🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

You are not very numerous… I was asked whether I would hold my seminar given the strike.
There are even two—or maybe only one, but perhaps two—of these people who asked me what my opinion on the strike was, or more precisely, who asked my secretary about it.

Well, I now ask you!
Is there no one who has anything to say in favor of the strike, at least concerning this seminar?
I am not going to make you… fail to attend.

This morning, however, I myself was rather inclined to go on strike.
I was inclined to do so because the person I just mentioned—my secretary—showed me a small section in the newspaper regarding said strike, the strike directive, and, given the newspaper in question, a statement from the Ministry of National Education about all that had been done for the University: the average number of teaching positions allocated per number of students, etc.

Of course, I will not dispute these statistics, yet the conclusion drawn from this very broad effort—an effort that should, in any case, be satisfying—I must say that it does not align with my own information, which, however, comes from a reliable source. Because of this, I was quite inclined to go on strike.

Your presence compels me—let’s say, through something that carries weight—which is what we call in our language courtesy, and in another…
To which I have alluded, in a sort of revenez-y (a “coming back to”), which I will refer to—that is, the Chinese language, about which I let myself confide to you that at one time… well, I learned a tiny bit of it…
It is called “Lǐ 禮”.

“Lǐ”, in the great tradition, is one of the four fundamental virtues—of whom? Of what?—of a man, at a certain time.
And if I speak of it, if I bring it up as it comes to me, it is because I thought I would share with you a few informal remarks—this is the approach I intend to take today.

It will not be, strictly speaking, what I had prepared; in my own way, I will nevertheless take this strike into account, and it is in a way…
You will see at what level I will place things…
It is in a more informal way, to respond in an equitable manner—this is about the best meaning one can give to “Lǐ”: responding in an equitable manner to this presence.

You will see that I will take the opportunity to address a certain number of points that have been ambiguous for some time, meaning that, since something is at stake at the level of the University, it is also at the level of the University…
To which, in many cases, I disdain to acknowledge movements that reach me…
To which I feel today I must respond.

As you may know…
Does your presence bear witness to this or not? How can one know?
…I only hold, in my relation to said University, what one might call a marginal position.

It believes it must provide me shelter, which, of course, I owe it homage for—yet, for some time now, something has manifested itself that I cannot ignore, given the field in which I find myself teaching.
It is a certain number of echoes, of noises, of murmurs reaching me from a field defined in an academic manner and called linguistics.
When I speak, of course, of disdain, it is not a feeling; it is a course of action.

Some time ago—which already dates back quite a bit, if I remember correctly, to something…
What would it be? It must have been—two years ago? That is not much…
…An article was published in a journal that no one reads anymore, whose name sounds old-fashioned: La Nouvelle Revue Française.
An article appeared there entitled “Exercices de style de Jacques Lacan”.

It was an article that I pointed out, by the way. At that time, I was under the roof of the École Normale… well, under the roof… under the awning, at the door… I said: “Read this, it’s amusing.” It turned out, as you later saw, that it was perhaps a little less amusing than it seemed, since it was, in a way, the “little bell” that—I, though deaf—should rather have heard as confirmation of what had already been announced to me: that my place was no longer under that awning.

It was a confirmation I could have heard, because it was written in the article. It was written… well, something—I must say—rather blatant… that one could hope, once I was no longer under the awning of the École Normale, for the introduction into said École of linguistics… I am not sure I am quoting the exact terms—you can imagine I did not refer back to it this morning, since all of this is improvised—but something along the lines of linguistics of high quality, of high intensity, or whatever similar phrase, something that indeed suggested that linguistics had, my God!—been somewhat degraded within the École Normale.

In the name of what, for heaven’s sake? I was not assigned any teaching at the École Normale, but if, according to this author, the École Normale was so little initiated into linguistics, it was certainly not me who should be blamed.

This indicates the point on which I nevertheless intend to clarify something this morning. That is, this issue which has been raised for some time now with a certain insistence… the theme is taken up in a less… less light-hearted manner in a number of interviews… there is a question being raised around something: “Is one a structuralist or not when one is a linguist?”

And people tend to distance themselves, don’t they? They say, “I am a functionalist.” I am a functionalist—why? Because structuralism is something… purely a journalistic invention, I might add… structuralism is still something that serves as a label and which, of course, given what it encompasses—namely, a certain seriousness—is not without causing concern, which naturally leads people to make it clear that they set themselves apart from it.

