🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

It seemed to me this morning that it would not be excessive to begin my seminar by asking this question: have we crossed the line?
This is not about what we do here; it is about what is happening in the world we live in.
It is not because what is expressed there makes a noise so vulgar that we cannot hear it.

At the moment when I speak to you about the paradox of desire, about its essence, about how goods mask it, you can hear outside the dreadful discourses of power. It is not a question of wondering whether these are sincere or hypocritical, whether they aim for peace or calculate the risks. If there is a prevailing impression at such a moment, it is undoubtedly the sense of what might pass as a prescribable good.

Information serves as a call, a capture, for the powerless masses to whom it is poured like a stupefying liquor, just as they slide towards the slaughterhouse. One wonders whether they would dare unleash the cataclysm without first loosening the reins of this great clamor of voices.

Is there anything more disheartening than this echo reverberating through those little devices we are all equipped with, during what is called a press conference? Namely, those stupidly repetitive questions, to which the leader responds with a feigned ease, inviting more interesting questions and occasionally allowing himself a touch of wit. Yesterday, there was one, somewhere—I don’t know where, Paris or Brussels—who spoke to us about “disenchanted tomorrows.” How funny!

Does it not seem to you that the only way to tune your ear to what has echoed is to formulate it as follows:
What does it want? Where is it aiming to go? And yet, everyone falls asleep with the soft pillow of “It’s not possible,” while there is nothing more possible. It is even, by excellence, the possible itself. For the domain of the possible, the one that man aims for, is so that it becomes possible. This is possible because the possible is that which can respond to man’s demand, though man does not know what he sets in motion with his demand.

The formidable unknown beyond the line is that something in man that we call the unconscious—that is, the memory of what he forgets. And what he forgets, after all, you can see the direction it takes:

• It is what everything is made to ensure he does not think about,
• It is stench,
• It is the corruption always open like an abyss,
• It is life,
• It is decay.

It is even more so in recent times, acutely relevant for us today: this anarchy of forms, this secondary destruction that SADE spoke of the other day in the quote I extracted, the one that appeals to subversion beyond even the cycle of generation-corruption. With this secondary destruction, this movement of forms as they regenerate themselves, with this possibility suddenly tangible for us, with the menacing effect of chromosomal anarchy, that even the moorings of life’s forms might be undone.

Monsters deeply preoccupied those who—the last ones in the 18th century—still spoke and gave meaning to the word “Nature.” It has been a long time since six-legged calves or two-headed children were given much thought. Yet perhaps now we will see them reappear, by the thousands, if things begin!

This is why, when we ask here: what lies beyond this barrier guarded by the structure of the world of the good, and where is that point that causes this world of the good to tip, to turn, to revolve around itself, waiting to drag us all into ruin?

This is why our question carries a significance whose terrifying relevance I believe was not vain to remind you of.
What lies beyond this barrier? Let us not forget from the outset that if we know there is a barrier and that there is something beyond it, we know nothing about what is beyond. It is false, a false premise, to say—as some have said, starting from individual psychology or from our experience—that it is the world of fear.

Centering our lives, even our worship, on this as the ultimate term—fear—is an error we cannot afford to make, because we know that the world of fear and its phantoms is already a localized defense. It already has meaning for us, it is already a protection for man against something beyond, which is precisely what we do not know.

This is indeed the moment—the moment when these things are possible, possible and yet enveloped in a kind of prohibition against thinking about them—to draw your attention to the distance and the proximity linking this possibility to those extravagant texts I have chosen this year as the pivot of a certain demonstration, the texts of SADE, and to make you notice that if reading these texts and their accumulation of horrors produces in us—not over time, but simply through usage—nothing but incredulity and disgust…
and if, in some way, it is only fleetingly, in a brief flash, in a flicker, that such images can stir within us something strange called perverse desire…
…it is because, to the extent that the natural background of ἔρως (erôs) returns to us, ultimately every relationship, every imaginary or even real connection of the pursuit inherent to perverse desire only serves to suggest to us the impotence of natural desire, of the desire born of the senses, to go very far in this direction. It is the natural desire that, on this path, quickly gives way and is the first to yield.

