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Questions: Saturday, March 9, 1974

Question 1: Really no difference?
Question 2: “The unconscious”—what a strange word!
Question 3: I interrupt you: you say that the animal…
Question 4: And when someone comes to see you, you psychoanalyst…
Question 5: The difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
Question 6: Is it Freud saying this, or Lacan?
Question 7: Isn’t this ultimately eliminating Freud’s discovery: sexuality?
Question 8: “If one enjoys poorly, it’s because there’s repression of sex…”
Question 9: “If there’s repression, it’s because there’s censorship.”
Question 10: For you, the family and society themselves are effects of repression.
Question 11: Still, a certain number of people try to escape it.
Question 12: “Racism has a bright future.” Why on earth do you say that?

Questions: Saturday, March 16, 1974

Question 13: “The unconscious speaks.” But was it heard before Freud invented psychoanalysis?
Question 14: What do you mean by “analytic discourse”?
Question 15: The International Psychoanalytic Society excommunicated you.
Question 16: Psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists tackle all the world’s misery.
Question 17: So how do you situate the analyst, in your view, who neither collaborates nor protests?
Question 18: What do you do with emotions, affects, for instance?
Question 19: Answer Kant’s three questions, starting with: “What can I know?”
Question 20: Can you—or can’t you—teach what analytic discourse reveals about the relation between the sexes?
Question 21: Woman does not exist. Man, however, does exist.
Question 22: What should I do?
Question 23: “What am I allowed to hope for?”
Question 24: “What is well conceived is clearly expressed.” Your style, etc.

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Saturday, March 9, 1974

I always tell the truth—not the whole truth, because saying it all is impossible. [cf. “Me, the truth, I speak.” in Écrits, p. 409]
Saying it all is materially impossible: the words are missing.
It’s even through this impossibility that truth touches the real.

[The real is the impossible → cf. the four discourses, the circle of discourses, “the wall of the impossible”:
the four logical impossibilities: Inconsistency (H), incompleteness (M), unprovability (U), undecidability (A)]

– Here we are on television…

There’s no difference between television and the audience I’ve been speaking to for a long time,
what’s called my “seminar.”

---

Question 1 – Really no difference?

In both cases, it’s a gaze.
A gaze to which I address myself in neither case, but in the name of which—this gaze—in the name of which I speak.
Let’s not imagine for that reason that I’m addressing the crowd at random. It’s apt to say so.
I speak to those who know, to the non-idiots, to the analysts I presume are in my audience.

Experience shows…
even if we stick to the fact of the gathering, because that’s what my seminar is: a gathering…
…experience shows that what I say interests far more people than those I reasonably presume to be analysts.
So why should I speak here in a different tone than in my seminar?

---

Question 2 – “The unconscious”—what a strange word!

Yes, I agree!
After all… Freud couldn’t find a better one, and now it’s done; there’s no going back.
The word has the disadvantage of being negative, which allows— and people don’t hold back—
for supposing anything in the world in it, not to mention the rest.

I don’t approve, but still, for something previously unnoticed,
the name “everywhere” fits as well as “nowhere.”
Yet it’s something very precise.

Let’s approach it: there’s no unconscious—it must be stated—except in the speaking being.

For others…
let’s stick to animals, which have no being properly speaking, no being except insofar as they are named.
I’m not saying they don’t impose themselves as real…
…but for others, there is instinct, for example, that is, the knowledge implied, apparently, by their survival—that’s instinct.

Still, one might say that this is only so in our thought,
which may, by calling it instinct, be inadequate.
There remain animals longing for humans; we call them “domestic,” and those…
and very likely for this reason…
…those are traversed by tremors—brief ones—that can be linked to the unconscious.

Let’s approach… The unconscious speaks, which makes it dependent on language…

---

Question 3 – I interrupt you: you say that the animal, because it does not speak, does not have an unconscious.

Descartes, for his part, said that the animal did not have a soul.
That would seem to prove that the unconscious is only a hypothesis, a supposition.

The soul is also a supposition, a supposition of the sum…
it’s not nothing to be able to make a sum, to suppose it at least…
…the sum of the body’s functions.

In that sense, it is a supposition far more problematic than that of the unconscious.
Nevertheless, let us suppose it, because after all, it is reasonable to do so.
It has always been supposed in the same way: from Aristotle to someone named Von Uexküll.
Remember this name if you’ve never heard of it.

And moreover, it is still what biologists and physiologists suppose—whether they like it or not.
So, the soul is there. Fine.
Now, I say that the subject of the unconscious only connects to the soul through the body. [the “fragmented” body of (a): anal, oral, scopic, vocal]
And what is even tougher: to introduce into it—I say, through the body—thought.

In this, I contradict Aristotle this time: man does not think with his soul, as the Philosopher imagines it there.
“As he imagines it”: one only has to read him to realize it.
Man thinks through a structure that cuts his body into pieces, into segments that have nothing to do with anatomy.

