Post-Fantasmatic Sinthome

Youngjin, Park

As a paradigmatic example to illustrate the radicality of the Lacanian fantasy, one could refer to Lacan’s response to a series of questions that the students of the Ecole Normale

Supérieure posed in February 1966. Concerning the relation between the subject of revolutionary praxis and the subject of alienated desire, Lacan stated “the subject of alienated desire...is the desire of the Other, which is correct, with the sole modification that there is no subject of desire. There is the subject of the fantasy.”1 This statement is intriguing not only in the context of the nascent sociopolitical turmoil of the May ‘68’, but also in the context of

Lacan’s intellectual trajectory that his seminar on fantasy began in November 1966. Desire is always the desire of the Other. In other words, what motivates and activates desire is the dialectical relationship between the subject and the Other. Embedded in the signifying chain as the locus of the Other, every desire has the form of alienation. Lacan certainly addresses the subjectivity in relation to desire. Thus, the implication of his response would be that the desire of the subject must be displaced into the subject of fantasy in its disavowal of lack, its attempt to cover up the division of the subject. The subjectivity of desire appears or subjectivizes only in the form of the subject of the fantasy. Lacan continues, “revolutionary theory would do well to hold itself responsible for leaving empty the function of truth as cause, when therein lies, nevertheless, the first supposition of its own effectiveness.”2 The subject of revolutionary theory leaves the object-cause of desire untouched, disregarding the fact that the truth of the subject lies in that object. Revolutionary subject, in its denial to confront its lack, will have become the subject of fundamental fantasy of the revolution.

Keeping in mind this radicality of the fantasy, this essay will first construct a

1 Jacques Lacan. “Responses to Students of Philosophy concerning the Object of Psychoanalysis” trans. Jeffrey Mehlman. October Vol. 40 (Spring, 1987), 110. 2 Ibid. genealogy of the Lacanian conceptions of fantasy in his Seminars, focusing on its transformation and the contexts in which fantasy works in Lacan. Second, with reference to

Seminar XXIII, I will examine the extent to which and in what sense fantasy and sinthome are related and distinct. Based on this analysis, I will conclude by addressing the political possibility of the Lacanian discourse in the context of the post-capitalist fantasy.

The Genealogy of Fantasy

Let us begin with the “Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power.” In this article, Lacan criticizes the Klein School’s reduction of fantasy to the imaginary. What the Klein School did not realize was the role of the signifier in the function of the fantasy.

“The notion of the fantasy no longer presents any difficulty once it is defined as an image set to work in the signifying structure...fantasy is the means by which the subject maintains himself at the level of his vanishing desire, vanishing inasmuch as the very satisfaction of demand deprives him of his object.”3 Fantasy is not an image of the imaginary, but of the symbolic. If the unconscious is structured like a language, the notion of the unconscious fantasy should be also defined in terms of the signifying chain. As an image in the signifying structure, fantasy maintains the subject and reproduces vanishing desire. Since desire is set up in relation to the metonymical movement of the signifier and the ceaseless substitution of the objects, it is constantly appearing and disappearing, remaining forever unsatisfied. For the subject, fantasy is a tool to support his desire in the face of its vanishing quality. If this article describes the fantasy in relation to the symbolic and desire, Lacan’s discussion of the fantasy in Seminar VII is oriented more towards the relation between the Real and the Imaginary.

Lacan states, “It is rather in an imaginary function, and, in particular, that for which we will use the symbolization of the fantasm ($ ◊ a), which is the form on which depends the

3 Lacan, Ecrits, 532. subject’s desire.”4 The relation between fantasy and desire is maintained. Fantasy is a form or a structural setting for the reproduction of desire despite its volatility. Lacan also affirms the relation between the Imaginary and the fantasy. The crucial shift in Seminar VII is that the fantasy is limited neither to the imaginary, nor to the image of the symbolic, but is coupled with the imaginarization of the Real in the form of object a. Lacan continues, “In forms that are historically and socially specific, the a elements, the imaginary elements of the fantasm come to overlay the subject, to delude it, at the very point of das Ding.”5 Fantasy

“colonizes the field of das Ding with imaginary schemes.”6 In Seminar VII, das Ding is the

Real as the lost object or the absolute Other of the subject, an empty and strange center around which the signifier or Vorstellung revolves. It is the domain of jouissance beyond the scope of the pleasure principle of the psychic reality. However, this does not mean that the

Real and the Symbolic are totally disjunctive. Although the Law and the Thing are distinct, they are not totally disjunctive, because one could approach the Thing only by means of the

Law. It is only through the mediation of the Law of the signifier that the Real of the Thing is reached. Therefore, while what comes to the fore is the relation between the Real and the

