Prieto - Writing the Subjects Knot_E_REP_012_0169

WRITING THE SUBJECTS KNOT

Graciela PrietoTranslated by Kristina Valendinova

Association Recherches en psychanalyse | Recherches en psychanalyse 2011/2 - No 12pages 169-179

ISSN 1767-5448

This document is a translation of:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Graciela Prieto, Translated by Kristina Valendinova critures du nud du sujet , Recherches en psychanalyse, 2011/2 No 12, p. 169-179. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Available online at:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.cairn-int.info/journal-recherches-en-psychanalyse-2011-2-page-169.htm--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to cite this article:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Graciela Prieto "critures du nud du sujet", Recherches en psychanalyse, 2011/2 No 12, p. 169-179. DOI : 10.3917/rep.012.0169--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Electronic distribution by Cairn on behalf of Association Recherches en psychanalyse. Association Recherches en psychanalyse. All rights reserved for all countries.

Reproducing this article (including by photocopying) is only authorized in accordance with the general terms and conditions ofuse for the website, or with the general terms and conditions of the license held by your institution, where applicable. Any otherreproduction, in full or in part, or storage in a database, in any form and by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited withoutthe prior written consent of the publisher, except where permitted under French law.

1 / 1

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D

ocument downloaded from

www.cairn-int.info - - - 89.100.20.73 - 06/05/2015 00h46. Association Recherches en psychanalyse

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis 122011

172

Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies. Hosted by the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris Diderot at Sorbonne Paris Cit University.

Theoretical Considerations

Writing the Subjects Knot critures du nud du sujet

Graciela Prieto

Abstract: Lacans focus on jouissance in the nineteen-seventies led to a fundamental revision of his entire theoretical work. The structure of jouissance, incompatible with the principles of non-contradiction and the exclusion of the third, requires the use of ternary logic. This logical necessity led Lacan to approach the question of structure with the help of Borromean topology and to rethink psychoanalysis in the light of writing and of the written traces a subject produces based on his knowing-what-to-do with his sinthome. This article shows the foundations of this logical necessity and the forms of writing which result from it.

Rsum : Labord de la Jouissance dans les annes 70 produit un remaniement fondamental dans llaboration de Lacan. La structure de la jouissance nadmettant pas les principes de non-contradiction et de tiers exclu, implique une logique ternaire. Cette ncessit logique conduit Lacan penser la structure selon une topologie borromenne et repenser la psychanalyse en fonction de lcriture, des traces quun sujet crit partir de son savoir-y-faire-avec le Sinthome. Il sagira dans cet article de montrer les ressorts de cette ncessit logique et les formes dcriture qui en rsultent.

Keywords: topology, clinic of the Borromean knot, writing, sinthome

Mots-clefs : topologie, clinique borromenne, criture, sinthome

Plan: Introduction: The Spinning of Jouissance and the Weaving of Jouissances

The Logical Necessity of the Borromean Knot in Psychoanalysis.