A witness: the hysteric. I think that—still!—this says something to a few people.
This cutting, of course, also touches the soul, but as a consequence, it reaches the soul with…
what I hope—still!—a few people have some idea of…
…namely the obsessional symptom: that is… that is, after all, where we clearly see the difference between thought and the soul, because the soul, regarding this thought, cannot be said to be anything but burdened by it, like a fish with an apple, unable to know what to do with it.

From which it follows—which is astonishing—that it took so long to say what everyone already knows:
thought is disharmonic, disharmonic with respect to the soul.

And the famous νοῦς (nous) of the Greeks…
there may still be some professors who hear me here…
…the Greek νοῦς is the myth of a compliance of thought with the soul…
this is what is seen in Aristotle’s theory of θεωρία (theoria: contemplation)…
…of a compliance that would be aligned with the world, the Umwelt, to use Von Uexküll’s term
that I mentioned earlier, the world of which the soul is presumed—
in a certain supposition of the soul—
to be the reflection.

Whereas this world, this world—I say—is nothing but the fantasy sustained by a certain type of thought.
Of course, it is a reality, but there is no reason to grant it such privilege with the word “reality”…
a word that itself exhibits certain wavering…
…no reason to grant it such privilege that we cannot consider it as a grimace of the real.

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Question 4 – And when someone comes to see you, you psychoanalyst, it’s to feel better, and in this world

that you so casually reduce to a fantasy. Do you also consider healing to be a fantasy?

Healing is a request that arises from the voice of the sufferer, someone suffering in their body or their mind.
What is surprising is that there is a response, and that this response, always in medicine…
at least ancient medicine…
…that this response, always in medicine, has struck true through words.

How was it before the unconscious was identified?
Well, it was the same: medicine struck true over much of its domain with words.
Which proves that a practice does not need to be illuminated to operate.

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Question 5 – Very well! But what, then, specifically distinguishes psychoanalysis from psychotherapy,

since both act through words?

That is indeed a question that must be answered. It must start from the fact of the unconscious.

Insofar as the unconscious is involved here…
the unconscious as I define it…
…there are two aspects revealed to us by the structure.

The structure is language. Pay close attention here, because it’s not what you might expect.
The side of meaning—the first aspect—is the one you might believe to be the side of analysis:
analysis that pours meaning over us in waves, for the sexual ship.

Yes… There’s a problem, which is…
and God knows Freud insisted on this…
…that this meaning boils down to nonsense, the nonsense of the sexual relationship, which is evident, and always has been,
in nothing other than the sayings of love. Everything that is said there—you never know if it’s not gibberish.
It is evident to the point of being outrageous: and this gives a high idea of human thought.

Moreover, there is meaning that is taken for “common sense,” and even for “universal sense.”
This is the height of comedy, except that comedy always involves a kind of knowledge…
a knowledge sensitive, sensitive in what it states…
…the knowledge of the [sexual] non-relationship that is in play, in the play of sex.

This is where our dignity takes over, or even takes its place:
– common sense represents what operates in suggestion,
– comedy represents laughter.

Does this mean they suffice, even though they are barely compatible?
This is where psychotherapy—whatever it may be—falls short.
Not that it doesn’t do some good, but it’s temporary and leads back to the worst.

The unconscious…
which is what? The insistence by which desire manifests itself, meaning the repetition of what is demanded there…
…the unconscious reminds us that on the side of meaning—to conclude—the study of language contrasts with the side of the sign.

How is it, even, that the symptom—what is so called in analysis—has not already blazed the trail?
How is it that Freud had to simply listen to the hysteric to come to read dreams, slips of the tongue, even witticisms, as one deciphers an encrypted message?

Question 6 – What you just said: “reading dreams, slips of the tongue, and witticisms as one deciphers an encrypted message”—was that Freud or Lacan?

Go, go to Freud’s texts, spread across three books called:

• The Interpretation of Dreams [Die Traumdeutung],
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life [Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens],
• and what has been translated as The Joke (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten).

You’ll read there that it is nothing other than a deciphering of the purely significant dimension.
Namely, it always begins with the occurrence of one of these phenomena—I mean dreams, slips of the tongue, witticisms—
naively articulated:

• “Articulated” simply means verbalized.
• “Naively” means verbalized according to ordinary logic, using the accepted language.

And then, then comes the progression through a web of ambiguities, metaphors, and metonymies,
where Freud evokes a substance, a fluidic myth he calls the libido.

But what he really performs there, right before our eyes fixed on the text, is a translation that demonstrates that jouissance…
which Freud supposes under the term “primary process”…
…resides in the logical pathways where he leads us with such artistry.