Imaginary that is at work in the fantasy, one could already see at this point the Lacanian three orders working in relation to the fantasy. Fantasy reaches the dimension of the Real. However, it covers up and paints over the Real with object a that is retroactively produced as the gap between the signifier and Das Ding. It is the domestication of the Real as the Real-of-the-

Symbolic with the Imaginary objects. It is the imaginarization of the gap between the Real and the Symbolic. Let us move onto Seminar X where anxiety is defined as the encounter of the desiring Other. “Che vuoi?” as the enigmatic appearance of the Real Other’s desire

4 Lacan, S7, 99. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. provokes the anxiety as the affect of the Real. Drawing a veil over the lack in the desiring

Other, fantasy here works again as the imaginarization of the Real. In Lacan’s formulation, “I would say that the formula of fantasy can be translated as ‘may the Other fade away, faint, before the object that I am as a deduction from the way in which I see myself’.”7 The Other here is not the battery of the signifier, i.e., the Symbolic Other, but the Other as desiring

Other because of its Real lack, while the self-reflection refers to the imaginary dimension.

Lacan also provides an interesting visual metaphor for his conception of the fantasy, which is repeated in Seminar XIII. Fantasy is a picture that is located over the frame of a window, the purpose of which lies in not seeing outside the window. However, it is a picture that depicts the scenery that one can actually see through the window. By delimiting the Real scenery with the Imaginary framing, the metaphor succinctly illustrates the nature of the fantasy.

Fantasy neither reveals nor disguises the Real. It makes the access to the Real both possible and impossible by simultaneously hiding and indicating the Real. As Lacan put, “this little reality [peu de réalité] that is the whole substance of fantasy but which is also, perhaps, the whole reality to which we can gain access.”8 As fantasy delimits reality from the Real, fantasy becomes co-extensive with reality. If reality is an interlaced juxtaposition of the imaginary and the symbolic, one can see here also how fantasy composes its own configuration among the three orders. Moving onto Seminar XI with Lacan’s other formulation that “the Real supports the fantasy, the fantasy protects the Real,”9 let us focus on the two functions of the dialectic between the desire of the subject and the desire of the

Other―alienation and separation. In the formula of the fantasy ($ ◊ a), alienation describes the bottom half of the lozenge, the arrow going from the $ to a, separation the top half of the

7 Lacan, S10, 89. 8 Lacan, S13, 8/6/1966. 9 Lacan, S11, 41. lozenge, the arrow going from a to $. As a forced choice that only leads to a kind of deal at a loss for the subject, alienation means: between being and meaning, the subject cannot but choose meaning. Either he chooses being, then he will lose everything, or he chooses meaning by acceding to the Other, he will get the meaning with the part of non-meaning Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM eliminated so that the signifying chain that is haunted by non-meaning will constitute his Comment [1]: This seems to be the point at which the subject is castrated by unconscious. If alienation refers to the appearance of the lack of being of the subject, the “phallic law” that insists that membership (to the symbolic) is based on ignoring the One who does not obey the separation refers to the intersection of the lack of the subject and the lack in the Other so that law, while disappearing beneath the misrecognition forced by symbols. The what the Other cannot assimilate through the logic of signifier, i.e., object a will come out signifying chain haunted by non-meaning is the group within the “club” of the and complete the totality of the subject in an imaginary fashion by veiling the division of the symbolic, bound by the phallic principle. subject. This is the reason the Real desire revealed in “what does he want?” is displaced into the objectification of that desire displayed in “can he lose me?” In the fact of the lack of the

Other, the subject responds with his own death as the first object. The enigma of the Other’s Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM desire is positivized and objectified as my death. Moving onto Seminar XIV, Lacan re- Comment [2]: When the child first confronts the “Ché vuoi?” he imagines verifies here the distinction between the Imaginary and the fantasy. If the former stems from his/her death, and what it would mean to the mother. “I,” the latter stems from “Not-I.” The Lacanian fantasy originates from a deeper strata of the unconscious as “Not-I” than the Imaginary “I.” Intervening in the Cartesian Cogito and Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM addressing the gap between thinking and being, Lacan states that one is forced to choose ‘I Comment [3]: This “levels” difference seems to be a quick way to distinguish think not’ rather than ‘I am not,’ as in the forced choice of alienation. This “I think not” leads between imagination, which “fills in the gaps,” and fantasy, which is the gap — is based on the negative and impossibility. into “When I think not, it [Es] is.” This “it [Es]” is the same as “Not-I,” the bedrock of the logic of the unconscious thinking as the fantasy. In the fantasy, “‘I’ itself is excluded.”10

Lacan also brings up an algebraic formulation for the fantasy, explaining the logic of the fantasy: 1-a=a2 While 1 or A symbolizes the big Other and the fictional possibility of the sexual relation, a symbolizes that which is incommensurable from the standpoint of 1 or A. a cannot be measured according to 1 as the fictional unity of the sexual relation. Since there is