Nodal Writing

Nodal Writing in the Psychoanalytic Clinic

Conclusion: Erasures and Rewritings

122011 Psychoanalysis, the Body and Society Psychanalyse, corps et Socit

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




173


Introduction: The Spinning of Jouissance and the Weaving of Jouissances

While Lacan introduces the field of jouissance as early as 1959, by adopting, in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Freuds term Das Ding, it is only in the later Seminar The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969-70) that he introduces the notion of the Lacanian field and marks a change in his axiomatic system, moving from the axis of desire to that of jouissances. A distinction has to be made between phallic jouissance, which is dominant in the speaking being and from which the signifying function always slips away, and the jouissance of the body, which in itself only has an identity by virtue of enjoying itself, suggesting that this jouissance is of another order than phallic jouissance and is linked to the essence of life [lavie].1 However, while the body as such enjoys itself, it only enjoys itself by corporizing [corporiser] the body in a signifying way.2 It is therefore lalangue that animates the jouissance of the body, a parasitic animation therefore, because it originates from a jouissance that is distinct from that of the body, i.e. the phallic jouissance, carried by semes. The problem stems from what is added to the body: lalangue, which Lacan writes as one word, as a reference to the term lallation, i.e. the bath of sounds, both heard and emitted, that the child is immersed in before he acquires articulated language, and which is both joined with and separate from meaning. Lalangue is the reason why one language cannot be compared to another and why this incommensurability cannot be expressed in words: we could say that it is the way in which a given language produces equivocation. The unconscious, Lacan writes, on account of being structured like a language, i.e. lalangue that it inhabits, is subjected to the equivocation by which each lalangue is distinguished.3 The real makes itself heard through what undoes the differential system of language (slips of the tongue, witticisms, etc.). Lalangue, this too much, this echo that contingently exceeds language, renders obsolete the notion of the

excluded third as required by grammatical and linguistic methods of analysis. Since classical logic proves unable to account for the unconscious and therefore for the analytic experience, the field of jouissances calls for a logic that goes beyond the pair, beyond the yes or no of binary logic. This call is answered by the topology of knots, which reveals the object a as what is wedged in by two intersecting continuities that rein in a third continuity, and which cannot be located in any point. The manner in which the three registers are tied together implies no particular order.

The Logical Necessity of the Borromean Knot in Psychoanalysis

Lacan went on to rethink psychoanalysis in the light of this topology which deploys a ternary logic and which entails the fourth dimension. In the Seminars XXV: Le moment de conclure and XXVI: Topologie et temps this theorization results in the creation of a combinatorial system of surfaces and knots, which weaves together mathematics, psychoanalysis and poetry, opening a field rich in clinical implications. The definition of the symptom changes, including a return to its archaic way of spelling Sinthome: it is no longer either a message or a metaphor but the jouissance of an element of the unconscious, an arbitrary element, which Lacan calls a letter because it is outside the signifying chain and thus outside meaning. In its function of nomination, the sinthome belongs to the order of saying, i.e. to the symbolic, yet it occupies a real function, a function of ex-sistence that creates the nodal link between the three registers. Within this field of jouissance, the impossibility of establishing a sexual relationship creates the need for an invention, by the unconscious, of a knowledge that might make up for it. The modalities of jouissance of each individual are organized around this hole-point. These multiple jouissances cannot be reduced to a pair of opposites; although they are heterogeneous, they are not mutually exclusive. The structure of jouissance therefore rules out the principles of

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




174


non-contradiction and of the exclusion of the third, instead implying a ternary logic:

[] language does not allow a notation such as x has a certain type of relationship with y, and no other; which is what authorizes me, since Peirce himself says that for this one would need a ternary logic, instead of the one we use, a binary logic [].

4

This logical necessity leads Lacan to rethink structure from the perspective of a Borromean topology. As opposed to science, which pursues its project by manipulating the elements of the symbolic system it operates with, theoretical construction in psychoanalysis originates from the clinic, which is formalized in its mathemes. By including the hole that brings them into existence, these mathemes do not form a system; their writing differs from one to another, which means that they cannot link up in a rational way and hence they forbid imaginary capture. Reduced to their pure literality, they are the indivisible fragments of knowledge and as such they do not let themselves be absorbed by any demonstrative theorization.5 The Borromean knot cannot be reduced to demonstration: because no complete mathematical formalization of it is possible, it can however become the basis of another kind of writing.

