The Letter, Issue 47, Summer 2011, Pages 67 - 83
Guy Le Gaufey
LACAN’S NOTALL
Logical consistency, clinical consequences
Translated by Cormac Gallagher SCHOLION
A MISUSE OF METAPHOR
The final part of Guy Le Gaufey‘s book ―Lacan‘s Notall – The Scholion: A Misuse of Metaphor, translated by Cormac Gallagher, deals with Lacan‘s treatment of the Borromean Knot and his attempt to use logic to deal with the problematic of sexual non-relationship of the inexistence of such a relationship. Le Gaufey traces Lacan‘s efforts to make a distinction between the two but to our surprise he concludes that Lacan felt his attempt ended in a failure – thus calling topology, or one aspect of topology – knot- theory into question.
Keywords: sexual non-relationship; inexistence of relationship; non-enan tiomorphic; consistencies; Borromean knot; reversal of perspective
Quite imperceptibly, between 1972 and 1975, Lacan brings about a slippage in the negation regarding sexual relationship, going from 'there is no relationship‘ to 'there is a non-relationship‘, from the inexistence of such a relationship to the existence of such a non-relationship. The nuance might appear rhetorical if there were not grafted onto it a change of perspective which takes support on the key instrument in the teaching of these years of the seventies: the Borromean knot.