10 Lacan, S14, 11/01/1967. no sexual relation, one cannot reach 1 by procuring a. Thus, there always remains the gap between 1 and a, which is expressed as ‘1 - a = a2.’ Manipulating this equation slightly, one could arrive at 1 + a = 1/a. The value of a in this equation amounts to 0.618. Thus Lacan Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM claims that the truth of the subject and the logic of the fantasy has to be addressed from the Comment [4]: This guy is really gutsy!!! If this is ø + 1 = ø2 or ø = 1/ø + 1 (divide by ø, switch sides) Park needs to show standpoint of object a as the golden number. Seminar XVII addresses the fantasy as the how the -1 becomes a +1. Lacan’s ø is 1/ø -1, the Fibonacci 1 is 1/ø + 1. I lik perversion in relation to Freud’s case study of “A child is being beaten.” The important e this because it is close to the ø/-ø w e use to describe “demon”, based on a reification of ‘1’ as “One” — i.e. the Big context that needs to be noted is that the perversion here is not the imaginary fixation onto the Other. phallus but the inconsistency of the Other, i.e., the interlacing between the Other as the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM guarantee of truth and the Other as lacking jouissance. The perverse fantasy illustrates how Comment [5]: “Inconsistency of the One,” i.e. +1/-1. I like it!!!! Note that the the domain of language and the domain of jouissance penetrate each other. If Seminar VII Fibonacci One gives you the “bad infinity” condition, implicit in the Nose dysfunction (the desire to show desiring, through depicts the relation between the Symbolic and the Real as the master signifier revolving portraying the representer in the represented). around das Ding, the fantasy of perversion in Seminar XVII depicts the incursion of the Real into the Symbolic as the infiltration between the Symbolic and the Real. The Real is always Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM the Real-of-the-Symbolic. Lacan states that the subject here straddles truth or falsity of the Comment [6]: In the form of the 1/-1 (the inconsistency of the “demonic” Other, proposition and jouissance. “...his [the subject’s] own jouissance in the form of the Other’s metalepsis shows how fantasy operates within the Symbolic. jouissance...the father gets jouissance from beating him.”11 As a matter of fact, the Other as inherently incomplete because of its differential structure is supposed to lack jouissance. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Comment [7]: This can be pictured more However, the fantasy of the child postulates not only that the Other is enjoying but that he easily as “reverse predication” — the child enjoys being enjoyed by the Other, but the Other’s jouissance is lacking. The child is himself becomes the object of the Other’s jouissance. Lacan continues, “we are beings born “desires by being desired … by desire!” — i.e. by the lack (the gap). We might claim of surplus jouissance, as a result of the use of language. When I say, “the use of language,” I that reverse predication is the only way to make sense out of this in-between-the- do not mean that we use it. It is language that uses us. Language employs us, and that is how mirrors situation. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM it enjoys....He [the Other] is jouissance.”12 There is no Other because it is inherently Comment [8]: This is Lacan’s “Vichian moment” — where human origins is connected to the reverse predication of the incomplete. However, the Other as language paradoxically has its own body that materializes Symbolic (pretty much exactly what Vico says about the matter). “There is no Big Other” is in Vico, “there is no Jove, the first humans only imagined themselves to be in 11 Lacan, S17, 65. the sky but failed to recognize their role in 12 Ibid., 66. this transposition.” in each and every subject. The Other does not exist but has a body. When one becomes the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM subject by entering into the domain of language or knowledge, the living organism or the Comment [9]: Does this make the Other the opposite of the “partial object,” an human animal is inscribed by the signifier, and this body of the signifier is the place where organ without a body? INTERESTING! The Other is a reverse predication of the breast, shit, phallus, gaze, voice, etc. language enjoys itself through the subject’s body. Where it speaks, it enjoys. To call NOW we’re getting somewhere! knowledge “the jouissance of the Other”13 is equivalent to state that “the signifier is the cause of jouissance.”14 Thus, the Lacanian fantasy in the form of perversion now reaches the point where the Symbolic and the Real are interpenetrated or, more provocatively, the point of “signifier as jouissance.”15 Seminar XX goes one step further in that jouissance comes to Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM the fore and is theorized in terms of the sexuation formula. While the feminine jouissance or Comment [10]: This would be the Finnegans Wake condition. Joyce is thus the Other-jouissance goes beyond the phallic function while still relating to it, thus marking the example of how the Symbolic and Real are interpenetrated. Every point in discourse is a point of epiphany, but there the point of internal excess of “Not-All’ plus “No-Exception,” the masculine jouissance is is no complete edition of a horizontal structure of discourse with vertical circumscribed by “All” plus “Exception.” What is notable here is that the structure of the interruptions. Rather it is the “cross” of the horizontal and vertical, which is portable, phallic jouissance precisely has the structure of fantasy. “This $ never deals with anything by that becomes an “everywhere” inside discourse — discourse as jouissance. way of a partner but object a...He is unable to attain his sexual partner, who is the Other, Don Kunze 3/3/14 8:26 AM Comment [11]: Good! we are on the right track here! except inasmuch as his partner is the cause of his desire. In this respect, as is indicated... $ and a, this is nothing other than fantasy.”16 The phallic jouissance relates only to object a, Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM not to the Other as such. The sexual relation cannot be inscribed by the logic of the signifier, Comment [12]: This is why Lacan cites the troubadour tradition of the un- constituting the impossible. However, the phallic jouissance pretends that there is a sexual reachable Lady of the poet’s desire. “The Poet” here stands for the Symbolic, directly confronting the impossibility of relation. Insofar as (the absence of) the sexual relation is supported by the phallic signifier, it desire, a. supports our reality constituted by the pleasure principle or the law of the Symbolic, Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM disregarding the Real and constructing a fantasmatic relation. “What they deal with is object Comment [13]: This is Lacan’s “rediscovery” of Freud, that the pleasure

