128 .Le séminaire livre X,p. 62.
129. Ibid., p. 63.
13 0. In Seminar X, Lacan refines his early theorizations of the Hilflosigkeitas a mere biologi-
cal given: if the child is a biologically helpless animal, he completely depends on the
(m)Other, and becomes aware of his helplessness precisely when he is confronted with
the (helpless) desire of the (m)Other.
131. Ibid., p. 91.
13 2. Ibid., p. 92.
13 3. Ibid. (emphasis added). If anxiety first of all depends on a “cut,” then it is not suffi-
cient to state that “it is not the removal of the maternal breast but its proximity that an-
guishes the child” (J. Ansaldi, Le Discours de Rome suivi de L’angoisse, Le Séminaire X[Nîmes:
Théétète Éditions, 2004 ], p. 54 ). The proximity of the breast certainly causes—or will
have caused—anxiety during the second stage of the Oedipus complex when the
mother attempts to “engulf ” the child; however, it is only the (logically antecedent) re-
moval, the cut of the maternal breast at the moment of primordial frustration, that
retroactively generates anxiety in relation to the emergence of the desire of the
(m)Other. Anxiety originates on the verge of a bond which excludes separation only
because it relies on a prior separation which excludes any bond.
13 4.Le séminaire livre X,p. 91.
13 5. Ibid., pp.122‒123.
13 6. Ibid., p. 60.
13 7. “The source of anxiety is the rising of lack in a positive form” (ibid., p. 75 ).
13 8. Ibid., p. 60.
13 9. “Anxiety is already a protection... anxiety develops by letting a danger appear, whereas
there is no danger at the level of the final experience of Hilflosigkeit” (The Seminar. Book VII,
p. 304 ; my translation).
14 0. Lacan’s definition of anxiety stricto sensuin terms of the “lack of lack” pitilessly refutes
Derrida’s claim according to which, in Lacan’s “phallogocentric” theory of the subject,
“something is missing from its place, but the lack[the phallus] is never missingfrom it”
(J. Derrida, “Le facteur de la vérité,” in The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond[Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 ], p. 441 ; emphasis added). Derrida’s problem
is that he completely misses the dimension of the Real in Lacan insofar as he always con-
siders lack as an intrasymbolic element guaranteed by the Other of the Other. His con-
siderations on Lacan’s “fear” of acknowledging the anxiety-provoking power of
literature are equally belied: “[Lacan] forecloses this problematic of the double and of
Unheimlichkeitwithout mercy. And does so, doubtless, in order to deem it contained in
the imaginary... which must be kept rigorously apart from the symbolic.... What
thus finds itself controlled is Unheimlichkeit,and the anguishing disarray which can be
provoked... by references from simulacrum to simulacrum, from double to double”
(ibid., p. 460 ). For his part, in commenting on Hoffmann’s tales, Lacan speaks of the
“essential dimension which the field of fiction provides for our experience of the Un-
heimlich.In reality, the latter is fleeting. Fiction shows it in a much better way, it even pro-
duces it as an effect.... This is a kind of ideal point but it is very precious for us since
this effect allows us to see the function of fantasy” (Le séminaire livre X,p. 61 ).notes to pages 165–170