1-25-11 Lacan, My Teaching

“So, You Will Have Heard Lacan”

Lacan works through the question of Freud’s influence by arguing that Freud broke with previous philosophers with his idea that thought was embodied, that the essence of thought is not a self-transparent act; for Lacan, thought does not work hierarchically, but instead, on three different registers: Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real.

“My Teaching, Its Nature and Its Ends”

Lacan responds to charges of structuralism, saying that his theory might seem like shit at first glance, but shit actually has a lot to say about history and culture.  Lacan also subtly makes his objectors feel like shit.

“The Place, Origin and End of My Teaching”

Summary: Lacan positions himself against the way that psychoanalysis is currently practiced as a cure, which is a misreading of Freud; instead, psychoanalysis is the practice of actively thinking up a new way of talking about something we seem to know intuitively.

Close Reading:

“It seems refutable, but it is irrefutable.  And that is precisely what the unconscious is.  It’s a fact, a new fact.  We have to begin to think up something that can explain it, can explain why there are such things as unconscious thoughts.  It’s not self-evident.” (8)

Lacan uses “it” frequently in My Teaching.  We could attribute this to the slightly more informal lecture style, but in this particular passage, placing a third person pronoun as the subject of the sentence three times distances Lacan’s final point from its referent.  If we trace “it” back to the beginning of the paragraph that this passage belongs to, “it” is the objection.  The objection is objecting to the idea of the thinking unconscious.  Psychoanalysis argues for the “unconscious that thinks hard” (7), while the objection argues that “you can’t think without knowing you are thinking” (7).  Then, Lacan goes on to say that this objection doesn’t really carry any weight anymore, but no one really knows why, which indicates that Lacan is arguing that Psychoanalysis’s argument for the unconscious that thinks hard has become part of our unconscious.  This subtle argument, immediately preceding the ramped up use of “it,” points toward a more strategic use of the third person here.  The debate going on is really a debate about whether or not the unconscious is a concrete noun, something that can be perceived by the senses, or an abstract noun, something that names a quality or idea.  “It” takes the place of “unconscious” because, in this particular passage, the debate hasn’t been resolved yet.

The sentence structure that Lacan uses in this passage is also notable.  There is repetition in three sentences, which mirrors, reinforces, or reverses meaning.  There is “refutable, irrefutable,” “fact, new fact,” and “think explain, explain unconscious.”  In the first sentence, the two clauses are independent and joined by the coordinating conjunction “but.”  The first clause of the parallel structure is reversed by this use of “but” and also by the negative construction of refutable in the second clause.  A closer look at the verbs, though, makes the parallel structure a bit uneven.  “Seems” and “is” are both intransitive verbs, but “seems” indicates sensory perception, while “is” indicates essence independent of sense.  Written another way, this sentence could look like this: “The objection to the thinking unconscious seems refutable, but the objection to the thinking unconscious is actually irrefutable.”  Because this sentence is structured in a parallel way, the “it” can seem and be at the same time, even though the sentence is weighted more towards being than seeming.

In the second repetitive structure, “it” refers to a new subject, the “unconscious” in the previous sentence.  The dependent clause after the comma reinforces, renames, and revises the first independent clause.  “Fact” can mean something that is actually the case, but it can also mean something that is done or performed.  In the first clause, “fact” refers to the idea that the unconscious exists or has being (“that is precisely what the unconscious is”), and the second clause reinforces the idea that it has being.  But the addition of “new” indicates that we weren’t always conscious of the unconscious as such, which is a performance of the way the thinking unconscious works.

We have to begin to think up something that can explain it, can explain why there are such things as unconscious thoughts.

In the third repetitive structure, Lacan again reinforces the first independent clause with the second dependent clause.  The “can explain” in each clause mirror* each other, but they are separated because each “explain” refers to something different.  The first “explain” is in a restrictive clause referring to “something”.  “Something” is part of a prepositional phrase connected to an infinitive adverb clause.  In this part, we are thinking of something, which becomes the explanation for the unconscious.  In the second half of the sentence, “explain” is immediately followed by another restrictive clause.  Instead of referring to a noun, it refers to the repeated verb explain, which reinforces what exactly we are explaining.  The reason why I use “mirror” to explain what is going on in this repetitive structure is because the different uses of “explain” reflect upon each other and illuminate how this usage is reinforcing Lacan’s idea of the thinking unconscious.

I’m interested in this passage because I think it demonstrates how Lacan uses repetition with a twist to explain how things aren’t as they seem.  At first glance, we may think one way about what Lacan is saying, but upon further examination, we change our minds a bit about the nature of the sentence, what it is trying to say.  There’s a constant revision going on, which makes Lacan’s writing slightly maddening, but also fascinating and fun.

*I realize that using this word to talk about Lacan is highly loaded, but I want to go with it for now and see if further reading will shed some light on and complicate this rhetorical technique.  Then again, it might totally destroy what I’m trying to say here.