This indeed shows us that:

• While it is certain that the modern human mind justifiably seeks here a starting point, a trace, a beginning, a path toward self-knowledge, toward the mystery of desire,
• On the other hand, it seems that all the fascination this starting point exerts on studies—both scientific and literary—on the exploits of “Sexus,” “Plexus,” and “Nexus” of a certain writer (Henri Miller’s works), certainly not without talent, ultimately fails, culminating in a kind of rather sterile delight.

Surely, it is evident that we lack the thread of method, such that we see that everything that could be, both scientifically and literarily, elaborated in this direction has long since been overtaken and radically rendered obsolete by the imaginings of what was, after all, merely a petty provincial nobleman (Sade), representing a social exemplar of the decomposition of the noble type at the moment when these privileges were about to be radically abolished.

Nevertheless, this immense elaboration of horrors, in the face of which not only the senses and human capacity but even the imagination falters, is strictly nothing compared to what will occur, what will be seen, and what will unfold before our eyes on a collective scale if the great, real unleashing that threatens us comes to pass.

The only difference between the exorbitance of Sade’s descriptions and what such a catastrophe would represent is that, in the alteration of the latter, no motive of pleasure will enter. It will not be perverts who will unleash it; it will be bureaucrats, whose intentions—whether good or ill—are not even the point. It will be unleashed by order, and it will perpetuate itself according to rules, mechanisms, and hierarchies that will obey, with wills bent, abolished, and subdued toward a task that loses all meaning here. […] This task will be the absorption of an unfathomable waste.

Let us not forget that this has always been one of the dimensions in which we could define, could recognize, what the other—the gentle dreamer—once kindly called “the humanization of the planet.” As for recognizing the passage, the step, the mark, the trace, the imprint of man, we can rest assured: if we find a titanic accumulation of oyster shells, it can only be that humans passed through there—I mean, an accumulation of waste in disorder.

Geological epochs, too, have left their waste, allowing us to recognize something: an order. The heap of garbage—this is one of the aspects of the human dimension that should not be overlooked.

Now, after sketching this tumulus on the horizon of the possible policies of the good, of the general good, of the good of the community, let us resume our path where we left it last time and attempt to understand what is meant by, what signifies, what comprises the horizon of the pursuit of the good, starting from the moment it is demystified—from that error of judgment whose term I provided you in the passage from Saint AUGUSTINE, namely that it is by the mental process of subtracting the good from the good that one might arrive at the method that consists in refuting the existence of anything other than good in being, under the pretext that the irreducible, being as such more perfect than what came before, could not possibly be evil.

The reasoning of Saint AUGUSTINE is indeed something that surprises us. I will say that I leave the question open. What does the historical emergence of such a form of thought signify? For us, we must leave it behind.

What does the definition of good mean, as we defined it last time? Good as something that, within symbolic creation, is considered the initium, the starting point from which the destiny of the human subject emerges in its confrontation with the signifier; something that, within this good, presents itself as the object of sharing and simultaneously reveals its true nature—its profound duplicity as good, which is that it is not purely and simply the natural good, that which responds to a need, but rather that which is a potential power, a capacity to satisfy, and which, by this fact, organizes the entire relationship of man with the reality of goods in relation to this power—the power that the other, the imaginary other (as I told you), has to deprive him of it.

To revisit the terms around which I organized the first year of my commentary on FREUD: the ideal ego (moi idéal) and the ego ideal (idéal du moi), and which I have incorporated into my graph:

• On the one hand, Ι designates the identification with the signifier of omnipotence, the ego ideal.
• On the other hand, as the image of the other, i(a) is the Urbild of the ego, the primitive form upon which the ego models itself, establishes itself, and installs itself in its functions of pseudo-mastery.