Nodal Writing

Lacan defines mathematics as a science of the Real in other words as impossible. Any formalization which fails to take this impossibility of demonstration into account runs the risk of sliding towards the algebraic theory of knots elaborated by mathematics. This algebraic notation seeks to replace the plastic object by a polynomial or by an algebraic group, reducing the volumetric notation of the knot to a one-dimensional notation, by quantifying the linearity of some of its invariants. However, Lacan does not choose this writing to account for the use of the Real of the knot in the field of psychoanalysis: [] the analytic thing will not be mathematical.6 He uses drawings, i.e. flat schemes, for the purposes of transmission, but

he urges his students to construct his knots with actual strings and to manipulate them, in order to escape the imaginary capture, which would make them lose sight of the Real of their structure. He seems to wish to prevent the use of graphs, since they require a topology of (flat) surfaces that remains trapped in two-dimensional logic. Graphical or algebraic methods, which can retrospectively be correlated with the gaze and the voice, are able to capture what constitutes the knots specificity, i.e. the hole it clasps. The Borromean knot [] is a writing, a writing that supports a real,7 and as a result it changes the meaning of writing.8 Writing becomes volumetric; inscribing, in the real of the enjoying substance [substance jouissante], the product of the operation of introducing the signifier as a cut. Using a piece of string requires three-dimensional writing, which is true even for the flat scheme where we mark the over-and-under movements of the string. Because they are made of actual pieces of string, these knots are subject to continual twisting and also to wedging. In this way, the knot exceeds the narrow static frame of the flat scheme, which is only an artifice of representation expressing a point of view, a trick of perspective.9 The continual twisting of the string involves a fourth dimension, whose imperceptibility to those that inhabit it makes its ex-sistence no less real. In order to make up for the deficiencies of mathematical notation, Lacan highlights the existence of a no-space [nespace], which plays a role he had previously assigned to linguistery in relation to linguistics, i.e. marking a specific domain which is not part of science and of which he says in Ltourdit that it is in no sense metaphorical. This no-space in which nodal writing unfolds, provides us with another way to grasp the structure of the subject and therefore of the analytic experience. This experience shows us that insofar as he speaks, the subject is only a subject by virtue of the signifier. This subject, divided by the signifier, is the logical consequence of the lack in the Other. Lacans research aims to identify this non-symbolizable point of inconsistency. As he

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




175


says in Ltourdit, structure is the real brought to light in language.10 Structure is the result of the living body being caught in the Symbolic, i.e. the result of the manner in which the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary are knotted together; a structure that connects the places and relations on which a topology is based. By breaking with binary propositional logic, nodal writing opens up the field of writing. The image, insofar as it is constructed as linked to both the word and the letter, can thus turn itself into writing; this is the case especially in artistic creation, where it can become the scriptural basis of a style: [] The concept of style refers as much to the inclusive element through which art becomes language [] and to a constraining element that was somehow compatible with particularization.11 This particularization manifests the singularity of a jouissance of lalangue, which eludes language. It also allows Lacan to challenge the status of psychoanalysis as a science: [] psychoanalysis is not a science, it is a practice,12 whose object is [] the unconscious as participating in the real [of which.] there exist only fragments that cannot be formalized.13 Jean-Claude Milner describes the homophonic play which, beginning in the 1970s, weaves through Lacans theorization as atom[s] of poematic calculation [] as mathemes supplied by lalangue itself.14 It is closer to an art, which tries to describe what the stumbling of the bene dicere may be able to identify regarding the real of lalangue, what may be said about what escapes language: The unconscious is a knowledge articulated by dint of lalangue, the body that speaks there only being held together by the real it enjoys.15 A knowledge without a subject, an invented knowledge, which, thanks to the half-said truth, can engender new kinds of knowledge. In what the work of art says beyond the words of the artist himself, we are dealing with the same type of knowledge. In psychoanalysis, knowledge is also [] a knowledge under construction,16 which shows [] only by being legible,17 a knowing-how-to-deal-with lalangue, of which the psychoanalyst must remember [] that in this matter, the artist is always

ahead of him [],18 paving the way for him. A way Lacan explicitly takes in Linsu where he argues that poetry, rather than logic, can produce the effect of a hole that must be targeted by interpretation. The capture of the body by language, which echoes in the various gaps of the body as an imaginary, constitutes the different objects a. Although an object a can be imagined, it does not belong to the Imaginary the object a has no being,19 it is only an unbeing [dstre], a real hole and as such irreducible to a signifier. Topology is only ever a mode of setting up the hole. A hole brought into play in lalangue, lalangue being constituted by the odds and ends of the Real that are transmitted by the torn fragments of writing. A Real that Lacan tries to grasp through topological notation, a form of writing that would not depend on the signifiers precipitation. The writing of the Borromean knot provides precisely that.

