🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

While waiting for this piece of chalk I may need and which I hope will not take long to arrive, let’s talk about… little tidings. It’s a curious thing, and I don’t think it’s unrelated to what brings us together here, to talk about: the way this book is being received in a certain area, precisely the one you all represent, each and every one of you here.

I mean it is curious, for instance, that in distant universities where I have no reason to think that, up until now, what I limited myself to saying in my seminars had much echo—well, I don’t know why, this book is being requested.

Now, since what I’m alluding to is Belgium, I’ll mention that tonight at 10 p.m., the third channel of “Radio Brussels”… but on frequency modulation: so only those living near Lille will be able to catch it, but I know I also have listeners in Lille… well, at 10 p.m., a short response I gave to one of the most charming people who came to interview me will be broadcast. Besides that, there are others, of course, in even more distant countries, where it’s not certain that it always works out as well.

But anyway, I’m going to begin—since one must make a transition—I’m going to begin with a stupid question that was asked of me.

What I call a stupid question is not what one might think—I mean, something that would displease me in any way—I adore stupid questions—I also adore stupid women, and I also adore stupid men, for that matter, it’s not a gender privilege. Frankly, what I call stupid is something, occasionally, simply natural and proper. An idiom is something too quickly confused with singularity, it’s something natural, simple, and, frankly, very often tied to the situation. The person in question, for example, hadn’t opened my book, and asked me the following question:

“What is the connection between your Écrits?”

I must say that it’s a question that would never have occurred to me on my own. Of course, I must also say that it’s a question I never would have thought would occur to anyone. But it’s actually a very interesting question, one I made every effort to answer. And to answer it, well, my God, as it was posed to me.

That is to say, since it was posed to me for the first time, it was a genuine source of questioning for me and, to be brief, I responded in these terms: that what seemed to me to make the connection… I’m thinking here not so much of my teaching but of my Écrits as they might appear to someone who is just now opening them… well, it is that to which, in the realm of what is called “identity,” each person is entitled to relate, in order to apply it to themselves.

I mean that from The Mirror Stage to the most recent notes I’ve been able to write under the heading of The Subversion of the Subject, ultimately that would be the link. And as you know, this year… I mention this only for those who are here for the first time… I believed it necessary—speaking, I also say this for them, of The Logic of the Fantasy—to begin from this remark, which for those familiar with this place is nothing new, but is essential: “The signifier cannot signify itself.”

This is not quite the same as the question about the kind of identity, for the subject, that might be applicable to oneself. But at any rate, to put things in a way that resonates, the starting point, which remains a link until the end of this collection, is indeed that something deeply debated—this is the least one can say—throughout these Écrits, and which is expressed in this formula that comes to everyone and, I must say, maintains itself with a regrettable certainty, and which is expressed thus: “I am me”!

I think there are few among you who haven’t had to struggle to dislodge that conviction, and even if—in fact—even if they had erased it from their large and small documents, it would still remain extremely dangerous. Indeed, what immediately unfolds, the path one slips into, is this one, which I pointed out again at the beginning of this year—you see that the question arises immediately and in the most natural way—the very same people in whom this certainty is so firmly established do not hesitate to make equally flippant judgments about what is not them: “That’s not me, I didn’t act that way.”

It’s not only babies who have the privilege of saying “that wasn’t me,” and even an entire theory of the genesis of the world for each individual, which is called psychological, will straightforwardly begin with this: that the first steps of experience will be… for the one living it: the being “infans,” and then infantile… that they will make the distinction—the psychology professor says—between the “me” and the “not-me.”

Once engaged in this path, it is quite clear that the question cannot advance a single step, since to engage in this opposition as if it were considered resolvable, between the “me” and the “not-me,” with the sole boundary of a negation, additionally involving the excluded third, I suppose, it is entirely out of scope, entirely out of play, to attack what is, nevertheless, the only important question, namely, whether “I am me.”

It is certain that upon opening my book, any reader will be caught in this link—and very quickly—but that is not, for all that, a reason for him to remain within it, because what is tied by this link gives him enough occasions to concern himself with other things, things which precisely are clarified by being compressed within this link, and thus to once again slip outside its field. This is conceivable in the following: that it is obviously not on the terrain of identification itself that the question can truly be resolved.