This is what allows Freud to start from “I don’t love him” and give it an entire grammatical play:

• “It’s not me he loves,” “It’s not me whom he loves.”
• Or: “I don’t love him; her, I love.”
• Or: “It’s not him who loves me.”
• Or: “It’s her who loves me.”

Add the inversion of “love” into “hate”… Well, that’s the route Freud takes for an entire ripple effect that extends…
that goes very far in the series I just named: neurosis, perversion, or psychosis.

---

Question 7 – To repeat: “Significant dimension, logical pathways, grammatical play”—

isn’t this ultimately eliminating Freud’s discovery: sexuality, plain and simple?

What Freud discovers in the unconscious…
I could only earlier invite you to verify in his writings whether I’m stating it correctly…
…is something entirely different from realizing, broadly speaking, that one can assign a sexual meaning to everything one knows,
because that’s been done forever. It’s even on that basis that the word “to know” lends itself to the well-known metaphor.
And that’s what Jung believed Freud was announcing. That’s a mistake.

It is the real that effectively unravels what the symptom consists of—namely, a knot of signifiers.
Tying and untying are not metaphors here but must be understood as actual knots,
constructed in the chaining of significant material.
For these chains have no meaning, but jouis-sense—write it however you like,
conforming to the ambiguity that is the law of the signifier.

I believe I have given a broader perspective than the prevailing confusion regarding the designated recourse of psychoanalysis.

---

Question 8 – Today, there is a rumor circulating that says the following:

“If one enjoys so poorly, it’s because there is repression of sex…” and it adds,
“…it’s primarily the fault of the family, secondarily of society, and especially of capitalism.”

This is a question…
so I’ve been told, because your questions—well, I talk about them…
…a question that might reflect your desire to know how you yourself could answer it, given the chance.

Very well: if this question were posed to you, by a voice rather than a person—

• a voice conceivable only as coming from television,
• a voice that does not ex-sist, that says nothing,
• the voice, however, in whose name I make this answer ex-sist, which is an interpretation.

Bluntly put, you know I have an answer for everything, whereby you lend me the question:
you rely on the proverb that only the rich are lent to. Rightly so.
Who doesn’t know that I’ve made my fortune from analytic discourse?
In this, I am a self-made man. There have been others, but not today.

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Question 9 – Alright! Listen… If there is repression, it’s because there is censorship.

Freud never said that. He never said repression arose from censorship.
Censorship is not that at all; it’s something else. He never said…
let’s use this to create an image, shall we…
…that castration results from “Papa” waving a warning at his kid who’s touching himself:
“We’ll cut it off, for sure, if you do that again.”

It’s natural that Freud would have thought of it,
but he only used it as a starting point for experience…
…experience as defined in analytic discourse.
I would even say that as he advanced, he leaned more toward the idea that repression came first.

This is overall the shift—the happy shift—of the second topography.
The greed Freud ascribes to the superego is structural,
not a consequence of civilization but “discomfort, symptom, within civilization.”
So, it makes sense to revisit the evidence, starting from the idea that repression produces censorship.

---

Question 10 – If I understand you correctly, this means that for you, the family and society themselves

are effects of repression.

Well, yes… Well, yes!
Why wouldn’t they be—family and society—effects of being built from repression?
Why not?

Society and family, among speaking beings, seem to me entirely different from other animal societies.
It could very well be… It could very well be because of this,
which makes this speaking being specific: the unconscious ex-sists, is motivated by the structure, by language.

Freud so little dismisses this solution that, after all, he devotes himself to the case of the Wolf Man,
to whom it succeeds no better for that. It’s a failure.
A failure of the case, but in the end, a minor one next to its success: establishing the real of the facts.
The problem is that this real cannot be established from just one case, and even within this case, it remains enigmatic.

Yes… Of course, the question must be asked whether, in the end, this enigma is not attributable to analytic discourse itself,
as an institution.
It’s conceivable.

One might also think it could yield results that go further.
For if it stops there, naturally, there is no recourse other than the project of science to overcome sexuality:
I said “project” because sexology remains strictly in the project stage.

It’s not because Freud insisted on it; after all, he deferred to it, which is understandable…
It was still a most gratuitous trust, even for him.
And that says a great deal about his ethics.

Question 11 – Listen… What you’re saying isn’t exactly cheerful!

Still, there are some who try to break free from it.

Yeah… An effervescence where—why not?—analytic discourse might not be entirely irrelevant.

Yes… But that’s not going to lift what analytic discourse, in the same vein, attests to—what I might well call a curse on sex.
Freud himself pointed to it somewhere in Civilization and Its Discontents.

If I spoke of “boredom” or even “melancholy” regarding the “divine” approach to love, how can we overlook
that these two affects are clearly evident—in words and actions—among young people who…
Well, after all, why not? I see no problem with them committing themselves to relationships without repression.
I even find it striking that analysts—on whom they rely, after all—respond with pursed lips.

