Performative Jouissance and Analytic Act [1] : 6th October 2022 : Éric Laurent

NOTE, The following are Jacques Lacan’s references to Aristotle in Seminar XV, Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com. Lacan draws out his argument throughout this Seminar. For references consult the French transcription at http://staferla.free.fr /Séminaire 15.

17^th January 1968

-P49 Staferla, pVI 11 Cormac Gallagher, “The fruit of the act”, here is what seems to give its first measure to ethics. I took it up at. one time in commenting on Aristotle’s.

The Ethics to Nicomachus* starts from this: that there is something good at the level of pleasure and that following a correct channel in this register of pleasure will lead us to the conception of the sovereign good.

It is clear that this was, in its way, a sort of act that has its place in the journeying of any act described as philosophical.

* The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, translated by D. P. Chase, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8438/8438-h/8438-h.htm

Possibly, Chapter III, The Magnificent man is like a man of skill, because he can see what is fitting, and can spend largely in good taste; for, as we said at the commencement, the confirmed habit is determined by the separate acts of working, and by its object-matter.

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P50 Staferla, pVI 12 of Cormac Gallagher, Is it not true, on the other hand, that between these two extremes, I am speaking about Aristotle and Kant, the reference to the Other taken as such is the one, also very farcical, which was given at least by a classical form of religious direction? The measure of the act in the eyes of God is supposed to be given by what are called good intentions. Is it possible to initiate a more established path of dupery than that of putting this measure at the principle of the value of the act.

Can the good intention in an act in any way remove for a single instant for us the question of what is its fruit?

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24^th January 1968

P57-58 Staferla, pVII 11 Cormac Gallagher, Being is so superabundant that for us to try to catch ourselves in its precise rails, in this logic which is not a logic at all, about which one cannot in any way and by any right put the sign of emptiness, It is not so easy to construct this logic, you see here what it results from. Let us say, that for an analyst to bring. up terms like that of the person is something excessive, at least to my ears. But if he wants to reassure himself, let him observe that I would define this logic a little bit like one that would remain as close as possible to grammar. That startles you, I hope. So then, Aristotle, quite calmly, huh? Why not?

We must quite simply try to do better. I point out to you that if this logic of Aristotle has remained un-punctured for long centuries up to our own, it is because of the objections that were made to it of being, as they said, a logic which did not notice that it was doing grammar. I admire enormously professors in the university who know that Aristotle did not notice something. He is the greatest naturalist who ever existed. You can still reread his History of animals. It still holds up. It is fabulous. It is the greatest step ever taken in biology. Not that some have not been taken since. In logic also, steps taken precisely starting from grammar. It is still something that we can rack our brains about even after (121) having added to it some very astute things, quantifiers for example. They have only one inconvenience, which is that they are quite untranslatable into language. I am not saying that this does not bring up to date the question on which I took a kind of dogmatic stand, a label, a banner, a slogan: there is no meta-language.

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7^th February 2026

P69 Staferla, pIX 1 of Cormac Gallagher, In effect the last time, I left you with the indication of a logical reference. It is quite certain that at the point that we are at, where the act defines by its cutting edge what is involved in the passage in which the psychoanalyst is instaured* or established, it is quite clear that we cannot but pass again by way of the kind of testing that logical questioning constitutes for us.

Will it be, to take the inaugural reference of Aristotle, at the moment when, as I evoked, he takes the decisive steps from which there is instaured*, as such, the (146) logical category in its formal form [fonnal species]? Is it a matter of an approach with a demonstrative or dialectical intention? The question, as you are going to see, is secondary.

* “Instaured” is a rare or obsolete past-tense verb meaning to renew, restore, or establish something. It comes from the Latin word instaurare.

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P70 Staferla, pIX 2 of Cormac Gallagher, … the handling of what is designated by this term logic see-saws in such a way, a way which truly makes, as

I might say, not always more difficult, but makes us more and more confused before Aristotle’s starting point.

(147) You have to consult his text, and specifically the Organon, at the level of the categories for example, or the Prior Analytics, or the first book of the Topics, to notice how close to our problematic is the thematic of the subject, as he states it. For assuredly, from the first statement, nothing is already more tangible to enlighten us about what, in this subject, is of its nature something that slips away par excellence. Nothing that at the start of the logic is more firmly affirmed as being distinguished from what has been translated, very insufficiently undoubtedly as “substance”, ousia. What is at stake in translating it by substance is clearly seen, in the course of time, to be an excessive slippage in the function of the subject in its first Aristotelian steps, for the term “substance”, which constitutes here an equivocation with what the subject includes in terms of supposition, for the term “substance” to have been so easily put forward.

