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(All parts in English)

At the board: “Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance.”

“Of a discourse”: it is not mine that is in question.
I believe I made you feel clearly enough last year what must be understood by this term “discourse.”
I recall the discourse of the Master and its four, let’s say, positions, the shifts of these terms with respect to a structure
reduced to a tetrahedral form.

I left it to anyone who wished to undertake it to clarify what justifies
that these shifts, which could have been more diversified, I have reduced to four.
The privilege of these four—if no one takes it up—perhaps this year I will, in passing, give an indication of it.

I referred to these only in relation to what was my aim, as stated in the title “The Reverse of Psychoanalysis.”
The discourse of the Master is not the reverse of psychoanalysis.
It is where the specific torsion of the discourse of psychoanalysis itself, I would say, is demonstrated:
that which makes this discourse pose the question of an “obverse” and a “reverse,”
since you know the importance placed in theory,
from its very inception by Freud, on the dual inscription.

Now, what I sought to make you grasp was the possibility of a double inscription…
on the obverse, on the reverse…
without a boundary having to be crossed. It is the long well-known structure,
of which I only had to make use, called “the Möbius strip.”

These positions and these elements indicate that what is properly speaking discourse
can in no way refer to a subject, although it determines it.
This is undoubtedly the ambiguity of what I introduced in seeking to make heard
what I believed necessary within the psychoanalytic discourse.
Recall my terms from the time when I titled a certain Report:

“On the Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.”

Intersubjectivity, I wrote then, and God knows to what false trails
the formulation of such terms can give rise.
Excuse me for having made these trails primary.
I could only anticipate misunderstanding:
– “Inter,” certainly indeed, is what only later allowed me to formulate it as inter-significance,
– “subjectivity” as its consequence, the signifier being what represents a subject for another signifier where the subject is not.

It is precisely in this that:
– where he is represented, he is absent,
– and that, represented nonetheless, he thus finds himself divided.

Discourse is not only such that from then on it can only be judged in light of its unconscious motive,
but also that it can no longer be formulated as anything other than what articulates itself within a structure
where, in some place, it is irreducibly alienated.

Hence my introductory statement of discourse: “Of a discourse…,” I stop: it is not mine.
It is from this statement of discourse as being unable, as such, to be the discourse of any particular individual…
but rather founded on a structure and on the emphasis
given to it by the distribution, the shifting, of certain of its terms…
it is from here that I depart this year for what is entitled
“Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance.”

To those who could not follow last year’s statements, which are therefore preliminary,
I point out that the publication, already over a month old, of Scilicet 2/3 will provide them with the main references.
Scilicet 2/3—because it is a written text—is an event, if not an advent, of discourse.

First, in this: it is that the one from whom I find myself instructed cannot be eluded without acknowledging that he necessitates your “pressing,” in other words, that you are here, and very precisely under that aspect by which something singular makes us “press.” Assuredly, with, let’s say, the incidences of our history, there is something that touches upon, that renews the question of what may be at stake in discourse insofar as it is the discourse of the Master.

This something, which can do nothing but bind, something whose very naming remains in question—let us not be too quick to use the word “revolution”—but it is clear that one must discern what it is that, in sum, allows me to continue my statements under this formulation:

“Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance.”

Two features are to be noted in this issue of Scilicet. It is that I am, in sum, putting to the test—more or less entirely, with one additional element—my discourse from last year, within a configuration that is precisely characterized by the absence of what I have called this “pressing of your presence,” and to place full emphasis on it, I shall phrase it thus: what this presence signifies, I shall pin down as “a pressed surplus-jouissance.”

For it is precisely in this figure that one may gauge… if it goes beyond what is called a “discomfort” regarding too much semblance [S2 as Semblance] in the discourse in which you are inscribed: the university discourse.

…that which is easy to denounce

– a neutrality, for instance, that this discourse cannot claim to sustain, [S1 as Truth]
– a competitive selection, when it is only a matter of signs addressed to the initiated, [a as Other]
– a formation of the subject, when something entirely different is at stake. [S as Product]

To move beyond this discomfort of semblances, for something to be hoped for that allows one to break free from it, nothing makes this possible except establishing that a certain mode, a certain mode of rigor in the advancement of a discourse [A] does not, in a dominant position within this discourse, split what is at stake in these classifications, in these globules of surplus-jouissance [a as Semblance] by virtue of which you find yourselves caught within the university discourse.