The question of the relationship between linguistics and what I teach is, in other words, what I want to bring to the forefront, in order to dispel—dispel, I hope, in a way that will be remembered—a certain ambiguity. Linguists, academic linguists, would essentially like to reserve for themselves the privilege of speaking about language.

And the fact that the axis of my teaching is situated around linguistic development is supposedly an abuse, which is denounced in various formulations, the main one being—at least it seems to me the most substantial—that linguistics is being used… in the field where I position myself, and in the field as well of someone who, in this matter, certainly deserves closer examination, much more so than myself, since one might have only a rather vague idea—at least, that is my view—it is Lévi-Strauss… and then Lévi-Strauss, for example, along with a few others, Roland Barthes… we too would be making of linguistics a—let me quote—”a metaphorical use.”

Well, that is indeed what I would like to address. There is something that should be established first, because it is inscribed in something that matters: the fact that I am still here delivering this discourse, the fact that you are here as well to listen to it, assures me of it.

It means that one must believe that a certain formulation is not entirely misplaced concerning this discourse as I hold it, that in a certain way, after all, let’s say that I know—I know what? Let’s try to be exact—it seems proven that I know where I stand.

Holding a certain position—and I emphasize: this position is none other… I emphasize this because I do not have to state it for the first time—I spend my time repeating that this is where I stand… it is none other than the position I identify as that of a psychoanalyst. The question, after all, may be debated, since many psychoanalysts would debate it, but this is where I stand. It is not quite the same thing if I were to state: “I know where I am standing.” Not because the “I” would be repeated in the second part of the sentence, but because language always shows its resources here: to say “I know where I am standing,” the emphasis would fall on “where,” on the location that I would claim to know.

I would have—if I may say so—I would have the map, the mapping of the thing. And after all, why shouldn’t I?

There is a strong reason why I could not even claim that “I know where I stand”… this, in fact, is precisely at the core of what I have to say to you this year… it is that the principle of Science, as the process has been engaged for us—I am speaking of what I refer to when I take Newtonian science as its center, the introduction of the Newtonian field—implies that in no domain of science do we possess this mapping, this map, to tell us where we are.

And moreover… everyone agrees on this… whatever the validity of the objection that may be raised, as soon as one begins to speak of the map itself, of its contingency and necessity, well, anyone—anyone at all—is in a position to object that one is no longer doing science but philosophy.

That does not mean that just anyone knows what they are saying when they say it, but still, they hold a very strong position. The discourse of science repudiates this “where we stand.” It does not operate with that.

The hypothesis… recall Newton affirming that he feigned none… the hypothesis, though employed, never concerns the fundamental nature of things.

The hypothesis, within the scientific field… regardless of what anyone thinks… the hypothesis, above all, participates in logic.

There is an “if,” the conditional of a truth that is never more than logically articulated, then, apodosis: a consequent must be verifiable. It is verifiable at its own level, in the way it is articulated. This in no way proves the truth of the hypothesis.

I am absolutely not saying that science is merely floating there as a pure construction, that it does not grasp reality. To say that it does not prove the truth of the hypothesis is simply to recall what I have just stated, namely: implication, in logic, in no way excludes the possibility that a true conclusion may be drawn from a false premise.

Nevertheless, the truth of the hypothesis in an established scientific field is recognized by the order it imparts to the whole field, insofar as the field has its status. And its status can be defined in no other way than by the consent of all those who are “authorized” in that field—in other words, the status of the scientific field is an academic one.

These things may seem striking. Nevertheless, it is this that justifies establishing the level of articulation of academic discourse, as I attempted to do last year. Now, it is clear that the way I articulated it is the only way that allows us to see why it is not accidental, not contingent, not tied to some incidental factor, that the status of the development of Science involves the presence, the sponsorship, of other well-known social entities: the Army, for instance, or the Navy, as it is still called, and a few other elements of a certain furnishing.

This is entirely legitimate if we recognize that, at its core, academic discourse could only be articulated from the discourse of the Master. The division of domains within a field whose status is academic—this is the only place where the question of what happens can be raised, and first of all, whether it is possible for a discourse to call itself by another name.

It is here that, in its full weight, is introduced… I apologize for returning to such an elementary point, but after all, since I can receive objections—even from those authorized to be linguists—such as this one: that I make only a “metaphorical use” of linguistics, I must recall, I must respond, no matter the occasion on which I do so, and I do so this morning because I was expecting to encounter a more combative atmosphere… well then, I must recall this: that if I may decently say that I know—what do I know?

