Originally published in Quarto 50, L’écrit, Winter 1992, pp. 65-68.

Published, translated by Philip Dravers, in Psychoanalytic Notebooks – PN 20 – Object a & The Semblant, January 2010, p91-96. Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Skriabine) or /Authors by date (November 1992)

References

‘Jacques Lacan, ‘Lituraterre’ in Autres écrits, Seuil, Paris, 2001, pp. 11-20. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (May 1971)

Jacques Lacan, D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, Seuil, Paris, 2006, p. ll9-120 – Seminar XVIII On a discourse that might not be a semblance [semblant] (1971) : from 13th January 1971 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (January 1971)

Where references can be found

Footnote 1 – ‘I will make three remarks here concerning the letter and the written l’écrit on the basis of a reading of ‘Lituraterre’ [1], a text written by Lacan in 1971 on his return from his second visit to Japan.’

‘Jacques Lacan, ‘Lituraterre’ in Autres écrits, Seuil, Paris, 2001, pp. 11-20. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (May 1971)

Footnote 2 – ‘This trip, this ‘a bit too much tickling’ that Japan did to him with its letter, was what was necessary, as Lacan expresses himself in his seminar D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, [2] to give him ‘just what was needed’ for a new articulation to appear to him with the concept of the ‘littoral’, through which signifier, signified, writing and jouissance (semblant, letter and object) are knotted together in an articulation that in an effect of après coup drew its support from the Japanese letter, namely from calligraphy. It is precisely in relation to Japanese calligraphy that Lacan establishes this tension, this opposition that will be in question here, between the particular, the singular, and the universal.’

‘Jacques Lacan, D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, Seuil, Paris, 2006, p. ll9-120. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (January 1971)

This may be the reference Skriabine is using:

Seminar XVIII 12th May 1971, pVII 9-10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : I have just come back from a first, a first trip, I had experienced the littoral. You can understand me from what I said a little earlier about the Umwelt which I repudiated, precisely because of that, because of making the trip impossible, which, if you follow my formulae, would be to guarantee its real. Only there you are, it was premature, It is the departure that this makes impossible, unless we sing: “Let’s go, let’s go!” That is done a lot moreover. I would only note one moment of this trip, the one that as it happens I gathered, from what, from a new route, which as it happens I took simply because of the fact that the first time that I went there, it was simply prohibited. I have to admit that it was not on the outward journey, along the Arctic Circle, which traces this route for the aeroplane, that I managed to read what? What I was seeing of the Siberian plain.

The first appearance of littoral may be :

Seminar XVIII 12th May 1971, pVII 7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : I am going to propose something, like that, quite bluntly to come after a letter, a litter. For my part I am going to say, is not the letter the literal because it is founded on the littoral? Because that is something different to a frontier. Moreover you have perhaps noticed that they are never confused. The littoral, is something that posits a domain, as being entirely making with another, if you wish, a frontier, but precisely because they have absolutely nothing in common, not even a reciprocal relation. Is the letter not properly speaking littoral? The edge of the hole in knowledge that psychoanalysis designates precisely, when it tackles it, from the letter, is this not what it designates?

Footnote 3 ‘In ‘Lituraterre’, underlining what Japanese art demonstrates of the marriage between painting and the letter in the form of calligraphy, Lacan writes: “How am I to say what fascinates me in these things hanging, kakémono as they say, hanging from the walls of every museum in those places, bearing inscriptions of characters of Chinese descent, which I know a little and which, although I know them only slightly, enable me to measure what is being elided from them in the cursive, where the singularity of the hand crushes the universal, which is precisely what I teach you as applying only to the signifier: I don’t find it very well, but that is because I am a novice.” [3] In the presence of the trait, of the trace of the singular, what is elided, what is crushed is the universal value pertaining to the signifier, namely, that a signifier is a signifier for every speaking subject – even if they do not speak the same language.’

Jacques Lacan, ‘Lituraterre’, Op. Cit., p. 16. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (May 1971) Available at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (66. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations)

This appears to be a direct quotation from Jack W. Stone’s translation, see www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (May 1971) or p28 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (66. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations)

This is Dany Nobus’s translation of the same passage :

‘How am I to say what fascinates me in these things hanging, kakemono as it is being peddled, hanging on the walls of every museum in those places, bearing inscriptions of characters, of Chinese descent, which I know a little, but which, however little I may know them, enable me to measure what is being elided from them in the cursive, where the singularity of the hand crushes the universal, that is to say precisely what I teach you as applying only to the signifier: I can’t find it anymore, but that’s because I am a novice.’

Footnote 4 ‘namely, what I connote with the small a, here made object in being the stake of what wager being won with ink and brush?”[4]

4 ibid. See p29 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (Autres Écrits)

Footnote 5 ‘“Erasure of no trace that is prior, this is what constitutes the land (terre) of the littoral. Pure litura, that is the literal. To produce [this erasure], is reproducing this half without complement in which the subject subsists. Such is the exploit of calligraphy”, writes Lacan in ‘Lituraterre’. [5]’

5 ibid. See p32 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (Autres Écrits)

Footnote 6 ‘First, writing; in ‘Lituraterre’, Lacan proposes an apologue [6]: from the signifier (which is a storm cloud [nuée], a cloud [nuage], a semblant), when it breaks, the signified and jouissance start to rain down. And then, when the rain reaches the ground, it hollows it out, it creates channels; in other words, it produces writing and the letter.’

6 ibid., pp. 16-17. See p35 of www.Freud2Lacan.com.

Note, that this distinction that Skriabine is making is not included in any of the 4 translations at Freud2Lacan.

Footnote 7 ‘This is how Lacan condemns this in ‘Lituraterre’: “What I have inscribed, by means of letters, of the formations of the unconscious in order to fetch them from what Freud formulates of them, as being what they are, effects of the signifier, does not authorise making the letter into a signifier or, moreover, pretending that it has primacy in relation to the signifier.”[7]’

7 ibid., p. 14. See p21 of www.Freud2Lacan.com

Footnote 8 ‘The signifier is thus a semblant that serves as a vehicle for signification, but also jouissance.

And finally, the letter, which is indeed material, is not a semblant. It presents itself first as a channelling [ravinement], a hollowed void, “a pot always ready to receive jouissance”.[8] On the one hand then, we have the letter as a condenser of jouissance and on the other we have its signifying value when it is taken up in a chain, in a discourse.”‘

8 ibid., p. 19. See p48 of www.Freud2Lacan.com where pot is variously translated as ‘goblet’ or ‘bucket’ or ‘crock’ by the different translators…… I think I prefer ‘crock’.