It is precisely by deferring, not only this question but everything it concerns, in particular the question of the unconscious, which presents, it must be said, difficulties that strike the eye much more immediately, concerning what it should be identified with—it is, bearing on this question of identification—but not merely limited to what of the subject believes it grasps itself under the identification “me”—that we employ the reference to structure and that we must start from something external to what is given immediately, intuitively, in this field of identification, namely, for example, the remark I evoked earlier, namely: “That no signifier can signify itself.”

So then, to begin today from the reason why I requested this chalk, since it is a matter of structure… although here one of the sources of my embarrassment is sometimes that I have to take rather long detours to explain certain elements to you, which it is certainly not my fault if they are not within your reach, that is to say, not in sufficiently common circulation for so-called first truths to be considered as acquired when I speak to you… I will now draw for you the diagram of what is called a group. I have referred several times to what a group means, starting for instance from set theory, I will not go over that again today, especially considering the path we still have to cover. It concerns the Klein group, insofar as it is a group defined by a certain number of operations.

There are no more than three. What results from them is defined by a series of very simple equalities between two of them, and a result that can be obtained otherwise, that is, by one of the others for example, one through the other two for instance. I do not say by one of the others, and you will soon see why.

This KLEIN group, we will symbolize it by the operations in question, provided that they are organized in a network such that each colored line corresponds to one of these operations and…
— the pink color, then, corresponds to one and the same operation,
— the blue color likewise,
— the yellow line likewise
…you thus see that each of these operations, which I may leave in complete indeterminacy until I have provided more precision, each of these operations appears in two different places in the network.

We define the relation between these operations—in what they are founded—as the Klein group… it is the same KLEIN in question, whom I referred to regarding the bottle of the same name… one operation among these three, which are a, b, and c, each of them, all have the character of being what are called “involutive” operations.

The simplest way to represent this type of operation, though not the only one, is for example negation. You negate something, you place the negation sign on something, whether it is a predicate or a proposition: “it is not true that…”. You perform another negation on what you just obtained. What matters is to posit that there is a usage of negation where the following can be accepted: not, as you are taught, that two negations amount to an affirmation… we do not know what we started from, we perhaps did not start from an affirmation… but whatever we started from, this kind of operation of which I give you an example with negation, has for result 0: it is as if nothing had been done. That is what it means for the operation to be involutive.

So we can write, if by letting the letters follow one another we mean that the operation repeats, that: aa, bb, cc, each is equivalent to 0. 0 with respect to what we had before, that is to say, if before, for example, we had l, it means that after aa l there will still be l. This is worth emphasizing.

But there can be many other operations besides negation that have this result. Suppose it is a matter of sign change—it is not the same as negation. Starting with l at the beginning, I will have -l, then, applying the minus to the minus of -1, I will have l again as at the start. It nevertheless remains that these two operations, though different, will have the same manifestation of being involutive, that is, of resulting in 0. On the other hand, it is enough for you to consider this diagram:

…to notice
— that a followed by b has the same effect as c,
— that b followed by c has the same effect as a.

This is what is called the Klein group.
Since perhaps some intuitive needs of your own might like to have a bit more to chew on here, I can point out to you—because this week it’s really within everyone’s reach, in every kiosk—a rather thin issue, by the way, of a magazine which… you know what I think of magazines already, and I won’t today indulge again in the wordplays I’m used to. In short, in this magazine that doesn’t contain much, there is an article on structure in mathematics, which obviously could be longer but which, on the brief surface it has chosen—justifiably, I must say, since it is precisely the Klein group in question—lays things out for you with, I must say, extreme care.

For what I’ve just shown you here, which is very simple, I believe there are—well, my faith… 24 pages, where the exposition proceeds, one could say: step by step. Nevertheless, this can be a very useful exercise—at least for those who enjoy lengthy explanations—a very useful exercise, which can greatly increase your flexibility with regard to this Klein group. If I choose it, and if I present it to you right from the start, it’s because—it will, at least I hope, render us a few services.

