Well then, I am going to wish you a happy new year. It is not quite time yet…
I am going to spare myself comments about these… about these wishes that, after all, one can consider as vague.

And then I am going to enter very gently into what I have set aside for you today, which is at my risk,
which, as you are going to see, or perhaps not see it—who knows?—in any case, as for me, before beginning,
it seems to me dicey.

To put a title like that, what I am going to tell you will be centered, since, in short, it is still a matter of something that is the analytic discourse—it is a matter of the way in which, within this discourse, we have to situate the function of writing.

Obviously there is anecdote in it, namely that, one day I wrote on the page of a collection that I was putting out…
what I called ‘the poubellication’ [pun: poubelle (trash can) + publication]
…I did not find anything better to write, on the cover page of this collection, than the word ‘Writings’.

These ‘Writings’ it is fairly well known—let us say—that they are not read easily. I can make for you, just like that,
a small autobiographical confession: it is that, in writing ‘Writings’, it is very precisely that I was thinking.
It may even go that far: that I thought they were not to be read. In any case, it is a good start.

Of course that ‘the letter is read’.
It even seems to be made that way as an extension of the word: ‘is read’ and ‘literally’.
But precisely it is perhaps not at all the same thing to ‘read a letter’ or else to ‘read’.

To introduce this in a way that makes an image, I am not going to start right away from the analytic discourse.
It is quite obvious, yet, that in the analytic discourse it is only a matter of that, of what is read,
of what is read beyond what you have prompted the subject to say, which is…
as I underlined, I think, in passing, last time
…which is not so much to say everything, as to say anything at all, and I pushed the thing further:
not to hesitate, because it is the rule, not to hesitate to say what I introduced this year as the dit-mension [pun: ‘dimension’ altered to include ‘dit’ (said)] as being essential to the analytic discourse, to say stupidities.

Naturally, that presupposes that we develop this dit-mension, and this cannot be done without saying it.
What is the dit-mension of stupidity?
Stupidity, at least this one that one can utter, is that stupidity does not go far:
in discourse, ordinary discourse, it runs out.

It is, of course, that something of which, if I may say so, I make sure when I do this thing that I never do without trembling, namely returning to what—at the time—I uttered.
It always gives me a holy fright, precisely the fear of having said stupidities, that is to say something that,
because of what I am advancing now, I could consider as not holding up.

Thanks to someone who has taken up this announced seminar, the 1st of the École Normale [É.N.S. Ulm, 1964: The Four Concepts…, Seuil 1973]
which is going to come out soon, I was able to have…
which is not often granted to me since, as I tell you, I myself avoid the risk of it
…I was able to have the feeling…
that I sometimes encounter in the test
…that what, in that year for example, I advanced, was not so stupid, was at least not so much so
as to have allowed me to advance other things, which it seems to me—because I am there now—that they hold together.

It nevertheless remains that this ‘re-reading oneself’ represents a dit-mension, a dit-mension that is to be situated
properly in what it is—regarding the analytic discourse—the function of what is read.

The analytic discourse has, in this respect, a privilege.
It seems difficult to me, and it is from there that I started, in what dated me ‘from what I teach’,
as I expressed myself, which perhaps does not quite mean what it seemed to state,
namely that it put the emphasis on the ‘I’, namely on what I can utter,
but perhaps also to put the emphasis on the ‘from’, that is to say from where it comes, a teaching of which I am the effect.

Since then, I have put the emphasis on what I founded from a precise articulation, the one that is written precisely,
written on the blackboard
– of 4 letters,
– of 2 bars,
– and of some strokes—namely 5—that connect each of these letters.

One of these bars [strokes]…
since there are 4 [letters], there should be 6: 6 bars [strokes]
…one of these bars is missing there [◊].

What, in this way of being written that I call ‘analytic discourse’, this is part of a reminder, an initial reminder,
a first reminder: namely that the analytic discourse is this new mode of relation that was founded only
from what functions as speech, and this, in something that can be defined as a field.

