6

Lacan's Seminars on James Joyce:

Writing as Symptom and
"Singular Solution"
Ellie Ragland-Sullivan
Ragland-Sullivan

My'
My purpose is to try and convey in some detail the fruit of of Jacques Lacan's
seminars given on James Joyce, principally in 1975 and 1976, but also as
early as 1971.
1971. When Lacan first spoke at Yale University in 1975 he began:
"Ce n'est pas facile" ("It
("It is not easy for me") ("Kanzer
("Kanzer Seminar"). Indeed
Lacan's words on Joyce depict a Joyce that will be perfectly
perfectly strange for many,
including Joyce scholars. You will hear ideas such as these. There are real
knots in Joyce's prose that are not metaphorical, but have to do with meto-
signifying chains surrounding the Name of the Father. These knots
nymical signifying
{das Ding or point
denote the "thing" (das point de
de capiton) stuck
stuck at aa point of
of impasse
impasse
or encounter. But what is a knot? For Lacan the knot has the structure of of a
defined in at least three ways. But for the moment we will describe
symptom, defined
it as that in a person's life history which conscious knowledge does not ac- ac­
count for, but which leaves its imprint anyway. That is, the symptomatic
symptomatic
knot is Real, extrinsic in the first place to the cord it ties. It has to be put in.
As such it is a Real referent. Thus one can say that psychoanalytic resistance
has the shape ofof a knot, the structure of
of a symptom, the structure of of some-
some­
thing that is an obstacle or blockage in various aspects of of a person's life.

Joyce & Pa,

This lecture was first published in Joyce
Thi5 Pat is:
is: Act es Cinquieme
Actes Cinquieme Symposium
Symposium lnte, national
International
James Joyce,
James Joyce, Paris, June 16-20, 1975, eds. J. Aubert and Maria Jolas (Paris. C N.R.S , 1979).
referred tom
It is referred to in my essay from the most recent collection of of some ofof Lacan's seminars given
on James Joyce which have been edited by Jacques Aubert in Joyce Lacan. In Aubert's
Joyce avec Lacan.
referred to as "Joyce le sympt6me
collection it is referred symptome I."I . " The article called "Joyce le sympt6me
symptome II"II"
in Aubert's collection was prev10usly
previously published in
mL'AneL 'Ane Le Magazine Fteudien 6 (1982): 3-5.
A1agazine F,eudien
Many other selections on Joyce from Lacan's year-long seminar on Le Sinthome ha,e
Le Srnthome have been
published in Sci/icer
Scilicet and Ornicar?.
Ornicar?.

67
ti8 /I
68 Lacanian Theory
Lacanian Theory

In 1987 Jacques-Alain
Jacques-Alam Miller described the symptom in Joyce, Joyce avec Lacan
Lacan
as an enigma written in secret characters wluch which in and of of themselves say
nothing to anyone (''Preface,''
(''Preface," 11). Secondly, the symptom is also the pure
1ou1ssance-which
jouissance—which Freud discovered as the limit of of the power of of interpreta-
interpreta­
t1011-of an ecriture
tion—of ecriiure that Lacan called the Real ("La ("La psychanalyse," 445).
Among
A ..mong other things, Lacan ecnture and gives
Lacau says fantasy is separable from ecnture
rise
nse to desue [($ ◊
desire [($ 0 a)].
a)]. Miller adds later that both interfere
interfere in language
("Preface," 11). In Joyce's case, the effects
("Preface," effects are knots that denote an uncon-
uncon­
scious memory bank of of signifying
signifying associations derived
denved from the unsymbol-
ized Real particular to James Joyce alone. These objet ob1et a are actively suspended
within his prose, but resist revealing themselves as transparent "knowledge."
Jacques Aubert has suggested that Joyce, hke like Lacan, developed an "art "art ofof
suspension" ("Galeries," 83). In such a context "truth" "truth" is the savoir
savoir ofof a
particular subject's unconscious and serves a paradoxical function: to pro- pro­
vide a knowledge base and to stop up a hole in the Other from from which a sub- sub­
ject's jouissance
jouissance arises, not as a signifier, but as an effect
effect ofof the Real. The
unconscious signifying
signifying chains or savoir
savoir contain some elements that make
sense and others that are nonsensical, the nonsensical significations
significations produc-
produc­
ing a 1ou1ssance
jouissance effect
effect rather than a clear grammatical or informational
informational
communication.
I shall speak of Joyce's prose, then, as arising from the discourse that
constituted
constituted the author in the first place as a subjectsubject poised between oblivion
and 1he
the signifier. Jacques-Alain Miller once called "discourse" a process of of
language that truth constrains (" Avertissement," 5). In his 1975 Kanzer lec­
("Avertissement," lec-
ture at Yale, Lacau
Lacan spoke of of the truth in Joyce's discourse by referring
referring to an
article that had just appeared in a French literary journal whose thesis was
that the English language did not exist any longer after after Joyce's prose. Lac-
an's opinion was that, on the contrary, up until FinnegansFinnegans Wake,
Wake, Joyce had
respected what Noam Chomsky has called grammatical structure ("Kanzer ("Kanzer
Seminar"). His interest in Joyce was not in the lingustic intricacies of of his
prose, Lacan
Lacau said, but rather in the connection of of the "truth" that is Joyce's
unconscious savoir
savoir to Joyce's language. One of of Lacan's many characteriza-
characteriza­
tions ofof truth is of
of some thing that affects
affects the place from which we are speak-speak­
ing ("The
("The Freudian Thing," 121). Freud understood understood that the unconscious
produces symptoms, but did not grasp that those same symptoms cannot be
meaningful truths because they do not arise from antici-
easily revealed as meaningful antici­
pated models or meanings such as the various ones he proposed proposed in trying to
relate mind to body and truth to an unconscious.
Freud's assumptions of of what constituted
constituted identity and mentality were typi- typi­
cal of
of the positivistic thinking of of his day, assumptions that led him to over- over­
meamng (;ouis-sens)
look the meaning (jouis-sens) in nonsense that he had cast aside as irrelevant
1923. He chose instead an id-ego-superego model to replace his earlier
by 1923.
search for the cause of of symptoms in dreams, jokes, wordplay, slips of of tongue
 Ellie
Eiiie Ragland-Sullivan
Ragland-Sullivan I/ 69
69

and pen (The

(The Psychopathology
Psych op at ho logy ofof Everyday
Everyday Life),
Life), in myth (Totem
(Totem andand Ta-
boo), or even in the "pathological" sublimation of
boo), of art. While Freud saw
the artist as necessanly
necessarily neurotic, Lacan meant something quite different different from
from
attributed symptoms to artists. While Freud elevated the artist
Freud when he attnbuted
sacrificial position, one whose repressed
to a sacrificial repre~sed neurosis provides others with
cathartic release, Lacan argued the opposite. The purpose of of art is not to
permit repression, but to pose a question that the artist him or herself herself ha~
has
not answered or resolved. Artistic productions are not then in and of of them-
them­
selves pathological or neurotic.
Lacan taught that symptoms return retroactively as the objet objet a in a per-
per­
effect of
son's life, an effect of the Real as distinct from ego fictions. But what are
the objet'a,
objet'a, first derived from Imaginary identificatory
identificatory material and Sym- Sym­
bolic order language and,codes?
and^codes? They are the Ur-obJects
Ur-objects ofof desire and "drive":
the breast, the feces, the urinary flow, the (imaginary) phallus, the voice,
the phoneme, the gaze, and the void(' 'Subversion of
void ("Subversion of the subject," 315). By
object Lacan never meant the phenomenologically
object phenomenologically totalizable object, but
and jouissance as they inhabit language and the
something to do with desire and}ouissance
body, joining them. The ob1et objet a dwell in1ouissance
in jouissance at the limit of of the powers
of conscious interpretation. As a surplus or 1ouissance,
of jouissance, the objet
objet a link the
Real to the Symbolic and Imaginary by the Symptom, a fourth order that
permits the unknotting of of the material that holds symptoms together in the
first place. Slavoj Zizek has defineddefined the symptom as a particular
particular element
which gives the lie to the Universal of of which it is a part ("The
("The Marxist Symp-
Symp­
tom," ms 12). Some such particulars show up as fictions, desires, or prohibi- prohibi­
referent is the signifer
tions whose final referent signifer of
of the Father's Name, the first count-
count­
signifier as a referent
able signifier referent for identity. Yet these "fillers" make it seem there
universe of self, image, language, or consciousness. The
is no lack in the umverse
human tendency is to try to explain what ts is by things from the outside or by
impersonal innate tendencies, rather than by deficiencies and dissymmetries
in being
bemg and knowing.
Unlike many critics who comment on Joyce, Lacan was not interested in
the images in Joyce's work. He argued m in his Kanzer Seminar that like any
apparent unity, images always block truth. In Lacan's teaching, gram-
other apparent gram­
matical language and images merely produce the illusion of of a consistent uni-
uni­
verse. But the unconscious disrupts these illusions, by dissociating mean- mean­
ing that only seems full from our pretenses that it functions smoothly. The
uncomcious
unconscious produces, instead, a glimpse of of the void underlying our sense
productions. On the other hand, truth does show up in spoken language,
just as in dream or literary language, when w7hen it 1sis linked to the ob.1et
objet a as they
lean against chains of of signifiers. Lacan taught that signifiers lean against the
primordial objects of of desire or obJet
objet a and enable us to think against a back- back­
drop ofof desire. If
If language 1s,is, indeed, infiltrated objet a as Real punctua-
infiltrated by objet punctua­
tion points around which articulable matrices of of desire cluster, it becomes
70
70 /I Lacaman
Lacaman Theory
Theory

