Seminar XXVI
| La topologie et le temps | |
|---|---|
| Seminar XXVI | |
 Representative cover image associated with circulating transcriptions of Séminaire XXVI. | |
| French Title | La topologie et le temps |
| English Title | Topology and Time |
| Seminar Information | |
| Seminar Date(s) | 21 November 1978 – 15 May 1979[1] |
| Session Count | Approx. 8–10 sessions (circulating transcripts)[1][2] |
| Location | Paris[1] |
| Psychoanalytic Content | |
| Key Concepts | Topology • Borromean knot • Temporality • Real • Symbolic order • Matema • Generalized Borromean |
| Notable Themes | Temporality of the subject; topological models in psychoanalysis; structure of the unconscious; topology of knots and circuits |
| Theoretical Context | |
| Period | Very late period |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Seminar XXV |
| Followed by | Seminar XXVII |
La topologie et le temps (La topologie et le temps; English: Topology and Time) is the twenty-sixth annual seminar delivered by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan during the academic year 1978–1979.[1] It represents the culmination of Lacan’s seminar series in Paris prior to his final sessions surrounding the dissolution of the École freudienne de Paris (EFP), which Lacan formally announced in early 1980.[3][4] Seminar XXVI was never formally published in the Seuil “Champ freudien” seminar series and survives primarily through stenographic, audio, and privately circulated transcripts.[1][2]
The seminar centers on Lacan’s late interest in topology—especially knot theory, homotopy, and the Borromean knot—and its relation to temporality, subjectivity, and the structure of the unconscious.[1][5] These explorations continue themes from earlier late seminars (particularly Seminar XXIII: Le sinthome), integrating complex formal models with psychoanalytic concepts such as the registers of the Real, Symbolic, and the Imaginary.[5]
Historical and institutional context
Lacan’s late seminars and the École freudienne de Paris
By the late 1970s Lacan had entered his very late teaching period, following seminars such as Seminar XX: Encore, Seminar XXIII: Le sinthome, and Seminar XXV: Le moment de conclure.[6] These years exhibit increasing formalization, with topology and knot theory becoming privileged languages for articulating the structure of the unconscious and the psychoanalytic act.[5] Seminar XXVI continues this trajectory, foregrounding topology not merely as metaphor but as a procedural and conceptual frame for clinical and theoretical questions of temporality.
Delivered at the tail end of the École freudienne de Paris’ existence—and during a period of declining health for Lacan—Seminar XXVI is among the last seminars he conducted before the dissolution of the school in 1980.[3][4]
Publication status and transmission
Unlike many earlier seminars (for example Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis), which received a formal Seuil edition, Seminar XXVI remains unpublished in book form in the Seuil “Champ freudien” sequence.[1][6] It is preserved through archived stenographies, audio recordings, and privately circulated PDF/text versions; extant holdings in library archives indicate that the surviving corpus may be incomplete and that lesson coverage can vary across collections.[2]
Scholars and Lacanian practitioners have increasingly turned to these transcriptions for research and commentary. Secondary work that engages Seminar XXVI often does so by reconstructing its main lines from the available lessons, emphasizing its formal and philosophical problems around topology and time.[5]
Conceptual framework and methodology
Lacan’s use of topological models traces back to earlier work, particularly his application of the Borromean knot in Seminar XXIII: Le sinthome, where the linking of the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary registers was formalized through knotted circles.[5] In Seminar XXVI this formal apparatus is elaborated in relation to temporality and the structure of psychoanalytic discourse itself, including questions about how time appears as an effect of knotting and of signifying operations rather than as a neutral linear container.[5]
Topology—particularly notions of continuity, knotting, homotopy, and twist—is deployed as both a metaphor and a formal tool for understanding the subject’s relation to language and the unconscious. Lacan suggests that the psychoanalytic subject cannot be coherently grasped through linear temporality or simple structural models; instead, its structure resembles complex topological forms that fold, knot, and invert.[5]
Lesion, loop, circuit, and twist recur as technical motifs. The seminar stages a dialogue between psychoanalytic categories and mathematical constructs: the Möbius strip, the trefoil knot, the torus, and especially generalized Borromean configurations are used to think about how the subject’s temporality is bound to the structure of the unconscious.[5]
A critical methodological move in Seminar XXVI is to insist that topology is not simply a metaphor for psychoanalytic relations but a formal language that can articulate psychoanalytic structure with precision. Lacan aligns this with his ongoing interest in the matema—a symbolic formalization intended to reduce ambiguity by writing psychoanalytic relations in formulas and diagrams rather than relying solely on discursive exposition.[5]
Key themes and concepts
Topology and the subject
For Lacan, topology provides a means of modeling features of subjectivity inaccessible to representational logic. The subject’s temporality—its experience of past, present, and future—is not linear but entwined with the structure of language, drives, and jouissance. Topological figures such as the Möbius strip exemplify how a surface can twist back onto itself, evoking the way the subject’s temporal experience folds into its unconscious structure.[5]
Similarly, the trefoil and Borromean knot serve as models for how distinct registers (the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary) interlock without reducibility to one another. The Borromean knot, in particular, provides an image for a structure that collapses if any one of its components is removed—a structural motif for the dependence and independence of the subject’s registers.[5]
Temporality and the unconscious
Lacan interrogates the temporality of the unconscious, suggesting that the unconscious is not a repository of past traces ordered chronologically but a “knot” of relations with its own topological type of time. This notion departs from chronological understandings of memory and repression, foregrounding instead a dynamic interplay of entangled signifiers whose effects are “out of time” yet structurally coherent.[5]
