Jacques-Alain Miller

translated by Barbara P. Fulks and Jorge Jauregui

Lacanian Biology
and the Event
of the Body
JACQUES-ALAIN MILLER

Gender and Sexuation
RICHARD KLEIN

The Great Divide
THOMAS SVOLOS

The Absence of
the 20th Century
GÉRARD WAJCMAN

Il n'y a pas de
rapport religieux
SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Rosemarie Trockel
JOSEFINA AYERZA

The Ballad of
Ion Lupescu
MIGUEL ABREU

THE CONCEPT OF LIFE

Finding myself again with the work of Freud, Lacan, and the practice of psychoanalysis, I see that I have carefully circumvented an explanation of the coordinates of the concept of life. I must say that this is an eminently problematic concept, and one of which Lacan said, in his 1955 Seminar: "The phenomenon of life remains in its essence completely impenetrable. It continues to escape us no matter what we do." One might ask if Lacan knew at that time of the decisive step of Watson and Crick's truly epochal discovery of the structure of DNA. Their very brief initial article, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids," appeared in the journal Nature in 1953 and inaugurated the triumphal years of genetics. We are today at the dawn of the century which will see the sensational practical consequences of this step.

Is the phenomenon of life therefore penetrable after the discovery of this structure? Quite the contrary. In 1970, one of the crafters of the triumphs of molecular genetics, François Jacob, could say, in his book The Logic of Life: "We do not question life any more in the laboratory; we no longer try to encompass its contours. We only try to analyze living systems."¹ It is a fact that, when we analyze the living being, not in its superb stature - its unity evident at the macroscopic level - but rather at the level of the molecule, the processes in play highlight the physics and the chemistry involved but do not at all distinguish themselves from the processes which unfold in inanimate matter, in inert systems.

Lacan's statement, then, is perfectly true in spite of the progress of molecular biology. As François Jacob said, the decline of the concept of life does not date from the middle of this century, but from the advent of thermodynamics: "The operational value of the concept of life had to decline after the birth of thermodynamics."

This perspective is perfectly coherent with that explained by Lacan in the beginning chapters of his Seminar The Ego,² where he pointed out that Freudian biology is first of all an energetics. This is the route he would take up, in his own way, as he resumes that year and afterwards the lessons of Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

[...]

1. Jacob, François, The Logic of Life, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993. back up

2. Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar, Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955, NY: Norton, 1988. back up