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MilnerRécanati

Lacan

I hardly speak to you of what appears when it is a matter of something of me,
all the more so since, in general, I have to wait long enough for it that, for me, interest distances itself from it.
Nevertheless, it would not be a bad thing for the next time, which will be May 8…
not before, since the 17th of this month will be in the middle of the Easter holidays,
so I am warning you that the next appointment is May 8
…it would not be a bad thing if you had read something that I have entitled L’étourdit, writing it d.i.t., [wordplay: foregrounds dit (said) versus dire (to say), and plays on the title’s sound/segments]
and which starts from the distance there is from the saying to the said.

That there is being only in the said is a question that we will leave pending.
It is certain that there is of the said only being, but that does not impose the converse.
By contrast, what is my saying is that there is of the unconscious only the said; that, that is a saying.

How to say? That is the question!
One cannot say just any way, and that is the problem of whoever inhabits language, namely all of us.

That is precisely why today, and concerning this gap that I once wanted to express by distinguishing, from linguistics, what I am doing here, that is to say from ‘linguistery’ [neologism: a Lacanian term for a practice distinct from linguistics proper],
namely what is grounded in what I have just first stated,
and which is assured: that we can treat the unconscious only starting from the said, and from the analysand’s said.

It is precisely in this reference that I asked someone…
who, to my great gratitude, was willing to agree to it –
…that is to say a linguist, to come to say today before you, and I am sure you will draw profit from it,
what it is currently about the position of the linguist.

I do not even want to point out what cannot fail, in such a statement, to interest you:
that someone wrote to me…
about an article like that which had appeared somewhere
…that someone wrote to me that there is, in the position of the linguist, something that is shifting.

That is what I wished that today someone inform you about,
and no one is more qualified for it than the one I present to you,
namely Jean-Claude Milner, a linguist.

Jean-Claude Milner

There has always been grammar; there was some before the moderns and there will no doubt be some after us.
For linguistics it is something else, if one understands by linguistics what one must understand:
something fairly precise, that is to say a field, a discourse that considers language as an object of science.

That language—no matter the name—that language be an object of science is a proposition that is not at all trivial,
and that is even, from a certain point of view, highly improbable. Nevertheless a discipline was constituted around this hypothesis and one generally knows at what price, by what routes, this discipline was constituted.

Historically and from a systematic point of view, the starting point is Saussure’s course in linguistics,
which thus articulates linguistics as a science around a certain number of linked propositions.
From these propositions, I will retain three to, let us say, summarize the first approach to linguistics taken as a science.

The 1st of these propositions is that language, insofar as it is an object of linguistics,
has as properties only those that are deduced analytically from its nature as a sign.

This proposition can be analyzed into two sub-propositions:
– the first is that language has no specific properties in relation to other systems of signs.
– the second is that the notion of sign is essential to linguistics.
In other words one can define linguistics as the general type of any theory of signifying systems.

The 2nd major proposition, which is linked to the 1st, is that the properties of any system of signs
can be described by fairly simple operations,
these operations themselves being justified by the very nature of the sign,
essentially its nature of being two-faced and of being arbitrary.

For example, among these operations, one that is well known: commutation.
These operations have nothing specific to language; they could be applied, and have been applied, to other systems.

The 3rd proposition is that the set of the properties of the language, thus the object of linguistics, what one can call—this set—what one can call the structure, is in some way of the same fabric as the observable data. This structure has nothing that is hidden, nothing that is secret; it offers itself to observation
and the linguist’s operations do no more than elucidate, make explicit what is co-present with the data themselves.

These three propositions gave birth to a well-known type of linguistics, structural linguistics.
It is an important fact that these three propositions were—all three—refuted.
In other words, in the very movement of linguistics considered as a science,
another hypothesis, another theory of the field was proposed,
which is also articulated by three propositions, which take the opposite of those that I have just stated.

I will begin with the last: to analyze…
No! 1st proposition of this new theory which corresponds
to the opposite of the 3rd that I stated previously
…to analyze a language one needs to bring in abstract relations
that are not necessarily represented in the data themselves.

In other words, there is not a single structure that would be co-present with the data, but there are at least two structures:
– one that is observable, which is called ‘surface structure’,
– and the other, or several others, that are not observable, whose structure is said to be ‘deep’.

2nd articulated proposition, which thus takes the opposite of the 2nd structuralist proposition,
these two structures, surface structure and deep structure, are linked to each other by complex operations,
in any case too complex to be drawn from the very nature of the sign,
for example what are generally called ‘transformations’.

And the 1st structuralist proposition finds its opposite in the 3rd transformational, transformationist proposition: these transformations are specific to language. In other words, no other known system presents operations of the type of transformations; in other words again, there are properties specific to language.

A corollary that I do not make explicit, whose reasons I do not make explicit,
is that the notion of sign as such is in no way necessary to linguistics.
One can perfectly well develop linguistics as a science without making use
of the notion of the Saussurean sign, of the notion of the signifier as opposed to the signified,
which—let us say in passing—makes somewhat comical a certain recent assertion
according to which it is on the side of linguistics that one would have to turn to understand the notion of signifier.

This change, within linguistics, has all the outward appearances of what was called a recasting,
that is to say the passage from a certain configuration of the field of a science to another configuration of this field,
this second configuration integrating the first and presenting it as a particular case of its own analysis.

And thus, structuralist linguistics is refuted by transformational linguistics,
but at the same time it is integrated there since structural linguistics appears as a particular case,
more restrictive, of transformational linguistics.

Far then from this passage from one linguistics to another being describable as a difficulty or as a crisis,
the fact that this type of recasting is possible seems rather a proof that linguistics is indeed integrated into the field of the sciences.
That is, broadly, the most common presentation one can give of the system of linguistics.

What I will try to show is that in reality the situation is entirely different,
there is not… in the ‘difficulties’, there are first of all difficulties today in the field of linguistics,
and these difficulties do not present themselves as the warning signs of a recasting,
that is to say as the warning signs of a new figure of linguistics that would integrate the previous one,
but as the signs of a fundamental difficulty, what is commonly called a crisis,
and I will try to show lastly the core, the principle of this crisis.

