Seminar XVIII

Jacques Lacan's Seminars : I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX · X · XI · XII · XIII · XIV · XV · XVI · XVII · XVIII · XIX · XX · XXI · XXII · XXIII · XXIV · XXV · XXVI · XXVII I. Freud's technical writings II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis III. The Psychoses IV. The Object Relations V. The Formations of the Unconscious VI. Desire and its Interpretation VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis VIII. Transference IX. Identification The Names of the Father X. Anxiety XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis XII. Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis XIII. The Object of Psychoanalysis XIV. The Logic of Fantasy XV. The Psychoanalytic Act XVI. From One Other to the Other XVII. The Reverse of Psychoanalysis XVIII. On a Discourse That Would Not Be Semblance XIX. Or Worse XX. Encore XXV. The Moment of Concluding XXVII. Dissolution ← Seminar XVII Seminar XIX →

Of a Discourse that Might Not Be a Semblance
Seminar XVIII
Cover image commonly associated with published editions of Seminar XVIII.
French Title	Le Séminaire, Livre XVIII : D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant
English Title	Of a Discourse that Might Not Be a Semblance
Seminar Information
Seminar Date(s)	13 January 1971 – 16 June 1971
Session Count	10 sessions
Location	Paris
Psychoanalytic Content
Key Concepts	Semblance (semblant) • Discourse • Four Discourses • Letter • Writing • Truth • Jouissance • Phallic function • Formulas of sexuation • Lituraterre • Name-of-the-Father
Notable Themes	Discursive bond and semblance; writing and the letter; limits of truth in relation to jouissance; logic and quantification; beginnings of sexuation formalization; critique of scientific and social discourses
Chronology
Preceded by	Seminar XVII
Followed by	Seminar XIX

Of a Discourse that Might Not Be a Semblance (D'un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant) is Jacques Lacan’s eighteenth annual seminar (Séminaire XVIII), delivered in Paris between 13 January and 16 June 1971. The seminar belongs to Lacan’s late period of formalization, and is commonly read as a continuation and complication of the Four Discourses introduced the previous year in Seminar XVII (The Reverse of Psychoanalysis).

Across ten sessions Lacan pursues the paradox announced by the title: every discourse produces a social bond by means of signifiers and positions, yet discourse also operates through semblant—a register of appearance, staging, and symbolic “show” that covers over the Real of jouissance and the structural impasses of sexual difference. Rather than treating semblance as mere illusion to be dispelled, Lacan examines its necessity for speech and sociality, while asking whether a discourse could be articulated that would not be “of semblance” in the ordinary sense—an inquiry that leads him to questions of writing, logic, and the status of the letter.

The seminar is particularly noted for its sustained engagement with logical and semantic formalisms (including quantification and issues associated with Gottlob Frege), and for early stages of the elaboration that would later crystallize in the formulas of sexuation and in Lacan’s well-known thesis that there is no complete inscription of the sexual relation in language (later formulated as il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel). It also contains an explicit lesson on Lituraterre, a text that would become a key reference for Lacan’s theory of writing as a litoral (a border-zone) between knowledge and jouissance.

Overview

Seminar XVIII intervenes at a moment when Lacan’s teaching is increasingly oriented by the interplay of the Symbolic, the Real, and the formal resources of matheme and topology. The central question—how to think a discourse not grounded in semblance—functions less as a program for eliminating appearance than as a probe into what discourse must presuppose in order to bind speaking beings together.

In Lacan’s usage, semblant is not simply deception. It is the structural dimension through which signifiers “take hold” (as titles, roles, ideals, and identifications) and thereby organize social relations, institutions, and the positions of speaker and addressee. A discourse “works” insofar as it installs agents, produces effects (knowledge, mastery, surplus, truth-effects), and limits or channels jouissance. Yet discourse can never fully state its own truth, because the truth it produces is partly supported by what it cannot say: the point where signification meets a real impossibility.

Historical and institutional context

After 1968: institutions, politics, and discourse

Delivered in the aftermath of the political and institutional upheavals associated with May 1968, Seminar XVIII continues Lacan’s attempt to theorize social bonds as discursive structures rather than as the expression of psychological traits or moral ideals. Seminar XVII had formalized four “viable” modes of social linkage (the discourses of the Master, the University, the Hysteric, and the Analyst). Seminar XVIII revisits those structures under a new emphasis: the extent to which each discourse depends on semblance—especially where it masks the real of jouissance.

Lacan’s late seminars are also shaped by the institutional trajectory of Lacanian psychoanalysis after Lacan’s “excommunication” by the IPA and his founding of the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in 1964. The seminar’s repeated attention to the discourses of science, teaching, and authority reflects both Lacan’s polemics against normalization and his effort to articulate the specificity of analytic discourse within modern institutions.

Text, editing, and publication history

As with much of Lacan’s annual teaching, Seminar XVIII circulated for decades in notes, transcripts, and unofficial copies before publication in a standardized French edition. The French text (Livre XVIII) was established by Jacques-Alain Miller and published by Éditions du Seuil in 2007. An English translation has been announced in the Polity series of Lacan’s seminars (editor: Miller; translator: Bruce Fink).