principle is actually fueled by the death 13 Lacan, S17, 14. drive – the involvement with the obstacle 14 Lacan, S20, 24. to pleasure in terms of the missing object 15 This is not to say that Lacan’s conception of the incursion of the Real into the Symbolic is made at this of desire, the fact that it is missing simply specific period. One could trace at least back to Seminar 5 (“There is no Other of the Other”) and “The because we desire it, and we then desire subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire” (“the lower chain [the signifier] is constitutive of the upper to sustain this situation. chain [the Drive].” 16 Lacan, S20, 80. a...the whole realization of the sexual relationship leads to fantasy.”17

Based on this construction of the genealogy of the Lacanian conception of the fantasy, one possible question would be “does the fantasy or ‘traversing the fantasy’ mark the end of analysis?” If there is only the subject of fantasy for Lacan, does fantasy as a structural, knotted configuration of the Lacanian three orders, i.e., the imaginarization of the Real-of- the-Symbolic, constitute the ultimate horizon of the Lacanian subjectivity? It is with this question that one could move onto another form of the configuration of the three orders, namely, sinthome.18

From Fantasy to Sinthome

Before moving onto the Borromean knot and sinthome and discussing the relation or the gap between fantasy and sinthome, let us begin with the late Lacanian definition of the symptom. In contrast to the early Lacan’s definition of symptom as signifiers that constitute the knowledge of the analysand the meaning of which needs to be interpreted by the analyst in the transferential situation, late Lacan describes the symptom in terms of jouissance. In

Seminar XVI, after pointing out that the person must be situated at the level of the symptom,

Lacan writes “the person begins where the subject is anchored in another way than I defined it for you [the aspect of the signifier], where it is situated in a much broader way, making jouissance enter into play and placing it without doubt at the origin of the subject.”19

Symptom is the place where the subject’s jouissance as his origin is captured and unfolded. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM As discussed above, considering the formulation in Seminar XX that the signifier is the cause Comment [14]: This is a beautiful condensation of a definition. It is the cellar of jouissance, the symptom should be understood as another manifestation of the incursion of of Sebastian’s mansion in Notorious. the Real into the Symbolic rather than jouissance as a transgression or “beyond” of the Don Kunze 3/3/14 8:40 AM

17 Ibid., 86. Comment [15]: Park is actually taking the position that the sinthome is 18 Ed Pluth (2007) claims that the issue of the problem of consistency of the three orders is applied both to the metalepsis!!! This is a bit like getting subject of fantasy and the subject of act. Lorenzo Chiesa (2007) also defines fantasy as a “compromise independent confirmation. Someone is formation” par excellence of the three orders. replicating our experiment and coming up 19 Lacan, S16, 318. with the same results. signifier. The full-fledged definition of the symptom is “the manner in which each one suffers in his relationship to jouissance, inasmuch as it is only inserted through the function of surplus-jouir.”20 Keeping in mind the definition of surplus-jouissance as the outcome of the signifier, one could formulate the following: the symptom is identified as the way in which the subject relates to jouissance in or of the signifier as the kernel of his or her subjectivity. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Comment [16]: Interestingly, Todd McGowan’s wife, Hilary Neroni, has an essay on the smile of the guards at Abu- Graib prison. My critique of this paper is that the smile is more generally the smile of corporate capitalism and should be expanded theoretically; this seems to support that.

