: a political demand in the form of democracy and market. These two elements are perceived as values on which all welfare depends.
Here comes the advantage of rejecting the order of such benefits which remains incomprehensible and even monstrous. Freud said 'anatomy is destiny' but in fact he discovered something much more relevant for us: "I will not say that 'politics is unconscious' – but, very simply, the unconscious is politics!"[11] The symptom establishes the order from which politics takes shape: it proves that any articulation of this order is open to interpretation: "Hence, we are quite right to position psychoanalysis under the conduct of politics. And here the situation will not be very peaceful if psychoanalysis proves it is more aware of what has featured in politics so far"[12].
The daily flood of political information shows that events are generated in the order of symbolic through utterance; the circulation of DNA information from one end to the other holds together the whole body. According to Lacan, we should ask here whether it is necessary, when dealing with politics, to count on the type of information with no other scope in meaning than to be imperative – the signifier is One. It is there only to tell us to follow unconditionally all information that is flooded on us? Is this the truth about the truth that Lacan's audience perhaps politically and philosophically expects from him? Lacan replies that he did not utter the truth about the truth because the truth opposes the untrue. Lacan does not discover the truth but rather invents it. The truth about the truth can be told: the truth cannot be uttered as it can only be uttered as half-truth. The truth is based on the assumption of the untruth – it opposes on the basis of 'no'. Its declaration is an announcement of un-truth: its half- is mimetic and originates in the imaginary. The imaginary is that untrue other in relation to the real[13].
The subject thus gets into the deep in the waste lake of the discourse of the capitalist. The human being is a waste unable to handle waste, with his civilisation also a waste, cloaca maxima[14], at its head. At first sight, the analyst fares no better: in a saintly way he functions as waste – his business is not charity but rather de-charity (waste removal). He has no feelings for the pleasure of the Other, and the political idea of happiness makes him laugh: "It is typical of the order, if there is any, that there is no need to wish for it as it has already been established. This has already taken place at some point by sheer luck, and happiness serves only to show that even the slightest semblance of freedom has very poor chances. This is capitalism brought back to order"[15]. In terms of freedom, the analyst also fares no better – in his strategy he is less free than in his tactics and has even less freedom in what transcends them both, "namely, in his politics where it would be better for him to be guided by his lack of being (manque à être) rather than his being (être)".
Every permissive hypothesis of analysis is at the very least ambiguous for "no special political regime is required to make what is not permitted compulsory"[16]. These non-transitions of our civilisation – discomfort in culture (Freud) or, in other words, "the empire of semblants" – are what "Jews (Freudians)"[17] follow. This lead has its indirect interest in the scope of the political where every 'you' – you are the one who follows me best; you are the one who follows the law; you are the one who follows the masses, etc. – depends on the signifier. If the signifier who carries the sentence is left out, the eternal question emerges: you are the one who… what? Kills me. In the call aimed at the other, the signifier falls in the field that is excluded (verworfen) or unreachable for the other. This is the moment when the signifier performs the descend to the register of imaginary, the entry to psychosis: the other becomes the being of pure desire while in the register of imaginary this dual relationship - a simplified Oedipic relationship triangle in a short circuit – is a source of extreme aggression and the other just a being of pure mutual annihilation[18].
In places of non-transition, philosophy installed ethics; but ethics cannot be separated from ideology which is given engaged political meaning through the mediation of stupid teachers. For this reason, Lacan in relation to Plato's "Menon" discusses the left-wing and the right-wing intellectual: the former is a fool – jester, idiot, naive and limited, generating truths in the fashion of a court jester; the latter is a knave – underdog, servant, a complete crook with ideology which incorporates acknowledgement of the consequences of one's political realism, in short, the recognition that he is a bastard. The individual style of the left-wing intellectual (foolery) is complemented by group knavery, that is, collective bastardry: "What gives me most pleasure, I admit, is the face of collective bastardry that is reflected in them – this innocent cunningness or this calm insolence which facilitates the expression of so many brave truths and not pay the price for them"[19].
The Freudian invention of psychoanalysis is neither under the sign of the fool nor under the sign of the knave: according to Lacan's somewhat less serious excursion (fantaisiste), Freud was a humanitarian, neither a reactionary nor a progressivist. Even though Lacan does not take sides either with the left-wing or the right-wing intellectual, he has no intention of encouraging senselessness "which gives rise to indifference in political affairs". Although Freud was not a progressivist, this is not to say that he was not interested in the Marxist experience – and the same applies to Lacan himself who was also not a progressivist[20]. The fact remains that they were not Marxists and they followed with some irony the attempts to create a monster called Freudo-Marxism, another failed meeting of the real and the reality[21].
