Founding speech

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French: [[parole fondant]]

Jacques Lacan

The term "founding speech" -- sometimes rendered "foundational speech" -- emerges in Lacan's work at the time of his growing attention to language in the early 1950s.[1]

Transformation

The point Lacan draws attention to in his use of this term is the way that speech can radically transform both the speaker and the addressee in the act of utterance. Lacan's two favorate examples of this are the phrases "You are my master/teacher (maître)" and "You are my wife," which serve to position the speaker as "pupil' and "husband" respectively. In order words, the crucial aspect of founding speech is that it not only transforms the other but also transforms the subject.[2]

"Founding speech, which envelops the subject, is everything that has constituted him, his parents, his neighbours, the whole structure of his community, and not only constituted him as symboli (?), but constituted him in his being."[3]

Elective and Votive Speech

Lacan refers to the same function of speech as "elective speech" in the seminar of 1955-6 and as "votive speech" in the seminar of 1956-7. Lacan plays on the homophony between tu es ma mère ("you are my mother") and tuer ma mère ("to kill my mother") to illustrate the way that the founding speech addressed to the other may reveal a repressed murderous desire.[4]

See Also

References

  1. Lacan, Jacques.. "Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse." 1953a. In Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p. 237-322. ("The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.") In Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977.. p. 30-113
  2. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 85
  3. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.20
  4. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.269