(All parts in English)

I therefore have to fulfill my promise today, to uphold my wager, the one in which I engaged myself by choosing the terrain where the most evanescent resides: this object (a) and its function, insofar as it comes into our experience to symbolize the central lack of desire, in other words, what I have always pointed out, univocally, through the algorithm –ϕ.

I don’t know if you see the picture. I will set, as usual, a few markers:

The object (a) in the field of the visible is the gaze.

Following this, under a bracket, I wrote:

in nature
as = (–ϕ)

It is to the extent that we can grasp in nature something that already – the gaze – appropriates it to this function in the symbolic relation in humans, that it can indeed assume the function that I describe.

Below, the two triangular systems that I introduced the two previous times:

• The first, in the geometrical field, places the subject of representation in our position.
• The second triangle makes me, myself, a picture – on the right, it’s the line where the subject of representation is situated – making me a picture under the gaze.

These two triangles overlap here as they do, indeed, in the functioning of the scopic register. I must, therefore, emphasize, to begin what I have to say today, that in this schema, we must consider that the gaze is external.

Nothing that happens in this register is comprehensible unless one conceives that I am being looked at, and that this is the function that lies at the very heart of the subject’s institution in the visible. What determines me most intimately in the visible is this gaze that is external. In the visible, I am first and foremost a picture; I am being looked at. It is through the gaze that I enter into the light, illuminated as I am; it is from the gaze that I receive its effect.

From this, it follows that the gaze is the instrument through which light incarnates itself, and, if you will allow me to use a word as I often do, by breaking it down, essentially, I am photo, photo-graphed. In this register, observe carefully that what is at stake is not the problem of representation in the presence of which I reassure myself as, ultimately, knowing a great deal.

I reassure myself as a consciousness that knows that it is merely representation, that beyond it there is The Thing – “the thing-in-itself” of the noumenon, for example – but that I can do nothing about it, that my transcendental categories, as KANT says, have a mind of their own, that they force me to take this thing as they see fit, and that, ultimately, it’s just as well: fortunately, everything works out like this!

This is not the perspective in which things are balanced in this dialectic. It is not a matter of the relationship between the appearance of the image – of some surface – and what lies beyond. It is instead about something that creates within me a fracture, a bipartition of being, a schism which, from nature itself, reveals itself as that to which being accommodates itself, in an observable and identifiable direction.

This direction is the one I pointed out last time when showing you, indicating to you in the variously modulated scale of what is, in its final term, inscribable under the general heading of “mimesis,” that it is what comes into play, manifestly and sensationally, when it comes to sexual union or the fight to the death.

Being decomposes itself there, especially between its being and its semblance, between itself and this paper tiger it offers, whether it is the parade in the male animal most often, or this grimacing inflation it proceeds with in the game of struggle, in the form of intimidation. It gives of itself or receives from the other something that is essentially: double, mask, envelope, detached skin, and detached to cover the frame of a shield.

It is through this form separated from itself that it enters into play in these effects of life and death. And it is striking that one can say that, in some way, it is with the help of this double, of the other or of oneself, that the conjunction from which the renewal of beings in reproduction proceeds is realized.

The lure plays this essential function, and it is what we grasp at the level of clinical experience itself, in what is prevalent compared to what one might imagine as the attraction to the other pole as conjoining the masculine to the feminine. What is prevalent in what presents itself as transvestite. The masculine and the feminine meet in the sharpest, most burning way, through the intermediacy of the masks of the masculine and the feminine.

Here I must point out what function this serves for the subject – the human subject, the subject of desire, which is “the essence of man” – I must point out for this subject, which is not taken – as the animal is – entirely by this capture, how the subject orients itself or can have the suspicion that allows it to orient itself, to the extent that it can isolate this function of the screen. This screen, it knows how to use. It knows how to play with the mask as being that beyond which there is the gaze. The screen plays the role of the place of mediation.

I alluded to this last time, to this reference that Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY provides in Phenomenology of Perception, where one sees, through well-chosen examples, how, at the merely perceptive level, this screen is what restores things to their status as real.