It is precisely that someone, from the standpoint of analytic discourse, places themselves before you in the position of the analysand… this is not new, I have said it before, but no one paid attention to it… what constitutes the originality of this teaching, and what motivates what you bring to it with your “pressing,” is what, when speaking on the radio [Radiophonie], I put to the test precisely by subtracting this presence, this space in which you press yourselves together: annulled and replaced by the pure “there exists” of that inter-significance I mentioned earlier, so that the subject wavers therein. It is simply a prod toward something whose possible scope the future will reveal.

There is another feature in what I have called this event—this advent—of discourse, in this printed thing called Scilicet. It is—as a number of you already know—that one writes in it without signing. What does this mean?
That each of the names listed in a column on the last page of these three issues, which constitute a year, can be interchanged with any other, thereby affirming that no discourse can be that of an author.

There, it speaks…
in the other case, it is the needle…
there, the future will tell whether this is the formula that, let’s say in five or six years, all journals will adopt—the proper journals, of course.
Well, we shall see!

I am not attempting, in what I say, to step outside what is felt, experienced, in my statements as accentuating, as holding to the artifact of discourse. This is to say, of course—it is the least of things—that in doing so, it excludes any pretense on my part to cover everything: it cannot be “a system,” it is not—on that account—”a philosophy.”

It is clear that for anyone who takes up, from the angle where analysis allows us to redouble what is at stake in discourse, this implies a displacement—I would say into a “de-universe.” This is not the same thing as a “diverse.”
But even to this diverse, I would not be averse, and not only for what it implies of diversity, but up to what it applies as diversion.

It is also very clear that I do not speak of everything, that even within what I state, it resists being spoken of as if it covered everything. This is evident every day, even in regard to what I state—that I do not say everything is another matter, I have already said it, it comes down to this: “the truth can only be half-spoken.”

This discourse, then, which confines itself to acting only within the artifact, is in sum nothing more than the prolongation of the position of the analyst, insofar as it is defined by placing the weight of its “surplus-jouissance” in a certain place [a as semblance].

Nevertheless, it is a position that I cannot sustain here, precisely because I am not in that position of the analyst. As I just said—except that you lack the knowledge—it is rather you who would be there, in your pressing.

[the listeners are in the position of the analyst, but without the S2 of the analyst, which they come here to receive]

That said, what can be the scope of what, in this reference, I state as “Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance”? It can be stated from my position, and in function of what I have previously stated; in any case, it is a fact that I state it. Notice that it is also a fact since I state it.

You may see nothing but smoke in it, that is to say, think that there is nothing more than the mere fact that I state it.
Only, if I have spoken of “artifact” with respect to discourse, it is because for discourse, nothing is “made,” so to speak; already, there is only a fact insofar as there is discourse, the stated fact is at once the fact of discourse itself. That is what I designate by the term artifact.

And of course, this is what is to be reduced, because if I speak of artifact, it is not to bring forth the idea of something other, of a nature into which you would be mistaken to engage yourselves in order to face its entanglements, for you would not emerge from them.

The question does not arise in the terms “Is it or is it not speakable?” but in this: “It is said or it is not said.” I start from what is said in a discourse whose artifact is supposed to suffice for your being here.
Here, a cut, for I do not add: “for your being here in the state of a pressed surplus-jouissance.”

I said “cut” because it is questionable whether it is as pressed surplus-jouissance already that my discourse gathers you.
It is not decided, whatever one or another may think, that it is this discourse, the one that follows the statements I present to you, that places you in that position from which it becomes questionable by the “not” of a discourse that would not be mere semblance.

Semblance—what does that mean?
What does it mean in this statement?
A semblance of discourse, for example?

You know, it is the position called “logical positivism”:
– that from a signifier to be put to the test of something that decides by yes or no,
– what does not allow itself to be subjected to this test is thereby defined as meaning nothing,
– but with this, one believes oneself to be rid of a certain number of questions qualified as “metaphysical.”