Yes… To answer what you say about the family:
even if memories of familial repression weren’t true, they’d have to be invented, and indeed they are.
That’s precisely the myth, the attempt to give an epic form to what operates structurally.

Sexual deadlock secretes the fictions that rationalize the impossibility it demonstrates.
I’m not calling the fictions in question “imagined.”
Like Freud—like Freud, I emphasize—I read in them an invitation to find the real that responds to them.

The familial order, in sum, merely translates—what?—that the Father is not the progenitor.
And what else? That the Mother forever contaminates woman, for the human child.
The rest follows. It’s not at all that I appreciate the little one’s taste for order.

The fact is, I hear echoes of it:

“Personally…
‘Personally’: that’s admirable!
…Personally, I loathe anarchy.”

That’s what he prattles on about.
As if the very nature of order, where it exists at all, is that one doesn’t need to like it, since it’s established.
It’s already happened somewhere like that, by good fortune, I’d say, and it’s good fortune only in demonstrating that things are going poorly,
even for the beginnings of freedom.

It’s capitalism re-ordered.
And from there: so much for sex!
Because capitalism—it must be said—started from just that: casting it aside.

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Question 12 – I wonder, where does your confidence come from to prophesy, as you once did,

that “racism has a bright future”? Why on earth do you say that?

Yes… I say it because it doesn’t strike me as funny, and yet… well, I didn’t make a big deal of it:
I ended a year, a seminar, on that subject…
It’s better to know what one can expect.
…I said it as a kind of farewell at the end of one of my seminars, so people would be forewarned.

The only thing that would be interesting, and precisely what I didn’t have the chance to comment on at the time,
is why it seems to me not only “predictable”…
because there are all sorts of symptoms…
…but “necessary.”

It is necessary due to what I call—or try to convey as—the misplacement of our jouissance.
What I mean is, I emphasize that only the Other…
the absolute Other, the radical Other…
…situates this jouissance, and situates it precisely by accentuating it as being the Other,
meaning that the Other, the other side of sex, is separated from us.

So from the moment we mingle in this way, there are fantasies,
entirely novel fantasies that would not otherwise have appeared.
It’s a way of dramatizing, if you will, this Other, this Other who is present in any case.
If there is no sexual relationship, it’s because the Other belongs to another race.

Now, if this Other were left to their mode of jouissance, well…
the thing is already settled…
…we could only do so if, long ago, we hadn’t imposed ours on them,
and we could only do so if things hadn’t reached the point where all that’s left is to regard them as underdeveloped.
Which, naturally, we never fail to do.

Added to all this is the precariousness of our own mode of jouissance.
That’s what I’ve emphasized in the position I call, what I designate as “surplus-jouissance.”
This surplus-jouissance, which is even commonly expressed: surplus-value, that’s what it is.

So, on this basis, on the basis of something that nonetheless specifies us in relation to jouissance…
specifies what I call “our mode”…
…how can we hope that this “humanitarianism,” I’ll call it, this off-the-shelf humanitarianism,
which after all—it must be said—has only served to dress up our misdeeds, will continue?

There you have it.
Even if God, regaining strength from all this, were to finally ex-sist, because after all, it’s not unthinkable—
it’s not unthinkable, but it wouldn’t bode any better than a return to His past,
a past, ultimately, rather dire.

There you go… So, what do you want?

[End of Part One]

Samedi, March 16, 1974

Question 13 – You say, “the unconscious speaks.” This implies—if I understand you correctly—that it is listened to. But was it listened to before Freud invented psychoanalysis?

In my opinion, yes. I go so far as to say so. But it surely does not imply…
…without the discourse from which it ex-sists, without the analytic practice, to name it…
…it does not imply that one evaluates it, as Freud does somewhere…
…at the end of the chapter on “The Work of Dreams” in The Interpretation of Dreams…
…evaluates it as “a knowledge that neither thinks, calculates, nor judges”—I am quoting—
…which does not stop it from working in dreams, and how!

Does that not inspire anything in you? It’s the ideal worker!
The one Marx specifically designated as the flower of the capitalist economy,
in the hope of seeing it take over from the master’s discourse.

Well, that is what happened, though in a form, it must be said, quite unexpected.
There are surprises like this in matters of discourse.
In fact, this—the surprise—is the characteristic trait of the unconscious, as an analyst has insightfully observed. [Theodor Reik]

Question 14 – What do you mean by “analytic discourse”?

The discourse I call analytic is the social bond determined by the practice of analysis. And it holds…
…this is what I contribute…
…it holds to be elevated to the level of the most fundamental among the bonds that remain active for us.

Question 15 – You, yourself, are outside what constitutes the social bond among analysts,
since the International Psychoanalytic Association excommunicated you.

