Note: There is a discrepancy in where the capital letter is put in the title between Cormac Gallagher’s translation and the published French version. The version given by Cormac Gallagher makes more sense to me, though there is an argument for the other way round.
This post was revised October 2023, after receipt of the official Bruce Fink translation, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller.
CONTENTS OF THIS POST
A Note on the translations
B. Session dates and references in Cormac Gallagher’s translation
C. Chapter headings given by Jacques-Alain Miller, date of the session & page number in Bruce Fink’s translation (2023), edited by Jacques-Alain Miller.
D. Commentaries
E. Published in French
F. Citations
A Note on the translations
Seminar XVI 7th May 1969
Opening paragraph from Staferla, the transcription from original tapes –
« L’angoisse, ai-je dit dans un temps, n’est pas sans objet ». Ceci veut dire que ce quelque chose, qu’on appelle objectif à partir d’une certaine conception du sujet, qu’il y a quelque chose d’analogue à répondre à l’angoisse, quelque chose – c’est ainsi qu’on s’exprime dans la psychanalyse – « dont l’angoisse est signal dans le sujet ».
Voilà le sens de ce « pas sans » de la formule qui ne dévoile rien d’autre que : il ne manque pas ce terme,
ce « quelque chose d’analogue à l’objet ». Mais ce « pas sans » ne le désigne pas, il présuppose seulement l’appui du fait du manque.
Or toute évocation du manque suppose institué un ordre symbolique :
plus qu’une Loi seulement, mais une accumulation, et encore numérotée, un rangement, je l’ai souligné en son temps.
NOTE : As in translations of Seminar X (See Seminar X The Anguish (L’angoisse) (1962-1963) : begins 14th November 1962 : Jacques Lacan at www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (19621114), l’angoisse is mistranslated by both Cormac Gallagher & Bruce Fink as anxiety in this text, Seminar XVI. The translation should be ‘anguish’ : Anguish (not anxiety) as I once said is not without an object. They both omit the definite article, the.
Everytime, in the Lacanian world, anxiety is used in English translation, the original French should be checked. If Jacques Lacan is using l’angoisse, then it is translated by ‘anguish’.
In Sigmund Freud’s texts, the use of anxiety in English translation, should be checked against the original German (see www.Freud2Lacan.com). If Angst is the term Freud used, then it is recommended that ‘angst’ gets substituted for ‘anxiety’.
B. Session dates and references in Cormac Gallagher’s translation
Published www.LacaninIreland.com /Seminars
Note : All sessions took place on a Wednesday:
1968
1. 13th November 1968
Reference, pI 8 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation refers to : Kant with Sade : April 1963 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (Index or 19630401) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net/Lacan
2. 20th November 1968
3. 27th November 1968
4. 4th December 1968
5. 11th December 1968
1969
6. 8th January 1968
7. 15th January 1969
8. 22nd January 1969
9. 29th January 1969
10. 5th February 1969
11. 12th February 1969
12. 26th February 1969
13. 5th March 1969
14. 12th March 1969
15. 19th March 1969
Jacques Nassif’s intervention is included in Staferla & not in Cormac Gallagher’s translation or Bruce Fink/Jacques-Alain Miller’s official publication.
16. 26th March 1969
17. 23rd April 1969
18. 30th April 1969
19. 7th May 1969
Opening paragraph from Staferla –
« L’angoisse, ai-je dit dans un temps, n’est pas sans objet ». Ceci veut dire que ce quelque chose, qu’on appelle objectif à partir d’une certaine conception du sujet, qu’il y a quelque chose d’analogue à répondre à l’angoisse, quelque chose – c’est ainsi qu’on s’exprime dans la psychanalyse – « dont l’angoisse est signal dans le sujet ».
Voilà le sens de ce « pas sans » de la formule qui ne dévoile rien d’autre que : il ne manque pas ce terme,
ce « quelque chose d’analogue à l’objet ». Mais ce « pas sans » ne le désigne pas, il présuppose seulement l’appui du fait du manque.
Or toute évocation du manque suppose institué un ordre symbolique :
plus qu’une Loi seulement, mais une accumulation, et encore numérotée, un rangement, je l’ai souligné en son temps.
