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As Jacques-[[Alain ]] [[Miller ]] has pointed out, the [[concept ]] of "constructions in [[analysis]]" does not rely on the (dubious) [[claim ]] that the [[analyst ]] is always [[right ]] (if the [[patient ]] accepts the analyst's proposed [[construction]], that's straightforward confirmation of its correctness; if the patient rejects it, this is a [[sign ]] of [[resistance ]] which, consequently, again confirms that the construction has touched on the [[truth]]); the point, rather, is the obverse - "the [[analysand ]] is always, by definition, in the wrong." In [[order ]] to get this point, one should focus on the crucial [[distinction ]] between construction and its [[counterpart]], [[interpretation]], correlative to the couple [[knowledge]]/ truth. That is to say, an interpretation is a gesture that is always embedded in the [[intersubjective ]] [[dialectic ]] of [[recognition ]] between the analysand and the analyst, it aims at bringing [[about ]] the effect of truth apropos of some [[particular ]] [[formation ]] of the [[unconscious ]] (a [[dream]], a [[symptom]], a [[slip ]] of tongue). The [[subject ]] is expected to "recognize" himself in the [[signification ]] proposed by the interpreter, precisely to subjectivize it, to assume the proposed signification as "his own" (Yes, my God, that's me, I really wanted this). The very success of interpretation is measured by this "effect of truth," by the extent to which it affects the [[subjective ]] [[position ]] of the analysand (stirring up [[memories ]] of the hitherto deeply [[repressed ]] [[traumatic ]] encounters, provoking violent resistance). In clear contrast to it, a construction (exemplarily, that of a fundamental [[fantasy]]) has the status of a knowledge which can never be subjectivized, assumed by the subject as the truth about himself, the truth in which he recognizes the innermost kernel of his [[being]]. A construction is a purely [[logical ]] explanatory presupposition, like the second [[stage ]] (I am being beaten by my [[father]]) of the [[child]]'s fantasy "A child is being beaten" which, as [[Freud ]] emphasizes, is so radically unconscious that it cannot ever be remembered:

This second [[phase ]] is the most important and the most momentous of all. But we may say that in a certain [[sense ]] it has never had a [[real ]] [[existence]]. It is never remembered, it has never succeeded in becoming [[conscious]]. It is a construction of analysis, but it is no less a [[necessity ]] on that account. (1)

The fact that this phase "never had a real existence," of course, indexes the status of the [[Lacanian ]] real; the knowledge we have of this phase is a "knowledge in the real," i.e., it is an "acephalic," non-subjectivized knowledge. Although (or, rather, for the very [[reason ]] that) it is a kind of "Thou art that!" which articulates the very kernel of the subject's being, its assumption "desubjectivizes" me, i.e., I can only assume my [[fundamental fantasy ]] insofar as I undergo what [[Lacan ]] calls "[[subjective destitution]]." Or, to put it in yet [[another ]] way, interpretation and construction stand to each [[other ]] like symptom and fantasy: [[symptoms ]] are to be [[interpreted]], the fundamental fantasy is to be (re)constructed. This [[notion ]] of "acephalic" knowledge emerges rather late in Lacan's teaching, after the [[relationship ]] between knowledge and truth underwent a profound shift in the early seventies.

In the "early" phase, from the 1940s to the 1960s, Lacan moves within the coordinates of the standard [[philosophical ]] opposition between "inauthentic" objectifying knowledge which disregards the subject's position of [[enunciation]], and the "authentic" truth by which one is existentially engaged, affected. In the [[psychoanalytic ]] [[clinic]], this opposition is perhaps best exemplified by the clear contrast between [[obsessional ]] [[neurosis ]] and [[hysteria]]. The obsessional [[neurotic ]] "lies in the guise of truth." At the level of factual accuracy, his statements are as a rule [[true]], yet he uses factual accuracy to dissimulate the truth about his [[desire]]. When, for example, my [[enemy ]] has a car accident because of a brake malfunction, I go to great lengths to explain to everyone that I was never near his car and am therefore not [[responsible ]] for the malfunction. While this is true, this "truth" is propagated by me to conceal the fact that the accident realized my desire. On the contrary, the [[hysteric ]] "tells the truth in the guise of a lie;" the truth of my desire articulates itself in the very distortions of the "factual accuracy" of my [[speech]]. When, instead of "I hereby open this [[session]]," I say "I hereby close this session," my desire clearly reveals itself. The aim of the psychoanalytic [[treatment ]] is thus to (re)focus attention from factual accuracy to [[hysterical ]] lies which unknowingly articulate the truth, and then to [[progress ]] to a new knowledge which dwells at the [[place ]] of truth, to a knowledge which, instead of dissimulating truth, gives rise to truth-effects, i.e. to what the Lacan of the fifties called "[[full ]] speech," the speech in which subjective truth reverberates. This notion of truth, of course, belongs to a long [[tradition]], from [[Kierkegaard ]] to [[Heidegger]], of despising mere "factual truth."