Marx is interesting to both Freud and Lacan for with Marx the classical philosophical tradition reaches its post-Hegel peak in the analysis of the position of the bourgeois State based on need and rational mind. By exposing the framework which has not been left behind, Marx highlights the partial and inadequate nature of the solution: need and rational mind are in harmony only on the level of law whereas the individual is left to the egoistic nature of his specific needs, to anarchy and materialism. For this reason, Marx pursues a utopian vision in which the political state is abolished and replaced by an emancipated and un-alienated human society. Freud shows that the philosophical notions of 'need' and 'rational mind' are not sufficient to analyse the subject, desire and pleasure. History gave this Marx's concept lots of opportunity; the last time in 1968, the period in which Lacan is involved with his anti-progressivism.
To the challenge who actually supports the perverted discourse of the master, young revolutionaries or liberalism-denouncing Lacan, he openly declares: "As all other people, I am liberal only as much as I am also anti-progressive. It is just that I belong to a movement that is justifiably called 'progressive' for it is progressive to facilitate the establishment of the psychoanalytical discourse as far as this course is completes the circle which could perhaps help you position accurately that what your are fighting against. Nevertheless, this just damn well continues. And the first ones who take part in this, here in Vincennes
The concept of symptom has not been introduced by Hippocrates but rather by Marx who was the first to use it to explain the effects of capitalism: these effects can perhaps be beneficial to the whole, but they reduce the proletarian to zero. Freedom from everything turns him into the Messiah of the Future, the concept of symptom. If we make the human being the ideal of future and define him by particularities, the symptom remains where it was placed by Marx. However, for Lacan it has a different meaning – the symptom is not social but rather particular[24]. Lacan connects the field of class struggle and the field of the unconscious and repression, and insists that Marx invented the concept of symptom as used in psychoanalysis. The analytical concept of symptom targets the problem of universality which needs to materialize itself in a specific point which it embodies. For Marx, this is the proletariat: the symptom as the embodiment of a particular truth of the antagonising whole and at the same time the point which builds the universal. Between the symptom and the unconscious exists consistency and the symptom cannot be defined in any other way than by that each person takes pleasure in the unconscious.
The symptom is nothing but also not nothing: Lacan points out the Greek compound δέν (den) used by Democritus in Fragment 156: it means a paradoxical entity that evades the alternative between being and nothingness. It is neither being nor nothing; it is an embodiment of negativity – negation 'hen' can be objective (ouden) or subjective (meden), but it is not something that can be identified. Den is not something, nothing, being one, positively existing, absent or countable: in short, it is object a. This allows Lacan to indicate that Democrit's and Marx's philosophical materialism is not far form psychoanalytical materialism: "Democritus actually gave us the gift of άτομος, racially real, from which 'no' needs to be taken away, μή, in its modality. In modality which requires new consideration. In this way, δέν was the stowaway whose shell is now our destiny. In this, he is no more a materialist than anybody else who has any sense, like, for example, me or Marx"[25].
Some Marxists-Maoists called Lacan's Seminar XV (The Act of Psychoanalysis, 1967-1968) the "Che Guevara seminar". Lacan responds to this by saying that if anything, psychoanalysis reveals an act over which nobody can be the total master. "Every act, not only the psychoanalytical act, promises to the one who takes the initiative the conclusion which I call the 'lower case a' in the object a." Behind the request to polish the tragic to better shine, Lacan discovers something much more basic, namely, a quarter turn form the discourse of the master to the discourse of the university[26]. Events of May '68 reintroduce the topic of responsibility of psychoanalysis: even though they for the most part did not take place at universities, lecturing at universities played a key role in them. In this, psychoanalysis is faced by a structural concept of the relationship between desire and knowledge, transmission of knowledge which psychoanalysis positions on the level of lacking.
