Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor 1998
The Function of the Written[1]
The unconscious is what is read
On the use of letters
S/s
Ontology, the master’s discourse
Speaking of fucking
The unreadable
[1] What I am translating here as “the written” is “l’écrit” which can also mean writing, a text (as in Lacan’s Écrits i.e., his writings), etc. It is not always easily distinguished here from écriture, writing, but should not be confused with the act or fact of writing, s it refers specifically to that which has already been written. In the few cases in which I render it as “writing,” I provide the French in brackets. Bruce Fink
Published
in translation
– Translated by Cormac Gallagher, & transcribed from original tapes. Thus, it includes far more of the dialogue between Lacan and his interlocutors, than the translation of versions edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Chapter IV p1 – 18 of www.LacaninIreland /Seminars, or http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Book-20-Encore.pdf
– Translated by Bruce Fink, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, Chapter III p26-37 of ‘On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge’: 1972–1973: Encore: The Seminar XX of Jacques Lacan, Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, W. W. Norton & Co, 1998
in French
– Transcription from original documents, Session 4, p35-42 of http://staferla.free.fr/S20/S20.htm /Session 4, 9th January 1973, p41-62
The main sources for this working document are:
– Encore, mp3 audio files of the sessions, on Patrick Valas’ website.
– Encore Chollet version, pdf.
– Encore Tallandier version, pdf.
Staferla update their documents frequently and have good references and complete notes. If needed, put their notes in an internet translator!
– Original publication in French, p29-38 of Jacques Lacan: Le Séminaire, Livre XX, Encore, texte établi par Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris, du Seuil, 1975
Notes & information
– Notes & Information on Seminar XX Encore (1972-1973) : from 21st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721121 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Information on Session 9th January 1973 & its Mayhems
See https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node537.html for Seminar XX
For 9th January 1973, https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node541.html
Mathemes
Jacques Lacan’s Mathemes
Here is the computer version of a Mathematics Thesaurus taken from written texts and from Dr. Lacan. It covers all the texts written by Lacan and all the seminars he held in 1953 at 1979. Accompanying this thesaurus, there is a search tool allowing to visualize the citations comprising one or more mathemes, these appearing in chronological order.
A Mathematics Thesaurus
For 20.4 Bon, ben je vais vous souhaiter …, 9 janvier 1973.
This has been translated via the internet and no links are given. Go to Lutecium for the links.
20.4 Well, I am going to wish you …, January 9, 1973.
Based on seminar texts and audio recordings. [Lac73c, Lac75b, Jan. 9, 1973]
In analytical discourse, it is only about what can be read.
* Stupidity does not go far.
Analytical discourse is a mode of rapport based solely on what functions as speech.
A is the place of the Other.
S(A barred) is the signifier S as barred.
The Other as a place does not hold, because there is a flaw, a hole, a place of loss in this place.
The object a comes to function in relation to the loss in the Other.
The written word is in no way of the same register as the signifier.
* When we speak, it means something; it carries meaning.
What is heard has no relation to what it means.
Figure 20.4.1: Appearance, jouissance, truth, surplus jouissance
The signifier refers to a discourse.
The signifier has only to do with the interpretation of what we hear as the signified.
* The signified is the effect of the signifier.
* What we hear is the signifier.
* What is written is not to be understood.
* There is meaning.
* There is meaning that is injected into the signified.
* Sexual intercourse cannot be written down.
It is forever impossible to write down sexual intercourse as such.
* There is a certain effect of discourse, which is called writing.
It is a substitution of the not-at-all on which a woman’s jouissance rests.
Female pleasure is not everything.
Figure 20.4.2: The quarter turns of discourse
The condition of writing is that it be supported by discourse.
The letter is an effect of discourse.
What analytical discourse is always concerned with is giving a different reading to what is stated as signifier than what it signifies.
References
Staferla gives very good references and notes. If needed, use an internet translator.
Citations
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PIV 11-12 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
-Quote towards the New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis (NLS) Congress – Clinic of the Gaze, 11 & 12 May 2024, Dublin, Ireland. Circulated as From: NLS-Messager, Subject: [nls-messager] 4820.en/ POP-UP : FLASH #2, Date: 19 February 2024 at 15:15:00 GMT :
“A man is nothing but a signifier. A woman seeks out a man qua signifier. A man seeks out a woman qua […] that which can only be situated through discourse, since […] woman is not-whole, there is always something in her that escapes discourse.”