If we return to structure, you will remember some of the steps around which I’ve had it revolve enough for it to occur to you that the functioning of such a structured group, which for functioning, as you can see, can make do with four elements, which are represented here on the network that supports it by the vertex points, in other words where the edges of this little figure that you see inscribed here meet. [Cf. Écrits, The Purloined Letter: α, β, γ, δ]

Observe—Will this go on for long? [addressed to a troublemaker]—observe that this figure has no difference from the one I’m sketching here quickly for you in white chalk and which also presents four vertices, each having the property of being connected to the three others.

From the point of view of structure, it is exactly the same. But we only need to color the lines connecting the vertices, two by two, in the following way, for you to see that it is exactly the same structure. In other words, the central point in this network, in this figure, has no privilege. The advantage of representing it differently is to mark that there is, at that spot, no privilege. Nevertheless, the other figure has yet another advantage—it allows you to grasp something, among other things, that the notion of proportional relation may eventually cover.

I mean that, for example:

is something that functions, but among other things—among many other structures that have nothing to do with proportion—according to the law of the Klein group.

What matters for us is to determine whether the function I introduced under the terms, such as the function of metaphor, as I represented it through the structure: S, a signifier insofar as it is placed in a certain position which is properly the metaphorical position, or that of substitution, in relation to another signifier S’—S thus coming to substitute for S’—something is produced, insofar as the link from S’ to S is preserved as potentially […], there results from it this effect of a new signification, in other words, an effect of signified.

Two signifiers are involved, two positions of one of these signifiers, and a heterogeneous element: the quarter-element “s,” effect of signified, the one which is the result of the metaphor and which I write as follows:

It is that S, insofar as it has come to replace S’, becomes the factor of an S(1/s), which is what I call the metaphorical effect of signification:

You know, I place great importance on this structure insofar as it is fundamental for explaining the structure of the unconscious. That is to say that, in the moment considered as the first, the original one, of what is repression, it is, I say—since this is the mode that is proper to me for presenting it—it is, I say, an effect of signifying substitution at the origin. When I say at the origin, it is a logical origin and nothing else. What is substituted has an effect which the tendencies of the language, if one may say so, in French, allow us to express immediately in a very vivid way: the substitute has the effect of sub-situating that which it substitutes.

What is found, as a result of this substitution—in the position that is believed, imagined, even doctrinally held, quite wrongly at times—to be erased, is simply sub-situated, which is the way I will today translate—because it seems particularly practical to me—Freud’s Unterdrückt. What, then, is the repressed?

Well, as paradoxical as it may seem, the repressed as such, at the level of this theory, is only sustained, only written, at the level of its return. It is insofar as the signifier extracted from the formula of the metaphor enters into connection, in the chain, with what constituted the substitute, that we touch upon the repressed—namely, the representative of the original representation insofar as it is linked to the first, logical fact of repression. Is there something—which you immediately sense relates to the formula, not identical to it but parallel: that “the signifier is that which represents a subject for another signifier”—that must strike you?

Here, the metaphor of the functioning of the unconscious, the S insofar as it re-emerges to allow for the return of the repressed S’, the S comes to represent the subject, the subject of the unconscious, at the level of something else, which is what we are dealing with here and of which we must determine the effect as an effect of signification, and which is called the symptom.

This is what we are dealing with and, likewise, what it was necessary to recall insofar as this four-term formula, a four-term formula that is here the cell, the core, where the specific difficulty appears of establishing, for the subject, a primordial logic as such, inasmuch as this joins up with what, from other horizons, by other disciplines that have reached a much higher degree of rigor than ours, notably that of mathematical logic, is expressed in this: that it is no longer tenable to consider that there is a universe of discourse.

It is clear that in the Klein group nothing implies this rupture of the universe of discourse, but nothing implies either that this rupture is not there! For the specific feature of this rupture in the universe of discourse is that if it is manifested at certain points of paradox—which are not always so paradoxical, moreover, as I have told you: the so-called paradox of Russell is not one—it must be designated in another way, namely that the universe of discourse does not close.

