J.-A. Miller, “Lacan con Joyce: Seminario di Barcellona II,” La Psicoanalisi,no. 23 ( 1998 ),
p. 40.
D. Hoens and E. Pluth, “The sinthome:A New Way of Writing an Old Problem,” in Re-
Inventing the Symptom: Essays on the Final Lacan,ed. L. Thurston (New York: Other Press,
2002 ), p. 13.
285 .Le séminaire livre XXIII,p. 22.
A. Di Ciaccia and M. Recalcati, Jacques Lacan. Un insegnamento sul sapere dell’inconscio(Milan:
Bruno Mondadori, 2000 ), p. 108.
The sinthomecould thus also be defined as “positive” jouis-sensand opposed to “negative,”
ideological jouis-sens.The latter should be identified on two different levels: (a) a gen-
eral level for which, as we have seen, all (phallic) knowledge is tacitly a “means of
jouissance”; (b) particular instances in which the ideological conjunction between hege-
monic signifiers and jouissanceexplicitly emerges in jouis-sens.In these cases, we are con-
fronted with an idiotic, conformist language which sides with a necessarily idiotic
Other. In other words, although it openly discloses the lack in the hegemonic Other,
negative jouis-sensdoes not work subversively in order to denounce it; on the contrary,
it fully participates in the Other’s ideological homogenization by providing it with a
linguistic discharge for its structural and inadmissible jouissance.This is why we get so-
called “dirty words”: blasphemy and insults might also belong to this category, or, to
provide some more prosaic examples, expressions such as “cool,” “you know,” “check
it out,” “I was like.. .”. It goes without saying that their common feature is compul-
sive repetition.
Miller, “I sei paradigmi del godimento,” p. 32.
Ibid., p. 31.
Ibid., p. 32.
J.-A. Miller, “Préface,” in Joyce avec Lacan,ed. J. Aubert (Paris: Navarin, 1987 ). With regard
to Joyce’s writing, Miller also adds that it provides us with “a topology in which the
Symbolic, as place of the Other, neither overhangs the Imaginary, nor even encircles the
Real as impossible, but enters into the formation as one of the three” (ibid., p. 12 ).
These pronouncements are extremely suggestive, but also rather vague.
“Nobody has ever observed how it is rather curious that the discourse of the analyst
produces nothing but the discourse of the master” (Le séminaire livre XVII,p. 205 ).
As for this last point, a detailed study of the possible connections between Lacan’s eth-
ical subject and Badiou’s political subject as expounded in Théorie du sujet(Paris: Seuil,
1982 ) would be necessary.