🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

Today, I would like us to chat a little, to get a sense of where you all stand, at a moment when I believe we might perhaps consider that we have…
apart from the lecture announced for next Wednesday at 10:30, which will not be followed by a seminar…
we will still allow ourselves one more seminar after that, in case the lecture raises questions you would like me to clarify or develop further afterward.

Because, of course, the said lecture will have to take into account an extension of the seminar’s audience on that occasion, and I will not be able to express myself in the terms I use here, which assume familiarity with all our previous work. So, my goodness, if only to allow me to gauge, at least through you, the ground on which I will rely to speak to you next time, I would really like for today, as we have already done once before, and as it worked out rather well, for as many of you as possible to ask me a question that remains open for you. I think there are plenty of them, since what we seek here is rather to open up questions than to close them.

So, what is the question that seems to you, perhaps, to have been opened? That’s rather how I should phrase my question—what is the question that was opened for you by this year’s seminar, either as a whole or in these recent sessions?

Let’s see, GRANOFF, didn’t you have a comment to make last night on the topic of the theme of the three caskets? Is there nothing you could articulate?

Wladimir GRANOFF—No.

LACAN—Then, who wants to speak? BARGUES?

BARGUES

I don’t really know about what. There are so many questions. I’ve mostly been dwelling on last night’s lecture, and in this regard, I feel like I now see things a bit differently than GESSAIN does. Perhaps precisely because of what this seminar has given me—a difference in perspective. For instance, I wouldn’t have done anymore—though I was very tempted to do so for a long time—what he tried to do, that is, the rapprochement he made at the start of his lecture, placing this on a genetic plane, starting from all this mirage, this whole accumulation of images we get from certain clinical types, and from there trying to rediscover sensory experience, to rediscover this reality, the good-mother reality… It gives the impression of doing a kind of maternalization of analysis, if you will, of rediscovering… It reminded me a bit of SCHWEICH’s lecture, in a certain sense, where he emphasizes frustration.

And I believe that if we resolutely consider the ego in its imaginary function, I no longer think it’s possible to rediscover, to draw a parallel, as it were, between an experience like the one SPITZ or GESELL bring us and what we find in our own field, solely based on these contents, whether they are drawings…

GESSAIN had the impression, after his lecture, that child psychoanalysts lack all this material from drawings. I feel like it does, of course, bring us something, but it’s extremely dangerous because things are not very well situated. I’ve completely changed my way of viewing the problem, whether with children or adults. I used to practice a technique similar to GESSAIN’s or Françoise DOLTO’s.

Now I emphasize much more the way they speak rather than what they say to me, the way the discourse unfolds much more than its content. And one really gets the impression that the truth—if we can call it that, what refers precisely to the subject—is something that doesn’t have much to do with all these structures. Suddenly, at a certain moment, a word appears. At least, that’s what they said. I’ve clearly observed it in certain cases, the moment when the ego disintegrates as much as possible. I believe that’s what the seminar has brought me most—to show, to go as far as one must to completely diffract this ego, a kind of rainbow, and it’s at that moment indeed—the dream you showed of the injection given to Irma, and that formula that emerged at a certain point. I think that’s what has most changed my way of practicing my technique.

LACAN—Who else…?

Miss X.

Perhaps it’s about the things you talked about at the beginning of the year. I have the idea that you make a distinction between the symbolic and the imaginary, and I’m not at all sure about how that is situated.

LACAN

Indeed, many things are grounded on that. So, what idea do you have of it, after what you’ve heard, that is, part of the seminar?

Miss X.

I have the idea that the imaginary is perhaps more visible, in the subject, in the way they receive things, whereas the symbolic order is something more impersonal. But I’m not sure.

LACAN

Yes, that’s true… and it’s not, what you’re saying. I’m going to ask a question in turn. At the point we have now reached—and here, I’m asking those who are supposed to grasp something to make an effort—
what economic function—in the schema I’ve given you, reciprocal—do I assign to language and speech? What is their relationship? How do they differ from each other?

This is a very simple question, but one that still deserves an answer.

Wladimir GRANOFF

It is not a relationship of container to content. One would give a poor illustration by extending the one you provided in the Rome lecture, about the message with all its redundancies. And the message stripped of those redundancies in the sense that…

Octave MANNONI—I…

LACAN—You’re not going to cut him off, this isn’t the time.

Wladimir GRANOFF

To return to the topology of these questions as Miss X presented them, language would be the frieze of the imaginary and speech the symbolic marker, full speech.

LACAN—Yes… The symbolic marker, what do you mean by that?

Wladimir GRANOFF—Well, the islet from which the entire message can be reconstructed, or rather deciphered.

Octave MANNONI

I would say, to be brief, that language is geometrical, and speech is perspective, and the point of perspective is always an Other. Language is geometrical, a reality. Language is geometrical, meaning something that is not set in perspective, something that belongs to no one, whereas speech is a perspective within this geometrical space, with a center of perspective, with a vanishing point that is always an ego. In language, there is no ego. It cannot be put into perspective.

LACAN—Are you sure about that?

Octave MANNONI

It seems to me. Language is a universe. Speech is a cross-section of that universe, which is tied exactly to the situation of the speaking subject. Language may have meaning, but only speech has significance. Language may have meaning—we understand the meaning of Latin, but Latin is not speech.

LACAN

When we understand Latin, we understand the totality of the meanings by which the various lexicological and grammatical elements are organized, the way meanings refer to one another, the usage of expressions.

Octave MANNONI—That is language, whereas speech…

LACAN—And in this, why do you say that “in this system the ego does not exist”? It is absolutely included there, on the contrary.

Octave MANNONI

I’m thinking of an old joke about the baccalaureate exam, where a fake candidate is mistaken for a real one. The examiner shows him a paper:

—”But it’s you who wrote this; it’s titled Letter to Seneca.”

And the guy says:

—”But, sir, am I the type to write to Seneca?”

