Talk:Seminar XXI
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| Seminar XXI | |
|---|---|
| Seminar | |
| French Title | Les non-dupes errent |
| English Title | The Non-Duped Err |
| Seminar Information | |
| Psychoanalytic Content | |
| Key Concepts | Real; Symbolic; Imaginary; Borromean knot; nomination; Name-of-the-Father; parlêtre; lalangue; passe; saying (dire) |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | — |
| Followed by | — |
| 1973–1974 | Seminar XXI | Les non-dupes errent The Non-Duped Err |
Seminar XXI is the customary designation for Jacques Lacan’s 1973–1974 teaching cycle, titled Les non-dupes errent (usually rendered in English as The Non-Duped Err). Delivered between 13 November 1973 and 11 June 1974, the seminar belongs to Lacan’s “late teaching,” marked by the intensification of topological models (especially the Borromean knot) and by a shift from a primarily linguistic formalization of the unconscious toward problems of jouissance, the Real, and the body of the speaking being (parlêtre).[1]
The title itself is programmatic. Lacan introduces it as a deliberate homophonic echo of Les Noms-du-Père, the seminar he announced in 1963 and then abandoned after one session amid institutional conflict with the International Psychoanalytical Association.[2] In the inaugural lesson Lacan states that Les non-dupes errent “sounds strictly the same” as Les noms du père and defines “erre” (momentum, drift) as what continues after propulsion ceases—an image for how subjects “go on” under the inertia of signifying structures even when the cause is no longer present.[3]
Although no official French book edition has been issued in Lacan’s standard seminar series for this volume, the seminar is widely studied through audio recordings, French transcripts, and English working translations produced in scholarly and clinical networks.[4][5]
Textual history and sources
Publication status
Unlike several earlier seminars edited and published in the canonical French series, Seminar XXI remains unpublished in an official book form. The primary materials used in scholarship typically include:
- French transcripts derived from stenographic notes and/or audio recordings, often circulated as “working texts.”[3]
- Partial or complete audio recordings of sessions (notably the opening class), disseminated through archival and educational platforms.[2]
- English working translations prepared from unpublished French transcripts, frequently associated with independent Lacanian study groups.[4]
Archival institutions have also acquired seminar transcript holdings; one prominent finding aid describes mimeographed seminar transcriptions (some incomplete) dating between 1962 and 1979, noting that many are unpublished.[5]
Dating and structure
Circulating tables of contents for the seminar commonly list 15 lessons (weekly sessions), beginning on 13 November 1973 and ending on 11 June 1974.[3][4] The established rhythm—public sessions from November to June—follows the standard annual structure of Lacan’s seminar as a “laboratory” for conceptual elaboration rather than a university course in the conventional sense.[1][5]
Historical and institutional context
Venue and audience
By the early 1970s, Lacan’s seminar had moved from its earlier institutional settings to the Faculty of Law across from the Panthéon in Paris, where it continued through much of the late period of his teaching.[1][5] This period is associated with a widened audience (clinicians, students, philosophers, writers) and with Lacan’s increasing reliance on formal devices—mathemes, logical schemas, and topological figures—to resist what he regarded as premature “understanding” (comprendre) and to foreground the materiality of the signifier.[3]
After Encore and before R.S.I.
Chronologically, Seminar XXI stands between Encore (1972–1973) and R.S.I. (1974–1975). It is therefore positioned at a hinge point:
- Encore intensifies Lacan’s theses on jouissance, sexuation, and lalangue.
- Les non-dupes errent develops the problem of how the registers (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) are “knotted” and how “names” and acts of nomination function in relation to the Real.
- R.S.I. continues and systematizes the knotting of the registers and prepares the later emergence of the sinthome in Le sinthome.
Conceptual framework and methodology
Title as concept: dupery, error, and the “Names of the Father”
The title’s pun condenses a major thesis: refusing symbolic “dupery” does not yield lucidity but a specific form of error (erreur) or wandering (errance). In the first lesson Lacan explicitly ties the title to the abandoned 1963 theme of the “Names of the Father,” stating that the two expressions are phonemically identical and that the difference of spelling signals a difference of sense.[3]
In one frequently cited passage, Lacan insists that it is not enough to be “duped” in general: “it is not enough to be dupes in order not to err … one must be dupes of something” (often glossed as the need to be “duped by the Real” rather than by imaginary certainties).[6] Later Lacanian commentators treat this formula as an ethical orientation: analysis does not eliminate semblants but reorients the subject’s relation to the Real that these semblants knot and screen.[7]
From “understanding” to “writing”: the late turn
Lacan’s late teaching repeatedly warns against the analyst’s and analysand’s desire to “understand too quickly.” In the opening lesson of Seminar XXI he frames the seminar as a renewal (“I start again!”) and situates his procedure in relation to the passe (the School’s device for testimony about the end of analysis).[3] His stated aim is less to transmit meanings than to produce an “event” of discourse: an encounter with the signifier’s material effects and the Real that eludes sense.