Beginning in the late sixties, however, Lacan focuses his attention more and more on [[drive ]] as a kind of "acephalic" knowledge which brings about [[satisfaction]]. This knowledge involves no inherent relation to truth, no [[subjective position ]] of enunciation - not because it dissimulates the subjective position of enunciation, but because it is in itself nonsubjectivized, or ontologically prior to the very [[dimension ]] of truth (of course, the term [[ontological ]] becomes thereby problematic, since [[ontology ]] is by definition a [[discourse ]] on truth). Truth and knowledge are thus related as desire and drive: interpretation aims at the truth of the [[subject's desire ]] (the truth of desire is the desire for truth, as one is tempted to put it in a pseudo-[[Heideggerian ]] way), while construction provides [[know]]- ledge about drive. Is not the paradigmatic [[case ]] of such an "acephalic" knowledge provided by modern [[science ]] (2) which exemplifies the "blind [[insistence]]" of the ([[death]]) drive? Modern science follows its path (in microbiology, in manipulating genes, in particle [[physics]]) heedless of cost - satisfaction is here provided by knowledge itself, not by any [[moral ]] or communal goals [[scientific ]] knowledge is supposed to serve. All the "[[ethical ]] committees" which abound today and attempt to establish rules for the proper conduct of gene-manipulation, of medical experiments, etc. - are they ultimately not desperate attempts to reinscribe this inexorable drive-progress of science which [[knows ]] of no inherent limitation (in short: this inherent [[ethic ]] of the scientific attitude) within the confines of [[human ]] goals, to provide it with a "human face," a limitation? The commonplace wisdom today is that "our extraordinary [[power ]] to manipulate [[nature ]] through scientific devices has run ahead of our faculty to lead a meaningful existence, to make human use of this immense power." Thus, the properly modern [[ethics ]] of "following the drive" clashes with traditional ethics whereby one is instructed to live one's [[life ]] according to standards of proper measure and to subordinate all its aspects to some all-encompassing notion of the [[Good]]. The problem is, of course, that no [[balance ]] between these two notions of ethics can ever be achieved. The notion of reinscribing scientific drive into the constraints of the life-[[world ]] is fantasy at its purest - perhaps the fundamental fascist fantasy. Any limitation of this kind is utterly foreign to the inherent [[logic ]] of science - science belongs to the real and, as a mode of the real of [[jouissance]], it is indifferent to the modalities of its [[symbolization]], to the way it will [[affect ]] [[social ]] life.

Of course, the [[concrete ]] organization of the scientific [[apparatus]], up to its most abstract [[conceptual ]] schemas, is socially "mediated," but the [[whole ]] [[game ]] of discerning a patriarchal, Eurocentric, mechanistic, nature-exploiting bias to modern science "does not really concern science", the drive which effectuates itself in the operation of the scientific [[machine]]. Heidegger's position seems here utterly ambiguous; perhaps, it is all too easy to dismiss him as the most sophisticated proponent of the [[thesis ]] that science a priori misses the dimension of truth. Didn't he claim that "science doesn't [[think]]," i.e. that it is by definition unable to reflect its own philosophical foundation, the hermeneutic horizon of its functioning, and, furthermore, that this incapacity, far from playing the [[role ]] of an impediment, is a positive condition of possibility of its smooth functioning? His crucial point is rather that modern science, as such, cannot be reduced to some limited, ontical, "socially conditioned" option (expressing the interests of a certain social group, etc.), but is rather the real of our historical [[moment]], that which "remains the same" in all possible ("progressive" and "reactionary," "technocratic" and "ecological," "patriarchal" and "[[feminist]]") [[symbolic ]] universes. Heidegger is thus well aware that all fashionable "critiques of science" according to which science is a tool of Western [[capitalist ]] domination, of patriarchal oppression, etc., fall short and thus leave unquestioned the "hard kernel" of the scientific drive. Lacan obliges us to add that science is perhaps "real" in an even more radical sense: it is the first (and probably unique) case of a discourse that is strictly "nonhistorical" even in the Heideggerian sense of the [[historicity ]] of the epochs of Being, i.e. epochs whose functioning is inherently indifferent to the historically determined horizons of the disclosure of Being. Precisely insofar as science "doesn't think," it "knows", ignoring the dimension of truth, and is as such drive at its purest. Lacan's [[supplement ]] to Heidegger would thus be: why should this utter "[[forgetting ]] of Being" at [[work ]] in modern science be perceived only as the greatest "[[danger]]? Does it not contain also a "liberating" dimension? Is not the suspension of ontological Truth in the unfettered functioning of science already a kind of "passing through" and "getting over" the metaphysical closure?

