The Letter, Issue 69, 2020, pages 51-56
Sick, Dying, Dead, and Buried…Rotten and Forgotten
Monica Errity
This paper explores Lacan’s concept of the second death and its significance for an ethics of psychoanalysis.
Keywords: Psychoanalysis; ethics; second death; desire; Antigone
Between reading Lacan’s seminar on ethics, dealing with the threat of the coronavirus and watching some children playing, I was put in mind of a game I used to play with others as a child. We called it ‘sick, dying, dead and buried’. It works on the principle of players in the game trying to avoid being hit by a ball. Each time a player is hit, they move through the different levels of sick, dying etc., and once they are hit they try to hit someone else with the ball. It certainly seems like a game for our times. Any accounts I’ve heard of the game only had the levels sick, dying, dead and buried, then you’re out of the game. I’m not sure where the last two stages, ‘rotten and forgotten’ came from in our game but I always thought of it as an extension of the game. The game’s not over just because you’re dead and buried: you’re not truly dead until you’re forgotten.
I bring this to your attention because I think it illustrates something of what Lacan is talking about when he introduces the idea of the second death in his seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. In this short paper I want to look a little closer at what he says about it and its relevance for an ethics of psychoanalysis.
In preparing the ground for the introduction of the notion of the second death Lacan draws on a passage from the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette. Here Sade puts forward what Lacan calls a wild theory - that nature requires the destructive acts of man to bring about its creations e.g., acts like burning scrubland so that new growth may appear and life is renewed. The implications being, the vices of man are of more value than the virtues. Lacan quotes Sade:
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