The analysts of the so-called International Society…
…it’s a bit of a fiction! For a long time, the affair boiled down to being familial.
I still knew it when it was in the hands of Freud’s direct and adoptive descendants.
But let us leave that aside… there are other things to say.
…if I dare…
…I warn you that here I am both judge and party, therefore partisan…
…if I dare, I would say that it is currently a Mutual Assistance Society Against Desire… against Analytic Discourse.

The MASAD (Mutual Assistance Society Against Desire)—that’s how it could be called. Sacred MASAD!
It is because of it that I will never speak under the title Names of the Father.
But that’s a personal matter.

These analysts thus want nothing to do with the discourse that conditions them.
That does not exclude them from it, however, since they function as analysts,
which strictly means that there are people analyzing themselves with them.

Thus, they satisfy this discourse, even if certain effects of this discourse are unrecognized by them.
On the whole, they are not lacking in prudence, and even if it is not the true kind, it can be the right kind.
Besides, it is they who bear the risks.

Question 16 – These stories about analysts are very interesting,
but the psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists—they are the ones who, at the grassroots level,
deal with all the misery of the world. And the analyst, meanwhile?

It is certain that “dealing with misery,” as you say,
means entering the discourse that conditions it [master’s discourse], even if only under the guise of protesting against it.
Merely stating this gives me a position, which some will situate as disapproving of politics.
I assert that this is what, for my part, I consider for anyone excluded.

But let us return to the fact. The psycho-[professionals], whatever they are, who engage in your supposed “dealing,”
have no reason to protest but to collaborate. Whether they know it or not, that’s what they are doing.

It is very convenient—I readily admit it to myself—this notion of discourse,
to reduce judgment to what it determines.
What strikes me is that no one has come up with anything better than I have to retort against it.
I said it was easy: they say “intellectualism” about what I put forward.
It doesn’t hold weight when it comes to determining who is right.

Even less so when relating this misery to the capitalist discourse—which I do, as well—I denounce this discourse.
I merely indicate that I cannot do so seriously,
because by denouncing it, I reinforce it,
by normalizing it, or rather, perfecting it.

Question 17 – How would you situate the analyst, in your view, who neither collaborates nor protests?

One could not better situate this analyst objectively than by what was called in the past “being a saint.”
A saint, during his life, does not impose the respect that sometimes comes with a halo.
Nobody notices him when he follows the path of Baltasar Gracián, the one of avoiding brilliance, which his translator—
there might be people who have read this—Amelot de La Houssaye, believed to be writing about The Courtier.

A saint—for me to be understood—does not engage in charity. Rather, he engages in the opposite: he de-charities.
This is to accomplish what the structure imposes, namely, allowing the subject—the subject of the unconscious—to take him as the cause of their desire.

It is from the abjection of this cause, indeed, that the subject in question has a chance to orient themselves, at least within the structure.
This is the condition for them to orient themselves elsewhere as well, if the unconscious is truly what I claim it to be.
And enduring this abjection, for the saint, is not pleasant.

But I imagine that for some ears, at least, tuned to this broadcast, this resonates—it aligns with many oddities—
what I would call the “saint effect.”

The saint effect: does it have a jouissance effect that aligns with enjoyment?
Only the saint remains untouched—there’s nothing in it for him. This is what astonishes most in the matter,
astonishes those who approach and are not mistaken: the saint is the waste product of jouissance.

Sometimes he has a brief reprieve: he enjoys.
But he does not content himself with it—no more than anyone else.
During that time, he no longer operates.

There are always the clever ones who watch him then, trying to draw conclusions to bolster themselves.
But the saint does not care, any more than those who see in this reprieve his reward.
This is laughable since disregarding distributive justice is often where he started from.

In truth, the saint does not believe in “merits,” which does not mean he lacks morality.
The only trouble, for others, is that one cannot see where it leads him.
I ponder, I ponder tirelessly, so there may be more like him.

It is undoubtedly because I cannot attain it myself.
The more saints there are, the more laughter, that’s my principle.
It could be the way out of capitalist discourse, but it will not constitute progress if it only happens for a few.

Question 18 – For twenty years, you have faced an objection in various forms.
You say, “the unconscious speaks.” And of what does not speak, what do you make of it?
What do you do with emotions, with affects, for example?

In this question, you imitate, you reproduce the gestures with which one feigns an air of tradition within the MASAD.
Because—you know it—at least in Paris, within MASAD, the elements that sustain them
still originate from my teaching. It seeps everywhere, it’s a wind, a wind that chills
when it blows too hard. Then they return to old gestures, those that warm them: they huddle together in Congresses.

Let me be answered on just this point: does an affect concern the body?
An adrenaline surge—does that belong to the body or not?
That it disrupts its functions is true, but in what sense does it originate from the soul?

It is from thought that it is discharged. What must be weighed, then,
is whether my idea that the unconscious is structured like a language allows for a more serious investigation of affect
than the view that, after all, it is merely an upheaval that produces a better arrangement. For that is the opposition I face.