Cormac Gallagher’s translation, pXIX 1 : The anguish (CG gives Anxiety), as I once said, is not without an object. This means that this something called objective, starting from a certain conception of the subject, that there is something analogous corresponding to anguish (CG gives anxiety, something – this is how it is expressed in psychoanalysis – of which anguish (CG gives anxiety) is the signal in the subject. This is the sense of this “not without” does not designate it; it simply presupposes the support of the fact of the lack. Now any evocation of lack supposes an established symbolic order, more than simply a law, an accumulation, and again a numbered, ordered one, as I underlined at the time.
NOTE : As in translations of Seminar X (See www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (19621114)), l’angoisse is mistranslated by both Cormac Gallagher & Bruce Fink as anxiety. The translation should be ‘anguish’ : The anguish, as I once said, is not without an object. Everytime, in the Lacanian world, anxiety is used in English translation, the original French should be checked. In Sigmund Freud’s texts, the use of anxiety in English translation, should be checked against the original German (see www.Freud2Lacan.com). If Angst is the term Freud used, then it is suggested that ‘angst’ gets substituted for ‘anxiety’. the omission of the definite article, the, is cause for concern.
20. 14th May 1969
21. 21st May 1969
22. 4th June 1969
23. 11th June 1969 appears to be missing. The transcription from tape recording, in French, unedited, is available at https://ecole-lacanienne.net/bibliolacan/stenotypies-version-j-l-et-non-j-l/ /1968-1969 D’UN À L’AUTRE/JACQUES LACAN at https://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1969.06.11.pdf or from www.Staferla.free.fr or from www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /texts by request
24. 18th June 1969
25. 25th June 1969
C. Chapter headings
given by Jacques-Alain Miller, date of the session & page number in Bruce Fink’s translation (2023), edited by Jacques-Alain Miller.
Published as ‘From an Other to the other, Book XVI, Jacques Lacan’ – Polity Press, September 2023.
CONTENTS
Figures pvii
Translator’s Note pix
Translator’s Note
INTRODUCTION
I. From Surplus Value to Surplus Jouissance (13th November 1968) p3
On the board
THE INCONSISTENCYOF THE OTHER
II. The Knowledge Market and Truth (on) Strike (20th November 1968) p19
Structure is real(ity)
On a discourse that has an impact
Language and logic
The worker’s frustration
Renouncing jouissance
III. Topology of the Other (27th November 1968) p32
Ordered pairs
IV. Facts and What is Said [le fait et le dit] (4th December 1968) p48
Laughter and elision
There is no theory of the unconscious
Suffering and truth
“I am what I is”
The ordered pair revisited
V. “I Am What I Is” (11th December 1969) p62
The assujet
“It’s raining”
The Other’s inconsistency
VI. Toward a Practice of Logic in Psychoanalysis (8th January 1969) p74
Freud is watching me
From linguistics to logic
A [kind of] writing without equivocation
Form and content
From the pot to the wager
ON PASCAL’S WAGER
VII. Introduction to Pascal’s Wager (15th January 1969) p89
Modern Morality means giving up pleasures
Pleasure from Aristotle to Freud
Once it’s wagered, it’s lost
Does “I” exist?
VIII. The One and Little a (22nd January 1969) p101
Desire and Grace
Marks and losses
How can we depict the effect of loss?
Measuring the Other’s field
On masochistic jouissance
IX. From Fibonacci to Pascal (29th January 1969) p116
Fibonacci series
First matrix of the wager
Second matrix
The “getting-off-on-the-mother”
The Father has been dead all along
X. The Three Matrices (5th February 1969) p131
Two writings
Philosophy or repetition
The superego and Durcharbeitung according to Bergler
XI. Truth’s Retardation and the Administration of Knowledge (12th February 1969) p143
Students write
The real qua abutment of knowledge
Lies as the secretion of truth
The Other identified with a
JOUISSANCE: ITS FIELD
XII. “The Freud Event” (26th February 1969) p161
Michel Foucault is perfectly well informed
Ethics revisited
Pleasure, hallucinations, and dreams
Intuition and formalization
The truth about knowledge
XIII. On Jouissance Posited as an Absolute (5th March 1969) p175
“Hot seat” civilization
Knowledge on the sexual horizon
The torpor of sexuality
The logical structure of jouissance
The One lies
Knowledge/(Truth – knowledge) = truth/knowledge
XIV. The Two Sides of Sublimation (12th March 1969) p187
Gilles Deleuze’s elegance
Logic and biology
The Other as a terrain scrubbed clean of jouissance
There’s no such thing as a sexual relationship (Probably a translation of « il n’y a pas d’acte sexuel » (p102 Staferla))
The logistics of defense
Woman qua sexual Thing
A love beyond narcissism
The anatomy of the vacuole
Tickling the Thing from the inside
On the board
XV. High Fever (19th March 1969) p202
Jacques Nassif’s intervention is included in Staferla & not in Cormac Gallagher’s translation or Bruce Fink/Jacques-Alain Miller’s official publication.
