Subjectivity and Otherness A Philosophical Reading of Lacan

99. Ibid.

10 0. Ibid. Lacan also states that “this whole development of knowledge, with what it in-
volves in terms of... the function of the object, is the result of a choice” motivated by
a specific “position of desire,” the “desire to know.”

101. 
     

     Ibid.

     
     


102. 
     

     Seminar VI, lesson of May 20 , 1959.

     
     


103. 
     

     Ibid.

     
     

10 4. Ibid. Lacan similarly argues that “the subject does not locate himself simply in terms of
discourse, but also indeed in terms of some real[ities]” (Seminar VI, lesson of May 27 ,
1959 ).

105. 
     

     Seminar VI, lesson of May 20 , 1959.

     
     


106. 
     

     For the location of the “Real as real” at the unconscious level, see Seminar VI, lesson of
     May 27 , 1959.

     
     


107. 
     

     Ibid. “Being is properly the real insofar as it manifests itself at the symbolic level” (Sem-
     inar VI, lesson of June 3 , 1959 ).

     
     


108. 
     

     Seminar VI, lesson of May 27 , 1959.

     
     

109 .Ibid. These definitions are accompanied by the following statement: “It is only too ob-
vious that the real is not an opaque continuum.” This sounds like an open dismissal of
Lacan’s early theory of the Real as “that which has no fissures.” In parallel, Lacan again
attacks the “philosophical tradition”—Aristotle in primis—since he believes that it al-
ways based its systems on the presupposition that “the relationship of the cutting of the
real to the cutting of language... is only a question of the overlapping of one system
of cutting by another system of cutting.” On the other hand, Lacan implicitly suggests
that the cutting of the Real dependson the cutting of language: this is proved by the fact
that contemporary science (as the epitome of the cutting of language) has recently
reached what Lacan calls the “disintegration of matter.”...

110. 
     

     Ibid.

     
     


111. 
     

     See The Seminar. Book VII,p.13 2.

     
     


112. 
     

     One might well argue that the unconscious Thing “that speaks” in the articles of the
     mid-195 0s is nothing but die Sache,the representation of the Thing on the symbolic level
     which, in Seminar VII, Lacan makes every effort to opposeto the dumbness of the real
     das Ding(see ibid., pp.43‒46).

     
     


113. 
     

     Ibid., p. 118.

     
     


114. 
     

     Ibid., p. 121 (my translation). See also p. 163.

     
     


115. 
     

     Ibid., p. 118 (emphases added).

     
     


116. 
     

     Ibid., p. 121 (my translation).

     
     


117. 
     

     Ibid., pp.202‒203. The Thing is by definition inaccessible, since when one mythi-
     cally accesses it, one automatically returns to the primordial Real, the Thing quahole
     disappears....

     
     


118. 
     

     See J. Lacan, Le séminaire livre XXIII. Le sinthome, 1975–1976(Paris: Seuil, 2005 ), p. 12.

     
     

219