I have merely restored what Freud stated in a 1915 article on repression,
and in others where he revisits it: that affect is displaced. How could this displacement be judged,
if not by the subject who assumes it does not come from anywhere better—in Freud as well—than from the representation?
This is not the best of what he could have said.

But this—I explain by his “circle,” as he himself pinned it—
since, after all, I must recognize that I always deal with the same one.

However, I demonstrated through recourse to his correspondence with Fliess…
from the edition, the only one we have of this correspondence: expurgated…
…that the said representation, especially repressed, is nothing less than the structure,
and precisely in its link to the postulate of the signifier. Refer to Letter 52 for this:
that postulate is—within the text—written.

The Affect – as I consider it – is an interference of the unconscious, inasmuch as it itself is this knot of knowledge.
This is what I propose when I say, “the unconscious is structured like a language.”
It is different from bowing down to “a palpitation of the soul.” It is not the same.

Reconsidering affect from my statements, at least, brings us back to what has been said about it with certainty.

The mere dissection of “the passions of the soul”…
…as it is termed by Saint Thomas, a more accurate term than this vague one [affect], which is quite medical…
…the dissection of these passions, beginning with Plato, in terms of the body: head, heart…
…and even, as he says, for what is lower, curiously enough: ἐπιθυμία (epithumia), which seems to imply “overheart”…
…doesn’t this dissection already testify to the necessity of approaching them through the body,
which, I say, is affected by the structure?

Sadness, for example, is qualified as depression, attributing the soul as its basis…
…”psychological tension,” for instance, as the philosopher Pierre Janet puts it…
…but it is not a state of the soul; it is simply a moral fault, as expressed by Dante, or even Spinoza:
a sin, which means a moral cowardice that, ultimately, only pertains to thought—
to the duty of “speaking well” or “orienting oneself” within the unconscious, within the structure.

Moreover, what follows…
…should this cowardice, being a rejection of the unconscious, lead to psychosis…
…this is what I define as the return to the real of what has been rejected—of language, in this case—
…and it is the manic excitation through which this return occurs, mortally so.

Opposite to sadness, there is “gay savoir” [cf. Rabelais, Gargantua: Chapter X], which is, itself, a virtue.
A virtue, incidentally, absolves no one from sin, original as everyone knows.
The virtue I designate as “gay savoir” is an example of manifesting what it consists of:
not “understanding,” delving into meaning, but brushing it as closely as possible without allowing it to stick to this virtue,
thus enjoying deciphering—which implies that “gay savoir” ultimately results in its fall, a return to sin.
Where, in all this, is happiness? Exactly everywhere.
The subject is happy. This is even its definition:
– since it owes nothing except to fortune, to chance, as one might say,
– and since every stroke of fortune is good to it for maintaining itself, for repeating itself.

What is surprising is not that it is happy without suspecting what reduces it—its dependence on the structure.
What is surprising is that it conceives of beatitude—it is not the same—conceives of it far enough to feel exiled from it.
Fortunately, we have the poet to let the cat out of the bag: Dante, whom I just mentioned, and others,
aside from those scoundrels profiting from classicism.

A glance, Beatrice’s glance—be it a mere trifle [three previous instances], a blink of an eye, and the exquisite waste that results:
there emerges the Other, the Other that we must identify with her jouissance,
the jouissance that he, Dante, cannot satisfy, since from her he can only have that glance, that abject thing,
but of which he tells us God fulfills her.
It is even from her mouth that he provokes us to receive this assurance: Paradiso.

To which our response is: “ennui.” A word whose letters, when danced like in cinematography until they align on a line,
I have recomposed into the term: “unien,” by which I designate the identification of the Other with the One.
I say: the mystic One, the other comic one, shall I say…
…because Dante is one; the proof: The Divine Comedy…
…the other comic one makes its eminence elsewhere, in Plato’s Symposium…
…Aristophanes, to name him…
…gives us the crude equivalent in the two-backed beast, whose bisection he attributes to Jupiter—who could not care less.
This is vile, I said—it is not done. One does not implicate the real Father in such improprieties.

And yet Freud also falls here, for what he attributes to Ἔρως [Eros], in opposing it to Θάνατος [Thanatos],
as a “life principle,” is to unite, as if…
…apart from a brief coïtération [coit-iteration (C. Hagège)]…
…one had ever seen two bodies unite as one.

Thus, affect comes to a body whose characteristic would be to “inhabit language”…
I throw myself [sub-jectum?] here to feathers that sell better than mine—Heidegger, to name him…
…the affect, I say, that, finding no accommodation, or at least not to its liking, is called gloominess, ill-temper just as well.
Is that a sin, a grain of madness, or a true touch of the real? I pose the question.

But you see that the “affect,” they—the MASAD—would have done better, for modulating it, to take up my hurdy-gurdy.
It would have taken them further than gawking at crows.

