L’étourdit: First Part of the Second Turn
The Letter, Issue 43, Spring 2010, Pages 1 - 15
L’étourdit by Jacques Lacan
A Bilingual Presentation of the Second Turn (First Part)
Translator’s note:
The most notable modification since Issue 41 of The Letter is the decision to abandon the translation of “dit” by “what is said” and go for “said”. More controversially, this leads to the rendering of “dits” as “saids”. So Lacan's ubiquitous “dire” and “dit” become “saying” and “said”. Instead of presenting the whole of the second turn, we have decided to publish it in four parts, each followed by Christian Fierens' commentary. As before, the numbers in brackets indicate the pages in the Scilicet and Autres écrits versions.
Cormac Gallagher
Second turn, first part: The discourse of the analyst and interpretation
The notall touched on by the philosopher (25d; 469)
I took pleasure in pointing out that Aristotle tends this way, curiously by providing us with terms that I am taking up again in a different amusement. Would it not have been interesting all the same if he had steered his World from the notall to deny its universal? With that existence would no longer have etiolated from particularity, and for Alexander his master the warning might have been worthwhile: if it is from an ab-sense like-no-other by which the universe seemed to be denied that the notall shies away, there is a case for saying that he would have been the very first to laugh at his plan to “empire” over the universe. (26)
It is precisely there that notsofoolish, the philosopher plays all the better the air of the half-said in that he can do so with a good conscience. He is entertained to say the truth: like the fool he knows that it is quite doable, on condition that he does not suture (Sutor…) beyond his soleness.
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