Nodal Writing in the Psychoanalytic Clinic

Starting from Lacans formulation that there is no sexual relationship, the symptom is redefined as what acts as a supplementation of the sexual non-relationship, a singular fixation of jouissance, an answer to the void left behind by the inexistence of any Other that might inscribe a secondary, complementary form of jouissance that would establish a relationship. The topology of Borromean knots allows the symptom to be inscribed in the structure in a different way. Lacan uses the archaic spelling sinthome which produces multiple resonances, particularly with the English sin: the equivocation is used to emphasize the role of the symptom as a correction of an error in the original binding of the Borromean knot. The symptom is partially an invention, a creation authorized by neither the subject nor the Other; this is true whichever the subjects structure may be psychotic or neurotic. For the neurotic it is the paternal metaphor that provides the living being with meaning in his relationship to sex and to death. By substituting

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




176


itself for the signifier of the mothers desire, the Name-of-the-Father is responsible for quilting discourse and binding the Imaginary to phallic signification. The Name-of-the-Father introduces the prohibition of incest, which creates the hole of the sexual non-relationship in the Symbolic. It therefore introduces the temporal dimension into generational order and therefore a historicizing discontinuity, which separates the subject from the vacillation of identification proper to the specular relation, where the child remains stuck to the mother. While occupying a position of exception, the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father is crucial to the constitution of the signifying chain, since its function is to give names to things and [] nomination is the only thing of which we can be sure that it makes a hole.20 Lacan will therefore make the Name-of-the-Father the neurotics symptom, as the fourth ring which binds together the three others. Its foreclosure in psychosis leads to the signifier separating itself from the chain. Some of the subjects identifications assuming the mothers desire can appear to cover over this void, producing what Colette Soler has called a fake identification [identification postiche].21 It is therefore necessary that an incidental encounter, by calling upon the Name-of-the-Father, reveal the latters deficiency. In psychosis, the eroded identification dissolves the relation to the Imaginary since the latter is not tied in with the other two registers, but only held in place, contrary to neurosis where the identification is substituted by another. This substitution is made possible by the fact that the Imaginary is tied to the two other consistencies by the ring of the Sinthome. Already in 1958, in his text On A Question Prior to, Lacan argues that the deficiency of the Name-of-the-Father can be supplemented in its function of quilting; he thus anticipates the later pluralization of the Names-of-the-Father and the essence of his theorization based on the introduction of the Borromean knot as a writing relying on ternary logic: the Symbolic, the

Imaginary and the Real [] This is what the Names-of-the-Father are, the first names, insofar as they name something [].22 This multiplication of the Names-of-the-Father leads Lacan to rethink nomination as something that only has to do with the Symbolic. At the end of the Seminar RSI, three pages23 are devoted to imaginary and real nomination, which, Lacan argues, concern inhibition and anxiety respectively. Imaginary nomination is supported by the infinite straight line:

[] this line is very precisely not what

names anything whatsoever in the Imaginary but what, precisely, acts as a bar, inhibiting the handling of all that is demonstrative, of all that, articulated as Symbolic, creates a bar at the level of imagination itself and yields what is at stake in the body []