Question 19 – I propose as an exercise for you to answer Kant’s three questions, starting with “What can I know?”

Well, the answer is simple; it’s what I spend my time stating:
Nothing that does not have the structure of language, in any case…

– That repeats Kant…

It does not exactly repeat him, despite the reference to logic. It only repeats insofar as:
there has been the discovery of the facts of the unconscious. The subject of the unconscious, itself, engages with the body.

Must I return to the notion that it is only truly situated by a discourse?
By that whose artifice makes up its entirety, concretely—but what a concrete one, indeed!
What can be said of the knowledge that ex-sists for us in the unconscious—but which only a discourse articulates?
What can be said that allows the real to come to us through this discourse? Thus, your question translates into my context.
Which is to say, it might seem insane.

Question 20 – Can you, yes or no, teach what analytic discourse teaches us about the relationship between the sexes?

Can we, for example, say that if The Man desires The Woman, he only attains her by failing within the realm of perversion?
Yet this is what is formulated through the established experience of psychoanalytic discourse.
And if this is verified, can it be taught to everyone—that is to say, scientifically—
since science has cleared the way by starting from this postulate?

So I do not say that it is verified, but I do say that it is teachable.
And all the more so, as this is what Renan wished for in The Future of Science:
that it should be absolutely without consequence (what a marvel)…

In this case, it fits perfectly, since The Woman does not ex-sist. I’ve said that.
But that she does not ex-sist does not exclude her from being made the object of one’s desire. Quite the contrary.
Hence the result.

Meanwhile, The Man, he, does ex-sist!
The Man, in being mistaken, encounters a woman, with whom—oh my—everything happens:
ordinarily, this failure in which the success of the sexual act consists.

The actors are capable of the most noble deeds, as we know from theater.
The noble, the tragic, the comic, the buffoonish—classify it as you will, but it forms a Gaussian curve,
a spectrum of what emerges from the stage where it is exhibited…
…the stage that severs all social bonds in matters of love…
…the spectrum takes shape, producing the fantasies by which beings of speech subsist in what they denominate,
for reasons unclear, as “life.”

For life, they have only the notion derived from the animal, for whom their knowledge is irrelevant.

Question 21 – The Woman does not ex-sist. The Man, he, does ex-sist.
One cannot say that this makes life easy, nor that it is simple to understand.

Yes, I regret that—indeed—it seems a little complicated, but I can’t help it!
I didn’t create either man or woman.
Someone else took care of that, according to legend…

So let us first establish this axiom: not that The Man does not ex-sist…
…that’s the case for The Woman…
…but that a woman can only forbid herself from…
I am speaking of The Man…
…and not because he is The Other…
…because The Other, we know nothing of his customs…
…but because “there is no Other of the Other.”

That is what I say.
If there were an Other of the Other, there would be a guarantee;
there would be a guarantee that whatever was said would always be true, because the Other of the Other would react.

Well, it does not react…
At the level of the Other, what is said always passes for the truth, but it is not certain—that’s the problem.

Thus, the universal of what women desire…
…this is what I mean when I say they only encounter The Man in psychosis…
…the universal of what they desire is simply madness, and that is why it is said that “all women are mad.”

This is precisely why they are not all, meaning not entirely mad, and rather accommodating:
they arrange, and significantly so. Even to the point where there are no limits to the concessions
each one makes for a man: her body, her soul, her possessions.
She can only manage this, however, in relation to her fantasies, for which accountability is more difficult.
She “lends herself” rather to the perversion I consider to be that of The Man.

And this is what leads her to the masquerade we all know:
[falsetto] and which is not at all, not at all the lie that ingrates, clinging to The Man, accuse her of.

It is the “at-random” preparation for the man’s fantasy in her to find its moment of truth.
It is not excessive since truth is already a woman—not entirely so, but not entirely sayable either.

This is why truth more often than not refuses itself, demanding from the act airs of sexuality
that it cannot sustain, resulting in failure—like clockwork.
But let’s leave that aside.

It is for The Woman that M. Fenouillard’s famous axiom does not hold,
and that beyond the boundaries there is, for her, the limit—to not be forgotten.
By which, in love, it is not the meaning that counts but the sign, as elsewhere.

This is, indeed, the entire drama.
And one cannot say that in translating analytic discourse I evade, in any case—not I, who speaks to you, as is done elsewhere.

Question 22 – What should I do?

Regarding “What should I do?” I can only take up the question as anyone else would,
by asking it of myself. It is not you I am answering.

For me, the answer is simple: “What I am doing,”
drawing from my practice the ethic of “the duty to speak well,” which I have already emphasized.

Take a cue from this for yourself, if you believe that in other discourses this ethic might thrive, though I doubt it.
For ethics are relative to discourse. We do not rehash endlessly.

Kant’s idea of testing a maxim by the universality of its application
is but a grimace from which the real slips away, by being approached from only one side.
I am speaking here of the “male” side of Kant.

