Abstract
This extensive chapter on the cut launches an exploration into Lacan’s career-long reliance on topological modelling, which culminated in a surfeit of the practice in his late Seminars, which were almost conducted without words and whilst ‘Lacan was no longer anything but thought’, as he has been described by François Cheng. The chapter files the cuts of 2001 into the categories of ‘major’ (each monolithic cut: inaugurating hominid, then computer, sentience, and those that beckon the beyond) and ‘minor’, and relays the cuts found in the formations of the topologies of the cross-cap and Borromean linkages against the ‘Freudian structures’ of neurosis, perversion, and psychosis, and their dialects. A heuristic topological map is laid out, which it is hoped offers bearings for future explorations.
The subject, the Cartesian subject, is what is presupposed by the unconscious[.] The Other is the dimension required by the fact that speech affirms itself as truth. The unconscious is, between the two of them, their cut in action.
—Jacques Lacan, ‘Position of the Unconscious’ [1960, rev. 1964], in Écrits, p.712
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Notes
- 1.
Jacques Lacan, ‘The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud’ [1957], in Écrits, p.417. Lacan states in ‘The Subversion of the Subject’ that ‘we analysts must bring everything back to the cut qua function in discourse, the most significant being the cut that constitutes a bar between the signifier and the signified.’ See Jacques Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious’ [1960], in Écrits, p.678.
- 2.
Jacques Lacan, ‘On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis’ [1955–1956], in Écrits, p.486, note 14. The R schema is depicted on p.462.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Ibid., pp.486–487, note 14.
- 5.
For the theses pertaining to the unificatory/separatory principle, see Bristow, Joyce and Lacan: Reading, Writing, and Psychoanalysis. In a forthcoming review of this work, Raul Moncayo offers an interesting rephrasing of it as the ‘conjunction/disjunction principle’.
- 6.
Lacan, Seminar IV: The Object Relation, p.50. Indeed, to locate ‘the first Freudian dialectic of the theory of sexuality’, it might well be worth going back to the first edition of Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality of 1905, in which he states, of the object relation: ‘the process of finding an object, prepared for since the earliest stages of childhood, takes place on the psychical side. At a time at which the first sexual satisfaction was still linked to the intake of food, the sexual drive had a sexual object outside the infant’s own body—the mother’s breast. It was only later that the drive lost that object, just at the time, perhaps, when the child was able to form an overall idea of the person to whom the organ affording it satisfaction belonged. As a rule, the sexual drive then becomes autoerotic, and only after the latency period has been surmounted is the original relation restored. It is not without good reason that the sucking of the child at the mother’s breast has become the model of every loving relationship. The finding of an object is in fact a re-finding of it.’ See Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: The 1905 Edition, ed. by Philippe van Haute and Herman Westerink, trans. by Ulrike Kistner (London: Verso, 2016) p.73. In the Standard Edition translation—replicating the 1924 edition—James Strachey points out in a footnote that this ‘paragraph[,] written in 1905, does not appear to harmonize with the remarks on the subject […] written in 1915 and 1920.’ See James Strachey, ‘Footnote 1’, in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, in SE, VII, p.222.
- 7.
Jean Laplanche, New Directions for Psychoanalysis [1987], trans. by David Macey (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) p.45. In ‘Beyond the “Reality Principle”’, Lacan states: ‘the psychoanalyst, in order not to detach analytic experience from the language of the situation that it implies, the situation of the interlocutor, comes upon the simple fact that language, prior to signifying something, signifies to someone.’ See Jacques Lacan, ‘Beyond the “Reality Principle”’ [1936], in Écrits, p.66.
- 8.
Jacqueline Rose, ‘The Imaginary’ [1975], in Sexuality in the Field of Vision [1986] (London: Verso Radical Thinkers, 2005) p.189. Rose is here quoting (and translating) from the anonymously-authored article ‘Le clivage du sujet et son identification’, Scilicet, 2/3 (1970) 103–136 (p.120). Unless written by Lacan, all articles in Scilicet were anonymous. Lacan himself utilises the topology of the cross-cap in his ninth Seminar, Identification.
- 9.
In Full Metal Jacket there is a failure of a major cut, which is attempted on the part of Private Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio), and which in the end culminates only in the completion of his ‘major malfunction’ (in Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s words). That is; followed by the extraordinary cut from the boot camp to ‘the shit’ of Vietnam , Private Pyle’s passage to the acts of murder and suicide does not change the trajectory of the army’s punishing training and its result in a catastrophic campaign of war. If Pyle has felt the systematic effects of this trajectory, the one thing his act does not change is this systematicity itself; it can only be seen by the others as an aberrant misfortune.
- 10.
Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire’, in Écrits, p.678.
- 11.
Jacques Lacan, ‘The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956’, in Écrits, p.392.
- 12.
It is Adrian Price who flags this up in a note to the English edition of Seminar XXIII. See Lacan, Seminar XXIII: The Sinthome, p.223, n.3.
- 13.
Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe [1957] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968) p.201.