24

This statement in fact seems to reject the term nomination when referring to the Imaginary. As for anxiety, it constitutes the nomination of the Real. How should we then understand a nomination that would be outside the signifying function? In Le moment de conclure, Lacan will stress the necessary gap between these two registers. Inhibition and anxiety as the effects of, respectively, the imaginary and the real invasion, are no longer associated with nomination but instead with what appears in the gap between the Imaginary and the Real. The Symbolic is the only register that can divide [se ddoubler]. This has to do with the double essence of language: it is simultaneously the letter, linked to the glottal and phonetory jouissance outside meaning, and a system of signifiers, which, in their combinations, form a chain and produce meaning. The Imaginary and the Real cannot divide because the field of their intersection, where the Other Jouissance [Jouissance Autre] is produced, does not exist as a closed field; it is here that Lacan situates the true hole. The opening of this field results in their notation as straight lines stretching to infinity, but interlaced in the knot:

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




177


The only register that can divide and form a circular link with the fourth term is the Symbolic. In the flat scheme, this can be represented as follows:

Lacans discussion of the case of Joyce leads him to elaborate the question of the possibility of repairing an error in the tying-in of the three registers, as well as to limit nomination to the sinthome as a fourth term. The question of the plurality of the Names-of-the-Father now seems to indicate that the Name-of-the-Father as sinthome is not the only signifier able to function as what joins the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary together. The idea of the sinthome as something that is produced at the exact same place where the error in the knotting occurred opens up the possibility of constructing a sinthome in psychosis, that is to say in a situation where the Name-of-the-Father has been foreclosed.

The subjects structure results from the type of knotting that exists between the three registers: Real, Imaginary and Symbolic; the last, as Lacan says, always misfires, hence the necessity of the sinthome. The original knotting results from a cut applied to the projective plane. The signifier is a cut [] the structure of the subject has the structure of a surface, at least when defined topologically.25 The move from the projective plane to the Borromean knot is a simple operation, regardless of the type of the latters immersion in three-dimensional space: a cross-cap or a Boys surface, which is another form of immersing the projective plane in three dimensions, starting from a Mbius strip with three half-twists.

The Surface of the Boy

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




178


The duplication of the Mbius strip with three half-twists, where the cut operates a passage from the projective plane to the trefoil knot; the latter, though it only has one element, [] is the same knot as the Borromean knot, even though it does not have the same appearance.26

This movement shows us the three singular points where Boys surface intersects with itself in more than three-dimensional space; its immersion implies a non-traversability of the surface by itself and therefore the hole. Duplicating the Mbius strip with three half-twists gives us the trefoil knot:

Here we see the three singular points that the duplication transforms into crossing-points:

The knots possibility or impossibility of intersecting itself in a double point, a traversability that involves a moment of indecision neither yes nor no inscribes the knot in the field of ternary logic. This property of knots necessitates a space of immersion of more than three or even four dimensions, since the topological flexibility of the knot entails the fourth dimension. The immersion of the knot in three-dimensional space projects the temporal dimension across an expanse as a succession. The possibility of auto-intersection allows us to suppose that accidents may happen when the plane is immersed in the three-dimensional space produced by the signifying cut in enjoying substance, and allows us to conceive of how two of the three registers may become interlaced:

This interlacing entails the necessity of the construction and subsistence of the Sinthome, so that something of the imaginary fabric of the

body can be maintained in its consistency, which Lacan calls body-sistency [corps-sistence]: The corde is also the corps-de. This corps-de is

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




179


parasited by the signifier [].27 The corps-de of the Symbolic grants the neurotic subject, who inhabits language, a body. On the other hand, the psychotic subject, who has not made language his habitat, resides outside discourse but not outside language. The question remains as to [] what kind of invention, what kind of machine he will construct (machina means invention) based on this discourse, in order to delimit the real.28 This is what Lacan observes in the case of James Joyce, who was able to construct a Sinthome through literary creation and, as a result, repair and stabilize his psychic structure. By establishing a ternary link between the two interlaced registers, the Real and the Symbolic, the Sinthome allows him to hold the Imaginary register in place; this concerns primarily the imaginary aspect of the body, which in the beating scene29 slips outside the structure. If in Joyces case the Sinthome holds, it is thanks to its being linked to the Name-of-the-Father, metaphorically absent yet metonymically functioning through the bond of the letter. The initials of Joyces proper name, James Joyce J.J., are the same as those of his father, John Joyce; hence they seem perfectly suitable to act as a stand-in for the foreclosed Name-of-the-Father, thus remaining rooted in what he rejects. By making this Name his ego, which Lacan designates as Joyces Sinthome, he constructs a wholly singular ego, one that is