[the function of speech in the analytic discourse leads to the production of S1, of signifiers of ‘stupidity’, bearing no message, no signified, no meaning,
but it is in their ‘non-sense’, those of the symptom, the slip, the dream… that their meanings of jouissance are found → in a writing to be deciphered.
The function of language refers to linguistics, to the coupling signifier/signified, with the signifier as support of the distinctive trait (phoneme), and the signified as message.]

– ‘Function and field… I wrote precisely,
– of speech and of language…
– I ended: in psychoanalysis.’
Which was to designate, to designate what makes the originality of a certain discourse [A]
which is not homogeneous with a certain number of others [discourses H, U, M] that serve as substitutes,
and that only because of that we are going to distinguish as being official discourses.

[the discourses H, U, M ‘serve as substitutes’, ‘stand in’ for a sexual relation only ‘possible’, limited to phallic jouissance,
in the place, in lieu of ‘the gap’ (impossibility of the sexual relation) that they try to fill]

It is a matter, up to a certain point, of discerning what is the office of the analytic discourse,
and of making it too, if not official, at least officiating.

It is within this discourse, as it is in its function and its office, that it is a matter of circling there…
it is today the path that I take
…what this discourse can reveal of the very particular situation of writing as to what is of language.

It is a question that is very much on the agenda, if I may express myself thus.
Nevertheless it is not to this cutting edge of currentness that I would like to come right away.
I mean particularly to specify what can be—if it is specific—
what can be the function of writing in the analytic discourse.

Everyone knows that I have produced, advanced, the use…
in order to allow explaining the functions of this discourse [function of speech and function of language in their relation to the function of writing]… of a certain number of letters.

Very specifically, to rewrite them, to rewrite them on the blackboard:
– the a that I call ‘object’, but which all the same is nothing but a letter,
– the A that I make function in what, from the proposition, has taken only written formula, is production of the logico-mathematical or of the mathematical-logical, however you wish to state it.

This A I have not made into just anything, I designate what, first, is a place, a position.
I said: the place of the Other, as such designated by a letter.

How can a letter serve to designate a place?

It is clear that there is something abusive in this and that when you open, for example, the 1st page of what has finally been brought together in the form of a definitive edition under the title of ‘set theory’,
and under the heading of fictitious authors who call themselves by the name of Nicolas Bourbaki,
what you see is the putting into play of a certain number of logical signs.

: →

[the analysand: the subject S (barred therefore) who by his speech occupies the place of the Other: A, barred by the ‘not-all’, the signifier of primordial lack: S(A)]

These logical signs precisely designate, in particular one of them, the ‘place’ function as such.
This logical sign is designated in writing by a small square: □. I therefore did not first, properly speaking,
make a strict use of the letter when I said that the place of the Other was symbolized by the letter A.

On the other hand, I marked it by doubling it with this S that here means signifier, signifier of A insofar as it is barred: S(A). By that I articulated in writing, in the letter, something that adds a dimension to this place of A,
and very precisely by showing that, as a place, it does not hold:

– that there is in this place, in this place designated of the Other, a gap, a hole, a place of loss [→ S(A) specifies the function of speech],
– and it is precisely from what, at the level of the object (a), comes to function with regard to this loss, that something is advanced that is wholly essential to the function of language. [→ a specifies the function of language]

I also made use of this letter: Φ, I am speaking of what I introduced that functions as a letter,
which introduces, as such, a new dimension [Φ as the beyond of S1, asemantic signifier, insofar as Φ was written].

