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The Letter, Issue 45, Autumn 2010, Pages 37 - 70 LACAN’S NOTALL: LOGICAL CONSISTENCY, CLINICAL CONSEQUENCES PROLOGUE AND LOGIC OF THE SEXUAL FAULT- LINE Guy le Gaufey Translated by Cormac Gallagher Prologue This Prologue is a road map for the circuitous journey which Le Gaufey will follow in his work on the Logic of the Sexual Fault-Line , which can be read as a continuation of the Prologue . The starting point is classical logic, then moving on to the quarrels of logic in the Middle Ages and coming to an end- point at Lacan‟s changes to traditional logic which enabled him to develop his formulae of sexuation. Keywords: universal affirmative and negative propositions, part object, not- all, Borromean knot, neither one nor two. Logic is not known for its close relationship with the sexes. The p's and q's that populate propositional calculus do not stimulate licentious thoughts in many. Likewise inasmuch as we think about the sexes we imagine them as poorly regulated by the literal rigour that makes logic stick to its priapism with regard to the truth. And nevertheless…scarcely have we convinced ourselves that the attraction called sexual is not reduced in human beings to the interplay of pheromones, but draws considerable resources from the symbolic material so pregnant in this species, that we see a curious questioning opening up: if there are two sexes, which attract oneanother, which is the one and which is the other? "It's all the same!‟ our contemporaries will say, each is the other of the other – therefore each is one. I propose in what follows not to go so quickly, and to take the time required to go from one to two by posing that the latter must be the other of the first. Already logical concern shows the tip of its nose. We have a presentiment that the otherness at the heart of a couple is not that established in the heart of a plurality, and that the difference which separates one from the other is perhaps not proper to either the one or the other. In any case things become complicated in the measure that the basic logical instruments – the same, the other, difference, quality, the identical – are from the very start required to articulate anything whatsoever about the sexes in the discursive order . Could it be that the noble philosophical clothing of these instruments is in fact completely impregnated by the muffled quarrel of the sexes, and that certain logical pillars (and some foundations of the social order) have been constructed to regulate a sexual confusion considered to be fatal? That very early on people began to think, including logically, against the sexual thing?

The Letter, Issue 45, Autumn 2010, Pages 17 - 36 Reading L’Étourdit: The Second Turn [1] Chapter 2: The Discourse of the Analyst Christian Fierens This continuation of Christian Fieren's 2002 book, Lecture de L'étourdit. Lacan 1972. (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002), is translated here into English by Cormac Gallagher. Fierens follows the four sections of Lacan‟s work, in the previous paper, and in doing so, provides an excellent exposition of the many difficult passages, allusions, and references. In so doing, he enables us to re-read Lacan which facilitates a movement which goes beyond the meaning of the said, to the ab-sense of the sense. This opens up ever- expanding vistas as symbolized in aspherical topology which provides a path to the enormity of the task involved in psychoanalytic discourse. Keywords: labite; love-insurance; phallic function/topology; the real; cross-cap (209) Analysis operates from ab-sense and has only one reference: the phallic function developed in the topology of the cross-cap. It is the psychoanalytic discourse that produces this reference which operates only on the structure of the asemantic signifier. But what is the social bond brought into play in the psychoanalytic discourse? In a first section, we will see that “the psychoanalytic group is impossible”; this impossibility implies that psychoanalytic discourse follows a thread that runs through the ideologies of our time (second section); essentially movable, the psycho- analytic discourse does not admit of any normalisation (third section); it will have to be constructed from the impossible of other discourses, therefore from the real and from the o-object (fourth section).

The Letter, Issue 45, Autumn 2010, Pages 1 - 16 L’étourdit by Jacques Lacan A Bilingual Presentation of the Second Turn, Second Part [1] Translated by Cormac Gallagher Second turn, second part: the discourse of the analyst Chapter 2: The discourse of the analyst 1. The psychoanalytic group is impossible (31a-32c) I have the task of clearing the way for the status of a discourse, there where I locate that there is…something of discourse: and I locate it from the social bond to which are submitted the bodies that labitent [ 2] this discourse. My undertaking appears hopeless (is so by that very fact, this is the result of hopelessness) because it is impossible that psychoanalysts should form a group. Nevertheless, the psychoanalytic discourse (this is me clearing the way) is precisely the one that can establish a social bond cleansed of any group- necessity. Since people know that I do not mince my words when it is a matter of putting into relief an appreciation which, though deserving a stricter approach must do without it, I would say that I measure the group-effect by the amount of imaginary obscenity it adds to the effect of discourse.

