Editorial

Ram Mandil

PAPERS N 6
List of members of
the Action Committee
of the School One
Paola Bolgiani
Gustavo Dessal
Mercedes Iglesias
Ram Mandil
Laure Naveau
(Coordinator)

Silvia Salman
Florencia Fernandez
Coria Shanahan

Responsible for the

edition:
Marta Davidovich

This edition of Papers provides the

sequence to the debate on the theme of
our next Congress: A real for the 21st
century. Two aspects of this debate are
considered here. On one hand, the real
is approached from the point of a
collective logic, that of a small group,
as the cartel, or of a wider social
dimension, capable of producing
segregating effects like racism. On the
other hand, the real is considered from
the fields of art, more specifically that
of body art, as well as from science
which, since modern physics, also
seems to be circling a real without law.
Catherine Lacaze-Paule, in The
Cartel and the Real, draws attention to
a real in the cartel that presents itself as
impossible, the impossible to bear in the
group and the impossibility of saying
in a relationship with knowledge
marked by a hole. To these
impossibilities, another would be added:
there is a real included in the cartel,
which is formulated by a hole, the
impossibility of forming a group. The
author argues that if, for the
psychoanalyst, the formation of a group
is impossible, the analytic discourse, on
the other hand, could establish a social
bond free from any need for a group.
Laure Naveau, in Another Disorder
presupposes that the disorder that
psychoanalysis is concerned with is of a
political nature. If the real of
psychoanalysis implies a reading of the
worlds disorder, the analytical practice
introduces
another
disorder,
disturbing the defence erected in face of

the real without law to reach what

makes, each One, each of us, a
singularity, an absolute difference.
From the theme of absolute difference
the author presents a consideration of
the problem of racism which can be
associated with the hatred of the
Others
jouissance
or
more
fundamentally with the hatred of
jouissance. For the author, the disorder
introduced by psychoanalysis can
produce a torsion in relation to the
worlds disorder: in the face of the real
of science, psychoanalysis has as a
mission to disturb it, making this other
real emerge; a real without law, out-ofmeaning, where nothing else is expected
from the Other.
Josefa Rodrguez, in Goosebumps,
addresses the theme of the real from the
perspective of body art, more
specifically from the performances of
the Guatemalan artist Regina Galindo.
The artist uses in her art the presence of
a body that shocks, which does not
present itself as subject, but divorced
from life, married to death, the
expression of an encounter with the
real without limits. The author finds
there a mode of living the drive, of a
jouissance
divorced
from
the
articulation of the signifier. Moreover
the author enquires about the responses
that psychoanalysis could give to the
vicissitudes of the body in the
contemporary clinic. She finds, in the
artist in question, a perspective of an
effort for poetry, whereby a poem is
addressed to someone who might
perhaps/ kiss my sadness.
Francisco Paes Barreto examines, in
Sciences Real Without Law, the
Lacanian formula of the real without
law and its corollary, there is no
science of the real. After an
examination of the debate opened by
Einstein and Bohr in the field of
physics, the author exposes the basic
lines of quantum theory, and the issues
2

that it raises in relation to causality and

chance. He identifies the perplexity
that exists in physics today due to the
presence of irreconcilable theories. In
conclusion, the author proposes that
psychoanalysts should be alert to the
fact that science already cogitated on a
real without law and that it is possible
to approximate the real in Lacan latest
teaching to the real of quantum
mechanics.
Good reading and good entry into 2014!

Translated by Micheli Romo

The cartel and the real

Catherine Lacaze-Paule

At the source of the cartel

Lacan invented the cartel in 1964 when
he created the Freudian School of Paris
(EFP), and he repeated his choice in
1980, when he created the School of the
Freudian Cause (ECF). He confirms,
then, that there are two organs that
constitute the school the cartels and
the pass. He thus splits the question of
entry into the school and what it is to be
a member. The school is open and
welcomes the work of whoever declares
a cartel to the school. This opens a
topology of the school which is, at one
and the same time, closed to its

members but open to the production of

knowledge that constitutes it.
Why the cartel? What is the real at skate
for psychoanalysis?
It finds its source, it seems, both in the
example of students of literature at the
Sorbonne
(and
students
of
mathematics), and in Bions theory of
small groups, which Lacan encountered
during his visit to England in September
1945. Lacan draws on the GTU
(University Work Group) inviting
students to work without a teacher,
without hierarchy, without lectures, but
by producing knowledge themselves in
an egalitarian fashion, and it retains the
form of the small group for the
production of knowledge.
But it is from certain principles adopted
during his experience in England that
we shall meet four points that are key to
the formation of cartels1.
Four findings and their subversion for
the cartel, of which Lacan seems to
teach as a result of this experience and
this reflection on the war and the groups
for which he proposes his response, his
subversion.2
- In the first instance, he remarks on the
extraordinary docility of men in groups.
He brings this up ironically when he
says: It is not the excessive unruliness
of individuals that presents the greatest
threat to the human spirit3. In response,
Lacan considers that there is a struggle
to be waged against the death instinct,
which unfolds as the discontent in
civilisation, notably in the form of the
passion for ignorance.
1

J. Lacan, British Psychiatry and the War, in

Psychoanalytical Notebooks, No. 4, 2000.
2
ric Laurent, Le discouse psychanalytique et
le groupe Quarto No. 8, these remarks and these
comments are drawn from reading this text.
3
J. Lacan ibid.