It is incorrect to ask what the rebels can expect from psychoanalysis – and vice versa. What they expect from psychoanalysis is to help them throw cobblestones. On the level of dialogue, the cobblestones fulfil the role of object a. The rebellion at the Nanterre University Fifth Republic
People who know – and this is about the knowledge management[28] – a few things about how to handle truth are not that insolent. They have the truth and they teach: all authority comes from God. As this covers all authorities, it cannot be said that power alone suits them: for Church, even authority that is against God comes from God. In the order of authority/power, everything was sorted out, and the semblant confirmed that truth can only be seen through the Other. The analyst, however, is a privileged yet comical figure who creates a demand with his offering: the Subject-Supposed-to-Know (sss) is in parallel with the Subject-Supposed-to-Demand (ssd). The mistake of the analyst is in that he believes he should interfere on the level of demand where theorizing never stops.
It is a matter of a small knot, a Möbius strip, the gap between sss and ssd, a matter of the subject who does not know what he demands which consequently allows him not to demand what he knows. Hence, there is no dialogue in the relation to the Other: we are dealing with the order of asymmetry and every dialogue is a fraud[29]. Lacan anticipates this as he adds to the summary of Seminar XV, dispatched in writing, that he is proud that he never established a dialogue with the May events: he remained equally 'incomprehensive' and 'unreadable' as before and thus protected himself from the possibilities arising from historisation of circumstances as a "blessed opening for those who are in the rush of histrionisation (l'histrioniser) of circumstances for their own consolation"[30]. He did not, however, wish to remain in this relation with strikers: for Lacan, a strike is the most social issue in this world as it represents respect for social ties.
Some people experience this social tie – strike – as a celebration which means that they are able to connect with it from the right perspective, from the point of stupidity of enjoyment (connerie de jouissance)[31]. However, the analyst is not among them: for him, the university strike is a symptom which belongs to the real, an organised symptom[32]. We can know something about it if we elaborate on how radically the relationship between knowledge and power has changed. Classical antiquity science was based on the justified conviction that knowledge and power are one and the same thing. This conviction was also the basis of power of respective the British and the French Empire where power primarily did not stem from military force but rather from knowledge which allowed for the development of economic and scientific conditions which generated power. To know equalled to rule: Alexander the Great had at his side the genius of Aristotles, and the world of the Roman Empire enjoyed so many peaceful centuries due to the wisdom of institutions governed by universal respect. At this particular point in time, however, there was an eruption of disagreements, disharmonies and contradictions between knowledge and power[33].
The May events in Paris
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[1] Freud, S., Vražja nevroza iz sedemnajstega stoletja, Ljubljana
[2] Lacan, J., Intervention sur l'exposé de M. de Certeau: Ce que Freud fait de l'histoire. Note à propos de: »Une névrose démoniaque au XVIIe siècle«, Congrès de Strasbourg, 12 octobre 1968, Lettres de L'école Freudienne 1969, no. 7, p. 84, http://www.ecole-lacanienne.net/documents/1968-10-12.doc
[3] Lacan, J., Intervention sur l'exposé de Michel Foucault »Qu'est ce qu'un auteur?«, Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 1969, no.3, p. 104, http:/www.ecole-lacanienne.net/documents/1969-02-29.doc
[4] Lacan, J., La psychanalyse en ce temps, Conference au Grand Orient de France, Paris, 25 avril 1969, Bulletin de l'Association Freudienne 1983, no. 415, p. 17, http://www.ecole-lacanienne.net/documents/1969-04-25.doc
[5] Lacan, J., Propozicija z dne 9. oktobra 1967 o psihoanalitiku Šole, Ljubljana, Filozofski vestnik vol. XXXI/1, p. 9, 14; Lacan, J., Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste de l'École, in Autres écrits, Paris: Seuil, 2001, p. 245, 251
[6] Milner, J.-C., Od lingvistike k lingvisterstvu, Ljubljana , Filozofski vestnik vol. XXVII/1, 2006, p. 211; Milner, J.-C., De la linguistique à la linguisterie, in Lacan, l'écrit, l'image, Paris
[7] Lacan, J., Propozicija z dne 9. oktobra 1967 o psihoanalitiku Šole, op. cit., p. 16; Lacan, J., Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste de l'École, op. cit, 2001, p. 253
[8] Lacan, J., Propozicija z dne 9. oktobra 1967 o psihoanalitiku Šole, op. cit., p. 20; Lacan, J., Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste de l'École, op. cit., 2001, p. 257
[9] Badiou, A., Sveti Pavel - utemeljitev univerzalnosti, Ljubljana