It is a mockery, responding to the lack of rapport with the Other when one merely takes it literally.
It is, to put it plainly, a “bachelor’s ethic,” one that someone like Montherlant, closer to our time, embodied.
And which my friend Claude Lévi-Strauss might structure, if it amuses him, in his speech to the Académie,
since, after all, an academician need only tickle the truth.

It is worth noting, moreover, that thanks to your care, this is where I find myself for the moment…

Question 23 – You enjoy this exercise—and I prove it since you will answer the third question:
“What may I hope for?”

Well, that one… that one, unlike the previous one, I do not adopt.
It is not a question I ask myself again; I return it to you.
That is to say, this time I hear it as coming from you.
Because as far as what I make of it for myself, I have already answered it a little, as it were…

How could it concern me without specifying “what” to hope for?
Do you imagine hope—as sometimes happens—as having no object?

So to you, as to anyone else to whom I might address “you,” it is to this “you” that I respond:
hope for whatever pleases you. Just know that I have seen hope—those so-called brighter tomorrows—lead people I esteemed, as much as I esteem you, to suicide, quite simply.

And why not? Suicide is the only act that can succeed without passing through failure.
If no one recognizes what I draw from my experience, it is because the act itself arises from the principle: to know nothing.

Here again: Montherlant—yes, while we’re thinking of him—without Claude, Claude Lévi-Strauss,
I probably wouldn’t think of him.

For Kant’s question to have meaning, I would transform it into: from where do you hope?
It is the “from where” that matters.

Why would you want to know what analytic discourse might promise you, since, for me, it is already clear?
Psychoanalysis—forgive me—would undoubtedly allow you to hope for clarity about the unconscious of which you are the subject.
But everyone knows I encourage no one, no one whose desire is not determined.

Furthermore…
excuse me for speaking of “you” in bad company…
…I think analytic discourse must be refused to scoundrels:
surely this is what Freud disguised as a supposed cultural criterion.

One must say that ethical criteria, unfortunately, are no more certain.
In any case, it is other discourses that are judged before entering the analytic one.
And if I dare articulate that “analysis must be refused to scoundrels,” it is because analysis renders scoundrels foolish…

This is certainly an improvement, but without hope, to use your term [Lacan laughs].

Question 24 – If there is an academy, then tickle this truth from Boileau:
“What is well conceived is clearly stated.” Your style, etc.

Yes…[laughs] So, if I answer you off the cuff, what do I say?
Ten years are enough for what I’ve written not only to become clear to everyone,
but for them to come to me and say they’ve taken it as a guide.

I’ve seen this with my thesis, where…
perhaps that’s why I haven’t reissued it yet…
…where, nonetheless, my style was not yet crystalline [sic]. This is a fact of experience.

However, to continue would send you to the Greek calends, so I reply…

Nicolas Boileau, The Art of Poetry, Chant I:

“Before you write, learn to think.
Depending on how clear or obscure your idea,
Expression follows—either less distinct or more pure.
What is well conceived is clearly stated,
And the words to say it come easily.”

I restore it as:

“What is well stated, one…
…dear ‘one’…
…one conceives clearly.”

This “clearly” says enough about what it means: that it clears its path, its path through the “one.”
It is even despairing, this promise of success for the rigor of an ethic, success in sales at least.

It makes us feel the price of neurosis by which is maintained what Freud reminds us:
it is not evil, but good, that engenders, that nourishes guilt.

It all gives one a headache, doesn’t it?
Impossible to navigate this without a suspicion, at least, of what “castration” means.

And perhaps—parenthesis—it could enlighten us on the story that Boileau let circulate on this matter,
“clearly” so we might mistake it—that is, believe it—the story of the gander from his childhood, allegedly.
[Nicolas Boileau recounted having been attacked by a gander at 13, with the supposed quip: “always the gander devours the sex.”]

The “medí”—m, e, d, i, t—set in its reputed “ochre”:
“There is no degree from mediocre to worst,” that is Boileau.

Nicolas Boileau, The Art of Poetry, Chant IV:

“In all other arts, there are varying degrees,
One may fill the second ranks with honor;
But in the dangerous art of rhyming and writing,
There are no degrees from mediocre to worst.”

So this “medí” that I’ve just reinstated: still, I find it hard to attribute it to the author of the line,
the one I’ve just cited, the line that humorizes this word so well: “medí.”

Perhaps my correction is too easy. Perhaps it’s even clumsy, isn’t it?
And what if what is revealed here is simply what it is, this line—”what is well conceived, etc.”—
a witticism to which no one sees through?

Don’t we know that a witticism is a calculated slip, one that beats the unconscious at its own game?

This is readable in Freud, in The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious. What else does he say?

Interpretation must be swift to satisfy the interplay:

“from what endures as pure loss
to what wagers only from father to worse.”