- Secondly, he raises the English

pragmatism of Bion, driven not by the
ideal (as was the case in France in the
form of Ptainist idealism) but by
utilitarianism, which he calls a true
relation to the real4. The creation of a
small group around a task to be
accomplished, and not around an ideal,
comes out of isolation not out of
solitude and allows each person,
according to his ability, to put himself
there on his own behalf, according to
his unique, as opposed to his collective,
relation to the ideal.
- Thirdly, Lacan notes the decline of the
paternal imago and the promotion of
horizontal identification, distinct from
the vertical identification with the ideal.
However,
because
he
is
a
psychoanalyst, he indicates that there is
always a leader function that is
embodied in a group. But it is working,
on this function, by reduction and
discharge, that the cartel will promote
horizontal identification and circulation
among its members. Therefore, he
invented the Plus-One, a leader
function, but a depleted leader function.
This makes the cartel not five people,
but four plus one, and introduces an
entirely new topology.
- And finally, fourthly, for Lacan, it is
not about completely eliminating all
identification, or imaginary effects
specific to groups, imaginary or ideal,
but to adjust, otherwise regulate, to
counter their effects in a manner arising
from analysis. In the cartel, the function
of the plus-one is designed to look out
for the effects of groups. For this, the
plus-one has the function of enabling
the one by one, to counter the all, the
one of the group. Indeed, Lacan makes
the universal serve the will to
jouissance, an inhuman will. Because,
as J-A Miller says in his Turin theory, it
is in the universal the for all, and the
4

J. Lacan ibid.

law of the NDP, of the father that the

superego lives5.
The structure of the cartel answers and
inscribes it is this that grounds
psychoanalysis the question of the real
as impossible. The transitory, the
random, the changeability, and the
depleted leader the few signs of
authority the any old one who is the
Plus-one but it must be someone
are all principles which bring into play
the impossible, and the crisis. Transient,
lasting a year, no more than two, this
signifies that there is no group ideal at
work in a cartel. There will inevitably
be a crisis and this limited duration
responds as a cut-off. Randomness: the
drawing of lots for a cartel is a reminder
that personal affinities offer no
guarantee, randomness is not enough to
avoid group effects [et que le hasard se
fait rptition de rencontrer les mmes
effets de groupe mme constitu sur le
mode alatoire.] Whether you draw lots,
or choose combination, contingency,
the incalculable, fate, chance they are
all of the same order as choosing by
affinity. Finally, the depleted leader is
there to be on the look out for the
imaginary effects, and to encourage
elaboration. Let us also recall one is
not the father of signifiers, at the very
most, one is because of6. As he/she is
also the one who inscribes a new
topology of the group, thus the analytic
operation is inscribed in the structure of
the cartel.
The impossible and the cartel
A fair but quick understanding would
lead to the idea that the group creates
imaginary effects that the symbolic is
5

Jacques-Alain Miller, Turin Theory of the

School, intervention of 21 May 2000, Transl. by
Heather Chamberlain and Vincent Dachy, online
at the LondonSociety-NLS website.
6
J. Lacan, Seminar 17, The Other Side of
Psychoanalysis, trans. Russell Grigg, Norton,
New York, 2007, p. 130.

going to treat and that the action of the

Plus-one is going to regulate, to
encourage this passage and this
treatment, or again that the symbolic
structure of the cartel, its handling,
would counter the real, in as much as it
is impossible to bear. In a sense, this is
true, but not quite complex enough to
realize what Lacan calls the analytic
operation, and of which he gives the
logic following on from the four
discourses.
In this first approach, the emphasis is
put not on the impossibility of
supporting the group the cartel and its
structure imply a mode of discourse.
Psychoanalytic discourse, let us
remember, is not all the words, the blahblah, but a device that creates a social
bond. So this is a reminder that it is not
the subjects between them who will
make the link but the discourse. At the
heart of the four discourses is found, is
written, impotence (the bottom line) and
impossible (top line). This impossible,
Lacan designates as follows: The
impossible is the real.7 Freud has
already mentioned these impossibilities:
the impossibility to govern, to educate,
to psychoanalyse, impossible to make
desire, to cure, which are included in
the four discourses. But what Lacan
says is the analytic discourse transforms
and processes the impossible, it is a
device that processes the real.8

More specifically, the analytic discourse

is the device that transforms the
impossible to bear, a name of the real,
into an impossible to say, another
name9.
If it is from the impossible to say that a
Plus-one orients him/herself as written
7

