Translated by Cormac Gallagher from tape-recordings as part of Seminar XVII
-Published at www.lacaninireland.com
Available, Analyticon 2 : 4.6.70 p1-13 of http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Book-17-Psychoanalysis-upside-down-the-reverse-side-of-psychoanalysis.pdf .
-This is not published in Book XVII : edited by Jacques-Alain Miller : translated by Russell Grigg. The sessions jump from Chapter XI 20th May 1970 to Chapter XII 10th June 1970, though Interview on the steps of the Pantheon : 13th May 1970 (Paris) is included as Chapter X & Analyticon – Impromptu No 1 : 3rd December 1969 (Vincennes) is included as an appendix, both heavily edited.
– Probably published in French – but location is currently not known.
From Cormac Gallagher’s Translator’s Note, 2001
Preface to www.LacaninIreland.com’s publication of Seminar XVII in translation,
I have been asked why I undertook the translation of this seminar when an official translation had been signalled. There are a number of reasons:
…
Thirdly: There is no critical French version of this seminar to compare with the acclaimed Stécriture version of Transference – cannibalised but not acknowledged in the corrected version. But when the official French text is compared to the ‘pirate editions’ that have been widely used by students over the years, a number of rather curious editorial decisions come to light. Here are the most obvious:
-The four replies to the Questions of Radiophonie read by Lacan to his seminar are omitted.
– Only one of Lacan’s two memorable visits to the University of Vincennes is reported.
– The discussion on Hosea with Professor André Caquot has been truncated and omits many of the lively exchanges with Lacan.
– A number of passages in the ‘pirate’ editions ring truer and are certainly more vivid than the corresponding ones in the official version.
…
Dublin, October 2001
Notes and references and quotations
This text examines the University Discourse in relation to the Master Discourse.
Two quotations
-P8-9, Analyticon 2: 4.6.70 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation,
If I had the time, I would note that what is happening highlights something important, namely, what you are explicitly charged with proving, what you are beginning to prove in fact, naturally in a different way than by these squeals. It is that as regards the masses, you can count on nothing, as the whole progress of history shows you, because imagine that if it is in effect in the masses that you can find revolutionaries, you no longer find them in the masses when they are organized en masse. At that stage those who have made the revolution are rebels. For example, the sailors at Kronstadt.
So then, there are perhaps in effect some people who for the moment are charged with demonstrating that. There is nothing to say that (7) they will not succeed in doing something, but we do not know what. For the moment, what they are dealing with, is what Freud in Massenpsychologie und Ich-analyse* demonstrates, which is that what the mass produces is idealization, imaginary idealization. It reproduces very precisely the re-emergence of the discourse of the Master.
That is the reason why, when people have tried to associate Freud with Marx – I am not all the same the only one to have this attitude that I am going to tell you about – it makes me laugh, because if there is something precisely that Freud contributes, it is something beyond Marx and specifically something which allows it to be seen why after the effect, the effect delivered by the discourse of Marx, as regards the stability of the discourse of the Master, nothing has changed.
So then, it is a matter of seeing what at the level of the o-object [a-object] that you constitute, namely, from the quarter where it has its incidence in a discourse, what you are offered. This is something that I cannot take any further today, but which I will continue at my next seminar with two terms that I have not yet put forward. These two terms are called impossibility and impotence. They are not the same.
* Mass (mistranslated as Group) Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego : 1921 [1922] : Sigmund Freud, SE XVIII p69-143. [ Massenpsychologie und Ich-analyse] Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud: The Metapsychological Papers, Papers on Technique and others
-P10, Analyticon 2: 4.6.70 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation,
The impossible, I have stated, I, Lacan, the impossible is the real. If you find that this is not sufficiently proved by the fact that to govern, to bring up, to educate, to analyse also – why not, we are not stinting ourselves – is the real. What is at stake, the connection by which science can connect up with something that concerns you, is precisely this, that this impossible is demonstrated as such, I said demonstrated.
I mane that what the questioning about language contributes to us is the following: it allows us to see that here mathematics, the logic which flows from it, once again does not fail us. This is what they demonstrate. It is precisely that we should not lose ourselves = because it is just as well not to lose oneself – in seeking the truth, with catching it in the toils of language, in formalizing it. Mathematical logic teaches us, makes us take the step that there is an impossible to be proved as true in every system whatever it may be, even at a certain level of elevation – one can hardly say that arithmetic is too much – that there is something impossible that demonstrates the true. Here we hold the real.
(8) Do not place your trust in the truth, it has a relationship to what? Not to knowledge certainly but precisely to this real. It was the way to orient oneself towards this real, as long as one did not have any other means. This indeed is the reason why it can only be expressed in a half-saying. Naturally it is there, in its place: this thing that plays the role of truth, in what might be a knowledge, a knowledge put in its place, it is the S1 of the discourse of the Master.
Related texts
Seminar XVII Psychoanalysis upside down/The reverse side of psychoanalysis (1969-1970) : from 26th November 1969 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /Lacan (19691126 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Analyticon – Impromptu No 1 : 3rd December 1969 (Vincennes) : Jacques Lacan. See this site /Lacan (19691203)
Radiophonie : recorded on 9th April 1970, transmitted 5th, 10th, 19th, and 26th June 1970 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /Lacan (19700409 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Interview on the steps of the Pantheon : 13th May 1970 (Paris) : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19700513 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Analyticon 2 – Impromptu Number 2 : Wednesday 4th June 1970 (Vincennes) : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19700604 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Citation
Dossier on the Institutional Debate, An Introduction : 1990 : Joan Copjec on this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Copjec or Index of Other Authors’ Texts)