Now, let us approach the Borromean knot and the sinthome at three levels: i) the clinical necessity to knot the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and the Symbolic and the Real through splicing or suturing, ii) Joyce’s proper name or ego as a compensation for the lack of the paternal function and the imaginary relation, iii) sinthome as an irreducible symptom or primal repression (Urverdrängung). Lacan conceived of the Borromean knot as the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM topological device to write the Real where the three orders are interlocked in such a way that Comment [17]: This is Ur-Verdrängung, the primal thing that has been suppressed removing or untying one order would cause the collapse of the entire structure. Just as the “in order that” the rest of the human project can proceed. This is nothing other than Vico’s imaginative universal, not as a unconscious is revealed through gap or surprise embodied by slip of the tongue, parapraxis, positive formula for mythic thought but the account of how this primal repression witticism, it is also probable that this knot could fail with the malfunction of one order. In takes place, and remains in place — it cannot be “dislodged” by explanation or order to prevent this, Lacan states that analysis should operate by suturing or splicing.21 If qualifications, saying that the first humans were just lacking any other means of expression. It is presence wherever there there is no Other of the Other, or if Name of the Father does not make the symbolic self- is a LACK that is primordial, and in this sense, as Vico put it, myth in the form of sufficient and enclosed, not only the borderline between the Real and the Symbolic becomes imaginative universality continues past the age where mythic thinking dominates culture. It is the mode of the unconscious, Lacan says, and on this Vico would agree. 20 Lacan, S16, 41. 21 Lacan, S23, 72-73. blurred, but so does the borderline between the Symbolic and the Imaginary.22 To prevent this, the Imaginary and the Symbolic need to be sutured so that the meaning of the symptom of the analysand is attainable through the analysis. This is why the place of sense is located at the intersection of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Lacan also states that the splicing between the Symbolic and the Real needs to be made in the form of j’ouïs-sense. As discussed above, when the symptom of the analysand manifests itself through a certain signifier, that signifier would not be an ordinary, differentially defined signifier; rather, it would be a singular signifier infiltrated by jouissance (JΦ).23 If the symptom of the analysand is a mixture of signifier and jouissance, the analyst should be capable of listening to what “enjoy-meant” is contained in that symptom. However, in the case of Joyce, as is indicated by his father John Joyce’s alcoholism, the paternal function is not properly operative. Furthermore, the Imaginary is cleared off, or the imaginary relation does not have any place for Joyce.24 Thus, the lack of the paternal function and the imaginary relation in Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Joyce makes the structure of his subjectivity equivalent to “the broken knot (le noeud raté).” Comment [18]: This agrees with and confirms what we have been saying about However, this broken knot does not lead to a complete failure of the knot and is repaired Finnegans Wake, i.e. that it cannot be read as a system of symbolic references. Whereas Ulysses can be taken as an through Joyce’s writing or sinthome (Σ) as a fourth ring to hold R/S/I together in an encyclopedia of symbolization, Finnegans Wake is entirely “symptomatic” — i.e. enigmatic way. Joyce creates his own name, a proper name that could compensate for the structured by fantasy. I’m not sure that a symbolic reading of Ulysses is correct, but lack of the paternal function rather than depend on the given Name-of-the-Father. His ego is it is what many readers have attempted. Possibly there is a more correct sinthomatic reading of this as well (and I also of a singularly different nature than that of the ordinary person involved in the imaginary. would cite the event of the death dream when Bloom falls trying to get into his flat It functions as “a corrector of the error” of the knot. With Lacan’s definition of père-version, and then imagines Molly’s desire in the “Yes … yes” passage that concludes the one gets the full-fledged definition of the sinthome. “They [three orders] are distinct and one book.

22 This would mean that the incursion of the Real into the Symbolic or “the untied Symbolic” led Lacan to reconsider the relationship between three orders, namely, two-by-two, R-S, S-I, R-I. In Seminar 21, Lacan states that the Real and the Imaginary both ex-sist, namely, there is the incursion of the Real into the Imaginary or the Real-of-the-Imaginary as three orders are interlocked as the Borromean knot. 23 Tom Eyers’ distinction (2012) between the signifier-in-relation and the signifier-in-isolation is notable from this perspective. Jacque-Alain Miller’s “discursive jouissance” would be useful as well. 24 Lacan, S23, 151. must suppose a fourth which is the symptom on this occasion. That which constitutes the

