"Heard Saturday on the resumption of JA Miller's course." By Lore Buchner. (LQ 729)
"Everything resumes/starts again, without being destroyed, to be taken to a higher level." (1) Here is how JAM 2 has invited us to join him in the long awaited resumption of his course. A breeze of fresh air circulates around the room of l'École de la Cause Freudienne (ECF) that welcomes us for this intense work day organized in three precise moments:
1. "The point of capiton", dedicated to the links between psychoanalysis and politics, leads us to reflect on the period since March 1, 2017 within the School, and onto the perspectives it points to. It is under this title that the course itself is developed, giving rise to the conversation with as starting point three expositions, previously published, written by Anaëlle Lebovits-Quenehn, Hervé Castanet and Catherine Lazarus-Matet (2).
2. "The Oracle of Lautréamont", a sequence oriented by the statement by the poet: "Poetry must be made by all. Not by one", to which JAM adds "as well as politics " (3), invites us to study the links between poetry and politics. After an introduction by JAM on Lautréamont, we allowed ourselves to be taught this time by Guennadi Gor (a contemporary Russian poet), James Joyce, the discussion Quevedo-Góngora, and finally the Italian Leopardi. The contributions were entrusted respectively to Nathalie Georges-Lambrichs, Olivier Livtine (recent translator of Chamber Music), Miquel Bassols and Cinzia Crosali.
3. "The Edict of the Ethics Committee" takes the form of a round table in which François Ansermet brings us up to date on the controversies involved in the demand for "procreation for all", which constitutes for him a point of junction between psychoanalysis and politics. He proposes to reach out to/ make use of psychoanalysis to think the future. Its opening is continued by the interventions of Éric Laurent, Philippe La Sagna and Nouria Gründler, who exemplifies these controversies for us through a case of her practice.
The course of JAM is thus marked by the evident orientation to assume our part with respect to psychoanalysis, as Lacan did by choosing to restore the Freudian truth in the heart of his School.
Here " Year Zero " becomes the point of capiton allowing us to interpret this new period, whose starting point has been a questioning(mise en question), at the very foundation of the analytic discourse.
The active intervention of the ECF during the last presidential elections is an unprecedented event in the history of psychoanalysis.
In this sense, JAM reminds us of the moment when Lacan decided to dissolve the Freudian School of Paris (EFP) in order for the ECF to take over. From its beginnings, the Freudian Field has played the part by (joué la partie de) Lacan.
Two signifiers are linked to what happened in the School in 2017: engagement and choice. Both are opposed to the notion that traditionally defined the analytical position: neutrality, understood as "/not choosing a side /not taking part(ne pas prendre parti ).The latter refers particularly to what Freud formulated in 1915 in his "Punctuations/ Remarks on the love of transference" and which he named 'indifference'. JAM then proceeds to situate what is at stake in engagement/commitment and what is implied, on the part of the analyst, by indifference.
On the one hand, engagement/commitment, whose source is the Heideggerian resolution to anticipate an action, and the Augenblick as the source, of the "instant of seeing." It is about what has to do with the register of choice and taste, that is, a choice rooted in the jouissance of the body, in the symptom.
On the other hand, the Freudian gleichschwebende Aufmerksamkeit, the floating attention, an attitude that consists in suspending everything equally in order to avoid focusing attention on a priori selected points (for example, on sexuality).
This equal attention of the analyst is the counterpart of the requirement that the analysand should say without choosing. The "standard" position of the analyst in the cure was extended to his position in social space as being one who does not choose.
In Antiquity this attitude was the object of a philosophical asceticism, that of the skeptical school, which aimed to reach a point of indifference in order to free itself from the ties that attaches us to the objects of the world. The skeptical philosopher was animated by a desire for tranquility. Nothing further from what JAM proposes to us today.
It is the desire of the analyst, as formulated by Lacan, which can shed light on this tension. In his enunciation, says Lacan, the analyst makes of his being an x whose value remains unknown, for the subject to find, and JAM observes that we must understand this x as indifference in the sense of Freud. The analyst uses indifference as a means. If the analyst's desire "is not a pure desire" for Lacan, it is because the analytic position is not a skeptical position: at the bottom, there is a choice. The analyst is not neutral; he has an ethics, which includes politics. Finally, the reference that frames this first course is found in the Écrits on page 321, which JAM develops at length.
The famous sentence, "Let him rather renounce, he who cannot join the subjectivity of his time at his/its horizon ", now finds an actualized reading. Hegel already spoke of the "spirit of time", because every epoch/time has its subjectivity, which outlines its coherence.
Should we speak of "a" subjectivity or "the" subjectivity? JAM asks us, and decides on the second formula. The subject is not the individual, it is the negative of the individual, it is empty. Subjectivity, however, is transindividual, as Lacan already stated at the beginning of his "Discourse of Rome" when speaking of the "transindividual reality of the subject." At a given epoch/time, we have the same spirit in common. We understand then that each epoch operates as a constraining limit. In this sense, JAM considers that the Lacanian sophism of the three prisoners is paradigmatic: three individuals, one subjectivity. Similarly, each one is also a prisoner of his time.
To conclude and move on to the conversation, JAM highlights that the outline of what will be the pass appears in this page, the idea that analysis is concluded with an act. Faced with urgency, with the subjectivity of his time, An implementation in act as well was made this year by the ECF.
This is why JAM does not conclude but by leaving us waiting for what will be, from now on, the pass of the subject- School. (C’est pour cela que JAM ne conclut qu’en nous laissant en attente de ce que sera désormais la passe de l’École-sujet.)
1 : Miller J.-A., « Champ freudien, Année zéro », Lacan Quotidien, nº 718, 11 juin 2017.
2 : In Lacan Quotidien you can read short versions of some of these texts. Cf. Lebovits-Quenehen A., « Aujourd’hui : depuis hier et pour demain », LQ , nº 728, 27 juin 2017 ; Lazarus-Matet C., « L’avenir d’une illusion : lecture rétrospective », LQ , nº 729, 28 juin 2017.
3 : Miller J.-A., « Champ freudien, Année zéro », Lacan Quotidien, nº 721, 15 juin 2017