I will therefore consider successively a few problems of blurring, of antinomy
that are covered over by so-called transformational linguistics.
The first will be the antinomy, the…—how to say?—the possibility of interpreting in two different ways
the opposition of surface structure to deep structure.

To present the problem simply, one can consider that the ‘given to be explained’…
for a transformational grammar
…is—let us put it—an ensemble of sentences that one will consider as belonging to a well-formed set.

For example, I take a completely abstract example: a positive, assertive, active sentence will be related and will be classified
– in the same set as the negative version of that same sentence,
– in the same set as the interrogative version of that same sentence,
– and in the same set as the passive version of that same sentence.

So one has a set; one can ask questions about how the set will be constructed, but anyway one has the two. Well then, this set, one can admit that if it is well formed, it is justified by a common property
to all the elements of the set, a very simple operation.
Question: is this common property a reality or a flatusvocis?
In other words, the interpretation of this proposition: ‘there is a common property to the sets, to the sentences of the set’ can have a ‘realist’ version or a ‘nominalist’ version.

If one adopts the realist interpretation, that comes down to saying that one has a reality, that this common property is a reality,
this reality is of a linguistic type, linguistic, in other words that the common property to all the sentences of the set
will be represented in the form of a linguistic structure, this structure being obviously qualified to be
the deep structure of the sentences belonging to the set.

Starting from this structure, it will suffice to construct a certain number of rules, transformations
which will make it possible to obtain, starting from the common structure, by a series of different operations,
this or that differentiated element of the initial set.

Other interpretation: nominalist interpretation.
In that case, there is no reality that represents the property as such,
there is as reality only the class that one was able to construct, the class of sentences that one was able to construct,
and from this point of view, the transformational system no longer has a starting structure on which it will have to operate modifications.

2nd possible divergence concerning the transformations themselves, let us say the set of the so-called transformational grammar: given a transformation, or given any grammatical assertion of the grammatical theory,
one will be able to consider it either ‘in extension’ or ‘in intension’.

For example, in extension: a transformation consists of a pair of sentences that one asserts to be linked,
for example the active sentence and the passive sentence,
and the transformation will be nothing other than the couple that one was able to construct: active sentence – passive sentence.

If one adopts the intensional point of view:
well then the transformation is not reduced to the pair of sentences
but becomes a property of this pair that is not confused with the pair itself.

This opposition, this divergence can entail a certain number of quite noticeable differences in the theory. Let us take for example a structure such as exists in many languages
where the presence of an element can be predicted from the presence of another.

For example, in French, there is no article that is not followed…
near or far, anyway immediately or not
…by a substantive.

In other words, when one says of a structure that it contains an article,
one says the same thing as when one says that this structure contains an article followed by a substantive, quite obviously. In other words again, the class of sequences containing an article
is identical to the class of sequences containing an article plus a substantive.

In an extensional approach, any expression having the same extension as another expression
can be freely substituted for that other expression. In the particular case this will mean that an expression
of the type ‘structure containing an article’ will be freely substitutable for ‘structure containing an article plus a substantive’.

But in the intensional approach, it is not necessarily true that two expressions having the same extension
are substitutable. For example, to take an example from Quine, between the property:
– ‘being a marine animal living in 1940’,
– and the property: ‘being a cetacean living in 1940’.
The extension may indeed be the same—let us suppose…—but it is not obvious for all that
that the two properties are the same and are substitutable for one another while preserving the synonymy of the statements.

Consequently in the case that concerns us, there can very well be a difference between:
– the property ‘being analyzable into an article’,
– and the property ‘being analyzable into article plus noun’.
And one can perfectly imagine rules that will be correctly presented according to one of these propositions
and would not be according to the other of these propositions.

Jacques Lacan—Mammal…

Jean-Claude Milner

Yes, that’s it, Mammal, ah yes!
To be complete, one would have to add the pinnipeds to the cetaceans:
there are two, two sub-groups among marine mammal animals.

In other words, here again one has a bifidity, a cleavage between 2 possible interpretations of the notion of transformation.
In general, linguistic theories combine
– the intensional point of view on transformations,
– and the realist point of view concerning deep structure.
And those that adopt the extensional point of view concerning transformations,
adopt the nominalist point of view on deep structure.
I will not linger on this fact; it is surely not due to chance; I will simply take the situation as it is. One therefore has two possibilities for transformational linguistic theory:
– on the one hand being intensional realist,
– and on the other hand being extensional nominalist.

If one adopts the extensional realist point of view… the extensional nominalist point of view, sorry,
deep structure becomes, being simply a class; the rules of the grammar being purely extensional
are themselves purely classes; in other words the demonstrations of this theory
will consist simply in finding procedures for constructing well-formed classes.
And one will have demonstrated a thesis in this grammar if one has found the effective constructive procedure,
making it possible to show that the targeted class is well formed, is exhaustive, etc.

Conversely in the other hypothesis, the thus intensional nominalist version,
deep structure is a real structure and it is moreover a hidden structure.
To reconstitute it, one is obliged to rely on indices given by observation.

On the other hand, transformations are formulated in terms of properties, essentially starting from the following statement,
the following principle: ‘Two sentences are in a transformation relation if they have the same properties’.
It will therefore take a whole series of reasonings showing:
– that such and such a property is indeed represented on two sentences,
– that this property is the same in the two cases,
– that on the other hand the fact that this property is the same is a sufficient argument to combine the two sentences by a transformation, etc.

In other words, the form of the demonstration will be, not of the order of the construction of classes, but of the order of argumentation from indices or from reasons. The type of certainty
– in one case will therefore be of the order of exhaustive enumerations,
– in the other case it will be of the order of combined reasons, of the relative force of the indices, etc.

Conclusion: just as there is not, then, a univocal interpretation of the fundamental notions of linguistics,
likewise there is no unique type of demonstration and of certainty.

