From an Other to the other, Book XVI
Jacques Lacan
Translated by Bruce Fink
Presentation by J.-A. Miller
Sollers once wrote that, to him, Claudel was first and
foremost the man who wrote, “Paradise is around us at this very moment, all its
forests attentive like a great orchestra that invisibly adores and implores.
The whole invention of the Universe with its notes falling vertiginously one by
one into the abyss where the wonders of our dimensions are written.”
Well, Lacan is, to me, the one who says in this Seminar, “We are all
familiar with hell, it is everyday life.”
Is that the same thing? No, I don't think so. Here there is no adoration,
no invisible orchestra, no vertigo or wonders. Let us begin by the end: Lacan
“evacuated” from the rue d’Ulm along with his audience, not without resistance
or an uproar. The episode was in all the papers. What had he done to deserve
such a fate? He had spoken not only to psychoanalysts, but also to young people
who were still fired up by the events of May 1968, who nevertheless accepted
him as a master of discourse at the same time as they dreamt of subverting the
university system. What did he tell them? That “Revolution” means returning to
the same place. That knowledge now imposes its law on power and has become
uncontrollable. That thought is censorship itself. He spoke to them about Marx,
but also about Pascal's wager—which became in his hands a new version of the
master/slave dialectic—not to mention the foundations of set theory. He moved
on to a discussion of perversion, and models of hysteria and obsession. All of
that is connected, scintillates, and captivates.
Between the lines, the dialogue between Lacan and himself continues
regarding the subject of jouissance and the relationship between jouissance and
speech and language.
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