In this context, we will define the ego ideal (I) of the subject, from the perspective of goods as such, as precisely representing this power to do good, which in itself contains that entire dimension that hollows out and opens the beyond that today forms our question, namely: “What results from it?” “How?” From the moment everything is organized around this power to do good, something utterly enigmatic presents itself to us and returns to us ceaselessly from our own actions as the ever-increasing threat within us of a demand with unknown consequences.

As for the ideal ego (i(a)), it is the “imaginary other” we face, at the same level as the one for whom—I am not sure if I introduced this term last time—the “depriver,” the “other,” represents in its very existence the one who deprives us.

I would say that at the two poles (I, i(a)) of this structuring of the world of goods, we see emerging, on the one hand, from the moment of the unveiling reached by the revelation of classical philosophy—the moment when HEGEL is, as they say, turned right-side up:

• On one side, the backdrop of social war, which is revealed only from this moment as the red thread giving meaning to the illuminated segment of history in the classical sense of the term.
• On the other side, at the opposite end, something that presents itself to us in the form of a question, allowing for hope. Something from a scientific thought, exercised in the problematic field called “the human,” has shown us that, long ago—far removed from this history and outside its field—something was created by humans in so-called non-historical societies. This creation was conceived as having an essential, salutary function in maintaining the intersubjective relationship.

And this—miraculously, in our eyes—this is present as a small signpost to indicate:

• That not everything is caught in the necessary dialectic of the struggle for goods, the conflict between goods, and the inevitable catastrophe it engenders.
• That there existed, in the world we are now investigating, traces suggesting that the destruction of goods as such could serve a revelatory function of value.

The Potlatch…

I assume that most of you are at least at a basic level of familiarity with this concept, so I do not need—at least it is not my object today, nor within the scope of what I intend to teach you—to remind you of what the Potlatch is. I will briefly note that it involves ritual ceremonies that include the widespread destruction of various goods, some of which are consumable goods, while others are goods of representation and luxury. These goods are created in societies which, for us, are now merely remnants and vestiges of a human mode of social existence that our expansion tends to abolish.

…The Potlatch stands as evidence that humans have already achieved, in relation to their destiny concerning goods, a certain detachment, a certain perception, a possible perspective. This perspective has enabled them to link the maintenance, or if you will, the discipline of their desire—as something with which they contend in their destiny—to something dependent on the positive, acknowledged, and proven act of destruction as such of what constitutes goods.

Whether it pertains specifically to collective or individual property, or to property as proprius, for the private individual, this is something around which revolves the problem, the drama, the ricochets, and the repercussions of the economy of goods. Indeed, from the moment this key is provided to us, it becomes clear that this is not the privilege of primitive societies.

I will not, today, revisit the notes I recorded most precisely concerning that historical stage where I paused this year, insofar as it marked, on the surface of our well-documented history, in the early 12th century, the emergence within European culture of a problematic of desire as such.

Specifically, with regard to courtly love, we see appearing at that time, in a feudal ritual—represented by a kind of festivity, a gathering of barons somewhere in the region of Narbonne—a manifestation closely analogous to this. It involves massive destruction, not only of goods immediately consumed in the form of a feast but also of animals and harnesses that are destroyed.
As if the very emergence of this problematic of desire necessitated a correlative expression in these acts of destruction, called prestige destructions, insofar as they manifest themselves as such.

In other words, these gratuitous actions are carried out by subjects confronting each other face-to-face, competing, and representing those who, within the community, appear as the “chosen” subjects. This is what gives meaning to the ceremony: face-to-face, the lords, and those who affirm themselves as such during this ritual, challenge and compete with one another to see who can destroy the most goods.

This is the other pole, the only one we have among examples of the manifestation of a certain mastery, a certain consciousness in the relationship of man to his goods. It is the only example we have of something that, in this order:

• Takes place consciously,
• Occurs in a controlled manner,
• Happens, in other words, differently from the immense destructions of goods, of massive consumption, that have already been witnessed by all of you—since, give or take a few years, we belong to generations not so far apart.