I referred to these examples on which he insists with great relevance, which stemmed from the experiments of GELB and GOLDSTEIN, showing us how…
if being isolated – which is the effect of an illumination that dominates us – if this beam of light that guides our gaze captivates us to the point of appearing to us only as this milky cone that ultimately prevents us from seeing what it illuminates…
the mere appearance in this field of a small screen that contrasts with what is illuminated but not seen causes – so to speak – this light to enter the shadow, revealing to us the object it was hiding. This phenomenon, at the perceptual level, concerns something that must be understood as serving a more essential function: in the very relationship of desire, reality appears only marginally.

And this is indeed one of the traits that, in the pictorial reaction, seems to have been scarcely observed, namely, what insists on what, in the composition of the painting, is precisely composition – dividing lines of the surface.

I am surprised that in a book…
remarkable, like so many others – for it is such a captivating game to uncover the structures of these surfaces created by the painter – one ultimately decides to title them, as in this book, Frameworks, these images through which one delights in tracing lines, providing variously decomposed divisions, vanishing lines, force lines, one might say, where the image finds its status…
that it is ignored that the principal effect of these lines is something that hardly suggests this notion of frameworks.

Rather, as if through a kind of irony, what appears on the back of this book is more exemplary than anything else:
a painting by ROUAULT where a circular trace is designated and makes manifest what it concerns: what one can always note in a painting – quite the opposite of what occurs in perception – one can note its absence.

The central field – where the separating power in vision operates at its maximum – can only be absent and replaced by a void, essentially a reflection of the pupil, behind which lies the gaze. In what is being constructed – insofar as the painting enters into the relationship with desire – the place of a central screen is always marked, and it is precisely this that elides me, in front of the painting, as the subject of a geometrical plane.

It is in this way that the painting does not function within this field of representation, of that “elsewhere” – an “elsewhere” that must be determined – in which its purpose and effect reside. Ultimately, everything is played between two terms:
– that which makes present the fact that, on the side of things, there is the gaze;
– that things look at me, and this plays antinomically with the fact that I can see them.

It is in this sense that one must understand the phrase hammered in the Gospel: “They have eyes to not see.” To not see what? Precisely this: that things look at me.

And this is why I introduced painting into our field of exploration through this small door, undoubtedly offered by Roger CAILLOIS’s remark…
of which everyone noticed last time that I had made a slip in naming him “René,” God knows why!
Through this small door, he brings us in by noting that, undoubtedly, this mimicry is to be sought as equivalent to the function which, in humans, is exercised by this singular activity of painting. It is not to carry out here a psychoanalysis of the painter, always so slippery, so precarious, and which, to a certain extent, always provokes a reaction of modesty in the listener.

Someone close to me, whose opinions matter greatly to me, told me last time that they felt somewhat uncomfortable when I touched on something resembling a critique of painting. Of course, there is a danger here, but let there be no confusion.
No formula, of course, allows us to encompass all the modulations that the variations of subjectivizing structures throughout history have imposed on painting – the aims, the tricks, the strategies, one might say, infinitely diverse.

And you have indeed noticed, moreover, that in positing the formula I might reformulate and condense today, by saying that in painting there is a “taming of the gaze,” that through painting, the one who looks is always, in some way, led to lower their gaze. Yet one must immediately add this corrective: it is still through the completely direct appeal to this gaze that expressionism is situated.

I embody – for those who might hesitate – what I mean: the painting of a MÜNCH, for example, or a James ENSOR, or a KUBIN, or of that painting which, curiously, one might geographically situate as encircling what today is concentrated in Parisian painting, besieging it.

How long before we see the limits of this siege breached? That is precisely what is at stake at the moment. If I am to believe the painter André MASSON, with whom I recently discussed this, the most pressing question – when pointing to references such as these – is not to enter the shifting historical game of criticism, which tries to grasp what, at any given moment, for this artist or in that era, is the function of painting.

