🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

Can you hear me back there, at the very back row?
Can you hear me, over there in the fourth row?
Great! At least we can breathe, that’s already something!

This can allow for more effective interactions. For example, in one case, I could ask someone to leave.
At the very least, I could have a nervous breakdown and leave myself.

Well, in the other— in the other lecture hall— it looked a little too much like most of the cases
where people believe there exists a sexual relationship [Laughter].
Because we’re stuck [Laughter] in a little bo—box. [Laughter]

This will allow me to ask you to raise your hand!
Who among you, following my explicit suggestion, made the effort to reread pages 31 to 40
of what is called my Écrits? Raise your hand, here we can raise our hands…
There aren’t that many of you! [Laughter]

I don’t know if I’m not just going to have a nervous breakdown [Laughter] and simply leave.
Since, after all, one must have at least minimal resources to ask someone
what connection— what connection they might have possibly perceived
between those pages they read and what I said I was talking about there, namely, the phallus.

Who here feels in the mood…
See, I’m being kind, I’m not calling on anyone…
Who here feels in the mood to say something about it, or even this—why not?—
that there’s hardly any way to notice it?
Would someone be kind enough to share with me a little bit of the thought
that this might have inspired in them—
I’m not saying “these pages,” but what I said last time about what, in my view, they consisted of?

Marie, listen… You, did you reread those pages?
You didn’t reread them! “Get lost!”
Well, anyway, that’s really annoying.

I’m certainly not the one who’s going to read them aloud to you,
that would really be too much to ask of me.
But still, let’s take something at random.
I’m a little bit surprised, really,
I’m a little bit surprised that I can’t—
except by resorting to teasing— get an answer.
Yes! It’s still quite annoying.

In these pages, I speak very precisely only about the function of the phallus
insofar as it is articulated— insofar as it is articulated within a certain discourse,
and yet, at that time, I had not even begun to construct that whole variety,
that tetrahedral combination with four vertices, which I presented to you last year.

And yet, I observe that even at this level, one cannot say…
“At this level,” I say— meaning my construction…
Even at that time, if you prefer— well, I aimed my shot, so to speak…
“Shooting my shot” is saying a lot— being able to aim at all, that’s already something…
…in such a way that it does not now seem to me to be off the mark,
I mean, in a more advanced stage of this construction.

Of course, when I said last time…
I let myself go like this, especially when one must at least pretend to breathe…
When I said last time that I admired myself, I hope you didn’t take that too literally.

What I admired, in fact, was rather the path I had traced
at the time when I was just beginning to carve a certain furrow
based on reference points—
a path that is not now something to be outright rejected,
at least not something that would make me ashamed.
That’s what I ended on last year, and it’s quite remarkable,
even perhaps something could be drawn from it—
a rough sketch of encouragement to continue.

It is quite striking that everything in it that is, so to speak, fishable,
in terms of the signifier…
And that’s precisely what it’s about— I came fishing for…
That Seminar on The Purloined Letter, which I think—
after all, for some time now, the fact that I placed it at the beginning…
despite all chronology, isn’t it?…
perhaps showed that it was necessary—
that I had the idea that this was, all in all, the best way to introduce my Écrits.

So, the remark I am making about this famous man—“who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man”—it is quite certain that if I insist at that moment on saying that not translating it literally…
“that which is unworthy as well as that which is worthy of a man”
…shows that it is in its block, in its whole, that the unspeakable, shameful, that which cannot be said in regard to a man—well, ultimately, the phallus—is indeed there, and that it is clear that bringing this back, fragmenting it into two:
“that which is worthy of a man as well as that which is unworthy of him,”
it is clear that what I am insisting on here is that it is not the same thing to say:
“the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber,”
“the knowledge the thief has of the knowledge the robbed has of his thief,”
…that this element of “knowing that he knows,” that is to say, a knowledge imposed by a certain fantasy—precisely: “the man who dares everything”—this is, as Dupin immediately states, the key to the situation.

I say this, I say this, and I will not return to it, because, to be honest, what I was pointing out to you could have…
—for someone who would have taken the trouble—
…directly allowed, from a text like this, the advancement of most of the articulations that I may have to develop, unfold, construct today…
as you will see, if you are willing, in a second phase,
after hearing whatever I will have more or less managed to say…
…it was, in short, already well and truly written there, and not only written there with all—and the same—necessary articulations,
those through which I believe I should guide you.