Can one nevertheless maintain that on the notion of ‘property of language’…
we have seen that it was singular in transformational theory
…can one say that there is agreement?

The problem is important insofar as, if one admits that language has specific properties,
the object of linguistics will obviously be to discover these specific properties, and there cannot be others.
If then it appears that on the notion of property of language there is ambivalence, ambiguity,
one will be led to conclude that there is no univocal notion of the object of linguistics.

Well in fact, one can indeed show that there is ambivalence in the very notion of property.
Let us take the example of transformations.
It is a specificity—let us admit it—of linguistic systems to be articulable in terms of transformations.
Well then there exists an interpretation according to which one will say:

‘What guarantees to me that it is a property is precisely that one can imagine a priori
a whole series of formal systems not provided with transformations’

In other words, a priori nothing prevents me from representing a system by transformations,
but that in fact, ‘well it is like that’ there are transformations in languages.
The notion of property is then linked to the ‘it is like that’: to the non-deducible a priori and to the observable a posteriori.

This is in particular Chomsky’s position, and for those who practice reasonings, in short the argumentations,
the discussions of Chomskyan-type grammar, they will recognize very frequently arguments of the kind:

‘There is no reason a priori for such and such a structure to be present in languages, yet it is present there, therefore I have a property, and having a property recognizable by this criterion that it is non-deducible a priori, I have reached the ultimate thesis of my theory,
and I have reached my object’.

But one can imagine a completely different interpretation that will say:

‘Well then there is no reason not to apply the principle of reason to the phenomenon one has discovered,
for example the existence of transformations’

and one will seek to say:

‘Well then if there are transformations in languages, well then that is due to their essence, whatever this essence may be,
for example that of being instruments of communication, or for example that of representing objective situations
or any essence one could imagine on that side’.

The detail does not matter; what matters is that in an interpretation of this kind, the criterion of a property
is not that it be non-deducible a priori, but that it be on the contrary deducible from a fundamental principle
which would articulate, would it not, which would formulate the very essence of the language taken as such.

You see that in that case one has two quite different linguistic theories and that the object of linguistics
will not be formulated at all in the same way, since:
– in one case the object of linguistics will be to record, to seek to discover the whole set of in some way inexplicable a priori properties of languages, which one can simply record as data,
– in the other case the object of linguistics will be to try to reduce the set of properties that one may have discovered objectively to an essence of language whatever its definition may be.

Well then, it seems to me, when in a theory one has divergence on the object, when one has divergence on the nature
of demonstrations, on the nature of certainty, there is manifestly something that is at stake.
Well then if one observes what happens, one realizes that, to choose between the various interpretations,
at each moment of the ambivalence, of the successive ambivalences, the linguist, the linguists have no other principle,
in any case that one can recognize, than their own vision of the world.

They will choose for example on the last point the hypothesis of the inexplicable a priori
or on the contrary of the explicable a priori, solely as a function of their conception of the principle of reason.
And so on, concerning the choice between nominalism or realism,
many discussions of this order come down simply to a selection in terms of ‘vision of the world’:

– what do I prefer, nominalism or realism?
– Or, what do I prefer: extension or intension?

This can be masked by a certain number of assertions about the nature of science,
which must be either measurable or not measurable, etc. It does not matter! The core is a question of vision of the world.

It seems to me that one can advance without improbability the thesis that when in a field belonging to science,
the selection between competing theories is made in terms of vision of the world, one can call that a crisis.
Well then this crisis one could simply note; it seems to me that the core, the fundamental principle
can nevertheless be articulated more precisely. Something is at stake at this moment,
in the system of linguistic theory, which calls into question its very nature as science.

Between the passage, let us say in the passage from Saussurism to transformationalism, which we have seen rests
on inversions of propositions, there was something, which I have not described, that remained intangible,
it is what I could call the model of the syntactic subject. What is this model?
Well then Saussure describes it in a very simple way: it is a two-term relation: between the speaker and the interlocutor.

One knows, everyone knows Saussure’s diagram: one has a starting point which is A, an arrival point which is B. What is proper to this model is that an interlocutor functions as such in the system
only if he proves that he has the capacity to be in turn a speaker at another moment of the system.

In other words one has two terms that are symmetrical and different, roughly like the right hand and the left hand,
but which are—like the right hand and the left hand—from a certain point of view, homogeneous.
And one can speak of the interlocutor or of the linguistic speaker in the singular,
having as a distinctive property to re-duplicate itself in reality, the reality of bodies,
just as one can speak of the hand in the singular,
whose property of re-duplicating itself in the human body everyone knows.

Well then this passage, in short this structure, this model is absolutely unchanged in Chomskyism,
the reference that Chomsky moreover makes to Saussure on this point is explicit, and one can show in a fairly simple way that outside such a model, the integration of language into science, into the field of science, is absolutely impossible.

The question that arises is not so much to know what one makes fall when one proposes such a model, because after all, practically one can show, regarding all scientific discourses, that they pay a certain price,
which is the price of their scientificity. That is not the problem.

The problem is to know whether, in the very movement of its positive exploration of the field of linguistic phenomena, therefore by relying on what makes this positive exploration possible, therefore this model,
linguistics is not led to be confronted with data that are properly inexplicable,
impossible to elucidate if it continues to rely on this model.

In other words, the point is to know whether, in the very movement of its scientific exploration,
linguistics does not encounter something that would dissolve what had made this scientific exploration possible.
Well then, without going into details, it seems that this is indeed the situation.

In other words, one can show, one could show that linguistics…
and it is at this moment that this is happening
…is placed face to face…
by simply the movement of its syntactic exploration, thus the most positive possible
…is placed face to face with unavoidable phenomena and whose pure syntax…
the syntax grounded on formalization, if I dare say, on the—let us say—the formalisable
…whose pure syntax cannot account for them if it continues to posit two subjects absolutely symmetrical, absolutely homogeneous with one another, one of whom will be the speaker and the other the addressee.

