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LACANBERRA
Project
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Bulletin for psychoanalysis and social sciences
Volume III Issue 4
Spring-Summer 2013
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
ARTICLE
THE HYPERMODERN DISCOURSE OF
XXI. CENTURY
Psychoanalysis is not a science, it is not a religion or a discipline, it is rather a discourse which is scientific in that it looks at the singular instead of the universal: hence, due to its policy of symptom it is different from the neuro-policy of science. With the latter, neuroscience subscribes to the utilisation of science and domestication of its power. Its source is in the scientific definition of Freudian consideration - Freud's dreams about psychoanalysis as classical science turned into neuroscience. These dreams are now backfiring: neuroscience aims to force psychoanalysis which is in its essence an attempt of totalisation. In the name of science, neuroscience is attempting to reduce the subject to the cognitivist mechanics of the synaptic and the cerebral. This rational knowledge tends to put all subject's problems, such as suffering, depression, discomfort, to a neuro- framework so that it could dominate the subject's knowledge and hold biopower (Foucault).
Subjectivity has been annihilated by the discourse of science to the level of the material body which is a triumph of biologisation of spirit. Scientification of the human is conducted entirely apart from the psychoanalytical position of the clinic, that is, the art of one-to-one. In the analysis, there is no counting or adding up, instead, it is trying to renew the uniqueness of non-comparability of the singular, to position the diversity of the unique which cannot be dominated by either utilitarian economy or state. In this sense, psychoanalysis is democratic knowledge which sides with the individual's freedom which is not subjected even to the subject of scientific ideology. This moment marks the battle of the 21st century: psychoanalysis against the new unconscious of political correctness, the vulgarised unconscious of depersonalised subject where cerebral determinism introduces a version of the unconscious 'for all x' thus denying singularity of the individual and his freedom[1].
We are entering a perverted 'era of man with no qualities'[2], dominated by rat scheme of stimuli and responses. This scheme requires a clear model of the problem situation and its solution in which the most important tools include statistical evaluation, mathematics, geometry and arithmetic. This is the origin of the cognitivistic cult status of American mathematician George Pólya that leads to a return to the rational mind and therefore to good mental health. In contrast, psychoanalysis faces the symptom which has no respect for any law of rational mind. If Freudian invention makes any sense, it makes sense in that it does not approach problems of 'psyche' as technical or mathematical problems but rather as problems of alienation and identification with the symptom of the symbol in the real. In this, psychoanalysis is materialistic and realistic whereas for cognitive idealists the real is rational in thus subject to therapy and correction. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, uncovers knots in the body and speech which have nothing to do with logics, informational simulation and algebraic series.
Hence, cognitivism for psychoanalysis is Weltanschauung of the 21st century: a vision of the world with a quantified human being of no quality subjected to calculations. The illusion of rationalising the real is the illusion of knowledge used for shaping imbeciles and of the working of the world with no barriers – the very same world which does not exist for psychoanalysis. Its anti-world is the real with no law, the real which does not submit to the laws of physics, informatics and rational mind[3] – the kind of anti-spherical world that cognitivists decided to put within the boundaries of a spherical world and its formulae. When Lacan, in contrast, uses mathematical formulae, he uses them in accordance with his invention of 'matheme', i.e., small pieces of logics of an illogical symptom. This application of rationality is in the service of subject's singularity[4]: little Lacan's letters cross the mirror of the world and demonstrate the foreignness of the real[5].
It is up to psychoanalysis to point out the cognitivist foreignness of the foreignness of the real, the foreignness of the program that is deriving the homo humanus to homo mercator. This total transformation program of the subject into a producer and consumer is an act of war announcement: a war, that is already under way. We are in the middle of commercial strategies and marketing for clientele processed by the determination of the product, PR promotion and the distribution of services. In line with the Hollywood-style progressivism of cognitivist managers, they promise the subject quick solutions from the menu of neoliberal techniques. At the same time, psychoanalysis is facing the questions of influence that was imposed on it: in the broader sense, as social ties, and in the narrower sense as schools of psychoanalysts, "schools of irony, scepticism and determined anti-modernism"[6].