It is something that is situated more radically at the principle of the function of this fine art that I am attempting to address, noting first that it is through painting that Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, in particular, was led…
if I may say so, by understanding this relationship that has always been drawn by thought between the eye and the mind…
to reverse this relationship: to see that the painter’s function is something entirely different from this organization of the field of our representation, where philosophy held us in our status as subjects. What is determining, essential – and what MERLEAU-PONTY admirably identified at the level of perhaps the most interrogative painter, CÉZANNE – stems from what he calls, along with CÉZANNE himself, “these little blues, these little browns, these little whites,” these strokes that rain down from the painter’s brush.

What is that? What does it determine? How does it determine anything?

It is already giving form and embodiment to this field into which the psychoanalyst has ventured following FREUD, with what in FREUD is wild daring, which, for those who follow him, quickly becomes recklessness. FREUD always marked, with infinite respect, his intention not to decide on what, in artistic creation, constitutes its true value – whether concerning painters or poets – drawing a line beyond which his judgment would not extend.

He cannot say, nor does he know, what it is that – for everyone, for all who look or listen – determines the value of artistic creation. Nevertheless, when it comes to Leonardo, he guides us toward something which, to summarize, seeks to identify the function that, in this creation, was played by Leonardo’s original fantasy: this relationship with the two mothers, which he sees represented in the painting in the Louvre, in his sketch in London, in the bodies – this double body, connected at the level of the waists of the two women, seeming to bloom from a mingling of legs at the base.

Should we, then, see the principle of artistic creation in this idea that it extracts something that stands in place of – recall how I translate Vorstellungsrepräsentanz – that “stands in place of representation”? Is this what I am leading you to by distinguishing the painting from what is representation? Certainly not, except in very rare works, in a painting that sometimes indeed emerges, appears – a dreamlike painting, but how rare, and scarcely classifiable within the function of painting. Perhaps this is the limit where we might designate what is called psychopathological art.

It is something else, it is elsewhere, and it is in a very differently structured manner that we must grasp what constitutes the painter’s creation. And perhaps, precisely to the extent that we restore the structural perspective within analysis, perhaps the time has come when we can profitably – I mean, in terms of establishing the terms of structure in the libidinal relationship – perhaps it is time to question, because with our new algorithms, we can better articulate the answer, what is at stake.

To question it in artistic creation as FREUD designates it – that is, as “sublimation” – and in the value it assumes in the social field, which FREUD designates only in that simultaneously vague and precise way, signifying merely its success in the fact that a creation of desire, pure at the level of the painter, first takes on commercial value – a gratification that can nonetheless be qualified as secondary. But if it acquires this commercial value, it is also because its effect – on what, in society, constitutes the whole that falls under the impact of the work – resides in something profitable for society. And it is here that the notion of value emerges.

Here again, we remain in vagueness, saying that it soothes them, that it offers them the reassuring example of this: that there might be a few who live off the exploitation of their desire. For this to satisfy them so deeply, there must also be another factor: that their own desire, as they contemplate it, finds some measure of appeasement there, and, as they say, it “elevates their soul” – that is, it incites them to renunciation.

Should we not try to go further in this direction, and do you not already see that something is indicated in this function I have called the “taming of the gaze”? The “taming of the gaze”—as I mentioned last time—has another face, and that is trompe-l’œil. In this, I seem to be going against everything that tradition and criticism have presented to us as being very distinct from the function of painting.

And yet, this is where I concluded last time, highlighting, in the opposition of the two works, that of ZEUXIS and that of PARRHASIOS, the ambiguity of the two levels—the one I emphasized when I revisited today: the natural function of the lure. If ZEUXIS’s painting deceived or was deceived by birds into believing the painted grapes could be pecked at—since, apparently (no matter whether the story is truth or legend), they rushed toward the surface where ZEUXIS had painted his strokes—let us observe that nothing suggests the success of such an endeavor required those grapes to be as admirably rendered as the ones we can see in the basket held by CARAVAGGIO’s Bacchus.

If those grapes had been painted with such precision, it is unlikely the birds would have been fooled. Why would birds perceive grapes in that kind of technical marvel? There must be something else—reduced to a sign—in what constitutes “prey grapes” for birds.