clearer what Lacan meant when he described truth as that which makes knowl- knowl­
edge stumble. Fiction may have the structure of of truth, but 1t
it is not truth in a
theological or essentialist sense.
In 1975 Lacan gave a seminar titled "Joyce le symptome" at the Fifth Fifth
International James Joyce Symposium.11 In this lecture Lacan considered
the difficulty of Fmnegans
difficulty of Finnegans WakeWake through describing a split in Joyce him- him­
self, but not the famous split of of the subject
subject divided between conscious and
unconscious awareness. Rather, Lacan pointed to a split between a Real
jou,ssance with which one is familiar, and truth which is repressed as an un-
jouissance un­
conscious savoir
savoir ("The
("The agency of of the letter," 169). Moreover, the Real is
stronger than the true ("Kanzer
("Kanzer Seminar," Scilicet 617, 42). Joyce, he sug- sug­
gested, was more attached to the Real suffering suffering caused by the Jowssance
jouissance
that lies beyond repression than to any wish to ascertain the true reasons for
his own psychic pain. It will perhaps be helpful
helpful to recall a definition
definition ofof 1ouis-
jouis-
sance given by Jacques-Alain
Jacques-Alain Miller: "Truth
"Truth resisting knowledge of of jows-
jouis-
sance"
sance" ("A ("A and a,"a," 25).
In his 1987 introduction
introduction to the screemng of Lacan's Television,
screening of Television, Jacques-
Alain Miller points out that1ouissance
that jouissance is not Other-related, but is egotistical
("Introduction to Television,"
("Introduction Television," 14). Joyce's deteriorating eye condition (glau-(glau­
coma), his daughter's psychosis, and his increasingly arcane prose were all
symptoms of of a man whose desire was encumbered by an excessive oppres- oppres­
sion ofof Jouissance.
jouissance. And jouissance
jouissance always concerns the relation of of desire to
the position of of the Father's Name (or the phallus). The issue of of fathers was
paramount in Joyce's life and work. His own father had been an alcoholic,
paramount
embezzler. Catholic Church fathers were also constantly
indeb.ted, and an em~ezzler.
disappointing Joyce. In Lacanian terms, his masculine identity was contin- contin­
ually beseiged by questions regarding the worthiness of of his (father's)
(father's) name,
the worthiness of of his national identity, and so on. Disappointed
Disappointed by Imagin-
Imagin­
ary order models and by the Symbolic order itself, Joyce sought to make a
name for himself
name himself chiefly
chiefly as an artist, thereby depending on his own crea- crea­
tivity rather than what others had created for him. Lacan argued that the
character Stephen Dedalus was Joyce's Imaginary alter ego through whom
sought to decipher his own life enigmas. This
he fictively and unconsciously sough.t
argument is developed at length by Hugo Rotmistrovsky in "Joyce, el nom-
bre." When an enunciation contains the enigma of of the enonce
enonce (or uncon-
uncon­
scious knowledge), Lacan denoted this phenomenon
phenomenon in his mathemes as Ee. Ee.
A particular enunciation is not just talk or information,
information, but itself
itself announces
that an unconscious enigma is in play. Rotmistrovsky refers to one such
enunciation Portrait of
enunciation from Portrait of the Artist
Artist as a Young
Young Man.
Man. "The
"The cock crew,
the sky was blue, the bells in heaven, were striking eleven. It's time for this
poor soul, to go to heaven?" (35).
By the time he wrote Finnegans
Finnegans Wake, shattering his ego into dispersed
voices, Joyce had dispensed with Imaginary and Symbolic fathers. Leaving
sense behind, the Lacanian Real father (otherwise thought of of as the dead
 Ellie
Ellie Ragland-Sullivan
Ragland-SuMvan I/ 71
71

jouissance) takes over Joyce's language. Lacan described Jouis-

Father or jouissance) jouis-
sances as unassimilated
sances unassimilated pieces of of knowledge that act as symptoms and cause
people to invent myths concerning their origins, bodies, desires, being, and
so on. The Real symptom or ohjet objet a is a universal "negative" positivized as
das Ding
Ding that is terrifying
terrifying in its full presence—a
presence-a lack of of lack-and
lack—and thus ob- ob­
scured by the savo1r
savoir that generally masks it for the purpose of of protecting a
reference to a
subject from knowing what constitutes his being and desire in reference
cause. The symptom is the more-than-us in us which destroys us. But we
cling to our symptoms because they are familiar and give us a sense of of being
unified and consistent. In the case of
unified of Joyce, Lacan described one ofof his symp-
symp­
demonstrated
toms as his doubt. He was a Saint Thomas who progressively demonstrated
what Lacan taught: that our sins, like our uncertainties, place all of of us on
the same side as analyst and analysand. We all live behind the wall of of lan-
lan­
guage, inhabited by a fault or flaw or lack, or in the language of of the Church,
effect caused by this wall of language (Lacan's
a sin. Every subject is an effect (Lacan\s
of alienation) behind which he or she lives more or less confidently,
structure of confidently,
not knowing that they retrieve the words by which they live at the expense of of
beings. Lacan gave Joyce a
a lack in being that constitutes them as speaking bemgs.
new name: "Joyce the symptom." By rewriting the spelling of of symptom (a
late-learned Greek borrowing) with the letters of of its archaic Old French spell-
spell­
ing—sinthome—Lacan said he was giving Joyce a new (old) name. The sin-
ing-srnthome-Lacan
thome is that which is singular in each person, as ordered by every subject's
thome subject's
experiences ofof taking on a gender identity.
Discourse of
As early as 1953 in his Discourse Rome Lacan described a symptom
of Rome
thus:

The symptom 1s is here the sigmfier of a signified repressed from the conscious­
conscious-
subject. A symbol written in the sand of the flesh and on the veil of
ness of the subJect. of
Maia, it participates min language by the semantic ambiguity that I have already
emphasized in its constitution. But 1t it 1s
is speech functionmg
functioning to the full, for 1tit in­
in-
was by decipher-
cludes the discourse of the Other in the secret of its cipher. It V\<as decipher­
this speech that Freud rediscovered the primary language of symbols, still
ing tlus
suffering of civilized man (Das
living on in the suffering (Das Unbehagen
Unbehagenin inderder Kultut).
Kultw). ("The ("The
function and field of speech," 69)

By the 1970s Lacan spoke ofof the symptom as a happening of of the body where
language joins symbol in such a way that the Imaginary and Real bodies
combine appearance and enigma. It is important to note, however, that he
does not make a simple symbol of of the symptom. The symbol gives rise to
the symptom, and the symptom refers to the symbol that gave rise to it. These
are pulled along by the Real with which the Imaginary combines by passing
above the symbol (representation
(representation ofof the sun, an elephant, etc.), and below
the symptom (the fantasy that interprets the symbol). The link between an
unsymbohzed Real and a representational Imaginary is thus expressed by an
unsymbolized
opposition: they
they must
must be taken together.
together.
72
72 / Lacantan Theory
Lacanian Theory