It is the impact of psychoanalysis in the world of counting which aims to quantify everything. The principle of counting everything is One: without One, calculations would not exist, hence we find them everywhere these days: in culture, politics, economy, religion, daily life etc. The general model of life in the 21st century is dependency: One takes enjoyment on his own in drugs and every activity has become a drug: sports, sex, work, iPhone, or Facebook. This however does not solve the problem of identification. The symptom is the rise of racisms, of One as a cult of self-identity for oneself which finds it difficult to put up with the Other who does not take enjoyment in the same way. The space transience did not lead to a clash of civilisations but only to an unusual mixing of ways of life, beliefs and jouissance. On the political level, the transition to One is marked by 'everything-goes-democracy': every person's right to his own jouissance has become a human right.
The Name-of-the-Father is dying and the subject has no problem operating without it if he chooses to do so. The era of domineering bosses is over: we are in a period of modest leaders who provide directions. But even giving directions is becoming harder: the number of false starts aimed to solve problems is growing exponentially in line with the growing number of factors. They can find their quick solutions only in temporal modal hastiness, and this will remain so until the number of decision-makers is drastically reduced. The same is happening on the economic level: the era of the golden standard is over and the dollar and the euro as global currencies are no firmer than the Name-of-the-Father. In the economy, there is a mess of signifiers and the monetary sign is confusing the situation to the extent where it becomes clear that nobody is the master in this logic. The impact of this situation, including fluctuations, panic, anxiety, is the topic of intense discussions and writings since in uncertainty when nothing is fixed the situation requires continuous communications.
However, due to the high number of involved talking beings, it is almost impossible to bring the communication to a conclusion. The fear is further increased by science in the form of madness: its slow beginnings in the 17th century have become an ever faster rattling of humanity as a whole. This rattling can no longer be stopped as the domination of One is the result of the language itself that fuels the madness of death drive. In the situation, the return of religion is a necessary counterweight: by untying all former ties, One is turning to religion where specialists are able to give the suffering being a meaningful life. This meaning provides the poor frightened One[7] with a social tie: the post-modern or hyper-modern subject is confused in his distress caused by uncertainty, he is left with no orientation or direction, no defence or repression that were required from him by cultural morality in the Freudian sense which also provided him with a compass.
Cultural morality of the 19th century with its Victorian end became brutal as it reacted to the ever widening gap between the agricultural and industrial civilisation. The former had its roots in the Nature and the unchangeable revolving of seasons. By its heavenly nature it was a friend of nature. With the industrial revolution, the multiplication of innovations and inventions pushed that aside: the real swallowed the nature and started spreading as its substitute. This is the moment when the star of object a starts shining in the social sky as a mighty factor which transcends all boundaries. Freud names it 'otherside': this intense element sends to the dustbin of history every sense of measure. Its measurelessness no longer follows the sequence of seasons; instead, it follows the revolving of accelerated renewal and frenetic innovation. As Lacan concluded his teaching with his symptom, J.-A. Miller continues his with fantasy within which the hypermodern discourse of (post)industrial civilisation is being constructed. According to a hypothesis of this discourse, object a is imposed on the disoriented subject inviting him to move beyond his repressions: a → $. With object a, evaluation (S1) adopts a tyrannical form. What is written in matheme as S1 is One which can be counted and thus lends itself to the production of evaluation and evaluation of production:
a → $
----
S1
Knowledge (S2) in the position of truth – including lies and semblants – completes the structure of the hypermodern discourse of civilisation:
a → $
---- ----
S2 S1
The result is surprising: the hypermodern discourse has the structure of the discourse of the analyst, following the model provided by Lacan who didn't hesitate to emphasise that the discourse of the master had the same structure as the discourse of the unconscious. The discourse of the master is the discourse of social ties and thus civilisation which existed since classical antiquity. It is therefore not absurd to consider that in relation to desire and object a the discourse of the current civilisation has the same structure as the discourse of the analyst.
If this is indeed so, psychoanalysis is facing a problem: the discourse of the analyst analysed the discourse of the unconscious positioned on its back side – what Lacan called the back side of psychoanalysis, that is, the discourse of the master. In analyses of the unconscious, this is where the interpretative and subversive power of the discourse of the analyst came from. If Miller's hypothesis of the hypermodern discourse is valid, this discourse is no longer on the back side of psychoanalysis, which is a conclusion that could be understood as its success. However, this fact opens the question of psychoanalytical tools – interpretation, its beginning and termination. Assuming that the relationship between the civilisation and psychoanalysis is no longer the relationship of the back side, an appealing explanation can be offered by using convergence: surplus-jouissance (plus-de-jouir) issues commands, subject works, identification in its fall is replaced by homogenous evaluation of abilities whereas knowledge is activated in the direction of progress in lies and false progress. According to this convergence explanation, these four elements in their appropriate positions are scattered around civilisation therefore it is only possible to organise these elements in an orderly discourse in pure psychoanalysis.