But it is clear, from the opposing example of PARRHASIOS, that to deceive a human, what is presented is a painting of a veil, something beyond which the human seeks to see. And this is where this apologue derives its value, showing us why PLATO protests against “the illusion of painting.” Despite appearances, this is not about painting providing an illusory equivalent of the object. But if PLATO seems to express himself this way, it is precisely because the trompe-l’œil of painting presents itself as something other than what it is.

What captivates us in trompe-l’œil, what satisfies us, what makes it so that in the moment when, through a simple shift of our gaze, we realize it does not move with it—that it is nothing but trompe-l’œil—it is at that moment that it captivates us and fills us with that kind of joy, that jubilation that trompe-l’œil produces.

For at that moment, the following emerges:

– It gives us something other than what it is; it presents itself precisely as this “other thing.”
– It is the painting that competes with what PLATO designates, beyond appearance, as the Idea.
– It is the painting that comes to rival, to stand in the place of what the theory of the eternal model designates as being beyond appearance.
– It is this appearance that tells us it is what gives us the appearance, against which PLATO rails as if it were an activity in rivalry with his own.

This “other thing” is precisely the (a). And it is indeed around this that a struggle revolves, with trompe-l’œil as its soul.

It is worth, at this point, attempting to gather the painter’s position throughout history, to concretely consolidate it, to realize that the painter is the source, the point of emergence of something that can pass into the real, and that, after all, at all times, is “taken on lease,” so to speak. It is not enough to emphasize the opposition of the time when the painter depended on noble patrons. The situation has not fundamentally changed with the art dealer, who is also a patron of sorts, of the same kind.

Something always “takes him on lease”—a kind of “farming society of the painter.” Before the noble patron, it was equally the religious institution that provided the painter with something to work with: the holy image, the icon. It always pertains to the object (a).

And rather than reducing it—which, at a certain level of explanation and understanding, might seem mythical to you—to an (a) with which, ultimately, it is true that the painter as creator engages in dialogue, it is far more instructive to observe how, within this social reverberation, this (a) functions.

Of course, within the icon, in the triumphant CHRIST on the vault of DAPHNIS, or in those admirable Byzantine mosaics, it is evident—and we could stop there—that their effect is to hold us under their gaze. But that would not truly grasp the mechanism behind what drives the painter to create this icon and the purpose it serves by being presented to us. There is a gaze in it, of course, but it comes from elsewhere.

What gives this icon its value is that the God it represents is also looking at it; it is meant to please God. At this level, the artist operates on the sacrificial plane, playing on this register: that there are things capable of awakening the desire of God, here at the level of the image.

God is a creator; He creates in certain images, as GENESIS indicates with the phrase בְּצַלְמֵנוּכִּדְמוּתֵנוּ (Zelem Elohim: in the likeness of God). And what is striking about iconoclastic thought is that it preserves this idea: that there is a God who does not like it. But He is the only one! And I do not want to venture further today into this register, which would take us to the heart of one of the most essential elements of the mechanics of the Names-of-the-Father, where a certain pact can be established beyond all images.

But where we are now, the image is the intermediary. If YAHWEH forbids the Jews from making idols, it is because these idols please other gods. In a certain sense, it is not that God is not anthropomorphic; it is that man is commanded not to be. But let us leave this…

And move on to the next stage, the one I will call, if you will, communal.

Let us take ourselves to the great hall of the Doge’s Palace, where all sorts of battles, of Lepanto and others, are painted. It is here that we clearly see the social function as it was already taking shape at the religious level. Those who come here are the people RETZ calls “the peoples.” What do “the peoples” see in these vast compositions?

They essentially see the gaze of the people who, when they are not there—the “people”—deliberate in this hall. Behind the painting, it is their gaze that resides there. You see, what we find at every stage is that there are always countless gazes behind it, and it is only in the era André MALRAUX distinguishes as “modern”—the one dominated by what he calls “the incomparable monster,” namely, the gaze of the painter that claims to impose itself as the sole gaze—that this phenomenon is explicitly brought forward. There has always been a gaze behind it. And where does it come from? This is where the most subtle point lies, the point at which one must grasp the source of this gaze.