woven from the signifier, and is therefore of a different substance than the Imaginary of the body that usually imparts it its consistency. Joyce constructs this proper Name by means of a singular style of writing; we can glimpse the interlacing of the Real and the Symbolic in the phenomenon of the epiphanies, which have a necessary role in Joyces writing: [] all of his epiphanies are invariably characterized by the same thing, which is very precisely the consequence of the error in the knot, namely that the unconscious is connected to the real.30 The fact that the Sinthome is limited to a single point leaves room for much more wavering between the registers, and the fact that the Imaginary is simply withheld does not constitute a possibility of separation. The contiguity between John and James, produced by their initials, is reflected in the reproduction of the fathers alcoholism, as a means of retaining an element of the body image. In psychosis, the Sinthome does not function as a metaphor: in order for it to persist as a letter of jouissance capable of producing a proper name it must maintain a link with the father. This link is not metaphorical but metonymic, a trait of the father or of his name is extracted and plays a role in the subjects own naming of himself. The Sinthome can thereafter function as a stopping point outside the Oedipus myth, in a sort of jouissance closed in on itself, a jouissance outside meaning.

This interlacing between two registers can also occur between the Real and the Imaginary, leaving the Symbolic adrift; however, in such a case no Sinthome can produce a new tying-in.

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




180


The subject, having lost all anchoring, is left to stray. The body [] is first of all what can carry the mark conducive to arranging it in a series of signifiers31 a body of the Symbolic, which, once it has been incorporated, produces the body in the common sense of the word, the one [] whose Being is thereby sustained does not know that it is language that grants this body to him, to the extent that it would not even be there, were it not capable of being spoken of.32 This impossibility has to do with the necessary condition of the persistence of the sinthome, namely that it can only subsist as hooked onto to the Symbolic, since it is here that the function of naming can be extracted, which limits jouissance. By granting the subject a proper name a signifier without a signified nomination both

reveals and covers over the void of the Thing, of the opaque jouissance linked to life, to the living, which belongs to the order of the Real. The Real can therefore never be the excluded order because it is inherent to the living being and so is inevitably part of any knotting. The neurotic structure presupposes the occurrence of an error [ratage] at two different points, leaving the three registers simply superimposed:

Hence the necessity of constructing a sinthome, which can tie the three registers together in a Borromean fashion: By dividing the defective Symbolic, Lacan constructs a new type of Symbolic, a [] circle:

+ S, which gives us a new type of S,33 and the fourth term is given a singular position, which specifies its function in neurosis as the Name-of-

the-Father, the father as a name and as naming: [...] there must be four because the four is what in this double loop supports the Symbolic by what it is in fact made for, namely, the Name-of-the-Father.34 The Symbolic is nonetheless

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




181


necessary in order for something to appear that has this function of nomination: [] what is involved in the distinction in the Symbolic of name-giving is included in this Symbolic.35

The Name-of-the-Father as a Sinthome permits of distinguishing between the three registers which are tied together in Borromean fashion, forming the central triskele knot, where the void of the cause of desire can be circumscribed and clasped, introducing the subject into the temporal dimension implied by the knot and thus inscribing him in the generational order.