From here comes the call to return to the discourse of the master in order to re-establish order and subversively position the master in his rightful place. Discomfort generated by psychoanalysis could be removed, according to some views, through its revolutionary practice which would transition traditional signifiers-masters and give disoriented subjects in their hands and their heads the fundamentalist order of signifiers of tradition. Psychoanalysis has three options available: 1) the reactionary practice of psychoanalysis could continue by emphasising the symbol as the carrier of tradition: we could witness a few exciting alliances with all forms of traditionalism and upbeat convergence of Bible and Interpretation of Dreams; 2) the classical practice of psychoanalysis could continue by consolidating the imaginary shelter: nothing is happening, the unconscious is eternal and eternity is God; and 3) the progressivist practice could follow the progress in science and failed sciences and collect itself around the real of science. The first position is turned towards the past, the second towards the (eternal) present and the third towards the future. The first practice puts its stakes on the symbolic, the second on the imaginary and the third on the real. What all three practices have in common can be summed up by S1 → S2. We are talking about the relation between the command and its execution, the stimuli and its response – in one word, this works[8].
There is, however, the fourth practice of psychoanalysis, Lacanian practice of future which is yet to be invented - not ex nihilo, but on the basis of late Lacan. This practice differs from the above mentioned in that it does not follow the principle of operation but rather the principle of failure which is the basis of Lacan's knots. Failure is not contingent as it manifests the non-possible: by excluding the concept of success the principle of failure protects analysis from the discourse of operation and establishes it as a practice of no value. Even the contingency of the order of individual failures does not invalidate the law of failure - rather it proves it as a manifestation of the non-possible. Due to the mentioned contingency it is not even possible to say that the law of failure is the law of real. The real has no law: if there were contingency that could confirm the disputability of the non-possible there would be a law in the real. But this does not work: plus-de-jouir took the dominant position in the meaning of the asexual status of the body. As such, it does not issue commands from the position of a factor, not in the sense of 'this works' but rather as 'this fails': $ fails in the register of sexual relationship which does not exist.
With the transition S → $, this non-existence becomes obvious and recorded which happens from the moment when object a is socialized. Freudian practice predicted this social ascent of object a and contributed toward the establishment of this artificial element. Lacanian practice too is involved in the consequences of this outstanding success which can be felt in the nature of catastrophe: the dictate of surplus-jouissance destroyed the natural world, broke down the institution of marriage, dispersed families and reshaped the body - not only in the dimension of its reforming (cosmetic surgical or anorexic) but rather by deciphering the human genome it opened the door to post-humankind. The discourse of hypermodern civilisation plays its role in the dimension of the real which fails in the relationship between sexes. This relationship is increasingly becoming non-possible when on the social side emerges the post-humankind standard of One-totally-alone: One of evaluation commanded by surplus-jouissance in its most anxious aspect.
Analytical interpretation which sees in the conditions of the discourse of hypermodern civilisation its (successful) continuation is not analytical interpretation: it includes only variations of failure whereby some are more satisfactory than others. Hence, Lacanian practice will be a form, i.e., reshaping in the sense of topological transformation, which transcends the consequences of positioning the discourse of the analyst in the civilisation. The conditions of possibility for psychoanalysis have changed in conditions of non-possibility and non-possibility is its only option. Psychoanalysis in its 'Socratic cynical' stand has looked through semblants in discourses and unveiled the economy of enjoyment: now, when this stand has become socialised, psychoanalysis itself has become the subject of cynical ridicule and even ridicule alone considering the fact that psychoanalysis is its own victim [9]. To the challenge of knowledge in the real, psychoanalysis responds by reinventing the meaning of the symptom through synthome. In Lacanian practice, the symptom is not a problem and not a disorder as there is no order in the order of the real. Knowledge in the real does not dictate its law therefore an intervention from the direction of knowledge in the real is not possible. The symptom is always a symptom of imbalance: even if its articulated in signifiers, in essence it is not about messages. The symptom is first and foremost the sign of non-existence of sexual relationship, the sign of punctuation, accent and stress.