Because after all, perhaps I position myself somewhere in a place that the one named Mencius—whose name I casually introduced to you last time—the one named Mencius might serve to define for us. Well, if—may Mencius protect me—I know where I stand, then at the same time, I must say that I do not know what I am saying. I know what I am saying; in other words: it is what I cannot say.

That is the date, the date marked by this: that there is Freud and that he introduced the unconscious. The unconscious means nothing if it does not mean this: that whatever I say, and wherever I stand—even if I stand well—well, I do not know what I am saying. And none of the four discourses, as I defined them last year, leaves any hope, allows anyone—anyone who utters anything at all—to claim, or even hope in any way, to know what they are saying.

I say, even if I do not know what I am saying, only I know that I do not know it. And I am not the first to say something under these conditions; this has been heard before. I say that the cause of this is to be sought only in language itself, and what I add… what I add to Freud, even if in Freud it is already there, evident, since anything he demonstrates shows that the unconscious is never anything but the matter of language… I add this: that “the unconscious is structured like a language.” Which one? Well, precisely—go find it!

It is French or Chinese that I will speak to you. At least, I would like to; it is all too clear that at a certain level, what I speak is bitterness—particularly from the side of the linguists.

This rather suggests that the academic status—this is all too evident in its developments—forces linguistics to turn into some strange concoction. From what we see, there is no doubt about it. That I am denounced on this occasion, my God, that is not something of great importance. That I am not debated, that is not very surprising either, since it is not from a certain definition of the academic domain that I take my stance, or that I can take my stance.

What is amusing—since it is obvious, it is obvious that, it is obvious that we are not uninvolved… a certain number of people among whom I placed myself earlier, adding two other names, and one could add a few more… it is obviously from us, after all, that linguistics sees its number of positions increasing, those counted this morning in the newspaper by the Ministry of National Education, as well as the number of students. Well, in the end…

The interest, the wave of interest that I have contributed to bringing to linguistics is—so it seems—an interest coming from the ignorant. Well, that is not so bad! [Laughter] They were ignorant before; now they are interested. I have succeeded in making the ignorant interested in something extra, which was not even my goal, because linguistics, let me tell you: I do not care! [Laughter]

What directly interests me is language, because I think that is what I am dealing with, that it is what I am dealing with when I conduct psychoanalysis.

The linguistic object—well, it is the linguists’ business to define it. In the field of science, each domain progresses by defining its object. They define it as they see fit, and they add that I make a metaphorical use of it.

It is rather curious that linguists do not see that every use of language, whatever it may be, shifts into metaphor, that there is no language except metaphorical, as is demonstrated by any attempt at “metalanguage,” if I may put it that way, which cannot help but start from what is always defined—each time one advances in an effort called logical—by first defining an “object language,” which it is clear, which is palpably evident from the statements of any of these logical attempts, is elusive, this object language.

It is in the nature of language… I do not say of speech, I say of language itself… that when it comes to attaching anything that “signifies,” the referent is never the right one, and that is what makes a language. Every designation is metaphorical; it can only be done through the mediation of something else.

Even if I say “this!” [Lacan points to his cigar], “this!” while pointing at it, well, I already imply—by having called it “this!”—that I choose to make it nothing but “this!” Whereas it is not “this!” The proof is that when I light it, it is something else.

Even at the level of the “It,” this famous “It” that would be the residue of the particular, of the individual. We cannot overlook the fact that saying “this!” is an act of language. What I have just designated as “this!”—this is not my cigar; it is when I smoke it, but when I smoke it, I do not speak of it.

The signifier to which discourse refers… when there is discourse, it turns out that one can hardly escape what constitutes discourse… the signifier to which discourse refers concerning something for which it may well be the only support. By its nature, it evokes a referent. Only, it cannot be the right one, and that is why the referent is always real—because it is impossible to designate. As a result, the only option left is to construct it. And one constructs it if one can.

There is no reason for me to deprive myself… well, I am not going to remind you of what you all already know anyway, since you have read it in a heap of occultist garbage from which you all drink, as everyone knows, isn’t that right? I am not talking about yang and yin, as everyone here knows that—right?—the male and the female. They are drawn like this: they form very beautiful little characters.

Here is yáng陽, and as for yīn, I will do that another time. I will do it another time because, regarding this, I do not see why—these Chinese characters, which mean something to so few of you—I should abuse them. Still, I am going to use them.