And so, we return to “our little blues, our little whites, our little browns” of CÉZANNE, to what Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY so beautifully illustrates at a certain turn in his book Signs, namely, the strangeness revealed in a slow-motion film capturing MATISSE painting. The key detail is that MATISSE himself was profoundly disturbed by it. Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY highlights the paradox of this gesture which—magnified by the stretching of time—allows, in some way, the imagining (for it is no more than a mirage) of the most precise choice, the most perfect deliberation, in each of these strokes.

His observation brings us, if I may say so, to the threshold of what is at stake. He asserts that, undoubtedly, we are not dealing here with anything other than a mirage, that at the rhythm in which the painter’s brush rains down all these little strokes that will result in the miracle of the painting, something else [other than choice] is at play.

Can we not try to formulate it ourselves?
In that moment, are things for the painter not to be restored to what I have called “the rain of the brush”?
If a bird were to paint, would it not do so by shedding its feathers, a snake its scales, a tree by scattering its leaves?

Here, what accumulates is the initial act of this depository of the gaze, an act undoubtedly sovereign because it materializes into something that renders everything else—anything that might otherwise present itself in front of this product of the gaze—obsolete, excluded, ineffective. And indeed, this is where we must locate the essential: let us not forget that the painter’s stroke is something where a movement comes to an end.

– We are faced here with something that gives meaning—a new and different meaning—to the term regression.
– We are faced with the driving element in the sense of response, as it generates its own stimulus in reverse.
– It is through this that the original temporality—distinct in its relation to the Other, to desire as instituted within the subject in relation to the Other—establishes itself as the temporality of the scopic dimension, defined by the terminal moment.
– This temporal dimension, which in the identificatory dialectic of the signifier and the spoken word projects itself forward as haste, is, by contrast, here the end of what, at the starting point of any new intelligence, might be called the moment of seeing.
– This terminal moment is what allows us to distinguish a gesture from an act.

It is through the gesture that the stroke is applied to the canvas. And it is so true that this gesture is always present that, first of all, there is no doubt:

– That the painting is experienced and felt by us as the culmination of impression or “Impressionism.”
– That the painting is more akin to every representation of movement that is first a gesture than to any other.
– That even an action depicted within a painting as ongoing—such as in a battle scene—will appear to us as theatrical, made for the gesture.
– And that it is through this embedding in the gesture that the painting—figurative or not—remains indisputably oriented for us: it cannot be turned upside down.

If, by chance, it is what is called a slide, turn it around, and you will immediately notice, in any painting, if it is shown to you with left and right reversed. The direction of the hand’s gesture sufficiently indicates this lateral symmetry. Thus, what we see here is something through which the gaze operates in a certain descent—a descent undoubtedly of desire—but how to designate it?

How can we not see that the subject is not entirely there, that it is tele-guided? To describe it, I would say, modifying the formula I give to unconscious desire—”the desire of man is the desire of the Other”—that here it is a kind of “desire toward the Other,” at the end of which lies the “offered-to-be-seen.”

How does this “offered-to-be-seen” appease something, if not by addressing, in the one who looks, an “appetite of the eye”?
This “appetite of the eye,” which must be fed—a plane far less elevated than one might suppose—is the charm value of painting. It must be sought in the nature, the true function, of the organ of the eye. This voracious eye is the “evil eye.”
What is striking, in contrast to the universality of this “evil eye,” is the complete absence of any “good eye,” of an eye that blesses.

What does this suggest, if not that the eye carries with it this mortal function of being, in itself, endowed—allow me here to play across several registers—with a separating power? But this “separating” goes far beyond distinct vision. These powers attributed to it—such as the ability to dry up the milk of an animal it looks upon, a belief as widespread today as ever, even in the most civilized countries, or the ability to carry disease or misfortune (δυστυχία [dustuchia], the “misfortune” of the real)—where can we imagine them best?

Invidia comes from videre, and the most exemplary invidia for us analysts is the one I have long highlighted in AUGUSTINE, giving it its full significance: namely, the invidia of the small child watching—AUGUSTINE says—his brother suckling at their mother’s breast, looking at him with “amare conspectu,” a bitter gaze that dissects him and acts as a poison upon him.