In Lacan's redefinition
redefimt10n of of terms symbol does not mean a second sense or
a hidden meaning, but as I have put it elsewhere: "a " a discrete unit, both au-au­
tonomous and irreducible, which speech sounds endow with meaning in ref- ref­
erence to other units" (Jacques Lacan,Lacan, 170).
170). Lacan has rejected neopositivistic
symbologies and redefined
redefined symbol as the lowest common multiple of of mean-
mean­
ing that imposes itself
itself through projection/introjection
projection/introject10n in the building up of of
unconscious
unconsc10m networks of of signifying
signifying ensembles. In Lacanian terms, when one
encounters an enigmatic use of Finnegans U'ake,
of language such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake,
the author's language speaks an opaque symptomatology: a jouissance jouissance of of
the Real where language conceals (and reveals) the presence of of a blockage
within itself.
Joyce has called such a phenomenon
phenomenon "consubstantiality," referring referring to
the theological theory that the three persons in the Trinity or Godhead- Godhead—
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-are
Ghost—are of of the same substance. Their Flesh made
r
w ord is celebrated in communion (Ulysses, 32). Lacan frequently
word frequently spoke of of
the word made Flesh. Yet one cannot read the unconscious of of a text, but
rather the symptom which has the structure of of metaphor. As in metaphor
one thing substitutes for another. In Lacan's view, Joyce substitutes the ma- ma­
teriality—that which gives weight, density, and motion-of
teriality-that motion—of the voice for a
cohesion between language and a lacking identificatory
identificatory signifier
signifier for a worthy
Father's Name. One can read this through the materiality materiality ofof the voice as
objet a, linked to the signifier
objet signifier foj
fo.r the Father's Name. Put another way, the
unconscious bites into language. Lacan named this stylistic phenomenon
common to Rabelais, Joyce, and himself himself an ecrit: a place between speaking
and writing where the timbre and resonance of of the voice as a libidinal organ
resides. As symptoms wax and wane they are linked to the voice. As objet objet a
the voice is a cause of of desire that refracts
refracts the tension between desire and
jouissance.
jouissance. It produces an echo in the body of of the fact that something reson-
reson­
ates in language, demonstrating that the word has impact both as cause and
effect.
effect. Finnegans
Fmnegans Wake is, for Lacan, Lacau, a dream, an enigma of signifiers and
of signifiers
the silence ofof aajouissance
jouissance bequeathed
bequeathed us by Joyce. This monumental work
is not an awakening, but a dream full of of sorrow and death: a wake. After After
Joyce's other works his Bildung
Bi/dung or substitute ego (that Lacan designated as
Dedalus) was finally ready to collapse in the sense that Joyce's own ego was
fading, unraveling, abandoning Joyce to the unconscious signifying signifying networks
that spoke him as if from from afar.
afar.
Lacan loved Joyce for his attempts to shred academic myths and conven- conven­
tions, to make litter of of the letter, to retrieve bits of
of verbal garbage to add to
the garbage can of poubel/ication (publication). But he loved him most for
of poubellication
his ability to live his symptoms through a sheer will of of words. Joyce's dis­dis-
course was one of of contingency, said Lacan, going so far as to suggest that
Finnegans Wake in order to become Joyce the sinthome:
Joyce published Finnegans sinthome:
that is, Joyce
joyce the enigma.
en-igma.-Tri-ff11s effort Joyce gained a mastery over the__ _
In this effort
signifying deficiency
signifying close- th,i
deficiency that brought him close to lack and loss, that Lacan Lacan''
 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan
Ragland-Sullivan I/ 73

attributed to a foreclosure bf bf the signifier

signifier for the Father's Name. Joyce's
art became a supplement that would give birth to Modernism as that which
provokes, but does not answer, and thus pushes "supposed""supposed'' masters to in- in­
terpret, according to Slavoj Z1zekZizek ("Limits," 38).
The inert energetics of of a 1ouissance, unsymbolized and empty yet
jouissancey both unsymbohzed
totally dense and full, that Lacan attributes to the Real, constitutes the pain- pain­
ful, silent symptom behind Joyce's language. Lacan sees this symptom as
the flip side of
of the signifier, one side giving life, the other showing death or
an "extimacy" that he described as an intimate alienation emanating from from
within us (Miller, "A"A and a,"
a," 25). The life-giving
life-giving side of
of a word suggests that
infinite meanings are possible. Yet when a word ceases to mean, we confront
infinite confront
the side of
of a text or an author that is not open to all meanmgs.
meanings. On the con- con­
trary, one finds here the point at which all meanings can be abolished. The
of a language are the limits of
limits of of the subject. For Lacan this means that
signifier can occasionally, as in dreams or psychotic discourse, take over
the signifier
and begin to function
function either agrammatically or without reference to a listen- listen­
functioning on automatic pilot. In these contexts the signifier
er, as if functioning signifier speaks
subject in such a way as to reveal the Other speaking, as if for no one.
the subject
In Joyce's texts that Lacan read and reread over a period of of decades, he
found both sides of of what Jacques-Alain Miller has clarified
clarified as the Lacanian
symptom. On one side, the symptom is a mark or tic that replaces or sub- sub­
stitutes for a trauma (a knotting in the Real). The symptom may be a word,
sound, event, detail, or image that acts in a way peculiar to a given subject's
subject's
involve some part of
history. It will always mvolve of the body, ifif only as an objet
objet a.a.
On this slope, the enigmatic symptom belongs to the sign or the unconscious
signifying chain of
signifying of language because it is susceptible of of being deciphered or
decoded. But on the other slope, the symptom becomes more problematic
jowssance—hors-sens or beyond language-that
because it concerns a 1owssance-hors-sens language—that is
both extra-utilitarian
extra-utilitarian and inaccessible and does not wish the "good""good" of of the
subject it inhabits. Insofar
subject Insofar as James Joyce was concerned, Lacan ventured
the theory that his first symptoms concerned an unconscious position taken
toward the signifier
to\\ard signifier for the Father's Name which he could still enunciate in
Portrait of
Portrait of the Artist Young i'4an
Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Stylistically speaking,
metaphors—or the double
characters served Joyce in these two novels as metaphors-or
structures that constitute ego or meaning-by
meaning—by negotiating the author's un- un­
conscious desire and taking up varying positions regarding his jouissance.
consc10us jouissance.
Finnegans Wake Joyce had cancelled his subscription to the Other.
But in Finnegans
His recognizable ego-with
ego—with its substitutive or metaphorical structure-dis-
structure—dis­
appears.
In Uly,\~~es
Ulysses Joyce's father figures still ground him in a representational
representational
hneage,
lineage, thereby giving him a way to subsist in language as a coherent (that
is, desiring) subject. Up until Finnegan~
Finnegans Wake
Wake the Father's Name s1gnif1er
signifier
was represented by a country, a race, a religion, and a name for Joyce him- him­
self: the Artist.
Artist. On the first side ofof the symptom-the
symptom—the side signified
signified by a
74
74 /I Lacanian Theory
Lacanian Theory

signifier—Joyce's search for an identity adequate to his desire is only too

sigmfier-Joyce's
visible in his texts. On the other side of Jou is-sens comes into
of the symptom jouis-sens
play as an excess left behind in the wake of of the constitution
constitution of of an ego, point-
point­
ing
mg here to the referent
referent ofof the Father. Although Lacan finds this key refer- refer­
ent foreclosed, one could not determine that this was the "psychic" struc- struc­
ture at issue before Finnegans Wake. Moreover, Lacan argues that Joyce is
before Finnegans
curiosity like no other. Even the foreclosure of this central signifier
a cunosity signifier is not
necessarily sufficient
necessanly sufficient to give rise to a psychotic rupture (Ragland-Sullivan,
(Ragland-Sulhvan,
"La forclusion lacanienne," 199-227). Joyce's great desire to be the Artis·t
"La forclusion Artist
makes a supplement (a kind of of ob
objet a) of
jet a) of the sinthome. In
the sinthome. In Portrait
Portrait and
and Ulysses
Ulysses
an Imaginary denigration of of Joyce's own father becomes a Symbolic order
deficiency which the son will try, albeit unconsciously, to rectify
deficiency rectify by creating
Stephen Dedalus. Taken as a cipher for Joyce's unconscious quest "to know,"
Stephen's ventures lead him along the path of of trying to find out how to act,
how to be "as a man." It is crucial to Lacan's importance for literary stud- stud­
ies that one note his rethinking of of creativity (sublimation). Unlike Freud, he
did not view invention as neurotic displacement for Oedipal lack. Rather, a
creation can function
function as a supplement or a bridge built between the "partial "partial
drives," the objet
objet a, desire, and language. Art is a way to dwell dwell in language
as a subject of unconscious desire, as well as a way to adorn the void. Unlike
subject of
psychosis or neurosis, art does not equate artist to symptom. Art offers offers an
edifice built over suffering,
suffering, a something extra that has a life of of its own. Lacan
theorized that the mental representations—the Vorstellungsrepmsentanz or
representations-the Vorste!lungsrepmsentanz
savoir (S2)—which ground or frame every subject's identity question, his or
savoir (S2)-which
her "who am II?," ? , " show up ultimately as a gender problematic that can be
deciphered by a scanning of of how language uses that subject.
subject.
It seems fantastic to suggest that the syntactical discontinuities in Finne- Finne-
gans Wake come from disturbances in Joyce's body and being, and that these
are traceable to insufficient
insufficient representational grounding for a masculine iden- iden­
tity. Lacan's idea that the objet
objet a are woven into language, indeed, material-material­
ize language, from infancy on—language which structures being by the sig­
infancy on-lang~age sig-
nifier
nifier in the first place—seems
place-seems outrageous. Yet, Lacan argued from from clinical
data, from philosophical treatises, from from literary texts, from artistic artifacts
artifacts
of all sorts, from theology, and from everything else, that unquantifiable
of unquantifiable
effects and enigmas-not
effects enigmas—not substantive
substantive essences—create
essences-create human being as an
alienated set ofof fictions and myths that only seem essentialized because our
language and bodies are connected by the objet obJet a. We are structured as the
creatures of
of an Other desire. This desire is itself
itself lacking as a fullness ofof knowl­
knowl-
edge. Moreover, it is perforated
perforated by the hole of itself from which the
of loss itself
objet Joyce avec Lacan
objet a fall. In Joyce Lacan Lacan reminds us of of this when he speaks of of
the "drive" as an echo in the body to the fact that there is a dire which reson- reson­
ates through the agencies we call being or meaning ("Le ("Le Sinthome, Seminaire
du 18 novembre," 42). Lacan said the same thing in other words in "Joyce le
symptome I": "Subjects are spoken in a way that creates their destiny, surely
 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan
El/ie Ragland-Sullivan I/ 75