He takes it on the plane of speech; he might be able to translate the passage, but he says: That’s not me, that’s not my speech. Obviously, it’s a burlesque situation, but it seems to have that meaning. If I read a letter whose sender and recipient I don’t know, I can understand it—I am in the world of language.

LACAN

If you understand it, it’s because you are quite naturally indeed… When someone shows you a letter to SENECA, it’s naturally you who wrote it. The proof: it’s true! This completely contradicts what you are indicating with the example you provided.

If we immediately find our place in the play of various intersubjectivities, it’s because we are in our place there, anywhere, that the world of language is possible, insofar as we are in our place from anywhere.

Octave MANNONI—When there is speech.

LACAN

Precisely, the whole question is there: if that is enough to become speech. Now it is quite clear that what grounds the analytic experience is that not every way of introducing oneself into language is equally effective. Isn’t that so? Isn’t it also in this corpse of being—this body of being—that psychoanalysis can exist, that any piece of borrowed language does not hold the same value for the subject?

Wladimir GRANOFF

Language is: from person to person, and speech is: from someone to someone else. Because speech is constituting, and language is constituted.

François PERRIER

You mentioned the word economic when posing the question. That’s precisely where the current problem lies, so I can’t answer. But that was precisely the question I’m currently asking myself. I ask it as follows: I’m trying to understand in relation to a certain form of analysis that plays out precisely in the imaginary and that formulates the imaginary as such, without denouncing it as imaginary.

Moreover, I think that in this form of analysis, the economic problem—which is ultimately the most important on the plane where we live—is genuinely posed in terms of quantity, for example, through a given imaginary situation. The way I understand things: such an amount of affect is discharged, and insofar as not enough has been discharged, for example, the analysis will remain superficial. So, there’s this tendency to try, through the transference relationship, through its imaginary character, in the mode of something fairly ineffable, of the sensory and the felt, to precisely address the economic criteria of analysis—that is, to draw out as much as possible and to feel as much as possible.

This is, if you will, the schema to which I could refer a few years ago.

At present, if I understand correctly, the perspective has been displaced and repositioned: it is about introducing the economic problem of language into speech. And this is where I ask myself the question by proposing this—I don’t know if I’m mistaken—there will no longer be an economic problem insofar as the signifying situation of the subject is fully articulated in all its dimensions, and particularly in its triangular dimensions, with the help of speech.

And it is precisely to the extent that language becomes full speech—but specifically, it is three-dimensional—that, quite naturally, the economic factor will cease to be a problem precisely at the level of the quantities invested in an analysis, for example, quantities of affects or instincts, to simply become—it’s very difficult, I can’t quite…—to simply become the substratum, the motor of something that will quite naturally integrate into a situation, insofar as it has been understood, articulated, and fully brought to consciousness in all its dimensions.

LACAN

A word you just pronounced, I’ll note in passing before giving the floor to LECLAIRE:
– the first time: dimension,
– the second: three-dimensional,
– and another time in the form of dimension.

Serge LECLAIRE

The answer that came to me is this—it’s a formula. In the way of viewing things where language has a function of communication, or even of transmission, speech, in turn, has a function of foundation, even of revelation.

Mr. ARENSBURG

So, it would be through speech that language could have its economic role. Is that what you mean?

François PERRIER

No, I am talking about the reintegration of economy into the symbolic order. Ultimately, this is the formula I’ll settle on: the reintegration of economy into the symbolic order, through the intermediary of speech.

LACAN

There’s a significant word, which is the key term in cybernetics: it’s the word message. Language, in relation to the message, undeniably occupies a complicated position. But it is designed for that. What is striking in language is several things in relation to the message—in language as we know it, as it is constituted. What is striking, first of all, is its ambiguity, the fact that semantic units are always polysemantic, that signifiers always have multiple meanings, sometimes extremely disjointed ones.

Thus, language, which is not a code, language as it exists, can operate in messages effectively through the totality of a meaning. It is through the sense of the sentence, which is a unique sense—I mean, it cannot be lexicalized:
– one cannot make a dictionary of sentences,
– one makes a dictionary of words, of word usages, or phrases,
– one does not make a dictionary of sentences.

It is through the usage of the utterance of a sentence that certain ambiguities tied to usages, to the semantic element, are resolved by what we say in context.

This can only mean this: the reduction of language to codes, to examples that are most often given when one sketches, because one cannot have a better one to sketch the theory of communication…
of which I do not know if I will speak to you about today or if it will only be next time, during my lecture, that I will provide you with its precise schematization…
the theory of communication, insofar as:
– it tries to define the units of communication,
– it tries to formalize the theme of communication,
…always tends rather to refer to codes, that is to say, to something that in principle avoids ambiguities:
a code sign cannot be confused with another sign, except by mistake. Therefore, we find ourselves in front of language, facing a first category that shows us that, in relation to the message, its function is not simple.

Now, this is only an introduction that leaves entirely veiled the question of what a message actually is.
What is a message, in your opinion, spontaneously, innocently?
What does the message imply for you?

Mr. MARCHANT—The transmission of information.

LACAN—What is information?

Mr. MARCHANT—Some kind of indication.

Collette AUDRY—It’s something that starts from someone and is addressed to someone else.

Mr. MARCHANT—That’s communication, not a message.

Collette AUDRY—I believe that’s the essential aspect of the message—it’s a transmitted announcement.

Mr. MARCHANT—A message and communication are not the same thing.

Collette AUDRY

The most ordinary meaning of message is something transmitted to someone, to let them know. You carry a message to someone, whether it’s in military operations or something else. That’s the literal sense.

Mr. MARCHANT—The message is unidirectional. Communication is not unidirectional; there’s a back-and-forth.

Collette AUDRY—Didn’t I say that the message goes from someone to someone else?

Mr. MARCHANT

A message is sent from someone to someone else. Communication is what establishes itself once the message is exchanged.

Wladimir GRANOFF

The message is a program inserted into a universal machine, and after a certain time, it produces whatever it can.

LACAN—What he says isn’t bad.

Robert LEFORT—It’s the expansion of the symbolic world.