I refer, for an illustration of this kind of problem, to Ducrot’s recent book ‘Dire et ne pas dire’,
which shows evidently that there is a whole series of phenomena perfectly identifiable in positive terms…
which are identifiable in terms of grammatical structure,
of words, of things entirely recordable by data
…that all these phenomena cannot be understood if one does not posit at least two subjects,
heterogeneous with one another, one of whom exercises over the other what Ducrot calls a relation of power, an exercise of power.

In other words, the point of the crisis is that, to continue the exploration that it is necessitated to do…
by its very definition, that is to say as integration of language into the field of the sciences
…linguistics must now… is in the process of paying a price that it is impossible for it to pay,
because if it pays it, it is in fact its deconstruction as a science that begins.

What to say in conclusion, well, something like this:
it is that the day is approaching when linguistics…
and it is already present in Ducrot
…begins, will begin to perceive itself as contemporary with psychoanalysis,
but that it is not obvious that, when that day comes, linguistics will still be there to see it.

[Applause]

Jacques Lacan

– Well, then I would be very happy to concentrate today the interventions that I might wish.
I think that François Récanati will be willing…
since, in sum, the speaker who precedes him
has remained within very tight time limits, to his intention
…I would be happy to know what he can bring today as a contribution.

François Récanati

I will not go back over what has just been said. I think that some time for meditation is a bit necessary.
But it seems obvious to me that what was presented here as a conception of the world…
governing in a certain way the current destiny, that is to say not the evolution of what presents itself as science, as linguistics, these choices that must be made between nominalism and realism on the one hand, and on the other hand two principles of reason, or rather one principle that is the a priori non-deducibility and the other the old principle of reason
…this precisely belongs in a certain way to what one can call linguistery,
but at a level, as it were, where it is these choices that are constituted…
insofar as they are articulated
…these choices are constituted as objects.

And in a certain way, what I am going to say there, which was not planned to be articulated with what has just been said,
nevertheless will have a certain relation with the possibility of these choices,
with the functioning of something like precisely a priori non-deducibility functioning as a principle of reason.

This perhaps will then appear all by itself; I will not particularly try to show it.
In general, I indicate that it will have to do with everything that Lacan has developed recently about the ‘not all’
and feminine jouissance, and that more particularly it is a question that I would like to pose,
and in order to pose it, I will try to illustrate it, which is not without risk insofar as precisely
it is a matter of the possible mode of figuration of a relation, and that this illustration that I will try
perhaps a bit metaphorically to give, in a certain way,
perhaps encroaches a bit on the very fact of this figuration that I am awaiting.

I will first draw a diagram:

Yes, I have another one but it will come a little later.

So the question that I posed to Dr Lacan and that here I will illustrate is precisely this one:
how to articulate the relation between
– the father function on the one hand, the father function as supporting the universality of the phallic function in man,
– and on the other hand the supplementary feminine jouissance that is pinned from this L→S(A) constituting what one could call the in-universality or rather the in-exhaustivity…
and it is not exactly the same sense
…of woman with regard to Φ as well as her position in man’s desire under the species of the object(a)?

How to figure these two terms whose biglerie—Lacan said—is that they are conjoined both in the place of the Other?

How can one figure them?

And on the other hand, can one say that indeed…
it is roughly the same thing as the first question
…that indeed they be two, if it is so, that if Régine had a God, perhaps it was not the same…
certainly not the same
…as Kierkegaard’s.

But on the other hand, Lacan said, it is not sure either that one can say that they were two.
I will give some signposts there, which will not be exactly signposts for approaching this question that I pose, but more precisely for the approach that I would like to avoid.

Insofar as, as soon as it is a question of the not all, I believe that there are two ways of envisaging it:

– and precisely one of these ways is completely silent insofar as as soon as one gains access to it, as it were, there is a silence, it is no longer a question of it,

– and another of these ways evacuates the problem as it were, and it is ‘the way that evacuates’ that I will first, by certain signposts, recall to show that it leaves entirely intact the question of feminine jouissance.

You remember that this there exists x who says no, such that not phi of x (: §),
is what allows the universal: for every x phi of x (; !), to hold.

It is the limit, it is the bordering function, it is the enveloping by the One,
which allows a set to posit itself in relation to castration.

According to an inverted symmetry…
and which is moreover not a symmetry
…it is because nothing in the woman comes to say no, comes to deny the function Φ,
that nothing precisely decisive can in her be instituted.

Insofar as there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §), the woman being fully within the function Φ,
she signals herself only by what, as supplementary, goes beyond this function.

Nothing objects to the function Φ, that is to say there does not exist an x who says no to phi of x (/ §)
implies that the woman situates herself in relation to something other than the limit of the masculine universal
which is the father function: there exists x such that not phi of x (: §).

This other thing is pinned from her relation to the Other as barred, A.
With regard to the function Φ, the woman can inscribe herself only as not all.

But this there exists x such that not phi of x (: §) is in the position of a radical alterity with respect to Φ [ex-sistence],
in a disconnected position; certainly it is a necessary existence,
but it also posits itself just as necessarily outside the field covered by Φ.

In the father function, the function Φ…
insofar as it is on it that the negation bears
…is emptied of being able any longer to be indexed by any logical truth.

On the opposite, in there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §), the function is more than filled, it overflows,
and the play of true and false, in the same way, is rendered impossible.

In the two cases that I would like to point out as being the two cases of existence,
existence is in an eccentric position with respect to what in Φ has regulatory value,
that is to say the truth function that can be invested there.

What is at stake, I said, between

– there exists x such that not phi of x (: §)
– and on the other hand there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §)

is existence, and existence posits itself in this double disconnection with respect to Φ.

Existence certainly emerges from the contradiction between the two:
– between the father function,
– and what one could perhaps call the virgin function, that is to say there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §).