Nothing therefore indicates in advance that a structure so fundamental in the order of structuring references as the Klein group might not allow us—provided we grasp our operations in an appropriate way—might not allow us to sustain in some way what is to be sustained, namely in this case—and this is my aim today—the relation we may assign to our requirement to give its structural status to the unconscious with— with what?—with the Cartesian cogito.

For it is quite certain that this Cartesian cogito—it is not even necessary to point out that I did not choose it at random—it is indeed because it presents itself as an aporia, a radical contradiction to the status of the unconscious, that so many debates have already revolved around this supposedly fundamental status of self-consciousness.

But if it turned out, after all, that this cogito presents itself as exactly the best reverse side one could find, from a certain point of view, to the status of the unconscious, there might perhaps be something gained—which we can already surmise is not improbable—in that I reminded you that it could not even be conceived, I am not saying a formulation but even a discovery of what the unconscious is, before the advent, the inaugural promotion of the subject of the cogito, insofar as this promotion is coextensive with the advent of science.

There could have been no psychoanalysis outside the era, structuring for thought, constituted by the advent of our science; it was on this point that we concluded—not last year, but already the year before. Indeed, recall the point whose interest I already pointed out to you, in that graph… that graph which most of you know and to which you can now easily refer in my book… namely, as it is developed in the article: The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire.

What does it mean—it may be worth noting now—what is found on the upper chain and to the left of this little graph, which, when drawn, looks like this:

Here we have the mark, or the index S(A), which I have not—though it has existed for years, and has been placed in this graph—on which I have not made many comments. In any case, certainly not enough that today I shouldn’t take the opportunity to point out to you that what is at issue precisely at this place in the graph: S(A), is a signifier insofar as it concerns, as it would be equivalent in some way to this: the presence of what I have called the “one too many,” which is also what is lacking, what is missing in the signifying chain, precisely to the extent that there is no universe of discourse.

“That there is no Universe of discourse” means very precisely this: that at the level of the signifier, this “one too many,” which is at the same time the signifier of lack, is properly speaking what is at stake… and what must be maintained, maintained as absolutely essential, preserved for the function of structure, insofar as it interests us, of course, if we follow the path along which, after all, I have more or less led you up to this point, since you are here… that “the unconscious is structured like a language.”

Apparently, in a certain place—so I was told, and I see no reason why this information should not be accurate—someone, whom I wouldn’t at all mind one day coming to present himself here, begins his courses on the unconscious by saying:

“If there’s anyone here for whom the unconscious is structured like a language, they can leave immediately!”

We can take a brief pause. Still, I’m going to tell you how these things are commented on at the level of “babies” — because since my book came out, even “babies” read my book! — at the level of “babies,” one remark was reported to me that I can’t resist sharing with you: there’s a bit of discussion about this, that, and those who disagree, and one of them says something which, after all, I wouldn’t have come up with myself: “Here as elsewhere, there are the ‘Afreuds’!” [Laughter]

Note that this is not far off the mark—just before an interview, where I let myself be caught off guard, on the radio—just before me, there was someone, a voice I must say anonymous, so that I won’t be bothering anyone by citing it, who was asked the question: “Should we read Freud?”

— “Read Freud?” replied this psychoanalyst, who was described as eminent. “Read Freud? Not at all! Totally unnecessary! No need, no need… Only technique, just technique! But Freud—there’s no need to bother with him at all.”

So I really don’t have to try very hard to show that there are places where, “Afreud” or not, nobody bothers much with FREUD.

So, let’s go back: it’s a matter of this signifier, this signifier of the following: something concerning the necessary “one too many” of the signifying chain as such, insofar as it is written—I emphasize—that it stands in for the universe of discourse. Because that is precisely what this concerns. It concerns what is, for the beginning of this year, our guiding thread: that it is insofar as we treat language and the order it proposes to us as structure, by means of writing, that we can highlight the fact that what results is the demonstration, on the written level, of the non-existence of this universe of discourse.