It is not that I am particularly attached to them, but I do insist on pointing out that the position of logical positivism is untenable, in any case from the perspective of analytic experience, notably. If analytic experience finds itself implicated, if it derives its noble titles from the Oedipal myth, it is precisely because it preserves the cutting edge of the oracle’s enunciation [the undecidable excludes yes/no].

And I will go further: that interpretation there always remains on the same level; it is true only by its consequences, just like the oracle. Interpretation is not subjected to the test of a truth that would be decided by yes or no; it unleashes truth as such. It is true only insofar as it is truly followed [by the unleashing of truth].

We will shortly examine the schemas of implication—I mean logical implication—
in their most classical forms; these very schemas themselves necessitate the foundation of that “truthful” insofar as it belongs to speech, even if it is, strictly speaking, senseless.

The passage from that moment when truth is decided solely by its own unleashing,
to that of a logic that will attempt to give body to this truth,
is very precisely the moment when discourse, as the representative of representation, is dismissed, disqualified.
And if it can be so, it is because in some part it already always is: this is what we call repression.
It is no longer a representation that it represents, it is that sequence of discourse that is characterized as an “effect of truth.”

This effect of truth is not semblance, and Oedipus is there to teach us…
if you will allow me…
to teach us that it is red blood.

Only, red blood does not refute semblance, it colors it, it makes it re-semblant, it propagates it:
a bit of sawdust, and the circus begins again!
That is precisely why it is at the level of the artifact, at the level of the structure of discourse,
that the question may be raised of a discourse that would not be mere semblance.

Meanwhile:
– there is no semblance of discourse,
– there is no metalanguage to judge it,
– there is no Other of the Other,
– there is no truth about the truth.

One day, I amused myself by making truth speak.
I ask where the paradox lies: what could be truer than the enunciation “I am lying”?
The classical quibbling that is expressed in the term “paradox” only takes shape if this “I am lying”
is put down on paper, as writing.

Everyone senses that there is nothing truer that one can say, at times, than to say, “I am lying.”
It is even most certainly the only truth that, at times, is not broken.
Who does not know that by saying “I am not lying,” one is absolutely not shielded from saying something false?

What does this mean? The truth in question, when it speaks…
the one of which I said that it speaks “I,” which enunciates itself as an oracle…
who speaks?

This semblance—it is the signifier itself!
Who does not see what characterizes this signifier,
the one I make use of in a way that disturbs linguists?
Some have gone so far as to write lines intended to make it clear that
“undoubtedly, Ferdinand de Saussure had not the slightest idea of it.”

How do they know? Ferdinand de Saussure did as I do—he did not say everything [sic].
The proof is that things have been found in his papers that he never wanted to bring out.

The signifier—people believe it is a nice little thing,
tamed by structuralism,
they believe it is “the Other as Other” and “the battery of signifiers,”
and all that I explain, of course.
Naturally, it comes from the heavens because, for the occasion, I am an “idealist”…

“Artifact,” I said first.
Of course, the artifact—
it is absolutely certain that it is our everyday fate.
We find it at every street corner, within reach of the slightest gesture of our hands.

If there is something that is a sustainable discourse, in any case, one that is sustained—
that of science, namely—
it is perhaps not in vain to recall that it arose very specifically from the consideration of semblances.

The origin of scientific thought—I am speaking of history—what is it?
The observation of the stars—what is it if not the constellation,
that is, the typical semblance?
The first steps of modern physics, what did they revolve around at the outset?
Not, as one might think, the elements,
for the elements, the four [earth, air, water, fire]…
even if you add “the quintessence” [the fifth element]…
this is already discourse, philosophical discourse—and how!—
they are meteors!

Descartes wrote a treatise on meteors.
The decisive step—one of the decisive steps—revolves around the theory of the rainbow.
And when I speak of a meteor,
it is something that is defined by being qualified as such—a semblance.

No one ever believed that the rainbow, even among the most primitive peoples,
was something actually there, arched, standing.
It is as a meteor that it is interrogated.