We are not here to perform sleight of hand tricks. If I bring this up, it is because this is clearly an example of referents that cannot be found. That does not mean—damn it!—that they are not real. The proof is that we are still burdened with them.

If I make metaphorical use of linguistics, it is based on this: that the unconscious cannot conform to a research—by which I mean linguistics—that is unsustainable. That does not mean it cannot continue; of course, it is a wager, but I have made enough use of the wager to know, for you to know, for you to suspect, that it may serve a purpose. Losing is just as important as winning.

Linguistics can only be a metaphor that is constructed so as not to function. But in the end, this interests us greatly because—you will see… you will see, I am telling you now: this is what I have to say to you this year—it is that psychoanalysis, in turn, moves with full sails within this very same metaphor.

This is precisely what suggested this return to me, just like that… after all, we know what it is!… to my old little bit of Chinese. After all, why should I not have understood it fairly well, at least when I learned it with my dear master Demiéville? I was already a psychoanalyst. So, there exists a language in which this: 為—I write it more or less well with chalk, well, anyway, it is fairly clear. I will do it again. Learn to write it; it will help you. [Laughter]

It is pronounced wéi為, and it functions both in the formula wúwéi無為, which means “non-action”—so wéi means “to act”—and, with the slightest shift, you see wéi used as “as,” meaning “like.”

That is to say, it serves as a conjunction to create metaphor. Or even further, it means “insofar as it refers to such a thing,” which is even more in the realm of metaphor, insofar as it refers to such a thing—that is, precisely because it is not that thing, since it is necessarily compelled to refer to it.

When something refers to something else, the greatest breadth, the greatest flexibility is given to the possible use of this term wéi為, which nevertheless means “to act.”

Not bad for a language like that! A language in which verbs… and the most verbal of verbs—“to act,” what is more of a verb, what is more of an active verb?… transform into mere conjunctions. That is quite common.

That has nevertheless helped me a great deal in generalizing the function of the signifier, even if it chafes a little at the edges for certain linguists who do not know Chinese. I would really like to ask a certain someone, for example: how does “double articulation,” which he has been harping on about for years—after all, we are drowning in “double articulation”!—how does “double articulation” apply in Chinese? Huh?

In Chinese, well, you see, it is the first articulation that stands alone, and then, just like that, it produces meaning, which, from time to time, given that all words are monosyllabic, prevents us from saying:
– that there is the phoneme, which means nothing,
– and then the words, which mean something…
…two articulations, two levels. Well, yes, even at the level of the phoneme, it means something.

That does not change the fact that when you put several phonemes together, each of which already means something, you end up with a big multisyllabic word, just like in our language, but one whose meaning has nothing to do with what each of the phonemes means. Now that makes double articulation quite amusing!

It is odd that people forget there exists a language like this when they declare double articulation as a universal function, a defining characteristic of language. I am willing to accept that everything I say might be nonsense, but let someone explain it to me! Let a linguist here tell me in what way double articulation holds in Chinese…

So, this wéi為, like this, I am introducing it to you, so to speak, but very gently. [Laughter] I will bring you only a minimum of others, but at least ones that can be of some use. It certainly lightens things up that this verb is both “to act” and the conjunction of metaphor.

Perhaps Im Anfang war die Tat, as the other guy put it—“in the beginning was the act”—is exactly the same thing as saying ἐν ἀρχῇ [en archēi], “in the beginning was the Word.” Maybe there is no other action than that.

What is terrible, huh?—is that I can keep leading you along like this with metaphor, and the further I go, the more lost you will be, because precisely, what is proper to metaphor is that it does not stand alone. There is also metonymy, which operates at the same time—even while I am speaking to you. Because, after all, metaphor, as these very competent, very charming people called linguists say…

They are so competent, in fact, that they were forced to invent the notion of competence. [Laughter]
Language is competence itself.
Moreover, it is true. One is competent in nothing else.
Only—as they also realized—there is only one way to prove it, and that is performance. They are the ones who call it that: performance.

Not me—I have no need for that word. I am in the middle of performing it. And by performing the act of speaking to you about metaphor, naturally, I am deceiving you, because the only interesting thing is what happens in the performance—it is the production of surplus-jouissance, yours and the one you attribute to me when you reflect. It happens to you.

It happens to you especially when you wonder what the hell I am doing here.
One must believe that it must give me pleasure, at the level of that surplus-jouissance that presses upon you.
As I have already explained to you: it is at this level that the operation of metonymy takes place, thanks to which you can more or less be led anywhere, guided by the nose—naturally, not simply to move about in the corridor.