not by chance"
chance'' {23;
(23; my translation). A subject
subject is predetermined-not
predetermined—not en- en­
tirely, of
of course-by
course—by the discourse of of his origins.
But does this not return us to a retrograde version of of Freud's Oedipus
complex? No, we have, instead, encountered
encountered Lacan's rewnting
rewriting of
of the Oedi-
pal symptom as the paternal metaphor or the fourth term that links networks
of
of associative and combinatory
combinatory meanings, tying Imaginary identifications
identifications
to Symbolic language. These are pulled along by the Real of of symbol and
symptom which Lacan defmed defined as a universal lack or negative kernel at the
of all being, meaning, language, and desire. The appearance of
heart of of a symp­
symp-
tom points to an imbalance in the interrelatedness of of R.S.I. (Real.Symbolic.
Imaginary) and denotes what Lacan termed the particular negative. One
sees that a Lacanian reading of of texts will pay heed not only to jokes, puns,
of the tongue, and so on, but also to the appearance of
slips of of the gaze, the
voice, the void, or to any equivocation which points to the issue of of identify-
identify­
ing signifiers. It is in this sense that Lacan proposed in his 1975-76 seminar
mg
Le Sinthome that the increasing difficulties
Le Sinthome difficulties of
of Joyce's prose represent the
degree to which Joyce becomes^progressively
becomes progressively detached from the Symbolic
("Kanzef Seminar"). Yet, as Danielle Bergeron points
or grammatical order ("KanzerSeminar").
out, Joyce's production
production of of a work of of art, viewed as an object presented to
the gaze ofof the Other, served the author as an effort effort to inscribe himself
himself in
("Jouer sa vie sur," 172).
the Symbolic order ("Jouer
An ecrit as defined
defined by Lacan is something which gives language weight
and the semblance of of autonomy. Such language is to be located somewhere
between speech and writing. For Joyce an ecrit might be said to reside be- be­
tween language and the voice. We know that he even called his wife "Nor "Nor
Voice" {O'Brien,
(O'Brien, 33). IfIf we look at Joyce's difficult
difficult prose within a Lacanian
context, rather than from the recently familiar deconstructive one, we will
different view of
end up with a different of it. Whereas poststructuralist
poststructuralist theories have
privileged metonomy within language itself, often often describing language as
the search for metaphor, Lacan placed substitutive desire on the side of of
metaphor and recast metonymy as a fading into enigma. Language does not
so much slip, according to Lacan, as it swims in the water of of desire that func-
func­
tions like Freudian condensation, according to the primary law of of metaphor.
Metaphor spawns metonymies which do not simply open up to yet another
signifier on to infinity. Rather, metonymies dwell on the side of
signifier of the Real
and the objet
objet a, some of of which can be pinned down. While desire is on the
of the unconscious, the Real is on the side of
side of of the ego. That is, its effects
effects
are palpably strong, albeit mysterious, such as in anxiety. Not only is the
Other misrecogmzed
misrecognized as the unconscious subjectsubject ofof desue,
desire, but it is not real-
real­
ized that the Real causes of of desire are themselves effects
effects or products ofof loss
marked in the Other as a hole. Lacan spoke of Fmnegans Wake as language
of Finnegans
rushing m in to fill up a hole in Joyce's being, a hole that revealed a void be­ be-
hind the appearance of unities.
76
76 I/ Lacaman Theory
Lacaman Theory

Paradoxically the underweave of in. Fmnegans

of discourse in Finnegans WakeWake gave
gave birth
birth
to an artist like no other. Here Joyce is WRITING.
WRITING. The metaphorical and
metonymic slopes of of language fade rapidly 111
in and out ofof each other hkelike kal-
kal­
eidoscopic plays ofof being and nothingness. Joyce is dispersed into bits and
of the objet
pieces of objet a as phoneme, voice, gaze, and (imaginary) phallus. "The 'The
point of
of unmtelhgibility
unmtelligibility there is, however, the ladder by which one shows
oneself as master," Lacan said in "Joyce le symptome II,"
oneself I I , " continuing,
I am enough of a master of the roots of language [lalangue], [lalangue], the one called
Fiench, to
French, to have myself arrived at what is fascinanng
fascinating in bearing witness to the
jouissance particular
;ouissance particular lo
to the
the symptom.
symptom. Opaque;ouissance
Opaque jouissanceofofexcluding
excludingmeaning
meaning
[sens].One
[sens]. Onesuspected
suspectedititallallfor
fora along
longtime.
time.To
Tobebea apost-Joycian,
post-Joycian,isislotoknow
knowit.it.
wakening except through this particular jouissance.
There is no wakemng . . . The extra-
jouissance . ... extra­
ordinary thing 1sis that Joyce arrived there, not without Freud (although 1t it would
suffice that he had read him), but without recourse to the experience of
not suffice of
analysis (which would have trapped him mto into some flat endmg).
ending). (36)
The two faces of of the symptom as designated by Lacan appear clearly in
Finnegans Wake. On the communicative side, one finds the radical non-
Finnegans non-
sens of
of Other signifying
signifying chains. On thejouis-sens
the jouis-sens side, the Name of of the Fa-
Fa­
ther shows up as destructive of of law("
law ("Joyce
Joyce le symptome I," I , " 27). The Real,
in other words, is an obstacle that fragments and shatters appearances of of
unity into chaotic bits, its final term being that of of the contradiction
contradiction of of the
signifier for authority, "Father."
signifier " F a t h e r / ' When annulled, this signifier
signifier shows its
structural underpinnings. "Father''"Father" signifies desire only in referencereference to pro-
pro­
interpretation of
hibition. Such is Lacan's interpretation of Freud's myth in Totem
Totem and TabooTaboo
in which the primal hoard wishes to destroy the Father, yet feels guilty for
this desire. This myth, like many others, served Lacau Lacan as a setting out of of the
conditions of of meaning and being, seen as things that will not run smoothly.
In this purview, every person's unconscious reserve is ordered by experiences
that make of of them a symptom, insofar insofar as the symptom 1s is a fourth order or
final term
final term by which aa subject
by which subject exists
exists with
with any
any sense
sense of
of being
being subJect
subject to
to or
or of
of
some limit.
some limit. InIn "Joyce
"Joyce lele sympt6me
symptome I" I " Lacan
Lacan says,
says, "All
"All psychic reality, that
psycluc reality, that
is to
1s say the
to say the symptom,
symptom, depends
depends on on the
the last
last term,
term, of
of aa structure
structure where
where thethe
Name of
Name of the
the Father
Father isis an
an unconditioned
unconditioned element"element" (27).
(27).
Art is an artifice, Lacan suggested, that serves artists in singular ways. In
Portrait Joyce used Stephen to ask his public for love for himself
Portrait himself as author,
author,
position for himself
to hollow out a po1.ition himself in the social sphere. But in FinnegansFinnegans
Wake language has itself itself become a kind of of ego. Joyce's unconscious is no
structured like a language that doubles as a "self" fiction. Rather,
longer structured
language contiguities link pieces of of voice to letter and phonation, enabling
Joyce to become master of the debns debris coughed up into his discourse from the
Real. In his seminar Le Sinthome Lacau
Le Sinthome Lacan wrote: "One thinks against a signifi-signifi­
er. This is the meaning I have given the word appense. One leans against a sig­ sig-
nifier to think" (Ornicar?
nifier {Ornicar? 11,9). So while Joyce's art may be the quintessence
 Ragland-Sullivan
Ellie Ragland-Sullivan / 77