Both signal themselves by their in-essentiality with regard to Φ,
the one cannot inscribe itself in Φ, the other cannot not inscribe itself there:
– on one side the necessary: there exists x such that not phi of x (: §),
– on the other I say there the impossible, to go quickly; in fact there would be a variant to add to it: there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §).

The impossible is rather what happens between the two, and there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §)
could be called impotence if this term had not already served other ends. The disjunction between the two is radical.
Both are not disconnected from one another, but both are disconnected with respect to Φ,
and the two disconnections themselves are in discordance. In no way are they commensurable.

One can even say more: as long as Lfemme…
Lfemme always this barred La
…remains defined by this there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §) she situates herself between 0 and 1,
between center and absence, and is not denumerable.

She can in no way latch onto the One of there exists x such that not phi of x (: §),
not even in the already twisted way in which the for every x phi of x (; !) latches onto it.
If I called there exists x such that not phi of x (: §) the One, why not call it the zero,
thus not even in the already twisted way in which the zero latches onto it, that is to say by what I called there the denial.

It is here that one must situate—looking at the diagram beside it—the truth that there is no sexual relation,
but what is why I advanced this was in order to mark that existence posits itself, with respect to Φ, only in this alterity.
And the fact that the one and the other, existence and alterity, are, to that point, dissociable,
implies the wanderings that will follow, notably the destiny of man’s desire.

If one now examines the vertical relations between the formulas, and by taking up these marks that I called 0 and One,
the One of there exists x such that not phi of x (: §) allows, by its necessity,
for every x phi of x (; !) to constitute itself as possible, let us say under the title of zero.

It is absolutely not the same on the other side despite the apparent symmetry,
because on the other side it is from there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §) that for not-all x phi of x (. !) originates. Now here, it is rather the there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §) that plays the role of the indeterminate,
that is to say of the zero before its constitution by the One, that is to say of a sort of non-zero, of not quite zero.

And from that point of view, it is the for not-all x phi of x (. !) that would play—conditionally—the role of the One,
that is to say the possibility, the opening of something like a supplementarity, of an additional One possible.
But of course, this pseudo additional One immediately collapses into the indeterminacy of the there does not exist an x such that
not phi of x (/ §) that no existence, that no support comes to sustain, that no saying-no comes to sustain.

As long as no x will come to deny phi of x for L femme, the additional One that the ‘not all’ feels itself to bear remains phantomatic. No production is possible starting from the there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §),
but only a circulation of the initial indeterminate.

Between the 2 terms there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §) and for not-all x phi of x (. !), there is the undecidable. The undecidable in question crystallizes in the following way: the woman does not approach the One, she is not the One,
which does not imply that she is the Other.

In a word, she is in an undecidable relation to the barred Other; she is neither the One nor the Other, with two capitals.
The not all is supported by the not One.

Since there does not exist an x such that not phi of x (/ §) that does not mean anything other than not One.
And the all man, the ; !…
who, for his part, is supported precisely by the One, by the existence of this One, by the there exists x such that not phi of x (: §)
…the all man makes use of L femme as not all in order to have precisely relation to the One, or rather relation to the Other, according to a quite particular procedure.

Since the One is banished from his all in the time that constitutes it, he considers the two as antinomical
by repeating a negation, whereas this negation bears on what I will call a complex,
that is to say the complex of existence and alterity, and it always sees itself displaced with respect to the aim of the ;.

He believes, through the not all of L femme, to find again the Other,
whereas in no way can one identify the two negations of the One.

For on one side it is the necessary existence of the One that founds, that bounds the space of the ;,
while on the other it is the inexistence, it is the negation of the existence of the One
that supports the undecidable of the relation of L femme to the barred Other.

It is here that the man’s imaginary relation to the woman is situated.
Man as ; is in constituting prey to the alterity of the existence of the One.
We have seen that the two are indissociable.

By repeating the constitutive detachment of the there exists x such that not phi of x (: §), but in reverse,
there is created as it were the imaginary model of an Other of the Other, and in this as it were intermediate time,
the woman is for the man the signifier of the Other insofar as she is not all in the function Φ.

That is to say that a relation is on the point of being established between this all and this not all,
but between all and not all, between the all man and the not all of L femme, there is an absence, there is a breach
which is namely the absence of any existence that supports this relation.

Man apprehends L femme only in the defile of the objects(a), at the end of which only the Other is supposed to be found.
That is to say that it is after the exhaustion of the relation to L femme, that is to say after the impossible resorption of the objects(a), that man is supposed to gain access to the Other, and consequently L femme becomes the signifier of the barred Other as barred,
of the barred Other insofar as barred, that is to say of this infinite cursus.

Jacques Lacan—You indicated to us, of that…?

François Récanati – …infinite cursus.

The fantasy of Don Juan…
I cite it only for what is to come
…illustrates very well this infinite quest and its hypothetical term as well, namely precisely the return of a statue,
of what should be only statue, to life, and the immediate punishment for the author of the awakening.

I had posed a kind of subsidiary question to Dr Lacan about the relation between

– Don Juan’s jouissance presented like this,

– and on the other hand the constituting function of what he called the jouissance of the idiot, that is to say masturbation.

In this development that I have just summarized, certainly it is a question of the not all,
but it is more precisely of the function of this not all in the masculine imaginary, if one can express oneself thus,
that it was a matter of, whereas my initial question, which I maintain, bore on the relation between supplementary feminine jouissance and the father function from the point of view of Lfemme, which, in a certain way, above all poses the other question:
is there a point of view of L femme?

Which poses yet another:
can one speak of perspectives in psychoanalysis,
are there points of view, notably what of the imaginary in the woman,
since her relation to the big Other appears privileged only from the man’s point of view
who considers her as the representative, if he does not confuse the two entirely?

Perhaps, of course, this question is the one that has no answer, which—if it were decidable—
would certainly be fruitful in the sense that one could at least detect the answers that are false.

Woman as not all, we have seen it, is the signifier of the complex:
‘existence’–‘One’–‘Other’ (barred Other of course) for man.