I used…
distinguishing it [Φ] from the merely signifying function
which is promoted in analytic theory up to then, from the term ‘phallus’
…I advanced Φ as constituting something original, something that I specify here today:

– to be made precise in its relief by writing itself. [→ Φ specifies the function of writing]

: →

[the path of discourse A describes, ‘repeats’ a founding path: of a jouissance of the Other that left a trace, that was inscribed, that was written in Φ:
the subject borrows from language (: a inter-dict) and engages his body in a speech, in order to try to ‘fill’ the gap of the Other (S(A)) and re-resuscitate something that would be written,
but the function of speech brings the analysand only to produce ‘swarms’ of S1, asemantic signifiers (which—beyond—designate Φ) powerless to reach S2,
→ without new jouissance of the Other → without new writing (→ that which does not cease not to be written) → changes of discourse, then new powerlessness → round of the discourses]

It is a letter [Φ] whose function is distinguished from the others; it is moreover indeed for that that these three letters are different: they do not have the same function, as you can already have sensed from what I first stated, S(A) and a.

It [Φ] is of a different function and yet it remains a letter. It is very precisely to show the relation,
that from what these letters introduce into the function of the signifier, that it is a matter today of discerning what we can—taking up again the thread of the analytic discourse—advance.
– [a as letter specifies the function of language (→ the fantasy),
– S(A) as letter specifies the function of speech (→ jouissance of the Other),
– Φ as letter specifies the function of writing (→ what ceases not to be written)]
I propose, I propose this, that you consider writing as not being at all of the same register, of the same tobacco,
if you allow me this sort of expressions that can indeed have their usefulness, as what one calls ‘the signifier’.
The signifier is a dimension that was introduced by linguistics, that is to say by something
that, in the field where speech is produced, does not go without saying: a discourse supports it, which is the scientific discourse.

: →
A certain order of dissociation, of division, is introduced by linguistics, thanks to which is founded the distinction
of what nevertheless seems to go without saying, namely that when one speaks it signifies, it includes the signified.
Still more, up to a certain point it is supported only by the function of signification.

[The ‘signifier of linguistics’ is always there to signify a message, to translate a ‘thought’ → very different from the ‘signifier without signified’ of discourse A.
The ‘signifier of linguistics’ belongs to discourse H (scientific): it produces a knowledge of certainty (S1/S2 contingent), but for that it must cut itself off from its Truth: a]

To introduce, to distinguish the dimension of the signifier, it is something that takes on relief precisely only by positing
that the signifier as such, very precisely what you hear…
in the sense, I would say, literally auditory, of the term [phonological],
at the moment when here, and where I am… from where I am, I speak to you [cf. ‘I speak with my body’]
…it is to posit very precisely this—but by an original act—that what you hear has with what it signifies…
has with what it signifies no relation.

[in this discourse the univocity of the signified excludes what speech could convey other than ‘information’, → excludes a (scientific discourse: S → S1 → S2◊a)]

That is an act that is instituted only from a discourse called ‘scientific discourse’. That does not go without saying.
And it goes so little without saying that what you see come out of a dialogue that is not by a bad pen since it is the ‘Cratylus’ of the one named Plato, it goes so little without saying that this whole discourse is made of the effort
to make that precisely this relation, this relation that makes that what is enunciated is made to signify
and that it must indeed have some relation… this whole dialogue is an attempt…
that we can say, from where we are, to be desperate
…to make that this signifier, of itself, is presumed to want to say something.

[the signifier, because it ‘resembles’ the world, makes it possible to signify the world:
they have a common form. This in a cosmological vision where the human world would be a kind of reduced and impermanent model, of a vaster and eternal world]

This desperate attempt is moreover marked by failure since it is from another discourse…
but from a discourse that carries its original dimension: scientific discourse
…that it is promoted, that it is produced…
and in a way, if I may say so, of which there is no need to seek the history
…that it is produced from the very establishment of this [scientific] discourse that the signifier is posited only as having no relation.

The terms there that one uses are always themselves slippery.
Even a linguist as pertinent as can be… as Ferdinand de Saussure could be, speaks of ‘arbitrary’.
But that is sliding, sliding into another discourse, the discourse of decree, or, better said, the discourse of the master, to call it by its name. ‘Arbitrary’ is not what fits.

[‘to have no relation’ does not imply in any way that the relation is arbitrary.
Ferdinand de Saussure slides from scientific discourse: ‘no relation’ to the discourse of the master: ‘the relation falls under the master’s arbitrary’.
(despite himself? → cf. the 99 notebooks of anagrams and mythographies that Saussure produces, before and during the ‘Course in General Linguistics’) ].