XVI. Structures of Perversion (26th March 1969) p212
Capturing jouissance
The object is extimate
From the barred Other to little a
The pervert as a defender of the faith
Exhibitionism and voyeurism, sadism and masochism
JOUISSANCE: ITS REAL
XVII. Thought (as) Censorship (23rd April 1969) p229
Terrorism and freedom of thought
“How can we replace that?”
From Hegel to Freud
“I don’t know – what I think”
The effects of our science
On the board
|
Truth on the hither side of thinking, knowledge beyond? (Cormac Gallagher’s translation) Censorship Sense-cens (CG) or Tax [cens] on common sense (BF) Diagram of the Klein Bottle, with Truth inside? On the left & Knowledge on right. |
XVIII. Inside Outside (30th April 1969) p242
Analysis of idealism
Optics and representation
Spot, lack, and camera obscura
The object restored to the Other
Hommelle and famil
XIX. Knowledge and Power (7th May 1969) p255
– A Translation Correction
Opening paragraph of 7th May 1969 from Staferla –
« L’angoisse, ai-je dit dans un temps, n’est pas sans objet ». Ceci veut dire que ce quelque chose, qu’on appelle objectif à partir d’une certaine conception du sujet, qu’il y a quelque chose d’analogue à répondre à l’angoisse, quelque chose – c’est ainsi qu’on s’exprime dans la psychanalyse – « dont l’angoisse est signal dans le sujet ».
P255 of Bruce Fink’s translation (2023) : Anxiety (correct translation The anguish), as I said once upon a time, is not without an object. What did “not without” mean in that formulation? It simply meant that, corresponding to anxiety (correct translation ‘anguish’) there is something that is analogous to what is said to be objective on the basis of a certain conception of the subject. “Not without” does not designate a specific thing that is analogous to the object, which anxiety (Correct translation ‘anguish’), according to psychoanalysis, signals in the subject;
NOTE : As in translations of Seminar X (See www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (19621114)), l’angoisse is mistranslated by both Cormac Gallagher & Bruce Fink as anxiety. The translation should be ‘anguish’. Everytime, in the Lacanian world, anxiety is used in English translation, the original French should be checked. In Sigmund Freud’s texts, the use of anxiety in English translation, should be checked against the original German (see www.Freud2Lacan.com). If Angst is the term Freud used, then it is suggested that ‘angst’ gets substituted for ‘anxiety’ in James Strachey’s translations. In both Freud and Lacan translations, the omission of the definite article, the, is cause for concern.
The disjunction between knowledge and power
From One to 1
Object a appears when we count
A takes the form of a
Anacliticism revisited
Phobia as a central hub
XX. Knowledge and Jouissance (14th May 1969) p267
The conjunction of knowledge and jouissance
The Other and its “taking the form of”
The four effacings of the subject
Person and subject
The foreclosure of jouissance
XXI. Responses to Aporias (21st May 1969) p283
The history of a belle époque pen
An alibi based on the impossibility in inadequacy
Biography in psychoanalysis
Choosing between impossibility and impotence
Hysteria and obsession
JOUISSANCE: ITS LOGIC
XXII. Paradoxes of Psychoanalytic Action (4th June 1969) p295
The two Gods
The nonexistence of the subject-supposed-to-know
Only repetition is interpretable
The psychoanalyst as a scapegoat
Comparison with masochistic practices
XXIII. How to Generate Surplus Jouissance Logically (11th June 1969) p308
On the empty set
On the one in the Other
Hegel with Pascal
The slave’s jouissance
The body purified of jouissance
XXIV. On the One-Extra (18th June 1969) p325
On the intersubjectivity of the one-extra
The perverse statue
Object a is structure
The master and woman
Coalescence and cut
EVACUATION
XXV. The Ravishing Ignominy of the Hommelle (25th June 1969) p341
The master’s accession to knowledge
Alma mater
The student’s servile position
A little permutational system
Distributing diplomas
APPENDICES
Fibonacci as Used by Lacan, by Luc Miller p355
Reader’s Guide, by Jacques-Alain Miller p360
Dossier on the Evacuation p367
Index p371
D. Commentaries:
-The Other without Other : Sunday 19th May 2013 (Athens) : Jacques-Alain Miller
See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Miller) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Miller)
Note : there may be a problem with the two uses of Other both having capitals.