To understand what invidia is in its function as gaze, it must not be confused with jealousy. What the small child—or, equally, anyone—envies is not necessarily what they might “desire,” as is often improperly expressed. After all, the child AUGUSTINE speaks of, watching his sibling—who says he still needs to nurse? And everyone knows that envy is often provoked by the possession of goods that the envious person would have no use for and whose true nature they do not even suspect.

Such is true envy, the kind that makes the envious pale—before what?—before the image of a completeness that closes in on itself, and of that which the (a), the (a) in relation to which it hangs as separate, may represent as a possession for another, the possession in which they find satisfaction, Befriedigung. It is to this register of the eye, as despairing before the gaze, that we must turn in order to grasp the calming and enchanting mechanism, the function of the painting, the civilizing aspect of what, in the painter, is produced through a specific action. And this fundamental relationship of the (a) to desire will serve as an exemplary point for what we will now address concerning transference.

I will allow five minutes for questions.

Michel TORT: Could you clarify the relationship you’ve drawn between the gesture and what you’ve said about the instant of seeing?

LACAN:

What is a gesture? A threatening gesture, for instance? It is not a blow that is interrupted; it is, quite clearly, something done to stop and suspend. In what sense?

Since it is a “gesture” of threat, it does not mean that I will necessarily follow through to the end—I might follow through to the end later—but my threatening gesture is inscribed as a gesture backward. This very particular temporality that I have defined by this term of stopping, and which creates, behind it, its significance, is what distinguishes the gesture from the act.

What is quite remarkable—if you have attended, even to a minimal extent, performances such as the last Peking Opera or the manner in which they fight there—is that they fight as they have fought for all time: far more with gestures than with blows. Of course, the spectacle itself accommodates the absolute dominance of gestures.

In these ballets, where extraordinary acrobats perform—you may know—they never strike blows. They move through different spaces where sequences of gestures respond to one another, sequences of gestures that nevertheless, in traditional combat, have the value of weapons. To the extent that, ultimately, they suffice as instruments of intimidation.

Everyone knows that “primitives”—whom we call that!—go into battle with large, terrifying masks and horrific gestures. Don’t think that’s over! Marines are taught to respond to Japanese soldiers by making just as many grimaces as they do, but ones that are more dominant. And in a way, after all, our most recent weapons can also be considered within this register of gesture. May heaven grant that they stay within it!

But these are reflections—reflections that consist in connecting what comes to light in painting, whose authenticity cannot be diminished by the fact that we, as human beings, must go looking for our colors where they are, which is, after all, in the muck.

If I alluded to birds plucking their feathers to make a painting, it is because we do not have such feathers. What constitutes the creator’s true participation in what will only ever be a small, dirty deposit and a succession of juxtaposed deposits is precisely this. It is in this dimension that we participate in scopic creation: the gesture, the gesture as a movement offered to be seen.

Does this explanation satisfy you? Is this what you were asking me?
I am not asking if you are “without objections.”
Have I answered the question you asked, or is it located elsewhere?

Michel TORT:

Not exactly. I wanted you to clarify what you said, more precisely, about that time you have referenced once before, which presupposes certain references you have placed elsewhere regarding logical time.

LACAN:

Listen, if I may say so, I have noted the suture, the pseudo-identification, between what I have called the terminal stopping time of the gesture and what, in another dialectic, I designate as the first time—the instant of seeing. If they overlap, they are certainly not identical since one is initial, and the other absolutely terminal, are they not?

Let me say something else, something I could not elaborate on today due to time constraints. Perhaps at the beginning of the next session, I will need to provide those details.

When I say that this time of the gaze is absolutely terminal—that it is the time brought to an end by a gesture—I link it very closely to what I subsequently mentioned about the “evil eye.” The gaze itself, not only terminates movement, but freezes it. Look at these dances I mentioned; they are always punctuated by a series of stopping points or moments of waiting, where the others stop in an absolutely frozen attitude.