Mr. MARCHANT

No, it’s the narrowing of the symbolic world because, at the foundation of language, everything is transmitted together. Speech will make a choice. There is a distinction between speech, message, and language. Speech is the instrument that will serve in a more or less adequate way, with a series of indeterminacies, which manifest themselves during the act of speaking. There’s a series of things that will happen against the backdrop of language. I believe that language has a broader function. It is something on which and through which messages will be transmitted. There’s a series of indeterminacies at the level of the message, language, and speech.

LACAN

We find ourselves in the following position: Ms. Colette AUDRY introduces, concerning the message, the question of the necessity of subjects, something going from someone to someone else being the essential element of the message.

Colette AUDRY

It’s not necessarily direct, a message—it can be carried by a messenger who has nothing to do with it. The messenger may not know what the message contains.

Mr. MARCHANT—It can also be transmitted from machine to machine.

Colette AUDRY—But what is certain, in any case, is that there’s a starting point and an endpoint.

LACAN

Sometimes, the messenger becomes confused with the message. There’s something written on the scalp; he can’t even read it in a mirror, you have to shave his head to get the message. In this case, do we have the image of the message in itself? Is a messenger who has the message written under his hair, by himself, a message?

Mr. MARCHANT—I claim that yes.

Colette AUDRY—It’s obviously a message.

Octave MANNONI—It doesn’t need to be received.

Mr. MARCHANT—Messages are generally sent and received. But in between, it remains a message.

Colette AUDRY—A bottle thrown into the sea is a message—it is addressed. It doesn’t need to arrive, but it is addressed.

Mr. MARCHANT—It’s a meaning in motion.

LACAN

It’s not a meaning in motion; it’s a sign in motion, a message. Now we must determine what a sign is.

Mr. MARCHANT—It’s something that is exchanged.

Serge LECLAIRE—It’s objective speech; the message is objective speech.

LACAN

Absolutely not! I’m going to give you an essential allegory on this question to try to establish some markers, to clarify things a little. There was a man named WELLS who, as everyone knows, is often regarded as a rather simplistic mind. He was, in fact, an ingenious man, not simplistic at all. He knew very well what he was doing: what he refused and what he chose in the system of thought and behavior.

I don’t quite remember in which of his works—it’s certainly by him—he imagines two or three scientists who have arrived on the planet Mars. And there, they encounter the following phenomenon, which is quite striking: they find themselves in the presence of beings who have their own modes of communication, and they are quite surprised to understand what is being conveyed to them in the form of a message. They each understand something, they are amazed, and they say: “These Martians are extraordinary people!” And after that, they consult among themselves.

One of them says: “He told me he was conducting research on the functions of quantity, everything related to electronic physics.”

The other says: “Yes, he told me he was working on the essence of solid bodies.”

And the third says: “He told me he was studying meter in poetry and the function of meter and rhyme, etc.”

All three of them understood something. What they understood is precisely what interests each of them the most. Do you see the meaning of this allegory? Do you believe that this phenomenon, whose exemplary nature you can clearly see—it happens all the time, on every occasion, whenever we engage in intimate or public discourse—belongs to the side of language or the side of speech?

Wladimir GRANOFF—Where is your question?

LACAN—Does this little story illustrate language or speech?

Colette AUDRY—Both; there’s language on one side and speech on the other.

Wladimir GRANOFF

To my knowledge, there aren’t many universal machines. Suppose we run a program through one; we must consider not only the machine but also the operators. A program is run—it’s a message. And at the output, one either says, “The machine malfunctioned,” or “It didn’t malfunction.” In this sense, from the moment the machine produces a communication, from the moment it is receivable by someone—and it is unacceptable if it’s not understood by the operator—if the operator finds it consistent, understands it, accepts it as valid, and considers the machine to have worked well: at that moment, the message has become a communication.

Mr. MARCHANT—But in that case, the three understood, but they understood differently.

Octave MANNONI

Not differently. If a mathematician unfolds equations on a board, one person might say, “That’s magnetism,” and another might say something else, and those equations remain true for both.

LACAN—But that’s not it at all.

Mr. MARCHANT—Regarding the story of the machine, everything that happens in the machine is inserted, the entire code.

Jacques RIGUET—I think it’s simply language.

Serge LECLAIRE

I have the impression that the discussion has, nonetheless, been engaged in a certain way. I want to clarify how, based on your reflection on cybernetics—that is, what you will say next Wednesday.

LACAN—This is, incidentally, an opportunity for me to see where you stand.

Serge LECLAIRE

If, from this perspective, we manage to relatively situate language, I believe it’s much more difficult for us, at least for now, to situate speech. Earlier, when I spoke about speech, I spoke about it in a certain sense—that is, when I talk about speech, I always mean speech. I would like you to tell us a little, to speak a little about the pole of speech right now, so that we can at least situate the plane of the discussion.

Mr. MARCHANT—Can speech and language even be separated when they manifest themselves?

LACAN—Where is Father BEIRNAERT? What do you think about all this, Father BEIRNAERT?

Mr. BEIRNAERT—I thought, like RIGUET, that it was language. So, I must not have understood anything.

Jacques RIGUET—Why is it language…?

LACAN

You see here that everyone is obviously dealing with a mythical being who has developed a certain mode of message. Through this message, each one heard what lies at the heart of their creative function.

Jacques RIGUET—Each one heard it in their own way.

Colette AUDRY

It’s even more complicated because we are still in a state of expectation. We would need to distinguish what happens at the point of emission. We would first need to see what the Martian intended to say.

LACAN

We will never know what the Martian intended to say. If we position ourselves on the side where the emission of words remains vague, we cannot say that speech and language are conflated.

Mr. MARCHANT—Well, you make language disappear, and then you corner us with that.

LACAN

I agree that it’s an allegory that deserves clarification. There is a substitute for language in this allegory—it’s the possibility of understanding among the three individuals. And on this language, speech will function, the speech they will have received, whether it’s well or poorly understood—but there is no code.