-The Ordinary Topology of Jacques Lacan : 1986 : Jeanne Lafont. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Lafont) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Lafont)
E. Published in French:
Official text : Le Séminaire XVI : D’un autre à l’Autre : Jacques Lacan : Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller : Seuil : January 28, 2006
For unedited transcriptions from tape-recordings, put ‘Le Séminaire XVI Jacques Lacan’ in your search engine, & go down the list until you find www.Staferla.free.fr /D’un Autre à l’autre. Then click on the link. This link probably will not work http://staferla.free.fr/S16/S16%20D%27UN%20AUTRE…%20.pdf for security reasons.
OR www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Texts by Request
F. Citations:
-The Other without Other : Sunday 19th May 2013 (Athens) : Jacques-Alain Miller
See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Miller) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Miller). Quote from Miller : If I simplify the formulation, what does the Other of the Other mean? It means, on the one hand, that language obeys a law, that language is dominated by the law, that there is a law of language. On the other, it installs the big Other as a set of signifiers among which there is the signifier of the Other and there one cannot fail to recognise echoes of the logicist notion (I did not say logistical) of Bertrand Russell who, as you know, distinguished between catalogues that contain themselves and catalogues that do not – which, in fact, makes the big Other a set which contains its own signifier. At the time that concerns us, Lacan had not yet exploited this Russellian resource that his concept of the Other involves – but a large part of his seminar XVI, D’un Autre à l’Autre develops precisely this point, with exclusive reference to Bertrand Russell and to the paradoxes which can arise when one tries to produce a catalogue of all catalogues which do not contain themselves. In so doing, Lacan exploits these paradoxes for the analytic discourse.
Seminar XVI 13th November 1968
– An interpretation of the critique of patriarchy : 10th March 2023 : Clothilde Leguil
Circulated from: Pipol 1,1 Subject: [Pipol 11]Nobodaddy 6 le 10 mars 2023, Date: 10 March 2023 at 06:33:57 GMT. Towards Pipol XI Clinic and Critique of Patriarchy, 1st & 2nd July 2023 (Brussels) See https://www.pipol11.eu/en/2023/03/09/an-interpretation-of-the-critique-of-patriarchy-clotilde-leguil/
Quote from Leguil’s text : Let’s advance further into the successive versions of this revolt against the power of fathers, tutors and masters. In the 20th century, it is still authority that is rejected, the authority of tradition embodied by masters. The May 1968 movement in France is inscribed in the vein of the « critique of paternalism ». It was a revolt against authority and a revolt against prohibitions, but no longer in order to assert a « dare to think for yourself », but as a demand for jouissance. We know that Lacan will be attentive to the lure of the motto « il est interdit d’interdire », when it’s about aspiring to a surplus-enjoyment [plus-de-jouir][4].
Notes
– « il est interdit d’interdire »
From Wikipedia : Il est interdit d’interdire ! (meaning “it is forbidden to forbid”) is a French aphorism first used on an RTL broadcast by Jean Yanne in the form of a mocking joke.[1] This sentence later became one of the slogans of May 1968.[2][3]
References
[1] “Jean Yanne – Video”. Dailymotion. 2008-03-28. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
[2] Arnaud, Nicolas (2015-08-20). Le Bac Histoire Pour les Nuls, nouvelle édition (in French). edi8. ISBN 9782754081597.
[3] “LES MURS PARLENT”. Le Monde.fr (in French). Retrieved 2018-09-30.
From Seminar XX 15th July 1973 : See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721118 or the index) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan : pXII 3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : There is some relationship of being that cannot know itself. It is that whose structure I examine in my teaching in so far as this knowledge which I have just said is impossible, is thereby prohibited (interdit). This is where I play on equivocation. On the equivocation which from this impossible knowledge tells us that it is censured, forbidden; it is not so if you write this inter-dit properly, with a hyphen between the inter and the dit. The fact is that it is said between the words, between the lines, and that this is to expose the sort of real to which it allows us access.