The most characteristic meteor, the most original,
the one about which there is no doubt that it is linked to the very structure
of all discourse,
is thunder.

If I ended my “Rome Discourse” with an evocation of thunder,
it was not merely out of whim:
there is no Name-of-the-Father that holds without thunder,
of which everyone knows very well…
that we do not even know what sign it is,
thunder.

It is the very figure of semblance.

This is why there is no semblance of discourse.
Everything that is discourse can only present itself in semblance,
and nothing is built within it except on the basis of something called the signifier,
which, in the light in which I present it to you today,
is identical to that status, as such, of semblance.

“Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance”—
for this to be an enunciation,
it is necessary that in no way can this “mere semblance” be completed
by the reference to discourse.

It concerns something else—
the “referent,” no doubt.

[Addressed to X]—Restrain yourself just a little…

This referent is probably not immediately the object,
since precisely what this means is that this referent is precisely the one that moves about.

The semblance in which the signifier is identical to itself—
this is one level of the term semblance: it is semblance in nature.

It is not for nothing that I reminded you
that no discourse that evokes nature
has ever done anything other than start from what, in nature,
is semblance.

For nature is full of it. I am not speaking of animal nature, which quite obviously overflows with it—so much so that there are gentle dreamers who think that all of animal nature, from fish to birds, sings divine praise, naturally. Every time they open something…
a head, a mouth, an operculum…
it is a manifest semblance, and it necessitates these gaps.

When we enter into something whose efficacy is not decided, for the simple reason that we do not know how it came to be that there was, so to speak, an “accumulation of signifiers.”
For signifiers—well, I tell you—are scattered throughout the world, throughout nature; they are everywhere in abundance.

For language to be born…
this already initiates something!
For language to be born, there had to be, somewhere, the establishment of that something
which I have already indicated to you with regard to the wager: it was Pascal’s wager, let us remember.
Suppose this—the bothersome thing is that it already presupposes the functioning of language.

Because it concerns the unconscious, the unconscious and its play—this means that among the many signifiers
circulating through the world, there will also be the fragmented body [a].

There are still things from which one can begin, by considering that they already exist,
things that already exist within a certain functioning where we would not be forced to consider the accumulation of signifiers:
these are the matters of territory.

If the signifier “your right arm” enters the neighbor’s territory to gather something…
these things happen all the time…
naturally, your neighbor grabs your signifier “right arm” and throws it back over the shared boundary:
this is what you curiously call “projection”—it is a way of making oneself understood.

It is from a phenomenon like this that one should begin. If your right arm, in your neighbor’s space,
were not entirely occupied with gathering—apples, for instance—if it had remained still,
it is quite probable that your neighbor would have adored it. This is the origin of the master-signifier:
a right arm—”the scepter.”

The master-signifier needs only to begin like this, at the very start.
Unfortunately, a little more is required; it is not a very satisfying schema.
Besides, it immediately gives you “the scepter”—you immediately see the thing materializing as a signifier.
The process of history, according to all the testimonies we have, appears just a little more complex.

It is certain that the little “parable”…
the one I began with, isn’t it,
the arm that is thrown back at you from one territory to another…
it is not necessarily your arm that returns to you,
because signifiers are not individual; one does not know which belongs to whom.

So, you see, here we enter into a kind of other original game…
regarding the function of chance…
than that of Oedipus.

For the occasion, you create a world—let’s say a schema:
a support divided in such a way into a certain number of territorial cells.
This occurs at a certain level, the level where it is a matter of producing,
where it is a matter of understanding, at least a little, what has happened.

After all, not only can one receive an arm that is not one’s own, through this process of expulsion…
which you have called, for some reason unknown, “projection”—except that it is projected onto you, of course…
not only an arm that is not yours, but several other arms.

From that moment on, it no longer matters whether it is yours or not.
But then again, after all, from within a territory, one only knows one’s own boundaries,
and one is not necessarily aware that along this boundary, there are six other territories.
So, one throws it back out however one can,
and then it may happen that there is a downpour of territories.

