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When I decided to explore the question of Witz, or wit, with you this year, I undertook a small enquiry. It will come as no surprise at all that I began by questioning a poet. This is a poet who introduces the dimension of an especially playful wit that runs through his work, as much in his prose as in more poetic forms, and which he brings into play even when he happens to be talking about mathematics, for he is also a mathematician. I am referring to Raymond Queneau. While we were exchanging our first remarks on the matter he told me a joke. It's a joke about exams, about the university entrance exams, if you like.
We have a candidate and we have an examiner.
- "Tell me", says the examiner, "about the battle of Marengo."
The candidate pauses for a moment, with a dreamy air. "The battle of Marengo...? Bodies everywhere! It's terrible... Wounded everywhere! It's horrible..."
"But", says the examiner, "Can't you tell me anything more precise about this battle?"
The candidate thinks for a moment, then replies, "A horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies."
The examiner, surprised, seeks to test him a little further and says, "In that case, can you tell me about the battle of Fontenoy?"
"Oh!" says the candidate, "a horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies."
The examiner, strategically, asked the candidate to talk about the battle of Trafalgar.
The candidate replies, "Dead everywhere! A blood bath.... Wounded everywhere! Hundreds of them...."
"But my good man, can't you tell me anything more precise about this battle?"
"A horse..." "Excuse me, I would have you note that the battle of Trafalgar is a naval battle."
"Whoah! Whoah!" says the candidate. "Back up, Neddy!" The value of this joke is, to my mind, that it enables us to decompose, I believe, what is at stake in a witticism.
(Extract from Chapter VI)
List of contents
Translator's Note
Abbreviations
The Freudian structures of wit
I. The Famillionaire
II. The Fat-millionaire
III. The Miglionaire
IV. The Golden Calf
V. A Bit-of-Sense and the Step-of-Sense
VI. Whoah, Neddy!
VII. Une Femme de Non-Recevoir, or : A Flat Refusal
THE LOGIC OF CASTRATION
VIII. Foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father
IX. The Paternal Metaphor
X. The Three Moments of the Oedipus Complex (I)
XI. The Three Moments of the Oedipus Complex (II)
XII. From Image to Signifier ? in Pleasure and in Reality
XIII. Fantasy, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHALLUS
XIV. Desire and Jouissance
XV. The Girl and the Phallus
XVI. Insignias of the Ideal
XVII. The Formulas of Desire
XVIII. Symptoms and Their Masks
XIX. Signifier, Bar and Phallus
The dialectic of desire and demand in the clinical study and treatment of the neuroses
XX. The Dream by the Butcher's Beautiful Wife
XXI. The 'Still Waters Run Deep' Dreams
XXII. The Other's Desire
XXIII. The Obsessional and his Desire
XXIV. Transference and Suggestion
XXV. The Signification of the Phallus in the Treatment
XXVI. The Circuits of Desire
XXVII. Exiting via the Symptom
XXVIII. You Are the One You Hate
APPENDICES
The Graph of Desire
Explanation of the Schemas
Editor's Note
Translator's Endnotes
Index
About the author
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth-century's most influential thinkers. His many works include
Écrits,
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis and the many other volumes of
The Seminar.
Summary
When I decided to explore the question of Witz, or wit, with you this year, I undertook a small enquiry. It will come as no surprise at all that I began by questioning a poet.