Borromean link must be supposed to be tetradic, perversion only means turning towards the father, and that in short the father is a symptom...The ex-sistence of the symptom supposes Don Kunze 3/3/14 8:53 AM this enigmatic link of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.”25 Three things are notable Comment [19]: We know the name of this father — it is Vico! Vico is the here. First, the sinthome is the further refashioning of the symptom after the symptom as the sinthome of Finnegans Wake. presence of the Real in the Symbolic as a hole. Second, the father and the Oedipus Complex itself is a symptom in that Joyce’s turning towards the father is not a guarantee of the signification in general but an invention of his proper name as supplementary ring to re-knot the broken knot. Lastly, if the Borromean knot depends on the role of the Real as standing outside (sister hors) or ex-sisting to the Imaginary and the Symbolic,26 the sinthome depends on the role of the symptom as ex-sisting to all the three orders. By stretching outside beyond Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM itself and holding all three orders together, the sinthome constitutes a creative and enigmatic Comment [20]: I had never thought of this before, but it does address the matter configuration of the subjectivity. of where we are in order to see the Borromean knot in the first place — i.e. who is the subject who is supposed to However, let us also note that the sinthome is not simply a solution to the failure of the know Lacan’s theory? This is the portable cross of the horizontal with the vertical, the broken knot. It is also a problem to the analytic experience in relation to the cure of the Eros that Vico describes as the two Dianas and which is represented in the symptom. Responding to the question about whether it is the case that the disappearance of Janusian herm that connects the head psyche with the phallic psyche. the Borromean knot by the introduction of the fourth ring causes a problem to the hope of a Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Comment [21]: I take it that Park preserves a distinction between symptom cure, Lacan asserts that “there is no radical reduction of the fourth term...we do not know and sinthome, that sinthome is the hole in the Symbolic, which is not the opportunity along what path there is Urverdrängung. It is of the very nature of the Symbolic to comprise to correct the subject in analysis but a permanent condition of the Symbolic, it’s this hole.”27 In the actuality of the analysis, after going through numerous sessions and even “extimacy” (I’m speculating on that). succeeding in reaching the point of the traversing-the-fantasy, the analysand seems to be stuck in the masochistic jouissance accompanied by his or her symptom. This jouissance as a

25 Lacan, S23, 19. 26 Ibid., 50. 27 Ibid., 41. hole within the Symbolic forms a point of resistance to any kind of interpretation and remains purely hermetic and autistic. Expanding a little bit further, with the introduction of the Don Kunze 3/3/14 9:02 AM sinthome, the symptom becomes a more complicated black sheep than when it was the Comment [22]: The sealed-off (to interpretation) point is important. Theory, meaningless Real in the Symbolic. There is no way to eradicate the sinthome as the enigmatic as resistance to ideology, can identify with its counterpart within subjectivity, namely the sinthome. It is resistance AS SUCH Real that now overdetermines the three orders through its symptomatic ex-sistence. The that makes theory obliged to consider Lacan as the biographer of the sinthome. sinthome as the symptom-of-the-Real (not the symptom as the Real-of-the-symptom) proposes a serious aporia to the analytic practice. Here one could map the primal repression

(Urverdrängung) to the fundamental fantasy. This fundamental fantasy, theorized by Freud Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM as a pure structure without any positive content, is the irreducible kernel of the Unconscious. Comment [23]: Looks like this is the point where the Real breaks out of the Based on his experience, Jacque-Alain Miller points out that while the analysand feels Symbolic, where it was present only as an absence, so to speak, and reveals that it is the fountain of the Unconscious. Park pleasure in symptom and would be willing to talk at length about it, he or she still keeps makes a place for Vico without seeming to know anything about him — all the better, silent about the fundamental fantasy, which has nothing to do with pleasure.28 As a since it like an “independent confirmation” of the idea of VIco’s imaginative universal contentless kernel of the Unconscious or the non-substantial texture of the Unconscious, as an early version of the sinthome. Don Kunze 3/3/14 9:14 AM fantasy does not even get invoked or addressed by the analysand. It seems that if the Comment [24]: In fact, Vico says that this universality is grounded in fear, and the direct result is the institution of fundamental fantasy is overlapped with the sinthome through their participation in the primal marriage, which curbs lust and institutes a privacy based on the feminine not-all. This repression, there can be no optimistic vision for the analysis. This probable connection not-all is directly represented in the Djana manifestation as the herm. Hestia+Hermes between fantasy and the sinthome goes even further when one turns to another specific may finally be explained! problem, which to my knowledge is not directly addressed by Lacan, the status or function of object a in the sinthome. Fantasy as the support of desire always is fixated onto and works Don Kunze 3/3/14 9:16 AM Comment [25]: We would bet that this towards the object. Fantasy and the sinthome, albeit linking the three orders in a different had to do with the extimate, and the binding function of the sinthome in the way, might overlap through the mediation of object a. If so, the antinomy of the sinthome Borromean knot. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM between a creative solution and an irreducible problem seems to lean toward a monstrous Comment [26]: Which, in the Borromean knot analogy, is an “over/under” function, i.e. <>, which we put in terms of a figure of the “sinthomatic fantasy.” However, although the question about the extent to which scale dysfunction, “both greater than and less than,” but which Park uses “vertically” as a contrast between alienation and separation. “You can stay or leave 28 Miller, Jacques-Alain. “Two Clinical Dimension: Symptom and Fantasm,” in The Symptom Vol. 11 (Spring, (separation), but if you stay you will be 2010). uncomfortable (alienation).” the sinthome supports or rejects object a seems to either remain untouched by Lacan or requires an extrapolating construction of his thought, there is a clear distinction to be made between fantasy and the sinthome. In other words, there is no such thing as sinthomatic fantasy.