The idea of the relationship that might exist between the rejection of something [“that’s not it”]
and the birth of what I earlier called the master-signifier [inscription, unary trait]
is certainly an idea worth holding onto.

But for it to take on its full value, it is certainly necessary that there had been,
through some process of chance, in certain points, an accumulation of signifiers [repetition].
From there, one can conceive of something that would be the birth of a language.

What we see being built, properly speaking, as the first mode of supporting in writing what serves as language, in any case, gives a certain idea of it: everyone knows that the letter “A” is an inverted bull’s head and that a certain number of such elements, furnishings, still leave their trace.

What is important is not to go too fast and to see where the gaps remain. For example, it is quite obvious that the starting point of this sketch was already linked to something marking the body with a possibility of ectopy and “wandering,” which, of course, remains problematic. But after all, once again, everything is still there. We have…
well, it is a very sensitive point that we can still verify every day…
not long ago, even this week, something: a very beautiful photograph in a newspaper, which surely everyone delighted in. The possibilities for exercising the cutting-up of the human being, upon the human being, are truly impressive. That is where everything began.

There remains another gap…
You know, people have wracked their brains; it has been rightly noted that Hegel is very beautiful,
but there is still something he does not explain:
– he explains “the dialectic of master and slave,”
– but he does not explain how there could be a society of masters.

It is quite clear that what I have just explained is certainly interesting in this respect:
that by the mere play of projection and recoil, it is evident that after a certain number of moves,
there will undoubtedly be, I would say, a higher average of signifiers in certain territories than in others.

But still, it remains to be seen how these signifiers will be able, within a territory, to somehow form a society of signifiers.
One must never leave in the shadows what remains unexplained,
under the pretext that one has managed to give a small beginning of an explanation.

Whatever the case, the statement of our title this year,
“Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance,”
concerns something that has to do with an economy.

Here, “mere semblance”…
let us withhold “unto itself”…
it is not a semblance of something else; it is to be taken in the sense of the objective genitive:
it concerns semblance as the proper object by which the economy of discourse is regulated.

Are we going to say that it is also a subjective genitive?
Does “mere semblance” also concern what holds discourse together?

Only the word “subjective” must be rejected here, for the simple reason that:
– the subject only appears once this linking of signifiers has been established somewhere,
– a subject can only be produced from the articulation of signifiers [the product: a],
– a subject as such never masters this articulation in any way but is, properly speaking, determined by it [divided: S◊a].

A discourse, by its very nature, makes semblance, just as one might say that something “flourishes,” “lightens,” or “makes chic.”
If what is enunciated in speech is precisely true in always being very authentically what it is,
at the level where we are—of the objective and of articulation—
then it is precisely as an object, as that which is produced in discourse, that semblance is posited.
Hence the properly senseless nature [S1◊S2 → S1 has no meaning, asemantic] of what articulates itself [in analytic discourse].

But it must be said that this is precisely where the richness of language is revealed,
namely that it holds within it a logic that far surpasses everything we manage to crystallize or extract from it.
I have used the hypothetical form: “Of a discourse that would not be mere semblance.”

Everyone knows the developments that logic took after Aristotle, emphasizing the hypothetical function. Everything that has been articulated… assigning the value “True” or “False” to the articulation of the hypothesis and combining what results from the implication of a term within this hypothesis as being designated as “True”… this is the inauguration of what is called modus ponens and many other modes as well. Everyone knows what has been made of it.

It is striking that, at least to my knowledge, no one anywhere has ever singled out the resource contained in the use of this hypothetical in its negative form. A striking fact, if one refers, for instance, to what is gathered in my Écrits, when someone at the time—at the heroic time when I was beginning to clear the ground of analysis—came to contribute to the deciphering of Verneinung.

Even though, by commenting on Freud letter by letter, he soon realized…
Freud states it in full…
that Bejahung consists of nothing but a judgment of attribution… in which Freud truly demonstrates an exceptional subtlety and competence for his time, since only a few logicians of limited circulation had, at the same time, pointed it out… a judgment of attribution that in no way presumes existence:
the mere position of a Verneinung implies the existence of something, which is precisely that which is negated.

