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==Introduction to Encore==
<small>''(The following is an excerpt from an [https://www.lacan.com/symptom14/introduction-to.html "Introduction to Encore" by Francois Regnault])''</small><BR>
1. The ''Seminar'' XX, which Jacques Lacan called ''Encore'', was delivered between December 12, 1972 and June 26, 1975. It takes place at a turning point in French politics after the events of May 68, and in the teaching of Jacques Lacan.
The events of May 68 had resulted in Seminar XVII, ''The Other Side of Psychoanalysis'' (whose cover shows Daniel Cohn-Bendit facing a member of the CRS, the French mobile police forces), an upside down resumption of the Freudian project, which also resorts to another “reverse,” like the one invented by Balzac in ''The Seamy Side of History''that digs another hollow space in the heart of the city; the other side would be what psychoanalysis tries to keep away from, making a detour to a better address, for example, the discourse of the Master. Indeed Lacan sets up his theory of the four discourses, which are four different forms of arrangements between the subject and the Other, more exactly between the subject, its signifiers and knowledge, on the one hand, and the rest that results from this same arrangement, called surplus-''jouir'' (''plus-de-jouir''). We run here into a reference made to profit, the “bonus” which according to Marx results from the capitalist mode of production. Therefore we find ourselves in a political dimension that belongs to the unconscious and which authorizes the expression: “The unconscious is politics.” Social ties (there is two for socializing) between these instances, which Lacan calls “discourse.”
2. In ''Encore'' (whose cover shows Bernini’s ''The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa''as it stands in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome) the puzzle of the discourses recurs again and again, but the issue unfolds in the dimension that rules Lacan’s teaching at least since ''Seminar'' XVI ''D’un Autre à l’autre''—''From an Other to the other''—(just before 1968!) until its very end, until it becomes almost the dominant category, that is ''jouissance''. (''Jouissance''posited as an absolute, see Chapter XIII of the ''Seminar'' XVI).
Thus this is no wonder that ''jouissance'' (of which one must not forget the legal origin, fruit and tenure) is introduced early in its opposition to the functional: “''Jouissance'' is what is useless.” The superego, the concept of Freud’s second topography to which he gave a repressive meaning (Kant’s Moral Law), Lacan did not consider it less brutal, but he also deems it obscene, and changes its orientation by enjoining it ''Jouis!'' (Yes, I mean the Law, I heard, ''j’ouis'', her voice, and she becomes my desire). And soon taking up residence in the field of sexuality, this approach brings about the following statements: a) “The ''jouissance'' of the Other, of the Other’s body that symbolizes it, is not a sign of love.” b) “Ultimately, one person’s body is just a part of the Other’s body.” c) Finally,“…it is the Other who ''jouit''.”<ref>Lacan J., Encore, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, 1972-1973, New York: W.W. Norton, 1998, p.23.</ref> Then, “there is a hole there and that hole is called the Other.”<ref>''Ibid'', p. 113</ref>] Later on Lacan will declare that “the Other doesn’t exist.”
3. From then on a relationship between ''jouissance'' and sexuality is articulated (according to a topology that will be developed later on in the seminar), a relationship which cannot be reduced to the male and female orgasms, but one that will meet the obstacle of choice set up by psychoanalysis, namely that “there is no sexual relationship” and that will be resolved by way of love, made up for its absence. “What makes up the sexual relationship is, quite precisely, love.”<ref>''Ibid'', p. 44</ref>
4. The ''Seminar'' XX performs as a theory on ''jouissance'' in its complex relationship with love, where Freud’s emphasis on narcissism remains evident, and where the opposition between desire and love’s demand, which dominated the so-called “classical” Lacanian theory (we propose here a rather flexible periodization), is being displaced to a more central articulation and perhaps to a more consistent involvement with the deepening of the clinic: the opposition between phallic ''jouissance'', and that other ''jouissance'', the one Lacan named “supplementary ''jouissance''.”<ref>''Ibid'', p. 72</ref> It will allow Lacan (in Chapter VI of the Seminar “God and Woman(barred) ''Jouissance''”) to assign to the mystical a point of fall (or) of real. As a result, the reputed mystical delusions are just “mere business of fucking.”
If phallic ''jouissance'' can encapsulate as a whole and in its more persistent meanings a whole range of psychoanalytic issues such as orgasm pleasure, the pleasure principle, sexual satisfaction, sexual fetishism, perversion, etc., it has now to contend with this other dimension of itself, one that is often considered enigmatic, an other ''jouissance'', one called the other ''jouissance''.
5. So there, psychoanalysis feels embarrassed with this other ''jouissance'', and the following statement reveals the discomfort: “Were there another ''jouissance'' than phallic ''jouissance'', it shouldn’t be/could never fail to be that one.” From there on the paradox is established: in fact there is no other than phallic ''jouissance'' (such as orgasm, detumescence, the primacy of the phallus, etc.) “except the one concerning which woman doesn’t breathe a word.” Psychoanalysis therefore assumes here that woman is capable of an unverifiable ''jouissance'', other (other than the one Charles de Brosses, a libertine from the eighteenth century, boasted to recognize in the traits of Bernini’s ''Saint Theresa''). It is then necessary to Lacan to resort to a Stoic logic according to which truth is deduced from the false: “Suppose that there is another (true!)—but there isn’t (false!).” The doubt remains, after all, and it weighs heavily: the male is intrigued and ponders over the notion that woman is not, is never whole, or ''encore'' that The woman (as a whole) does not exist. “There is a ''jouissance'' that is hers (the woman), that belongs to that ‘she’ that doesn’t exist and doesn’t signify anything.”<ref>''Ibid'', p. 74</ref> Hence the idea that we are dealing with “a ''jouissance'' that is in the realm of the infinite.”<ref>''Ibid'', p. 103</ref> And “Why not interpret one face of the Other, the God face, as based on feminine ''jouissance''?”<ref>''Ibid'', p. 77</ref>
==21 novembre 1972==
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==References==
<references />
[[Category:Seminars]] [[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
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