But that is not what is interesting—dragging you into the corridor, or even getting you to fight in the public square. The interesting thing is keeping you here, neatly arranged, tightly packed, pressed against one another. While you are here, you are not harming anyone! [General hilarity]

This little banter will take us quite far, because it is from here, after all, that we will attempt to articulate the function of lǐ 禮.

You see, I am reminding you of this story of surplus-jouissance, I am reminding you of it… well, as best I can! It is quite certain that it could only be defined, even by me, starting from—what?—a solid edifice: that of the object relation as it emerges from what is called Freudian experience.

That is not enough. That is not enough! That is not enough: I had to cast that relation, I had to mold it into a godet of surplus value, Marx’s surplus value—something no one had thought to repurpose in this way.

Marx’s surplus value is not something that one just imagines like that. If it is an invention, it is in the sense that the word invention means finding something good already neatly set in some corner—in other words, making a discovery. But to make a discovery, well, it had to have already been polished, refined—by what?—by a discourse.

So, surplus-jouissance, like surplus value, is only detectable within a developed discourse, and there is no question of debating whether that discourse can be defined as the discourse of the capitalist.

You are not very curious, and above all, not very interventionist, so much so that last year, when I spoke to you about the discourse of the Master, no one came to prod me and ask how the discourse of the capitalist fit into all that.

I was expecting that. I would only be too happy to explain it to you—especially since it is as simple as can be: just a tiny little thing that turns, and suddenly, your discourse of the Master reveals itself to be the most easily transformable into the discourse of the capitalist:

→

That is not the important part. The reference to Marx was enough to show that this was deeply related to the discourse of the Master.

What I want to get at is this: to grasp something as essential as what is there, let’s say, as the support… the support—everyone knows I do not bombard you with that; it is the very thing in the world I distrust the most because, of course, it is through this that one makes the worst extrapolations—it is through this, to put it plainly, that one makes psychology. Psychology—it is what we desperately need in order to think through the function of language.

So, when I realize that the support of surplus-jouissance is metonymy, it is clear that I am entirely justified. That is what makes you follow me—because surplus-jouissance is essentially a slippery object: it is impossible to halt this slippage at any point in the sentence.

Nevertheless, why should we refuse to recognize that the fact that it is usable within a discourse—linguistic or not, as I have already told you, it makes no difference to me—within a discourse that is my own, and that it is only usable by borrowing not from discourse but from the logic of the capitalist, is something that introduces us, or rather, brings us back to what I presented last time, which left some people just a little perplexed.

Everyone knows that I always wrap up what I have to tell you with a little gallop, perhaps because I dawdled too much earlier—some people say that to me. What can I say? Everyone has their own rhythm! That is how I make love…

I spoke to you about an underdeveloped logic. That left some people scratching their heads. What is this underdeveloped logic supposed to be?

Let’s start here: I had previously made it clear that what the expansion of capitalism carries with it is underdevelopment.

Well, I will say it now, because someone I met on my way out—someone to whom I confided this—told me:
– “I would have liked to illustrate the point by saying that Nixon is actually Houphouët-Boigny himself.”
– “Oh!” he said to me, “you should have said that!”

Well, I am saying it. The only difference between the two is that Mr. Nixon, they say, has been psychoanalyzed. Just look at the result! [Laughter]

When someone has been psychoanalyzed in a certain way… and this is always true, in all cases… when someone has been psychoanalyzed in a certain way, within a certain field, in a certain school, by people who can be named—well, it is incurable.

One must call things as they are: it is incurable!

And it goes even further: it is, for example, quite obvious that someone who has been psychoanalyzed in a certain place, by certain people—specific people, not just anyone—well, that person can understand nothing of what I say.

That has been observed, and there is evidence! Books are published every day to prove it.

By itself, this nevertheless raises questions about what is at stake in the possibilities of performance—namely, the ability to function within a certain discourse. So, if the discourse is sufficiently developed, there is something—let’s not say anything more—this something just so happens to be you, but that is purely accidental; no one knows your relation to this something, yet it is something that interests you nonetheless.

Here, this is how it is written: 性. In a classical French transcription, it is read xìng. If you put an h in front of xīn, that is the English transcription, and the most recent Chinese transcription, if I am not mistaken—because, after all, it is purely conventional—is written like this: xìng性.