It is a matter of showing where the putting into form of this metalanguage which is not and which I make ex-sist, is going.
– when it’s about aspiring to a surplus-enjoyment [plus-de-jouir][4].
[4] Seminar XVI 13th November 1968 : pI 6-9 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Quote pI 7-8 : No newer than labour was in the production of merchandise, is the renunciation of enjoyment (jouissance), whose relation to labour I do not have to define any further. Since, from the beginning and quite contrary to what Hegel says, or seems to say, it is what constitutes the master who clearly intends to make of it the principle of his power. What is new is that there is a discourse that articulates this renunciation and which makes appear in it – for this is the essence of the analytic discourse – what I would call the function of the surplus enjoying (plus de jouir). This function appears because discourse occurs, because what it demonstrates in the renunciation of enjoyment is an effect of discourse itself. To accentuate things, it must be supposed that in the field of the Other, there is this market, if you wish, which adds up its merits, its values, the organisation of choices, of preferences which implies an ordinal, indeed cardinal structure. Discourse holds the means of enjoying in so far as it implies the subject. There would be no reason of subject, in the sense that one can say reasons of state, if there were not a correlative in the market of the Other, which is that a surplus enjoying is established that is captured by some people.
A discourse must be pushed very far to demonstrate how the surplus enjoying depends on stating, is therefore produced by discourse, so that it appears as an effect. But in fact this is not something very new to your ears if you have read me, because it is the object of my writing on ‘Kant with Sade’* in which the proof is given of the total reduction of this surplus enjoying to the act of applying to the subject the term o of the phantasy, through which the subject can be posited as cause of itself in desire.
* Kant with Sade : April 1963 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (Index or 19630401) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
1969
Seminar XVI 26th February 1969
– Alienation and Separation in Seminar XI : 1st July 1990 (Paris) : Éric Laurent
See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Index or Laurent) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent
Laurent mentions Lacan’s comments (Seminar XI : 27th May 1964) to a lecture by Michel Foucault on ‘What is an author?’. Foucault’s lecture is available on the internet, but not I think in English. See Seminar XVI where an entire session is given to discussing this work. :
Probably Seminar XVI 26th February 1969 : pXII 2 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation – This, in a first attempt at an initial drafting that I tried to give of what new things are contributed by what I am stating in the way that seems to me to be the most rigorous, by the Freud event (l’événement Freud). I now have, at the date that we are at, the satisfaction of seeing for example as regards what is involved in the function of an author like Freud, I would say that a very broad minded society finds itself in a position of being able to measure his originality and in connection with him, as Michel Foucault did for example last Saturday, in a sort of evil place called the Société de Philosophie, in posing the question “What is an author?”. And this led him to highlight a certain number of terms that deserve to be stated in connection with such a question, what is an author? What is the function of the name of an author? It was really, at the level of a semantic interrogation properly speaking that he found the means of highlighting the originality of this function and its situation closely internal to discourse. This involves, of course, a putting into question on this occasion, an effect of splitting, of tearing apart of what is involved in it for everyone, namely, for what is called the society of fine minds or the republic of letters, of this relationship to discourse. And whether Freud, in this respect, did not play a capital role, that moreover the author in question, Michel Foucault, not only accentuated but properly speaking put at the high point of his whole articulation. In a word, “The function of the return to…” he put three dots after it, in the little announcement that he had made of his project of questioning “What is an author?”. “The return to…” was found at the end, and I must say by that very fact I considered myself as having been invited, there being no one after all, I our day who, more than me, has given weight to “return to…” in connection with a return to Freud. Moreover he highlighted it very well and showed how perfectly well informed he was about the very special sense, the key point that this return to Freud constitutes, compared to everything that is currently a slippage, an alteration, a profound revision of the function of the author, especially of the literary author. And of what in short is provided by this circle in terms of a critical function which, after all, there is no reason to be astonished in our day lags behind, or backwards, with respect to what is happening. Something that in other times, a critical function thought it could pinpoint with this bizarre term that undoubtedly none of those who are in the forefront of it accept but by which we now find ourselves affected as it were by a bizarre label that has been stuck on our backs without our consent, structuralism.
