Nodal references for the topics to be discussed

Prehistory of the RSI knot

In Paso a paso 1

N.B.: Some of the texts not ‘officially’ published in English can be found in FREUD2LACAN.com or lacaninireland.com

– Seminar XIX, ...or worse (S19). Cambridge, UK and Medford, MA, USA, Polity Press, 2018.

– Seminar XX, Encore (S20). New York and London, Norton, 1998.

– Seminar XXI, Les non dupes errent (S21). Unpublished transcript. English translation in lacaninireland.com

  • (S19) Lacan’s encounter with the knot. He writes a three-part knot for the first time.

  • (S20) Various representations of the Borromean knot

  • Trefoil knot.

    (S21):

  • RSI knot. The Borromean knot with the dimensions of the registers R, S and I.

  • In the unconscious there is no chain of signifiers, there is a swarm of Ones.

  • Knots of love.

  • Lapses, substitutions, nominations.

§

In Paso a paso 2

  • The Third

  • Seminar 22, RSI (S22)

  • Seminar 23, The Sinthome (S23)

  • Lectures ‘Joyce the Symptom’ and Lectures at North American Universities.

  • The Third / S22:

  • Borromean space, knotted dimensions, braid.

  • Localisation and attribution of various concepts, jouissances as irruptions from one register into another: JΦ, phallic jouissance; and JA, jouissance of the Other.

  • The ‘Freudian’ knot according to Lacan.

  • Presentation of consistency, hole and ex-sistence.

  • The exigible effect of meaning in analytical discourse is neither imaginary nor symbolic: it must be real.

  • Borromean knots of 4

(S23):

  • Writing of sinthome.

  • Knot of the coupling Sinthome + Symbolic.

  • The false hole; the infinite straight line.

  • Writing JA/ between R and I: the true hole.

  • Trefoil knot, slip and correction.

  • Stabilisation of the notion of Borromean sinthome and its clinical operativity with the Joyce case

  • Joyce: the corrective ego and reconstitution of the Borromean knot.

§

The last period

In Paso a paso 2 and 3

— Seminar 24, L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue s‘aile a mourre

— Seminar 25, Time to Conclude

— Seminar 26, Topology and Time

(S24): — ‘[...] going beyond the unconscious.’

— Identifying oneself with the symptom... or with the sinthome...

— Chain of generations: love of the father.

— ‘At the end of the day, I am a perfect hystérique.’

— ‘[...] analysis does not consist in being freed from one’s sinthomes [...] but in knowing why one is entangled in them.’

— Alternative: madness (untangled) or mental weakness (sinthome).

— Braid with six movements. Openings and closings.

— ‘The real would be suspended very especially from the body.’

— ‘This notion of the real that I am advancing has something of consistency.’

— Psychoanalysis could be a scam, but... not just anyone...

— Empty word, full word and ‘tour de force’ of the poet.

— With interpretation, it is necessary to resonate something other than meaning, and poetry is to resonate the body with words. Lacan declares that it is not enough to be ‘pouate assez,’ ‘enough of a poet’.

— L'Une bévue would produce a new signifier, but ‘one that had [...] no meaning whatsoever,’ a new signifier.

— Cuts on the torus.

(S25):

— Pierced, cuts and reversals in the torus. Identifications.

— Distinction between word and saying. The analysand speaks. The analyst cuts, decides.

— Real face of the unconscious.

— Search for the generalisation of the knot.

— Criticism of Freud: the Freudian confusion has led to Borromean knots.

— ‘[...] To make a cut is to do much more than a reversal; to make a cut is to do more than perforation [...]’

— P. Soury: Differences between retournement (reversal), invertion (inversion), coupure (cut), trouage (perforation).

— P. Soury investigates the relationship (or rather the non-relationship) between the toricity of a surface and its perforation. 

(S26):

— The variety and complexity of braids.

— A third sex?

— Generalised Borromean Knot: presentation, description and generation.