Freudian Field, Year Zero by Jacques-Alain Miller

Paris, 11^th
June 2017

Will psychoanalysis end
up surrendering its arms in the face of the mounting impasses of our civilization,
as Lacan exclaimed one day, out of disappointment or anger, when the notables
of his school, the Freudian School of Paris, refused to endorse his
"Proposition of the 9^th of October 1967, on the Psychoanalyst
of the School"? It is by no means a foregone conclusion.

The Schools of the
Freudian Field have long been what Lacan wanted them to be, refuges against civilization’s
discontents. Since the executive of the École de la Cause freudienne, led by
its president, Christiane Alberti, and that of Uforca, have, at my request,
enthusiastically adopted my proposal to take a public position 1) against
Marine Le Pen and 2) for democracy and the rule of law, and now that the vast
majority of members have embarked on a national campaign of republican and
Anti-Le Pen Forums, it has become clearer how the ECF, flanked by its
satellites, Uforca, the ACF and the CPCT, can become what, at the moment of
creating his School, Lacan called, with an energy which, in my eyes testified
to the best of the warrior spirit of the French nation, "a base of
operations" with the aim both of reconquering the Freudian Field, by
winning it back from the IPA, and of overcoming those impasses of civilization that
pose a threat to the very existence of psychoanalysis.

The attention paid to the
political struggle in France, since the 1^st of March this year, has
not made me lose sight of the fact that today, through the continuous effort of
several generations of analysts, there is not one School, but seven: the ECF, the
EOL, the EBP, the ELP, the SLP, the NLS and, most recently born, the NEL.

Once Macron was elected
on the 7^th of May – and as soon as a local and subaltern revolt from
the EOL had been countered, a revolt which in fact played the same role as the
revolt of notables of 1967, namely to hamper the forward movement – I thought
that the lessons of the French experience should be resituated at a global
level. Especially since, on the 14^th of May, I created "la movida Zadig", ZERO ABJECTION
DEMOCRATIC INTERNATIONAL GROUP.

As of this Sunday, the
11^th of June, the day after the conversation organized at the EOL by
its executive committee under the enlightened leadership of its president,
Gustavo Stiglitz, I can announce that the entire Freudian Field has now rallied
to Zadig.

The global Lacanian
political network is not to be confused with the WAP,
or its Schools, but is rather an extension of it at the
level of public opinion. As such, it will benefit everywhere from the support
of our institutions and will be part of the Freudian Field in the broader sense
of the term. As for Zadig's way of operating and the causes it will defend
nationally and transnationally, everything has to be invented. Our initiative
concerning the Venezuelan crisis and the Pasolini petition are just a start.
Within the framework set by my first decisions, the field is open to
initiatives!

It is therefore:
"Freudian field, year zero". Everything begins again, without being
destroyed, to be carried to a higher level. Through a retroactive effect, I now
understand why I stopped giving my Cours
in 2011.

It was the consequence
of the decline in my transference to the Freudian Field, a result of the
feeling of failure that had gripped me since it dawned on me that all the
members of the ECF had joined the project of Freda, who proposed replacing the
School model put forward by Lacan with that of an association of psychotherapists
engaged in chasing subsidies and obeying the impulses of an association, the
association Aurore, known for mixing its money with the instructions of the
Ministry of Health. This plan of liquidation was about to be realized when I alone
stood in its way.

What’s more, the
Freudian Field seemed to have reached its nec
plus ultra in 2011. I saw myself as a prisoner of the world I had created,
this Freudian Field governed by the algorithms I had provided, and functioning
without me, as I had desired. All I had to do was to mill my Cours until my death. The curse of
Sartre’s "pratico-inert” was
upon me. Bringing my sempiternal Cours
to an end appears to me today as a desperate effort to escape petrification and
reconnect with the real of life.

The page has been turned.
Jam 2 will resume Jam 1’s course in a new form. My idea is now to mesh my work with
that of various collectives of the Freudian Field who are willing.

It is already established
that this is what is going to happen in Italy in the form of this
"Lacanian Political Seminar", which I will co-chair in Turin with
Rosa-Elena Manzetti on July 8th, then in Rome, Bologna and Milan, with Di
Ciaccia, the couple Francesconi and Mazzotti, and
Focchi. In Paris, it will be the "The Quilting Point Seminar" which I
have decided to start on the 24^th of June, which will be filmed so
it can be put online. In Buenos Aires it will be the "Seminar Clipol"
(clinic and politics) which I propose for the approval of the Argentine
colleagues, and which will be held next December during a trip I will make to
Buenos Aires to receive an honorary doctorate, on the initiative of Osvaldo
Delgado, whom I thank. Elsewhere in the Freudian Field, everything is open.

This
coming week I will provide an update on the Zadig networks created or in
formation around the world, the network known as "Channel of the One",
the
programme for the Paris and Turin Seminars, etc.

I was there with my friend
Mireille Cardot – whose name caused Lacan to raise an eyebrow as I introduced
him – when, Lacan read his "Adjoining Note to ‘The Foundation Act’”, in
June 1964, before an audience of less than a hundred people gathered in Sylvia’s
drawing room at 3, rue de Lille. After having spoken of the "admission committee, to be called
Cardo",¹ he said
this, which, in my view is still a major wager: "The École’s success will
be measured by the appearance of works that are acceptable in their place.”²

This is what is at stake in this multipurpose Seminar: to inscribe
forever the teaching of Lacan in the universal discourse.

Translated by Philip Dravers

Translator's Notes

1.   
Jacques Lacan, “The Founding Act”, Television, trans. Hollier et al, London & New York, Norton,
1990, p. 101

2.   
Ibid., p. 102