But on the other hand we must always pay attention when we develop a discourse, if we want to remain in its very field, and not to perpetually produce these effects of relapse, if I may say so, into another discourse, we must try to give to each discourse its consistency, and to maintain its consistency to leave it only with good reason.
To say that the signifier is arbitrary does not have the same scope as
to say simply that the signifier has no relation with its effect of signified.

It is thus that at every instant…
and more than ever in the case where it is a matter of advancing as function what a discourse is
…we must at least each time, at each instant, note wherein we slide into another reference.

The word reference on this occasion being able to be situated only from what constitutes as link the discourse as such.

There is nothing to which the signifier as such refers, except to a discourse, to a mode of functioning of language,
to a use—as link—of language [phallic function].

Still must we specify on this occasion what it means, what it means, ‘the link’: the link…
of course we can only slip into it immediately
…it is a link between those who speak [each of the four discourses: H, U, M, A, creates a type of link].

And you see right away where we are going, namely that ‘those who speak’, of course, are not just anyone,
they are beings that we are accustomed to qualify as living, and perhaps it is very difficult to exclude from those who speak, this dimension that is that of life, unless we notice at once—what can be touched with the finger—
that in the field of ‘those who speak’, it is very difficult for us to bring in the function of life
without at the same time bringing in the function of death, and that from that results a signifying ambiguity precisely,
which is quite radical, of what can be advanced as being function of life or else of death.

[from ‘those who speak’ can one exclude the dimension of the living?
– Do they speak ‘with’ language, (cf. Aristotle: ‘man thinks with his soul’)?
– Or are they ‘spoken by’ language, → are they the transitory form in which ‘an eternal form’ speaks?]

It is quite clear that nothing leads in a more direct way to this:
that the something from which alone life can be defined, namely the reproduction of a body,
this reproduction function itself cannot be titled
– neither specially of life,
– nor specially of death,
since, as such—insofar as this reproduction is sexed—as such it includes both: life and death.

[to define life as ‘the reproduction of the body’ does not resolve the question since sexed reproduction implies the dimension of death: the fact of being mortal is what determines reproduction, the only means of permanence—but of what? (the ‘eternal beings’ do not have to reproduce: cf. the debates of the ‘scholastics’ on the sex of angels)]

But already, merely by advancing into this something that is already in the thread, in the current of the analytic discourse,
we have made this leap, this sliding that is called ‘worldview’, which must indeed, for us, be considered as what is most comic [failing cosmical], namely that we must always be very careful
that this term ‘worldview’ itself supposes a wholly other discourse:

– that it is, that it is part of that of philosophy [→ discourse of the master],

– that nothing, after all, is less assured, if one leaves philosophical discourse, than the existence as such of a world,

– that often there is only the occasion, the occasion to smile in what is advanced, for example, from analytic discourse as including something that is of the order of such a worldview.

[the analytic discourse is that of ‘stupidity’, it ends at S1, at the signifier deprived of meaning → to make of it ‘a worldview’ can lend itself to a smile (angel’s smile?)]

I will even say further, that up to a certain point, it also deserves that one smile to see such a term advanced
to designate, for example, let us say what is called ‘Marxism’. Marxism does not seem to me…
and by any examination whatever, even the most approximate
…it cannot pass for a worldview.

It is, on the contrary, by all sorts of quite striking coordinates, of the enunciation of what Marx says…
which does not necessarily merge with the Marxist worldview
…it is, properly speaking, something else, that I will call more formally a ‘Gospel’,
namely an announcement [from Greek εὐαγγέλιον (evangelion): ‘good news’], an announcement that something called History establishes another dimension of discourse, in other words the possibility of completely subverting
the function of discourse as such, I mean properly speaking of philosophical discourse,
insofar as on it rests a worldview [that of the discourse of the master].