In contrast to signifying messages, symptoms are necessary and continuously recorded signs which indicate their equality with the real as etc. (et cetera). As symptoms are in one point real, they can be completely confused with the real which operates. J.-A. Miller leaves no room for doubt here: psychoanalysis is dealing with a symptom-juissance which expresses the fact that enjoyment is not where it should be - in the sexual relationship. Once the perverted enjoyment is allowed, it is only a matter of knowing how to deal with it. In order to get to it, it is not required from the analyst to love the unconscious and its impact of truth: in order for the unconscious to exist as knowledge - as the transferred and not the real unconscious which does not exist as knowledge - (transferred) love is required. Psychoanalysis requires that the analysand loves his unconscious as this is the only way to establish a relationship between S1 and S2. In the real unconscious are only dispersed Ones whereas love can only be transmitted between One-totally-alone. In this way, analysis leads to the fact that something still exists - not a sexual but a symbolic relationship.
A renewal of the Lacanian practice must follow the coordinates of the 21st century where the issue which Freud called discomfort and Lacan unknotted as non-transitions, as cul-de-sacs of civilisation, is on the increase. These coordinates are structures by two historic factors, two discourses: the discourse of science and the discourse of capitalism. The increased power of these two discourses which support each other's domination broke down tradition at its foundation. In the order of symbolic, an immense change has occurred as the foundations stone got broken - the Name-of-the-Father for which Lacan is adamant that it is the Name-of-the Father in accordance with tradition. This is where the combination of respective discourses of science and capitalism together with the Name-of-the-Father got devalued. It should be noted that this key function of the-Name-of-the-Father was already devalued in Lacan's late teachings when it was allocated the position of a supplement, a supplement with a hole and thus no longer a synthome. The hole of the non-existence of sexual relationship filled up by the symptom of the name of the name of the Father opens up a perspective expressed by Lacan in the following way: everyone is mad, everyone is wandering - the category of madness is broadened to include everyone who speaks.
J.-A. Miller articulates the consequences of this in a formula called the 'great disorder of the real in the 21st century'. Previously, the real was called the nature: when there was no disorder in the real, 'nature' was the name for the real which - as opposed to the signifier for which shifting places is typical - always returned to its place. Therefore the real emerged as the most obvious manifestation of the concept of order: if the signifier is always replaced by means of metaphor or metonymy and returns to unexpected and surprising positions, the real is signified as an ambiguous nature by peace and order with no surprises - the real emerges in the same place on the same date. Consider the return of seasons, perceptions of the sky and celestial bodies from classical antiquity to Chinese mathematical calculations of celestial bodies. In this period of the real as the nature, the real had the function of the Other of the Other which means that the real ensured a symbolic order. The signifier was fixed like celestial bodies and the nature was ordered by covering the symbolic and the real. In the same way was managed the social field where the human race had to mimic the natural order as the natural formation of the family serves as the corporate model of all human associations up to the level of state. The order based on the Name-of-the-Father established the symbolised real[10].
Since Aristotle's physics, the real was the nature, an orderly world in which everything had its own place. Even with the entrance of the Christian God of creation, the nature was still synonymous with order created by God's Will: God's order is the God's law embodied in the nature. From this is derived the natural law which carries the imperative noli tangere - do not interfere with the nature. The natural law anticipated the possibility that human acts could be in breach of the natural law. The Catholic Church still protects the real in accordance with Thomistic theology, the natural order of the real in regards to reproduction, sexuality and family from 'bestiality'. Its anachronistic discourse of tradition has become firmer the more it is facing the lost cause, i.e., the fact that the real liberated itself form the nature. However, Galileo's choice triggered the scientific movement which quickly connected with the capitalist dynamics of profit chasing. Paradoxically, this lost cause is the triumph for the Church: the real, emancipated from the nature, has followed the logics of either worsening or becoming unbearable which generates nostalgia for the lost order and reinforces the religious illusion.
Prior to the emergence of the discourse of science, there was already a practice of wish to touch the real - this was magic which tried to affect the nature in such a way that it would obey and provide an opportunity to use its powers. Lacan included the practice of magic in the matrix of four fundamental positions of truth: magic, religion, science and analysis[11] which predict the matrix of four discourses: the discourse of the master, the discourse of the academic, the discourse of the hysteric and the discourse of the analyst. With science, the god of nature becomes sss, the Subject-Supposed-to-Know in the real. The God who knows the calculation - according to Leibnitz, it is right, according to Spinoza, it is wrong. In any case, in front of us is a mathematised God who facilitates the transition from the finite cosmos to the infinite universe. With the latter, mathematical physics enables the unfolding of the real, the disappearance of the nature which becomes with Kant a philosophical moral category.
