Both the Master-Signifier S₁ and the symptom (or sinthome) S(Ⱥ) are characterized by their exceptional status in the symbolic order, but they are exceptional in different even opposed senses.

S₁ is a symbolic exception in the sense of being “not without a place” while posturing as “supposed to have a place” in the symbolic order, whereas S(Ⱥ) is a real exception in the sense of remaining unplaced in the symbolic order [1].

Let’s make a simple redefinition: “Castration” designates the semantic-verbal distinction of a signifier [2]. Any such distinction isolates a semantic-verbal signifying complex that condenses enjoy-meant [3]. This redefinition gives a new sense to being uncastrated.

Lacan’s (or Joyce’s) wordplays, insofar as they are not exposed to further distinction and analysis, (1) remain exempt from castration in the precise sense of remaining indistinct complexes that resist definition and subsist indefinitely, and (2) consequently acquire a symbolic exemption from potential criticism on behalf of their author Lacan (or Joyce).

When the wordplay acquires Exemption 1, it still (encore) has the status of an unplaced real exception of a “symptom” which remains interpretable in its indefinite indistinction. But when it acquires Exemption 2, it is reified as the no-longer-interpretable “sinthome” that may now easily become a symbolic exception as a Master-Signifier by acquiring a symbolic placement, which does not mean that it “actually has a place”; instead it is “not without a place” posturing as “supposed to have a place” (this is the exact symbolic status of “home”; let’s call this sint-‘home’).

This means that symptoms shouldn’t be rushed into sinthomes, instead we must rewind each sinthome and deal with it as a symptom.

In Lacan, there is a certain symptom of symptom, an ultimate symptom, so to speak: It is “qu’il ne faudrait pas” from Seminar 20, translated by Bruce Fink as “that shouldn’t be/could never fail” combining the negations of Falloir and Faillir.

Let’s call it “faudrait” for short. Lacanians usually take this as a sinthome: They respect the indistinction embodied in the wordplay and use it to authorize the “Other enjoyment”. But we tend to forget that Lacan explicitly stated that the “Other jouissance” does not exist! It is telltale that the book index lists 17 pages about “Other jouissance” but it excludes page 60 where Lacan explicitly states its inexistence:

Were there another jouissance than phallic jouissance, it shouldn’t be/could never fail to be that one. (…) It is false that there is another one, but that doesn’t stop what follows from being true, namely, that it shouldn’t be/could never fail to be that one.

To obfuscate the inexistence of “Other jouissance”, Lacanians elevated this “faudrait” to the status of an uninterpretable sinthome and a Master-Signifier. We must do the opposite: We must deny this wordplay’s extraordinary status and interpret it as an ordinary symptom that stages a certain semblance.

Now let’s examine “faudrait” as a semantic-verbal complex.

“Faudrait” is semantically authorized as belonging to “another jouissance than phallic jouissance”. Since the phallic function Φ(x) designates castration as the force of distinction, “faudrait” designates something beyond this distinguishing force of castration.

“Faudrait” verbally embodies an uncastrated indistinction: It combines “shouldn’t be” and “could never fail” which respectively refer back to the wordplay’s semantic status as a symptom (as a confusion of inconsistent meanings that “shouldn’t be”) and as a sinthome (as an enjoy-meant that indefinitely repeats itself and “could never fail”). The wordplay thereby articulates the impossible that “shouldn’t be” (real exception) with the necessary that “could never fail” (symbolic exception) [4]. This is Lacan’s ultimate symptom.

So what did Lacanians do? They took “faudrait” as a sinthome of enjoy-meant and neglected to interpret its symptomatic role of staging the semblance of castration, which we just did here.

Every sinthome that “could never fail” owes to a prior symptom that “shouldn’t be”. So when we detect the enjoy-meant of a sinthome, we must always rewind the sinthome back to the symptom and do the math of interpretation.

The symptom is always uncanny (Unheimlich, unhomely) in the precise sense of lacking the symbolic place of “home”, and this makes it real.

(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] This issue of placement is the main concern of Jameson’s Psychoanalytic Placement Bureau. See “Jameson’s Universal Army and Psychoanalytic Placement Bureau: Master and Analyst”

[2] Notice that by redefining castration in this way, we are effectively castrating the castration itself.

[3] A semantic-verbal signifying complex is an authority-body complex where the semantic and verbal distinctions stage the signifier’s authorization and embodiment respectively. See “The Authority-Body Complex”

[4] “Shouldn’t be” is literally a prohibition but what it articulates is an impossibility. About the impossible and the necessary, see “Turing Machine and Lacan: Writing and Stopping”