This methodological shift often appears in the seminar as an opposition between:
- speech (parole) as communicative articulation of meaning; and
- saying (dire) as an act or event with effects that exceed meaning, tied to jouissance and to the Real.
“There is no event except of saying”
A central claim, widely cited from the seminar, concerns the status of the “event.” In the lesson of 15 January 1974, Lacan formulates: “The event … occurs only in the order of the Symbolic. There is no event except of saying.”[8] The formula supports a later Lacanian distinction between a mere “spoken content” and an interpretive intervention that functions as an event—an act targeting the speaking body, with unpredictable jouissance effects rather than stable meaning.
This emphasis connects Seminar XXI to the broader late-Lacanian orientation in which the Symbolic is no longer treated as a self-sufficient order of law, but as a system of semblants whose function depends on how it knots with the Imaginary body and the Real of jouissance.[7][1]
Key themes, concepts, and formal devices
The Borromean knot and the knotting of RSI
Seminar XXI is a major stage in Lacan’s topological elaboration of the registers. The Borromean knot—three linked rings such that cutting one releases the others—serves as a formal model for the mutual dependence of the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary.[1] Lacan uses knotting to articulate how a subject’s consistency depends on the linkage of:
- the Imaginary (body images, identifications, coherence of meaning),
- the Symbolic (signifiers, law, social bond, articulation), and
- the Real (what resists symbolization, the impossible, jouissance).
Rather than presenting topology as an illustrative metaphor, Lacan treats knotting as a mode of “writing” that can register differences irreducible to semantic exposition—part of his attempt to formalize psychoanalysis without reducing it to psychology or hermeneutics.[3]
Nomination and the Name-of-the-Father
A second major axis concerns nomination—the act and function of naming. The seminar’s pun on the “Names of the Father” indicates that the paternal function is no longer treated as a single foundational signifier but as pluralized and operational: names function to “tie” the registers and to stabilize a subject’s place in a symbolic network.
Secondary discussions of Lacan’s late work frequently connect this to problems of proper names, reference, and the social efficacy of naming. Some commentators note resonances with debates in analytic philosophy about names (e.g., “rigid designation”), though Lacan’s concern is clinical and structural: what a name does as a signifier in a speaking being, not what it denotes in a semantic theory.[9][10]
Truth, semblant, and the Real
In continuity with earlier formulations (“truth can only be half-said”), the seminar develops an account of truth bound to the Imaginary and structured by negation and contradiction. In circulating transcripts Lacan links truth to the necessity of “mi-dire” (half-saying) and underscores that the Imaginary organizes the stopping point of deciphering—sense as a satisfaction that arrests analytic work.[11]
This thematic triad—truth, semblant, Real—has clinical consequences: the analyst does not simply unveil a hidden truth behind appearances, but intervenes in how semblants function as supports for jouissance and as knots that make a subject’s world “hold together.”[7]
Religion and the “support” of belief
The opening lesson also includes remarks linking the function of symbolic structures to religion’s mode of operation—an early indication that the seminar will return to the question of belief as a structural necessity rather than an intellectual error. In one sequence, Lacan suggests that certain forms of symbolic capture place the seminar “on the same side where religion functions,” anticipating later Lacanian discussions of how the decline of traditional authorities does not eliminate the need for symbolic supports but displaces them into new forms.[3]
Theoretical significance and clinical implications
Ethics of analysis: being “duped” otherwise
The maxim “the non-duped err” is often read as a late-Lacanian correction to fantasies of disillusionment. On this view, the goal of analysis is not a cynical unmasking of semblants (as if the subject could stand outside the Symbolic), but a transformation of dupery: the analysand ceases to be duped by imaginary consistencies and learns to be “duped by a real,” i.e., oriented by what does not lie—jouissance and its limits—rather than by reassuring meanings.[7]
This orientation is compatible with Lacan’s insistence that an analysis cannot and should not abolish the Imaginary; it can, however, modify how imaginary identifications are knotted with symbolic demands and real impasses.[1]
Interpretation as event
By distinguishing the “event” of saying from ordinary speech, Seminar XXI contributes to a clinical theory of interpretation as an act. The interpretive act is conceived less as an explanatory construction and more as an intervention in the signifier’s materiality (sometimes later glossed as the “motérialité” of the signifier) capable of producing a cut in sense and shifting the subject’s relation to jouissance.[8]
From structures to singular solutions
The knotting perspective also foreshadows the later emphasis on singular solutions (including the later concept of the sinthome). Rather than treating symptoms only as messages to decode, Lacan increasingly approaches them as modes of knotting—ways in which a subject holds together the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary. Seminar XXI thereby functions as a bridge between structural clinic (neurosis/psychosis/perversion) and the later “Borromean clinic,” where questions of consistency, tying, and repair become central.