Seminar XVI 5th March 1969
– 5th March 1969, pVIII 5 of Cormac Gallagher, on p149 of “There is no sexual relation” What does it mean? Clinical Consequences of Lacan’s Formulae of Sexuation : 28th September 2013 (Dublin) : Patrick Monribot. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Monribot)
– Attentat Sexuelle – Sexual Assault : 28th May 2020 `: Éric Zuliani,
From Argument – Part 2, 50th Study Days of the École de la Cause Freudienne , translated by Peggy Papada, Circulated by the New Lacanian School Messenger, Published https://www.amp-nls.org/nls-messager/lro-whats-up-wap-sexual-assault-50th-study-days-of-the-ecf-argument-part-2-by-eric-zuliani/ This is no longer on-line. For a copy contact Julia Evans.
Quote from Zuliani: The contemporary questions of feminist movements – including #metoo- on the violence towards women and the denunciation of a “rape culture” for example, are addressed to men and remain to be explored. The Lacanian orientation can become its addressee. In 1969 Lacan gives an indication which can guide us (in bold)
5th March 1969, pXIII 11-12 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : This position in logical unveiling starts from an experience whose correlation is perfectly tangible at every level of analytic experience. I mean that it is always from a beyond of enjoyment as an absolute that all the articulated determinations of what is involved in desire logically find their correct place. This reaches a degree of consistency in the statements that refutes all the out-of-datedness linked to the randomness of origins. It is not because the hysterics were there at the start through an historical accident that the whole affair was able to take its place. It is because they were at the right point where the incidence of a word could highlight this hollow which is the consequence of the fact that enjoyment plays here the function of being outside the limits of the game. It is because as Freud says, the enigma of what a woman wants is there, which is an altogether displaced way of pinpointing what is involved, on this occasion, about her place, which takes on its value from what a man wants. That the whole theory of analysis, as is sometimes said, has developed along an androcentric channel, is certainly not the fault of men, as is believed. It is not because they are (169) dominant, in particular, it is because they have lost their way and that from then on, it is only women, and especially hysterical women who understand something about it.
____________________________
– Metamorphosis & Extraction of the Object a in the Pragmatics of the Cure : 16th March 2008 (Ghent, Belgium) : Éric Laurent
See this site /by date or 5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Authors) & www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent (March 2008) p15 of Laurent’s text quotes 5th March 1969 : “The functioning of medicine mimes the organic… some organs of the body, in fact diversely ambiguous and difficult to grasp, since it is too clear that some are only scraps, find themselves placed in a function of instrumental support. Seminar XVI 5th March 1969”
The Problem
The phrase ‘The functioning of medicine mimes the organic’ does not appear in the Staferla version (http://staferla.free.fr/S16/S16%20D’UN%20AUTRE…%20.pdf or search on ‘Séminaire 16, Jacques Lacan’) or in Cormac Gallagher’s translation from unedited tapes (www.LacaninIreland.com/Seminars). Further I do not have access to p206 of Seuil 2006. Also, the second part of the quote (2006) does not match what Staferla or Cormac Gallagher gives.
Seminar XVI 5th March 1969, pXIII 4-5 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, p101 of Staferla : And it is indeed because of this that some organs of the body that are moreover ambiguous in different ways, hard to grasp, because it is too obvious that some are only waste products, are found to be placed in this function of instrumental support.
Conclusion
The two versions seem to me to give different meanings. I suggest that the basis for the difference is that Seuil 2006 & Bruce Fink’s translation (2023) is edited, whereas Staferla & Cormac Gallagher work from tapes or transcripts of tapes. Julia Evans
Seminar XVI 5th March 1969 p101 of Staferla
Bien sûr, le domaine n’est plus limitrophe et c’est bien de ce fait que quelques organes, d’ailleurs diversement ambigus, malaisés à saisir, du corps – puisqu’il est trop évident que certains n’en sont que les déchets – se trouvent placés en cette fonction de support instrumental. Alors une question s’ouvre : comment pouvons-nous définir cette satisfaction ?
Internet translation : Of course, the domain is no longer borderline and it is indeed because of this fact that some organs, moreover diversely ambiguous, difficult to grasp, of the body – since it is too obvious that some of them are only the waste – find themselves placed in this function of instrumental support. Then a question opens: how can we define this satisfaction?
