Talk:Seminar XVI
| D’un Autre à l’autre | |
|---|---|
| Seminar XVI | |
 Cover associated with Seminar XVI | |
| French Title | Le Séminaire, Livre XVI : D’un Autre à l’autre |
| English Title | Seminar XVI: From an Other to the other |
| Seminar Information | |
| Seminar Date(s) | 1968–1969 academic year |
| Location | Paris |
| Psychoanalytic Content | |
| Key Concepts | Other • objet petit a • surplus‑jouissance (plus‑de‑jouir) • structure • language • knowledge • jouissance • Pascal • Marx |
| Notable Themes | The status of the Other; alternate concepts of jouissance; the logic of surplus; the structure of the subject and Other; intersections of psychoanalysis with philosophy, logic, and social critique |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Seminar XV |
| Followed by | Seminar XVII |
From an Other to the other (Le Séminaire, Livre XVI: D'un Autre à l'autre) is the sixteenth annual seminar delivered by Jacques Lacan during the 1968–1969 academic year in Paris. The seminar title plays on Lacan’s distinction between the big Other (Autre) and the little other (autre), and articulates a range of advanced concepts in psychoanalysis concerning the subject, language, jouissance, and the logic of alterity. It was later edited by Jacques‑Alain Miller and published in French by Éditions du Seuil (2006) and in English translation by Polity Press (2023).
Seminar XVI is widely read as a complex and challenging contribution to Lacanian theory that engages with analytic structure, the nature of jouissance, paradoxes of the Other, and intersections of psychoanalysis with philosophy and social critique. The work is deeply connected to Lacan’s elaboration of objet petit a, surplus‑jouissance (plus‑de‑jouir), and the logic of fantasy, and it anticipates concerns developed more fully in subsequent seminars, including Seminar XVII’s theory of the four discourses.
Historical and institutional context
Seminar XVI was delivered in the wake of the socio‑political upheavals stemming from May 1968 in France, a period that prompted critical reflection on academic institutions, knowledge, and power. Lacan positions psychoanalysis in this context by declaring that “If psychoanalysis cannot be articulated as a knowledge and taught as such, it has no place in Academia, where it is only a matter of knowledge.” This stance underscores his insistence on concept‑formation and structural rigor over empiricism or mere practice.
In this seminar, Lacan confronts contemporary debates on language, knowledge, and social criticism, often drawing on figures such as Blaise Pascal and Karl Marx, whose ideas he interprets through a psychoanalytic lens. While not as widely translated or disseminated as some of his earlier seminars (e.g., Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis), Seminar XVI occupies a transitional place in Lacan’s oeuvre, linking formal analysis of the subject and Other to broader philosophical and structural insights.
Publication history
As with many of Lacan’s seminars, the text of Seminar XVI circulated in unpublished transcriptions for decades before its editorial establishment. The French edition (D’un Autre à l’autre) was issued by Éditions du Seuil in 2006, based on stenotypies and notes established by Jacques‑Alain Miller. An English translation, From an Other to the other, translated by Bruce Fink, was published by Polity Press in 2023, making the seminar more widely available to Anglophone readers.Template:Citeturn0search4
Conceptual framework and methodology
Lacan’s methodology in Seminar XVI weaves together psychoanalysis, logic, and philosophy. Marked by a commitment to structural thinking, Lacan foregrounds the relations among subject, Other, language, and desire, aiming to show how psychoanalytic insight operates both within and beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
The seminar tasks itself with defining and articulating the nature of the Other and its relation to the subject and to the little other (autre), as expressed in both analytic and logical terms. Lacan’s approach is deeply formal and often mathemetic, staging his inquiry through algebraic formulas, structural diagrams, and conceptual operations that resist simple paraphrase but insist on precision and rigor.
Key themes and concepts
The Other, little other, and the structure of alterity
A central concern of Seminar XVI is the elaboration of the distinction between the big Other (A) and the little other (a), and the traversals between them. The title D’un Autre à l’autre captures this movement, where Lacan investigates how the subject navigates these two registers of otherness. Here, the big Other is associated with the locus of language, law, and structure (the symbolic field), whereas the little other relates to specular images, mirroring, and imaginary identifications.
Lacan’s engagement with this distinction has deep roots in his earlier work (e.g., the Schema L from Seminar II), where the subject’s relation to Others is shown to be mediated by signifiers and structured by language. In Seminar XVI, he returns to this fundamental bifurcation with renewed philosophical intensity and conceptual elaboration.
Structure and knowledge: science, language, and psychoanalysis
Another major theme is the relation of psychoanalysis to science and knowledge. Lacan argues that psychoanalysis, to be a genuine field of knowledge, must articulate a structural account of its objects and effects. This entails confronting the limits of traditional scientific epistemology and incorporating a logic that accounts for the subject’s split nature, its relation to language, and the presence of gaps and inconsistencies in any system of knowledge.