The triad of man’s desire can thus be written with the semiotic triangle, and it is my 3rd diagram.

If I took that diagram, it is because you remember, I hope, what it supports,
so I will not have to go back over it and I will be able to content myself with a certain number of allusions,
not that I transport the terms of the problem into the semiotic configuration
to see there, as it were, what remains posed as problematic at the place of feminine jouissance,
but I nevertheless want to take [the example of] someone, whom one can call a semiotician,
let us say that he is one of the most important modern theorists of the arbitrariness of the sign, I mean Berkeley.

What does he say? That there is language, that is to say signifiers, that have signified effects.

Now from the moment when they have signified effects, which is not at all self-evident for Berkeley, these signifiers…
when Berkeley says signifier, in short when he does not say it but when I say it in his place,
that means: anything at all, thing, etc.
…these signifiers are obliged to deploy—once they have signified effects—
their existence elsewhere than on the scene of the signified.

The material evacuation of the signifiers allows the signifieds to continue their round.
The signifying chain is the effect—still according to Berkeley—of the fortuitous encounter.

The chain of signifieds…
perhaps I did not say… I said signifiers?
…the chain of signifieds is the effect of the fortuitous encounter between
– the chain of signifiers on the one hand,
– and on the other hand—what?—certainly not the chain of signifieds since one sees that it originates from it, but rather what one could call the subjects, that is to say what becomes, from this encounter, subjects, and which until then were only signifiers like the others.

As soon as signifiers encounter subjects, that is to say as soon as there is production of subjects by a shock of signifiers,
these are shifted, the subjects are shifted with respect to the existence that is the material existence of the signifiers.
They cease to participate in the material life of the signifiers in order to enter the domain of the signified,
that is to say in order to be subjected to the signifiers, which, as we have seen, have become eccentric and inaccessible to them.

The loss of the signifiers for the subject bounds the space of what Berkeley calls signification, a signification that becomes universal. From the universal point of view of signification, the evacuation of the signifier in its effects is something absolutely necessary; it is an a priori of the field of signification.
But from the point of view of the necessary itself, that is to say of the signifier,
nothing is more contingent, nothing is more supplementary, than signification itself.

From the point of view of the intrinsic necessity of the signifier, signification is even impossible,
it is the word Berkeley uses, that is to say that it is without any relation to the internal reason of the signifier.
But this impossibility is realized all the same.

Likewise, Berkeley says on the first page of the Treatise on Vision, distance is imperceptible and yet it is perceived.
Distance is imperceptible, that is to say that nothing, in the signifier ‘distance’ ‘noumenes’…
to write as a single word as you do
…‘noumenes’ toward the signification of this distance, that is to say toward the subject’s internal exclusion from this signifier, the signifier distance. Nothing leads us there. Distance is imperceptible, and nevertheless it is perceived.
How to understand this if not, in Berkeley’s way, according to a triadic schema?

From the point of view of signification as given, the directive detachment of the signifier is something necessary; from the point of view of the signifier itself, its expansion into signification is absolutely impossible.
There is there a disjunction to which Lacan has accustomed us, that of the ‘not-without’,
that is to say not the one without the other, but the other without the one.
You remember that the example that was given of this third figure of disjunction was ‘the purse or life’, that is to say there is not the one without the other, but the other without the one. This figure that Berkeley remarkably isolated,
he calls it arbitrariness; it is the arbitrariness of signs which is nothing other, he says, than divine arbitrariness.
More: the arbitrariness of signs is a proof, for Berkeley, of the existence of God,
it is even the fundamental proof of his system.

Something is impossible and yet it is effective.
That means that the conjunction of impossibility and effective reality…
which is the human space,
…is a manifestation of Providence; it is entirely providential that these 2 divergent things nevertheless come together, and that the interpretation of this relation…
interpretation of this relation according to the triadic schema, that is to say two terms posited here
…this infinite interpretation, at its inaccessible term, leads to God.

But also, and for obvious reasons, man cannot in any way bring to its term
this infinite interpretation which would be a transgression of his space, since he himself is originary, as it were, from the movement of convergence of these two terms posited at the start as separate. All he can do is
– to idealize a point of convergence,
– and to form from it what Berkeley calls ‘an idea of God’.

We now find ourselves in the presence of a quaternary system which is the classic quaternary system of the sign that I had already spoken about. The four terms are there
– the material signifier on the one hand,
– the signified on the other hand,
– the idea of God,
– and God.

The signifier—I summarize Berkeley’s positions a bit—the signifier is the material, the point-being of the raw thing.

The signified…

Jacques Lacan—point-being…?

François Récanati—…of the raw thing.

The signified is the distanced appropriation of the idealized material, correlative of the limiting detachment of the loss of the signifier; it is language, language understood in its effects of course, temporality opposed to punctuality.

God is temporal punctuality, condensed temporality; it is eternity, the higher flourishing of contradictions.

As for the idea of God, it is the signifier of eternity, that is to say the renunciation of language by language,
the temporal taking-in-view of eternity. It is the mystical instant of grace, the repetition of renunciation of the signifier, into renunciation of this renunciation itself. It is a denial of temporality that is presented as if it did not exist.

That is to say that the linguistic taking-in-view of eternity wants itself absent from the represented eternity,
while of course being present enough for this, that is to say the represented eternity, to count as pseudo-transgression, as it proves enough that, from this mystical instant, from this higher instant of grace, one enjoys it.
Now the instant of grace is very exactly the representation, from the temporal point of view of language,
of the lost punctuality of the signifier.

Jacques Lacan—Of the…?

François Récanati – …of the lost punctuality of the signifier.

The universal of language and of signification holds only by this failed translation of the punctual endlessly recommenced. It is here that the paradox of the impossible into the realized is resolved, and it is resolved in a way that marked modern philosophy, which is in part the doing of Berkeley, in part also of Locke.

The punctual or the signifier cannot have a relation to what would be the temporal or the signified.
This relation, insofar as they have nothing in common, is impossible.
But they can have a relation to this relation itself.