[10]Structural elements of Badiou's semblant are known well enough. In brief: ideology is a discourse figure through which an imaginary installation is imposed as a representation of relations in the social and the political that represent some kind of real. Discourses and representations are masks for the real, outlining and covering it at the same time: representation is a symptom of the real that needs to be decoded in the form of insights. There is a subjective localisation of the gap between ruling and the ruling ideology, between the real and its semblant. The mentioned localisation presents itself in thinking, movements, organisations, parties and states that perform absolute violence against the real: "the real as it is understood in its contingent absoluteness is never sufficiently real not to be suspected of being a semblant. The passion for the real must be suspicious as well. Nothing can confirm that the real is really the real but the fiction system where it plays the role of the real". In short, revolutionary terror whose tendencies were recognised by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit (paragraph on Terror). As there are no formal criteria which would enable us to distinguish between the real and the semblant , we find ourselves in the suspicion. This is where Badiou's task comes from - to think of formal criteria so that in the new positioning of the Two, a radical desire for One would win and this victory could be understood as evidence of the real. However, the problem with this desire is obvious: in discovering the real, reality is an obstacle that should be bypassed with a fight against the semblant. This fight of Badiou's passion for the real is equally accompanied by an accumulation of semblants and this requires continuous weeding out which can unveil the real (Badiou, A., 20. stoletje, Ljubljana: DTP - Analecta, 2005, pp. 67-86; Badiou, A., Le Siècle, Paris: Seuil, 2005). Needless to add, Lacan's real and Badiou's real are not identical; Badiou's real is in the semblant. Jacques-Alain Miller in his paper 'Des semblants dans la relation entre les sexes' provides the most enlightened definition of the semblant: " What do we call a semblant? The semblant is called that whose function is to veil nothing. In this respect, the veil is the first semblant (Miller, J.-A., O nekem drugem Lacanu, Ljubljana: DTP - Analecta, p. 136; Miller, J.-A., Des semblants dans la relation entre les sexes, Revue de la Cause freudienne Navarin/Seuil, no. 36, ECF, Paris).
[11] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XIV: La logique du fantasme (1966-1967), 10. 5. 1967, unpublished typescript; Miller, J.-A., Milanese Intuitions - II, Mental online 12, 2003, p. 8, http://lacancircle.net/MentalOnline11.pdf, http://lacaniancompass.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mentalonline121.pdf
[12] Lacan, J., Le séminaire, Livre XVIII: D'un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant (1971), Paris
[13] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XXI: Les non-dupes errent (1973-1974), 15. 1., 19. 2. 1974, unpublished typescript
[14] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XXII: R. S. I. (1974-1975), 10. 12. 1974, unpublished typescript; Lacan, J., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2 décembre 1975, Scilicet no. 6/7, 1975, pp. 53-63, http://www.ecole-lacanienne.net/documents/1975-12-02.doc
[15] Lacan, J., Televizija, Ljubljana, Problemi-Eseji 3, 1993, p. 59, 74; Lacan, J., Télévision, in Autres écrits, Paris: Seuil, 2001, p. 519, 532
[16] Lacan, J., Vodenje zdravljenja in principi njegove moči, Kolokvij v Royaumontu, 10.-13. julij 1958, Ljubljana, Razpol 6, 1990, p. 9, 35; Lacan, J., La direction de la cure et les principes de son pouvoir, Rapport du colloque de Royaumont 10-13 juillet 1958, in Écrits II, Paris: Seuil, 1999, p. 67, 96
[17] Lacan, J., Lituraterre, Préface à L'Éveil du printemps, in Autres écrits, Paris
[18] Lacan, J., Seminar III: Psihoze (XXIII. in XXIV. pogl.), Ljubljana
[19] Lacan, J., Seminar VII: Etika psihoanalize (1959-1960), Ljubljana : DE, 1988, p. 182; Lacan , J., Le séminaire, Livre VII: L'éthique de la psychanalyse (1959-1960), Paris
[20] Miller, J.-A., Vie de Lacan, Paris
[21] As we know, history repeats itself: not only among politicians-philosophers, lecturers and scientists but also among psychoanalysis theoreticians there is an emerging desire to marry the real in psychoanalysis with whatever. Instead of Freud and Marx's copulation, something 'truly atheist-materialist' can be done by following the culinary recipe offered by Adrian Johnston: ingredients for this complex dish need to be 'taken from philosophically coordinated connection of psychoanalytical meta psychology, dialectic materialism and cognitive neuroscience' (Johnston, A., Konfliktna materija: Jacques Lacan in izziv sekulariziranja materializma, Ljubljana, Problemi 7-8, 2008, p. 79). Any planned meeting is set for failure due to non-executable heterogeneity, discoordination and non-executability of the real. The real is a retroactive product of symbolisation - a process from which it falls out as a reverse hypothesis of symbolisation. The internal split in the real-reality occurs due to symbolisation itself where the signifier cycles in a circle of differentiated directing and self-referencing with no support that is organised around the hole of the real. Philosophy, meta psychology, dialectic and historic materialism, science (as science fiction) and so on cover the symbolisation of social production and thus miss the register of the real: psychoanalysis (and certain hypothetical types of science, such as scienza nouva) by being restricted to the signifying process, opens it up to the register of the real. These two levels cannot be synchronised and then synthesised: psychoanalysis pays for the access to the real by objectivity, whereas other theoretical fields pay with the status of science by missing the object a.