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The Letter, Issue 44, Summer 2010, Pages 59 - 65 Through the Lenses of the Cartel... Mary Cheyrou-Lagrèze This article contrives to illustrate the fact that committing oneself to participation in a cartel requires an informed leap into the unknown; that operating in obscurity demands radical questioning of received as well as preconceived ideas; that words and meanings outside Lacan's texts are limited, and inside, incomplete. Yet in the "not-alls‟ and the "half-saids' of the cartel we can form a social bond… by way of the psychoanalytic discourse. Keywords: apprenticeship; transmission; discourses; cartel, social bond, writing. The Irish School for Lacanian Psychoanalysis (also referred to in other articles in this issue), was formed in 2008 to further the work of psychoanalysis as elaborated by Jacques Lacan in the Founding Act, Adjunct and Preamble. [ 1] Active participation in a "cartel‟ - designed to make possible a new style of work that promotes on-going formation, as set out in the aforementioned texts - was singled out by the founders of the School as a necessary task of its first year of functioning. As an introductory step, cartels made up of experienced and training analysts chosen by lot, were formed. They were then invited to investigate the statement of Jacques Lacan in L ' étourdit: „The psychoanalytic discourse… can establish a social bond cleansed of any group necessity‟, [2] and produce written evidence of their individual experience .

The Letter, Issue 44, Summer 2010, Pages 47 - 57 What might a School be? Barry O’Donnell This paper is a response to Lacan's reference to the ancient philosophical schools when he was launching the school in 1964. It aims to shed light on the reference through a consideration of material which describes the ancient schools. This material indicates that Lacan‟s school differs in its arrangement and aims from other educational and training institutions. Keywords: School, antiquity, Lacan, work-transference In one of the closed seminars during the Crucial problems for Psychoanalysis Seminar , in January 1965, just some months after the act of founding L'Ecole Francaise de Psychanalyse / L'Ecole Freudienne de Paris Lacan indicates that it is "a school ... in the sense that this term has been employed since antiquity.‟ Importantly he emphasises that it is “elsewhere”, that it is not the Seminar. In the Preamble of 1964 Lacan describes his idea of a school as having the sense of "certain places of refuge, indeed operational bases against what could already be called the discontents of civilisation‟. [1] What follows are some points gathered from a cursory consideration of some key texts describing the ancient schools of Athens with a view to, one, better appreciating Lacan's proposal for a Freudian school in Paris in 1964; [2] and two, allowing this material to shed light on the current project of the Irish School for Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

The Letter, Issue 44, Summer 2010, Pages 33 - 45 What is an author.... a question for the cartels? Patricia McCarthy After a year's experience of being part of one of ISLP's cartels, the question of authorship emerged, not in the sense of plagiarism or of who can claim ownership over an idea or a text. Our question about authorship centres on the big Other, the field of a knowledge devoid of subjectivity, unconscious knowledge where one does not know who it is that knows . The co-ordinates of the big Other, understood as utterly distinguishable from the One, will be questioned with reference to Foucault's address to the Collège de France, entitled "What is an author?”. This is a necessary preliminary to grasping the full power of Lacan's four discourses. Keywords: avatar; authorship; cartel; the big Other; empty set; topology Today, I am down to speak in the session entitled The Psychoanalytic Discourse and its Avatars . [1] This calls for a definition of what an avatar is and at the same time a recommendation that for anyone who hasn't yet seen James Cameron's film of the same name Avatar which was nominated for best movie at the Oscars last year, it is indeed worth watching. In the movie, a wheelchair-bound marine is recruited to cross over as an avatar into a fantastical planet-world called Pandora which is to be colonised by man for its riches. Some sort of template/image of his brain is commandeered and by the simple method of sleeping in a special sleep machine for protracted periods of time, he crosses over as an avatar to a place of Otherness, a place of spirit people who are directly linked to the dendritic world around them, their horses, flying birds, roots of trees and the forest vegetation. Over time, his allegiance shifts to this Other world and thereby an allegorical tale of love and loss unfolds. This not only embraces principles of neuroscience - where the infinite dendritic capacity of neuronal activity is beguilingly hinted at, and how, in an utterlymysterious fashion, brain activity must, at a concrete level, beget who we are - but, also embraces our question, the question of desire, as to which is in fact more real, the dream or waking reality? I fondly think that Freud, whose genius gave us A Project for a Scientific Psychology would have loved a film like this!

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The Letter, Issue 43, Spring 2010, Pages 111 - 119 “You’re not going out like that, are you?” Helen Sheehan This paper situates Frank Wedekind’s play, Spring Awakening, in a Freudian-Lacanian framework. The masked man who makes his appearance towards the end of the play is said to be a mediator between life and death for the adolescents, just as the preface written by J. Lacan suggests that the masked man serves as one of the names of the father. Keywords: Freud; Lacan; adolescents; suicide; masked man; the names of the father I am basing my talk today on a play by the German, Frank Wedekind (1864- 1918), called Spring Awakening . [1] Written in 1891, it created a scandal for the twenty-six year old playwright and it took sixteen years for German censorship on the drama to be lifted and then with crucial concessions. In 1906 it was put on in Berlin by Marx Reinhardt. In England the play was banned from public performance until 1963. In its first performance at the National Theatre London in 1974 the lead role was taken by Veronica Quilligan from Rathmines. The play is a series of brief scenes dealing with the awakening of sexuality in three adolescents, Wendla, Moritz and Melchior.