Language thus proves to be much vaster as field, much richer in resources than to be simply that in which can be inscribed a discourse that is the one that, over time, was established from philosophical discourse [M].

It is not because it is difficult for us not to take it into account at all…
insofar as from this discourse—philosophical discourse—certain reference points are stated
and which are difficult to eliminate completely from any use of language
…it is not because of that that we must at all costs do without it,
provided that we notice that there is nothing easier than to fall back into what I called ironically,
indeed with the comic note: worldview, it is what has a moderate name, much more precise, and which is called ontology.

Ontology is especially this that, from a certain use of language, brought into value, produced in an accentuated way,
produced the use in language of the copula, in such a way that it was, in sum, isolated as signifier.

To stop at the verb ‘to be’, this verb that is not even, in the complete field of the diversity of languages,
of a use that one could qualify as universal, to produce it as such is something that carries an accentuation,
an accentuation that is full of risks.

In order, if one can say so, to detect it, and even up to a certain point to exorcise [the accentuation] it,
it would perhaps suffice to advance that nothing obliges…
when one says that: ‘whatever it may be, it is what it is’
…in any way to isolate, to accentuate this ‘to be’.

It is pronounced ‘it is what it is’ and it could just as well be written ‘s,e,s,k,e,c,e’, such that one would not see…
in this use of the copula
…one would not see, if I may say so, a thing. One would see nothing at all if a discourse, which is the discourse of the master
—discourse of the master which here can just as well be written ‘m’être’ [pun: maître (master) / m’être (‘my being’)]—which is what puts, what puts the emphasis on the verb ‘to be’.

It is this something that Aristotle himself looks at twice before advancing,
since as for being, which he opposes to τό τί ἑστι (to ti esti), to quiddity, to ‘what it is’,
he goes so far as to employ the τό τί ἦνεἶναι (to ti ên einai), namely:
‘what would indeed have been produced, if it had come to be quite simply, what was-to-be’ [Cf. Aristotle, book Zeta of the Metaphysics]

And it seems that there the pedicle is preserved that allows us to situate from where this discourse of being is produced [discourse M].
It is quite simply that
– of ‘being under the boot’,
– of ‘being under orders’,
– ‘what would have been if you had obeyed what I order you’. [‘to be’ ≡ ‘to be a subject’ ≡ ‘subjected’]

Every dimension of being is produced from something that is in the thread, in the current of the discourse of the master,
of the one who, uttering the signifier, expects from it what is one of its effects of link, certainly not to be neglected,
which is made of this: that the signifier commands. The signifier is first, and by its dimension, imperative.

[being is produced as surplus-jouissance when S1 (master signifier) commands S2 (slave knowledge) and an being (a) results: master → m’être]

How, how to return—if not from a special discourse—to what I could advance as a pre-discursive reality?
That is what, of course, is the dream, the founding dream of every idea of knowledge,
but what also is to be considered as mythical: there is no pre-discursive reality.
Every reality is founded and defined by a discourse.

And it is precisely in this that it matters that we realize what the analytic discourse is made of,
and that we do not misconstrue what no doubt has there only a place, a limited place,
namely—my God…—that one speaks there of what the verb ‘foutre’ perfectly enunciates, one speaks there of ‘foutre’,
I mean the verb ‘to fuck’, isn’t that so, [discourse A: a → S→ S1: phallic jouissance of S1] and one says that ‘it doesn’t go’

[for S1◊ S2→ S1 as ‘Surplus of jouissance’ ≠ S2 as ‘Truth’ → ‘it’s not that’, it’s not the expected jouissance:
phallic jouissance does not reach Truth, the jouissance of the body of the Other → the ‘true’ jouissance (lost)].

It is an important part of what is entrusted in the analytic discourse, and it matters very precisely
to stress that it is not its privilege. It is clear that in what I called a moment ago ordinary discourse
and in writing it almost in a single word:
– the disk… the ‘disk-ourcurrent’ [pun: disque (disk) + discours courant (ordinary/current discourse)],
– the disk also off-screen, out of play of any discourse, namely the disk pure and simple.