There is nothing in the ousia in what is -namely, for Aristotle – the individual, of a nature to be able to be or situated in the subject, nor affirmed, namely, nor attributed to the subject.

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P71 Staferla, pIX 3 Cormac Gallagher, The term “turning point” seems to me well enough fixed in the formula that I thought I should give of it, in saying that the subject is very precisely what a signifier represents for another signifier.

This formula has the advantage of re-opening what is eluded in the position of mathematical logic. Namely, the question of what is initial, initiating, in positing any signifier whatsoever, by introducing it as representing the subject. For this is, and this is since Aristotle, what is essential about it and what alone allows there to be situated in its correct place the difference between this first bipartition, the one which differentiates the universal from the particular, and the second bipartition, the one which affirms or which denies. One and the other as you know cross over (148) one another to give the quadripartition of the universal affirmative, the universal negative, and of the particular negative and affirmative, by turns.

The two bipartitions have absolutely no equivalence.

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P73 Staferla, pIX 4-5 Cormac Gallagher, This indeed is why it is necessary for me (150) to accentuate how it is demonstrated- what is already known if one reads Aristotle’s text in an appropriate way- that the universal affirmative and the universal negative in no way contradict one another, that they are both acceptable on condition that we are in this top right hand box. It is also true at the level of this box to state that all the strokes are vertical, or that no stroke is vertical, the two things are true at the same time, something that curiously Aristotle, if my knowledge is correct, failed to recognise.

At the other points of the crucial division you have the instauration of particulars.

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P74 Staferla, pIX 7 Cormac Galagher, But for the moment, the question for us is to know how the psychoanalysand can become a psychoanalyst. How does it happen that, in the most well-grounded way, this qualification is only supported by the task completed by the psychoanalysand. Here indeed we see there being opened up this other dimension, which is one that I already tried to profile before you, about the conjunction of the act and the task. How do the two connect up? We find ourselves here before another form of what created a problem and ended up by being articulated in the Middle Ages. It is not there for nothing this inventio medi, from which there starts with this admirably lively step the Prior Analytics (153) of Aristotle. Namely, the first figure of the middle term, of this middle term about which he explains to us that by being situated as a predicate, it will allow us to connect in a rational fashion this vanishing subject to something which is a predicate. Through the middle term, this connection is possible. Where is the mystery? How does it happen that it appears that something exists which is a middle term and which appears in the first figure as predicate of the major where the subject awaits us, as subject of the minor which is going to allow us to lay hold again of the predicate in question. Is it yes or no, attributable to the subject?

P79 Staferla, pIX 8 Cormac Gallagher, Now let us try to take up again what the psychoanalysand is, this psychoanalysand, who is engaged in this curious task that I described as being supported by his abdication. … But one does not say that-these or those or all of these or all of those are psychoanalysands. I did not use, as you notice, the singular term. This would be still more outrageous. But let us leave the singular to one side, experiencing at this turning point the same repugnance that ensures that Aristotle does not use singular terms in his syllogistics.

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28^th February 1968

Jacques Nassif’s intervention is on Aristotle. It is only available in French at www.Staferla.free.Fr Jacques Lacan comments on this intervention.

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6^th March 1968

P99 Staferla, pXII 1 Cormac Gallagher, I am writing the word tout, twice. They are indeed equivalent. What results from this? That, from the twice-repeated introduction of this identical term at these

two levels, I obtain two propositions of essentially different value. It is not the same thing to say “I don’t know everything about poetry” and “I don’t know anything about poetry”. Between one and the other there is the distance – I am saying it immediately to clarify, since it is necessary, where I want to get to, it is to the signifying distinction, I mean in so far as it can be determined by signifying procedures- between what is called a universal proposition, to express it like (210) Aristotle, and, moreover, also like everything that has been prorogued in logic ever since, and a particular proposition.

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P100 Staferla, pXII 3 Cormac Gallagher, Consequently, our first explanation is not fully satisfying, since it is by something completely opposite, it is by a blocking carried out in the second sentence, the one which realises the universal on this occasion, that there is produced this blocking, this equally ambiguous detaching moreover, the don ‘t not disappearing for all that, to obtain this sense, I am completely out of it as regards poetry.

On the contrary it is where “everything” is joined to “/don’t know” that the first sense is realised. This is well designed to make us reflect on something that (212) involves nothing less than- as I told you already, showing my hand- what is involved in the mystery of the relations between the universal and the particular.