- 14.
As Lacan delineates of the Symbolic order in this regard in Seminar IV: ‘th[e] signifying form gives a scansion to the operation of transformation which translates movement into substitution, the continuity of the real into the discontinuity of the symbolic.’ See Lacan, Seminar IV: The Object Relation, p.410.
- 15.
Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire’, in Écrits, p.678.
- 16.
Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, p.84.
- 17.
‘Indeed, Freud himself compared his discovery to the so-called Copernican revolution, emphasizing that what was at stake was once again the place man assigns himself at the center of a universe.’ See Lacan, ‘The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious’, in Écrits, p.429. Later—in ‘The Subversion of the Subject’—he draws out his Copernican response much more elaborately: ‘We must home in more precisely on what Freud himself articulates in his doctrine as constituting a “Copernican” step.
For such a step to be constituted, is it enough that a privilege should be revoked—in this case, the one that put the earth in the central place? Man’s subsequent destitution from an analogous place due to the triumph of the idea of evolution gives one the sense that such revocation implies an advantage that is confirmed by its constancy.
But can we be so sure this is an advantage or real progress? Does anything make it seem that the other truth, if we may so term revealed truth, has seriously suffered as a result? Don’t we realize that, by exalting the center, heliocentrism is no less of a lure than seeing the earth as the center, and that the existence of the ecliptic probably provided a more stimulating model of our relations with truth, before it lost much of its interest when it was reduced to being no more than the earth bowing assent?
In any case, it is not because of Darwin that men believe themselves to be any the less the best among the creatures, for it is precisely of this that he convinces them.
The use of Copernicus’ name as a reference has more hidden resources that touch specifically on what has already just slipped from my pen regarding our relation to the true—namely, the emergence of the ellipse as being not unworthy of the locus from which the so-called higher truths take their name. The revolution is no less important even though it concerns only “celestial revolutions.”
From that point on, to dwell on it no longer means simply revoking some idiotic notion stemming from the religious tradition, which, as can be seen well enough, is none the worse for it, but rather of tying more closely together the regime of knowledge and the regime of truth.
For if Copernicus’ work, as others have remarked before me, is not as Copernican as we think it is, it is because the doctrine of double truth continues to offer shelter to a knowledge that, up until then, it must be said, appeared to be quite content with that shelter.’ See Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire’, in Écrits, p.674.
- 18.
Arthur C. Clarke, in 2001: The Making of a Myth, dir. by Paul Joyce, 2001.
- 19.
Indeed, Patrick Webster prods his readers to take ‘note that some of the most iconic moments in Kubrick’s work appear to have derived from collaboration with actors. For example: Malcolm McDowell’s singing during the attack on Mr. and Mrs. Alexander; Jack Nicholson’s gleeful shout of ‘Here’s Johnny!’; Gary Lockwood’s idea for HAL to lip-read Bowman and Poole’s lips in the space-pod; Lee Ermey’s improvised dialogue in Full Metal Jacket, and so on.’ See Patrick Webster, Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita through Eyes Wide Shut (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2011) p.303, n.14.
- 20.
Concerning this whole or absolute cessation, a (minor) criticism that could be levelled at Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic Melancholia (2011) is that its last cut—to the film’s credits—should have been to black and silence (the absence of image and sound, implying the absence of that to which they are visible and audible) only, so as to have rendered the world’s end fully utter (and that it thus may have placed its credits at the start).
- 21.
Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire’, in Écrits, p.676.
- 22.
Lacan deploys the term ‘Freudian structures’, for example, in ‘On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis’, in Écrits, p.449. As Dylan Evans states, however, it is the term ‘clinical structures’ that seems to ’predominate […] in the writings of Lacanian psychoanalysts today.’ See Evans, ‘Structure’, in An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, p.196.
- 23.
Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: The 1905 Edition, p.26.
- 24.
Evans, ‘Perversion’, in An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, p.142. To Evans’ references to the French of Seminar IV, compare Lacan, Seminar IV: The Object Relation, pp.113–114 and pp.289–290.
- 25.
See Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, p.142, in which he refers to Jacques Lacan, ‘Kant with Sade’ [1963], in Écrits, p.653.
- 26.
Thus, in her book on perversion, Stephanie Swales suggests: ‘the perverse fundamental fantasy is better written a ◇
, or the object-cause of jouissance in relation to the Other. In contrast to the obsessive’s negation of the Other, shown by the omission of the Other from 
◇ a, this formula (a ◇ 
) emphasizes the pervert’s necessity to prop up his relation to the Other. Furthermore, just as the obsessive does everything in his power to deny his own lack, such that his fundamental fantasy might be written S ◇ a instead of 
◇ a, so too does the pervert make every effort to cancel out the lack in the Other, such that his fundamental fantasy might be written a ◇ A instead of a ◇ 
.’ See Stephanie S. Swales, Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (Hove: Routledge, 2012) p.93. The writing of these last formulae without the bars is thus to suggest their purely fantasmatic bearing. - 27.