These modes, which might appear to us as inexplicable accidents, as returns to savagery, are in fact something much more necessarily connected—if not inevitable—than possible in the context of the advance of our discourse. For it is clear that a new problem arises for us, one that even HEGEL did not see clearly.
HEGEL spent considerable effort in the Phenomenology of Spirit attempting to articulate the tragedy of human history in terms of conflicts of discourse. Among all the tragedies, he dwelt especially on that of Antigone, insofar as he believed it clearly demonstrated the opposition between the discourse of the family and that of the state. As we shall see, things will appear far less clear to us.

For us, in the discourse of the community, the discourse of the general good, we are confronted with the effects of a scientific discourse, where, for the first time, a question uniquely our own is revealed. Namely: what does the power of the signifier as such, which manifests itself there, mean? I mean that we are faced with the underlying question:
in the order of thought I am attempting to unfold here before you, does the sudden, prestigious development of this power of the signifier, of this order, give rise to a discourse derived from the small letters of mathematics:

• A discourse that sustains itself,
• A discourse distinct from all those previously articulated,
• A discourse that, for us, becomes, in a sense, an additional alienation.

How so? In this: the discourse derived from mathematics is one that—by its structure, by its definition—does not forget anything.
Unlike the discourse of that primary memorization, the one that continues deep within us, unbeknownst to us, the memorial discourse of the unconscious, whose center is absent, whose place and organization are situated by the “he did not know,” which is precisely the marker of that fundamental omission where the subject situates itself.

And at some point, man learned to use, to launch, to circulate, in reality and in the world, this mathematical discourse, which cannot proceed unless nothing is forgotten. Once a small chain of signifiers begins to operate on this principle, it appears that things continue as if they were functioning on their own. This brings us to this point: we are left to ask whether the discourse of physics, the discourse born from the omnipotence of the signifier—this discourse of physics—will lead to the integration of Nature or to its disintegration.

This is what complicates, in a singular way—although no doubt it is only one of its phases—the problem of our desire. Let us say that, for the one speaking to you, this is precisely where the decisive originality of the place of human desire lies, in the relationship between man and the signifier, and in determining whether, within this relationship, man must destroy it or not.

There is no other meaning—and I think you may have grasped this from what has been conveyed to you regarding the reflections of a merely refined, open, and cultured disciple of FREUD, though not otherwise a genius—namely, that this is where the question of the meaning of the death drive is focused. It is precisely because this drive is tied to history that the problem arises. It is a question of “here and now,” not of “ad aeternum.” It is in this context that the movement of desire is crossing the line of a kind of unveiling, and this is where the advent of the Freudian notion of the death drive holds significance for us.

In saying this, we know nothing except that the question exists, and it arises in these terms: the relationship of the living human being to the signifier as such, to the signifier inasmuch as, at its level, it can call into question every possible cycle of being, including the cycle of loss and return of life itself. Indeed, this is what gives its equally tragic meaning to the role we—analysts—find ourselves bearing.

For, in truth, no real step forward has been taken since the moment this became known, except the recognition that this unconscious, in its own cycle, presents itself today—for us, identified as such—as the domain of a non-knowing. And yet, this is the domain in which we must operate every day. From the moment we have identified it, we cannot fail to recognize what is evident even to a child or a simple person regarding the position and situation of every “man of goodwill,” of the one whose desire is to do good.

That is to say:

• Undoubtedly, he wants to do good.
• Undoubtedly, this is how he has come to find you.
• He seeks to feel well, to be in agreement with himself, to be aligned with certain norms.

And yet, you know what we find at the margins—but why not call it the horizon—of everything that unfolds before us as the dialectic of progress in the knowledge of his unconscious. It is this irreducible margin that ensures that, always on the horizon, this quest for his own good reveals the subject to the never fully resolved mystery of what his desire is.

The subject’s reference to any other, whoever it may be, has something almost laughable about it when we observe it—we, who see a few, or even many—always referring to the other as someone who, surely, lives in balance, or at least in greater happiness: one who does not question himself, who sleeps soundly without a care.

We do not need to see that other—even the most solid, well-grounded one—come to lie down on our couch to know what this mirage…this distance, this reference to something beyond in the dialectic of good, to something that, to illustrate my point, I will call “the good, but don’t touch it”…constitutes the very text of our experience.