Now what is this relation, if not impossibility?
That is to say that the imaginary figures of mysticism are thus only the limiting series of perverse representations
of this impossible that language wraps, that is to say of this hole that passes between
– the universal of signification,
– and the closed corporeality of the signifier.

The barred Other thus appears as the point of convergence of the series of figures of the absence of the existing One,
the series of the drift, as it were, of the father function, the infinite derivation of its effects from an initial rupture.

The mystic’s path toward God is thus the impossible exhaustion of what already…
– between the universal and the excluded existence that founds it,
– between the zero and the One,
…of what already passes there. Now of course…

Jacques Lacan—between the zero and the One…?

François Récanati

…of what already passes between the universal and existence, between the zero and the One. I had forgotten the verb, I reintroduced it!

It is of course there…
since I speak of zero and of One, to make you feel an analogy
…it is of course there that the mystic encounters Lfemme, as signifier precisely of this not all that supports his quest.

But one sees that this new development has finally changed nothing,
and that the question arises again as it was initially,
that is to say what then is this supplementary feminine jouissance, apart from the signifier of this masculine fatum?

One can take things from another angle to see that always the question…

Jacques Lacan—apart from the signifier of this…?

François Récanati

…masculine fatum.

The question from another angle, by considering perhaps something that, we are already… we have approached mysticism, and which will serve us; I mean Kierkegaard and his story with Régine.
Perhaps Régine too had a God, Lacan told us, who would have been other than Kierkegaard’s.
What goes without saying is that it is not Kierkegaard who will tell us, but by taking, as it were, his position, as he developed it at length, one will be able to see the place he reserves for Régine,
and that this place is not as mistaken as it seems.

Jacques Lacan— is not… ?

François Récanati—…as mistaken as it seems.

One must, he says, situate oneself—this is Kierkegaard who says that—situate oneself
– either in the temporal perspective,
– or in the eternal perspective.
This distinction takes its effects in temporality itself, that is to say in social life,
that is to say in relation to what he calls the mass:

– either one is a simple individual and one recognizes oneself as participating in the mass, in the established order, and thanks to this recognition, one avoids being confused with it,

– or one is what Kierkegaard calls by different names: either genius, or particular individual, or extraordinary individual, or one is an extraordinary individual and then one has the duty, with regard to eternity, to say no to the mass, to the established order, for it is only through the intermediary of these geniuses who make its history that the mass remains in relation with eternity.

Geniusness presents itself as the repetition of the act of Christ by which he separated himself from the mass,
or again the repetition of the act of Kierkegaard’s own father who would have, we are left to understand,
by transgressing the law of the noli tangere matrem, provoked God to keep his gaze ceaselessly upon him and thus to particularize him.

The extraordinary individual is in a personal relation with God.
Now Kierkegaard thought he had received from his father this relation that he had to assume through genius.
Now it is precisely there for him the explanation of the breaking of the engagement with Régine.

It is that if he had married, he says, Régine, after the marriage he would have been forced
– either to bring Régine into the secret of this personal relation to God, and that would have been to betray this relation,
– or to do nothing of it, and that would have been to betray the couple’s relation to God.

Before this paradox, Kierkegaard decided to break anyway, and Régine’s genius was to reproach him for it precisely in the name, what was permitted to her: in the name of Christ and of Kierkegaard’s father,
that is to say that there was there a double impasse from which it was impossible for Kierkegaard to get out.

What this whole story shows is that no doubt there are not two Gods, Régine’s and Kierkegaard’s, but at least there are, for Kierkegaard only, two paths to follow, and the opposition being that of two to one,
that is to say that for Kierkegaard there are two paths to follow, not for Régine, that is to say the two paths are:
– either to put oneself, for Kierkegaard, in the position of the excluded, to say no to the all x and to live as if he were already dead, already subject of eternity,
– or to seek God in the mediate relation, by the intermediary of his fellow being.

I hope that reminds you of something.
What is important in this dilemma, but it is above all that Kierkegaard reproaches Régine for not being its prey,
that is to say for not choosing in the alternative that he proposes as being that of ethics and aesthetics.

Now this choice…
one sees it by reading for example Kierkegaard’s biography
…is quite simply to be or not to be in Φ.

One understands of course that this choice did not arise for Régine, who as woman is in it without being in it.

Jacques Lacan— who as woman… ?

François Récanati –…who as woman is in it without being in it. In other words, here again the silence.

When Kierkegaard speaks of Régine’s God, he believes that she has already made the choice of aesthetics against ethics.
He says: for her, God is a kind of rather benevolent, good-natured grandfather.
Whereas in fact this choice does not arise: she is on this side or beyond this choice that arises for Kierkegaard only.

The question that Kierkegaard poses, and that after him I will repeat to Dr Lacan, is:

– is there an alternative for L femme, L barred, and what is it?

Does the choice pass
– between knowledge and semblance,
– between being or not being hysterical?

The disjunction that passes between man and woman, between the all and the not all, risks remaining…
as long as the imaginary relation of the woman to the Other has not been determined,
and the place of man in this relation
…risks remaining in singular analogy with what I named the 3rd figure of disjunction,
the disjunction of ‘the purse or life’, that is to say:

– no relation of man to the Other without the not all of the woman,

– but on the other hand a supplementary feminine jouissance, a privileged relation to the Other, a personal jouissance of God.

[Applause]

Lacan

What time is it? Yes, I have a quarter of an hour left, I have a quarter of an hour left.
I do not know what, what I can do in this quarter of an hour, and I think that it is an ethical notion.

Ethics…
as you can perhaps finally glimpse,
or at least those who heard me speak formerly of ethics
…ethics of course has the greatest relation with our inhabiting of language, and…
as I was saying a moment ago to that dear Jean-Claude Milner, like that in the tone of a confidence,
and then also cleared by a certain author whom I will re-evoke another time
…ethics is of the order of the gesture.

