The Letter, Issue 61, Spring 2016, Pages 1 -22
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE. A SECOND READING OF LACAN’S L’ÉTOURDIT
Christian Fierens
C. Fierens, Le discours psychanalytique. Une deuxième lecture de l’étourdit de Lacan. Toulouse, Point hors ligne, Erès, 2012. Trans. C. Gallagher 2014.
TABLE OF CONTENTS[1]
CHAPTER 4
THE STUFF OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE AND ITS CUT
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE: THE SAME STUFF
The philosopher can say the truth. He can speak about everything on condition of taking into account that he is speaking about it (Kojève). It’s his trade. He knows that it is doable, on condition of clearly knowing that the truth will remain a half-said. Not only will all never be said, the said will be never complete. But much more, even if he takes his own speech into account, the philosopher will always remain at the dit-mensions of the said, the truth does not get away from the said and does not touch saying; even if it [truth] takes it into account, saying remains outside. The said is constitutive of the approach of the philosopher. To be sure, the philosopher confronts chaos, the radical real, absence, the question of the void. He does so by fitting the saids together into a coherent discourse creating concepts and organised on a plane of immanence which acts as locus for these concepts (Deleuze, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?). The chaos only appears under the species of dit-mensions.
At this level, the psychoanalytic discourse is perfectly well inscribed into the discourse of the philosopher, it organises chaos under the species of ditmensions named imaginary, symbolic and real.