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<b>Le séminaire, Livre XIV: La logique du [[fantasme]].</b><br>[[French]]: unpublished.<br>[[English]]: unpublished.

[[Lacan ]] stresses the importance of the signifying [[structure ]] in [[fantasy]]. He takes as his starting point the [[matheme ]] <img src="lacansem1b1.gif" valign="bottom" height="11" width="12">&lt;&gt;<i>a</i>, which is the [[logical ]] articulation of fantasy. The matheme was already introduced in <i>Les [[formations ]] de l'[[inconscient]]</i>, in the [[graphs ]] of [[desire]], and was later developed in 1960 in "The [[subversion ]] of the [[subject ]] and the [[dialectic ]] of desire in the [[Freudian ]] [[unconscious]]" (<i>[[Écrits]]: A Selection</i>) as the first [[topology ]] of the subject.<br>

<img src="lacansem1b1.gif" valign="bottom" height="11" width="12"> represents the [[division ]] of the subject [[barred ]] by the [[signifier ]] that constitutes him. The [[sign ]] &lt;&gt; enunciates the relation either of inclusion/implication, or of [[exclusion ]] between the two [[terms]]. It's a binary [[system ]] where the verb as such [[disappears ]] to leave room for the [[algebraic ]] sign of a pure relation. Definitions of <i>[[objet ]] a</i> will vary over the years; to [[understand ]] it here, one should go back to the part [[object ]] of <i>[[La relation d'objet ]] et les [[structures ]] freudiennes</i>, and then address its [[analysis ]] in <i>L'[[angoisse]]</i> and <i>L'objet de la [[psychanalyse]]</i>. In 1960, however, Lacan mentions the [[fascination ]] of the fantasy in which "the subject becomes the cut that makes shine in its inexpressible oscillation".<br>

The <i>[[objet a]]</i> would be the [[primal ]] object, forever lost, the [[remainder ]] or the product, which cannot be assimilated because it is [[real]], of the cut operated by the primal signifier engendering the subject when it repeats itself in absolute [[difference ]] (<i>L'[[identification]]</i>). "If <i>a</i> is the [[frame ]] of the subject, this frame falls at the level of the most fundamental act of [[life]], the act in which the subject as such is engendered, i.e the [[repetition ]] of the signifier." This is the [[symbolic ]] paternal mark or the [[phallic ]] mark since there is no signifier of [[sexual ]] difference: "The [[phallus ]] alone is the sex-[[unity]]." The <i>objet a</i> creates a [[hole ]] constantly filled, in the [[partial ]] frives, by the different <i>objets a</i>, the [[breast]], [[feces]], the [[penis]], the [[gaze ]] or the [[voice]], [[objects ]] that are in themselves caught in [[imaginary ]] substitutions. To understand fantasy, one should try to determine the logical status of <i>objet a</i>, which can only be accomplished by way of a topology dealing with gemetrical [[figures]]. Is <i>objet a</i> situated on the side of the [[drive ]] or of desire of which it is the [[cause]]? Is it [[born ]] out of the [[separation ]] from the placenta as a part of the [[body ]] proper or from the division from oneself from the signifier, the cost that the [[speaking ]] [[being ]] has to pay to become a subject? Is there really an alternative? Lacan talks of a surface where "desire and [[reality]]" are "the [[right ]] and the wrong sides"; however, the passage from one side to the [[other ]] is unnoticeable, as if there were only one side, because "the relation of [[texture ]] does not entail any break." Might the fantasy allow oneself to go from the drive to desire and from desire to the drive, to link [[them ]] or to disjoint them?<br>

Lacan oscillates between exaltation and bouts of [[anxiety:]] "The [[logic ]] of fantasy is the most fundamental [[principle ]] of any logic that deals with [[formalizing ]] defiles," and at the same [[time ]] defers his presentation of "[[alienation ]] in terms logical calculation" because its formulation is not yet ready. The [[reason ]] might have been that "[[truth ]] is related to [[desire,]]" which "creates difficulties for handling it like logicians do." His aim is to define "a logic that is not a logic, an entirely new logic that I have not named yet, for it [[needs ]] to be instituted first." Using the [[character ]] of Diotima from <i>The [[Symposium]]</i>, he mentions academic Penia (the [[lack]]) before [[psychoanalytic ]] Poros ([[male ]] resource) and wonders "up to what point, between the two, he could let the obscurity go."<br>