When one inhabits language, there are gestures that one makes…
– gestures of greeting,
– of prostration on occasion,
– of admiration when it is a matter of another vanishing point, the Beautiful
…what I was saying there implies that that, that does not go beyond: one makes a gesture and then one conducts oneself like everyone, that is to say like the rest of the scoundrels.

Nevertheless, finally there is gesture and gesture, and the first gesture that is literally dictated to me by this… this ethical reference,
it must be that of thanking first Jean-Claude Milner for what he has given us from the present point
of the fault that opens in linguistics itself and, perhaps after all, that finally justifies us for…
in a certain number of conducts that we must perhaps—I speak of myself—that we must perhaps
only to a certain distance, where we were from this science in ascent, when it believed it could become it.

It is certain that the reference that we took from it was for us of the utmost urgency because,
it is all the same very difficult not to notice that, as for analytic technique,
if ‘he says nothing’, the subject who is in front of us is a difficulty—the least one can say—quite special.

What Jean-Claude Milner indicated to us in particular concerning the radical difference,
it is that which I tried to make emerge for you last year by writing lalangue as a single word,
it is that what I was advancing under this head, this head of a sticking-together between two words,
was indeed that by which I distinguish myself…
and that, that seems to me to be one of the many lights that Jean-Claude Milner has cast
…in which I distinguish myself from structuralism, and namely insofar as it would integrate language into semiology,
that as the little book that I made you read under the title of the ‘Titre de la lettre’ indicates,
it is indeed a subordination of this sign with regard to the signifier that is at issue, that is at issue in everything that I have advanced.

I cannot expand on that; be sure that I will come back to it.

I must also take the time to pay homage to Récanati who certainly proved to me at last that I was indeed heard.
One cannot see, in everything he advanced as pointed questions…
which are those in a way that… in which it remains for me, this end of the year, to do the clearing, in other words to provide you what I already have now as an answer, is it not,
that his having ended on Kierkegaard and Régine is absolutely exemplary,
and since I made only a brief allusion to it, it is indeed of his own making
…one cannot better, I think, illustrate at the point where I am at last in this clearing that I do before you,
one cannot better illustrate at last this resonance effect which is simply that someone gets it, gets what it is about,
and by the questions he proposed to me certainly, I will be helped in what I have to tell you next,
I will ask him—I tell him already now—for his text so that I can refer to it very precisely
when it happens that I can answer it.

That he referred to Berkeley, on the other hand, he had no indication of it in what I stated before you,
and that is precisely why I am then even more grateful to him if it is possible, because to tell you everything,
in short I even took care quite recently to get myself an edition of it, ‘original’ imagine,
because I am also a bibliophile, but I have that sort of bibliophily that holds me,
that there are only the books that I want to read that I try to obtain in their original.

I reviewed on this occasion last Sunday this…
I no longer know, I do not know very well how that is pronounced in English ‘menute’,
this minute philosopher, this menute philosopher
…Alciphron as one still calls it, to which certainly, in short, it is certain that if Berkeley had not been
my oldest nourishment, probably that many things…
including my nonchalance in making use of linguistic references
…would not have been possible.

I still have 2 minutes left. I would like, I would like all the same to say something concerning the diagram that unfortunately Récanati had to erase a moment ago. It is really the question: to be hysterical or not, is there One or not?

In other terms, this ‘not all’…
in a logic that is classical logic
…seems to imply the existence of the One that makes exception.

So that it would be there that we would see the emergence, the emergence in abyss…
and you will see why I qualify it thus
…the emergence of this existence, this ‘at least one’ existence which, with regard to the function !, inscribes itself in order to say it,
– for if what is proper to the said is being—I was telling you a moment ago,
– what is proper to the saying is to ex-sist with respect to any said whatsoever.

But then the question of knowing, in effect, whether from a not all, from an objection to the universal there can result this which would be stated
of a particularity that contradicts it, you see there that I remain at the level of Aristotelian logic.

Only here it is:
– that one can write not all x(.) inscribes itself in phi of x(!),
– that it can be deduced from it by way of implication that there is an x that contradicts it,
that is true but on one single condition: it is that in the ‘all’ or the ‘not all’ that is at issue, it be a matter of the finite.

As for the finite, there is not only implication but equivalence:
it suffices that there be one that contradicts it, to the universalizing formula,
for us to have to abolish it and transform it into a particular.
This ‘not all’ becomes the equivalent of what in Aristotelian logic is stated of the particular: there is the exception.

Only it is precisely from the fact that we can be dealing not with anything finite,
but on the contrary that we are in the infinite, namely that the ‘not all’, there, is no longer on the side of extension
that we must take it, and it is indeed of that that it is a matter when I say that L femme is not all
and that it is for that that I cannot say La femme; it is precisely because it is what I put in question,
namely a jouissance which with regard to everything that is served [is tightened: (a)] in the function of the ! is of the order of the infinite.

Now as soon as you are dealing with an infinite set, you could not posit that not all includes the ex-sistence
of something that is produced from a negation, from a contradiction.
You can at best posit it as a quite indeterminate existence,
only one knows, by the extension of mathematical logic, the one that precisely is qualified as ‘intuitionist’,
that to posit a :, one must also be able to construct it, that is to say know how to find where this ex-sistence is.

It is on this footing that I base myself to produce this tearing-apart, on the upper line of what I posit of an ex-sistence very, very well qualified by Récanati as ‘eccentric’ to truth: it is between:
– the simple :,
– and the : marked with a bar (/),
that the suspension of this indeterminacy is situated between an existence that comes to affirm itself,
L femme in this can be said ‘that she is not found’, which the case of Régine confirms.

And to finish, my God, I will tell you something that will make, like that, according to my mode, a very little bit of an enigma: if you reread somewhere this thing that I wrote under the name of La Chose freudienne, hear in it this:
that there is only one way of being able to write—without barring the ‘la’ of the article that one was speaking to you about a moment ago—
of being able to write La femme without having to bar the ‘La’, it is at the level where woman is truth.

And that is why one can only half-say it.