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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.
List of contents
Figures
Translator's Note
INTRODUCTION
I. From Surplus Value to Surplus Jouissance
The Inconsistency of the Other
II. The Knowledge Market and Truth (on) Strike
III. Topology of the Other
IV. Facts and What is Said
V. "I Am What I Is"
VI. Toward a Practice of Logic in Psychoanalysis
On Pascal's Wager
VII. Introduction to Pascal's Wager
VIII. The One and Little a
IX. From Fibonacci to Pascal
X. The Three Matrices
XI. Truth's Retardation and the Administration of Knowledge
Jouissance: Its Field
XII. "The Freud Event"
XIII. On Jouissance Posited as an Absolute
XIV. The Two Sides of Sublimation
XV. High Fever
XVI. Structures of Perversion
Jouissance: Its Real
XVII. Thought (as) Censorship
XVIII. Inside Outside
XIX. Knowledge and Power
XX. Knowledge and Jouissance
XXI. Responses to Aporias
Jouissance: Its Logic
XXII. Paradoxes of Psychoanalytic Action
XXIII. How to Generate Surplus Jouissance Logically
XXIV. On the One-Extra
Evacuation
XXV. The Ravishing Ignominy of the Hommelle
Appendices
Fibonacci as Used by Lacan, by Luc Miller
Reader's Guide, by Jacques-Alain Miller
Dossier on the Evacuation
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 Psycho-analysis and the many volumes of The Seminar.
Summary
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.