If logic—what we call…—had not taken the paths it took in modern logic, that is, to address logical problems by purifying them to the furthest limit of the intuitive element that, for centuries, had made, for example, Aristotle’s logic so satisfying—which undoubtedly retained a large part of that intuitive element—so seductive that for Kant himself—who certainly was no idiot—for Kant himself there was nothing to add to this Aristotelian logic.

Whereas it only took a few years to pass for it to become clear that to address, to merely attempt to address, these problems, by that sort of transformation which resulted simply from the use of writing, such as had already by then spread and trained us to its formulas through algebra, suddenly, things began to pivot and change direction in the structure. That is, it allowed us to pose the problem of logic in an entirely different way, reaching what—far from diminishing its value, and indeed what gives it all its value—reaches what in it, as such, is pure structure. Which means “structure”: effect of language. That is what is at stake.

And what does it mean, that big S with the barred A in parentheses: S(A), if not to designate, at the level where we are now, by a signifier, what the “one too many” is about?

But then, you’re going to say to me—or rather, I hope you will refrain from saying—because of course we are always on the edge, on the razor’s edge of identification, just as naturally from the mouth of the naive person whom you begin to indoctrinate: “Me, I’m not me? Then—she says—who is me?” Likewise, around this invincible rebirth of the mirage of the subject’s identity, can we say: does the fact of making this signifier of the “one too many” function not mean we are acting as if the obstacle, so to speak, were “vincible,” and as if we were allowing into the circulation of the chain that which precisely cannot enter into it? That is to say, the catalogue of all the catalogues that do not contain themselves, printed within the catalogue, and thereby rendered invalid.

Now, this is not what it’s about. This is not what it’s about, because in the signifying chain, which we can consider, for example, as composed of the entire series of letters that exist in French, it is insofar as, at each moment, for any of these letters to be able to stand in place of all the others, it must be barred, so that this bar is rotating and virtually strikes each of the letters, that we have, inserted into the chain, the function of the “one too many” among the signifiers.

But this excessive signifier, you invoke it as such insofar as, as indicated here, we place it outside the parenthesis where the bar operates, always ready to suspend the use of each signifier when it is a matter of it signifying itself; the signifying indication of the function of the “one too many” as such is possible. Not only is it possible, but it is, properly speaking, what will manifest as the possibility of a direct intervention on the function of the subject.

Insofar as the signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier, everything we do that resembles this S(A)—and which, as you clearly sense, corresponds to nothing less than the function of interpretation—will be judged by what? By—according to the system of metaphor—by the intervention in the chain of that signifier which is immanent to it as the “one in excess,” and as the “one in excess” capable of producing there this metaphorical effect, which will be what here?

Is it through an effect of signified, as metaphor seems to suggest, that interpretation operates?

Certainly—according to the formula—by an effect of signification, but this effect of signification must be specified at the level of its logical structure, in the technical sense of the term. I mean that the continuation of this discourse—the one I am addressing to you—will specify for you the reasons why this effect of signification becomes clarified, specified, and must, in a sense, delimit the function of interpretation in its proper sense, in analysis, as an “effect of truth.”

But also, this of course is only a milestone along the path, after which a parenthesis opens. To be able to provide you with all the reasons that allow me to specify thus the effect of interpretation.

Understand well that I said “effect of truth,” that in no way can it be presumed that this implies the truth of the interpretation… I mean: whether the index “true” or “false,” until further notice, can or cannot be assigned to the signifier of interpretation itself. This signifier, up until now, was only a signifier in excess, even redundant, as such, until it comes, signifier of some lack, of some lack precisely as lacking in the universe of discourse… I said only one thing: that the effect will be an effect of truth.

But it is not for nothing that certain things I bring forward as I can, one after another, like one sometimes drives a flock of sheep, and that if last time I made you the remark, the remark that in the order of implication, as material implication, that is to say, insofar as there exists what is called consequence in the signifying chain—which means nothing other than antecedent and consequent: protasis and apodosis—and I pointed out to you that there is no obstacle, in terms of the truth value, to a premise being false so long as its conclusion is true. So suspend your judgment about what I have called the “effect of truth,” until we know a bit more, until we can say a bit more about what the function of interpretation is.