What, ultimately, is this halting, this stopping time of movement in this register? It is nothing other than the fascinator effect, in this sense: the evil eye, as it concerns depriving it of its gaze to neutralize it, is the fascinum. It is what has the effect of stopping movement and, quite literally, killing life within it. At the moment when the subject halts in this suspension of their gesture, they are mortified.

The function, if I may say, anti-life, anti-movement, of this terminal point, is this: it is the fascinum, and it is precisely one of the dimensions in which the power of the gaze is directly exercised.

The instant of seeing here, of course, can only intervene as a suture, as the junction between the two domains I am discussing. The other domain, where the instant of seeing is taken up in a dialectic, is a kind of progress called haste, drive, forward movement. I will address this in another register because what I have highlighted today is the complete distinction of the scopic register in relation to that field, is it not?

If you like, in the scopic field, as opposed to the invoking, vocatory, or vocational field, which I oppose to it, the subject is not, as in that field, first and foremost essentially indeterminate—I am speaking of the invoking field. In the scopic field, the subject is determined by this very separation. The subject is, properly speaking, determined by the cut of the (a), by what the gaze introduces as fascinating.

Are you a little more satisfied? Completely? Almost…?

François WAHL:

A small question. It seemed very small to me, but it is becoming more complex. You left out a phenomenon that is precisely related to the “evil eye” in Mediterranean civilization, which is the “prophylactic eye.” It strikes me as particularly interesting because, if I am not mistaken, the “prophylactic eye” has a protective function that lasts during a journey, linked not at all to a halt but, on the contrary, to a movement on which you have… How do you view that?

LACAN:

The most prophylactic things, aren’t they—if I may put it this way—allopathic? Whether it’s the coral horn, or not coral at all, or a thousand other things with an infinitely clearer aspect, such as, for example, that thing, yes, turpicula res… I can’t remember which author described it—I think it’s VARRON or someone like that… it’s simply a phallus!

That is where the prophylactic element is found in relation to the evil eye, isn’t it! It opposes the true reason behind the evil eye, namely that it is on the ground of castration that the eye gains its particularly virulent function—not merely deceptive, as in nature, but an aggressive one.

Among all of this, you can find, among the amulets, forms where it takes on a homeopathic aspect—a counter-eye. This is the avenue through which we can introduce this prophylactic function. But what I’ve said—and I believe… well, I’ve done some research and revisited quite a bit of Hebrew on this topic, because I thought surely there must be somewhere in the Bible where the eye plays the role of distributing or conferring the baraka. There are a few small instances where I hesitated—ultimately, no. It is not about the eye. The eye can be prophylactic; it is not beneficial. On the other hand, it is harmful, and in the Bible, it is harmful in all corners, even in the New Testament.

Is that all? Ah, here is someone we haven’t heard from in a while. That pleases me!

Jacques-Alain MILLER:

I believe we all now have the concept of the subject that we can expect from you—a definition by localization within a system of relations. What you have explained to us, I think, over the course of a number of lectures, is that the subject is not localized in a space that belongs to the world, to quantity, to measurement—in a Cartesian space, let’s say. The subject must always be localized in another space.

Moreover, you have explained—and this was what, in fact, initiated your reflection—that MERLEAU-PONTY’s research converged with your own. You said that he established the markers of…

LACAN: The markers of…?

Jacques-Alain MILLER: The markers of the unconscious.

LACAN:

I didn’t say that. I hoped—or, rather—I hypothesized that the few traces, the hints of the “unconscious” mustard in his notes, might have led him to move, let’s say, into my field. But I’m not sure…

Jacques-Alain MILLER:

Why could that conclusion be possible? MERLEAU-PONTY does indeed carry out that denunciation of Cartesian space. One could say… You could say that he thus opens up the necessary, transcendental space—you once said this—of the relation to the big Other. But it must still be acknowledged that if MERLEAU-PONTY denounces Cartesian space, it is not at all to open up that space, but rather to open the space of intersubjectivity. Do you have anything to change about the critique of MERLEAU-PONTY that you published in an issue of Les Temps Modernes?

LACAN: Absolutely nothing! Thank you.