What this allegory means is this: it is in a world of language that each person must recognize a message, if you like—but let’s not call it that, because it will create confusion—a call, a vocation, which is revealed to them. Isn’t that so?

When someone spoke earlier about revelation or foundation, that’s what it’s about. We are confronted with an entire world of language. And that’s precisely why, from time to time, we have the impression that this world has something essentially neutralizing, uncertain, and error-inducing about it.

There isn’t a single philosopher who hasn’t, quite rightly, insisted on the fact that the very possibility of error is tied to the existence of language. And it is in relation to this world that each subject must find their way—it is, at the very least, part of their function in existence to find their way. It’s not, as was once believed, something that simply happens on a plane of noetization… they must find their way, they mustn’t simply come to know the world.

If psychoanalysis means anything:
– it’s that they must find their way in their very being,
– it’s that they are already engaged in something that relates to this world of language, but that is by no means identical to it.

What we have said so far is that it is something that has a relationship with language and yet is not identical to it—it is the universal concrete discourse, insofar as it has continued since the beginning of time. This is what has been truly said. When I say truly said, I would even say: what has been actually said. To clarify the idea, we can go that far.

It is in relation to this that the subject is situated, as and inasmuch as they are a subject, up to a certain point already determined:
– a determination that belongs to a completely different register than that of the determinations of the real,
– a completely different register than that of the material metabolisms through which this appearance of existence, which is life, has emerged.

It is of an entirely different order. The subject is inscribed in it, determined by it. And yet, they have a function as long as they continue this discourse—to find themselves in their place in this discourse, not simply as an orator, but as already entirely determined by this discourse. I have often emphasized that even before their birth, they are already situated somewhere, not only as the emitter of this discourse but—I would almost say—as an atom of this discourse; they are in the dance line of this discourse.

They themselves are, if you will, a message, just as earlier when we began to approach the question of the message, we immediately saw that the message could wander on its own. The question precisely concerns the relationship between humans and this message. We realize that it is much deeper than in that accidental way, namely when a message is written on one’s head.

The subject is already entirely something that is situated within the succession of messages. Each of these choices is speech.

Mr. MARCHANT—We are now at that level, at the level of speech.

LACAN

I called Father BEIRNAERT to the rescue because there is still the “In principio erat verbum” [Εν αρχη ην ο Λογος]. The other day—you weren’t there, and I regretted it—I found confirmation in PLAUTUS of the use of the word fides, which you once said best translates speech for you. It’s curious that the religious translation does not say “In principio erat fides,” but “In principio erat verbum,” and verbum is language properly speaking—it’s the same word.

It does not say “In the beginning was speech.” When it says “In the beginning was the word,” it says something with a certain meaning, and which probably indicates to us that there is something there—since we say that it was at a principle we cannot reach, which is, in truth, extremely difficult for us to think about, because it means nothing other than what is also emphasized in the Greek text: “Εν αρχη ην ο Λογος,” Λογος: language, and not speech. And afterward, God uses speech. He says, “Let there be light.”

Let us return to what we aimed at earlier in that Wellsian allegory. The question has its meaning, and we understand that each person receives it differently. But still, if we give a precise meaning to the word speech, which is the question that remains open—and it is not the one we must approach today—let us try to approach more closely the way in which humans are interested—in the most inter-esse sense—in speech.

We still feel the necessity of distinguishing what is message—in the sense of what is a sign, a sign on the move—and the way in which humans enter the game. I say that the subject themselves is integrated into the universal discourse. You will notice, however, that it is not in the same way as these messages in bottles or on skulls that wander across the world. It is not of the same order, at least not for us. From the point of view of Sirius, perhaps, one might make a confusion, but for us, such a confusion is not possible. In any case, what interests us is knowing the difference.

That is why VALABREGA[?] earlier formally said that in Wells’ allegory, it is a question of speech.

Jacques RIGUET—May I sketch two or three things on the board?

LACAN—Go ahead.

Jacques RIGUET

I would simply like, in two minutes, to try to explain what mathematicians mean by language, because they have a very precise definition. We consider a set of letters S = {a, b, c, d}, and from these letters, we consider the set of all the words that can be formed using these letters: ab, ac, ca, ad… etc., abdd, bb, etc. You see, I arrange the letters one after the other in any order, with repetitions allowed. I form all these words indefinitely.

Among these words, we consider a subset WF (well-formed)—words formed according to specific rules using these symbols. And a mathematical theory consists of providing a certain subset WF—we call these axioms—and a set of deduction rules, which are, for example, syntactic rules.

It’s something of the form, for example, that if, within a word, I have the symbol ab, then I will have permission to replace ab with p. Thus, from the word abcd, I can form the word pcd. This is what we call theorems. The set of all the words I can form from the axioms using these syntactic productions—this set, WF, is called a language.

One clear thing is that the choice of symbols abcd is arbitrary. I could have chosen others instead of abcd and replaced those symbols everywhere with u, v, x, y, and made the same changes in the syntactic productions. I would have thereby defined an isomorphism between these two theories.

In other words, the notion of language for mathematicians is defined up to isomorphism. There’s more: it is defined only up to encoding. Because if we consider the set of symbols made up of 0 and 1, I could agree that a = 00, b = 01, c = 10, d = 11, and I would translate all the syntactic productions and axioms based on these symbols 0 and 1.

But I would need to be careful when I want to decode the new theory to retrieve the old one! Because if I encode a certain word as 00010111001, you’ll see that the decoding might sometimes involve ambiguity. For example, if we assume that e = 000, I won’t know if the word begins with a or with e, etc. I believe that’s where we should start to understand.

It seems to me that your definition of symbols is not the same as this one: S = {a, b, c, d}.

Because for you, symbols are tied to another language. You have a kind of base communication language, a sort of universal language, and the symbols you speak of are always encoded based on this foundational language.