See Lacan, ‘Kant with Sade’, in Écrits, p.653. Lacan here states: ‘the lozenge ◇ is to be read as “desire for,” being read right to left in the same way, introducing an identity that is based on an absolute non-reciprocity.’ Thus, the non-reciprocity between
and a is of the same order when their positions are reversed; its effect, however, of course the inverse (i.e., in perversion, to that of
neurosis, confirming Freud). - 28.
Lacan, Seminar IV: The Object Relation, p.223.
- 29.
Lacan, Seminar X: Anxiety, p.110.
- 30.
See Lacan, Seminar XXIII: The Sinthome, p.130.
- 31.
See Raul Moncayo, Lalangue, Sinthome, Jouissance, and Nomination: A Reading Companion on Lacan’s Seminar XXIII on the Sinthome (London: Karnac, 2016) pp.v–viii. Moncayo’s extrapolation of a link of neurosis (depicted as three unconnected rings), however, seems contrary to its workings in Seminar XXIII.
- 32.
Jacques-Alain Miller, ‘A Contribution of the Schizophrenic to the Psychoanalytic Clinic (Original title, ‘La clinique d’ironie’) [1988], trans. and ed. by Ellie Ragland and Anne Pulis, The Symptom: Online Journal for Lacan.com , 2 (2002), http://www.lacan.com/contributionf.htm. Regarding the manifestation of the structure as schizophrenia, Miller here in effect stresses that because of the inextricably linked Symbolic and Real the Other’s inexistence is perceived, and an ironic approach is therefore taken to the social. On the ‘influencing machine’ attributed to experiences in the schizophrenic condition, see ‘On the Origin of the “Influencing Machine” in Schizophrenia’ [1919], in Viktor Tausk, Sexuality, War and Schizophrenia: Collected Psychoanalytic Papers, ed. by Paul Roazen, trans. by Eric Mosbacher and others (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991).
- 33.
On this, for example, see Stijn Vanheule, The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) p.163: ‘Lacan described himself as psychotic, or at least as someone who tried to be so[.] In a lecture at Yale University he said the following: ‘Psychosis is an attempt at rigor. In that sense, I would say that I am psychotic. I am psychotic for the sole reason that I always tried to be rigorous’[.] Later on, a student returned to this and asked Lacan if he was actually psychotic. His answer then was that he was not psychotic enough: ‘If I were more psychotic, I would probably be a better analyst’.
- 34.
See, for example, the chapter ‘Psychoanalysis Reduced to Zero’, in Elisabeth Roudinesco , Jacques Lacan: An Outline of a Life and a History of a System of Thought [1993], trans. by Barbara Bray (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999) pp.385–398.
- 35.
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX: Encore, p.37.
- 36.
On Joyce’s work’s relation to madness, from which he claimed it was separated by a ‘transparent sheet’, see Bristow, Joyce and Lacan: Reading, Writing, and Psychoanalysis, pp.39–64. The phrase ‘[senseless] adventure of sense’ is Jean-Luc Nancy’s, and is discussed in the aforementioned work on p.130.
- 37.
Joyce is claimed to have remarked, in French: “Je suis au bout de l’anglais [‘I’m at the end of English]’,’ […] to August Suter, and […] to another friend, ‘I have put the language to sleep.” See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce: New and Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) p.546.
- 38.
Lacan, ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’, in Écrits, p.257.
- 39.
See Lacan, Ibid. p.259: ‘In experimenting with what have been called my “short sessions,” at a stage in my career that is now over […] I was able to bring to light in a certain male subject fantasies of anal pregnancy, as well as a dream of its resolution by Cesarean section, in a time frame in which I would normally still have been listening to his speculations on Dostoyevsky’s artistry.’
- 40.
Ibid., p.258.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
This moment in Fight Club chimes with the contemporary revelation of the insertion of two non-consecutive frames of a topless woman into a background window in Disney’s The Rescuers (1977), which was discovered in 1999 when a child paused a VHS copy at exactly that point, causing the recall of around 3.5 million copies of the film. See David Mikkelson, ‘Emotional Rescue’, http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rescuers.asp
, or the object-cause of jouissance in relation to the Other. In contrast to the obsessive’s negation of the Other, shown by the omission of the Other from 
◇ a, this formula (a ◇ 
) emphasizes the pervert’s necessity to prop up his relation to the Other. Furthermore, just as the obsessive does everything in his power to deny his own lack, such that his fundamental fantasy might be written S ◇ a instead of 
◇ a, so too does the pervert make every effort to cancel out the lack in the Other, such that his fundamental fantasy might be written a ◇ A instead of a ◇ 
.’ See Stephanie S. Swales, Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (Hove: Routledge, 2012) p.93. The writing of these last formulae without the bars is thus to suggest their purely fantasmatic bearing.
and a is of the same order when their positions are reversed; its effect, however, of course the inverse (i.e., in perversion, to that of
neurosis, confirming Freud).Author information
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Bristow, D. (2017). Cut. In: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69444-3_3
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