So, everything that is there is not only filtered but also connected, and is indeed made of those signifiers available for a more elaborated signification,
that of a teaching which I can say is unprecedented—other than Freud himself.
And precisely in that it defines the preceding one in such a way that one must read its structure in its impossibilities.

Can we say that Freud, properly speaking, formulates this impossibility of the sexual relationship—not as such?
I simply do so because it is so simple to say,
it is written all over, it is written in what Freud writes,
all one has to do is read it.
Only, you will soon see why you do not read it.
I try to say it—to say why I read it.

The letter, then—“purloined,” not “stolen,” but as I explain—it is where I begin—
it will take a detour,
or as I translate it: “The letter in suffering.”
It starts like that, and this little text ends with this:
that it nevertheless arrives at its destination.

And if you read it,
I hope there will be a few more of you who will have read it by the time I see you again.
Which will not be for quite some time,
because all this has been very well calculated:
the 2nd and 3rd Wednesdays—I chose them because in April, that falls during the Easter holidays,
so you will not see me again until May.
That will give you time to read the 40 pages of The Purloined Letter.

At the end, I want to highlight what is essential in it,
and why the translation The Stolen Letter is not the right one:
The Purloined Letter still means,
it means that, all the same, it reaches its destination.

I give the destination,
I give it as the fundamental destination of any letter—
I mean, epistle.
It arrives, let’s say, not even to him nor to her,
but to that which can make nothing of it:
the police, in this case,
who, of course, are completely incapable of making anything of it…
as I emphasize and explain in many pages:
precisely, this is even why they were incapable of finding it in the first place…
…to that substrate, that material of the letter.

All of this is said very beautifully—
this invention, this forgery by Poe, is magnificent.

The letter, of course, is beyond the reach of spatial explanation,
since that is what it is about.
That is what the prefect comes to say,
well, what the police come to say first:
that everything in the minister’s place,
given that we are certain the letter is there,
that it is there for him to always have at hand,
we say why—the space has been literally gridded.

It is amusing—isn’t it?—
to indulge myself here, like this,
I do not know, every time I allow myself—still, from time to time—a little slack,
why not, a few considerations like this about space,
this famous space
which, for our logic, has been, for quite some time—
since Descartes—the most cumbersome thing in the world.

It is, after all, an occasion like this to talk about it, if indeed it must be added as a marginal note—
this is what I isolate as the dimension of the Imaginary. There are still people who worry,
not necessarily about this particular text, but about others,
or even sometimes those who have kept notes of things I may have said at some point,
for example, on Identification.

That was in the years 1961-62. I must say that all my listeners were thinking about something else,
except— I don’t know—one or two who came entirely from outside, who didn’t exactly know what was going on.
That is where I spoke of the unary trait. So now people are worrying—not without legitimacy—about where to place this unary trait:
should it be on the side of the Symbolic, or of the Imaginary, and why not of the Real?

Whatever the case, as it stands, this is how it is marked: a stroke, eine einziger Zug…
for, of course, it was in Freud that I went fishing for it…
…which raises a few questions, as I already somewhat introduced last time
with that remark that it is entirely impossible to conceive of anything that holds up
within this bipartition, so difficult, so problematic for mathematicians, namely:

– “Can everything be reducible to pure logic?”
That is to say, to a discourse that is sustained by a well-determined structure.

– Is there not an absolutely essential element that remains…
no matter what we do to enclose it within this structure, to reduce it…
which still remains, a final kernel, and which we call intuition?

This is certainly the question from which Descartes set out.
What he pointed out was that mathematical reasoning, in his view,
drew nothing effective, nothing creative from reasoning itself,
but only from its point of departure, that is, from an original intuition—
the one he posits, institutes, in his fundamental distinction
between “extension” and “thought.”

Of course, this Cartesian opposition,
being made more by a thinker than by a mathematician…
though certainly not incapable of producing in mathematics,
as its effects have demonstrated…
was, of course, greatly enriched by the mathematicians themselves.

It was indeed the first time that something came to mathematics through the path of philosophy.
For I ask you to note something that seems to me quite certain…
let anyone contradict me if they can,
it would be easy to find someone more competent than I on this matter…
it is nevertheless quite striking that the mathematicians of Antiquity pursued their course
without the slightest regard for whatever might have been happening in the schools of wisdom,
in the schools—whatever they may have been—of philosophy.

