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Formations of the Unconscious: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book V

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When I decided to explore the question of Witz, or wit, with you this year, I undertook a small enquiry. It will come as no surprise at all that I began by questioning a poet. This is a poet who introduces the dimension of an especially playful wit that runs through his work, as much in his prose as in more poetic forms, and which he brings into play even when he happens to be talking about mathematics, for he is also a mathematician. I am referring to Raymond Queneau. While we were exchanging our first remarks on the matter he told me a joke. It’s a joke about exams, about the university entrance exams, if you like.

We have a candidate and we have an examiner.


– “Tell me”, says the examiner, “about the battle of Marengo.”


The candidate pauses for a moment, with a dreamy air. “The battle of Marengo...? Bodies everywhere! It’s terrible... Wounded everywhere! It’s horrible...”


“But”, says the examiner, “Can’t you tell me anything more precise about this battle?”


The candidate thinks for a moment, then replies, “A horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies.”


The examiner, surprised, seeks to test him a little further and says, “In that case, can you tell me about the battle of Fontenoy?”


“Oh!” says the candidate, “a horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies.”


The examiner, strategically, asked the candidate to talk about the battle of Trafalgar.


The candidate replies, “Dead everywhere! A blood bath.... Wounded everywhere! Hundreds of them....”


“But my good man, can’t you tell me anything more precise about this battle?”


“A horse...” “Excuse me, I would have you note that the battle of Trafalgar is a naval battle.”


“Whoah! Whoah!” says the candidate. “Back up, Neddy!” The value of this joke is, to my mind, that it enables us to decompose, I believe, what is at stake in a witticism.

(Extract from Chapter VI)


Author: Lacan Jacques
Publisher: POLITY PRESS
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9780745660387
Cover: Paperback
Edition Number: 1
Release Year: 2020

Translator’s Note

Abbreviations


The Freudian structures of wit


I. The Famillionaire


II. The Fat-millionaire


III. The Miglionaire


IV. The Golden Calf


V. A Bit-of-Sense and the Step-of-Sense


VI. Whoah, Neddy!


VII. Une Femme de Non-Recevoir, or : A Flat Refusal


THE LOGIC OF CASTRATION


VIII. Foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father


IX. The Paternal Metaphor


X. The Three Moments of the Oedipus Complex (I)


XI. The Three Moments of the Oedipus Complex (II)


XII. From Image to Signifier Ð in Pleasure and in Reality


XIII. Fantasy, Beyond the Pleasure Principle


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHALLUS


XIV. Desire and Jouissance


XV. The Girl and the Phallus


XVI. Insignias of the Ideal


XVII. The Formulas of Desire


XVIII. Symptoms and Their Masks


XIX. Signifier, Bar and Phallus


The dialectic of desire and demand in the clinical study and treatment of the neuroses


XX. The Dream by the Butcher’s Beautiful Wife


XXI. The ‘Still Waters Run Deep’ Dreams


XXII. The Other’s Desire


XXIII. The Obsessional and his Desire


XXIV. Transference and Suggestion


XXV. The Signification of the Phallus in the Treatment


XXVI. The Circuits of Desire


XXVII. Exiting via the Symptom


XXVIII. You Are the One You Hate


APPENDICES


The Graph of Desire


Explanation of the Schemas


Editor’s Note


Translator’s Endnotes


Index

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth–century's most influential thinkers. His many works include Écrits, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis and the many other volumes of The Seminar.

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