Loved it. Thank you so much. This was the answer I had been looking for ages: "To recover one’s libido at the level of drive in the felid of enjoyment apart from demands of others (i.e., our desires) is to recover an unreal because pre-real, pre-existence mythical experience of life in the midst of death. In recovering one’s libido at the level of the drive is not just a simple sense of jouissance but the experience of life in the midst of death, by way of absence instantiated by the signifier (i.e., castration)."
I really love how you are characterizing the real versus the symbolic it really dovetails with Bollas’ characterizations. He sad that it took him 15 years to begin to understand Lucan.
You really are connecting the dots in this presentation for me. I appreciate the way you understand Lacan, and even more, the way you speak and interpret what he said without making a “pubelication” of it! Excellent - thanks again.
Remember Lacan's concepts changed so many times in the course of his intellectual trajectory. Worse, they have multiple meanings.There are also allusion to various philosophical systems such as that of Kant, Hegel, Jakobson, Heidegger, and the Surrealist Movement. I suggest you read Zizek.
Would the nose be considered an erogenous hole? It is also through smell how we move our sexual drive. Smell is a key factor of sexuality/libido. Thank you and saludos from Barcelona.
2:34:55 missed opportunity to coin.. 'the breath drive' .. I'll see myself out. But hey also want to say, I'm super glad to have found your stuff. Thanks for putting it out so we can take it in.
Greetings from Munich. The lecture is excellent, especially the explanation of objet a. I have been trying to understand Lacan's thought for some time, find these explanations here the most plausible. By the way, the explanation of objet a reminds me of the central idea of Wittgenstein's Tractatus (at 4.0312 he claims: "My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts.")
Greetings, from San Francisco! Thank you for tuning in to Lectures on Lacan! I’m delighted to hear that these materials are proving useful to you, especially around the topic of object little a! I think Lacan would have had a great time hanging out with Wittgenstein. Both terrific thinkers of language, especially its structural logic!
@@lecturesonlacan My approach to philosophy is mainly influenced by Wittgenstein, whom I know excellently, other philosophers much less. For some reason I then found Lacan interesting, but have not yet found a book that puts the two in a relationship (only at the University of Vienna there was a master's thesis). That Lacan uses the term "object" for something non-representable makes it incredibly difficult for a Wittgensteinian to understand what he means by "a". Your explanations make it clear on the spot what this mysterious "object" is really about - precisely that which (according to Wittgenstein) "cannot be talked about". The fact that Lacan then does talk about it would have earned him the shaking of Wittgenstein's head.
In the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, which I am currently reading, there are two fascinating passages that reminded me a lot of the idea of the death drive. In the first passage, the Corinthians try to incite the Spartans against the Athenians by invoking the Athenians' "death drive". They speak to the Spartans in this way: I / 70. Besides, we consider that we (die Corinthians) have as good a right as any one to point out a neighbor's (the Spartans) faults, particularly when we contemplate the great contrast between the two national characters; a contrast of which, as far as we can see, you have little perception, having never yet considered what sort of antagonists you will encounter in the Athenians, how widely, how absolutely different from yourselves. [2] The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution; you have a genius for keeping what you have got, accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you never go far enough. [3] Again, they are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that from danger there is no release. [4] Further, there is promptitude on their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home, you are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have left behind. [5] They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. [6] Their bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their country's cause; their intellect they jealously husband to be employed in her service. [7] A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. [8] Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life. [9] To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others. The encounter Dante has with Odysseus, hidden in a "horned flame," in the 26th canto of the Inferno also fits this: "O Master!" think my prayer a thousand fold In repetition urg'd, that thou vouchsafe To pause, till here the horned flame arrive. See, how toward it with desire I bend." He [Vergil] thus: "Thy prayer is worthy of much praise, And I accept it therefore; but do thou Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine, For I divine thy wish; and they perchance, For they were Greeks, might shun discourse with thee." When there the flame had come, where time and place Seem'd fitting to my guide, he thus begun: "O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire! If living I of you did merit aught, Whate'er the measure were of that desert, When in the world my lofty strain I pour'd, Move ye not on, till one of you unfold In what clime death overtook him self-destroy'd." Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire That labours with the wind, then to and fro Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds, Threw out its voice, and spake: "When I escap'd From Circe, who beyond a circling year Had held me near Caieta by her charms, Ere thus Æneas yet had nam'd the shore; Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence Of my old father, nor return of love, That should have crown'd Penelope with joy, Could overcome in me the zeal I had To' explore the world, and search the ways of life, Man's evil and his virtue. Forth I sail'd Into the deep illimitable main, With but one bark, and the small faithful band That yet cleav'd to me. As Iberia far, Far as Marocco either shore I saw, And the Sardinian and each isle beside Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age Were I and my companions, when we came To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain'd The bound'ries not to be o'erstepp'ed by man. The walls of Seville to my right I left, On the' other hand already Ceuta past. 'O brothers!' I began, 'woe to the west 'Through perils without number now have we reach'd; 'To this the short remaining watch, that yet 'Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof 'Of the unpeopled world, following the track 'Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang: 'Ye were not form'd to live the life of brutes, 'But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.' With these few words I sharpen'd for the voyage The mind of my associates, that I then Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn Our poop we turn'd, and for the witless flight Made our oars wings*, still gaining on the left. Each star of the' other pole night now beheld*, And ours so low, that from the ocean-floor It rose not. Five times re-illum'd, as oft Vanish'd the light from underneath the moon, Since the deep way we enter'd, when from far Appear'd a mountain dim*, loftiest methought Of all I e'er beheld. Joy seiz'd us straight, But soon to mourning chang'd. From the new land A whirlwind spring, and at her foremost side Did strike the vessel. Thrice* it whirl'd her round With all the waves, the fourth time lifted up The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed: And over us the booming billow clos'd." Dante - in Paradise 33 - even gives us, I think, a beautiful description of a: Thenceforward, what I saw, Was not for words to speak, nor memory’s self To stand against such outrage on her skill. As one, who from a dream awaken’d, straight, All he hath seen forgets; yet still retains Impression of the feeling in his dream; E’en such am I: for all the vision dies, As’t were, away; and yet the sense of sweet, That sprang from it, still trickles in my heart.
To Jason's question about why the objects of the anal drive might be of a different order to the oral drive - perhaps because the original anal objects (shit) is something that we have and give. Whereas the oral drive has to do with the breast of another, something that we take. I don't know, but it was such a good question. Thank you so much for all the work you do.
We must have something like a psychic mouth if a car satisfy our oral drive. The link muss be structural like the act of sucking, holding in the hands an integrating, feeling full of... Is not only about the mouth is about the function of the mouth. The car is something you show in public // Breath control BC tackles respiratory drive and is directly associated with anxiety and death itself...I think :)
1:47:56 - while i agree with this, cases like the rat man case suggest how the drive can very well condense/displace through signifying chains onto concepts that have nothing to do with the location of the drives. Ie there is probably no magnitude - but just a possibility of meaning being condensed into or displaced onto an object. Which may or may not happen.
Mainly - the flow can never be on some magnitudal scale and can always be explained through condensation or displacement right? Isn't that the only way meaning is formed in language even in the most basic structuralist sense? And definitely for how Freud constructs the unconscious, he puts these two mechanisms at the very top. Within that i dont know if there's any meaning to putting a magnitude scale considering it happens on a totally subjective level from person to person. Ie one person might form a bridge to lollipop and another to a car but each orally defined. Sure the verbal bridge is more abstract in one than another but the mechanism has to be one of the two I think
Just arguing a case for how it practically speaking it still is an opening. In a meaning sense - possibility Is it's a way to still think of the drive as a wormwhole. It is a wormhole. The shape of the wormhole is either condensation or displacement. If I'm getting this wrong, I have a lot of it figured out wrong😅
Loved it. Thank you so much. This was the answer I had been looking for ages:
"To recover one’s libido at the level of drive in the felid of enjoyment apart from demands of others (i.e., our desires) is to recover an unreal because pre-real, pre-existence mythical experience of life in the midst of death. In recovering one’s libido at the level of the drive is not just a simple sense of jouissance but the experience of life in the midst of death, by way of absence instantiated by the signifier (i.e., castration)."
I really love how you are characterizing the real versus the symbolic it really dovetails with Bollas’ characterizations. He sad that it took him 15 years to begin to understand Lucan.