Throughout the seminar, Lacan repeatedly contrasts psychoanalytic structure with conventional scientific models, pointing out its unique stance toward truth, language, and jouissance. This reflects Lacan’s longstanding claim that the unconscious is “structured like a language”. While that claim dates from earlier seminars, Seminar XVI pushes it into broader considerations of knowledge and power in social and institutional contexts.
Objet petit a and surplus‑jouissance (plus‑de‑jouir)
A hallmark of Lacanian theory—and a focal point in Seminar XVI—is objet petit a, the object‑cause of desire that represents the irreducible remainder in the subject’s relation to the Other. Lacan extends his analysis by relating the being of objet petit a to the concept of surplus‑jouissance (plus‑de‑jouir), a term that evokes a parallel with Marx’s surplus‑value while marking a specifically psychoanalytic surplus associated with jouissance rather than economic exchange.
In this formulation, the subject’s pursuit of jouissance always exceeds any symbolic accounting of satisfaction, producing an excess that functions as a driving force of desire and symptom formation. Lacan’s use of the fantasy matheme $<>a (where $ designates the barred subject and a the object‑cause) underscores this logic of surplus and excess, identifying the being of a with its surplus‑jouissance. This surplus is not simply additive but structurally constitutive of desire and the subject’s relation to the Other.
Feminine jouissance and phallic non‑ubiquity
Seminar XVI also addresses questions of feminine jouissance and the limits of symbolic articulation. Lacan poses the question of whether feminine jouissance occupies the “place” of the Other or of the Thing, thereby challenging prevailing notions of enjoyment and its symbolic capture. In this context, the phallus is said to exhibit “nullibiquity” (non‑ubiquitousness), indicating that jouissance is real yet resists full symbolization. This emphasis on the phallus as lacking or outside the system reflects Lacan’s broader claim about the limits of symbolic representation and its implications for subjectivity.
Philosophical engagements: Pascal and Marx
Lacan’s seminar frequently traverses philosophical terrain. He rereads Blaise Pascal’s reflections on the subject, loss, and nothingness to illustrate psychoanalytic themes, such as the gap (béance) that emerges between body and jouissance, and the condition of the subject’s existence in the field of the Other. Lacan juxtaposes this with a critique of Marx’s concept of surplus‑value, using it as an analogy to isolate and analyze surplus‑jouissance. These engagements underscore Lacan’s effort to situate psychoanalysis in dialogue with broader philosophical concerns about knowledge, desire, and structural absence.
Subject, language, and truth effects
Throughout Seminar XVI, Lacan explores how subjects are shaped by language and how truth effects are produced in discourse. The subject is inherently divided ($), situated within chains of signifiers that resist complete mastery or presence. Psychoanalysis, for Lacan, reveals this division and redirects attention from self‑identical subjects to subjects constituted by structural relations with Others and with language itself.
Theoretical significance and clinical implications
Seminar XVI represents a deepening of Lacan’s structural approach, extending traditional psychoanalytic concerns into areas of logic, knowledge, and social critique. By situating the subject’s relation to the Other within broader philosophical and structural parameters, Lacan moves beyond purely clinical formulations toward a theory that aspires to describe the conditions of language, jouissance, and subjectivity in contemporary contexts.
Clinically, the seminar reinforces the centrality of desire, lack, and surplus‑jouissance in the analytic encounter, emphasizing how structural gaps and paradoxes reveal themselves in symptoms and discourse. While not a manual of technique, it informs analytic practice by highlighting the structural determinants of subject formation and the limits of symbolic articulation.
Reception and legacy
Although less widely studied than some other seminars (e.g., Seminar XI or Seminar XVII’s introduction of the four discourses), Seminar XVI has gained renewed attention with the publication of its English translation, contributing to contemporary Lacanian scholarship on knowledge, language, and jouissance. Its integration of psychoanalytic concepts with philosophical critique makes it a touchstone for interdisciplinary study across psychoanalysis, philosophy, and critical theory.
Scholars and commentators have noted the seminar’s ambition in addressing the subject’s relation to Others and to structural absence, seeing in its dense formulations a precursor to later elaborations on discourse, power, and institutional critique in Lacanian thought. The parallels Lacan draws between psychoanalytic surplus‑jouissance and Marxist surplus‑value, for instance, have been discussed in the context of subjectivity under capitalism and the logic of desire in socio‑economic structures.
See also
- Jacques Lacan
- Seminar XV
- Seminar XVII
- Other (psychoanalysis)
- objet petit a
- Surplus‑value
- Jouissance
- Four discourses (Lacan)
References
Further reading
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