Now, we are simply going to be led today to produce something concerning the cogito. The Cartesian cogito, in the sense that you know, is not at all simple, since among those who devote—or have devoted—their lives to Descartes’s work, there remain very wide divergences on how it should be interpreted and commented.

Am I doing—or have I up to now done—anything that would amount to inserting myself, me, a specialist—not a specialist! [Laughter], or a specialist of something else—into these Cartesian debates? Of course, after all, I have as much right as anyone, I mean that the Discourse on Method or the Meditations are addressed to me as much as to anyone, and that I am at liberty, on whatever point it may concern, to question the function of the ergo, for example, in the cogito, ergo sum.

I mean that I am, as much as anyone else, entitled to note that in the Latin translation Descartes gives of the Discourse on Method, very precisely in 1644, there appears as the translation of “I think, therefore I am”: “Ergo sum sive existo.” And on the other hand, in the Meditations, in the second Meditation and just after he feels a kind of enthusiasm, he compares it to Archimedes’s point, that point from which, he tells us, so much can be expected:

“If I have discovered—invenero—only this one thing, minimal though it may be, which contains something certain and unshakable—certum sit & inconcussum”
[“Nihil nisi punctum petebat Archimedes, quod esset firmum & immobile, ut integram terram loco dimoveret; magna quoque speranda sunt, si vel minimum quid invenero quod certum sit & inconcussum.” Meditatio II, 3]

…that it is in the same text that he formulates this phrase, which is not absolutely identical: Ego sum, ego existo.

[Haud dubie igitur ego etiam sum, si me fallit; & fallat quantum potest, nunquam tamen efficiet, ut nihil sim quamdiu me aliquid esse cogitabo. Adeo ut, omnibus satis superque pensitatis, denique statuendum sit hoc pronuntiatum, Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. Meditatio II, 3]

And finally, in the Principles of the Search for Truth by Natural Light, it is dubito ergo sum, which, for the psychoanalyst, resonates quite differently—but that is a resonance I will not attempt to engage with today; it’s too slippery a terrain… especially with current habits, those that make it acceptable to speak of Mr. Robbe-Grillet by applying to him the grids of obsessive neurosis [Laughter]… which presents too many pitfalls, even ridiculous ones, for psychoanalysts for me to go far in that direction.

On the other hand, I emphasize that what is at stake for us is something that offers us a certain choice. The choice I make, in this case, is this: to leave suspended all the questions that the logician may raise around cogito ergo sum. Namely: the order of implication at play. If it is merely material implication, you can see where that leads us.

If it’s material implication… according to the formula I wrote on the board last time—and which I’m willing to rewrite if I’m given the space—it’s only insofar as the implication, as indicated by the “therefore,” would make the second proposition, “I am,” false, that the link of implication between the two terms could be rejected.

In other words, all that matters is whether “I am” is true; there would be no inconvenience if the “I think” were false—I say: for the formula to be acceptable as an implication.

“I think”: it’s me who says it. After all, I might believe that I think, but not actually be thinking. That happens every day—and to many people. Since the implication that “he is” [i.e., “therefore I am”]—which I repeat to you, in pure and simple implication, what is called material implication—requires only one thing: that the conclusion be true.

In other words, logic, which involves reference to truth functions, in establishing the table in a certain number of matrices, cannot define—if it is to remain coherent with itself—cannot define certain operations like implication unless it accepts them as functions that would be better named “consequences.” “Consequences” meaning only this: the extent of the field within which, in a signifying chain, we can assign the connotation of truth; we can assign the connotation of truth to the link between a false beginning and a true following, and not the reverse.

This, of course—it’s certain—leaves us far from the register of what there is to say about the Cartesian cogito as such, in its proper order, which no doubt implies, concerns the constitution of the subject as such, that is to say, complicates what writing is, insofar as it regulates the functioning of logical operation, and precisely surpasses it in this: that this writing itself undoubtedly represents nothing more than a more primordial functioning of something which, for that reason, deserves for us to be posited as a function of writing, insofar as it is from there that the true status of the subject depends, and not from its intuition of being “the one who thinks.”

