The true truth is the part of truth that is sacrificed for the sake of reality [1]. But what is the content of the true truth? According to Lacan, “This term, the true truth (vraie vérité) has a meaning, and I would further say: it is on this meaning that the whole credit of psychoanalysis has been built. Psychoanalysis presented itself at first to the world as being that which brought the true truth.” (Seminar IX)

The Lacanian meaning of the true truth is the impossibility of the sexual relationship as that which does not stop not writing itself [2]. But this is a paradoxical ‘meaning’ that is elusive to conception (like the sexual act which ‘eludes conception’ in the sense of fertilization). It is more desirable to give ‘the true truth’ a mathematical expression as a dynamic signifying function (signification) rather than taking it to be a static-fixed term with a constant meaning. So what is the signifying function of the true truth?

Remember: “A signifier represents the subject for another signifier” (Lacan). The absolute relativity of the symbolic order is supported by the signifying difference that emerges between the signifiers. Also remember that the signification of an enunciation is conceived through the passing of logical time, which consists of (1) the instant of seeing, (2) the time for understanding, and (3) the moment of concluding (Lacan).

Let us now express the signification of an enunciation as a mathematical function:

— S designates signification.

— t designates logical time.

— S(t) designates the signification of an enunciation as a function of the logical time within which that enunciation takes place.

— dS designates the difference in signification that is enacted by the enunciation.

— dt designates the logical time that passes during the enunciation.

— dS/dt designates the derivative of the signifying function, i.e. how signification changes logically with the passing time.

What does reality mean? When we say that something is real, it means that we are permitted to ignore the changes in signification about it, because the real is “that which always returns to the same place” (Lacan, Seminar XI). There is something about the real that is assumed to be fixed and constant, like the thrust of a drive (Freud). Therefore, the true truth that is sacrificed for the sake of reality is precisely the signifying derivative dS/dt.

Reality is the ground of all authorizations [3]. We are forced to ignore the true truth of the signifying derivative dS/dt in order for any authorization to take place. This is why all authorities rely on the sacrifice of the true truth. The hysteric reacts to and resists this structurally necessary ignorance by the authority, but she remains fascinated by the poetic evocations of the ceremonial sacrifice of the true truth, and she cannot conceive the true truth as a mathematical function. This is the difference between the poetic ‘meaning’ according to the hysteric and the mathematical ‘signification’ according to the analyst. The true truth has a meaning only from the hysteric’s viewpoint. From the analyst’s perspective it has only signification and no meaning [4].

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Desire to Repair and Desire to Decompose”

[2] About this, see Lorenzo Chiesa (2016) The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan, p. 138.

[3] See “Clamor and Lenio”

[4] See also “False Truth, True Falsity, False Falsity”