Seminar XVI 5th March 1969 pXIII 4-5 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : All of this is not a reason for psychoanalysis to be used in any way to contest – because this is what is at stake – the well-foundedness of the transmission of any knowledge whatsoever, not even its own. Because after all it discovered something, however mythical its formulation, it discovered what in other registers is called the means of production, of what? of a satisfaction. It discovered that there was something articulatable and articulated, something that I pinpointed, that I exposed as montages, and literally not being able to conceive of itself otherwise, that it calls drives. And this only has meaning-which means that it does not present them as such-in as far as on occasion it is satisfying, and that, when one sees them functioning, that implies that it brings satisfaction with it. When, from the angle of a theoretical articulation, it exposes in behaviour the functioning of oral drives, anal drives, and of others again, scotophilic or sado-masochistic drives, it [pXIII 5]is indeed to say that something is being satisfied and it is self-evident that it cannot be designated otherwise than as what is underneath, a subject, and upokeimenon, whatever division must necessarily result for (164) it, because here it is on the subject of a functioning instrument, an organon. The term is used here less with an anatomical accent, a prolongation, the more or less animated natural appendix of a body, than properly in its original sense, where Aristotle, uses it in logic as an apparatus, as an instrument. Naturally, the domain is no longer limitrophe. And it is indeed because of this that some organs of the body that are moreover ambiguous in different ways, hard to grasp, because it is too obvious that some are only waste products, are found to be placed in this function of instrumental support. So then a question is opened up. How can we define this satisfaction? We have to believe that there must here be something, all the same, that is not working because what we spend our time on, with regard to these montages, is dismantling them. Does that mean that the pure and simple dismantling implies in itself, as such, in the foreground, that it is curative? If that was how things were, things might have gone a little quicker, and we would perhaps have covered the whole area a long time ago! If we put forward the function of fixation as essential, it is indeed because the affair is not as easy as that. And that what we have to retain in the psychoanalytic field is perhaps in effect that there is something that is inscribed as its horizon, and that this is the sexual. And that it is in function of this horizon, maintained as such, that the drives are inserted into their function as system.
Seminar XVI 12th March 1969
– The Seminar of Barcelona on Die Wege der Symptombildung : probably Autumn 1996 : Jacques-Alain Miller
See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Miller or Index of texts) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Miller). Quote from Miller, ‘we already have the place for which Lacan used the word extimité’. : 12th March 1969 : pXIV 9 – 10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : I ought to recall here what I developed at length in a year that I evoked at one of our last encounters under the title of the Ethics of Psychoanalysis. It articulates that the very dialectic of pleasure, namely, what it involved in terms of a level of stimulation that is at once sought and avoided, a correct level of a threshold, implies the centrality of a forbidden zone, let us say, because the pleasure would be too intense. This centrality is what I designate as the field of enjoyment, enjoyment itself being defined as everything relating to the distribution of pleasure in the body. This distribution, its inner limit, is what conditions what at that time and of course with more words, more illustrations than I can give here, what I put forward, I designated as a vacuole, as this prohibition at the centre that constitutes, in short, what is nearest to us, while at the same time being outside us. It would be necessary to make up the word “extimate, extime [extimité]” to designate what is at stake.
Seminar XVI : 19th March 1969
– Shame, an old-fashioned affect? : November 2009 (Paris) : Jean-Luc Monnier
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Quote from Monnier : Footnote 18 Lacan, J., Le séminaire, Livre XVI, D’un Autre à I’autre, Paris, Seuil, 2006, pp.238-9. : 19th March 1969 :
Quote from pXV 5 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : As a way of exemplifying, taken in the model given by what might motivate, in this supposition, your presence here, because obviously, from a certain angle, the reference that I found in the worker-boss relationship also has its prolongation here. The boss knows what the worker is doing, in the sense that he is going to bring him profits, but it is not sure that he has a clearer idea than the worker about the sense of what he is doing.
When you are dealing with the assembly line in Fiat or elsewhere, I am talking about that of Fiat because I already evoked it, here or elsewhere. I was there. I really had this feeling, in effect, of seeing people occupied with work and my absolutely not knowing what they were doing. That made me feel ashamed. It does not make you so, so much the better. But in any case, I was very embarrassed. I was precisely with the boss, Johnny, as he is called, as I call him. Johnny was also obviously…in any case, he too was ashamed. That expressed itself afterwards by the questions he asked me, which all had the obvious aim designed to dissimulate his embarrassment, the obvious aim of telling me that, to all appearances, they were happier there, with him, than in Renault.
