"Writing is a trace in which an effect of language can be read"
— Lacan, XX, 121

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NLS Congress presents

Dana Tor
The Jealouissance of Having and the Possibility of (Spoken)Being

In Seminar XX and in other places, Lacan refers to the jealousy captured by St. Augustine when he watches a young boy staring, completely pale, at his younger brother suckling at his mother’s breast. Lacan calls this jealousy "jealouissance" (1). It jumps from the picture, infused with “jealous hatred” – an affect originally termed by Freud (2) designating the child’s feelings towards his imago, his competitor on the Other’s love. This jealouissance produces satisfaction from the subject as having; in the scenario reported by Augustine, the baby brother has the a (3), the mother’s nipple but, he is also himself the a, the object of his mother’s jouissance.

The satisfaction from the imaginary image overcomes the signification as unity (4). As such, it is undefiable by language. The shift that Lacan makes from the word that kills the thing to the body that enjoys by the signifier is from phallic to feminine jouissance. This imaginary jealouissance that springs from the image is born in the Pre-Oedipus, condemned by ravage and repeats in the wanting-to-have a phallus of the castration complex; it is a force that prevails the symbolic, an infinite jealouissance aimed at anyone that tries to pull her away from satisfaction, always wanting more.

Paradoxically, the way to gain consistent satisfaction, achieved by one’s sinthome, is to give up on this satisfaction derived from the mother, agreeing to the shift from having the a to being the a.

The speaking-being is a speaking-being first and foremost because he is spoken about; to be a speaking-being requires a mode of being-in-language as an object of desire in the chain of other signi-desires. When something fails there, we see the effects of language on the body that is not mortified by the signifier, and it is there where the symptom materializes. Joyce took these unmortified pieces of living-(l)et(t)res, inventing himself as a poem, not a poet (5). This way, Joyce could have been read by other people, becoming a signifier for other signifiers.

The jealouissance of the gaze and of having the object must be given up to enable the invention of a sinthome, a way to be looked at by someone else, thus becoming both a spoken and a speaking being.

[1] Lacan, J. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, trans. Bruce Fink, Norton, 1998, p. 100.
[2] Sigmund, F. “A Child is Being Beaten”, The Standard Edition, Volume XVII: An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, trans. James Stratchey et al., Hogarth press, 1955, p. 199.
[3] Lacan, J. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, trans. Bruce Fink, Norton, 1998, p. 100.
[4] See Stevens, A. “The Bodily Effects of Language” argument for the NLS Congress 2021, available online.
[5] Rephrasing Lacan’s statement in “Preface to the English Edition of Seminar XI”, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycoanalysis. trans. Alan Sheridan, Norton, 1998.

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NLS Congrès présente

Dana Tor
Jalouissance d'avoir et la possibilité d'être (parlé)

Dans le Séminaire Livre XX, Encore, Lacan évoque le passage des Confessions de Saint Augustin (Livre I chap.7) (1) qui désigne la jalousie de l’enfant regardant son petit frère au sein de sa mère, comme « jalouissance ». De cette image jaillit la « haine jalouse » – un affect initialement défini par Freud (2) – désignant les sentiments de l’enfant envers son imago, son rival dans l’amour de l’Autre. Cette jalouissance produit une satisfaction à partir du sujet comme « celui qui a » (3) ; dans le cas évoqué par saint Augustin, le petit frère est « celui qui a le a », le sein de la mère, mais il est aussi lui-même le a, l’objet de la jouissance de sa mère.

La satisfaction à partir de l’imaginaire dépasse ici la signification comme unité signifiante (4). En tant que telle, elle n’est pas signifiantisée. Le passage que Lacan fait du mot qui tue la chose, au corps dont jouit le signifiant, est du même ordre que le passage de la jouissance phallique à la jouissance féminine. Cette jalouissance imaginaire qui jaillit de l'image naît dans le pré-Œdipe, elle condamne le sujet au ravage et se répète dans le vouloir-avoir le phallus du complexe de castration. C'est une force qui prévaut sur le symbolique, une jalouissance infinie dirigée vers quiconque tente de l'éloigner de la satisfaction, et qui veut toujours plus.

Paradoxalement, le moyen d’obtenir une satisfaction constante, de l’ordre de celle obtenue par le sinthome, est de renoncer à cette satisfaction dépendante de la mère, en acceptant le passage d’avoir le a à être le a.