Because the French publication is posthumous and editorially established, scholarly references often distinguish between the delivered year (1971) and the edition year (2007), and may note variation between circulating versions in titles, session headings, and punctuation of Lacan’s formulas.

Conceptual framework and methodology

From the Four Discourses to the problem of semblance

Seminar XVIII presupposes the Four Discourses as a baseline grammar for social bonds. In Lacan’s discourse theory, a discourse is not simply a set of opinions; it is a structured arrangement of positions (agent, other, production, truth) through which signifiers operate and through which subjects are “caught” as speaking beings. Seminar XVIII returns to these arrangements to stress that discourse produces effects by staging a certain semblance—an organized appearance that both enables communication and covers the real.

Rather than opposing semblance to truth as false to true, Lacan emphasizes that truth itself is discursive: it appears as truth only within a structure of enunciation. The crucial problem becomes how truth is limited by jouissance—how truth can be spoken only “half-said” (mi-dire) when what is at stake is enjoyment and the sexual impasse.

The letter, writing, and formalization

A distinctive methodological feature of Seminar XVIII is its emphasis on writing and the letter. Lacan distinguishes the signifier (as a differential element in the symbolic chain) from the letter (as a mark, inscription, or written support), and treats writing not merely as representation of speech but as a formal operator that can register what speech cannot.

This focus is connected to Lacan’s broader movement toward matheme: compact formulas and diagrams intended to transmit psychoanalytic structures with maximal rigor and minimal reliance on interpretive paraphrase. In Seminar XVIII, logical notation and quantification serve as tools for testing what can or cannot be written—especially where the sexual relation is concerned.

Logic, semantics, and the limits of knowledge

Lacan’s engagement with logic in Seminar XVIII is not an attempt to reduce psychoanalysis to formal science; rather, it is an inquiry into what scientific discourse presupposes and what it excludes. By reading logical quantification and issues of meaning (often discussed in relation to Fregean distinctions between sense and reference), Lacan asks how discourse stabilizes meaning and how it fails to do so at the points where jouissance intervenes.

In this sense, Seminar XVIII continues Lacan’s long-standing claim that psychoanalysis is inseparable from language, while also suggesting that language’s most decisive points are those where writing marks an impossibility (a “cannot be written”) rather than a positive knowledge.

Key themes, concepts, and case studies

Semblance (semblant)

The seminar’s central concept, semblant, names the dimension of appearance through which symbolic authority, identity, and social roles are sustained. For Lacan, the master-signifier functions as a semblance insofar as it “makes a One” and organizes social relations, even though it cannot ground itself in a final truth.

Semblance is also tied to the phallic function: the phallus operates not as an anatomical object but as a signifier that organizes desire and positions subjects in relation to lack and jouissance. Seminar XVIII repeatedly links the phallus to the “show” or “shine” of signification, while stressing that jouissance cannot be fully captured by it.

Truth, jouissance, and the “half-saying” of analysis

A recurrent thesis in Lacan’s late work is that truth is structurally partial. Seminar XVIII develops this through the problem of jouissance: truth can be spoken, but when it concerns enjoyment it can only be spoken through semblance. The analytic experience is thus oriented not by the ideal of complete transparency but by the production of truth-effects that shift the subject’s relation to the signifier and to jouissance.

In this context, the discourse of the Analyst functions as a reversal of mastery: it aims not to impose knowledge but to produce a position where the subject confronts the cause of desire (the objet petit a) and the limits of what can be said.

The letter and the litoral: “Lituraterre”

One of the best-known moments of Seminar XVIII is the lesson devoted to Lituraterre, delivered in May 1971. In later publication, “Lituraterre” elaborates Lacan’s claim that the letter is a borderline (a litoral) between knowledge and jouissance, marking an interface where the symbolic encounters the real.

Lacan’s wordplay (often glossed in commentary as a movement from “litter” to “letter”) stages a shift in focus from meaning to inscription: the letter is not primarily a bearer of semantic content but a material trace that can localize jouissance and produce effects in the real. This is one reason Seminar XVIII is frequently cited in discussions of Lacan’s theory of writing, and in readings that connect Lacan to modernist and avant-garde literature.

Quantification and the beginnings of the sexuation formalism

Seminar XVIII is an important waypoint in the development of the formulas of sexuation. Late in the seminar Lacan uses quantificational notation to distinguish positions associated with “man” and “woman” (as discursive positions rather than empirical identities), and to articulate the claim that the sexual relation cannot be written as a complete, complementary formula.

Although the fully developed sexuation formulas are more closely associated with Seminar XX (Encore), Seminar XVIII lays groundwork by:

• treating “man” and “woman” as effects of discourse (positions produced by signifiers and laws of enunciation);
• linking the phallic function to quantificational scope (the universal and the exception);
• introducing a “not-all” logic that resists totalization in the feminine position (a logic later tied to Other jouissance).

These moves connect the seminar’s question—discourse beyond semblance—to the possibility that writing can register a structural impasse rather than resolve it.