Science starts out form the hypothesis that the real incorporates knowledge and regularity which enables the discourse of science to predict and to demonstrate the existence of laws. It still discusses natural laws even though they no longer require God's utterance to underline their validity. However, Planck's discovery of quantum physics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle introduce uncertainty in science which Einstein tries to limit by saying that God does not gamble. The taming of the discourse of science, however, was not successful and so science still discovers the real as the law of nature - in complete opposition to psychoanalysis which claims that the real has no law and that there is a gap between the nature and the real. By including knowledge in the real, the discourse of science remains subordinated to the Subject-Supposed-to-Know: in the discourse of the analyst, the real has no presumed knowledge. For psychoanalysis, there is no knowledge in the real: every knowledge only represents thinking about the meaning of the real. The real has no natural law and the real with no law emerges as the unthinkable, as a boundary to every thought. The latter, however, does not exclude the possibility that the real is the target and that everything around it is moving, starting with eugenic bioengineering of the human species.
In order to illustrate transformations of the 21st century, J.-A. Miller resurrects the famous Marx's Communist Manifesto which is in terms of the real the best description of the revolutionary impact the discourse of capitalism has on the civilisation: "The bourgeoisie cannot exist unless it continuously revolutionises production instruments including production relations, hence all social relations. On the other hand, keeping the unchanged old production way is the first condition of existence of all previous industrial classes. Continuous usurpation in the production, uninterrupted shaking up of all social conditions, continuous uncertainty and movement differentiate the bourgeois era from all others. All rusty firm relations accompanied by distinguished perceptions and concepts are untied, all newly formed relations are becoming outdated before they manage to become set in stone. Everything firm and permanent dissipates, everything sacred is profaned, and people are finally forced to see with sober eyes their life situation and interpersonal relations"[12]. The combination of capitalism and science prepared the conditions for the disappearance of the nature and what is left behind the disappearing nature is the real. Structurally disordered, the real is now hit from all sides by the progress of twin capitalism-science, including in the manner of disorder, forcefully and blindly, with no possibility to ever regain and establish any idea of harmony[13].
Psychoanalysis approaches the real in a different way: when Lacan delivered the formula that the unconscious is structured as a type of language, he understood the unconscious as knowledge in the real. But the traditional Freudian transferred unconscious proved to be knowledge elucubrating about the real. As the unconscious real has no sense or law, knowledge can be established only about the real and not in the real. The real with no sense corresponds to the situation where the real does not respond to any want-to-say. When we utter words, we don meaning in the manner of fantasy of transferred elucubration, whereas the real unconsciously creates senseless lalangue and its effects of enjoyment in the body. This real is neither the cosmos nor the world or any kind of order: it is a non-systematic fragment, a piece of contingency with no law, separated from fictive knowledge produced from the conformation of lalangue and body. The real invented by Lacan is not the real of science: as something contingent it is a hole in knowledge included in the real. In this invention, Lacan used the language of mathematical logics as the science of the real. However, in psychoanalysis this has its boundary that cannot be crossed: every crossing the line implies a symbolisation of the real, that is, capturing of juissance as a phallic function, as a symbol. Lalangue and the body establish the real with no law or mathematically-logical rules.
Logics appears later through elucubrations, fantasies, with sss - with psychoanalysis. The latter is unable to share with science the logic of stimuli-response, that is, cause-effect which represents prejudice supported by Subject-Supposed-to-Know. This logics on the level of the real with no law has no value: Lacanian practice is the experience of a break and discontinuation of the connection between cause and effect. This leads to the necessity that psychonalaysis of the 21st century is turned toward dismantling defence from the real: in this sense, the transferred unconscious with its intention of want-to-say is defence from the real. The real unconscious, on the other side, is not intentional as we can only encounter it in the mode of 'this is it' which is reminiscent of the 'amen'. Lacan invented the presentation of the real by using the Borromean knot so that he could put the analyst's wish on the path of reaching the real - reduction of the other to its real, liberated from meaning as well as from charity, friendship, fraternity and every other human sentiment [14].
This clinical Lacanian orientation has important consequences outside the clinic, especially in the political and social area. Lacan defined politics as an area structured as S(A barré) : Signifiant d'un manque dans l'Autre. According to J.-A. Miller, within it, the subject painfully experiences that the truth is not One, that it does not exist and that it is split [15]. The hope of totalitarian utopias was on the side of repairing the split in the truth and politically on installing the reign of One. In the post-totalitarian 21st century, the split in the truth has become objectivised in the form of various political parties which, due to the fatal split of the truth and split of the Other who does not exist as One, are tangled in unsolvable disagreements. Additionally, the unconscious is politics in that the sexual relationship does not exist. In the position where there should be sexual relationship and the sexual connection would be programmed there was no society.