LACAN

What strikes me in what you’ve just said, if I’ve understood correctly—I believe I have understood—is this: I believe that reducing, exemplifying the phenomenon of language with something as formally purified as mathematical symbols—and this is one of the advantages of adding cybernetics to our dossier to guide us in our technique—clearly shows us that no matter how much simplicity you grant to mathematical notation of—of what, precisely?—of something that is the verbum, language conceived as a world of signs, it is absolutely clear that this exists entirely independently of us.

I mean that whether you note it in decimal or binary numeration—that is, using only 0s and 1s—the number system, numbers have properties that exist absolutely. And they exist whether we are here or not. That is to say, 1729 will always be the sum of two cubes, the smallest number that is the sum of two different cubes. The question is whether, independently of us, the meaning of the theorem exists. [1729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³]

Jacques RIGUET

Here’s an example. Suppose the set consists of the elements: {2, 3, 5, 4, +}. We’ll have [Theorem]: 3+5 = 4+4.

LACAN

It is therefore clear that all of this can circulate somewhere in the universal machine—more universal than anything you can suppose—and can circulate in all sorts of ways. We can imagine them—let’s suppose—in a form, with an indefinite multiplicity of layers, where all of this spins and circulates in circles. The world of signs functions, exists, and it has no kind of meaning.

Jacques RIGUET—None at all. The machine will need to know this…

LACAN

What gives it meaning is the moment when we stop the machine. In other words, what gives it meaning are the temporal cuts we make in it. You said it yourself. Moreover, if these cuts are faulty, they can introduce ambiguities that are sometimes difficult to resolve, but which will eventually always be given a meaning.

Jacques RIGUET

I don’t believe so because these cuts can be made by another machine. One could construct a machine to make these cuts correctly, and there’s no guarantee that a human would know how to decipher what comes out of this new machine.

LACAN

That’s absolutely correct. Nevertheless, it’s within an element of temporal intervention, of scansion, that ultimately lies the insertion of the question of something that has meaning for a subject.

Jacques RIGUET—Yes, but there’s something more.

LACAN—Yes, go on.

Jacques RIGUET—It seems to me that, in addition, there’s this universe of symbols that belongs to the common realm of humanity.

LACAN—What we’ve just said is that it does not belong to it specifically at all.

Jacques RIGUET—Exactly: machines do not have a shared universe of symbols.

LACAN

That’s very delicate. Because we construct these machines, but in fact, we don’t even need to construct them—we just need to observe that, through your 0s and 1s, that is, through the connotation of presence-absence, we generate, we are capable of representing everything that presents itself, everything that has been developed by a determined historical process, everything that has been developed in mathematics.

We agree on this. It is also absolutely clear that all the properties of numbers are present in numbers written with binary symbols. Of course, they were not meant to be discovered this way. It required all sorts of things, including, precisely, the invention of symbols, such as this: √, which allowed us to take a giant step the day we began to write it down on a small piece of paper. We spent centuries with our mouths agape in front of the quadratic equation, unable to move forward. And it’s because of that symbol that we could advance.

We find ourselves before this kind of problematic situation:
– there is a reality of signs, within which exists a world of truth entirely devoid of subjectivity,
– and, on the other hand, there is a historical progression of subjectivity, which is manifestly oriented toward rediscovering this truth that resides in the order of symbols.

Do you agree? Who doesn’t get it?

Mr. MARCHANT

I don’t agree. You’ve defined—and I believe it’s the best definition—language as a world of signs to which we are foreign.

LACAN—That language.

Mr. MARCHANT—I believe that applies to language in general.

LACAN—But no, because it is fully loaded with our history. Language is as contingent as the symbol √. And furthermore, it is ambiguous.

Mr. MARCHANT

I believe the notion of error cannot be applied to language when it’s conceived in this way. You linked it earlier. And I think that by defining language as a world of signs independent of us…

LACAN
There are no errors in the world of zeros.

Mr. MARCHANT
But in the world of language, it no longer means anything, obviously. There are things that are true or false. You’re talking about a search being conducted. At that point, error and truth are determined. But it’s already a somewhat particular language, the world of mathematical symbols.

LACAN
It’s not entirely aligned with a system of language as it exists. I can point out an error, identify it as such, if I tell you, “Elephants live in water,” I can, through a series of syllogisms, refute that error.

Mr. MARCHANT
That’s already a sentence, it’s a message and a communication that can be false. You’re sending a message. What I mean is that if we define all language as a world of signs that exists independently of us, then the notion of error doesn’t apply at that level. It arises at a subsequent level of differentiation of language, where messages are already manifesting. Communication and speech are not on the same level, in my opinion. I place language on a lower level, as a foundation upon which—and thanks to which—all other things manifest: communication, message, and speech.

I assign language a much broader space. It is what envelops an entire totality of manifestations of existence, of everything you like. From there, a certain number of differentiations can arise. But when you refer to language and say, “In the beginning was the Word,” that’s the true language to which error does not apply. Because the primary role of language is to provide the possibility…

LACAN—What we have defined.

Mr. MARCHANT—It’s another language. When you say, “In the beginning was the Word,” it’s a language from which this one is derived.

LACAN—As far as it is possible to approach it, it approaches it.

Mr. MARCHANT—When it’s possible to know what error and truth are.

LACAN—Yes, you mean that in that language, there are no errors?

Mr. MARCHANT
They can be found. One can determine that there are errors, and one can eliminate them. That language already has laws far more significant than one might imagine, whereas the language from which it originates does not yet have its laws. This entire language is built upon another language, which is the one you refer to when you say, “In the beginning was the Word.” It’s not the same.

LACAN—I would like to grasp your thought.

Mr. MARCHANT
This is where the role of speech and subjectivity comes into play. When you speak of speech and language, there are two distinct functions. Language is the foundation upon which—and thanks to which—an ensemble of constructions, of forms, can be built, and an ensemble of directions can be indicated in which, for example, human thought will operate and messages will be transmitted.

It is something extremely undetermined. And when you then determine another language—because Mr. RIGUET, when he spoke about it, when he indicated all this, he imposed rules, he provided definitions, using language, moreover. It is within language itself that these determinations can occur. In my view, language must be maintained at an almost undifferentiated level. Because, at that point, if one begins to want to decipher the meaning of a language, it no longer applies. One can only decipher the meaning of speech.