J. Lacan, ibid, p. 165

ric Laurent, Le rel et le groupe, on the
internet.
9
ric Laurent, op cit.
8

discourse in the top line, he separates

the inability to say that resonates with
the fantasy in play of the impossible to
say as real. In both cases, that of the
impossible to bear of the group and that
of the impossible to say, the question
is about a relation to knowledge marked
by a hole. It is therefore about obtaining
in the cartel struck from the mark of the
unconscious of each person. That is to
say how does each one appropriate by
reason and logic from knowledge, from
his I do not want to know anything
about it his encounter with a singular
impossible, and according to what he
does with it. In the cartel, what is being
verified is that there is no
apprenticeship of knowledge except that
which is with the object, the object
cause of desire, that we learn what
concerns us.
The real and the group10
To conclude, what grounds the School,
the cartels and the group, rests on this
statement by Lacan: It is impossible
that psychoanalysts form a group.11
Here's what was in labour in the
invention of the cartel, and which will
find its logic in 1975.
However, the analytic discourse (my
spawning) is precisely that which can
establish a social bond cleansed of any
need for a group12 says Lacan.
In every cartel there is a real that
presents itself as a hole, an impossible
to make a group. Indeed, the cartel is
more than a group, it is the very
impossibility of making a group, of
which we have given the topology that
creates the function of the Plus-one, a
group that is closed and outwardlooking, countering the temptation to
make it a group or to find in analytic
10

ric Laurent, Le rel et le groupe.

J. Lacan, Ltourdit, in Autres crits, dition
du Seuil 2001, p. 474.
12
Ibid.
11

knowledge a knowledge that is ended or

closed. The production of knowledge
that the cartel presupposes has as its
cause not the group, but the discourse it
serves, that being the analytic discourse.
The cartel is the pivot point, the hinge
around which the School and the subject
turn. For the School, it is about awaiting
and welcoming new knowledge; for the
subject it is about entering and taking a
step. Both for the School, and for the
subject, what works itself out and
renews itself is a bit of knowledge
issuing from analytic knowledge.
But none of this will happen without the
other organ that Lacan wanted for his
School, the Pass: namely, the possibility
of finding a way out for this knowledge
that comes from the unconscious
knowledge [la possibilit de trouver
une issue pour ce savoir issu du savoir
insu].

Translated by Janet & John Haney

Another Disorder

Laure Naveau
Argument
Because psychoanalysis accompanies
the subject in what raises itself in
protest against the discontents of
civilisation, the disorder with which
psychoanalysis is concerned is political.
How are we
proposition?

to

interpret

this

It is from this quotation, extracted from

Jacques-Alain Millers 2011 conference
in Brussels, entitled Parler avec son
corps (Mental 27-28, p. 129), I have
deduced the principle that the disorder
with which psychoanalysis is concerned
is political.
In the item on disorder, in the volume of
Scilicet about A Real in the 21st
century, of which I was in charge, I
opposed this disorder to the one about
which the beautiful soul grumbles in the
name of the law of the heart, which is
located in the symbolic register, on the
border with the imaginary.
I distinguished it from the disorder
imputed to psychosis, which Lacan
refers to as a disorder caused at the
most intimate juncture of the sense of
life that is to say, the juncture of the
symbolic and the real, where the Nameof-the Father has not worked to situate
the subject and thus stabilize the
system.
So, saying that our real, if you allow
me this colloquialism, is lawless, is part
of a system that itself escapes the
symbolic law entirely; as Lacan said in
Seminar 21, it is not about producing
the disorder of the world, it is about
reading the not-all.
As JAM indicated in Brussels, it is
about extracting this real from all
possibility
of
mass
subjective
rectification and inscribing it in a
discourse which derives its power from
that which is de-massifying.
Our real without law can then be read as
follows: we are parltres affected by a
language that puts to work a lack and,
6

by virtue of this fact, by the chance

encounter of words and bodies.
JAM assigns psychoanalysts of the 21st
century the task of replacing the crazy
laws of modernity with another
disorder, which consists of dismantling
the defense against this real to reach
what is, for each Un, his singularity,
her absolute difference.
So I picked up the thread that I wove at
the end of my testimony as AE and
which I singled out as a compass,
inasmuch as one of the crucial
problems of psychoanalysis in the 21st
century is that of obtaining the absolute
difference.
And I wish today to knot this thread
with one of the crucial problems of
civilisation racism, whose actuality
bears no relation to its structural aspect.
It is you, madam, a beautiful ringing
voice, that from now on we wish to
hear Virginie Despentes recently wrote
in an open letter to Christiane Taubira,
in response to her amazement that any
voice with such qualities could not
make itself heard following the racial
insults of which she had become the
object in France.
If one knows, as Marie Darrieusecq
pointed out in an article in Le Monde on
15th November, that racism never thrives
as well as it does in times of crisis, this
escalation of structural racism, if extime
to the deep discourse of all of society,
seems to represent its order rather than
its disorder, its S1, its master signifier as
we say, and that it boils down to hatred
of the Other.