I did not take this question seriously and I only interpreted it as you see, as a displacement, or perhaps as a way of avoiding on my part the question : “Finally, of what use is all of this?” Not that I am say that capitalism is of no use. No. Capitalism is precisely of use for something and we ought not to forget it. It is the things that it makes that are of no use. But that is a completely different affair. This is precisely its problem. In any case, what it is supported by, and it is a great force, ought to be clarified. It operates in the same sense as the one that I was telling you about earlier, it goes against power. It is of a different nature. And it causes great embarrassment to power. There also, it is obviously nachträglich, it is subsequently that we have to see the sense of what is happening. Capitalism completely changed the habits of power. They have perhaps become more excessive, but in any case they have changed. Capitalism introduced something that had never been seen before, what is called liberal power.
There are very simple things about which, after all, I can only speak from very personal experience.
Seminar XVI 26th March 1969
– “The Unconscious is Politics” today (LQ518) ) : 30th May 2015 (Probably Nantes) : Éric Laurent
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Quote from Laurent : In the lesson of May (wrong – should read March) 26th, 1969, from Seminar XVI entitled “Clinic of Perversion,” as that of Seminar XIV of May 10th, 1967 above mentioned, Lacan rises forcefully against a certain use of the categories of masochism and sadism. To account for what may appear as passivity, submission, which, as noted by Primo Levi, could take hold of the victims of the camps, there is no need to make recourse to masochism. “The game of the voice finds its full register here […] escapes; its place is hidden by this amazing dominance of the objet a, but the jouissance on its part is nowhere to be found.” (11) [11] Seminar XVI 26th March 1969 : p259 of French text (2006)
Seminar XVI 26th March 1969, p131 of Staferla : On n’a jamais vu apparemment dans ces troupeaux qui se sont trouvés poussés vers les fours crématoires quelqu’un tout d’un coup se mettre simplement à mordre le poignet d’un gardien. Le jeu de la voix trouve ici son plein registre, il n’y a qu’une seule chose, c’est que la jouissance ici, exactement comme dans le cas du voyeur, échappe.
Sa place est masquée par cette domination étonnante de l’objet(a), mais la jouissance, elle, n’est nulle part. Il est tout à fait clair que le sadique ici n’est que l’instrument de quelque chose qui s’appelle « supplément donné à l’Autre », mais dont dans ce cas l’Autre ne veut pas.
Seminar XVI 26th March 1969 : pXVI 10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : But the following is of no less interest. What then is the o-object in the sadomasochistic drive? Does it not seem to you that highlighting the prohibition proper to enjoyment, ought also to allow us to put back in its place what people believe to be the key of what is involved in sadomasochism, when they speak about playing with pain and immediately retract and say that after all, it is only amusing if the pain does not go too far. This sort of blindness, of lure, of false fright, of tickling the question reflecting in a way after all the level at which there remains everything that is practised in this kind of thing, does this not run the risk, is it not in fact the essential mask thanks to which there escapes what is involved in sadomasochistic perversion?
Seminar XVI 26th March 1969 : pXVI 13 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : There was apparently never seen in these herds that were pushed towards the crematory furnaces someone who all of a sudden simply bit the wrist of a guard. The operation of the voice finds its full register here, there is only one thing, which is that enjoyment escapes here exactly as in the case of the voyeur. Its place is masked by this astonishing domination of the o-object [a-object], but enjoyment for its part is nowhere. It is clear that the sadist here is only the instrument of something that is called a supplement given to the Other, but which in this case the Other does not want.
-The Ordinary Topology of Jacques Lacan : 1986 : Jeanne Lafont.
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Seminar XVI 14th May 1969
– Not If, but when : 11th August 2011 : Bruno de Florence
See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (de Florence) or /texts by date (August 2023 or August 2024 or August….. for Index of texts by Authors (August 2011).
Quote “…to fill in something, something which cannot be resolved at the level of the subject, at the level of unbearable anguish [l’angoisse intolérable], all the subject has left is to fabricate the fright [la peur] of a paper tiger .” ( Lacan, Seminar XVI, 14th May 1969. Bruno de Florence’s translation which has been modified).