of Modernism for literary cntics,

critics, for Lacan his art elaborated an ego already
positioned
pos1t1oned at the breaking point,pomt, but an elaboration
elaboration that enabled him to hve live
with some Imaginary 1dentificatory
identificatory consistency in the world of of others. Joyce's
art did not cure his symptoms nor stop his suffering.
an suffering. For his readers Joyce's
language 1s,is, however, an interpretative delinum
delirium that stretches to infinity, in
the words of of Slavoj Zizek, "from
"from the time when each stable moment reveals
itself
itself to be only an effect
effect of
of the congealing of of a plural sigrnfying
signifying process"
("Limits," 38-39).
Zizek has called Joyce the writer wnter ofof the fantasy m in Lacan's sense, where
"fantasy" closes off
"fantasy" off the space of of a painful
painful inert presence he,ca:f!ed
he^called "non-
dialectisableyowmtfttce."
dialectisable 1ou1ssance." The prose of of Finnegans
F1nnegans Wake becomes the fan- fan­
of language knotting together images, words, and traumas to (re)consti-
tasy of (reconsti­
tute knots into which signifying
signifying associative chains
chams from the Real, Symbolic,
and Imaginary can hook themselves. In this context Lacan described F111ne- Finne-
gans Wake
Wake as a book about the ''polyphony
"polyphony of of the parole''
parole'' that manifested
manifested
Joyce's sinthome
stnlhorne in all its pristine purity. Finnegans
Fmnegans Wake is anything but a
book about play and humor, as some Joyce critics have argued. It is a book
about the sinthome, itself a kind
sinthome, itself kmd of of writing that is irreducible. Symptom
and symbol coalesce in the Real at a place where a signifier'ssignifier's meaning is not
intended to be communicated
communicated to another as interpretable ("Le ("Le Sinthome,
Seminaire du 18 novembre," 47).
Lacan's innovative conception of of the sinthome
s111thome refers to a kind of of writing
that is completely empty of of meaning, noninterpretable, but still does not
lose its aptitude for correlating the subject with something of of the unconscious:
the sexual nonrelation (Lajonquiere, 23). Another innovation in Lacan's
reading ofof Joyce's prose is the idea that Finnegans
F11111egans Wake 1s is not intended to
mystify
mystify readers, but is
1s Joyce's desperate effort
effort to try to keep a link to the
intact. This writing on the slope of
Symbolic order mtact. of metonymy gave its author
a way to live without falling mto into the abyss of psychotic jouissance.
jouissance. As long
as he could chain letters together and substitute sounds for images and voices
in prose that resembled metaphorical language (just as one can forestall psy­ psy-
chosis in the transferential
transferential or Imaginary realm by imitating Imaginary order
models), Joyce could reconstitute himself himself as a double structure for others,
even if those others could not grasp what he meant. The polyphony of of voices
in Finnegans
Finnegans Wake creates a kmd kind of
of border or limit, a simulated superego,
whose continuing
continmng murmurings allow Joyce to make a pact between the obJet objet
a as cause of of desire and the foreclosure of the Father's Name m in the Real
(there where no clear limits
lin11ts are set).
In Portrait
Portrmt Lacan saw Joyce as still engaged in substituting others in sex-
m substitutmg sex­
ual relations for the underlying
underlymg nonrelation of of every subJect
subject to the Other.
Dedalus represented Joyce's effort
Declalus effort to face the gaze of of Woman who evoked
in him the horror of of the Other's desire. Although certain women-particu-
women—particu­
larly those whose standmg
standing 111in the Church was worthy-portrayed
worthy—portrayed the "es- "es­
sence of truth" for Joyce, sexual women threatened him h11n with the "gates of of
78
78 /I Lacanian
Lacan inn Theory
Theory

hell." In this sense, Woman was for him, as for other men, a symptom of of
masculine fantasy relations to the obJet objet a Lacan called the void. In a com- com­
plicated set of
of arguments Lacan has argued that there is no [He tke in the Woman
for she reaches into the ineffable
ineffable realm of of the Real and is, in consequence,
villified, deified, or in other ways symptomatic for men (see Lacan, Encore; Encore;
"Avent Propos," 18). In a Lacanian interpretation
Andre Aubert, "Avent interpretation ofof liter-
liter­
ary texts, one can never dismiss figurations of of women. It is not that Woman
(or women as figures) is synonymous with "truth" or is essentialized in any
\Vith "truth"
other way. But she is close to the realm of of a "truth" that lives us mysteriously,
as an inwardness we recognize but whose source or meaning we cannot quite
grasp. In Portrait
Portrait Joyce uses Stephen's voice to block out the female gaze
with all its intimations ofof seduction and judgment. Yet not only do the names
of Molly and Nora open onto feminine sexual!ty,
of sexuality, Joyce goes beyond names
or characters in his grasp of of the feminine when he confronts
confronts the Woman in
his epiphanies. Catherine Millot has called the epiphanies "trivial vulgar
moments" when they concern masculine desire or Woman and sexuality.
They indicate Joyce's use of of jouissance
Jouissance to show the emptiness of of phallic
meaning in a return that marks the place of of das Ding as invisible space (Millot,
94). By the time he writes Finnegans
Finnegans Wake, Woman is no longer Joyce's
major
major threat. The Real or the hole in the Other is. Instead of of making Woman
the solution and battleground
battleground for his life epic, Joyce took the turn toward
the Father, the turn that required him to to try to contain the overspill of of the
unbarred gaze of of the Real.
In 1976 Lacan's clinical and theoretical orientation
orientation toward the Real does
not bear any longer on the Name of of the Father, but on the foreclosure of of
meaning in relation to his axiom that there is no sexual relation at the heart
of
of sexual relating. Rather there are "partial drives" that appeal to others,
after having gone through the circuit of
after of the Other. These drives constitute
the unconscious desire that conditions each subject subject (Lajonquiere, 22-24).
Joyce himself
himself names the foreclosure of of the signifier
signifier for a Father's Name
"the legal fiction of paternity." Not only external invaders—the
invaders-the British Em- Em­
pire, the Church, and so_ so. on-but'
on—but also Joyce's own deteriorating eyesight
and his daughter Lucia's psychosis, give a certain meaning to his prose. To
read Lacan with an artist is to read art with life. To read Finnegans Finnegans WakeWake
with Lacan's theory of of the symptom is to rethink the question of of identity in
relation to the concept of of a signifier
signifier for law or limits.
Although Lacan first theorized the potential infinitization
infinitization of
of the signifier
signifier
in 1953, his interest in Joyce in the 1970s bears on the death drive rather than
on the play ofof the signifier. What Freud called the ''"silence
silence of
of the drives''
drives" in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
Beyond Principle, Lacan named the Real points of of an irreducible
movement in a subject's primary symbolizations, concerning the residue sur- sur­
rounding the signifier of the Father's Name. A Real knot blocks Symbolic
signifier of
differentials and Imagmary
differentials Imaginary collusions. But Lacan knew that neither analyst
nor literary critic-nor
critic—nor author for that matter—can
matter-can get to the Real (which
 Ellie Rag/and-Sullivan
Ellie Ragland-Sullivan I/ 79
79