You really are connecting the dots in this presentation for me. I appreciate the way you understand Lacan, and even more, the way you speak and interpret what he said without making a “pubelication” of it! Excellent - thanks again.
Remember Lacan's concepts changed so many times in the course of his intellectual trajectory. Worse, they have multiple meanings.There are also allusion to various philosophical systems such as that of Kant, Hegel, Jakobson, Heidegger, and the Surrealist Movement. I suggest you read Zizek.
Unbelievable lecture.
38:30 metonymy
48:00 pulses out closes
58:00
1:57:00
Would the nose be considered an erogenous hole? It is also through smell how we move our sexual drive. Smell is a key factor of sexuality/libido.
Thank you and saludos from Barcelona.
Terrific insight! Yes! On my reading, any part of the human form that can be opened and closed can be a source / erogenous zone for the drive.
@@lecturesonlacanThank you. I’m enjoying your lecture. Great discovery your channel is.
Pheromones are picked up through the nose without us knowing!
2:34:55 missed opportunity to coin.. 'the breath drive' .. I'll see myself out.
But hey also want to say, I'm super glad to have found your stuff. Thanks for putting it out so we can take it in.
All drives are breath drives -- this should be our bumper sticker!
@@lecturesonlacan ha, lacanian bumper sticker merch coming soon? "If you can read this, che vuoi?"
@@schlieweak Great idea - and great addition to the list! 😂
Greetings from Munich. The lecture is excellent, especially the explanation of objet a. I have been trying to understand Lacan's thought for some time, find these explanations here the most plausible. By the way, the explanation of objet a reminds me of the central idea of Wittgenstein's Tractatus (at 4.0312 he claims: "My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts.")
Greetings, from San Francisco! Thank you for tuning in to Lectures on Lacan! I’m delighted to hear that these materials are proving useful to you, especially around the topic of object little a! I think Lacan would have had a great time hanging out with Wittgenstein. Both terrific thinkers of language, especially its structural logic!
@@lecturesonlacan My approach to philosophy is mainly influenced by Wittgenstein, whom I know excellently, other philosophers much less. For some reason I then found Lacan interesting, but have not yet found a book that puts the two in a relationship (only at the University of Vienna there was a master's thesis). That Lacan uses the term "object" for something non-representable makes it incredibly difficult for a Wittgensteinian to understand what he means by "a". Your explanations make it clear on the spot what this mysterious "object" is really about - precisely that which (according to Wittgenstein) "cannot be talked about". The fact that Lacan then does talk about it would have earned him the shaking of Wittgenstein's head.
In the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, which I am currently reading, there are two fascinating passages that reminded me a lot of the idea of the death drive.
In the first passage, the Corinthians try to incite the Spartans against the Athenians by invoking the Athenians' "death drive". They speak to the Spartans in this way:
I / 70. Besides, we consider that we (die Corinthians) have as good a right as any one to point out a neighbor's (the Spartans) faults, particularly when we contemplate the great contrast between the two national characters; a contrast of which, as far as we can see, you have little perception, having never yet considered what sort of antagonists you will encounter in the Athenians, how widely, how absolutely different from yourselves. [2] The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution; you have a genius for keeping what you have got, accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you never go far enough. [3] Again, they are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that from danger there is no release. [4] Further, there is promptitude on their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home, you are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have left behind. [5] They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. [6] Their bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their country's cause; their intellect they jealously husband to be employed in her service. [7] A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. [8] Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life. [9] To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.
The encounter Dante has with Odysseus, hidden in a "horned flame," in the 26th canto of the Inferno also fits this:
"O Master!" think my prayer a thousand fold
In repetition urg'd, that thou vouchsafe
To pause, till here the horned flame arrive.
See, how toward it with desire I bend."
He [Vergil] thus: "Thy prayer is worthy of much praise,
And I accept it therefore; but do thou
Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine,
For I divine thy wish; and they perchance,
For they were Greeks, might shun discourse with thee."
When there the flame had come, where time and place
Seem'd fitting to my guide, he thus begun:
"O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire!
If living I of you did merit aught,
Whate'er the measure were of that desert,
When in the world my lofty strain I pour'd,
Move ye not on, till one of you unfold
In what clime death overtook him self-destroy'd."
Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn
Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire
That labours with the wind, then to and fro
Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds,
Threw out its voice, and spake: "When I escap'd
From Circe, who beyond a circling year
Had held me near Caieta by her charms,
Ere thus Æneas yet had nam'd the shore;
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
Of my old father, nor return of love,
That should have crown'd Penelope with joy,
Could overcome in me the zeal I had
To' explore the world, and search the ways of life,
Man's evil and his virtue. Forth I sail'd
Into the deep illimitable main,
With but one bark, and the small faithful band
That yet cleav'd to me. As Iberia far,
Far as Marocco either shore I saw,
And the Sardinian and each isle beside
Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age
Were I and my companions, when we came
To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain'd
The bound'ries not to be o'erstepp'ed by man.
The walls of Seville to my right I left,
On the' other hand already Ceuta past.
'O brothers!' I began, 'woe to the west
'Through perils without number now have we reach'd;
'To this the short remaining watch, that yet
'Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof
'Of the unpeopled world, following the track
'Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang:
'Ye were not form'd to live the life of brutes,
'But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.'
With these few words I sharpen'd for the voyage
The mind of my associates, that I then
Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn
Our poop we turn'd, and for the witless flight
Made our oars wings*, still gaining on the left.
Each star of the' other pole night now beheld*,
And ours so low, that from the ocean-floor
It rose not. Five times re-illum'd, as oft
Vanish'd the light from underneath the moon,
Since the deep way we enter'd, when from far
Appear'd a mountain dim*, loftiest methought
Of all I e'er beheld. Joy seiz'd us straight,
But soon to mourning chang'd. From the new land
A whirlwind spring, and at her foremost side
Did strike the vessel. Thrice* it whirl'd her round
With all the waves, the fourth time lifted up
The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
And over us the booming billow clos'd."
Dante - in Paradise 33 - even gives us, I think, a beautiful description of a:
Thenceforward, what I saw,
Was not for words to speak, nor memory’s self
To stand against such outrage on her skill.
As one, who from a dream awaken’d, straight,
All he hath seen forgets; yet still retains
Impression of the feeling in his dream;
E’en such am I: for all the vision dies,
As’t were, away; and yet the sense of sweet,
That sprang from it, still trickles in my heart.
To Jason's question about why the objects of the anal drive might be of a different order to the oral drive - perhaps because the original anal objects (shit) is something that we have and give. Whereas the oral drive has to do with the breast of another, something that we take. I don't know, but it was such a good question. Thank you so much for all the work you do.
We must have something like a psychic mouth if a car satisfy our oral drive. The link muss be structural like the act of sucking, holding in the hands an integrating, feeling full of... Is not only about the mouth is about the function of the mouth. The car is something you show in public // Breath control BC tackles respiratory drive and is directly associated with anxiety and death itself...I think :)
1:47:56 - while i agree with this, cases like the rat man case suggest how the drive can very well condense/displace through signifying chains onto concepts that have nothing to do with the location of the drives. Ie there is probably no magnitude - but just a possibility of meaning being condensed into or displaced onto an object. Which may or may not happen.
Mainly - the flow can never be on some magnitudal scale and can always be explained through condensation or displacement right? Isn't that the only way meaning is formed in language even in the most basic structuralist sense? And definitely for how Freud constructs the unconscious, he puts these two mechanisms at the very top. Within that i dont know if there's any meaning to putting a magnitude scale considering it happens on a totally subjective level from person to person. Ie one person might form a bridge to lollipop and another to a car but each orally defined. Sure the verbal bridge is more abstract in one than another but the mechanism has to be one of the two I think
Just arguing a case for how it practically speaking it still is an opening. In a meaning sense - possibility
Is it's a way to still think of the drive as a wormwhole. It is a wormhole. The shape of the wormhole is either condensation or displacement.
If I'm getting this wrong, I have a lot of it figured out wrong😅
I think adding an emphasis on magnitude makes a lot of sense.
Wormholes, galore!
Is that an excerpt from Lacan's " Ecrits", an authoritative secondary source, or your interpretation?
Not sure what you’re referring to here. The essays from Écrits that we studied in our series on the drive? Those are primary sources, I’d say. 😀