Conclusion: Erasures and Rewritings

The Borromean knot corresponds to the writing of a discursive logic which cannot be restricted to the affirmative or negative statements of binary propositional logic but makes room for interrogative, suspensive and even equivocal statements, thus allowing for the manifestation of the unconscious. In this way, it separates off from the psychiatric discourse, which tends to be increasingly reduced to the descriptive classification of phenomena understood as a series of lines of behavior. In the final years of his teaching, Lacan situates the Borromean knot inside the torus a reversal

[retournement] of the Symbolic which brings about equivocation. The question of turning the torus inside out following a cut should be connected to the reversal of the orientation of the knot, which Lacan discussed earlier in Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent. This reversal of the knot, brought about by equivocation, changes the sens(e) in both senses of the word: as meaning and orientation.36 Turning the torus inside out involves cutting and splicing. Equivocation itself is an operation of cutting a cutting off of meaning and its splicing, which reconnects it in a different way. It can therefore function as the operator of a writing of separation, in which the voice makes itself heard by an effect of jous-sens,37 releasing the subject from his fixed position. This separation, which concerns the Other of desire, [] brings the subject back to the opacity of the being he receives through his advent as a subject.38 The opacity refers to what holds the three registers of the Borromean knot together when they are not linked with each other but nonetheless clasp the triple central point, the void of the Thing, which the different objects designated by the letter a come to cover over. Separated from the signifier, the letter can join the living body to language because it is part of the Real due to the glottal jouissance it delivers and simultaneously of the Symbolic, insofar as it carries the signifier, as well as of the Imaginary, by virtue of being not only an acoustic image but also a picture. Consequently, the invention of unconscious knowledge can only be of the order of the written, defined by Lacan as the knowledge presumed to be a subject [Le savoir suppos sujet],39 thus producing a new rewriting of the subjects knot.

Bibliography: Adorno, Theodor W. (1997). Aesthetic Theory. Transl. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: The Athlone Press. Lacan, J. (1962). Le sminiare IX, Lidentification. Unpublished.

Lacan, J. (1974). Le sminaire XXI, Les non-dupes errent. Unpublished. Lacan, J. (1975). La troisime. Lettres de lcole freudienne, 16. Lacan, Jacques (1975). Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2 Dec 1975). Scilicet, n 6-7.

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




182


Lacan, J. (1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I. Unpublished. Lacan, J. (1976). Neuvime congrs de lEFP Strasbourg. Lettres de lcole freudienne, 19. Lacan, J. (1977). Le sminaire XXIV, Linsu Unpublished. Lacan, J. (1999). The Seminar, Book XX. Encore. On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. (1975). Transl. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton Lacan, J. (2001). Autres crits. Paris: Seuil. Lacan, J. (2005). Le sminaire livre XXIII, Le Sinthome. Paris: Seuil. Lacan, J. (2006). crits. Transl. by Bruce Fink. New York: Norton. Milner, J.-C. (1995). Luvre claire, Lacan, la science, la philosophie. Paris: Seuil. Normand, M. (2003). Les vhicules du sujet. Hulak, F. (Ed.). Pense psychotique et cration de systmes. Paris: rs. Soler, C. (2008). Linconscient ciel ouvert de la psychose. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail.

Notes: 1[Transl. note: lavie is Lacans transcription of la vie or

life, which he uses especially in the Le sminaire, XXI, Les non-dupes errent: Lavie that on this occasion I would write indeed as I did with lalangue, in a single word. This would only be to suggest that we do not know much about it except that it needs washing (elle slave). 24 April 1974, unpublished. ] 2Lacan, J., (1999). The Seminar, Book XX, Encore. On

Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, (1975). Transl. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, p. 23. 3Lacan, J., (2001). Ltourdit. In Autres crits. Paris: Seuil,

p. 490. 4Id., (11 January 1977). Le sminaire XXIV, Linsu...,

unpublished. 5Milner, J.-C. (1995). Luvre claire, Lacan, la science, la

philosophie. Paris: Seuil, p. 132. 6Id., Encore. Op. cit., p. 117.

