J.-A. Miller: Introduction to the Reading of J. Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety (2004) (part 1)

“INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF J. LACAN’S SEMINAR ON ANXIETY” (2004) - J.-A. MILLER (Part 1)

In April, May and June 2004, J.-A. Miller comments on Seminar X, On Anxiety, which had just been published. Two texts collate this work and are of the highest interest for us since they highlight the “body with organs” in opposition to the body as a surface of the mirror stage. We present here the first of two fragments which are like two appetizers for these texts.

"Introduction to the Reading of Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety", translated by B. P. Faulks, Lacanian Ink, 26, Fall 2005, pp. 37-39.

"Whereas the signifier functioned and was enthroned as an all-performing instrument in his prior teaching, the novelty of this Seminar, but discreetly, is that, in the place of the signifier one sees the organ introduced, put into function, recovered, in the same way that one sees Lacan suddenly leave to one side the unitary specular form of the body in order to take up the anatomical particularities of the organism. One will never hear this goal of Lacan, this biological and anatomical detail, spoken of again. One finds it at the moment when he lifts the veil of the signifier and the body, the splendid body of the mirror, but at the same time this unitary body which is only a form, retrieves its organs." (p. 37) "The myth of the lamella, which figures in 'Position of the Unconscious' and which is also mentioned in The Four Fundamental Concepts, conveys the use made of the term 'organ' in the place of the signifier, and it shows the amphibology of the remainder. (...) What is this remainder which is from the beginning delivered to us by subjective division? It is a remainder of jouissance." (pp. 38-39)

Translated by Fred Baitinger & Roger Litten

---