The Founding Act, the Cartel and the Riddle of the PLUS ONE

In his Founding Act (1964) Jacques Lacan established a School organised around small working groups tasked with enabling each individual to produce written work. Their radically innovative character lay not just in a curious name – cartel – but also in the very tightly defined structure requiring a strict limitation of 3–5 members PLUS ONE as well as an obligation to permute on a regular basis. For almost half a century attempts to implement this apparently well-defined project have met with successive failures caused mainly by a confusion, partly cultivated by Lacan, around the real or imaginary status of this plus one and its function in promoting the work of the cartel.…