I will go further: this dimension of enjoyment, as something that, by definition, is only accessible to the other, is the sole framework within which we can situate that singular and fundamental unease, which only the German language—uniquely sensitive to certain psychological nuances of human gaps—has captured under the term Lebensleid.

This is not ordinary jealousy; it is something far stranger and more singular. It is a jealousy that may arise in one subject toward another insofar as the other is precisely perceived as participating in a certain form of enjoyment, a surplus of vitality conceived and perceived by the subject as something he himself cannot grasp, even through the most elemental or affective of movements.

Is there not something profoundly singular in this: that a being can prove, admit, or manifest jealousy toward another—so much so that it may provoke hatred and the desire for destruction—for something he is in no way capable of apprehending through any intuitive means?

The almost conceptual identification of this other as such can, in itself, suffice to provoke this movement, this unease, whose rippling disturbances, I believe, do not require one to be an analyst to observe running through the fabric of human subjects.

Here we stand at the very boundary where we must ask ourselves: what will ultimately allow us to cross it? As I have told you, there is another marker, another crossing point on this frontier, which may enable us to pinpoint with precision an element of the field—the field beyond the principle of the good.

This element, as I have mentioned to you, is the beautiful.

Regarding the beautiful—I would like today to simply introduce its problematic—I believe we must adhere to the articulations already provided to us, particularly those closest to us. Certainly, we can observe that FREUD approached this matter with remarkable caution. He said:

• That the analyst truly has nothing substantial to say about the essence or nature of what manifests as creation in the beautiful.
• That, in the specific realm of evaluating the artistic work as such, we find ourselves not even in the position of students, but rather as people gathering clues and crumbs, entirely incapable of articulating the essence of what is involved in creation itself.

But that is not all. FREUD’s text on this matter is notably weak.

In this regard, things become quite clear from the outset, as soon as we approach the definitions he offers of sublimation—as it pertains to artistic creation. FREUD does nothing more than illustrate the aftermath, the repercussion of effects occurring somewhere at the level of the sublimation of the drive or instinct, when the result, the creator’s work of beauty, returns—where?—to the domain of goods, that is, when they become commodities.

The quasi-grotesque nature of FREUD’s summary of the artist’s career—essentially stating that the artist gives forbidden desire a beautiful form so that others, by purchasing his little art products, might grant him, in some way, the reward and sanction for his daring—
…this is truly a way of short-circuiting the entire problem. And this becomes manifestly evident when coupled with FREUD’s dismissal of creation—whether literary or artistic—as a question beyond the scope of our experience. FREUD is entirely aware of the limitations within which he confines himself.

Thus, we are referred back to everything that, over the centuries, has been said about the beautiful in variously pedantic ways. However pedantic it may be, it is worth noting: everyone knows that, in no other field, have those with something to say—namely, the creators of beauty—been less satisfied with what pedantry has produced than in this one.

Nonetheless, it is certain that something has been consistently articulated by nearly everyone—surely by the best minds, but also at the level of common experience: there is a certain relationship between the beautiful and desire. Yet this relationship is singular because it is ambiguous. It seems that throughout the entire field where we might locate the term, category, or register of the beautiful, it can never be fully detached from the horizon of desire.

And yet, it is equally clear, equally manifest, that the beautiful—as has been expressed since ancient thought and as Saint THOMAS articulated with great precision—has the effect of suspending, diminishing, or disarming, one might say, desire. The beautiful, insofar as it manifests itself, intimidates and inhibits desire.

This is not to say that desire cannot, at certain moments, be associated with it. But very mysteriously and singularly, this association always takes the form that I believe can best be described linguistically by the term “outrage,” insofar as this term inherently carries the structure of crossing an invisible boundary.

Moreover, it seems to be in the nature of the beautiful to remain, as they say, indifferent to “outrage,” and this is not the least significant element of its structure. I will demonstrate this in the text, in the details of analytical experience—by which I mean with reference points that will allow you to remain alert when it emerges, specifically within an analytical session and concerning matters shared with you.