In the disk which is indeed after all the angle under which we can consider an entire field of language,
the one which indeed gives its substance, its fabric, to be considered as disk, namely that it turns,
and that it turns very exactly for nothing, this disk is exactly what is found in the field,
in the field from which discourses are specified, the field where all that is drowned, where anyone is capable
– just as capable – of enunciating as much of it, but out of a concern for what we will very rightly call decency,
the fact—my God…—the least possible.

What forms the ground of life indeed is that everything that has to do with the relations of men and women,
what one calls ‘collectivity’, ‘it doesn’t go’. ‘It doesn’t go’ and everyone talks about it,
and a large part of our activity is spent saying it.

It nonetheless remains that there is nothing serious except what is ordered in another way as discourse,
up to and including this: that precisely this relation, this sexual relation insofar as it ‘doesn’t go’, it does go all the same,
thanks to a certain number of conventions, prohibitions, inhibitions, all sorts of things
– which are the effect of language,
– which are to be taken only from this fabric and from this register,
– and which are reduced very precisely to this which all of a sudden makes us come back, makes us come back as it should,
to the field of discourse.

There is not the slightest pre-discursive reality, for the good reason that what makes collectivity, and that I called,
in evoking it just now ‘men, women and children’, that means very exactly nothing as pre-discursive reality:
‘men, women and children’ are only signifiers.

A man is nothing other than a signifier, a woman looks for a man as signifier.
A man looks for a woman as…
this will seem curious [Laughter]
…as what is situated only from discourse, since if what I advance is true, namely that the woman is ‘not-all’,
there is always something in her that escapes discourse. [‘what is situated only from discourse’ and this ‘which in her escapes discourse’: → a]

So it is a matter of knowing in all this what, in a discourse, is produced from the effect of writing.
You know it… You may know it… You know it in any case if you have read what I write:
the signifier and the signified, it is not only that linguistics has distinguished them.

Something that perhaps seems to you to go without saying. But precisely it is in considering that things go without saying
that one sees nothing of what one nevertheless has before one’s eyes, and before one’s eyes concerning precisely writing.

If there is something that can introduce us to the dimension of writing as such,
it is to realize that no more than the signified—nor the signifier—has anything to do with the ears,
but only with reading, namely of what one hears as signified.

But the signified is precisely not what one hears. What one hears is the signifier. And the signified is the effect of the signifier.
There is something that is only the effect of discourse, the effect of discourse as such,
that is to say of something that already functions as link.

Well then it is this something which, at the level of a writing, effect of scientific discourse [linguistics S/s]:
– of the S, made to connote the place of the signifier,
– and of the s by which the signified is connoted as place,
this place function is created only by discourse itself: ‘each in his place’ functions only in discourse.

Well then between the two, there is the bar [S1/S2]. And it looks like nothing when you write a bar, one has to explain.
This word ‘explain’ has all its importance because there is no way to understand a bar, even when
it is reserved to signify negation [/,….].

It is very difficult to understand what negation means.
If one looks at it a tiny bit closely, one will realize in particular that there is a very great variety of negations,
and that it is quite impossible to bring all negations together under the same concept: the negation of existence [/] is not
at all the same thing as the negation of totality [.], to limit myself to the use I may have made of negation.

But there is something else that is in any case even more certain, namely that the fact of adding the bar to the notation S and s,
which already distinguish themselves sufficiently, could be upheld as being only marked by the distance of writing.
To add the bar has something superfluous about it, indeed futile, and in any case, like everything that is of writing,
like everything that is of writing is supported only by this: that precisely writing is not to be understood [no meaning].

That is why you are not forced to understand mine. If you do not understand them it is a good sign, so much the better, that will precisely give you the occasion to explain them [Laughter]. Well then the bar is the same.
The bar is very precisely the point where, in any use of language, there will be occasion for writing to be produced.