From Lacan J. (1975), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore, Transl. B. Fink, New York & London, W.W. Norton & Co., 1998, p33. [Modified Translation]
From PIV 11-12 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com :
Nevertheless, there is nothing serious except what is organised in a different way as discourse. Up to and including the fact that precisely this relationship, this sexual relationship in so far as it does not work, is going to all the same, thanks to a certain number of conventions, of prohibitions, of inhibitions, of all sorts of things that are the effect of language, which are only to be taken from this material and from this register. And which reduce very precisely the something that all of a sudden makes us come back as we should to the field of discourse. There is not the slightest pre-discursive reality, for the good reason that what constitutes a collectivity and what I called in evoking just now men, women and children, means very exactly nothing as pre-discursive reality. Men, women and children are only signifiers.
A man is nothing other than a signifier. A woman seeks out a man under the heading of signifier. A man seeks out a woman under the heading – this is going to appear curious to you – under the title of what is only situated from discourse, since if what I am tackling is true, namely, that the woman is not-all, there is always something that in her escapes discourse.
So then, it is a matter of knowing, in all that, what is produced in a discourse from the effect of writing.
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pIV 15-16 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
P58 of A Vision of the Streaming (ruissellement – trickling down) of the One : 1st March 2021 : Éric Laurent, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19730116) quotes pIV 15-16 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
p57-58 Laurent : According to Lacan, the vision of the streaming of the One is that of the letter which comes to be added to the world, by disturbing it. In this vision “blotting-out dominates”, which can equally well take the form of isobars, or motorways resembling gliders from the sky, like a violation of natural rules. In everything in the world and in language Lacan sees irregularity and equivoque. He will give a radical development of this, two years after “Lituraterre”^, in the Seminar “Encore”^^ and in “L’Étourdit”: “A language, amongst others, is no more than the integral, the complete series [l’intégrale] of the equivoques that its history has let persist in it.”[35] This definition of language is brought in as foundation of the possibility of this particular act of saying that is the psychoanalyst’s: interpretation. It only holds up by forcing the equivoque.
Seminar “Encore”^^ is Seminar XX Encore (1972-1973) : from 21st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan. One of a number of possible references & there are more!
-9th January 1973 Seminar XX, p36 of Bruce Fink’s translation, quoted from pIV 15-16 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, The letter is radically an effect of discourse. What is good, is it not, if you will allow me, what is good in what I tell you, is that it is (15) always the same thing. Namely, not of course that I repeat myself, that is not the question. It is that what I said formerly, the first time as far as I can remember that I spoke about the letter, I brought that out I know longer know when, I didn’t look for it, I told you, I have a horror of re-reading myself, but it must easily be 15 years ago, some time at Sainte-Anne. I tried to point out this little thing that everyone knows of course, that everyone knows when they read a little – which is not the case for everyone. That someone called Sir Flinders Petrie, for example, believed he had noticed that the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were to be found well before the time of Phoenicia on tiny pieces of Egyptian pottery where they served as trademarks. Which means simply the fact that the market, which is typically an effect of discourse, is where the letter came out first, before anyone dreamt of using letters to do what? Something which has nothing to do with the connotation of the signifier but which elaborates it, which perfects it.
Things should be taken of course at the level of the history of each tongue. Because it is clear that the Chinese letter, the one that disturbs us so much that we call it, God knows why, by a different name, character, namely, it is manifest that the Chinese letter emerged from very ancient Chinese discourse, in a completely different way to the way our letters emerged. Namely, that in short the letters I bring out here have a different value. And different as letters, because they come out of analytic discourse, to what can come out as a letter for example from set theory. Namely, from the use that is made of it and which nevertheless – this is what is of interest – is not without having a relationship; a certain relationship of convergence, to which I will certainly, have the opportunity in what follows, to contribute some developments.
The letter as effect, any effect of discourse whatsoever, is good in that it constructs a letter (which makes a letter).
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