We will try later to say what was the fundamental preoccupation of the one who introduced this distinction into history, namely, Aristotle.

P102 Staferla, pXII 3-4 Cormac Gallagher, So then, I am going to be forced to start from the way in which I for my part think about it, at the level that I think interests you, namely, at the level where this can, be of some use to us.

In Aristotle, everything depends on something that is designated as a sign, which he believes he can allow himself. He allows himself to operate in this way, namely, that if he said that every man is an animal, he can for any useful purpose, if this appears to him to be of some use, extract from it: some man is an animal.

This is what we will call – it is not quite the term that he uses – since what is at stake is a relation that has been qualified as subalternate between the universal and the particular, an operation of subalternation.

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P102 Staferla, pXII 5 Cormac Gallagher, The important thing is that you are able to follow the thread to see where I want to get to, which gives the formula of the universal negative. Namely, what in Aristotle, might be articulated as: All men are wise, a reassuring statement that on this occasion, (215) moreover, is of no importance. What is important to us, is to see the advantage that we may find in articulating this statement differently.

Here, right away, you can note that this universal affirmative will bring into play to support itself nothing less than two negations. It is important for you to see the order in which things are going to be presented. Let us put on the left the Aristotelian forms, the universal affirmative and negative. It is the letters A and E which designate them among Aristotle’s posterity, and the letters I and 0 are the particulars, I being the particular affirmative (all men are wise, some man is wise). [Diagram omitted]

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P103 Staferla, pXII 6 Cormac Gallagher, But you also see that there is no longer a ne, in is not wise. This is how it has to be for who is wise to have a meaning. Or, if you again want to articulate there is a man such that he is wise, this such that is not excessive because you can also put it at the level of the universal: there is no man such that he is not wise. So then, to give the equivalent of our Aristotelian subalternation we had to efface two negations. This is very interesting. Because first of all we can see that a certain use of the double negation is not meant to be resolved into an affirmation, but precisely to allow – according to the sense in which this double negation is used, whether it is added or removed- to assure, the passage from the universal to the particular.

This is striking and makes us ask ourselves what indeed must be said for us to be able, in certain cases, to assimilate the double negation to a return to zero.

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But let us continue to interest ourselves in the property presented by the function we started from, that we have pinpointed, because it is correct, because this is what it corresponds to the quantifying operation. Let us only remove one negation, the first one: there is a man such that he is not wise. There also, I particularise, and in a fashion that corresponds to the particular negative. It is what Aristotle would call some men are not wise – no longer of subalternation but of the opposite subalternation which is diagonal, the opposition between A and 0, from all men are wise to some men are not wise – this is what he calls “contradictory”.

The use of the word contradiction interests us, us analysts.

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pXII 8 Cormac Gallagher, Let us be careful. This not wise may well serve us as a passage to something a little unexpected.

If we restore the “ne” it still works. There is a man such that he is not wise (ne soit pas sage)”, that will still work.

Let us come then to the not wise and let us come back in the diagonal to the A, [diagram not reproduced] the universal affirmative of Aristotle being the quantifying locution: there is no man such that he is not not wise (pas d’homme tel qu ‘il ne soit pas sage). The fact is that this gives a funny sense, all of a sudden. It is the universal negative: they are all not wise.

What could have occurred? This added not, which was perfectly tolerable at (218) the level of the particular negative, here if we put it into what previously was the universal affirmative, which appeared altogether designed to tolerate it just as well, with this not, it swerves towards blackness and I do not know which colour has ‘e’ in the Rimbaud’s sonnet*. But at the Aristotelian level, it is black, it is the universal negative: all of them are not wise.

I am going to tell you right away the lesson we are going to take from this. It is obviously something which makes us put our finger on the fact that the relation of the two ne, as it exists in the fundamental structure of the quantified universal affirmative, which is this formula, there is nothing which does not, has something which suffices in itself. And we have the proof of it in the liberation of this pas which all of a sudden while inoffensive elsewhere, here makes one universal turn into the other.

*Footnote 95, p103 of Staferla, 95 Cf. Arthur Rimbaud : « Voyelles », Paris, Éd. Garnier, 1961, p.110. Dans ce sonnet, la lettre « e » est blanche.

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[pXII 8]This is what allows us to advance and to affirm that the distinction of the quantifying operation, when we give it its rectifying (rectrice) function; a normal function of logical operation, is distinguished from the logic of Aristotle by the following. It substitutes – at the place where the ousia, the essence, the ontological is not eliminated, at the place of the grammatical subject – the subject that interests us qua divided subject. Namely, the pure and simple division as such of the subject in so far as he speaks, of the stating subject qua distinct from the subject of the statement.