If in Saussure himself, S is: bar above s [S/s], it is thanks to that that in ‘The Agency of the Letter…’,
which is part of my Writings I was able to demonstrate—in a way that is written, nothing more, isn’t that so—that nothing is supported
by the effects called ‘of the unconscious’, if thanks to this bar—if there were not this bar, nothing could be explained of it—
there is unconsc… there is… signifier… there is signifier—I repeat because I cut it short—there is signifier that passes under the bar.
If there were no bar you could not see that there is signifier that injects itself into the signified [slips, forgettings…].

Thanks to writing there is manifested, there is manifested this which is only effect of discourse…
for if there were no analytic discourse, you would continue to speak very exactly like starlings,
that is to say to say what I qualify as disk-ourcurrent, that is to say to continue the disk, the disk continuing this something which is the most important point that the analytic discourse reveals only
…namely this, namely this which can be articulated only thanks to the whole construction of the analytic discourse:
it is that very precisely, there is not… [sexual relation]…
I come back to it since after all it is the formula that I keep droning into you
…but for me to drone it into you, I still have to explain it because it is supported only by writing precisely,
and by writing in this: ‘that the sexual relation cannot be written’. That is what it means.

Or more exactly that everything that is written is conditioned in such a way that it starts from the fact
that it will forever be impossible to write as such the sexual relation.
That writing as such is possible, namely that there is a certain effect of discourse that is called writing.
You see, one can, at a pinch, write ‘x R y’ and say: x is the man, y is the woman, and R is the sexual relation [Laughter].

Why not? Only there you are, it is what I was telling you earlier: it is a stupidity!
It is a stupidity because what is supported under the function of signifiers of man and woman are only signifiers,
they are only signifiers entirely tied to this ordinary/ourcurrent use of language [ordinary discourse – disk-ourcurrent].
And if there is a discourse that demonstrates it to you it is that the woman will never be taken…
it is what the analytic discourse brings into play
…that ‘quoad matrem’, that is to say that ‘the woman’ will enter into function in the sexual relation only insofar as ‘the mother’.

Those are massive truths and which, when we look at them more closely, of course will lead us further.
But thanks to what? Thanks to writing which moreover will not object to this first approximation,
since precisely it is by that that it will show that it is a supplementation of this ‘not-all’ on which rests—what?—
the jouissance of the woman.

Namely that this jouissance… that it is not-all, that is to say which somewhere makes her absent from herself,
absent as subject, that she will find there the plug of this a that her child will be.

And on the other side, on the side of x, namely of what would be the man if this sexual relation could be written in a sustainable way, sustainable in a discourse, you will see that the man is only a signifier because where he comes into play as signifier,
he comes into it only quoad castrationem, that is to say insofar as he has a relation—a relation whatever—with phallic jouissance.

So that it is from the moment when, from somewhere…
from a discourse that takes up the question seriously: the analytic discourse
…it is from the moment when what is the condition of writing, namely that it be supported by a discourse [H, U, M, A],
that everything will slip away and that the sexual relation you will never be able to write, naturally insofar as it is a matter of a true writing,
that is to say of writing insofar as it is what, of language, is conditioned by a discourse. The letter, radically, is an effect of discourse.

What is good…
isn’t that so, if you allow me
…what is good in what I am telling, is that it is always the same thing [Laughter], namely…
not, of course, that I repeat myself, that is not the question
…it is that what I said previously, the first time, as far as I remember, that I spoke about the letter…
I brought that out I no longer know when, now I am not going to go looking for it, I tell you: I hate
re-reading myself, but it must be 15 years ago, somewhere at Sainte-Anne [Identification, session of 20-12-1961]
…I tried to point out this little thing that everyone knows of course…
that everyone knows when one reads a little, which does not happen to everyone
…that someone named Sir Flinders Petrie for example had thought he noticed that the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were found,
well before the time of Phoenicia, on small Egyptian pottery where they served as trademarks.

Which means, which means simply this: that the market—which is typically an effect of discourse—
that is where the letter first came out, before anyone had thought of using letters. To do what?
Something that has nothing to do, that has nothing to do with the connotation of the signifier, but that elaborates it, that perfects it.