Dreams of such (non)society - of bees and ants - encourage utopian considerations of societies with no politics that various theocracies tried to realise. Regardless of all such attempts - or exactly due to them - it is today possible to claim that there are no societies without politics and this is one of the reasons why the unconscious is political[16]. The position of psychoanalysis to remain a symptom in the future depends on the "political analysis which is a prerequisite for any practical psychoanalysis" [17]. In order to keep the symptom trait, every (psycho)analysis should start with pas-tout. In the political and social pas-tout, signifiers do not enter the analysis organised in clusters but rather in discontinued fragments, for example, in the form of a continuous flow of information which keeps falling apart at any attempt of organisation. This disorientation is a part of modifications related to globalised society which no longer lives under the reign of the Name-of-the-Father.
On every step social phenomenology of contemporary civilisation shows a formation that can no longer be called social organisation - it is a transition from universal to pas-tout. In the structure of pas-tout, there is nothing left that could be used as a barrier to what is in the position of forbidden: the movement of pas-tout opposes everything forbidden and as such appears on the level of social and political. Pas-tout develops in such a way that it never hits the boundary which distinguishes the function of the father from male sexualisation[18]. The structure of everything is determined as a supplementary and antinomyc element which sets the boundary and this in turn allows for hierarchical relationship, organisation and stability. Pas-tout, on the contrary, does not include lacking but rather a development of series with no boundary in totalisation: if any remnant still generates everything and the boundary it is threatened by borderless globalisation.
Globalisation is a process of detotalisation which annihilates all totalitarian and corporative structures. No elements has its own secure principled position and permanent features. Pas-tout carries insecurity, impermanence and risk for every element, the safety of features is replaced by precarity. The pas-tout machine - correlated to female sexualisation - is daily removing elements of respect for tradition and paves the way to the new. From here comes the loudness of the silence of the master: traditional elements are calling back to authority, to a return to the order and the reign of the signifier-master who has found himself in a irreversible process of invalidation. In parallel with this process runs a process of dismantling large filters of knowledge, meta-narratives, stereotypes and sanctified authorities.
The above mentioned items represented various organisations of the signifier and variations of the discourse of the master: their function was a simplification and formalisation of reality, formation of coherent behavioural models in accordance with the authority of competent authorisations. Globalisation of everything following the logic of pas-tout generates as its necessary by-product its own extreme: destructualisation in the form of extreme individualisation that unveils the decadence of collective organisation models. In the discourse of the post-modern master the signifier-master appears in the matheme as the factor: S1/$. In the movement of pas-tout, this signifier is isolated which results in his pluralisation and multiplication: to put it simply, there is no One. They are many and nothing is there to ensure that they will not be chaotic in the sense of disorganised constellations of signifiers instead of the unified structure of the signifier-master[19]. The matheme of the discourse of the master with a half quarter turn, or rather one eighth turn, is replaced by the discourse of the capitalist. In this modification of the discourse of the master, the subject is positioned in the place of the signifier-master: $/S1.
The above mentioned turn is not so much a promotion of hysteria as it is an underlining of a subject with no guidance. This can only be found in very limited scope in certain narrow areas of certainty. The pas-tout machinery multiplies micro-totalities, pockets and shelters of limited levels of systematisation, stability and codification which allows a renewal of masterdom but only in cases of extreme specialisation. The signifier-master can only be renewed in a very limited field of signifiers, in bubbles of knowledge certainty. Lacan in his predictions introduced an approach of clinical practice as a practice of pas-tout, an RSI knot. Earlier, psychoanalysis dealt with the clinical theory focused on the Name-of-the-Father which allowed for discontinuity and thus clearly distinct categories of clinical structures and classes. The knot, however, includes continuity whereby safety of strictly determined distinctions is lost of which the result is the practice of pas-tout in which the symptom becomes the basic unit of (clinical) theory.