Secondary commentary on Seminar XXVI highlights Lacan’s distinction among different forms of access to what he calls the Real—often summarized as *modelling*, *demonstration*, and *monstration*—as a way of marking heterogeneous modes of engagement with the Real through topological writing rather than through interpretive meaning alone.[5]
Borromean and generalized Borromean knots
A major conceptual locus is the generalized Borromean configuration, which extends Lacan’s earlier use of Borromean linkage to more complex nodal structures. Commentators treat Seminar XXVI as introducing (or at least explicitly foregrounding) the generalized Borromean, along with related notions such as “homotopic inversion,” in order to formalize how registers and elements of subjectivity can be re-linked or inverted while preserving certain invariants of structure.[5]
The seminar connects these structures to the psychoanalytic symptom: the symptom is not a linear trace of the past but a topological articulation of temporal entanglement, stabilizing tensions among the registers. The Borromean framework thereby functions both as a formal model and as an interpretive guide to understanding clinical phenomena such as repetition, compulsion, and desire.[5]
Matema and formalization
Throughout the late seminars Lacan increasingly relied on matema as a device for formalizing psychoanalytic concepts. In Seminar XXVI, matema intersects with topology: formulas and diagrammatic representations function as instruments for capturing relational invariants that elude purely discursive expression.[5]
This formal turn positions psychoanalysis closer to a kind of structural logic or algebraic discourse—though always with the caveat that such formalization cannot substitute for clinical practice. Rather, it provides a symbolic horizon against which the clinician might better observe the subject’s enactments of structure and time.
Theoretical significance and clinical implications
Seminar XXVI represents a culmination of Lacan’s efforts to think psychoanalytic subjects beyond representational models rooted in ego psychology and traditional chronology. By grounding subjectivity in topological forms, Lacan articulates a structure in which temporality, desire, and the unconscious are inseparable from relational linkages among registers.[5]
Clinically, the seminar suggests that psychoanalytic interpretation must attend not merely to temporal narratives of past events but to the structural “knots” that bind the subject’s present experience to enduring relational patterns. Temporality is understood as a function of structure rather than of linear history.[5]
The emphasis on topology also signals an invitation to clinicians to think psychoanalytic phenomena in formal terms—through diagrams, models, and matema—without reducing them to mathematical literalism. The clinician is encouraged to view symptoms, repetition, and subjective temporality as manifestations of an underlying topological logic.
Reception and legacy
Seminar XXVI has been discussed in specialist Lacanian literature as an advanced statement of Lacan’s late formalism, including work that reconstructs its main threads from the available transcriptions and emphasizes its development of the generalized Borromean and homotopic operations.[5]
Because the seminar remains unpublished and is only partially translated, its reception has been uneven outside French and Lacanian specialist circles.[1][2] Nonetheless, it figures prominently in discussions of the “very late” Lacan, exemplifying a style of teaching in which topology and psychoanalysis are treated as mutually informing modes of formalization and clinical orientation.[5]
See also
- Jacques Lacan
- Seminar XXV
- Seminar XXVII
- Topology (mathematics)
- Borromean knot
- Matema
- The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
- Real (psychoanalysis)
- Symbolic order
- Imaginary order
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 “Seminar XXVI: La topologie et le temps.” No Subject: Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (entry with dates and links to session materials).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Johns Hopkins University Libraries, finding aid: “Collection: Transcripts of Jacques Lacan’s Séminaires” (resource listing that includes “Séminaire XXVI: La topologie et le temps (1978–1979)” among mimeographed/unpublished transcripts, with notes on extant/missing lessons).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedEFP_Wiki - ↑ 4.0 4.1 “Dissolution – Speech: 15th March 1980 (P.L.M. Saint-Jacques Hotel, Paris).” LacanianWorks (introductory note stating Lacan announced the EFP’s dissolution in a letter dated 5 January 1980 and contextualizing the March 1980 meeting).
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 Greenshields, Will. “An Approach to Lacan’s XXVIth Seminar. Topology and Time.” The Letter, Issue 62 (Summer 2016), pp. 71–97 (article description and bibliographic details).
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 “Seminars of Jacques Lacan.” Wikipedia (historical overview of the seminar series and late period context).
Further reading
- Greenshields, Will. “An Approach to Lacan’s XXVIth Seminar. Topology and Time,” The Letter, Issue 62 (Summer 2016), pp. 71–97.[1]
- No Subject: Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. “Seminar XXVI: La topologie et le temps.”[2]
- Johns Hopkins University Libraries. “Collection: Transcripts of Jacques Lacan’s Séminaires” (finding aid/resource listing).[3]
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French
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| 21 novembre 1978 | link |
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| 12 décembre 1978 | link |
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| 19 décembre 1978 | link |
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| 09 janvier 1979 | link |
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| 16 janvier 1979 | link |
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| 20 février 1979 | link |
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| 13 mars 1979 | link |
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| 20 mars 1979 | link |
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| 08 mai 1979 | link |
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| 15 mai 1979 | link |
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