L'être qui parle est d'abord, et avant tout, un être parlant parce qu'il est parlé. être un être parlant nécessite un mode d'être au langage comme objet du désir dans la chaîne des autres signifiants du désir. Quand quelque chose échoue là, on voit des effets du langage sur un corps qui n'est pas mortifié par le signifiant, et c'est là que se matérialise le symptôme. Joyce a pris ces part non-mortifiées de « lettres-vives », s'inventant lui-même comme un poème, et non comme un poète (5). De cette façon, Joyce peut être lu par d'autres personnes, devenant un signifiant pour d'autres signifiants.

Il faut abandonner la jalouissance du regard et d'avoir l'objet pour permettre l'invention d'un sinthome, une manière d'être regardé par quelqu'un d'autre, devenant ainsi à la fois un être parlé et un être parlant.

Traduit par Dominique Gentès et Daniel Roy

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"Writing is a trace in which an effect of language can be read"
— Lacan, XX, 121

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NLS Congress presents

Paulina Tanterl
Material | Body – The Body in Contemporary Art

When we talk about the body, the body and furthermore the body-event we first have to get a glimpse of what kind of body we’re talking about and what this body is associated with.

The artist can use his body as a tool to access material but not exclusively in a performative way. One has to carefully decide, consider and abolish in order to figure out more about the material he chooses to work with. With material we form a structure, we create. It’s a physical thing. Material as form. Figuratively we refer to material as the base of ideas or concepts, the subject matter. Something we express through words. Material as content.

This is why the material the artist works with implies not exclusively the solid physical form but even more so the process of reflection, choices, rejection and resumption. This process is the alliance the artist builds with the material. The material functions as an extension of the body. Like a prosthesis which extends the physical but also the mental/intellectual capacity of the artist. But besides these well elaborated steps there’s also the need for a breaking point, a detachment from any preset concept and transgression into something bodily, something which happens spontaneously.

What about owning the material? What happens to the “material-prosthesis” after an exhibition for example? Ultimately, the artist only will be able to claim his ownership of the material after undergoing the process of working with it. Only with intense dedication, with persistence, sometimes even obsession and only through the process of trial and error the artist is able to make his material processable and maybe even accessible, too. It is precisely the examination of the material – the trial and error – which ultimately defines the artistic process and progress: The bodily experience of improvisation.

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"Writing is a trace in which an effect of language can be read"
— Lacan, XX, 121

“In America too you would have to shed your own language, not an article of clothing but your own skin.”

— Freud, S. (1936). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig, February 21, 1936. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., 84:122-123

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Initiative Toronto

15 May – via Zoom

Seminar

The Logical Form of the Body

with Veronique Voruz

Time: 12 pm – 2 pm (Toronto Time)

Free and open to all

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYsdOqorzwqE9VY6sV71i6cLcAli8nCFvjM

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New Lacanian School

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"Writing is a trace in which an effect of language can be read"
— Lacan, XX, 121

“In America too you would have to shed your own language, not an article of clothing but your own skin.”

— Freud, S. (1936). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig, February 21, 1936. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., 84:122-123

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CONGRÈS DE LA NLS – DANS 15 JOURS !!

15 DAYS TO GO TO THE NLS CONGRESS !!

22-23 May / mai

Zoom

Bodily Effects of Language

Effets corporels de la langue

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"Writing is a trace in which an effect of language can be read"
— Lacan, XX, 121

“In America too you would have to shed your own language, not an article of clothing but your own skin.”

— Freud, S. (1936). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig, February 21, 1936. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., 84:122-123

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The Flesh and lalangue: our Parasites

"Writing is a trace in which an effect of language can be read"
— Lacan, XX, 121

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NLS Congress presents

Stijn Vanheule
The Flesh and lalangue: our Parasites

In 1997 Berlinde De Bruyckere made a series of drawings entitled “parasite”. They show us a bent over woman who is probably pregnant. Long hair veils her face. All kinds of black, skin-colored and blood-red tentacles rise ostentatiously from the bottom. These hook onto scars and appear to be entwined with her organism. Some tentacles resemble a spider's hairy legs. Others are like blood vessels perforating the boundary of the skin and merging with the substance of her body.