You will be able to locate it—with the precision of a Geiger counter, as the saying goes—in the references the subject provides, within their associations, within their fractured or disrupted monologue, to the aesthetic register, whether in the form of a citation or a recollection from their schooldays. For naturally, you are not always dealing with creators, but you are dealing with people who have had some relationship with what I would call the conventional domain of beauty.

You can be sure that these kinds of references—especially as they appear increasingly sporadic, sharply distinct from the discourse—are correlated with something that, at that moment, becomes present. This is always in the register of a destructive drive.

You can be sure that it is at the moment when the subject begins to recount a dream in which it becomes evident that the thought involved is “aggressive” toward one of the fundamental elements of their subjective constellation, they will evoke, according to their nationality:

• A citation from the Bible,
• A reference to a classical (or not) author,
• Or a musical evocation.

I point this out today to emphasize that we are not far from the culmination of our experience. This concerns the beautiful—the beautiful in its singular function in relation to desire. Unlike the function of the good, it does not deceive us; rather, it awakens us. Perhaps it even acclimates us to desire, insofar as desire itself is tied to a certain structure of deception.

This is what I want to guide you toward: this place, as it exists, the place illustrated by the fantasy. The fantasy, as if it were a “good: don’t touch it,” as I mentioned earlier—here, it is a “beautiful: don’t touch it.” The fantasy might reside in the structure of this enigmatic field, whose first boundary we already know: the boundary that prevents us from entering under the principle of pleasure—it is the boundary of pain.

We must ask ourselves what constitutes this field. Death drive, says FREUD, primary masochism. But is this not already taking too great a leap into the question? Is the pain that guards the boundary the entirety of the field’s content? Are all those who appear to have penetrated it, those who manifest the demands of this field, ultimately masochists? I will tell you outright: I do not believe so.

Masochism—a marginal phenomenon—has in it something almost caricatural that, after all, the moralistic explorations of the late 19th century laid bare quite effectively. Masochistic pain, in a way, ends up resembling, in its economy, that of goods. Pain becomes something to share, like so many other things—indeed, it almost seems as if people fight over it.

But is this not something where the dialectic of goods re-emerges—albeit in a panicked form? In truth, everything in the behavior of the masochist—here, I speak of the perverse masochist—indicates that this is something structural to their behavior. Read Monsieur DE SACHER MASOCH, an author who, though far less profound than SADE, is still instructive. You will see there that, ultimately, the desire to reduce oneself to the nothingness of a good—to something treated as an object, a slave passed around, shared, and regarded as this nothingness that is a good—is indeed the ultimate horizon where the position of the perverse masochist projects itself.

One must never move too quickly to sever inventive homonymies. That masochism has been called masochism as far back as psychoanalysis is not without reason. I believe that the unity emerging from all the fields where analytical thought has labeled masochism lies precisely in this something that, in all these fields, imbues pain with the character of a good.

Next time, we will question this further using a document. This document is not exactly new—it is one that has already been chewed over through the centuries, with teeth and claws alike. What appears to us as the arena where the morality of happiness was crafted—and we know that the Greeks, for some time now, did not possess a field where the horizon remained closed to substructure—is, as always, the place where the substructure is most evident. It is where it becomes most visible on the surface.

The issue that has raised the most problems through the ages, from ARISTOTLE to HEGEL, and as you will see, up to GOETHE, is a tragedy: the tragedy that HEGEL himself considered the most perfect, albeit for the worst reasons. It is ANTIGONE and her position in relation to criminal good. It undoubtedly requires a deeply shortsighted rigidity of our era to have, if I may put it this way, returned to this subject, focusing the light on the figure of the tyrant.

We will revisit the text of Antigone together. It will allow us to pinpoint—and I hope to convince you of this—an essential moment in what signifies a certain absolute choice: a choice motivated by no good, a choice that provides us with a critical reference point for our investigation into what man seeks and what he defends against. This will serve as a vital anchor for our inquiry.