The course on clinical theory equals the symptom and the theory of enjoyment/jouissance. J.-A. Miller formulates this by using a reference to Spinoza: "Deus sive natura, sive jouissance". As enjoyment equals loss of truth and meaning there is no longer the question of getting well from withdrawal from enjoyment at the end of analysis or the question of transference. There is only the question of transferring from one regime of enjoyment to another, of transition from managing suffering to managing jouissance. This management is not a return to the discourse of tradition which tried to control enjoyment and discipline effects of non-existing sexual relationship by uncomfortable means or by giving way to enjoyment - it is the handling of enjoyment. In regards to Lacan's principle of "do not give in to your desire", it is important to see the first principle of Lacanian politics - do not give in in regards to the real: "Lacanian politics must focus on the real..."[20].
This real should be defined. It was said that it cannot be defined in the same way as Lacan defined it a few decades ago, especially not in the period of semblant 'return to Freud'. Today psychoanalysis does not need a semblant 'return to Lacan': Lacan is always here and always contemporary. Loyalty to his teaching and the School implies creative reading and invention activities: non-existent is Lacanian orthodoxy ("il n'y a pas d'orthodoxie lacanienne" - J.-A. Miller)[21]. If anything, contemporary position of psychoanalysis can be illustrated by Beckett's words in "Worstward Ho": "Try again. Fail again. Fail better". The devil hidden in the detail of et cetera should here be provisionally put a full stop.
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[1] La Sagna, Ph., Lettre ouverte à Philippe Pignarre, pp. 209-215, Laurent, É., Les TCC ne font pas partie du programme cognitif, pp. 236-239, Leguil, C., Être ou en plus être. Le sujet du XXIe siècle face à l'empire des neurosciences, pp. 241-256, in Miller J.-A. (ed.), L'Anti-Livre noir de la psychanalyse, Paris
[2] Miller, J.-A., (2004d) L'ère de l'homme sans qualités, La Cause freudienne, Paris
[3] Lacan, J., Le séminaire, Livre XXIII: Le sinthome (1975-1976), Paris
84 Lacan uses the word 'singularity' for the first time in his early paper on the 'mirror stage' (Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu'elle nous est révélée dans l'expérience psychanalytique; Lacan, Éctits I, Paris: Seuil, 1999, p. 93), delivered at the 16th International Psychoanalytical Congress in Zurich
[4] Miller, J.-A., Milner, J.-C., Évaluation. Entretiens sur une machine d'imposture, in L'Instant de voir (coll.), Paris
[6] Miller, J.-A., Des pratiques abominables. Trois Imitations pour préserver de la tentation, in Miller, J.-A. (ed.), L'Anti-Livre de la psychanalyse, op. cit., p. 13
[7] Miller, J.-A., Lacan's Prophecies, Symptom 12, Le Point, http//gconse.blogspot.com/2011/10/symptom-12-lacans-prophecies-jacques.html
[8] Miller, J.-A., A fantasy, Conference of Jacques-Alain Miller in Comandatuba, Bahia, Brasil, IV Congress of the WAP – 2004, http://www.congresoamp.com/en/template.php?file=Textos/Conferencia-de-Jacques-Alain-Miller-en-Comandatuba.html
[9] Together with J.-A. Miller, it is important to remember the contingency conditions that led to the emergence of psychoanalysis as Freud's discovery of the hysterical symptom. This discovery was based on the discourse of science and was carried by the scientific Galilean real - an adaptable and obliging real that implied knowledge. Freud's psycho-physiological materialism of the end of the 19th century discovered within the framework of the Galilean real of science that there is meaning in the real. For science, this amounted to a scandal as it appeared that psychoanalysis was contaminating and faking scientific knowledge which can be found in the real, however, it utters nothing; if there is meaning in the real, on the other hand, it follows that it wants to say something. For psychoanalysis, the discovery of meaning in the real facilitated its existence: meaning in the real supports the essence of the symptom. This has applied up to our era as through the discomfort of psychoanalysis the split of the essence of the symptom was produced, that is, the split in the real and the meaning. The symptom was kept together by its utterance. Now, however, psychoanalysis is dealing with the symptom's break down: 'sym' disappeared and only 'ptom' was left, as a disorder from the order of the real. For science, the real continues to function as it is supported by knowledge in the real. In accordance with this feature, as far as science is concerned psychoanalysis found a level of attraction in the discourse of the master. But the hypermodern civilisation no longer believes that scientific knowledge cannot fail: atomic bomb or genetically modified organisms do not invoke trust in positive functioning of knowledge in the real. Here, the symptom was reduced to a problem, split in half and thus doubled. From the perspective of the real, the symptom in biochemistry is perceived beyond meaning, and in cognitive behavioural therapies it is seen as meaningful listening to pure semblant and the related authoritarian practice of programmed language. Only within the framework of psychoanalysis does the symptom maintain the value of (masked) truth, therefore it must take time for verification to benefit the emergence of truth from lies. (Miller, J.-A., op. cit., http://www.congresoamp.com/en/template.php?file=Textos/Conferencia-de-Jacques-Alain-Miller-en-Comandatuba.html).