This is no longer the case today,
where, certainly, the Cartesian impulse concerning the distinction
between the intuitive and the reasoned
is something that has profoundly influenced mathematics itself.
It is in this that I cannot help but find a vein,
an effect of something that has a certain connection
with what I am attempting here in the field in question.

It seems to me that the remark I can make from where I stand,
on the relationship between speech and writing,
on what there is, at least in this first edge,
on what is special in the function of writing in relation to all discourse,
is perhaps of a nature to make mathematicians realize what, for example,
I pointed out last time:
that even the intuition of Euclidean space owes something to writing.

On the other hand, if…
as I will try to push you a little further…
what is called in mathematics logical research, logical reduction, the mathematical operation,
is something that, in any case, cannot have any other support…
one only needs to follow history to see this…
than the manipulation of small or large letters, of various alphabetic sets—
I mean Greek letters or Germanic letters, multiple alphabetic sets—
every manipulation that advances logistic reduction in mathematical reasoning
requires this support.

As I keep repeating to you,
I see no essential difference from what was, for a long time…
throughout an entire era, the 17th and 18th centuries…
the difficulty of mathematical thought:
namely, the necessity of the trace for Euclidean demonstration—
that at least one of those triangles be drawn.

What drives everyone to panic: this triangle that has been drawn—
is it the general triangle, or a particular triangle?
For it is quite clear that it is always particular,
and that what you demonstrate for the triangle in general, namely…
always the same story…
namely, that the three angles sum to two right angles—
well, it is clear that you must not say
that this triangle does not have the right to be right-angled, isosceles at the same time, or equilateral.

So, it is always particular.
This has greatly troubled mathematicians.

I will spare you, of course…
this is not the place to recall it, we are not here for erudition…
through whom and through what this flows,
from Descartes, Leibniz, or others, all the way to Husserl,
they seem to me to have never seen this stumbling block, nonetheless:

– that writing is there on both sides,
it is indeed homogenizing the intuitive and the reasoned;

– that writing—in other words, small letters—
has no function less intuitive than what good old Euclid was tracing.

It would still be necessary to understand why people think that makes a difference.
I don’t know if I should point out to you that the consistency of space—
Euclidean space, the space that closes in on its three dimensions—
seems to me to need to be defined in a completely different way.

– If you take two points,
they are at an equal distance from each other,
if I may put it that way;
the distance from the first to the second is the same as from the second to the first.

– You can take three and make it still true,
namely, that each is at an equal distance from each of the other two.

– You can take four and make it still true.
I don’t know, I have never heard this explicitly pointed out.

– You can take five—
don’t be too quick to say that you can also put them all at an equal distance
from each of the other four,
because—at least in our Euclidean space—you won’t manage it.
To have those five points at an equal distance—do you hear me?—
each from all the others,
you would need to construct a fifth… a fourth dimension.
There you have it!

Of course, this is very easy to state literally, and it holds up very well.
One can demonstrate that a four-dimensional space
is perfectly coherent, insofar as one can show the link
between its coherence and the coherence of real numbers.
It is in this very measure that it is sustained.
But still, it is a fact that beyond the tetrahedron,
intuition already has to rely on writing.

I got into this because I said that the letter that reaches its destination
is the letter that arrives at the police, who understand nothing of it—
and that the police, as you know, were not born yesterday, were they?
Three stakes planted like this in the ground,
three stakes on the campus—
if you know even a little of what Hegel wrote,
you will know that this is the State.

The State and the police—
well, for someone who has thought even a little…
one cannot say that Hegel is so poorly placed on this matter…
it is exactly the same thing.

It rests on a tetrahedral structure.
In other words, as soon as we question something like the letter,
we must step out of my little diagrams from last year,
which were, as you may remember, drawn like this:

Here is the Master’s discourse, as you may recall,
characterized by the fact that out of the six edges of the tetrahedron,
one is broken.
It is to the extent that these structures rotate
along the four edges of the circuit…
which, in the tetrahedron, follow each other—this is a condition—
and interlock in the same direction,
in such a way that one—any one of the other two, of the other three—
spins in a loop…
that variation is established
in what constitutes the structure of discourse,
precisely insofar as it remains at a certain level of construction—
that of the tetrahedral form—
which we cannot be satisfied with
once the instance of the letter emerges.
It is precisely because we cannot be satisfied with it
that, in remaining at its level,
there is always one of these sides that forms a loop, that breaks.

