Will Greenshields - An Approach to Lacans XXVIth Seminar Topology and Time
 
THE LETTER 62 Summer 2016-pages 71-97
 
This paper outlines an approach to Lacan’s XXVIth seminar Topology and Time. It begins with an examination of Lacan’s substitution of the philosopher’s being and time for the psychoanalyst’s topology and time by looking at Lacan’s deployment of the Moebius strip in clarifying the paradoxical temporality of the subject and the signifer. It then introduces the Borromean knot as a writing of the Real and attempts to explain the distinction Lacan makes between three different accesses to the Real: modelling, demonstration and monstration. Following a delineation of the place of the symptom and the unconscious in a nodal topology, this paper concludes by raising some questions about the temporality of the Borromean knot and outlining two of the concepts that Lacan introduced in Topology and Time – namely, ‘the generalised Borromean’ and ‘homotopic inversion’.