Twenty years after the Shoah, in 1964, it

was not for nothing that Lacan ended
his seminar on The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis, with these
words which remain written in stone in
our memory for many of us.
I will reread the basics:
There is profoundly masked in the
critique of the history that we have
experienced. This, re-enacting the most
monstrous and supposedly superseded
forms of the Holocaust, is the drama of
Nazism.
I would hold that no meaning given to
history, based on Hegelian-Marxist
premises, is capable of accounting for
this resurgence which only goes to
show that the offering to obscure gods
of an object of sacrifice is something to
which few subjects can resist
succumbing, as if under some
monstrous spell.
Ignorance, indifference, an averting of
the eyes may explain beneath what veil
this mystery still remains hidden. But
for whoever is capable of turning a
courageous
gaze
towards
this
phenomenon and, once again, there
are certainly few who do not succumb
to the fascination of the sacrifice in
itself sacrifice signifies that in the
object of our desires, we try to find
evidence for the presence of the desire
of this Other that I call here the Dark
God. [Seminar 11, p 274-5].
I propose that we read here what Lacan
already introduced us to: the idea of the
real which, back then, he named the
Dark God, and on which he posed the
fundamentals of psychoanalysis.
7

One recalls the question that JAM put to

Lacan, 10 years later, in Television:
Where do you get the idea of
prophesying a rise in racism, and why
the hell did you say it?
And Lacan answered him tit for tat:
Because it did not seem funny to me,
and yet it is true.
It is a response which is even more
surprising in that it is part of a text that
challenges the foundations of truth...
Lacan diagnoses that, in what he calls
the error of our jouissance, hatred of
the Other is a foundational mode of the
ONEs jouissance of the racist nature
of the Others jouissance, that from
which we are separated, and which we
take as inferior, that can only, in fact,
summon this return to the Dark God.
I refer you here to Manuel Zlotiniks
nice article on racism, published in the
Scilicet (2014), and subtitled an
Argentine thread.

Manuel recalls what Lacan wrote in

ltourdit about race: it is the effect of
discourse and not of biology. And I
quote:
The race of which I speak is not what a
certain anthropology sustains by calling
itself physical. For it is not there that
any race constitutes itself, it is
constituted from the mode in which are
transmitted, by the order of a discourse,
the symbolic places, those with which
are perpetuated the race of masters and
the race of slaves, as well as pedants, to
which one needs to balance the queers,
the xxx, I might say, who cant do

without the known objects. I can do

perfectly well without the ethnography
of primitives and without the recourse
to elementary structures, in order to
establish what is going on in racism in
the discourses of action.
Manuel then refers to the lesson of 27
November (??) in JAMs course
Extimacy [Extimit], which focuses on
the hatred of the jouissance of the Other,
and he deduces that the root of racism,
could well be hatred of jouissance itself.
He gives the example of the present
Argentine racism, directed at skin
colour and negros racism of
someone who holds the most gadgets
and gizmos. Nothing is impossible for
him anymore, but there hovers over him
a threat coming from the person who is
the object of segregation, the person
excluded from consumer society and
from the labour market: who can
subtract his object from him. In fact, he
may steal his surplus Jouissance. The
rich man, says Manuel, participates in
the segregation of the poor by means of
a fantasy: one wants to take from him
his object of Jouissance.
And in the phenomena of social
violence, it is all about a fight to the
death for the most enjoyment [plus de
jouir], and it is also about the
segregation anticipated by Lacan in his
Discourse on the psychoses of children:
the fact that the masses are doomed to
share the same geographic space yet
remain separate. Thus, concludes
Manuel, segregation takes as its point of
departure the mode of jouissance proper
to each social group.
This illustrates, it seems to me, the
racist reaction to Christiane Taubira:
8

sure, shes black, but what is really

insupportable is that she is a Minister of
the Republic, and she occupies a place
of power.
In his interview in le Point, August
2011, entitled The prophecies of
Lacan JAM already approached the key
issues mentioned in his introduction to
the WAP Congress:
- The tyranny of the ONE.
- The power of science and its frenzy
bordering on the death instinct.
- The return of the sacred and religion,
of the meaning of life as a remedy
against the brutality of the modern
master the statistics.
- And that of isolationism and the rise of
racism, the cult of identity, of the
difficulty of supporting the Other who
does not enjoy himself as you do (which
has always existed on the part of men to
the place of women)...
- And when reporters asked him about
psychoanalysts, JAM replied that the
Ones-all-alone,
who
authorise
themselves through their own analysis,
before being recognised by a group, and
who are, he says, more individualistic
than before.
If Lacan was not a prophet, he
concluded, one can still decipher our
present in his grammar, and glimpse the
grimace of the future that awaits us.
Yet already in 1958 when Lacan gave
his Seminar VI, on desire and its
interpretation, the Other is riddled with
inconsistency. You can read the premise
of a deconstruction of the logic of
racism.