An intuition justified by what, if not by something deeply hidden from it at that moment, namely: what does it want in seeking this certainty on the terrain of progressive evacuation, of cleansing, of sweeping away everything within its reach concerning the function of knowledge? And then, after all, what is this cogito?

— Ago: I drive—like earlier, as I was saying—my sheep: that’s part of my work when I’m here, not necessarily the same as when I’m alone, nor when I’m in my analyst’s chair,
— Cogo: I drive together,
— Cogito: all of that stirs.

Ultimately, if it weren’t for this desire of Descartes that so decisively orients this cogitation, the cogito could be translated—as one might translate it, after all, wherever there’s cogitation—it could be translated: I fiddle around!

Why cogito and not puto, for example, which also has its meaning in Latin: it even means “to prune,” which for us analysts has small resonances… In the end, puto ergo sum might have had a different nerve, a different style… perhaps different consequences.

One never knows, had he begun by pruning—in the true sense of pruning—maybe he would have ended up pruning God! Whereas with cogito, it’s something else. And moreover, cogito… cogito is written, first of all, if we’ve realized that cogito could be written.

“Cogito: ‘ergo sum’—this is precisely where we can recapture the intuition and make it graspable that […] some […] content, this liquid that fills what derives—from, properly speaking, structure, from the apparatus of language. Let us not forget, concerning certain functions, insofar perhaps… I say ‘perhaps’ because I am beginning to bring it in and will have to return to it… insofar perhaps as they are those in which the subject is not simply in the position of the acting-being, but in the position of subject, insofar as the subject is more than involved—is fundamentally determined—by the very act in question.

The ancient languages had another register: diathesis—as those who know the vocabulary for this field say—it’s called the middle diathesis. That is why, concerning what is at stake here and which is called language, insofar as it determines that other thing in which the subject constitutes itself as speaking being, one says: loquor.

And it’s not just yesterday that I’ve been trying to explain all these things to those who come to hear me, whatever preoccupations may make them more or less deaf to it. Let them remember the time when I was explaining the difference between “the one who would follow you” and “the one who will follow you.”

“I am the one who would follow you” does not mean the same as “I am the one who will follow you.” If there are two… who are distinguished only by that difference of tense, beyond the opacity of the relative and of the “one who” designates the subject… it’s because there is no middle voice in French, and one does not see that “to follow” can only be said sequor, insofar as by the mere fact of following, one is not the same as having not followed.

These are not complicated things. They are things that interest us concerning what one might call a thought that would truly be one, truly real thought!

How would that be said in Latin using the middle voice? Ideally, one would find an example among what are called media tantum: verbs that exist only in the middle voice, like the two I’ve just cited. It’s a riddle! No one raises their hand to propose something? I regret that. I’ll tell you.

But then again, it might be going a bit too fast to tell you now. Perhaps it is precisely on the occasion of what the psychoanalyst does when he interprets that I will be led to tell you. But still, we must continue to advance, step by step as we do. To give you, all the same, a small indication on this voice, I refer you—you understand that I don’t pull all this from my own imagination alone—to the article by Benveniste, in his recent collection, which he himself compiled.

It includes an article, which fortunately we have all read for a long time now in the Journal de Psychologie, on the active voice and the middle voice. It will explain to you something that—perhaps—I think now—might help open up your ideas a bit.

Apparently, in Sanskrit, one says “I sacrifice” in two different ways. It is not a media tantum verb, nor activa tantum; both exist, as with many verbs in Latin, by the way. But still, one uses the active voice when—for the verb “to sacrifice”? Well, it’s when the priest performs the sacrifice to Brahma, or to whatever deity you like—for a client. He says to him: “Come, we must make a sacrifice to the God.” And the guy: “Very well, very well…” he hands over his thing and hop! a sacrifice. That’s active!

There’s a nuance: the middle voice is used when he officiates in his own name.

It’s a bit complicated that I’m bringing this up now, because it doesn’t just involve a gap that we’d have to place somewhere between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the utterance—which already applies immediately in the case of loquor—but here it’s a bit more complicated, because there is the Other: the Other, whom with the sacrifice, one catches in a trap. It’s not the same to trap the Other in one’s own name, or if it’s more simply for the client, who needs to fulfill a duty to the divinity and seeks out a technician.