The unit in which this presence of the divided subject is presented, is nothing other than this conjunction of two, negations.

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pXII 10-11 of Cormac Gallagher, In other words, what is at stake, as regards logic, I mean formal, is always this. What can be drawn, and up to what point, from a statement, namely, to get a (221) reliable statement. It is indeed from there also that Aristotle started.

Aristotle, of course, let us not say that he was at the dawn of thinking, because what is proper to thinking is precisely never to have had a dawn. It was already very old and it knew something. In particular it knew that of course there would be no question of knowing, if there were no language. That is not enough, of course, because knowledge does not depend only on language. But what was important for it, was to know precisely – because thinking did not date from yesterday- what could make of a stating, something necessary. There is no way of yielding on this point. The first ananke is the ananke of discourse.

The formal logic of Aristotle was the first step in knowing what properly and distinguished as such, at the level of the statement, could be formulated as giving this source – which does not mean that it was the only one, of course – its necessity for stating. Namely, that here there is no way of retreating. Moreover, it is the sense that the term episteme had at that time, it is that of a stating about the distinction between episteme and doxa is nothing other than a distinction situated at the level of discourse.

It is the difference between what is for us science, to go in the same direction, namely, between a strictly reliable statement, and indeed it is certain for us, who have made some original contributions to what is involved in the statement, and in fact in no other place than in mathematics. These laws of the statement, to be reliable, have become, still become every day more and more exigent and, in this respect, do not fail to show their limits. I mean that it is in the whole measure that we have taken, in logic, some steps, among which of course is the one that I am presenting to you here. But it is the original step, that interests us. Why? Because we analysts find ourselves beyond this attempt at capturing stating by the networks of the statement. But what luck that the work has been pushed so far elsewhere, if through this there are given to us some rules to carefully map out the fissure.

When I state that the unconscious is structured as a language, that does not mean that I know it, since, what I completed it with, is properly this one (on) on which I put the emphasis and which is the one which gives vertigo to all the (222) psychoanalysts. The fact is that one knows nothing about it. One, the subject supposed to know, the one Who must always be there to make us comfortable.

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P106 Staferla, pXII 12 Cormac Gallagher, It is not a matter, as he said, and as he said in a legitimate fashion in the perspective of what he was trying to contribute as an answer to this discourse, of a “new negation” which is supposed to be the one that I am producing. May heaven preserve me from giving again to anyone whomsoever with the introduction of a novelty the opportunity of conjuring away what is at stake. Which is indeed the complete contrary of this thing that is plugged up because it is something that cannot be plugged. May heaven grant that I do not in any way give to the psychoanalyst a renewed alibi to the one that he has by being in the analytic discourse. Namely, in the proper and Aristotelian sense, his upokeimemon, his subjective support certainly, but in so far as he himself assumes its division.

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13^th March 1968

P103 Staferla, pXIII 3 Cormac Gallagher, Psychoanalysis let us start then from what is for the moment our only firm point: that it takes place with a psychoanalyst. “With” must be understood here in the instrumental sense, or at least I am proposing that you should understand it in that way.

How does it happen that there exists something that cannot be situated except with a psychoanalyst. As Aristotle says, not at all that one should say, he assures us, “the soul thinks” but “man thinks with his soul” indicating explicitly that this is the sense that should be given to the word “with”, namely, the instrumental sense. A strange thing, when I made an allusion somewhere to the Aristotelian reference, things seem rather to have brought effects of confusion to the reader, for want no doubt of recognising the Aristotelian reference.

It is with a psychoanalyst that psychoanalysis penetrates into this something that is at stake.

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P111 Staferla, pXIII 7-8 Cormac Gallagher,

This is only designed, moreover, to indicate to you in the margin, and to show you what the necessity of this hollow corresponds to, which is the following. That somewhere there deserves to be isolated the term which logically, at the point of adequate advancement of logic that we are at, gives body to the term all as being the principle, the base starting from which, through the simple operation of diversified negation, there can be formulated all the first positions defined contributed by Aristotle. Namely that, for example, there is to be put (233) here, in the form ofthis vertical line, the negation, [diagram omitted] that it will be true for every man, that man is not wise, namely, that we will incarnate the universal negative.