So, it follows from this that in a world…
structured by a certain tetrahedron
which can be found at more than one corner of the field…
a letter only reaches its destination
by finding the one whom, in my discourse on The Purloined Letter,
I designate by the term the Subject…
who is not to be eliminated in any way
or removed under the pretext that we are making some steps in structure…
and from whom we must, nonetheless, begin with this:
that if what we have discovered under the term unconscious has any meaning,
the subject…
I repeat to you: irreducible—
even at this level, we cannot fail to take it into account…
but the subject is distinguished by its very particular idiocy.

That is what matters in Poe’s text, given that the one he is toying with on this occasion—
it is no coincidence that it is the King who here appears as the subject—
understands absolutely nothing, and yet his entire police structure does not prevent
the letter from even coming within his reach,
since it is the police who keep it, and they can do nothing with it.

I even emphasize that—should it be found in his files—it could not serve the historian.
In one or another page of what I write about this letter,
one could say that it is very likely only the Queen who knows what it means,
and that all of its weight comes from the fact that if the only person interested in it—
namely, the subject—if the King had it in his hands,
he would understand only this: that it surely has a meaning,
and that this is where the scandal lies—
that it is a meaning that, to him, the subject, escapes him[S1asemantic].
The term scandal, or even contradiction, is in its rightful place
in those last four little pages I gave you to read, I emphasize.

It is clear that it is solely by virtue of this circulation of the letter that the minister…
since, after all, there have been a few among you who once read Poe,
you must know that there is a minister involved, the one who swiped the letter…
that the minister shows us, throughout the movement of said letter,
certain variations—like a dying fish—
variations in his color,
and in truth, his essential function, upon which my entire text plays…
perhaps a bit too abundantly, but one cannot emphasize enough in order to be understood…
plays on the fact that the letter has a feminizing effect.

But as soon as he no longer has the letter,
he becomes himself again.
As soon as he no longer has it,
he is, in a way, restored to the very dimension
that his entire scheme was designed to bestow upon himself—
that of the man who dares anything.
And I insist on this shift in what happens,
this is what brings Poe’s statement to its conclusion:
it is at this moment that the thing appears—
monstrum horrendum, as the text says—
what he had wanted to be for the Queen,
who, of course, took it into account,
since she tried to get the letter back,
but still, with him, the game was on.

This is for our Dupin—
that is, “the cleverest of the clever,”
the one to whom Poe gives the role
of throwing at us something that might quite readily be called—
as I emphasize in this text—
a bit of dust in our eyes:

– namely, that we believe that the cleverest of the clever truly exists,
– namely, that he truly understands, that he knows everything,
that by being within the tetrahedron, he can understand how it is made.

I have ironized enough about these certainly very skillful things—
the wordplay around ambitus, religio, or honesti homines—
to show and to simply say, as for myself,
that I was looking a little further, wasn’t I,
and that, in truth, the little beast is there somewhere.

It is there somewhere:
following Poe, one might ask
whether Poe himself really noticed it.
Namely, that the mere fact of having passed through Dupin’s hands
has feminized the letter in turn,
enough that,
regarding the minister—who, though he knows
he has deprived him of what would allow him to continue playing his role
should the cards ever have to be laid down—
it is precisely at this moment that Dupin cannot contain himself
and manifests, toward the one
who already believes himself to have sufficiently put anyone at his mercy,
such that he leaves no further trace,
that he sends him this message in the note he has substituted for the stolen letter:

“A fate so dire—well, you know the text—if it is not worthy of Atreus, it is worthy of Thyestes.”

The question, if I may say so, is to notice—
if I may say so—whether Poe, in this instance,
truly grasps the significance of this,
of what Dupin conveys in this message beyond all possibilities,
for God knows if the moment will ever come
when the minister will produce his letter
and find himself, at the same time, deflated—
so that castration is there—
suspended, yet perfectly realized.

I also indicate this perspective,
which does not seem to me to have been written in advance.
This only adds greater value to what Dupin writes as a message
to the one he has just deprived
of what he believes to be his power—
this little chicken, who revels in the thought of what will happen
when the concerned party—
for what purpose?—
will have to make use of it.
What can be said is that Dupin rejoices.

And there lies the question—
the question I began to raise last time by asking you:

“Is the narrator the same as the one who writes?”

What is undeniable is that the narrator, the subject of the enunciation, the one who speaks, is Poe.
Does Poe take pleasure in Dupin’s jouissance, or does it come from elsewhere?
That is what I will attempt to show you today.