Of course, it is not pronounced xìng, it is pronounced sin. It means “nature.” And it is this nature that, as you will have noticed, I am far from excluding from the matter at hand. If you are not completely deaf, you will have picked up that the first thing worth retaining from what I said to you in our first session is that the signifier—I insisted on this—races everywhere in nature.

I spoke to you about the stars, more precisely about constellations, since there are stars and then there are stars. For centuries, after all, the sky was this:

The first mark, the one above, is the important one. It is a plateau, a blackboard. Since I am reproached for using the blackboard… well, my good friends, that is all we have left of the sky. That is why I use it—to place upon it what ought to be your constellations.

So, a sufficiently developed discourse—what results from this discourse is that all of you… whether you are here or in the U.S., it’s the same story, and the same elsewhere… you are underdeveloped in relation to this discourse.

I am speaking of this something, this something that one must take an interest in, but which is certainly what is being spoken about when one speaks of your underdevelopment.

Where exactly should it be situated? What should be said of it? It is not philosophy to ask, of what happens, what its substance is.

There are things in this dear Meng-Tzu! I see no reason, after all, to make you intoxicated by it; I have absolutely no hope that you will make the effort to stick your nose into it. So, I will simply go—why not?—to what I should handle with three levels of steps, especially since he has said things of extraordinary interest.

There is a thing—one does not know how it emerges, moreover, because it is written, God knows how—it is a patchwork, this book of Meng-Tzu. The passages follow one another, as they say, and yet do not resemble one another.

Anyway, right beside this notion of xìng性, of “nature,” suddenly appears that of mìng命, of the “Mandate of Heaven.”

Of course, I could very well stick to mìng, the Mandate of Heaven—that is to say, continue my discourse, which ultimately means: it is like this because it is like this. One day, science sprouted upon our terrain. At the same time, capitalism was making its moves.

And then, my God, there was a man… God knows why—Mandate of Heaven!… there was Marx, who, in a way, assured capitalism of quite a long survival.

And then there was Freud, who suddenly became troubled by something that was manifestly becoming the only element of interest that still had any connection to that thing once dreamt of and called knowledge, at a time when there was no longer the slightest trace of anything bearing such a meaning. He realized that there was the symptom.

That is where we are.

The symptom—it is what everything we can, as they say (if the word still had any meaning), conceive of, revolves around. The symptom—it is by this that you orient yourselves, all of you.

The only thing that interests you, the only thing that does not fall flat, that is not simply inept as information, is things that take the appearance of symptoms—that is to say, in principle, things that seem to signal something to you, yet which you do not understand at all.

The only certain thing is that there are things that seem to signal something to you, yet you do not understand them at all.

I will tell you how l’homme…
it is untranslatable, that’s just how it is, it’s the guy, the good guy…
performs some very curious little juggling acts and exchanges between xìng 性 and mìng 命.

Of course, this is far too intricate for me to discuss with you today, but I place it on the horizon, at the forefront, to tell you that this is where we will need to get to. Because, in any case, this xìng 性 is something that does not fit, that is underdeveloped—we must at least know where to place it. That it can mean “nature” is not entirely satisfying, given the state of things when it comes to natural history.

This xìng 性—there is absolutely no chance of us finding it within that thing that is so tricky to grasp, to hold tightly, which is called surplus-jouissance. If it is so slippery, that does not make it easy to get a hold of.

Still, it is certainly not this that we refer to when we speak of underdevelopment.

I am well aware that by stopping here now…
because—my God—the time is getting late…
I may leave you a little too much in suspense.

Even so, I will take a step back, to the level of metaphorical action, and tell you how…
since today, this has been my pivot…
linguistics, properly filtered, critiqued, and finally brought into focus—to put it plainly—
provided we make of it exactly what we want.

And as for what linguists do—my God, why not take advantage of it? It may happen that they produce something useful. If linguistics is what I described earlier—a metaphor deliberately constructed not to function—
perhaps that can give you some ideas about what might very well be our own aim.

From where we stand, with Meng-Tzu and a few others from his time who knew what they were saying—
because we must not confuse underdevelopment with a return to an archaic state;
just because Meng-Tzu lived in the 3rd century BCE does not mean I present him to you as having a primitive mentality.

I present him as someone who, in what he said, probably knew a part of things that we no longer know when we say the same things.

And so, that is what might help us learn with him how to sustain a metaphor—
not one constructed not to function, but one whose action we would suspend.

That is perhaps where we will attempt to show the necessary path.

I will leave it there for today, for A Discourse That Would Not Be of the Semblance.