But today, if the inexpressible,

immeasurable and uninterpretable real
is the real of Lacan, his invention, his
symptom, the cornerstone that makes
his teaching hold, our rendezvous for
this Congress is a rendezvous with that
which in Lacan became a symptom of
civilization; its messy remainder, as
JAM qualifies it in his presentation.
But in an analysis, the remainder
becomes a compass that guides us and
renews the concept of the unconscious
moving towards a knot beyond
meaning, provided that at this stage
there is less of an Other, and more of the
One.
And when JAM gives the indication that
Guy Briole mentions in his introduction
to this volume of Scilicet, that there is
not much to say without knowing how
to read [lire], and he argues that if
psychoanalysis takes its departure from
the function of speech, it refers itself to
writing, to a language, reduced to the
letter, writes Guy, then we cannot help
but read in the word real, the perfect
anagram of the leer of the Spanish
language, spoken by the majority of
Lacanian analysts in the WAP...
In PAPERS 4 Mercedes Iglesias shows
how the real of psychoanalysis is a
disorder in the sense of the exclusioninclusion that it realises, insofar as it
introduces a there is not [il ny a pas],
an absence of knowledge about the act
and the absence of sexual relation; at the
same time it includes a there is with
the object a [il y a].
And in the orienting text of the
Congress, What's up!, Sergio Laa
proposes considering the real as a
9

strategic
offer
of
Lacanian
st
psychoanalysis for the 21 century, to
the extent that psychoanalysis offers the
subtlety and refinement of a real that
will allow it to survive.
To provisionally conclude, I would say
that if, as indicated by JAM in 1998,
Lacanian politics is the concern that we
have, today and tomorrow, for
psychoanalysis he already invited us
not to forget the phrase that Lacan
spoke at the moment of the 1953 split in
the IPA: The moron [dbile] subjected
to a psychoanalysis, always becomes a
knave [canaille]. As we know.

This is a phrase that makes me even

more fond of Christiane Taubiras retort
to the racist assaults of which she was
the object, published in Elle, 22 Nov
2013: I am not afraid of racists or
sexists or morons.
So, no chance of psychoanalysing these
morons, but we do have to give
ourselves over to dismantling their
speech, in forums and writings that hit
home.
Not giving up on the real at stake in the
formation of the psychoanalyst, is to
extend beyond the cure it is the action
that we must take in the social and
political arena.
A twist has taken place: the disorder of
the world that one interprets is being
answered
by
the
disorder
of
psychoanalysis and its real without law
and without sense.

The subject of psychoanalysis is

someone who takes a position in these
things of subtlety.
We could then read these repeated
attempts by legislators to reduce
psychoanalysis to a simple therapy and
to legislate it, a racism towards
psychoanalysis,
to
the
absolute
difference and the dignity of the subject
that it promotes.
Our position, it is to make everyone feel
concerned about this, not to just let
anything go [cest den faire laffaire de
chacun, de ne pas laisser faire].
Faced with this runaway real which
Lacan refers to in la Troisime, the
one that has the support of scientific
discourse, the analyst, has a mission, as
he puts it: to counter this scientific real
in order to disrupt it, and to bring about
this other impoverished real, without
law, without sense where nothing more
can be expected from the Other.
Thus, the Other who fades away gives
way to this hole-effect. It gives
existence to a there is not, that carries
a novel anti-racism, where the ONE,
like no other, can accommodate its
symptoms, its loneliness, its own exile
proper to language, without taking itself
to any Other, since it does not exist.
Lets finish here tonight.
If there is not the Other, or The woman,
and if the truth of Lacan is like The
woman that there is not not to be all
said, not all there is no Race, but there
is a real, and something well said [bien
dire], and there are courageous women,
like Christiane Taubira, to say it.
10

Translated by Janet & John Haney

Goosebumps

Josefa Rodriguez
"Goosebumps" is the title of the striking

exhibition by Guatemalan artist Regina

Galindo (1974) which we have recently
been able to visit in the Atlantic Centre
of Modern Art (CAAM) of Las Palmas.
Winner of the Lion Gold at the 51
Venice Biennale in 2005, Regina Jos
Galindo presents us with an artistic
project which aims to denounce the
political and social power exerted in
Latin America, especially on the women
of Guatemala, under the figures of rape,
abuse, death and torture, through
repressive measures sustained by the
State and the political system.

titles of Galindos performance, which

emphasize the unprecedented and
deadly force of the death drive in its
most pure and real dimension: that of a
jouissance separated from the signifying
articulation which does not resign
limitless satisfaction. Galindos body
shocks. She does not present herself as a
subject, but as a remainder that falls, an
abject body separated from life, married
to death. It is the encounter with the real
without limits.

To refer to these facts which are loaded

with guilt and impunity, Galindo utilizes
photography, video and performance
where she uses her body as a canvas.
As with many styles of Body Art, the
extreme violence that is being exposed
moves to the body of the artist, who is
subjected to all kinds of torture, while
remaining still. She thus manages to
revolt a warned viewer who reticently
moves through the exhibition under a
disturbing gaze.
Galindo pierces the skin of the spectator
who witnesses with horror the
desubjectivation of the artist, the
effacement of the subject who inhabits
the body, provoking an effect of
subjective division and a commotion of
the drive: the viewer knows that there
is something of himself there, which he
ignores.
"Necromas",
"Bitch",
"Social
Cleansing", "Hymenoplasty," "Volts"
are, among others, some of the shocking
11