I am speaking to you about The Purloined Letter as I myself have articulated it,
and this serves as an illustration of the question I posed last time:

“Is it not radically different—
– the one who writes,
– and the one who speaks in his name as the narrator in a written text?”

At this level, it is perceptible. Because what happens at the level of the narrator
is, in the end, what I could call…
—I apologize for insisting on the demonstrative nature of this little essay—
…that, at the end of the day, it is the most perfect castration that is demonstrated.
Everyone is equally cuckolded, and no one knows a thing.

That is the marvel:

– The King, of course, has been sleeping soundly since the beginning
and will continue to do so for the rest of his days.

– The Queen does not realize that it is almost inevitable that she will go mad over this minister,
now that she has him, now that she has castrated him—
isn’t it delightful?—
it’s love!

– The minister—well, that’s quite true—
he is done for, he is finished,
but in the end, it does not bother him in the least,
because, as I have explained quite well somewhere, one of two things will happen:

• Either he is pleased to become the Queen’s lover,
  and that should be enjoyable—
  in principle, people say so;
  not everyone likes it.
• Or, if he really harbors toward her one of those feelings
  that belong to what I call the only lucid sentiment—
  namely, hatred—
  as I have explained very clearly to you,
  if he hates her, she will love him all the more for it,
  and that will allow him to go so far
  that he will eventually begin to suspect
  that the letter has been gone for quite some time.

Because, naturally, he will deceive himself:
he will tell himself that if they are pushing things so far with him,
it must be because they are sure of something.
So, he will open his little scrap of paper in time,
but in no case will it lead back to what is actually desired—
which is that the minister, whom they want to ridicule,
will not be ridiculed.

Well, there you have it! That is what I manage to say
about what I have written,
and what I would like to tell you is that its significance
comes from the fact that it is illegible.
That is the point—
if you are still willing to listen—
that I will try to develop.

Like many people—
I am telling you this right away because they are people of the world,
the only ones capable of telling me what they think
about what I pass along to them—
this was at a time when my Écrits had not yet been published.
They gave me their expert opinion:
“We understand nothing,” they told me.
Notice that this is quite a lot.
Something that one understands nothing about—
that is hope itself,
it is the sign that one is affected by it.

Fortunately, they understood nothing!
Because one can only ever understand
what one already has in one’s head.
But still, I would like to try to articulate this a little better.
It is not enough to write things that are deliberately incomprehensible,
but rather to see why the illegible has meaning.

I will first point out to you that our entire concern,
our entire concern, which is the history of the sexual relationship,
turns around this idea—
which you might believe is written,
since, after all, this is what has been found in psychoanalysis:
we are still very much referring to a written text.

Oedipus is a written myth,
and I would even go further—
that is precisely the only thing that defines it.
Any other myth could have been taken,
so long as it was written.

What defines a myth that is written,
as Claude Lévi-Strauss has already pointed out,
is that once written, it has only one form.
Whereas what defines a myth—
as Lévi-Strauss’s entire work demonstrates—
is that it has an extremely large number of variations.
That is what constitutes it as a myth,
rather than a written myth.

Now, this written myth could very well be taken,
in short, as the inscription of what the sexual relationship consists of.

I would still like to point something out to you.
That is why it is not insignificant that I began with this text—
because if this letter…
this letter, which in this instance
can take on this feminizing function…
it is because, in relation to what I have told you about this:
that the written myth—Oedipus—
is constructed precisely to show us
that it is unthinkable to say: the woman.

It is unthinkable—why?—because one cannot say “all women.”
One cannot say “all women” because this is introduced in the myth only in the name of this:
that the Father possesses all women, which is manifestly the sign of an impossibility.

On the other hand, what I emphasize regarding The Purloined Letter
is that if there is only one woman,
that, in other words, the function of woman unfolds only from what the great mathematician Brouwer…
in the context of what I set out and developed earlier regarding the mathematical discussion…
calls multi-unity, namely:

– That there is a function that would, strictly speaking, be the one in which the Father is there,
there to be recognized in his radical function, in the function he has always manifested.
And each time monotheism, for example, has been at stake,
it is no coincidence that Freud runs aground precisely there.

– That there is an absolutely essential function,
one that must be preserved as being at the origin,
strictly speaking, of writing—
this is what I shall call the not-one-more (le papludun).

