{"id":270,"date":"2016-01-24T12:08:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T12:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/?p=270"},"modified":"2016-02-01T09:55:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T09:55:30","slug":"speaking-lacanese-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/2016\/01\/24\/speaking-lacanese-1\/","title":{"rendered":"1. “I demand that you refuse what I am offering you\u2026 because: it is not that”"},"content":{"rendered":"

REFRAMING PSYCHOANALYSIS presents the first in a series of SPEAKING LACANESE<\/a> posts by Will Greenshields<\/a> that will seek to make legible Lacan\u2019s various aphorisms and neologistic puns. If you disagree with the\u00a0interpretation offered, have a suggestion as to how it might be improved, or would like to see a particular Lacanian phrase discussed here, please don\u2019t hesitate to contact Will<\/a>, or leave a comment below.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Will Greenshields<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our first bit of Lacanese comes from the fifth session of Seminar XIX: …ou pire (1971-1972) <\/em>(the unofficial English translation by Cormac Gallagher is available here<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

I demand that you refuse what I am offering you… because: it is not that.
\nJe te demande\/ de me refuser\/ ce que je t\u2019offre\/ parce que: c\u2019est pas \u00e7a<\/em>. (SXIX 9\/2\/72)<\/p>\n

At\u00a0first glance this statement appears to be little more than a playful reiteration of a familiar Lacanian theme: the satisfaction of desire is impossible, the purpose of the analyst (present in this aphorism as \u2018I\u2019) is not to annul the subject\u2019s lack in the fashion promised by today\u2019s quasi-spiritual self-help books, \u2018that [\u00e7a<\/em>]\u2019 \u2013 the extra-discursive object-cause of desire that would bring the divided subject ontological oneness \u2013 is impossible to attain, etc. The aphorism twice relays between \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018you\u2019 before abruptly concluding that nothing final and definitive can come of the communion between two desirous subjects.<\/p>\n

Lacan seems to encourage this interpretation when he refers his audience to the famous aphorism that closes Wittgenstein\u2019s Tractatus logico-philosophicus<\/em> (\u2018Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent\u2019), commenting that \u2018it is very precisely… what one cannot speak about that is at stake [when I say]… it is not that<\/em>\u2019 (Ibid). However, rather than aligning himself with what he calls Wittgenstein\u2019s \u2018admirable asceticism\u2019, Lacan makes a quite different claim about the function of his own aphorism: far from being just another pithy pr\u00e9cis of the human condition, it instead does something <\/em>(Ibid). This \u2018formulation\u2019, he would later reflect in Seminar XX<\/em>, \u2018is carefully designed to have an effect\u2019 (111) \u2013 an effect that goes beyond the production of meaning, an effect that exceeds the sum of the aphorism\u2019s constituent parts: \u2018What I am leading you to is the following. Not to know… how meaning arises, but how it is from a knot of meaning that the object arises, the object itself\u2019 (SXIX: 9\/2\/72). In other words, the aphorism somehow makes present that which cannot be spoken about. How exactly does it accomplish this?<\/p>\n

Here, Lacan\u2019s object (a<\/em>) or \u2018that [\u00e7a<\/em>]\u2019 should be thought of less as a \u2018thing-in-itself\u2019 that exists beyond or prior to language and more of a structural impasse that is very much internal to language, a consequence of language\u2019s formal properties. The signifier is differential, the desirous subject cannot achieve self-identical meaning in language; whatever he asks for and whatever another subject understands that he is asking for is always \u2018not that.\u2019 Later in Seminar XIX<\/em> Lacan remarks that the object (a<\/em>) \u2018is always between each of the signifiers and the one that follows\u2019 \u2013 a structural fault that leaves the spoken and speaking subject, as that which one signifier represents for another signifier, \u2018gaping\u2019 and unable to merge these differential signifiers together (to produce signification without gaps) by immaculately articulating his desire (SXIX: 21\/6\/72). The object is not simply beyond language; it is really more of a beyond produced by language<\/em>, an impasse created by the fact that signifiers cannot signify themselves. It is for this reason that Lacan argues that \u2018[w]e are confronted with it at every instant of our existence\u2019 (SXIX: 9\/2\/72). That is to say, we are confronted with it as absent<\/em>. If it were simply non-existent or beyond language it wouldn\u2019t bother us; instead, it exists as that which is missed by language.<\/p>\n

Lacan is not suggesting that his aphorism has achieved the impossible by circumventing the logic of signifier and closing the gap but that the object \u2018arises\u2019 from it as missed<\/em>, thereby demonstrating how the object is not absent from language but is instead an absence internal to language. In other words, Lacan is not seeking to make the impossible possible but to better demarcate the impossible. Now, all this talk of structural gaps seems to imply that a certain visualisable space <\/em>is at stake and Lacan fiddles about with several figures in order to show the paradoxical space that the object occupies. Remember that whilst it is not assimilated into the signifying chain it is also not definitively excluded:<\/p>\n

\"image001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The above figure shows the object dropping out of the aphorism\u2019s matrix of verbs and pronouns. It does not, however, sufficiently testify to the way in which the object is both the structural ground of Lacan\u2019s aphorism \u2013 it literally being this aphorism\u2019s object, the \u2018something\u2019 that this aphorism is about, the motivation for Lacan to demand that we refuse what he is offering \u2013 and its gap. If we assume the object\u2019s straightforward absence, the three-verbed construction collapses. With the \u2018it is not that\u2019 removed, there would be no reason for Lacan to demand that you refuse what he is offering. It is through its absence that the object is present as the aphorism\u2019s support. Furthermore, if the negatively denoted object is the necessary support of this construction, the latter is also the necessary support of the former: if we lose any one of the verbs, \u2018that\u2019 becomes completely non-existent because the construction supporting it collapses (e.g. what would it mean for Lacan to demand that you refuse if he had not made an offer?). Far from pre-existing the statement, the object instead arises as its effect.<\/p>\n

It is in this fashion that the aphorism perfectly captures the structural paradox of language \u2013 i.e. that language\u2019s beyond is internal to language and that, as any psychoanalyst would doubtless testify, the subject cannot stop speaking about that which he cannot speak about. The failure of diagrams, such as the one reproduced above, to adequately present the structural \u2018place\u2019 of an object that is neither completely excluded nor an assimilated part of the chain, forms the prelude to the introduction of a topological structure that will dominate Lacan\u2019s later seminars: the Borromean knot:<\/p>\n

\"image003\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like the aphorism that it represents, the Borromean knot requires three components to hold together. It is knotted in such a fashion that no two of its rings can remain together when one is removed; it either subsists as a three or not at all. The effect of this knotting is to produce a hole \u2013 a hole that disappears when one of the components is lost. It is in this hole \u2013 that is both beyond the materiality of the knot and integral to it \u2013 that Lacan places the object (a<\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

REFRAMING PSYCHOANALYSIS presents the first in a series of SPEAKING LACANESE posts by Will Greenshields that will seek to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-speaking-lacanese","tag-will-greenshields"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/files\/2016\/01\/Speaking-Lacanese.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6N9Wu-4m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/repsychoanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}