It can even have several meanings, and that is precisely its role.

LACAN—That’s precisely what I’m aiming at: to show you that the question of meaning arises with speech.

Mr. MARCHANT—Of course, but not with language. Language allows for meaning to be established and for speech to manifest within it.

LACAN
There are two things. The historically embodied language, which is that of our community—French, for example—and then there is that language. The important thing is to realize that there is something we can access in an exceptionally clear way in its purity, something where laws are already manifest—you said so yourself earlier.

Mr. MARCHANT—But there’s another example that comes to mind…

LACAN—But laws that remain entirely undeciphered until we intervene to introduce meaning. What meaning?

Mr. MARCHANT—Ah, no! Not there! Absolutely not!

LACAN
It is always the meaning of something with which we are entirely engaged—that is, the way we introduce ourselves into the temporal succession of this. It’s a matter of knowing what time we’re dealing with.

Mr. X
I believe there are notions from PIAGET that can be applied here, which span from the logic of the child to the logic of the adolescent. He defines the essence of formal thought in terms of possibility rather than in terms of reality. But within the notion of possibilities themselves, he makes a distinction between what he calls possible structure, which corresponds to the objective structures of thought, and what he calls materially possible, which must receive a function from the subject’s consciousness.

LACAN
But that has absolutely nothing to do with thought. None of this needs to be thought at all—the circulation of binary signs in a machine, as long as it allows us—provided we introduce the correct program—to detect a prime number that has never been detected before. It has nothing to do with thought, the prime number that circulates through the machine.

Mr. X
Not thought. He means the objective structure that finds the solution to the problem—the structure of the machine in being, and in the case of a human being, the structure of the brain. It’s not a contrast with thought in the sense of conscious thought. I have the impression that it corresponds precisely.

LACAN
These are not problems on the same level. I don’t think that’s what this is about.

Mr. X
One might say that speech is interposed as an element of revelation between universal discourse and language.

Jean-Bertrand LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS
I’m not sure I fully grasp it. I have the impression that, in fact, there is a very radical break between language and speech. For me, it doesn’t mean much, because, after all, if there were no speech, there would be no language. And in the allegory earlier, it seemed to me that language was, by definition, ambiguous. We cannot say that it is a universe of signs implying a relatively closed cycle, fully completed, from which one could draw specific meanings.

So, the one who receives speech and the one who uses it, when faced with this ambiguity, reveal their preferences. What I don’t understand is this kind of…

LACAN
As soon as language exists—and the question is precisely to know the minimum number of signs required to constitute a language—as soon as language exists, it is a universe. That is to say, it is concrete. All meanings must find their place within it. There are no examples of a language in which entire zones are untranslatable. Everything we know as meaning is always embodied in a system that constitutes a universe of language. As soon as language exists, it is a universe.

Jean-Bertrand LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS
But one could also invert this result and say that even the poorest language allows everything to be communicated. But that doesn’t mean that all meanings are already established in a language.

LACAN
That’s why I’ve distinguished between language and meanings. It is because language is a system of signs and, as such, a complete system. With it, one can do everything as soon as it exists.

Jean-Bertrand LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS—On the condition that there are speaking subjects.

LACAN
Of course. The question is to know what the function of the speaking subject is in all of this. So, what we are gently advancing towards is the function of time in all of this. It is through this lens, I believe, that we can truly distinguish what belongs to the imaginary order and what belongs to the symbolic order. And of course, in a way that is not simple, as you’ll see.

Because ultimately, I’ll use another allegory—perhaps clearer than Wells’ story, probably because it was crafted explicitly for this purpose, and it’s my own.

It’s the story, which some of you may know, of the characters presented with the problem of recognition, accompanied by an entire small narrative around it. These are three prisoners subjected to a test. One of them will be released; it’s unclear who will benefit from this grace, as there’s only one. All three are equally deserving. The game hinges on the success of this test.

There are three of them. They are told: here are three white disks and two black disks. We will attach one of these disks to each of your backs, and you will figure it out.

Naturally, communication is not allowed; there’s no mirror, and it’s not in their interest to communicate since simply revealing to another what they have on their back would allow that person to take advantage of the situation.

So, each has a disk on their back, and each sees only how the other two are marked by the means of these white disks.

There are three white disks and two black disks. Each of them is given a white disk. The question is how each subject will reason.

It is quite clear that this isn’t merely an example of reasoning but rather a narrative that allows us to demonstrate layers, dimensions, as PERRIER said earlier, of time.

There are three temporal dimensions, which, truthfully, deserve to be noted because they’ve never been properly distinguished or highlighted. There are three temporal dimensions that can be designated in a way that isn’t implausible—it’s not sheer fantasy—to imagine the mode under which each subject, in such a situation, bearing an internal coherence, quickly realizes that all three of them have white disks.

But if we want to verbalize it, it will necessarily be in the following manner: there’s a given logical data point—of the order of those 0s and 1s—that if someone saw two black disks, they would have no doubt, since there are only two, and therefore they could immediately walk away.

This is the eternal logical given, and simultaneously, perfectly instantaneous—it’s enough to see two black disks.

But here’s the thing! No one sees them, for one simple reason: there aren’t any black disks at all, so no one is capable of seeing them. Each one sees only two white disks.

Nevertheless, this thing that isn’t seen will play a decisive role in the reasoning through which the characters can take a step toward the exit.

Each subject must think, upon seeing two white disks, that one of the two others standing before them must see what?
– Either two white disks,
– Or one white disk and one black disk.

You can clearly see that each subject must think about what the other two must be thinking, in an absolutely reciprocal manner.

Because there’s one thing certain for each subject: each of the two others, being similar, sees, in any case, the same thing. Since the second term added for each one is themselves—that is, what the subject does not know about themselves.