A riddle—I sense I’m going from riddle to riddle—where are the analogues in the so-called analytic situation? What officiates, and for whom? That is a question one may ask. I pose it only to make you feel this: that there is a function of the downfall of speech within analytic technique. I mean that it is a technical artifice that subjects this speech to the sole laws of consequence—nothing else is relied upon: it must be strung along, simply.

This is not so natural, as we know from experience: people do not learn this métier, as someone once said, right away. Or else they must really have the desire to officiate. Because it very much resembles an office, in fact, which one is asked to perform, like the good Brahmin must do when he has a bit of training, by reciting his little prayers or thinking about something else.

Cogito ergo sum: What “sum” is in that sum? It is this, which is of a nature to help us understand that in any case, whatever the correct place for our reflections on what concerns the Cartesian step… that it is certainly not at all a matter of reducing it—you know I grant it its proper historical place—so that here, as you can see, it is only a use, but a use that, moreover, remains pertinent.

Namely, that it is from there—in that case, if what I say is true—it is from the moment one treats thought… thought is something, it had its past, its noble titles. I know very well that before, people did not think—no one had ever thought—of revolving the relation to the world around “me, I am me!” The division between the ego and the non-ego—that is something that never occurred to anyone until some relatively recent century! That is the cost, the price one pays—what for?—perhaps for having thrown thought into the trash.

The cogito, after all, in Descartes is the waste, since he literally throws into the wastebasket everything he has examined in his cogito. I think those who follow me can see a little bit the interest and the connection all of this has with what I am currently putting forward.

From the written formulation of the new logic, a certain number of things have been stated which had not previously appeared evident, and yet which are of real interest. For example, this: if you want to negate a and b, I place the bar, and, by convention, this constitutes the negation:

The advantage of these written procedures is well known: it has to function like a mincer—no need to think! It consists in writing: not-a or not-b, that’s all.

You will look it up in Mr. Morgan, who discovered the thing, and in Mr. Boole, who rediscovered it, what it corresponds to. Fine, I’m going to—very reluctantly—illustrate it for you, because I know that there are people who would be annoyed if I didn’t. But I regret it, because those people are probably going to be satisfied and think they’ve understood something. That is precisely why I will show it to them—but at that point, they will be definitively stuck in error!

Nevertheless… What does this mean?

Here are two sets, a and b: either one or the other. Either not-a or not-b, in there. That [in dark gray], that is, what is called the symmetric difference, is what is called the complement in this set.

This is, interpreted at the level of sets, the function of negation. Negation being what is not a and b, it is the other two areas of these two sets—which, as you see, share a common sector—these are the two other areas, indifferently—indifferently, I say—that fulfill this function.

I announce to you, for the purpose—since it is two o’clock—of postponing it to next time, that we will examine all the ways we can seek to operate upon this “I think, therefore I am,” in order to define operations that might allow us to grasp its relation
— first, to its falsification: “I think and I am not” — to another transformation as well, which is possible and whose burning relevance you will see when I tell you that it is the Aristotelian position: “I do not think or I am,”

And then the fourth, which very precisely overlaps with this one and is inscribed as follows:

All these circles symbolizing, since I have chosen to provide a support for you to retain something today from where I land, “Either I do not think or I am not.” I will try to advance such a framework as the best translation we can offer of our use of the Cartesian cogito, to serve as a crystallization point for the subject of the unconscious.

This inverse [of the cogito]
—and you clearly sense that this inverse is negation only in relation to the whole within which we make it function—
…this inverse which “either I am not or I do not think” realizes in relation to the cogito, we are going to have to question it in such a way that we uncover:
— the meaning of that vel (“or”) that connects it,
— and the exact scope that the negation here can take, so as to give us an account of what the subject of the unconscious is about.

This is what I will do then on December 21, and what will, I hope, finely conclude—if I make it that far—this year, which will allow us to properly begin, thereafter, what this year we ought to cover as The Logic of Fantasy.