Towards Sinthomatic Relation

Lacan’s thought is not a systematic philosophy but an ever-renewing praxis. It is in the form of an experimentation to be elaborated further that his thought remains as “lesson” for Don Kunze 3/3/14 9:21 AM today. In seminar XXIII, he shifts his thinking about the sexual relation as the impossible in a Comment [27]: This repeats our contention about theory — that it is striking way. This time Lacan argues that where there is a sinthome, there is a sexual relation. speculative and experimental, not constructed around any particular content. If theory uses Lacan, it is not as content It is in the measure that there is a sinthome that there is no sexual but as another form of experimentation. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM equivalence, namely, that there is a relation. For it is sure that if we say that Comment [28]: This is a doctrine about Hestia and the role of the marriage the non-relation stems from the equivalence, it is in the measure that there function in “resolving” the Urverdrängung situation, i.e. the imaginative universal. In is no equivalence that the relation is structured. There is then both sexual other words, our interests in marriage, the two Dianas, Hermes/Hestia, the Prytaneion, etc. was not accidental! relation and non-relation. There is only a relation where there is a sinthome,

namely, where the other sex is supported from sinthome... It is the sinthome

that we have to address in the sexual relation itself.29 Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM To use the algebraic matheme in Seminar XIV, 1 or A is a conventional law to Comment [29]: Although it’s nice to know that we “discovered” the need for ideologically fictionalize the sexual relation as Oneness. There is no sexual relation, but this independently, I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t seen this quote before! Shame on me! I have downloaded phallic jouissance covers up this absence of the relation and pretends to guarantee the Seminar XXIII from Scrib’d. presence of the relation, as if there is Oneness (Yad’lun). However, phallic jouissance has the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM 30 structure of the fantasy fixated onto object a as “semblance of being.” It serves as a tool to Comment [30]: There are echoes of Parminides throughout, and consequently support the One or Being. Insofar as the masculine position and the feminine position are of the “Menippean satire” involved in talking about what you can’t talk about. When Parminides says “you can’t talk structured by the fictional equivalence between the two represented by 1, then there is the about non-being” the humor is that we are already talking, and if non-being is “untalkable” it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist 29 Lacan, S23, 101-102. (as negative) but simply that talking about it is inherently resisted, both by it and by 30 Lacan, S20, 90. language. veiling of a non-relation. On the contrary, if the other sex is addressed at the level of sinthome, then there is a relation. This means that the impossibility of a relation at the level of fantasy appears as the possibility of a relation at the level of sinthome. If one approaches another at the level of fantasy or phallic function, there remains the Imaginary-of-the-Real.

However, if one approaches another at the level of sinthome, there remains both the Real as the impossibility of the relation and the Real-izable Real31 as the possibility of/in the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM impossibility of the relation. It is imperative to read the formulation that there is both a Comment [31]: “Very funny” in the sense of Menippean satire, where we can relation and non-relation, neither from the (traditional) dialectical standpoint nor from the have our cake and eat it too. It is the nature of the Real to allow this “impossibility,” since the Real is in fact the anti-dialectical standpoint. The dialectics would claim that this relation is actually a sublation impossible-Real. Nothing is impossible to that which embodies the impossible, and (Aufhebung) of non-relation, appealing to the One as the self-positing teleological movement. is Real, to boot! Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM The anti-dialectics would claim that this relation is a disjunctive synthesis of the Comment [32]: These are played out as the emotional polarity in Buñuel’s That heterogeneous multiplicity, thereby sublimating the Other as the inverted form of the One. Obscure Object of Desire. Seems that Buñuel chose his titles very well! The sexual relation at the level of the sinthome points out that there is only the Other as the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Comment [33]: This is Park’s brilliant One-missing (l’un-en-moins). “For the Other...is the One-missing.. That’s why, in any move. He sees the question of sexual relation in the same way as the master- slave dialectic, where the principle of relationship of man with a woman, it is from the perspective of the One-missing that she must mastery is sublated (Aufhebung is difficult to translate! — “cancel and preserve”) be taken up.”32 What matters here is the subtraction of that which is missing both from the within slavery. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM One and the Other, preserving the hole (Ø) and destabilizing the binary between the One and Comment [34]: I offer a naïve and simplistic explanation: Freud’s view that in the Other. Never avoid the void or void the void in order that out of the void (non-relation) a any romance there are four people, at minimum, involved. The one missing … which is that? Possibly it is the empirical different void (relation) appears. The Real-izable Real as the sexual relation should be subject who must disappear (aphanesis) in order for the fantasmic double to take envisioned and elaborated through the Real as the sexual non-relation. If the ethics of the one’s place. This is the function of romance in Cyrano de Bergerac. Real is formulated as “Never give up on your desire,” the “ero-thics” of the sinthomatic Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Comment [35]: Hegel’s motto: “Tarry relation could be formulated as “Never give up on the possible while holding onto the with the negative.” impossible by keeping the void.”