never ceases writing itself) by simply deconstructing texts or merely by de­ de-
coding enigma or making innumerable puns. Put another way, language
produces a Real which does not have any corresponding corresponding reality. Thus, it is
difficult even to know when one is in the presence of
difficult of the Real. Yet, para-
para­
doxically, even though the Real is the expulsion of, of, even the aversion to,
meaning, Millot points out that the only way it can be treated is by being
symbolized (91). In this context perhaps one can better understand that Lacan
would take Freud's allegory in Totem Totem and
and Taboo
Taboo of of a mythic father to be a
Real father who signifies the paradoxical circumscription
circumscription of of law by desire
(Aubert, "Le sinthome, Seminaire du 20 Janvier,'' janvier," 66).
One enters the Symbolic order in the first place at the price of of submission
to an Imaginary father whose superego images are initially (for any child)
incomprehensible, if not ferocious and obscene. No child is born understand- understand­
ing that someone must "lay down the law." Although one of of the Names of of
"mother," Lacan's larger point is that Father signifies law be­
the Father is "mother," be-
cause he is the diacritical opposite of of mother, making male/female
male/female seem a
opposition or at least a differential.
natural opposition differential. But the effects
effects of
of this seemingly
structured asymetrically in terms of
equal opposition are structured of gender identity,
not as a clear equality. Because law actually dwells in some third position
apart from mother and father alike, never equal to itself, yet seemingly at- at­
tached first to a family structure and then to a social one, the signifier signifier for
law always appears to be attached to familial requisites. Freud called it the
internalized superego and saw it as necessary to social functioning. Lacan
emphasized that
emphasized that without
without an an internalized
internalized representation
representation of of aa border
border oror an
an
identity limit, a subject is open to the chaos of the Real which
identity limit, a subject is open to the chaos of the Real which wreaks havoc wreaks havoc
on subjects
on subjects who
who have
have littl~
little or
or no
no sense
sense of
of aa self
self that
that has
has aa name
name andand some
some
characteristic properties. Without our "legal fictions," Lacan
characteristic properties. Without our "legal fictions," Lacan argued, psy- argued, psy­
chosis waits in the wings, attesting to the human incapacity to
chosis waits in the wings, attesting to the human incapacity to think oneself think oneself
human unless
human one already
unless one already hashas aa firm
firm conceptualization
conceptualization of of aa position
position inin aa
given Symbolic order. When psychosis appears the individual
given Symbolic order. When psychosis appears the individual and particular and particular
character of
character of the
the Real
Real destroys
destroys Symbolic
Symbolic systems
systems and
and Imaginary
Imaginary pacts that
pacts that
seemed adequate to subject functioning when no severe
seemed adequate to subject functioning when no severe challenge to iden-challenge to iden­
tity—who are
tity-who are you
you and
and what
what are
are you worth?—occurred.
you worth?-occurred.
The Symbolic Father is a pure signifier,signifier, for Lacau,
Lacan, to which there is no
correlative representanon.
representation. Insofar
Insofar as the mother is a natural signifier, the
first sigmfier
father is the fust signifier for culture, a human interpretation
interpretation imposed on
nature to structure and shape it. This signifier, sometimes called the phallic
signifier, denotes its own lack, as well as the possibility of of its denotation.
denotation.
"In this respect the Name of
"In of the Father is one of of the minimal elements of of
signifying network whatsoever. Lacau,
any signifying Lacan, like Freud, situates the Name of of
'prehistory/ though he instead calls it 'transcendent,' a term
the Father in 'prehistory,'
that needs to be treated with caution. In calling this signifier signifier transcendent
he is claiming that while it has no correlate in any representation it is never- never­
theless a condition for the possibility of
thele~s of any representation" (Grigg, 120).
80 /I Lacanian Theory
Lacanian Theory

In many of of Im
his own Ecrits,
Ecnts, Lacan, like Joyce, pushed at normative lin- lin­
guistic borders where conventions and grammar rules point to some author- author­
itative referem.
referent. By pushing style to its limit, both men created a language
where the mark of of a lack in the Other can evade the Imaginary and attach
itself
itself to the Symbolic by the Real. In turn, language can be used to hook into
the Real in an effort
effort to
co avoid and e\acuate
e\acuate Imaginary relations. Such writ- writ­
ing dwells outside the "human,"
"human," as if suspended from nowhere. It reveals
that language can play around the void of of lost objects that return as objel
ob)et a. a.
Finnegans
Finnegans Wake dramatizes a "beyond" Joyce's aesthetic, into Lacan's
Real. Joyce's efforts
efforts to construct an aesthetic remain mimetic and imita- imita­
tive—Imaginary images and Symbolic codes-while
tive-Imaginary codes—while the Lacaman
Lacanian Real is a
savoir faire linked to the practice of of the sigmfier
signifier joined to the objet
objet a: "An
a: "An
action planned by man which places him in the situation of of treating the Real
by the Symbolic" (D. Miller, 34).
Insofar
Insofar as an aesthetic implies distance and perspective, Lacan's theory
that metaphor
metaphor and the subject
subject ofof desire function
function by the same substitutive
movement or law confronts
confronts us with a "materialization
"materialization of of language" where
the word becomes the flesh of of being, precisely because meaning must take
up the burden of of supporting jouissance as well as the unconscious signifying
supportingJouissance signifying
chains that speak us. When a signifier
signifier refers to the Father's Name, the Real
suddenly becomes stronger than ordinarily so. The objet objet a shows its face as
a point
point de capiton (anchoring button), making of the subject the same object object
that causes his desire. But since desire and 1ouissance
jouissance are at odds, human
subjects are asymetrical (that is, dialectical or contradictory) within their
very being. This is because subjects are the causes of of Real effects
effects that inhabit
them intimately, but as if fromfrom afar. If If a subject
subject is his own sinthome,
smthome, one
can see that actions—including
actions-including artistic acts—that
acts-that one performs
performs without nec­ nec-
essarily understanding why, may have a cause, cause inin an
an Elsewhere
Elsewhere with
with its
its own
own
meaning and logic. It becomes possible to imagine that James Joyce could
have written Finnegans Wake to resist the void at the center of
Fmnegans Wake of his being, as
a survival action. In this act his tools or weapons would be words and sounds.
In Lacanian terms, the return of of the Real always perforates
perforates the Symbolic
and Imaginary as nonlinear interferences. But for those who are potentially
psychotic, the objet
ob.1et a can have the paradoxical function
function ofof replacing a hole
in representation
m representation and being, possibly forestalling a psychotic episode or sui-
sui­
cide. But would a "supposed" use of of the Real in language not merely be a
stylistic trick played by Joyce? Worse yet, one which might ni1ght make ofof him a
neoplatonist trying to unify
neoplatonist unify his being and thinking by seeking an aesthetic in
essences thought to dwell in language, or in the Irish Insh people, or in some ideal
Form? Lacan's answer would be no. Joyce's goal is not to totalize, nor ideal­ ideal-
ize, but simply to escape the rawness of of anxiety produced by the effects
effects of of
the Real that live him.
Lacan saw language as creative of of being in the first place, leaving certain
minimal structures in its wake. When language, identifications, and experience
 Ellie Rag/and-Sullivan
Ellie Ragland-Sullivan I/ 81
81

are not sufficiently

sufficiently tied together, the Real (or objetobjet a), which is usually ob-ob­
scured by apparent unities and by being tied to the other orders, becomes
visible. It returns as a gaze or voice or act. Thus, even psychotic language is
full of
of meaning, although its meaning might seem chaotic or peculiar. Yet,
the Real as we ordinarily experience it in anxiety, dreams, jouissance, Jowssance, and
so on, has no explicable meaning at all. In this context, Lacan read Joyce as
exemplary of of his theory that the Oedipal complex is a symptom that subsists
only in relation to language: only because the Name of of the Father is the fa-fa­
ther of
of the name, and "at "at least one" element by which we knot together a
of being. Through his art Joyce gave life to the archaic fathers in his
fiction of
memory network. Dead persons and failed beliefs are joined joined to the vitality
of signifying knot for the Father's Name foreclosed
of the voice, making a signifying foreclosed in
Joyce's unconscious. Lacan argued in his seminar on Le Smthome Sinthome that Joyce's
writing actually established a secondary " knot between the Imaginary, Sym- Sym­
bolic, and Real
bolic, and that tied
Real that lack to
tied lack to voice,
voice, being, and letter.
being, and letter. One
One might
might call
call this
this
aa prosthetic
prosthetic knot.
knot.
Although Lacan discounts most of of Joyce's explanations of of how he estab-
estab­
lished his aesthetic, one aspect of of his aesthetic did help him to turn1ou1ssance
turn jouissance
suffering into art: his creation of
or suffering of the epiphany. These joyful
joyful moments of of
mastery become less joyfuljoyful in Finnegans Wake where puns are not so imita-
Finnegans Wake imita­
tive of
of speech as they are exemplary of of linguistic "free
"free association''
association" taken to
its breaking point. Lacan's interpretation
interpretation ofof Joyce's epiphanies looks at the
flip side ofof what Millot termed trivial vulgarities. When brilliant irradiance
is attached to these textual moments they unveil a manic joy of of elation and
liberation.
hberation. Lacan called this, quoting Thomas Aquinas, claritas. claritas. Such "clar-
"clar­
ity" is a return of of the Real, said Lacan, that shows the Wizard-of-Oz
Wizard-of-Oz shib-
shib­
boleth of of phallic law. As such the epiphanies are a "singular" writing, an
ecriture placed at the limits of of the Real that touch on the mystical. In Millot's
view, Joyce's epiphanies are like "holophrases," which Lacan redefined redefined as
the summing up of of everything in a few words that seek to grasp an absolute:
God, Woman, the All (Aubert, "Avant "Avant Propos," 15). Aubert writes that
Joyce's epiphanies try to organize what Joyce does not consciously under- under­
stand, although he seeks to construct what he cannot see or say by trying to
control what
control what actually controls him
actually controls him ("Galeries,"
("Galeries," 83).
83).
Lacan says Joyce m in Finnegans
Finnegans WakeWake gave up his belief
belief in a substitute or
pseudofather
pseudofather and took the third-person position of of one listening to onself
onself
write, rather than the usual second-person position of of writer to text. The
voice becomes palpable, if if not visible, as a libidinal object
object that carries sig­
sig-
nifies along. Indeed, for Lacan, Joyce identified
nifiers identified with the underwoven vocal
tones in his own discourse and in this way escaped the actual death of of his
ego. Moreover, his writing enabled him to maintain and reconstitute a seem- seem­
ingly unified
unified Imaginary body. In Lacan's thought, the body is an Imaginary
signifier that demarcates one kind of
signifier of limit to thought and desire. By linking
language, unconscious signifiers, and body, Joyce created a world where a
82 I/ Lacaman
Lacan ion Theory
Theory