The immobilization and impassiveness

of the artist, while she is beaten and
lacerated; her performances where she
makes herself be marked on her thigh
the word "bitch" while the blood flows;
her pregnant and naked body tied to a
bed with real umbilical cords, as an
expression of the rapes suffered by
indigenous women; and the one where,
in real time, she has her hymen
reconstructed to go back to being a
virgin; they are the fragments of the real
of a scandalous and visceral artwork
made to transmit social memory and
collective identity. In any case, this
treatment of the body, inertly dropped,
suspended, even buried, bearing
uncomfortable, painful and degrading
positions, seemed a rather psychotic
attempt to treat the returns of the real.
A small fact about her life resonated
like an echo in her work. Referring to
her mother, she said: "I always
remember her devouring books and I
her voice incessantly repeating to us the
tragic phrase of Vargas Vila, if life is a
martyrdom suicide is a duty".
Devastating demand of jouissance from
the maternal superego. Is this an iron
order to which the work of Regina Jos
Galindo responds?
Far from seeking to investigate the
artists subjectivity, I am more
interested in what she produces and in
how to live the drive today; what

answer does psychoanalysis give to the

vicissitudes of the body in the modern
clinic. The manifestations of the
barbarism that the artist brings to the
scene, the violence beyond limits in her
native Guatemala, which she denounces
with "Goosebumps", invites us to
reflect, I think, on several issues.

Another thing will be us as analysts,

because there what is at stake is our
responsibility and the future of
psychoanalysis: How to assume the real
of our praxis? What real for the 21st
century can psychoanalysis of the
Lacanian orientation offer, as put to us
by the title of the next WAP Congress?

The radical rejection of the symbolic.

1. A master signifier which does
not form a chain, rather than the
symptom as knowledge and
articulated to the Other.
2. The cruel modality adopted by
some types of suffering in the
modern clinic: the mortal threat
of passage to the act, compulsive
sex, tattoos, certain cases of
anorexia and bulimia, surgical
reassignment for sex change,
bariatric surgery for morbid
obesity, children and teenagers
trapped in the mothers fantasy
with no beyond able to set a
limit, violence and behavioral
disorders, also by omission
(passivity, apathy).
3. The desubjectivization and the
destitution of the impossible in a
frantic search for absolute
jouissance outside of the laws of
pact and love, through which the
absence of the sexual relation
tries to be denied.
When the compass of the symbolic fails
and ideals are scattered, psychoanalysts
are aware of the push to jouissance in
current civilization, without forgetting
the
subjects
responsibility
and
complicity in his or her fantasmatic
response or symptomatic solution with
which s/he tries to veil the structurally
irreducible void; there where the
capitalist discourse with a thousand
lures- leads to the worst by making us
believe that everything is possible.
12

Psychoanalysis as an incomplete
knowledge- constitutes an indispensable
tool for reflecting about the social; but it
is also a clinical device where, from the
place of subjective responsibility, the
way in which each subject, one by one,
responds to malaise, to unconscious
desire and to jouissance, can be listened
to and treated. This is not outside of
social and cultural connotations, but
gives the possibility of doing something
with that deadly jouissance, especially
in those cases where desire cannot be
oriented within a signifying chain. This
in times where the subject, in the
absence of the structuring law of the
father, will be forced to find other ways
of knotting, other modes of orientation
that may have a similar result to that of
the operation of the name of the father,
thanks to the function of the desire of
the analyst, as a desire to get to the real
stripped of meaning.
The Lacanian orientation proposes to us
an effort for poetry. If "Goosebumps"
turned out to be a an extreme and
disturbing creative experience that
anguish names in its real, it was a poem
by the artist -written on the wall- that
acted as a frame to allow me finish that
lonely journey in a Museum at two
o'clock in the afternoon on a grey
Sunday:
I paint my mouth with mourning,
So that they know I am alone
So that someone might perhaps
Kiss my sadness.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

On November 2, 2013
Translated by Renata Cuchiarelli

Sciences Real Without

Law
Francisco Paes Barreto

The real of psychoanalysis

If Schelling, at one point, questions
What, in the end, is the real? as the
important question of philosophy, the
same question can be taken as the
mainspring of Lacans teaching. In
Millers reading of the theme, it is
possible to find many answers in this
trajectory of more than thirty years. 13
Some prominence will be given to the
first and last answer.
First answer: The real is the symbolic.
Well, if what Lacan calls the real, at that
time, is excluded from analysis, which
is isolated as being the real in
experience, then it is the core of the
symbolic. This approach prevails in his
first six Seminars, and implies a
conceptual relevance between the real
and the cause. The real is the cause. It
is the cause of a number of effects, and
it is necessary to intervene where it