So, they’ll think that, in the case where they themselves have a black disk, each of the two others would see one white disk and one black disk. And then, one of them could think that if they themselves were black, surely the other would have already walked toward the exit.

Since they don’t see them moving, they then have the feeling, the certainty, that the characters in question are not in a situation where they can ask themselves the question that each of the two others, whom the subject speaks of, are in fact capable—if they themselves were black—of finding, from the stillness of the third, a sufficient reason to move toward the exit.

It is precisely because they do not move that the third subject can realize that he himself is in a position strictly equivalent to the other two, meaning that he is white. You see, it is only in a third moment, through speculation on the reciprocity of the subjects, that he can build upon the fact of witnessing a not-already-done, a not-already-left in the others, that he can himself reach the feeling that he is in the same position as the other two—that is, marked with a white disk.

Nevertheless, observe one thing: at this level, an element intervenes in the subject’s speculation that is absolutely essential. As soon as he arrives at this understanding, he must hasten his movement. Because, of course, from the moment he arrives at this understanding, he must conceive that each of the others might have arrived at the same result. If he gives them even the slightest moment of advance, he will find himself back in the previous case—that is, it is his very haste that ensures he does not fall into error. In other words, he must say to himself:

“I must hurry to reach this conclusion because if I delay, if I hesitate even slightly in reaching this conclusion, I automatically fall not only into ambiguity but into error, given my premises. For if I let them get ahead of me, it will be proven that I am black.”

It is a sophism, you realize, because you can see how the argument turns back on itself in the third moment, and how everything depends on something as elusive as this: the subject holding in his hands the very articulation by which the truth he uncovers is absolutely inseparable from the very action that testifies to it. If this action is delayed by even a single instant, he knows at the same moment that he will fall into error. Are you following?

Mr. MARCHANT—No one can move, or all three must move.

Jean LAPLANCHE—He could reach a failure.

LACAN
We are now dealing with the subject as he discourses about what he is doing. What he does is one thing; the way he speaks about it is another. If he speaks about it, he says: “If the others act before me on the basis of the act whose necessity I have just discovered through my reasoning, then they are white, and I am black.”

Mr. MARCHANT—But in the example, there is no “before,” precisely.

Jean LAPLANCHE—They leave because I am white, and…

LACAN
From the moment he lets the others get ahead of him, he has no way out because he can reason in both directions, but he has no means of choosing between them.

What is important is this: he can grasp in this situation—and specifically in this situation—that he has in front of him two terms on which he can reason as having the properties of subjects, meaning, they think just like him.

From that moment on, he reaches a point where, for himself, the truth of the conclusion he arrives at through deduction depends on the very haste with which he steps toward the door, after which he must manifest it—that is, explain why he thought that way. The accent of acceleration, of precipitation in the act, is something that is revealed here as consistent with the manifestation of the truth. He knows he can no longer manifest it from the moment he delays, even slightly, in manifesting it. Do you grasp this, LAPLANCHE?

Mr. MARCHANT—I don’t agree because you introduce the notion of delay and hurrying.

LACAN—That’s precisely to demonstrate its logical value.

Mr. MARCHANT
But these two notions can only be established in relation to something. Yet here, no such relationship is possible. That’s why the three subjects cannot move. There is no relationship because each of the three, holding the same reasoning, and each of the three waiting for something…

LACAN—Suppose they all leave simultaneously.

Mr. MARCHANT—They’d all be executed.

LACAN—Even before they reach the door, what will happen?

Mr. MARCHANT—It’s not possible; they are all in waiting. In the classical presentation of the problem, one thing is added.

LACAN
But each subject’s act or decision depends on non-manifestation, not on manifestation. And it is precisely because each of the others does not manifest that each one has the opportunity to manifest. They will thus normally arrive at the solution if they have the same amount of time—this real element called “the time to understand,” which underlies all psychological examinations, but which we can assume to be equal.

Mr. MARCHANT
Then it can’t be resolved. If we want to solve the problem, we have to assume that the times of understanding are not the same.

LACAN
But this problem is only interesting if you assume the “times to understand” are equal. If the “times to understand” are unequal, not only does it cease to be an interesting problem, but you’ll also see how infinitely more complicated it becomes.

Mr. MARCHANT
Otherwise, he cannot move. Either they are not equally intelligent, or they cannot move.

Jean LAPLANCHE
If A does not see B leaving, he is plunged into perplexity, but that is not an error.

LACAN
It is an error, from the moment he has reached the truth.

Mr. MARCHANT
He cannot reach it.

LACAN
But if you assume the time to understand is fixed.

Mr. MARCHANT—The same for everyone?

LACAN
Yes. At the end of this time to understand, they will all be convinced that they are all white. They will all leave together, and in principle, they will explain why they are white. If you reintroduce a tiny element of hesitation, an infinitesimal moment where each says to themselves, “But aren’t the others leaving precisely because they’ve realized that I am black?” what will happen? A pause.

But don’t think that the situation after this pause—when they will do the same thing and then leave—will be the same. When they leave after a first pause, there will have been progress. And there will be room—I’ll spare you the details of the analysis; I’ll leave it to you to see how it structures itself—they might pause a second time, but not a third.

In other words, in two scansions, everything will be said. And what am I trying to explain to you here? To show you what? Where is speech, and where is language?

Language, we saw it in the initial data: there are two black disks, etc. These are the fundamental data points of language, entirely outside of reality. Language begins to play its role from the moment the subject can make the other two speak in a coherent way.

Speech is introduced from the moment—when the subject does what?
– When he takes the action by which he simply affirms, “I am white.”

And of course, he does not affirm it in a way that is logically founded, as one might say, but nonetheless in a valid way if he proceeded in the manner I just described: if he does not say, “I am white,” immediately upon understanding it, he will never again be able to affirm it in a valid way. Do you understand?

Mr. MARCHANT—On this point, yes.

LACAN
Do you understand where I’m going with this, LAPLANCHE? I’m not presenting this as a model of logical reasoning but as a sophism designed to demonstrate the distinction between language at the moment when it ultimately applies itself to the imaginary—because the other two subjects are entirely imaginary for him. He imagines them—they are simply the reciprocal structure as such—and the symbolic moment of language, which is the moment of affirmation.