[10] Miller, J.-A., The real in the 21st century by Jacques-Alain Miller, Presentation of the Theme of the IXth Congress of the World Association of the Psychoanalysis, Buenos Aires, 27th April 2012, Lacan Quotidien no. 216, http://www.lacanquotidien.fr/blog/2012/05/the-real-in-the-21st-century-by-jacques-alain-miller
[11] Lacan, J., Écrits II, La science et la vérité, op. cit., pp. 335-358
[12] Marx, K., Engels, F., Manifest komunistične stranke (Komunistični manifest), MEID II, Ljubljana
[13] Miller, J.-A., op. cit., http://www.lacanquotidien.fr/blog/2012/05/the-real-in-the-21st-century-by-jacques-alain-miller
[14] Lacan, J., Préface à l'édition anglaise du Séminaire XI, in Autres écrits, op. cit., p. 571
[15] This is a reference to Jacques-Alain Miller's seminar 'Lacanian Orientation' (L'orientation lacanienne) of 2001/2002 (Le désenchantement de la psychanalyse, which can be translated as 'dissappointment' or 'sobering up' of psychoanalysis): There are two lectures delivered at the Department of Psychoanalysis at the Paris VIII University on 15 and 22 May 2002; their cover title 'Milano Intuitions' (JAM was on 12 May 2002 in Milano where in reference to Lacan's appearances in this city where the 'fifth' discourse, the discourse of the capitalist, was born the Italian Lacanian School of Freudian Field was established) (Miller, J.-A., Milanese Intuitions - II, Mental online 12, http://lacaniancompass.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mentalonline121.pdf).
[16] Miller, J.-A., Milanese Intuitions - I, II, Mental online 11, 12, http://lacancircle.net/MentalOnline11.pdf (p.11), http://lacaniancompass.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mentalonline121.pdf (p.7)
[17] Brousse, M.-H., Editorial, Mental online 12, May 2003, p. 3, http://lacaniancompass.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mentalonline121.pdf
[18] Lacan, J., L'étourdit, in Autres écrits, op. cit., p. 494-495
[19] Miller, J.-A., Le neveu de Lacan, Paris: Verdier, 2003, p. 165; Laurent, É., The Name-of-the-Father: Psichoanalysis and Democracy, Lacanian Compass, January 24, 2006, Vol. 1, Issue 7, pp. 3-5; Freud in his famous meta psychological papers through the identification of the position of One allowed for the possibility of democratic equality. However, after the French Revolution which undermined the traditional status of the Father, democracy that followed proved the necessity of S1: plurality of fathers found its logical function in the pluralisation of the Names-of-the-Father. This 'democratic form' does not exclude arbitrariness and 'decisionism' where the position of the dead father is taken by the ambivalent democracy of the country in the state of emergency. On one side, there is democracy of ways of pleasure, hedonism and limitless jouissance which unveils its backside death dimension; on the other, search for the Other, nostalgia for the Name-of-the-Father, the law that would reintroduce order in pas tout of the dispersed, non-totalisable and inconsistent masses. The cross-cut mass of both tendencies is the existing unreadable chaos – the lacking of the signifier-master which brought down the precise and bureaucratically regulated common EU market and pushed it in the uncertainty of the global market. This duality is also reflected in the relationship of democracy with psychoanalysis: democracy itself facilitated the emergence of the discourse of the analyst but by market offering catch-all-psychotherapies considerably disabled its subversiveness.
[20] Miller, J.-A., Seminar o lacanovski politiki, Ljubljana , Problemi 5-6, 2002, p. 95; Miller, J.-A., Le séminaire sur la politique lacanienne, Paris
[21] Miller, J.-A., Prologue, in Autres écrits, op. cit., p. 7; creative reading and the activity of invention is – as argued before – related to the transference of the idiot's knowledge field, also or foremost in the discourse of science (neurology, cognitivism) and the discourse of the master (philosophy, deconstruction). Criticism of Lacan unfortunately still does not relate to what Lacan or his writing had to say. As a rule, it is not an argument with his words or texts but rather an argument with his power, that is, with the global effect the power of Lacanian discourse has. Let us just remember Derrida's 'Postman of the Truth'.