“A discourse that would not be mere semblance” posits that discourse, as I have just stated, is semblance.
The great advantage of positing it this way is that one does not specify the semblance of what.
Now, this is, of course, what our statements propose to advance toward:
to know what it is about, where it would not be semblance.

Of course, the ground is prepared by a singular and timid step—
the one Freud took in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

I wish here…
because I cannot go further…
only to indicate the knot that repetition and jouissance form in these statements.
It is in function of this that repetition goes against the pleasure principle,
which, I shall say, does not recover from it.
Hedonism, in light of analytic experience, can only return to what it is,
namely, a philosophical myth—
I mean, a myth of a perfectly defined class.

It is a thesis, and I stated it last year, concerning the assistance that they [the philosophers] provided
to a certain trial of the Master, by allowing the discourse of the Master, as such, to construct a knowledge.
This knowledge is the knowledge of the Master.

This knowledge has presupposed…
since philosophical discourse still bears its trace…
the existence, opposite the Master, of another knowledge,
which—thank God!—philosophical discourse did not disappear without having pinned down, beforehand,
that there had to be a relation between this knowledge and jouissance.

The one who thus brought philosophical discourse to a close…
Hegel, to name him…
sees, of course, only the way in which, through labor, the slave will come to accomplish—
what?—nothing other than the knowledge of the Master.

But what does what I shall call “the Freudian hypothesis” introduce anew?
It is in an extraordinarily cautious, yet nonetheless syllogistic form, as follows:
if we call “pleasure principle” this—
that always, by the behavior of the living being,
it returns to a level that is that of minimal excitation,
and that this regulates its economy.

If it turns out that repetition is exercised in such a way
that a dangerous jouissance…
a jouissance that exceeds this minimal excitation…
is brought back, is it possible…
this is the form in which Freud states the question…
to think that life, taken in its own cycle…
which is something new compared to a world that does not universally contain it…
that life contains this possibility of repetition,
which would be a return to this world insofar as it is semblance?

I can point out to you, by means of a diagram on the board,
that this involves, instead of a series of ascending and descending excitation curves,
all of them bordering on a limit, which is an upper limit:

The possibility of an intensity of excitation that can just as well extend to infinity, that which is conceived as jouissance, containing in itself, in principle, no other limit than this lower point of tangency:

This point, which we shall call “supreme,” giving this word its proper meaning,
which designates the lowest point of an upper limit,
just as “infimum” designates the highest point of a lower limit.

The coherence given to the mortal point, from then on conceived—without Freud emphasizing it—as a characteristic of life.
But in truth, what one does not consider is precisely this:
one confuses what pertains to non-life…
and which is far—damn far—from not stirring that “eternal silence of infinite spaces” that stunned Descartes [Pascal]:
they speak, they sing, they stir in every possible way before our eyes today…
The so-called inanimate world is not death. Death is a point, it is designated as a terminal point—
a terminal point of what?—of the jouissance of life.

This is very precisely what is introduced by the Freudian statement,
the one we might qualify as hyper-hedonism, if I may put it this way.

Who does not see that economy—even that of nature—is always a fact of discourse,
that one cannot grasp that this indicates that jouissance can only be considered
insofar as it is itself not only a “fact” but an “effect of discourse” [“jouis-sens”]?
If something called the unconscious can be half-spoken as a linguistic structure,
it is so that at last the prominence of this “effect of discourse,”
which until now appeared impossible to us, may become apparent—
namely, surplus-jouissance.

Does this mean—following one of my formulas—that inasmuch as it was impossible, it functioned as real?
I leave the question open.
For in truth, nothing implies that the irruption of the discourse of the unconscious—
halting and stammering as it remains—
implies anything, in what preceded it, that was subject to its structure.

The discourse of the unconscious is an emergence;
it is the emergence of a certain function of the signifier.
That it existed until then as a “sign”—this is precisely why I placed it at the principle of semblance.

And the consequences of its emergence—this is what must be introduced as something that changes,
which cannot change, for it is not of the order of the possible.
On the contrary, it is from the fact that a discourse centers itself on its effect as impossible [S1◊S2]
that it would stand a chance of being a discourse that would not be mere semblance.