Real? Is it not the case that a hypothetical society of fully sinthomaticbeings of lan-
guage—as opposed to phallic beings of language—would inevitably cause a frag-
mentation of the Symbolic into many Symbolics, and ultimately its complete
demise?
On the other hand, I propose that if the sinthomewere to include the formation
of a new fundamental fantasy, and the “new manner of repetition” to which Miller
refers corresponded to the emergence of a truly original fundamental fantasy—the
unavoidable counterpart of a radically innovative Master-Signifier—then one can
discern the outline of a politics which could deservedly claim to have inherited
the legacy of Lacan’s ethics of jouis-sans.The psychoanalytic community is not per se
a political avant-garde; Lacanian psychoanalysis does not promote any specific
Master-Signifier; however, it is clearly meant to pave the way for a new Master-
Signifier which is compatible with its ethics.^292
Let me recapitulate some important points before concluding. Insofar as the
symbolic structure is universal only through a particular contingent Master-
Signifier that hegemonizes fundamental fantasies, the subject’s encounter with the
real lack beneath his ideologized fundamental fantasy forces him to assume the
lack in the universal. Conversely, the resymbolization of lack is therefore, by defi-
nition, always carried out at the level of the particular. More precisely, insofar as
this is nothing but the specific moment at which the subject realizes that particu-
larity is necessary if there is to be universality, it is here that the particular is turned
into the individual. At this critical stage, the subject can either:
( 1 )become his own name,develop his own sinthome,while coexisting with the hege-
monic Other. This solution inevitably implies a certain compromise with the
senselessness of the ruling universal, a progressive diminishing of the aware-
ness that the universal depends on the individual; such a realienation could be ob-
viated only by periodically undergoing a new traversal of the fundamental fantasy
through psychoanalytic treatment. Yet one soon realizes that this does not auto-
matically imply a neat separation of the ethical and the political: in point of fact,
an increase in the number of people who undergo Lacanian psychoanalytic treat-
ment and ethically assume the inconsistency of the symbolic order, jouis-sans,would
inevitably increase the chances of the success of a political force which does not
aim primarily at obliterating lack;
( 2 )name a movement,promote a new Symbolic—resymbolized through one’s indi-
vidual Master-Signifier/sinthome—and struggle politically to establish its hegemony.
This obviously presupposes ( 1 ) above: Marx-ism, for example, presupposes that
Marx first made his own name à laJoyce. It goes without saying that such a direct