This is information about Session I of
Seminar V The Formations of the Unconscious (1957-1958) : from 6th November 1957 : Jacques Lacan.
See this site  /4 Jacques Lacan (19571106) for complete information about Seminar.

Seminar V 6th November 1957

Session I p1- 14 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, see www.LacaninIreland.com  /Seminars

Published transcription from unedited tapes, p4-14 of Séminaire 5 : Formations, Jacques Lacan, at http://staferla.free.fr/S5/S5.htm

First published as p9 – 25 of Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre V, Les formations de l’inconscient (1957-1958), Jacques-Alain Miller – éditeur, Éditions du Seuil, 1998

Headings given by Jacques-Alain Miller

Translated by Russell Grigg
From p3 of Polity Press 2017

I THE FAMILLIONAIRE :

Points from previous seminars

Schema of Witz

Wit and its national traditions

Confirmation by the Other

What can only be seen by looking away

Citation

– On the Right Use of Supervision : May 2002 : Éric Laurent, at this site  /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Authors’ texts)

P31 Laurent, The problem seems to be on the path to resolution through the introduction of this symbolic instance that will bring things out of the imaginary enclosure. But is it really resolved in the right way? Is it even posed correctly?

It cannot be thought about for two distinct reasons. First because the Other of good faith and the Other as a logical place must be separated. The Other of good faith as a universal place is not quite the same as that of the Other of the witticism such as Lacan presents it in Seminar V.[10] There this Other in the place where the particular of the witticism is welcomed in its irreducible novelty.11 It is the place where the new that is produced must be registered as belonging to the family of games, of previous words, in a way homological with that of Wittgenstein and his logical families, emerging from one same series without however being qualifiable as having a common trait.

[10] J. Lacan, Le Séminaire V: Les formations de I’inconscient, Seuil, Paris, 1998, lessons I – VII.

See Session I (first of 7 sessions referenced) p1- 14, of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, at www.LacaninIreland.com  /Seminars

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-A Vision of the Streaming (ruissellement – trickling down) of the One : 1st March  2021 : Éric Laurent

P50, Footnote 15

P50 Laurent : Lacan also evokes “Ferdinand de Saussure’s famous schema in which you see the double parallel flow of signifiers and signifieds, distinct and destined to perpetually slide over one another.” 15, 15 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book V, Formations of the Unconscious, 1957-58, trans. R. Grigg, Polity Press, 2017, p7

Seminar V 6th November 1957 : p5 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com : This relation of the signifier to the signified, so visible, so palpable in this dramatic dialogue, is something that I brought forward in referring to the famous schema of Ferdinand de Saussure: the flux, or more exactly the double parallel stream – this is how he represents it to us – of the signifier and the signified as being distinct and destined to slide perpetually one over the other. It was in this connection that I constructed the images of the technique of the upholsterer, of the buttoning point, since it is necessary that some point of the fabric of one should attach itself to the fabric of the other. So that we are able to grasp at least something about the possible limits of the sliding, the buttoning points allow some elasticity in the links between the two terms. This is the point that we will take up again when I have evoked for you the function served by the fourth year of the séminaire, when I will have shown you in a way that is parallel and symmetrical to this – and it was at this point that the dialogue between Joad and Abner culminated – that there is no true subject who can sustain himself, unless he speaks in the name of the word, in the name of speech. You will not have forgotten the plane on which Joad speaks:

“Here is how God answers you through my mouth.”

There is no subject other than in a reference to that Other. This is symbolic of what exists in every word worthy of the name.

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-On the origin of the Other and the post-traumatic object : 6th November 2004 (Lyon) : Éric Laurent, see this site  /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Authors’ texts)

P112 Laurent : the function that Lacan attributes to the Freudian Witz in his fifth Seminar (Lacan, 1998b)

Extracts from p7 to 11 : Ch1 p7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Moreover it is precisely the way in which today we are going to begin our entry into the subject of the unconscious, by the witticism and the Witz. : to p9 : Now let us approach this Witz. What does this Witz mean? It has been translated by le trait d’esprit and also by le mot d’esprit. I will not go into the reasons why I prefer le trait d’esprit. :

to p10 : It really would be fun to evoke for you the English tradition in which the term used is wit, which is still more ambiguous than Witz and even than l’esprit in French – the discussions on the true, the genuine spirit, the good spirit to call him by his name; and then of the bad spirit, the one with which charlatans amuse people. How can we distinguish all of this? :

to p10 : On the contrary this is something that did not hold Freud back at all. Freud was already in the habit of committing himself, and that is why he saw things much more clearly. It is also because he saw the structural relationships that exist between the Witz and the unconscious.

On what plane did he see them? …

To p11 : In any case, it is precisely at the level of this formalism, namely of a structural theory of the signifier as such, that Freud situates himself from the beginning. : to p14 : This certainly contributes a good deal to our pleasure, and we will return to it, but I am laying down from today that the witticism, if we wish to discover it, and discover it with Freud, because Freud leads us as far as possible in the direction of finding the point of it, because it is a question of a point and a point exists, and its essence depends on something that is related to something absolutely radical in the sense of truth, namely something that I called elsewhere (in my article on “The Agency of the Letter”) something that depends essentially on the truth, that is called the dimension of the alibi of the truth, namely in a point that may enable us, by using a sort of mental diplopia, to better circumscribe the witticism.

What is in question, is what it is that expressly constructs the witticism in order to designate that which is always to one side, and which is seen precisely only by looking elsewhere. This is where we will begin again the next time. I am certainly leaving you on a note of suspense, with an enigma, but I think that I have at least been able to set out the very terms that we must necessarily hold onto, and this I hope to demonstrate in what follows.

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