13

Miller, J.-A. Progressos em

psicanlise bastante lentos. In: Opo
Lacaniana n64. So Paulo: Edies
Elia, 9-67, dez. 2012, p. 20.
13

unfolds,
to
obtain
transformation.14

effects

of

At that time, Lacan accepts an equation

between the rational and the real; the
real, that is cause and which has effects,
can be translated by the proposition:
there is knowledge in the real. That is
the position of scientific discourse
which, since Galileo, concedes the
writing of nature in mathematical signs.
Thus, the unconscious for Lacan is a
structure, in other words, knowledge in
the real15. Finally, structure, for Lacan,
is one of the names of the real; the real
is the structure of language.
While an incessant change throughout
Lacans teaching can be verified, it is
also possible to observe that some lines
are preserved from the beginning to the
end. One of them is the importance
attached to the idea of structure, whose
weight is always maintained. At the
beginning, however, the structure is the
structure of language; then, it becomes
the structure of logics and, finally,
structure becomes equivalent to
topological structure, or the Borromean
knot.
Miller remarks that the formulae of
sexuation constitute a heroic attempt to
make of psychoanalysis a science of the
real, such as logic-mathematics.16
However, from Seminar 23 on The
Sinthome, where Lacans very latest
teaching begins, everything changes
completely. This change can be summed
up in the formula the real is without
law, whose corollary might be: there is
no science of the real. It is important to
say a little more about that.

14
15
16

Miller, J.-A. Idem. cit., p. 23-4.

Miller, J.-A. Ibidem, p. 33.

Miller, J.-A. The real in the 21st

century, in Hurly-Burly, Issue 9,
December 2013, p. 202.

After all, what does the formula the

real is without law mean? This law is
natural law, that which governs nature
and can be written by mathematical
language. Natural law predicates a
relationship of cause and effect, the
principle of causality. It is essential to
point out, then, that The cause-effect
relation is not valid at the level of the
real without law, it is not valid except as
a rupture between cause and effect17. In
other words, the real without law is not
of the order of causality, but, it is of the
order of chance. If causality is on the
side of necessity, chance or causality is
on the side of contingency. To conclude
this part, an opposition between the first
and the second concept of the real in
Lacan shows that, in the first case, there
is knowledge in the real, and the last
case points towards a real without
knowledge.
The real of science
It is necessary, initially, to define
science. By the term science, I am
referring to what was initiated by
Galileo and Newton and whose
paradigm is mathematical-physics.
Galileos famous claim was that nature
is written in mathematical language, and
therefore, governed by laws and that the
duty of science is to unveil them. When
it is pointed out that Galileo died in the
same year that Newton was born, there
is in it something more than a curious
remark, because it was precisely
Newton who brought to light the
important laws of the new science.
Formulated in such terms, natural law
presupposes the principle of causality,
and it pertains to the order of necessity,
because there is no effect without cause.
The existence of natural law implies the
existence of knowledge in the real and
nourishes the scientific dream of
complete knowledge about the real.
17

Ibid.

14

Knowledge in the real is in accordance

with Descartes formula that there is a
God that does not deceive; guarantor of
science. Or, to employ a later
expression, equally famous, God does
not play dice, as Einstein asserts. With
this expression the inventor of the
theory of relativity wanted to leave well
noted that it is not chance that governs
the universe. Or, which is the same
thing, sciences real is not without law.
Real of science
Causality
Necessity
Natural law
Knowledge
the real

Real
of
psychoanalysis
Chance
Contingency
Without law
in Real
without
knowledge

The real without law of quantum

mechanics
When questions are placed in these
terms and these are the terms in which
they are placed what stays out of
question is something truly crucial to
the scientific debate. To expose the
problem, it is better to return to
Einsteins formula, God does not play
dice, to contextualize the argument.
Under what circumstances was it said?
It all happened in 1930, in Brussels,
during one of the Solvay conferences,
the best-attended conference on physics
in the first half of the 20th century, when
Einstein argued against quantum
physics, defended by the Dane, Bohr.
Einsteins intention was to overthrow
the uncertainty principle proposed by
the German physicist Heisenberg in
1927 in which, time and energy in
physical
processes18,
cannot
be
measured
simultaneously
with
precision.
18

O pulo do gato. In:

Superinteressante, dezembro 2006. So
Paulo: Editora Abril.

The debate started by Einstein and Bohr

is far from being over. In this regard,
one can cite Hawking.
Today scientists describe the
universe in terms of two basic
partial theories the general
theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics. They are the great
intellectual achievements of the
first half of this century. The
general theory of relativity
describes the force of gravity
and the large-scale structure of
the universe, that is the structure
on scales from only a few miles
to a large as million million
million million (1 with twentyfour zeros after it) miles, the size
of the observable universe.
Quantum mechanics, on the
other hand, deals with the
phenomena on the extremely
small scale, such as a millionth
of a millionth of an inch.
Unfortunately, however, these
two theories are known to be
inconsistent with each other
they cannot both be correct.19
What is at stake? Nothing less than the
very foundations of science. Einstein
defends determinist causality and
attacks the purely probabilistic laws of
quantum mechanics, of which Bohr is
one of the founders. Here is the crux of
the matter.
Quantum mechanics is the branch of
physics that studies the atom and the
subatomic particles. No other scientific
theory has so many practical
applications, ranging from the atomic
bomb
to
numerous
household
19