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P111 Staferla, pXIII 8-9 Cormac Gallagher, You sense some artifice in articulating things in this way. Namely, that the fact you sense as artifice, for example the appearance of the last particular described as negative, highlights that in the original logic, that of Aristotle, something is masked from us, precisely by implying these subjects to be a collection, whatever they may be, whether by grasping it in extension or in comprehension. That the nature of the subject is not to be sought in something that is ontological, the subject functioning in a way itself as a sort of first predicate, which it is not. What the essence of the subject is, as it appears in logical functioning, starts whole and entire from the first writing, the one that posits the subject as affirming itself of its nature as all. For every m, man; the formula: “man is wise” is true. And it is starting from that, in accordance in a way with a deduction the inverse to the one that I highlighted before you the last time, that existence, comes to light and specifically the only one that is important for us, (235) the one that the particular affirmative supports: there is a man who is wise. It depends, and through the intermediary of a double negation, on the affirmation of the universal. Just as the last time, in presenting the same thing to you (for we are still dealing with quantifiers), it was the double negation applied to existence that I showed you could express the function of all. That the function, “C F_x, I said could be expressed be reversed into $C F_x. No x exists which renders the F_x function false, namely a double minus,- $C -F_x.

This presence of the double negation is what for us, creates a problem. Since in truth, the connection with it is only made in a enigmatic fashion with what is involved in the function of the all, because this fact again of course that the linguistic nuance, of the function opposite to pan or of pantes in Greek, is opposed to the function of olos, just as omnis is opposed to totus. It is, nevertheless, not nothing that Aristotle himself, as regards what is involved in the universal affirmative, says it is posited kath olon* “for the whole”, and the ambiguity in French remains unaffected, because of the confusion between two signifiers, between which fundamentally has some relation, namely, this function of the all (du tout).

* καθ᾽ ὅλον [kath’holon]104, Footnote 104, p111 Staferla, 104 Le grec est « kata holou eipôn aretès peri ho ti estin», mot à mot : « ayant en vue la totalité dire au sujet d’aretès quoi est ». Sur l’expression ho ti estin, voir la note 17 sur 71b3-4 et la note 18 sur 74c5-6. La formulation utilisée ici introduit une autre expression, qui fera fortune chez Aristote, « kata holou ». C’est la seule utilisation de cette expression dans tous les dialogues. On trouve les formes légèrement différentes, avec kata et l’accusatif holon au lieu du génitif holou employé ici, en République, III, 392d9 (où Socrate dit que, pour mieux faire comprendre sa critique des poètes, il ne va pas traiter le problème kata holon, « selon la totalité », c’est-à-dire « en général », mais en « prenant une partie », c’est-à-dire, sur des exemples) ; en Parménide, 138e6-7 (kata holon) et 144e9 (kata to holon), dans les discussions de Parménide sur l’un en rapport avec les concepts de tout et de parties ; et en Timée, 40a7 (où il est question de l’univers créé de manière à être « kosmon… kath’ holon », c’est-à-dire, « ordonné dans sa totalité ») et 55e7 ( pour parler d’un des triangles élémentaires qui est « plus stable kata merè kai kath’ holon », c’est-à-dire « selon la partie et selon le tout »). Mais dans aucun de ces autres emplois, l’expression n’a la connotation quasi « technique » qu’elle a ici, anticipant le sens qu’elle prendra chez Aristote, sous la forme agrégée en un seul mot, katholou, qui deviendra pour lui le terme de choix pour désigner l’« universel » par opposition au particulier (note reprise de Bernard Suzanne, Ménon, 77a5-80d1)

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27^th March 1968

P129 Staferla, pX 9-10 Cormac Gallagher, It is quite obvious that we are already a little oriented, thanks to my discourse, not thanks to my language, thanks to my discourse. Here, these are subjects that we find at first sight, designated in Greek as what is usually called the grammatical subject, the subject of the sentence. It is on this occasion the subject that one can quite well introduce into propositional logic and rediscover the Aristotelian formula of predicative logic with the help of tiny changes:

all men are loving to women (sont aimant la femme)

all psychoanalysts are desiring to know (sont desirant savoir)

The interest of the matter is that these are propositions, which because of the presence of the all fall under the heading of what I introduced this year, and not without reason, as the implication of what is called the logic of quantification.

It is obvious that to write all men or to write all psychoanalysts, is a way that is distinct from the one that is going to be marked in the two other articulations underneath, by implying what I always put in question to distinguish it severely, by implying the stating subject in the statement.

This is obviously why the logic of quantification interests us, it is at the level of what is called the universal.

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