relationship between ear and eye could exist, even though he had difficulties
relat10nship difficulties
invented a prose reduced to the torsion of
in seeing. He mvented of the voice joined to
are—very—baa-aa-dd" open up a split be­
phonation. Sayings such as "you are-very-baa-aa-dd" be-
tween words used for meaning and the voice as a desiring part of of the body.
In this final text Joyce fully assumes Lacan's name for him: Joyce the sin-
thome.
thome.
By viewing Joyce as one who poses his identity question m in art, Jacques-
Alain Miller sees him as one who succeeded m
Alam in passing from contingency to
a kind of consistency ($, —► (a)].
(?• ___. (a)]. But the consistency at issue is not per- per­
verse or hypocritical because 1t it entails building a language on the side of of the
ecrit: something not written to be read in an ordinary way. As Zizek puts it,
such language has the status of of the objet
objet a or cause of of desire out ofof which
signifying textures arise in the first place ("Why
signifying ("Why Lacan is Not a 'Post-Struc-
Tost-Struc-
turalist',"
turalist' comfortably describe such language
,'' 31-39). One cannot, however, comfortably
signifier—that which represents a subject for another signifer-
as a Lacanian signifier-that signifer—
because it does not represent a subject subject coherently. More apt for Lacan is
Philippe Sollers's description of of Finnegans
Finnegans Wake as an exploding and re- re­
grouping
groupmg of of language. The art object is no longer as aesthetic artifact, but
objet a,
an objet ay itself
itself made ofof separable parts: voice, name, symptom, palpable
jouissance. That Joyce could come so close to writing down the unwritable
Jouissance.
becomes an unwitting revelation of equivoque that ordinarily charac-
of the equivoque charac­
terizes language. That is, language can lie, pun, overdetermine meanings,
make homophones, turn the phoneme into an empty letter. Seen this way,
the letter no longer resides on the side of
the· of l'etre
Vetre (being), but on the side of of
trash or litter (Schreiber, 10). This Real of of the letter can be taken as an evis­ evis-
ceration of of meaning, a model of of Joyce's epiphanies taken to their extreme
point.
One might argue that when Joyce's unconscious desire and his1ouissance his jouissance
come together in his writing he cannot offer offer a unified
unified theory of of aesthetics
for the simple reason that he cannot close the space between the word and
insofar as the !ettre
"letter," insofar
the ''letter,'' of the ob
lettre is that of Jet petit
objet pet1t a that goes beyond
transparent meaning. When Lacari spoke at a colloquium on Joyce in France
in 1975 he spoke of of Joyce's symptom as a dream-wish to mark an end or
Finnegans Wake,
final term with Finnegans Wake, linking the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real
by the Symptom in the form of of a knot. One can speak of of a knot, Lacan said,
because
because it too has a limit(" Joyce le sympt6me
limit ("Joyce symptome I," I , " 29). Insofar
Insofar as he accom-
accom­
plished the goal of of showing himself
himself to be a Master
Master of of the English
English language,
language,
one might ask what interpretation
interpretation psychoanalysis might give such an achieve- achieve­
ment? If If Lacan is correct in his theory that language is received by humans
as an alienating wall from which they, nonetheless, take the meanings they
live by, but can only ever speak as half-truths
half-truths or as truths halfhalf hidden, James
Joyce's art revealed that writers create or invent in order to live, not the re- re­
verse. Such an understanding of of Joyce's art adds something to our compre- compre­
hension ofof what the literary is or what the aesthetic might be. Moreover,
 Ellie Rag/and-Sullivan
Eliie Ragtand-Suiiivan I/ 83
83

Joyce reveals that writing at its own limits meets—and reveals—the ob1et
meets-and reveals-the objet a.
a.
objet a:
His daughter Lucia's name stands for an objet a: the gaze. Lucia means the
of seeing or light. The choice of
goddess of of her name, as well as the fact ofof her
psychosis, are evidence for Lacan that she herself
herself is a clue to the enigma that
is her father (Kuberski, 49-66).
Lacan was also interested in Joyce's insistence that his daughter was not
psychotic, but was telepathic. While Joyce meant that Lucia was endowed
with superior intelligence, that she could inform
inform him miraculously of of future
future
events through secrets only she knew, Lacan understood something different
different
by ''telepathic.''
"telepathic." Although Lacan found no magic in the idea of of telepathy,
he did not dismiss the phenomenon, and suggested in his 1953 "Discourse
"Discourse
r
of Rome":
of \_,
That the unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the Other appears even
more clearly than anywhere else in the studies that Freud devoted to what he
called telepathy as manifested in the context of an analytic experience. This is
the coincidence of the subject's remarks with facts about which he cannot have
information, but which are still at work in the connexions of another experience
in which the same psychoanalyst is the interlocutor—a
interlocutor-a coincidence moreover
constituted most often by an entirely verbal, even homonyrnic,
homonymic, convergence, or
which, if it mvolves
involves an act, is concerned with an "acting out" by one of the
analyst's other patients or by a child of the person being analyzed who is also in
analysis. It is a case of resonance m
in the communicating networks of of discourse,
an exhaustive study
study of which
which would
would throw light
light on similar
similar facts
facts presented by
everyday life. ("Function and field," 55-56)
In Lacan's estimation, Joyce unconsciously looked to his child, even as
he chose her name, for help with what he could not see/understand. As his
ego gradually unraveled,·
unraveled; dissolving borders between whether or not he was
controlling language or being controlled by it, it must have seemed to Joyce
that he received words in a somewhat hallucinatory-if
hallucinatory—if not telephatic-
telephatic—
manner. Moreover, his glaucoma ebbed and flowed, depending on whether
or not he was writing, giving it a strangely psychosomatic aspect (Guir, 17).
Insofar as 1ouissance
Insofar jouissance is unpleasure, yet the secret satisfaction
satisfaction at the heart of
a symptom that attaches a subject to his pain, even serving as the pivot around
which
wluch he turns, in Joyce's case, not seeing would equal not wanting to know
what was written indelibly in his unconscious. Dominique Miller has written
that "it
"it is in the measure that the symptom makes an enigma for the subject
that a knowledge, in the name of of the unconscious, is suspended" (34).
Lacan speculated that Lucia's psychosis was an extension of of Joyce's own
forestalled
forestalled psychosis. She lived the suffering
suffering he was able to keep at bay by
Of course many questions remain unanswered in such speculations.
his art. Of
Is Lucia schizophrenic as diagnosed, or severely hysterical? Lacanian analysts
find many women hospitalized in the Anglophone world and misdiagnosed
as psychotic or borderline patients because the diagnostic category ofof hystena
hysteria
is not used clinically or theoretically by the analysts in question. Moreover,
84 /I Lacanian Theo,y
Lacanian Theory