And so, you see that there is something here that is not entirely identifiable with the temporal cut you spoke of earlier.

Jacques RIGUET—Absolutely agreed.

LACAN
This is, in short, what can show you where and how the limits of this power revealed to us by the possibility we have—and I’ll bring this up next time—the originality of machines as we have them in our hands, is expressed in relation to time.

But there is also a final dimension of time that undeniably does not belong to it. It is the one I am trying to illustrate for you with something which, of course, is not the sole characteristic of this third dimension of time and which I have expressed here through the element—as you aptly described earlier, it was neither delay nor advance—but haste itself, properly speaking.

And it is precisely this that constitutes the unique relationship of the human being to time—that chariot of time that constantly nips at our heels. This is where speech is situated, and it is not where language is situated, which has all the time in the world. That is also why language never achieves anything.

Serge LECLAIRE
There’s something that troubles me in all this. Was it an error, but earlier you translated, “In the beginning was language.” This is the first time I’ve heard it put this way. Is this how you understand it? It’s usually translated as “In the beginning was the Word,” or “the Verb,” and you said: “In the beginning was language?” But what are you referring to? Is this your translation?

LACAN
“In principio erat verbum” is undeniably language. It is not speech.

Serge LECLAIRE—Then there is no beginning.

LACAN
But I am not the one who wrote The Gospel According to Saint John.

Serge LECLAIRE—It’s the first time I’ve seen this. It’s always written as “speech” or “the Word,” and never “language.”

LACAN
I’ve already written on the board twice the couplet no one has asked me to explain:

“Indem er alles schaft, was schaftet der hôchste? — Sich.
Was schaft er aber vorer alles schaftet? — Mich.”

What was the Almighty doing at the moment of creation? — Sich: Himself.
What was there before he did anything at all? — Mich: Myself.

It is obviously a bold assertion, but one that undoubtedly aims at something.

Serge LECLAIRE—I don’t understand why you translate it as “In the beginning,” and not “Before the beginning.”

LACAN

I am not at all saying that Saint John wrote things correctly. I am telling you that in Saint John it says: “In principio erat verbum,” in Latin. You saw it when we translated the De significatione. I would not have had to ask Father BEIRNAERT how he might have conveyed speech. He certainly made a few discoveries, but not one that satisfied us.

Mr. X

“Verbum” is the translation of the Hebrew word that truly means speech, and not language. It is דבר (davar), which means speech.

LACAN

We’ll have to revisit this matter of Hebrew. The important thing is not to know—though, of course, we must not forbid ourselves any theological incursions. I would go further: until they establish a chair of theology in the Faculty of Science, we won’t get anywhere, neither in theology nor in science.

Nevertheless, the question right now is not whether we should place “speech” or “the word” at the beginning.

Simply, in the perspective we’ve approached today and which I’ve intentionally illustrated with the couplet by Daniel VON CHEPKO [1605-1660], you see that, in some way, there is a kind of mirage through which language, meaning all your little 0s and 1s, has been there for all eternity.

When I tell you that they are there entirely independently of us, you might ask me: “Where?” I’d be hard-pressed to answer you. But what is certain is that, in a perspective, as MANNONI said earlier, we can only see them there, as having been there forever.

In other words, this is one of the fundamental distinctions between Platonic theory and Freudian theory. I mean that Plato’s theory is a theory of reminiscence. Everything we apprehend, everything we recognize, must have always been there, in a series of earlier mirages. And why?

I’ve shown you, on occasion, the coherence of this with the fact that the fundamental myth is the myth of the dyad in Plato. And it’s consistent with the idea that he cannot see the incarnation of Ideas other than as an infinite succession of reflections. Everything that happens and is recognized exists in the image of the Idea, that is, an image existing in itself. And because it is an image, it is, in turn, merely the image of another idea existing in itself, and merely an image relative to another image…

There is only reminiscence. And we know this because we talked about it just last night: the vagina dentata will still be nothing more than one image among other images.

What matters is understanding that when we speak of the symbolic order, there is something else—there are absolute beginnings. There is, precisely, creation. And that’s what is ambiguous in “In principio erat verbum.”

It is not for nothing that in Greek, it was called λόγος (logos). At the origins, one can just as well see it in the perspective of this indefinite homogeneity that we encounter every time in the domain of the imaginary.

The moment I think of myself, I am eternal. From the moment I think of myself, there is no possible destruction of me.

But when I say “I,” not only is destruction possible, but at every instant, there is absolute creation. Naturally, it is not absolute. That’s not what I’m telling you—not only is it not absolute, but if there is a possible future for us, it is because of this, because there is this possibility of creation.

But if this future is not also purely illusory, it is because our “I” is carried by all the previous discourse.

If Caesar, at the moment of crossing the Rubicon, does not commit a ridiculous act, it is because behind him stands all of Caesar’s past: the adultery, the man who dominated Mediterranean politics, the campaigns against Pompey.

Because of this, he can do something essential that has strictly symbolic value, because the Rubicon is no wider to cross than what lies between my legs. But he performs a symbolic act that triggers a series of symbolic consequences, which establishes the primacy of the future of creation in the symbolic register, as assumed by humanity.

But of course, everything depends on an entire past in which we must recognize, at every moment, this succession of creation. Even if we do not recognize it, this past is the eternal order, the past of everything layered upon itself.

It has been there forever in the little 0s and little 1s.

Earlier, I wasn’t telling you that “In principio erat verbum” meant I believed language was at the origin. For me, I know nothing about origins.

But it is to pose for you, through this ambiguous term, a question so evident that, for a moment, you all followed it, you all agreed upon it: that the little 0s and little 1s define a world with absolutely irrefutable laws. Namely, that with these little 0s and 1s, prime numbers have existed forever.

Do you agree? Let’s leave it there for today. It’s been a bit rough, today.