Hawking, S. H. (1991) Uma breve

histria do tempo. 22 edio. Rio de
Janeiro: Rocco, p. 31-2. (A brief History
of time, Bantam edition published 1995,
p. 13)
15

appliances,
such
as
televisions,
computers and refined instruments such
as radar and electron microscopes.
More than any other branch of science,
quantum mechanics represented the
breakup between the experiences of the
senses, with the traditional certainties of
its field, having shaken some
methodological foundations.
Where is the starting point? Formulated
in 1900, by the German physicist Max
Planck, Quanta theory asserts that the
emission
and
absorption
of
electromagnetic energy by bodies is
made through fixed quantities or
continuous packages of energy and
not through uniform distribution of
energy by waves. In 1911, the atomic
nucleus was discovered by the Briton,
Rutherford, followed by the creation of
the atomic model, the basis of modern
nuclear physics: electrons in orbit
around the nucleus, such as a miniature
solar system. It was considered entirely
absurd
and
irrational,
because,
according Newtonian physics, the
electron, as it turns, would lose energy,
and would eventually fall into the
nucleus. However, in 1923, Bohr, who
knew the quanta of Max Planck,
studied the electrons and found a
solution to the problem. In Bohrs
model, the electrons jump randomly
from one orbit to another, and,
according to what the theory teaches
you to calculate, the probability of
losing energy is zero. Thanks to this, the
atoms stay intact. Therefore, there come
into play jumps that are entirely
random.
In many ways quantum mechanics
proved subversive. It became clear, for
example, that the very process of
observing phenomena on the subatomic
level, actually, modified them. One
researcher that was conducting a
detailed investigation to find where

exactly an electron was, said: to look

at it is to knock it out.20
Quantum mechanics allowed for the
solving of the problem of the nature of
light. There was the corpuscular and the
wave theory, each one with excellent
and irrefutable arguments. In 1927, the
dilemma was solved with the use of
state in quantum the photons that
could be manifested, potentially as
wave or particle, or as both.
Chance, or the absence of cause in
quantum phenomena, makes the
question of predictability complex. The
random process does not describe,
obviously, a deterministic pattern, but
follows a distribution of probabilities,
which allows for precise calculations. In
one aspect, quantum mechanics was
similar to another part of physics: the
20th century was the century of
theoreticians telling researchers what to
look for in light of their theories, with
equations on the clipboard preceding
laboratory experiments. It was the
century of the mathematicians.21 To
illustrate this let us take a famous
example with a recent outcome: Higgs
boson was predicted by the British
physicist in 1964, and found in 2012.
The Schrdinger equation, proposed by
the Austrian physicist in 1925,
represents to quantum mechanics what
Newtons second law represents to
classical mechanics. It is the most
important formula of the theory, but it
concerns only probabilities, in other
words, abstract numbers. Schrdinger
stated, in 1935, that to take the laws of
quantum seriously, one would have to
believe in zombies. To illustrate this, he
imagined an experiment where a cat
would be locked in a metal box together
20

Hobsbawn, E. (2003) Era dos

extremos. O breve sculo XX. So
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, p. 518.
21
Ibid p. 516.
16

with a bottle of poison and a piece of

radioactive metal. After one hour what
would happen to the animal? The
answer depends on the metal. If the
metal emitted radiation, and there was a
50% probability of this being the case,
the bottle containing poison would
break and kill the cat. If not, the feline
would pass unscathed through the trap.
As for the quantum rules, none of the
possibilities could be excluded, as long
as the cat was enclosed in the box and
no one looked inside it, the cat would
remain in an undefined state, both alive
and dead at the same time.22
Is it possible that physicists could learn
to live with permanent contradictions?
For Bohr, it is a possibility and a must.
The totality of matter cannot fit into a
single description given the nature of
human language.23
How to reconcile relativity theory with
quantum mechanics, or these two with
the old Newtonian physics? Nobody
knows.
I can say without deceiving myself that
nobody
understands
quantum
mechanics, wrote Feynman, one of the
most brilliant American scientists of the
last century.24
This permanent perplexity does not
impede researchers to advance in
increasingly ambitious ways. In 1996,
American physicists Wineland and
Monroe succeeded in making an atom
appear at two different points in space
and in the exact same instant. It was
already known that subatomic particles
were capable of such prowess, but
nobody had demonstrated that the effect
reached the entire atom. For the
researchers, equations should not stay
confined within the field of extremely
22

O pulo do gato. Op. cit.

Hobsbawn, E., op. cit., p. 520
24
O pulo do gato. Op. cit.
23

small things: At the centre of this

historical question lies the universality
of quantum mechanics25.
Conclusion
It is time to conclude.
On the basis of what was discussed
above, would it not be reasonable to
oppose the knowledge of sciences real
to the real without law of
psychoanalysis?
It would be wiser to take two
approaches:
A) Between the real of Lacans first
Seminars and the real of
Newtonian
or
Einsteinian
physics.
B) Between the real of Lacans
latest teaching and the real of
quantum mechanics.
Finally, two appeals.
First, to Einstein, wherever he might be,
that he listens: God, yes, he plays dice.
Second, to psychoanalysts of the
Lacanian orientation that they know:
before, long before psychoanalysis,
science already cogitated on a real
without law.
Translated by Micheli Romo

25

Ibid.

17