The Letter, Issue 43, Spring 2010, Pages 107 - 110 Preface to The Awakening of Spring [1] Jacques Lacan In this introduction to a play by Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) which deals with the awakening of sexuality in three adolescents: Moritz, Melchior and Wendla, Lacan argues that it anticipates Freud’s and even his own – “There is no sexual relationship” – treatment of the real of sex. Is the Father who appears here as a masked Man merely another name for the white Goddess, lost in the night of time? The non-dupes err. Keywords: Wedekind; sexual awakening; The man; The woman; proper names So then we have a dramatist tackling in 1891 the business of what is involved for boys is in making love with girls, stressing that they would never dream of it without the awakening of their dreams. It is remarkable that this is staged as such: in other words to demonstrate in it that it is not satisfying for all, and even to the point of admitting that if it fails, it is for each and every one.

The Letter, Issue 43, Spring 2010, Pages 79 - 105 The Torus – An Introduction Tony Hughes Lacan used topology to theorise in a scientific way the structure of the subject. The topological field is a central part of his thinking and the first indications of this took place in the Rome Discourse in 1953 and continued up to the end of his life by which time topology had, perhaps, inspired his theory of the Borromean knot which led to his exposition of the sinthome. Lacan initially focused on four main areas of topology – the torus, the Moebius strip, the Klein Bottle and the cross-cap. This paper is an introduction to the torus with particular emphasis on three sessions of the seminar on Identification , namely 28 February, 7 March and 14 March 1962. Lacan’s use of a multitude of diagrams is seen to be helpful when following the development of this complex aspect of his theoretical analysis of the structure of the subject. Keywords: torus; subject; unary trait; cut; interior eight; Russell’s paradox At first sight, topology would seem to be entirely foreign to the clinic of psychoanalysis. We see “funny” topological shapes drawn on paper by Lacan as we wind our way through his seminars and they evoke a response of anxiety and bewilderment. We ask ourselves “what on earth have these shapes to do with the human subject?” Our initial reaction may lead to a foreclosure to engage with the diagrams and the logical development accompanying them which assists in the conclusion that Lacan draws that topology is not a metaphor for structure but is structure itself. Our view of topology would be even more perplexing if we were to engage with this topic from the perspective of L’Etourdit written in July 1972, which has no topological diagrams, the intent of which is to situate the logic of the process purely in the symbolic and remove any imaginary overtones which might distort our understanding of the way in which it should be applied.

The Letter, Issue 43, Spring 2010, Pages 53 - 77 Above the Horizon there is no Sky [1] Jean-Pierre Georgin and Erik Porge This paper takes one of Lacan’s “o objects” – the look – as its starting point. Lacan developed his thinking on the implications of perspective geometry for painting in 1966 in his seminar on The Object of Psychoanalysis where he showed its importance in Velasquez’s Las Meninas. Georgin and Porge develop the linkages between projective geometry and topology in order to show the gap which exists between the look and the gaze – the look being on the side of the subject and the gaze being on the side of the object, hence opening up a gap which is one of the avatars of the cross-cap. Keywords: Lacan; o object; the look; topology; painting; projective plane As Lacan recalls on the occasion of the anniversary of the twenty-third centenary of the death of Aristotle, the o is “complex in the extreme”. If there is one aspect of this “object” which is imagined by the breast, the faeces, the look, the voice, there is another one which draws its real from a (logical or mathematical) writing and designates topological presentations.

The Letter, Issue 43, Spring 2010, Pages 17 - 51 Reading L’Étourdit: The Second Turn[ 1] Christian Fierens Lacan’s L'étourdit eschews diagrams and other imaginary supports but refers to the “already articulated” developments of his earlier teaching, notably in the seminars on Identification and The Object of Psychoanalysis. While these articulations form the basis of Christian Fierens’ commentary, he adds explanatory figures and tables which open the way to a reading of Lacan’s highly condensed pages. Keywords: Aristotle; Moebius strip; cross-cap; formulae of sexuation (171) The second turn, a re-presentation of the first, is going to show how the notall was already implied from the beginning of the journey, from the first pages of L’étourdit , from the philosophical search for sense. The riddle of the Sphynx (or the notall) determines the course of phallic logic from its first steps; it confers on it a dimension which, left in the shadows in the first turn, will appear only during this second turn. The Notall touched on by the Philosophe r (25d; 469) Aristotle himself seems to have respected the logic of the notall: “the only universal formula that he does not seem to have allowed himself to pronounce is all women ” ( Of a Discourse which might not be a Semblance , 9 June 1971). This said, Lacan has followed a different path to Aristotle: instead of proceeding by philosophical deduction, he was inspired by a “different amusement”, namely by the entertainment of sex (in old French, déduire means to amuse, to entertain, but also to make love). Starting from the absence of sexual relationship, he initiated his phallic logic, deduced sexuation from it and discovered a feminine enjoyment – notall – beyond masculine enjoyment.

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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