The father is a function of the transmission of lack, a cultural function. It presupposes the contradiction between the necessity of a mythical father outside castration and the castration of every possible man. Without this necessity, human relationships are unthinkable[1]. On the other hand, we have the undecidable connection between the contingent woman who is not-all in castration and the impossible not-one outside castration. What connects the two sides, the possibility of one with the contingency of the other, is the object-cause of desire, object a. It is with this that we are in relation[2].
This non-relation is posited as a truth. There is no question of the proposition, « there is no such thing as sexual relation »: « move outside it and what you will say will only be worse [pire] »[3]. But as a truth, it can only be half-said. Lacan turns the verb half-say [mi-dire] into an empty space, a variable x, by putting three dots in its place: … or worse. We must remain within …; because « what the other half says is worse »[4]. This « impossible sexual discourse », Lacan says is « the passage of the real »[5]. Éric Laurent explains: The impossibility of sexual relation within discourse; passage of the real, as in « the passage of a hurricane »[6]. Therefore, half-said about the hurricane, or worse. What would allow us then to remain safely within the …?
Let’s return to the father. What is his function concerning the half-said? Although the father has been immersed in his sins, in sexual abuse, « exiting the horrors of patriarchy is no guarantee of happiness », says Jacques-Alain Miller[7]. Since Freud’s time, the father goes through a crisis, « he no longer impresses us »[8]. But exiting the father implies a slippage into the worst and into cynicism[9]. Against the overwhelming passage of the hurricane, the function of the father offers the possibility of a poetic solution, like that of the troubadours, since by father we mean a necessary function of the symptom, the dimension of something not-said (non-dire), and, also, the père-version of rendering a woman the object-cause of man’s desire[10].
Exiting both the half-said about the sexual relation and the father leads to worse. Versions of the worse, pire-versions, versions of forcing sexual discourse. Either towards the self: Lacan speaks of the transsexual’s « passion » to « force » sexual discourse in his own body by surgical means[11]; that is, of the attempt to heal the passage of the real with a passage to the real[12]. Or towards the other: Here we have a passage à l’acte: a possible man attempts to « force » a contingent woman to become possible, that is, to make The woman exist and all-women possible by murdering a woman. Psychoanalytically, the so-called femicides are indeed crimes of « passion ». Thus, we talk about passions after the father whose decline leaves us unarmed before the logic of the all, arming at the same time worse.
We live in an age of contradictions: gender fluidity alongside misogynist attitudes. Scientific discourse produces a brave new world of technological achievement, leaving no room for the poetic half-said: instead of half-, we are offered meta-, insta-, and also, gender as a new fluid identity of a new brotherhood of bodies in the absence « of the one who says no »[13]. The hyper-modern age favors the forclusion of the not-all introduced by female jouissance. The logic of the all slips into hatred, into the passion that is closest to the being of man: « Nothing concentrates more hatred than that act of saying in which ex-sistence is situated »[14].
[1] Lacan J., … or Worse. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XIX, transl. A. R. Price, Polity, 2018, p. 184.
[2] Ibid., pp. 183-185.
[3] Ibid., p. 4.
[4] Ibid., p. 5.
[5] Ibid., p. 9. « Le discours sexuel qui, en tant qu’impossible, est le passage du réel ».
[6] Laurent É., « Biopolitique de la norme trans », Lacan Quotidien, n°932, p. 13.
[7] Miller J.-A., « Conversation d’actualité avec l’école espagnole du champ freudien, 2 mai 2021 (I) », La Cause du désir, no108, p. 54.
[8] Lacan J., Le Séminaire, livre XXII, « R.S.I. », leçon du 21 janvier 1975, Ornicar ?, n°3, p. 108.
[9] Cf. Miller J.-A., « Conversation d’actualité… », op. cit., p. 55. See also: Lacan J., Television, transl. D. Hollier, R. Krauss, A. Michelson, Norton, 1990, p. 46.
[10] Cf. Lacan J., Le Séminaire, livre XXII, « R.S.I. », leçon du 21 janvier 1975, op. cit.
[11] Cf. Lacan J., Le Séminaire, Livre XIX, …ou pire, op. cit., p. 17.
[12] Laurent É., « Biopolitique de la norme trans », op. cit.
[13] Laurent É., Performative Jouissance and Analytic Act [1], LRO 368.
[14] Lacan J., On feminine sexuality: the limits of love and knowledge, 1972-1973. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, transl. B. Fink, New York/London, Norton, 1998, p. 121.
Picture : © Claire David