A parasite is an organism that feeds on other living organisms, like a tick in a dog's coat. As De Bruyckere uses this term, the question is which parasite is attacking that woman. In an interview the artist connects the idea of being inhabited by a parasite with pregnancy and refers to the fear she felt during her first own pregnancy.

Without realizing it, she thus formulates a very Lacanian remark. Lacan argues that an embryo has a parasitic bond with the mother, which is physically broken at birth, causing physical malaise in the baby. De Bruyckere's drawings demonstrate that similarly pregnancy causes malaise in a woman. Apart from the hormonal adjustments, she is then faced with the challenge of situating the parasitic intrusion of a new life in the space of her own body. Usually, this coexistence becomes livable by identifying with motherhood. In other words, an answer is needed in response to such parasitic intrusion.

Lacan's later ideas about the link between language, body and physicality especially revolve around finding an adequate response to the parasitic intrusions we all encounter. Take his Séance de clôture from 1975, which we studied in our cartel. There he states that we should regard a human being as a thinking thing or res cogitans. Where in the 1950s and 1960s he emphasized that thinking obeys the logic of the signifier and thus of the signified unconscious, in Scéance, as well as in other contributions from the seventies, he accentuates the material character of the res cogitans. The thinking thing is a substance, and this substance escapes the mind-body opposition (res cogitans versus res extensa). Lacan puts it this way: “what we strive for is to let that notion of the thinking substance enter a real”.

With the notion of "thinking substance" Lacan posits that our signified being is linked to a real physicality, which can also be distinguished from the body as an imaginary spatial representation. To think of this physicality, according to Lacan (still in his Séance de clôture), we must free ourselves from the thought that "life" needs to be considered in opposition to the term "death."

In Lacan's logic, "life" is nothing more than a cyclical process revolving around a hole. Viewed from the Real, man is a lump of senseless trembling flesh with holes in it – the holes of the body orifices – where precisely the trembling of the flesh evokes a jouissance that is parasitic to body image. Parasitic because this jouissance is experienced as internal, but not as 'own'. It must be appropriated, and to the extent that it fails, anxiety arises.

parasitizing
I body —————————-> R flesh

Perhaps that is precisely why a pregnancy can evoke a parasitic experience in a woman: a new life in your body makes it clear that your own living body has always been vibrating and trembling without the will having much of an impact on it.

It does not stop there, this living flesh is itself not autonomous either. Its substance is linked with lalangue. Words parasitize our organism, which Lacan expresses with his term "speaking body" (corps parlant).

parasitizing
R flesh —————————-> S lalangue

In L’inconscient et le corps parlant Miller (p. 56) writes the following about this speaking body: "It is a reminder that the signifying chain, which we decipher in a Freudian way, is connected to the body and consists of enjoying substance."

In other words, to the extent that signifiers are letters and have a meaningless lalangue character, their use parasitizes the body. Lalangue is an out-of-body organism that bites into living flesh. Speaking therefore functions as an enjoyment circuit that affects the body with its sounds. Conversely, the excitation of the flesh also vibrates in how we handle the signifier. This, Lacan and Miller argue, is the real of the unconscious.

To limit both forms of parasitization, people usually incorporate their speaking body into the field of images and meanings. Two tracks thus open up spontaneously: debility and delusion. Debility means that one comes to believe in “the imaginary of the body and the imaginary of meaning” (Miller, p. 58). Delusion involves the belief that the Real is signifiable. Debility and delusion make us deaf to the parasitization by language.

Lacan illustrates this dynamic in his 24th seminar (meeting March 8) with the example of his grandson Luc. One day little Luc tells him that he is trying to use words that he does not understand. What's more, he believes that is precisely why he has a big head. Lacan points out that the boy, like him, actually does have a big skull, but that is not the crux of the story. The point is that little Luc links this particular image of his head to the proliferation of misunderstood words. It shows that he uses everyday delusion to limit the parasitic experience of language. It is a form of identification with which he responds to an intrusion.

The third track, next to debility and delusion to deal with parasitization through the flesh and lalangue, is through being duped by the Real. This can be done, among other things, by naming the meaningless jouissance that marks our life. I read Berlinde De Bruyckere's drawings as a kind of such naming or presenting a real jouissance. They make jouissance singularly present without it being completely particularisable in the field of meaning and language.