[22] Lacan, J., Seminar XVII: Hrbtna stran psihoanalize (1969-1970), Ljubljana : DTP-Analecta, 2008, p. 244; Lacan, J., Le séminaire, Livre XVII: L'envers de la psychanalyse (1969-1970), Paris
[23] Laurent, É., Simptom in diskurz, Ljubljana, Problemi 7-8, 2006, p. 50; Laurent, É., Symptom and Discourse, in Clemens, J., Grigg, R. (ed.), Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Reflections on Seminar XVII, Durham and London
[24] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XXII: R. S. I. (1974-1975), 18. 2. 1975, unpublished typescript; Lacan will never tire of repeating that Marx invented the symptom, even though a symptom in the meaning of local manifestation of the non-functioning of the local structure. Marx's invention decentralises history in such a way that it can only be read as a class warfare, or, as Lacan puts it, as hystoire, hysterised history. The proletariat in the position of the symptom embodies the movement of the split in time, that is, the radical absence of the centre of spherical history. Instead of focusing on the human subject, on the subject of awareness, of spirit or on the mind of history, this results in non-spherically decentralised and punctured history that embodies, if anything at all, only its non-functioning.
[25] Lacan, J., L'étourdit, in Autres écrits, Paris
[26] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XV: L'acte psychoanalitique (1967-1968), 24. 1. 1968, unpublished typescript; as Lacan joins the lecturer strike, he refuses to deliver the seminar on 8 and 15 May 1968. However, as he was aware that some audience would still attend, he appeared in the lecture theatre on both occasions even though he insisted that everything he had to say was aimed at psychoanalysts. Also, they are his target audience because the strike allows him to read things that would otherwise be judged only by the author's signature. In doing this, he cannot avoid touching on the May events where students and others march on the streets, sing the 'Internationale' and perceive the whole happening as a perfect community (Lacan, J., Le séminaire XV: L'acte psychoanalitique /1967-1968/, 8., 15. 5 1968, unpublished typescript). Lacan repeats the same act of non-delivery the seminar later, the last time on 19 November 1974 when the day of his introductory lecture in the Seminar XXII coincides with the announced strike: hence, he says: "I have no intention of starting the seminar for you" (Lacan, J., Le séminaire XXII: R. S. I. (1974-1975) , 19. 11. 1974, unpublished typescript).
[27] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XV: L'acte psychoanalitique (1967-1968), 19. 6. 1968, unpublished typescript
[28] Lacan, J., Le séminaire, Livre XVI: D'un Autre à l'Autre (1968-1969), Paris
[29] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XV: L'acte psychoanalitique (1967-1968), 19. 6. 1968, unpublished typescript
[30] Lacan, J., L'acte psychanalytique. Compte rendu du séminaire 1967-1968, in Autres écrits, Paris
[31] Miller, J.-A., Vie de Lacan, op. cit., p. 23
[32] Lacan, J., Le séminaire XXII: R. S. I. (1974-1975), 19. 11. 1974, unpublished typescript
[33] Lacan, J.,Le séminaire, Livre XVI: D'un Autre à l'Autre (1968-1969), op. cit., pp. 295-307
[34] Lacan, J.,Le séminaire, Livre XVI: D'un Autre à l'Autre (1968-1969), op. cit., p. 167-168