in a Lacanian purview, a psychosis is passed on to a child through the moth-

111 moth­
er's desire to close out the father, not directly from the father's inadequacies.
The recent book by Brenda Maddox on Joyce':, Joyce's wife Nora, The Real Real Life
Life ofof
Molly Bloom,
Molly Bloom, suggests that the mother may well have been a cause of Lucia's
psychosis, although l\faddox's
Maddox's viewpoint difficulties of
viewpomt is that given the difficulties of liv­
liv-
ing with James Joyce, Nora is not to be blamed for any problems she may
have caused her daughter (O'Brien, 33). In any event, Lucia's letters to her
father reveal an extreme care to avoid
father av01d a kind of of "psychic incest," a care
that perhaps cost her a normal hfe. life. If Lucia's very life was constituted so as
to protect her father's fragile ego, she dwells on the same side as the fictional fictional
character
character Stephen Dedalus. Both would bear witness to Joyce's final failure failure
to project
project enough Imaginary material onto others in order to 10 survive in any
mimesis of of normalcy. Yet, by double, I do not refer in the subject
refer to the split 111
where conscious and unconscious savoir savoir fades in and out.
James Joyce
In James Joyce and
and the Revolution
Revolution of of the Word
Word Colin MacCabe has writ- writ­
ten: "To"To speak is to have accepted a symbohc symbolic castration; to have accepted
difference
difference and absence. To enter into language is thus to have denied to the
father his self-sufficiency
father self-sufficiency and it is this denial ,vhich
which constitutes the guilt asso-asso­
ciated with language" (145). Lacan teaches the opposite of of what MacCabe
has written.
\\ritten. To speak or write with coherency or consistency demonstrates
adequate confidence
confidence in an unconscious paternal representation to be able to
ignore its effects
effects on language. Lacan saw the relationship between symp- symp­
toms and language as a kind kmd ofof half-speaking
half-speaking between primordially repressed
representations and a master discourse which is normative and based on fur- fur­
ther repression of of the paternal signifier
signifier for any lack or division at all.
In his third theory ofof the symptom, Lacan thought there was more to 1ouis- jouis-
sance than he had previously suggested. Even in analysis, he said, excess
sance
jouissance remains excessive. It resists cure. Unlike unconscious savoir,
jouissance savoir, it is
another kind of of truth that wants no knowledge of of itself. No one, himself
himself in-in­
cluded, wants to be cured of of their symptoms because the death drive-which
drive—which
Lacan translates asjouismnce-lies
as jouissance—lies beyond
beyond thethe pleasure
pleasure principle andand beyond
beyond
the principle of of repetition. Freud called this phenomenon
phenomenon negative transfer-
transfer­
ence or unconscious masochism. Lacan called it the Real, or the existence of of
enjoyment in the breach of
displeasure, discontent, enjoyment of the pleasure principle
that places a stubborn obstacle in every life and a discontent or malaise in
civilization. Lacan called the satisfaction
satisfaction of of this death drive, as distinct fromfrom
jouissance (Miller, "A
instinct, jouissance "A and a,"a," 23). While unconscious desire is con- con­
jouissance dwells on the side of
nected to speech, jouissance of the silence of of the drives.
joutssance is the very principle of
Indeed, jouissance of symptom formation
formation that appears
as the "drive not to know."know."
In Lacan's many lectures on Joyce, he mentions the extraordinary accom- accom­
plishment of of devising a magisterial dire dtre that enabled him to avoid his own
imminent dissolution. In thinking of of this picture ofof Joyce, I envision a man
carrying on his back a mountain of of monumental proportions, actually carry-
 Ellie
El Ragland-Sullivan
lie Ragland-Sullivan /I 85
85

mg his own mountain with 1nm, him, rather than merely rollmg
rolling some mythic stone
up and down a mountam
mountain hkelike Sisyphus. Lacan has said that sometimes the
only adequate way to speak about the adequacy of language to itself itself 1sis to
speak about the manner of of its movement. In this concept, language is an af- af­
fected action, a trajectory,
trajectory, a path-forger,
path-forger, a comtitutmg
constituting and reconstituting
reconstituting
medium. At first glance a Lacaman nught might take the movement of of Joyce's lan- lan­
guage to resemble that of of an obsessional discourse, a usually masculine struc- struc­
ture where the feminme
feminine seems all-consuming and is to be avoided at any
cost, even though obsessional men are paradoxically
paradoxically overly dependent on
the women they hold at arm's length. The obsess10nal:.s
obsessional^ goal 1s is to use lan-lan­
guage as a weapon to close out desue. desire. Information
Information systems, encyclopedic
knowledge, ntualizat10n
ntualization of of words and thmgs,
things, the use of of sex to avoid speak-
speak­
ing of
of love, are all welcome in this use of of language that tnes tries to exclude the
unbearable threat of of desire. Language itself
itself becomes a fortress with poten- poten­
double-barred doors from which the all-too-present Other discourse is
tially double-barred
denied entrance.
On the other hand, one might view Joyce's language movement as typi- typi­
cally hysterical, although hysteria 1s is generally the feminine version of of obses-
obses­
sion (although they act differently). While masculine normat1vity normativity 1s is based
identification between father and sons, where desire and law
on an accepted identification
are united in an ego ideal, in hysteria the Imagmary
Imaginary father engenders frustra- frustra­
tion at the level ofof ideals and leaves usually the female hystenc hysteric with a fero- fero­
cious superego. Her duty is notlung
c10us nothing less than to unconsciously support the
desire ofof a denigrated father who gains his power of of death over her life by
his very shame which she takes on as her special burden to bear. In the end
result, as Jacques-Alain Miller has put it, hystena hysteria is itself
itself dissatisfaction
dissatisfaction
with knowledge as it stands (" ("AA and a,"
a," 20).
Although there may be hystenal and obsessional traits in some of of Joyce's
texts, in the O\-erall
overall movement of of his language somethmg
something else occurs. A kind
of tape-recorded
of tape-recorded double of of sounds and voices appears behind and withm within
regular language. The shadow language points to a prepsychotic structure
where language is broken down into pieces in order to serve grammar grammar as a
missmg
missing superego or border that will prop up the ego, lest 1t it collapse into the
sterility of
stenlity of psychotic speech where there is no distance from the Other, no
metaphoncal
metaphorical law of of the double. In the 1970s Lacan argued that foreclosure foreclosure
of the signifier
of signifier for the Father's Name was not enough to cause a psychotic
breakdown. Although the Real returns in the symptom to satisfy satisfy the super-
super­
ego which demands the right to jouir jou,r in the field of of the Symbolic, and the
objet returns in the Real by way of
obJet of the lmagmary
Imaginary in fantasy, 111 in psychosis
the Real becomes detached from the Imaginary and Symbolic. Thus when
there 1sis a failure of-m
of—in Joyce's case masculine-identity,
masculine—identity, when any sem- sem­
blance of of phallic authority disappears, Jt it is still possible for a person to iden- iden­
tify with the symptom as the terminal point of of a failure ofof their desire (Aram-
buru, 171-73). This theory led Lacan to rewnte his formula regarding the
rewrite ]1JS
86 /I Lacanian Theory
Lacanian Theory

sexual unrelation,
unrciation, to say that there is no sexual relation which is not sup- sup­
ported by the sinthome
sinthome that supports the Other sex of of a particular
particular subject.
subject.
That is, because every subJect
subject is the subject
subject of
of a symptom, thanks to the
particularity
particularity of sinthome, he or she can have a relation to the Other, from
of a sinthome, from
which an identity is forthcoming. The sinthomesmthome can stand in for the "num-"num­
ber" ofof the Father which Lacan called the fourth term (Grisolia, 31). Only
in the outbreak ofof a psychotic episode does the symptom become synonymous
itself because a relation to the Other disappears. When the ego breaks
with itself
down and psychosis ensues, the psychotic person becomes the Other. Joyce
never had a psychotic break. In the broadest conception
died at age 58 and ne\'er
of the symptom that one can find in Lacan's teaching, the smthome
of sinthome played
the displacement role for Joyce of of building simulated relations to others, as
in ordmary
10 ordinary (sexual) relations, thus maintaming
maintaining some distance from the Other.
There may have been foreclosure of of the signifier
signifier for the Father's Name in
James Joyce's unconscious, but Joyce never became psychotic as did Judge
Daniel Schreber, for example, because Joyce's sinthome itself the knot
sinthome is itself
that ties together the Borromean topology (R.S.1.)
thar (R.S.I.) reqmsite
requisite to subject
subject func-
func­
tioning, creating the illusion of of a relation to the Other.
We are no longer speaking of of Oedipus, but of of the difference
difference between a
smthomal
sinthomal and a nonsinthomal
nonsinthomal structure where the foreclosure of of the paternal
reference is compensated
compensated for by art ("Lajonquiere,"
("Lajonquiere," 23-24). Perhaps we are
speaking ofof the case ofof "one," if
if not the only one, at least one ofof few writers
who have shown that literary art is not the unconscious, but can respond to
unconscious drives (the ob1etobjet a) to create against the odds. As such, artistic
creation shows itself
itself to be the greatest achievement of of mankind. In speaking
of
of James Joyce in Lacanian terms, we speak of of the sinthome
sinthome of of invention,
then, not the symptom of of pathology. In this sense, James Joyce becomes a
saint
saint homme.
homme.