Aristotle, of course, makes utterly delightful and considerable efforts—
as he usually does—
to make this accessible to us in steps,
in the name of his principle,
which one might describe as the principle of climbing the ladder:

– From cause to cause,
– And from being to being,
you will have to stop somewhere…

Well, what is so endearing about Greek philosophers
is that they really spoke for fools.
Hence the development of the function of the subject.

It is in an entirely original way that the not-one-more arises:
without the not-one-more, well,
you could not even begin to write the series of whole numbers.
I will show you this on the board next time.

For there to be a 1,
and for you then to do nothing but keep bursting your mouth open in a circle
every time you want to start again,
so that each time it makes one more—
but not the same one.
On the other hand, all those that repeat in this way are the same;
they can be added together—this is what is called the arithmetic series.

But let us return to what seems essential to us on this subject, regarding sexual jouissance.
The fact is that there is…
—through experience of a structure, whatever its particular conditions may be—
…the fact is that sexual jouissance turns out to be something that cannot be written,
and from this results structural multiplicity,
and first of all, the tetrad,
within which something takes shape that situates it,
but which is inseparable from a certain number of functions
that, in short, have nothing to do
with what might define, in general terms, the sexual partner.

The structure is such that man as such—
insofar as he functions—is castrated.
And on the other hand, something exists at the level of the female partner,
which could simply be traced by this stroke—
the one on which I emphasize the significance,
the entire function of this letter in this instance—
that “Woman” has nothing to do with…
—if she exists, and precisely for that reason she does not exist—
…that as “Woman,” she has nothing to do with the Law.

So how can we conceive of what has happened?
People still make love, don’t they?
People still make love,
and the moment we take an interest in it…
—we take time with it,
and in truth, we have perhaps always been interested in it,
only we have lost the key to how we were interested in it previously—
…but for us, at the heart, in the blossoming of the scientific era,
we perceive what is at stake through Freud.

And what is it?

When it comes to structuring, to making the sexual relationship function through symbols, what stands in the way? It is that jouissance gets involved.
Is sexual jouissance directly treatable?

It is not, and it is in this—let’s say…
let’s say nothing more…
—that there is speech: discourse begins where there is this gap.

One cannot stop there. I mean that I reject any notion of an origin,
and that, after all, nothing prevents us from saying that it is because discourse begins that the gap occurs.
It makes no difference to the result. What is certain is that discourse is implicated in the gap,
and since there is no metalanguage, it cannot escape it.

The symbolization of sexual jouissance—what makes evident what I am articulating here—
is that it borrows all of its symbolism—from what?—
from what does not concern it, namely, from jouissance
insofar as it is prohibited by certain things that are confused—confused, but not that much—
since we have managed to articulate it perfectly under the name of the pleasure principle.

Which can only mean one thing: “not too much jouissance.”
Because the fabric of all jouissances borders on suffering—
this is even how we recognize the garment.
If the plant did not manifestly suffer, we would not know that it is alive.

It is therefore clear that the fact that sexual jouissance has found, for its structuring,
only the reference to prohibition—insofar as it is named—the prohibition of jouissance,
but of a jouissance that is not such,
which is that dimension of jouissance that is, strictly speaking, mortal jouissance.

In other words, that its structure—sexual jouissance—takes its form
from the prohibition placed on jouissance directed at one’s own body,
that is, precisely at that edge, at that boundary where it borders on mortal jouissance.
And it only joins the dimension of the sexual
through placing the prohibition on the body from which the own body emerges—
namely, on the body of the mother.

It is only through this that it is structured…
that what is at stake in sexual jouissance is joined within discourse…
which alone can bring the Law into it.

The partner, in this instance, is indeed reduced to one,
but not just any one: the one who gave birth to you.
And it is around this that everything that can be articulated is constructed,
as soon as we enter this field in a way that is verbalizable.
When we move further, I will return to the way knowledge comes to function as a form of jouissance.
For now, we can move on.

Woman as such is found in this position,
gathered solely in the fact that she is—
I would say—subject to speech.
Of course, I spare you the detours:
that speech is what establishes a dimension of truth…
the impossibility of the sexual relationship…
this is also what gives speech its reach,
insofar, of course, as it can do everything—
except serve at the very point where it is occasioned.

Speech strives to reduce woman to subjection—
that is, to make her something from which signs of intelligence are expected,
if I may put it that way.