7Lacan, J. (17 December 1974). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I.,

Unpublished. 8Lacan, J., (2005). Le sminaire, livre XXIII, Le Sinthome.

Paris: Seuil, p. 144. 9Ibid., Op. cit., p. 83.

10Id., Ltourdit. Op. cit., p. 476.

11Adorno, T. W. (1997). Aesthetic Theory. Transl. Robert

Hullot-Kentor. London: The Athlone Press, p. 205. 12

Lacan, J. (1975). Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology (2 December). Scilicet, n 6-7, p. 53.

13

Id., (1976). Neuvime congrs de lEFP Strasbourg.

Lettres de lcole freudienne, n 19, p. 558. 14

Milner, J.-C. Luvre claire. Op. cit., p. 165. 15

Lacan, J. (1975). La troisime. In Lettres de lcole

freudienne, n 16, p. 189. 16

Id., (12 March 1974). Le sminaire, XXI, Les non-dupes

errent. Unpublished. 17

Id., Lacte analytique, Rsum du Sminaire, XV. Autres

crits. Op. cit., p. 376. 18

Id., Hommage Marguerite Duras. In Autres crits.

Op. cit., p. 192. 19

Id., (4 April 1974). Les sminaire XXI, Les non-dupes

errent. Unpublished. 20

Id., (15 April 1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I. Unpublished. 21

Soler, C. (2008). Linconscient ciel ouvert de la

psychose. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, p. 17. 22

Id., (11 March 1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I.,

Unpublished. 23

Ibid., (13 May 1975). 24

Ibid. 25

Id., (30 May 1962). Le sminiare IX, Lidentification.

Unpublished. 26

Id., Le sminaire livre XXIII, Le Sinthome. Op. cit., p. 42. 27

Ibid., (15 February 1977). Le sminaire XXIV, Linsu.

Unpublished. 28

Normand, M. (2003), Les vhicules du sujet, in Pense

psychotique et cration de systmes, edited by Fabienne Hulak, Paris: rs, p. 233. 29

[Transl. note: Lacan discusses this scene from The

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, of Stephen enduring a beating at the hands of his classmates, in Le sminaire, livre XXIII, Le Sinthome, Op. cit.] 30

Id., Le sminaire, livre XXIII, Le Sinthome. Op. cit., p. 154. 31

Id., Radiophonie. In Autres crits. Op. cit., p. 409. 32

Ibid. 33

Id., (2 December 1975). Lecture at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology. In Scilicet, n 6-7. Op. cit., p. 59. 34

Id., (15 April 1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I. Unpublished. 35

Ibid., (11 March 1975). Unpublished. 36

[Transl. note: the French sens means both meaning,

signification and direction, orientation changer le sens can therefore mean to change the meaning but also to turn in a different direction.] 37

[Transl. note: this pun on jouissance, jous-sens or I

hear meaning appears in Le sminaire X, Langoisse.] 38

Id.,Position of the Unconscious. crits. Op. cit., p. 844. 39

Id., (9 April 1974). Le sminaire XXI, Les non-dupes

errent. Unpublished.

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D




183


The author:

Graciela Prieto, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Practicing Psychoanalyst. Member of the cole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien & associated researcher at the Center for Research in Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society. cole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien France 118 rue dAssas 75006 Paris France

Translated by Kristina Valendinova (revised translation).

Electronic reference:

Graciela Prieto, Writing the Subjects Knot, Research of Psychoanalysis [Online], 12|2011 published Dec. 22, 2011. This article is a translation of critures du nud du sujet Full text

Copyright All rights reserved

Doc

umen

t dow

nloa

ded

www.

cairn

-int.i

nfo

- - -

89.1

00.2

0.73

- 06

/05/

2015

00h

46.

Ass

ocia

tion

Rech

erch

es e

n ps

ycha

nalys

e D



Documents

Prieto - Writing the Subjects Knot_E_REP_012_0169