Reception and legacy
Within Lacanian psychoanalysis
In Lacanian schools and clinical literature, Les non-dupes errent is frequently cited for:
- its punning return to the problematic of the “Names of the Father,” now pluralized and linked to nomination;
- its elaboration of RSI knotting in the lead-up to R.S.I.;
- its strong thesis on the event of saying, used to support an act-based account of interpretation.[8][7]
Because the seminar is unofficially transmitted, its reception is also shaped by editorial issues: divergent transcripts, translation choices, and the interpretive traditions of different Lacanian lineages.
In contemporary critical theory and cultural analysis
Outside clinical circles, the phrase “les non-dupes errent” has become a recognizable Lacanian marker invoked in discussions of ideology, belief, and the status of the big Other. In political and cultural commentary influenced by Lacan, the title is often mobilized to argue that a refusal of “illusion” can itself become a fantasy, and that contemporary cynicism may remain caught in the structures it claims to see through.[12]
Such appropriations typically emphasize the paradox that belief is not simply an internal attitude but can be delegated to institutions, media, or practices—hence the continued relevance of Lacan’s thesis that the problem is not belief versus disbelief, but how symbolic supports are organized and where jouissance attaches.
See also
- Seminar XX: Encore
- Seminar XXII: R.S.I.
- The Names of the Father
- Name-of-the-Father
- Nomination
- Borromean knot
- Real
- Symbolic
- Imaginary
- Parlêtre
- Lalangue
- Passe
- Jouissance
Further reading
- Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre XX: Encore (1972–1973). Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil; English trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 1998.
- Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton University Press, 1995.[10]
- Johnston, Adrian. “Jacques Lacan.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev. 2022).[1]
- Miller, Jacques-Alain. “The Unconscious and the Speaking Body.” Uqbar/WAPOL (2014).[7]
- Working transcripts and translations of Seminar XXI (French and English), as indexed by No Subject and related archival platforms.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Johnston, Adrian. “Jacques Lacan.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 2013; substantive revision 2022). Sections on the 1970s and the Borromean knot emphasize Lacan’s late focus on topological knotting of the registers.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 “Seminar 21, ‘Les Non-Dupes Errent’: Opening class.” RadioLacan (audio and contextual note for the first session, recorded 13 November 1973).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Lacan, Jacques. Les non-dupes errent (Seminar XXI, 1973–1974), lesson of 13 November 1973, unpublished transcript in a circulating working edition compiled from audio sources (PDF working document).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 “Seminar XXI.” No Subject: Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (page listing basic dates and linking to English translation and audio resources).
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 “Transcripts of Jacques Lacan’s Séminaires” (MS-1097). Johns Hopkins University Libraries, Special Collections finding aid (describing mimeographed transcripts, many unpublished, and noting seminar venues including the Faculty of Law from 1969 onward).
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Les non-dupes errent (Seminar XXI), lesson of 19 February 1974 (unpublished transcript in circulating editions), passage stating that dupery must be oriented (“it is not enough to be dupes … one must be dupes of something”).
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Miller, Jacques-Alain. “The Unconscious and the Speaking Body” (presentation text; translated by A.R. Price). Uqbar/WAPOL (2014). Miller explicitly links “being the dupe of a real” to lucidity and reads it through the RSI triad.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Lacan, Jacques. Les non-dupes errent (Seminar XXI), lesson of 15 January 1974, circulating transcript: “L’événement … ne se produit que dans l’ordre du Symbolique. Il n’y a d’événement que de dire.”
- ↑ “The Symptom” (discussion of nomination and naming with references to Lacan’s late seminars, including Les non-dupes errent). lacan.com.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton University Press, 1995. Bibliographic and contextual references list Seminar XXI as unpublished and situate it within the later turn to jouissance and knotting.
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Les non-dupes errent (Seminar XXI), circulating transcript passages on truth as “mi-dire” and on the Imaginary as the stopping point of deciphering (lessons in spring 1974).
- ↑ Žižek, Slavoj. “Les Non-Dupes Errent.” The Philosophical Salon (2021). Uses Lacan’s title to discuss “fake news,” public belief, and the persistence of the big Other in transformed forms.
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| 13 novembre 1973 | Séminaire XXI (1973-1974) "Les non-dupes errent" | mp3 |
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The title of this Séminaire is a pun on the title of his Séminaire in 1963 (« Les Noms-du-Père ») which was stopped after a single session because Lacan had been banned from the IPA. In this session, Lacan explains the title and displays his borromean knot as the way to knot the 3 category registers of human reality : Real, Symbolic, Imaginary. Text in French | ||
| 20 novembre 1973 | Séminaire XXI (1973-1974) "Les non-dupes errent" | mp3 |
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Lacan reads (sometimes in german) and comments on Freud's text about the occult. | ||