The [[seminar ]] shifts its course toward the [[search ]] for a logic of the subject around the [[Cartesian ]] [[cogito]], then toward "the sexual act," questioning "the [[impossible ]] [[subjectivization ]] of sex," and of <i>[[jouissance]]</i>.<br>The multiple transformations of [[Descartes]]' <i>cogito ergo sum</i> (either I [[think ]] or I am"; "either I don't think or I am not"; "I am where I don't think," or "I think where I am not") end with a play of [[words]]: <i>Cogito ergo es</i>. The [[Latin ]] <i>es</i> (you are) marks the fundamental dependency on the Other and raises the problem of the passage from <i>objet a</i> to the Other or from the Other to <i>objet a</i>. Applied to desire, "I desire you" means "I implicate you in my [[fundamental fantasy]]" as <i>objet a</i>. Applied to [[love]], "You are not, therefore I am not"; "You are [[nothing ]] but what I am"; "You are the nothing that I am." Now, in [[German]], <i>Es</i> is the <i>id</i>, defined as the "non-I," the impersonal <i>id</i>, is it the reservoir of [[drives]]? Is it the cauldron (with a hole in it) of [[Freud]]'s witches? Or is it an aggregate of [[signifiers]]?<br>

Lacan elaborates on the [[notion ]] of "unbeing," <i>désêtre</i>, which would become the mark of the [[end of analysis]]. He elaborates on puns: the unconscious desire is "pure desire," <i>dés-être</i> like <i>dés-espoir</i>, despair, is an <i>irpas</i>, from the Latin <i>ire</i>, to go and the [[negation ]] <i>pas</i>, not, which is an <i>impassé</i>, something that had not gone through, linked to the desire of the Other, but also an <i>[[impasse]]</i>, a [[dead ]] end, due to repetition. The [[interpretation ]] does not entail any solution, <i>issue</i>, to the [[interpreted ]] desire because there is no solution, <i>issue</i>, to the unconscious desire that "will always remain a <i>désirpas</i> (desirenot)." For lacan, is this [[knowledge ]] of the truth of the unconscious desire really the solution, <i>issue</i> to be offered in analysis, the solution to the unfulfilled desire" of [[hysteria]], to the "prevented desire" of [[phobia]], or to the "impossible desire" of [[obsession]]? By itself, the <i>objet a</i> upholds "the truth of alienation"; to discover this truth is to discover that "there is no [[universe ]] of [[discourse]]" because something real (something impossible because not symbolizable) eludes it.<br>

"The big [[secret ]] of [[psychoanalysis ]] is that there is no sexual act," all there is is [[sexuality]], a very different [[thing]]. The act has a specific definition: it provokes a signifying doubling that allows for an insertion of the subject in a [[chain ]] in which he inscribes himself. Or it raises the institution of the signifier. But there is no signifier of [[sexual difference ]] and none of the [[feminine ]] sex either. Between man and [[woman ]] "there is this [[third ]] object, <i>objet a</i>, whose always sliding function of [[substitution ]] makes it impossible to keep them opposed in whatever eternal [[essence]]. It is impossible then to posit a subject inscribing himself as sexed in the act of conjunction to the subject of what is called the opposite sex." At [[the symbolic ]] level, "[[there is no sexual rapport]]": there is merely (a + 1) and (a - 1), where a term marks the difference as a plus or a a minus. The phallus is "the sex-unity": the 1 symbolizes the incommensurable.<br>Lacan uses [[Marx]]'s [[analyses ]] of use [[value ]] and [[exchange ]] value, and starts his [[theory ]] of "man-he" (<i>l'[[homme]]-il</i>). The "man-he" is also the man-standard and the man-stallion (<i>l'homme-étalon</i>), as well as the bull and the poor bearer of the [[symbol ]] of sex, doomed to symbolic [[castration]]. He does not [[know ]] how to live since there is no Other to [[guarantee ]] him, not even if he were God, marked as he is by castration. The only safeguard is the [[construction ]] of a protective [[society ]] based on [[masculine ]] [[homosexuality]]. The [[Father ]] of Freud's primal [[horde]], because he supposedly <i>jouis</i> all [[women]], sees "his <i>jouissance</i> killed." Then, if the almighty phallus circulates, it is due to women. "Woman represents the phallus as an exchange value among men; and, if the [[power ]] of the penis bears the mark of castration, it is because fictitiously she becomes what is enjoyed, <i>ce dont on jouit</i>, and circulates as an object of <i>jouissance</i>: she is the locus of [[transference ]] of this <i>jouissance</i> value" represented by the phallus. Through her identification to the [[use value ]] embodied in the phallus, woman transforms herself into an object-[[good]]. Yet, she does not lack resouirces, such as [[masquerade]], to act as "man-she," <i>l'homme-elle</i>. "She is inexpugnable as a woman precisely [[outside ]] the system of the sexual act," or "she has a different use of her own <i>jouissance</i> outside this [[ideology]]." Thus, Lacan establishes "the radical [[heterogeneity]]" of the <i>jouissance</i> of the two [[sexes ]] whose rapport could only be problematic. He begins here a [[reflection ]] that will lead him to <i>[[Encore]]</i>, the twentieth seminar.