One would of course have to take things at the level of the history of each language.
Because it is clear that the Chinese letter…
the one that so drives us crazy that we call it, God knows why, by a different name: ‘character’
…namely that the Chinese letter, it is manifest that it came out of very ancient Chinese discourse,
in a wholly different way from the way our letters came out.

Namely that, in sum, the letters, the letters that here I bring out, they have a different value…
different as letters because they come out of analytic discourse
…from what can come out as letters for example from set theory, namely the use one makes of them,
and which yet—that is the interest—is not without having a relation, a certain relation of convergence
on which I will certainly, in what will be the continuation, have occasion to bring some developments.
The letter as effect: any effect of discourse has this good thing about it, that it makes letter.

So my God, to finish, to finish today what is only an opening that I will have occasion
to develop, what I will take up again appropriately, by distinguishing for you, discerning for example the difference there is:
– between the use of the letter in algebra,
– or the use of the letter in set theory, because this interests us directly.

For the moment I simply want to point out to you that: something all the same is produced that is correlative with the emergence into the world, into the world—it is the case to say it—into the world in decomposition—thank God—into the world
that we see no longer holding, since even in scientific discourse it is clear that there is not the slightest world,
from the moment when you can add to atoms a thing called the quark, and that you find that…
Is that there the true thread of scientific discourse?

You must all the same realize that it is a matter of something else: it is a matter of seeing from where one speaks [H, U, M, A].
Well then refer yourselves all the same, because it is a good reading, you must all the same set yourselves to reading a bit of authors, I will not say of your time…
I will not tell you to read Philippe Sollers, he is unreadable, like me,
…yes, read Joyce for example.

Then there you will see how it began to be produced.
You will see that language perfects itself and knows how to play, and knows how to play with writing.
Joyce, I am willing for it not to be readable. It is certainly not translatable into Chinese!

Only Joyce what is it?
It is exactly what I told you earlier: it is the signifier that comes to stuff the signified.

Joyce is, it is a long written text—read ‘Finnegan’s Wake’—it is a long written text whose meaning comes from this:
it is that it is from the fact that the signifiers fit into each other, are composed if you want…
to make an image for those who do not even have the idea of what it is
…collide, that it is with that that something is produced which, as signified, can seem enigmatic,
but which is indeed what is closest to what we analysts…
thanks to analytic discourse we know how to read
…which is what is closest to the slip.

And it is as slip that it signifies something, that is to say that it can be read in an infinity of different ways.
But it is precisely for that that it is read badly, or that it is read askew, or that it is not read.

But this dimension of ‘being read’, is that not sufficient
to show that we are in the register of analytic discourse?

That what is at stake in analytic discourse is always, to what is enunciated of the signifier,
that you give another reading than what it signifies.

But that is where the question begins, because, look, in order to make myself understood I am going to take a reference
in what you read in the great book of the world.

For example you see the flight of a bee.
The bee flies, it goes, it gathers nectar, it goes from flower to flower.
What you learn is that it is going to carry at the end of its legs the pollen of one flower onto the pistil,
and by the same token onto the eggs of another flower. That, that is what you read in the flight of the bee, or anything else.

You see… I don’t know… something that you suddenly call, like that: a flight of bird that flies low,
you call that a flight, it is a group in reality, a group at a certain level you read in it that it is going to make a storm.
But do they read? Does the bee read that it serves the reproduction of phanerogamic plants?
Does the bird read the augury of fortune, as was said formerly, that is to say of the storm?
The whole question is there. It is not excluded after all that the swallow does not read the storm, but it is not sure either.

What there is in analytic discourse is that the subject, the subject of the unconscious, you suppose him to know how to read.
And that is nothing other, your story of the unconscious.
It is that not only you suppose him to know how to read, but you suppose him able to learn to read.
Only what you teach him to read then has absolutely nothing to do, in no case, with what you can write of it.