In 1975 at Columbia University, Lacan questions the inclination of a subject in analysis – led to say no matter what – to come to speak of his particular family, to speak of “that by which [he] holds on [to] his family [1]”. He specifies: “it is not the same thing to have had one’s mother and not the mother of the neighbour, the same for the father [2]”. The subject is marked by the signifiers of his family history, but a gap remains between history and the real. Jacques-Alain Miller has a lovely phrase which encapsulates Lacan’s thought, developed in the lesson of May 21, 1969 of his Seminar From an Other to the other: “the subject emerges, not from the signifier, but ‘from the unspeakable relation to jouissance’ [3]”. If there is a family romance, it is written by what marked the subject in what has been said, silenced, whispered, or shouted to him. Therefore, it concerns the relationship to the desire of the Other, and to the opacity of the Other’s jouissance.
Alexandre Stevens text thus invites us to think of family biography as the veil of an impossible articulation of jouissance in relation to knowledge. Christophe Le Thorel proposes to subvert the ideas of conflicts of loyalty with that of the mark of jouissance that determines the subjects welcomed into institutions. Finally, Juliette Lauwers reminds us that crime within the family is nothing new, indeed it is at the very heart of its constitution.
Three beautiful contributions to read and share!
[1] Lacan, J., “Conférences et entretiens dans des universités nord-américaines. Columbia University”, Scilicet, no 6/7, 1976, p. 44.
[2] Ibid. p. 45.
[3] Miller, J.-A., “Une lecture du Séminaire D’un Autre à l’autre”, La Cause freudienne, no 65, mars 2007, p. 121.
Translation: Dana Tor Zilberstein
Proofreading: Susan Mc Feely