Within [[psychoanalysis]], this knowledge of drive which can never be subjectivized assumes the [[form ]] of knowledge of the subject's "fundamental fantasy," the specific [[formula ]] which regulates his or her access to jouissance. That is to say, desire and jouissance are inherently antagonistic, exclusive even: desire's raison d'etre (or "utility function," to use Richard Dawkins's term) is not to realize its [[goal]], to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire. How is it possible nonetheless to couple desire and jouissance, to [[guarantee ]] a minimum of jouissance within the [[space ]] of desire? This is made possible by the famous Lacanian [[object ]] a that mediates between the incompatible domains of desire and jouissance. In what precise sense is [[object a ]] the object-[[cause ]] of desire? Object a is not what we [[desire, ]] what we are after, but rather that which sets our desire in motion, the [[formal ]] [[frame ]] that confers consistency on our desire. Desire is of course metonymical, it shifts from one object to another; through all its displacements, however, desire nonetheless retains a minimum of formal consistency, a set of [[fantasmatic ]] features which, when encountered in a positive object, insures that we will come to desire this object. Object a, as the [[cause of desire]], is [[nothing ]] but this formal frame of consistency. In a slightly different way, the same [[mechanism ]] regulates the subject's falling in [[love]]: the automatism of love is set in motion when some [[contingent]], ultimately indifferent ([[libidinal]]) object finds itself occupying a pre-given fantasy place. This role of fantasy in the automatic emergence of love hinges on the fact that "there is no [[sexual ]] relationship," no [[universal ]] formula or [[matrix ]] guaranteeing a [[harmonious ]] [[sexual relationship ]] with the partner. Because of the [[lack ]] of this universal formula, every [[individual ]] has to invent a fantasy of his own, a "private" formula far the sexual relationship; for a man, a relationship with a [[woman ]] is possible only inasmuch as she fits his formula. The formula of the Wolfman, Freud's famous patient, consisted of "a woman, viewed from behind, on her hands and knees, and washing or cleaning something on the ground in front of her"; the view of a woman in this position automatically gave rise to love. John Ruskin's formula, which followed the [[model ]] of old Greek and Roman statues, led to a tragicomic disappointment when, in the course of his wedding night, Ruskin caught [[sight ]] of pubic hair not found on the statues. This discovery made him totally impotent, since he was convinced that his wife was a monster.

Recently, Slovene feminists reacted with outrage at the publicity poster for a sun lotion, depicting a series of well-tanned [[women]]'s behinds in tight bathing suits, accompanied by the slogan "Each has her own factor." Of course, this ad campaign was based on a rather vulgar [[double ]] entendre: the slogan ostensibly refers to the sun lotion which is offered to customers with different sun factors to fit different kinds of skin; however, its effect is based on the obvious [[male]]-chauvinist [[reading]]: "Each woman can be had, if only the man knows her factor, her specific catalyst, what arouses her!" The [[Freudian ]] point about fundamental fantasy would be that each subject, [[female ]] or male, possesses such a "factor" which regulates her or his desire: "a woman, viewed from behind, on her hands and knees" was the Wolfman's factor; a statue-like woman without pubic hair was Ruskin's factor; etc., etc. There is nothing uplifting about our [[awareness ]] of this "factor": this awareness can never be subjectivized, it is [[uncanny]], horrifying even, since it somehow "depossesses" the subject, reducing her or him to a puppet-like level "beyond dignity and [[freedom]]."

(1) [[Sigmund Freud]], "A Child Is Being Beaten," [[Standard Edition]], vol. 10, p. 185.

(2) see [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], "[[Savoir ]] et satisfaction," in La [[Cause freudienne ]] 33, [[Paris ]] 1996.

* [[Desire: Drive = Truth: Knowledge]]. ''Umbr(a): On The Drive''. 1997. pp 147-152. <http://www.gsa.buffalo.edu/lacan/desire.html>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan.com]]''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizek-desire.htm>.