Lacan's Joyce quotes

Sinthome is an old way of spelling what has more recently been spelt symptom. This orthographic modification clearly marks the date at which Greek was injected into French, into my language. Likewise, in the first chapter of Ulysses, Joyce expresses the wish that we should hellenise, that we should inject the hellenic language into something -- one is not sure into what, since it is not Gaelic; even though Ireland is the subject, Joyce had to write in English. Joyce wrote in English in such a way that as [. . .] Philippe Sollers has remarked in Tel Quel the English language no longer exists. (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 18 November, 1975, 1)

It is hard not to see that a certain relation to language [la parole] is increasingly imposed on [Joyce], to the point where he ends up breaking or dissolving language itself, by decomposing it, going beyond phonetic identity" (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 17 February, 1976, 43).

It is obvious that I don't know everything, and in particular, I don't know, when I read Joyce -- for that's what's frightful I am reduced to having to read him! -- what he believed about himself. It is absolutely sure that I haven't analysed him -- and I regret it. But anyway, he was clearly not very disposed to it. (Seminar XXIII, 10 February, 1976, 37)


This other signifier is not alone. The stomach of the Other, the big Other, is full of them. This stomach is like some monstrous Trojan horse that provides the foundations for the fantasy of a totality-knowledge [savoir-totalité]. It is, however, clear that its function entails that something comes and strikes it from without, otherwise nothing will ever emerge from it. And Troy will never be taken. (Seminar XVII, 33)

There must be something in the signifier which resonates. It is surprising that this has been in no way apparent to the English philosophers. I call them philosophers because they are not psychoanalysts -- they have a rock-solid belief that language has no effect. They imagine that there are drives and so on, [. . .], for they don't know what a drive is: the echo in the body of the fact that there is speech [dire]; but for this speech to resonate, [. . .], the body must be sensitive to it. (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 18 November, 1975, 4)

Read some pages from Finnegans Wake without trying to understand anything. It reads, but as someone of my circle remarked to me, that's because we can feel present in it the jouissance of the one who wrote it. (JSI, 5)

this joy, this jouissance is the only thing that we're able to get a hold of in his text. [. . .]. Joyce gives it all the power of language without, for all that, any of it being analyzable, which is what strikes the reader and leaves one literally dumbfounded -- in the sense that one is struck dumb. (JSI, 8)

Joyce is not hooked to the unconscious - Lacan

The triplicity which the knot allows to be illustrated results from a consistence which is only feigned by the imaginary, a foundational hole which emerges in the symbolic, and an ex-sistence which belongs to the real, as its fundamental characteristic. This method offers no hope of breaking the constitutive knot of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. [. . . ]. [. . .] we observe desire. From this observation we infer its cause is objectal [objectivée]. The desire for knowledge encounters obstacles. As an embodiment of this obstacle I have invented the knot.

The knot must come undone. The knot is the only support conceivable for a relation between something and something else. (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 9 December, 1975, 9-10; my emphasis)

In a fabulatory manner, I propose that the real, as I think it in my pan-se is comprised really -- the real effectively lying -- of the hole which subsists in that its consistence is nothing more than the totality of the knot which ties it together with the symbolic and the imaginary. The knot which may be termed borromean cannot be cut without dissolving the myth it offers of the subject, as non-supposé, in other words the subject as real, no more varied than each body which can be given the sign speaking-being [parlêtre]. Only due to this knot can the body be given a status that is respectable, in the everyday sense of the word. (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 9 December, 1975, 10)

an art that has to do with a call/appeal to the real, not as linked to the body, but as different. At a distance from the body there is the possibility of something I termed last time resonance or consonance. In relation to its poles, the body and language, the real is what harmonizes [fait accord]." (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 9 December, 1975, 11)

Joyce wonders why [. . .] he [Stephen] has nothing against [the boy]. [. . .] he metaphorizes nothing less than his relation to his body. He observes that the whole affair has emptied out; he expresses this by saying that it's like a fruit being peeled." (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 11 May, 1976, 59)

It is easy to imagine that the imaginary will bugger off -- if the unconscious allows it to, and it incontestably does. [. . .]. One thinks against a signifier [. . .] one leans against a signifier in order to think." (Seminar XXIII, lesson of 11 May, 1976, 63)



Thanks to

:http://www.lineofbeauty.org/index.php/s/article/view/8/51



A beautiful inscription by Juliet Flower MacCannell as follows:

"Lacan places the imaginary in a direct relation with the real (in contrast to his original definition of the imaginary, where it flees the real). The reason why this is of extreme importance to us today is (as it should by now be clear) the unstated matter of my paper. As the globe is increasingly encircled by the plenitude of "known knowledge," by an "aléthosphère"[Mass Media] brimming over with the avatars of pseudo jouissance (lathouses), the negative effect on the individual of "the discourse of the university" (and its twin, capitalist discourse) needs to be much more fully assessed than one has thought. The globalized imperative to "enjoy" what is already accumulated, already at hand, is precisely what blocks desire: we want want, we lack lack, we can no longer desire. As such, we cannot therefore have any possible relation -- desiring, analytic, knowledgeable, and yes, even unconscious -- to our own jouissance."