But, of course, this does not concern any real being.
To put it plainly…
Woman, in this instance…
—as this text is meant to demonstrate—
Woman…
I mean the in-itself of woman…
Woman…
as if one could say all women…
Woman—I insist—who does not exist…
is precisely the letter,
the letter insofar as it is the signifier that there is no Other [S(A)].

And it is on this point that I would like—before leaving you—to state a remark
that outlines the logical configuration of what I am putting forward.

In Aristotelian logic, you have affirmatives…
—I am not using the letters traditionally used in formal logic; I am not writing A—
…I write it as universal affirmative, and I write this as universal negative,
because that is what it means.
Here, I write particular affirmative and particular negative.

I point out that, at the level of Aristotelian articulation,
it is between these two poles…
—since it is from Aristotle that these propositional categories are borrowed—
…it is between these two poles that logical discrimination takes place:

The universal affirmative states an essence.
I have often insisted in the past on what is involved in the statement
“every stroke is vertical”
and how it is perfectly compatible with the fact that no stroke exists.

Essence is situated essentially within logic.
It is a pure enunciation of discourse.
Logical discrimination, its essential axis in this articulation,
is precisely this oblique axis that I have just marked here.

Nothing contradicts any identifiable logical statement
except for the remark that “There are some that… are not”,
the particular negative: “There are strokes that are not vertical.”
This is the only contradiction that can be made
against the affirmation that something is a fact of essence.

The other two terms, within the functioning of Aristotelian logic,
are entirely secondary, namely:

“There are some that…”—particular affirmative.
And then what? How does one determine if it is necessary or not?
It proves nothing!

And saying: “There are none that…”…
—which is not the same as saying “There are some that… are not”,
that is, the universal negative—
“There are none that…”, well, that proves nothing either; it is merely a fact.

What I can point out to you is what happens when,
from this Aristotelian logic, we move to its transposition
into mathematical logic—
the one that took shape through what are called quantifiers.

Do not get angry with me, or you will not hear me anymore.
I will first write it down, and precisely, that is what this is about.

The universal, I said, the universal affirmative,
is now written using this notation that cannot be verbalized: ∀,
since it is an inverted A.
I say “inverted A”, but after all, this is not speech—it is writing.
But it is a signal—as you will see—for jabbering:

– ∀F(x): universal affirmative,
– ∃F(x): particular affirmative.

Now this—, I want to express that it is a negative;
how can I do so?
I am struck by the fact that this has never truly been articulated
in the way I am about to do.

It is that you must place the negation bar over F(x)
and not at all—as is usually done—over both.
You will see why.

And here, it is on ∃ that you must place the bar: ∄.
I now place a bar here myself,
equivalent to the one that was here,
and just as the one that was here
divided the group of four into two zones,
here, it distributes them into two in a different way.

What I am putting forward is that, in this very way of writing,
everything depends on what can be said about writing,
and that the distinction into two terms,
united by a dot in what is written ∃.F(x),
has the value of saying that one can state of every X…
—this is the sign of the inverted A: ∀—
…that it satisfies what is written: F(x),
that it is not displaced from it.

Likewise, but with a different emphasis, there is something inscribable—
namely, that this is where the emphasis of writing lies.
There exist Xs that you can make function within F(x),
which you then speak of, and which, in what is here called
the quantificatory transposition, involves the use of quantifiers
for the particular: ∃.F(x).

On the other hand, it is so true that writing is the pivot
around which the displacement of distribution turns,
that, as far as what is put in the foreground, what is admissible, is concerned,
nothing has changed for the universal—it is still valid,
though not at the same price.

On the other hand, what is at stake here is the realization of the non-value
of the universal negative,
since what poses a problem here is that, for any x you speak of,
one must not write F(x).
And similarly, for the particular negative,
just as here ∃ could be written,
was admissible, inscribable in this formula,
here, simply, what is stated is that it is not inscribable.

What does this mean?
It means that what, in these two structurations,
has remained somewhat neglected, without value—
namely, the universal negative, insofar as it is what allows one to say
“one must not write this if one speaks of any x”—
in other words, that it is here that an essential cut operates—
well, it is precisely this around which the articulation of the sexual relationship is structured.

The question concerns what cannot be written in the function F(x),
from the moment that this function F(x) itself is not to be written—
that is, it is what I mentioned earlier,
what was stated just now…
what is the very point around which
we will turn back when I see you again in two months…
namely, that it is, strictly speaking, what is called illegible.