31 This was intended as the refashioning of Lacan’s description of the unconscious as neither being nor non- being, but the “un-realized” in Seminar XI. 32 Lacan, S20, 129. Let us conclude. Where there is fantasy, there is Oneness or fictionalized relation as reality. On the contrary, it is Lacan’s axiom in Seminar XXIII that where there is sinthome, there is a relation, and that it is possible to address the sexual relation from the perspective of the sinthome. Therefore, while there could be an overlap between fantasy and the sinthome in Don Kunze 3/3/14 10:16 AM terms of object a and the handling of the three orders, the two are distinct in that fantasy Comment [36]: And, the result is … Notorious! guarantees the consistency of the reality, the sinthome provokes a different consistency of the inconsistent Real as the One-missing. In the context of global capitalism, there is no doubt Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM that the logic of capital supports both the movement from the Symbolic to the Real and vice Comment [37]: In other words, “What the world needs now / is love, sweet love.” versa. By subsuming any form of the pre-symbolic (if any) reality and propagating the Note the radical difference of this message from Pérez-Gómez’s Built Upon Love, in that P-G does not seem able to thematize imaginary fantasies, the symbolic code of capitalism infiltrates the kernel of our jouissance. negation in any form. He is “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places,” so to speak By becoming increasingly self-sufficient and abstract, financial capitalism transforms the (song from the long forgotten bad film with John Travolta, Urban Cowboy). Real as the impossible into the normal that becomes domesticated within the law of perverse desires. If capitalism as superegoic function forces us to enjoy by constituting both Law and its transgression, any post-capitalist fantasy should begin outside this self-imploding expansion. It must begin with the contingent encounter with the impossible, working towards the collective organization of a different possibility out of the impossibility. However, the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM crucial message of Lacan’s teaching lies in the vision that this organization is neither the Comment [38]: Park puts the “forced choice” situation of phenomenology so militant logic of the generic multiplicity supported by the faithful subject, nor the vitalist well! We are looking for the third pill, the one Morpheus logic of the creative becoming accompanied by the affirmation of life; rather, it performs the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM Comment [39]: I’m interested in this praxis of a vigilant listener of the Real-izable Real. Therefore, when Lacan proclaims his term in relation to the poetic implementation of the acousmatic voice dystopian vision of the progress of civilization by stating that “there is no progress, because and blindness that sees (Tiresius etc.) and the apotropaic role of “seeing what you should not, or technically cannot, see.” there cannot be any. Man goes round in circles if what I say about his structure is true, Here the idea of readiness is critical. It is the technical preparation for such events 33 because the structure of man is toric...the world is toric,” one should not hesitate to as epiphanies (CD — hope you are paying attention!) combine this topological vision of politics based on torus as a structure with an empty centre Don Kunze 3/3/14 10:49 AM Comment [40]: The reference to the torus is also Vichian — the ideal eternal 33 Lacan, S24, 14/12/1976. history is purely a ricorso, a re-circling. with the Lacanian conception of the modality in terms of the praxis of writing. “The Real is the impossible to simply write, or in other words, does not cease not to be written. The Real, is the possible waiting to be written.”34 Here Lacan identifies the Real as the possible, not the Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM impossible. However, let us note that while “not cease not to be written” fits into the Comment [41]: Although we must now pay attention to the question of “possible Lacanian formula of impossibility, “waiting to be written” does not fit into any of the under what conditions?” This emphasizes an active idea of the performative aspect of speculative theory (and art) — poiesis in Lacanian modalities of necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility. Writing is the both critical and productive senses. Don Kunze 3/5/14 8:26 AM place where the impossible could meet the possible. Nevertheless, it is imperative that this Comment [42]: In other words, the L- scheme, based on Aristotle’s logical possibility is not the one that belongs to the pre-established structure of the four types of the square. But, where this is shown to be a twist (i.e. toroid), as is the case in the modality, but an unknown possibility that will mobilize all four modalities in an “bolagram” zairja, writing is the place where the impossible meets the possible. unprecedented way. Therefore, following and expanding Lacan’s teaching, let us not hesitate to produce a new signifier in the form of the matheme by writing the formula that could be read as the “sinthomatic relation beyond the barred fantasm”: Σ Ø Σ ($ ◊ a).

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