Myth, the father, and the One

In the seminar’s later sessions Lacan returns to Freudian mythic constructions such as those associated with Totem and Taboo, in order to analyze how the “One” (the exception, the primal father, the founding point of a universal) supports social law and sexual prohibition. The “exception” functions as an operator that allows a universal statement (“all men…”) to be posed—an issue that links myth, logic, and the structure of discourse.

This re-reading also intersects with Lacan’s ongoing re-elaboration of the Name-of-the-Father: not as a person but as a signifier that supports naming, law, and the coherence of symbolic order. Seminar XVIII’s late emphasis on naming and logical operators anticipates subsequent debates over the plurality of “Names-of-the-Father” and the shifting role of paternal signifiers in Lacan’s late teaching.

Discourse, science, and social economy

Seminar XVIII continues Lacan’s critique of the neutrality claimed by scientific and institutional discourses. In this context Lacan links knowledge-production to structures of power and surplus: what discourse “produces” is never purely disinterested. The seminar’s final session explicitly stages an analogy between economic surplus (often discussed via Karl Marx’s analysis of surplus-value and fetishism) and psychoanalytic surplus (the remainder associated with objet petit a and the production of jouissance).

Rather than proposing a direct sociological theory, Lacan uses these analogies to highlight how discourses convert remainders into systems (value, authority, knowledge), and how semblance functions as the medium of that conversion.

Theoretical significance and clinical implications

A late-theory bridge: from discourse to sexuation and writing

In Lacan’s trajectory, Seminar XVIII is often treated as a bridge between:

• the discourse formalism of Seminar XVII; and
• the later emphases on lalangue, writing, and sexuation (Seminars XIX–XX and beyond).

Its theoretical significance lies in the way it reframes the question of truth: truth is not opposed to semblance, but is articulated through it; the point is to locate where semblance fails, and how that failure exposes a real that cannot be absorbed by knowledge.

Clinical orientation: listening for the letter and the impasse

Clinically, Seminar XVIII reinforces a distinctive Lacanian orientation: the analytic act does not aim at completeness of explanation, but at shifts in the subject’s relation to signifiers and to jouissance. The emphasis on the letter and writing suggests a way to think symptoms and repetitions not only as meaningful narratives but as insistent marks—traces that return at the level of form (puns, homophony, recurring signifiers, written fixations, bodily inscriptions).

The seminar also complicates the analyst’s relation to “truth-telling.” If truth about jouissance can only be spoken through semblance, then interpretation must be measured by its effects (displacement of the subject’s position, reconfiguration of desire), not by correspondence to an objective account.

Limits of mastery and the ethics of psychoanalysis

Seminar XVIII’s interrogation of semblance also functions as a critique of mastery in analytic and institutional settings. The risk for psychoanalysis is to become another discourse of authority—another semblance of knowledge that dominates the subject. Lacan’s insistence on the real limits of discourse is therefore inseparable from an ethical claim: analytic discourse should not promise final reconciliation or total knowledge, but should sustain the subject’s encounter with what cannot be written as a harmonious relation.

Reception and legacy

Within Lacanian schools

Within Lacanian institutions, Seminar XVIII is frequently taught as:

• a key text on semblant and the status of truth in analytic discourse;
• a primary reference for “Lituraterre” and the letter/writing problematic;
• an early locus for the logical turn that culminates in the sexuation formulas.

Its session on “Lituraterre” has generated a substantial secondary literature connecting Lacan to literary theory and to questions of inscription, materiality, and the real of language.

In philosophy and cultural theory

In the humanities, Seminar XVIII is often cited in discussions of:

• appearance, ideology, and the production of social bonds through signifiers (in dialogue with or critique of structuralism and post-structuralism);
• writing and the limits of meaning (often placed in proximity to debates shaped by Jacques Derrida);
• the relationship between formal logic and psychoanalytic theory.

Because the seminar addresses semblance as a structural necessity rather than a removable illusion, it has also informed debates about whether critique can ever step outside the discursive “stage” it analyzes.

Debates and cautions

Commentators have noted that Seminar XVIII’s heavy reliance on logical notation and wordplay can make it less accessible than Lacan’s mid-career seminars, and raises questions about how formalism transmits clinical knowledge. Supporters argue that the formal turn is precisely what allows Lacan to articulate limits (the “cannot be written”) without converting them into positive doctrine; critics worry that the formal register may invite scholasticism detached from clinical practice.

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• The Seminar
• Seminar XVII
• Seminar XIX
• Four Discourses
• Discourse of the Analyst
• Semblance
• Truth
• Jouissance
• Objet petit a
• Letter
• Writing
• Lituraterre
• Formulas of sexuation
• Phallic function
• Name-of-the-Father
• Totem and Taboo
• Karl Marx
• Gottlob Frege

Further reading

• Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre XVIII : D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant (1971). Text established by Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2007.
• Lacan, Jacques. “Lituraterre” (1971), in Autres écrits. Paris: Seuil, 2001.
• Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge, 1996.

• Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
• Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan: An Outline of a Life, History of a System of Thought. Trans. Barbara Bray. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.