To resume again...

Introduction to,
the Erotics of Time
J
ACQUES-ALAIN
MILLER

The Birth of
the Intimate (II)
G
ÉRARD WAJCMAN

A Sublimation
at Risk
of Psychoanalysis
M
ARIE-HÉLÈNE
BROUSSE

Anorexic Passion for the Mirror
M
ASSIMO RECALCATI

Manifesto of Affirmationism
A
LAIN BADIOU

The Boy Who Cried Wolf
S
TUART SCHNEIDERMAN

The Politics
of Jouissance
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Odradek
as a Political Category
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Jane & Louise Wilson
C
ATHY LEBOWITZ
interviews
JOSEFINA AYERZA


























        

A Sublimation at Risk




Marie-Hélène Brousse

translated by Barbara P. Fulks

 

Seeber imageThe opposition between art as production of object and art as fiction and operative of truth, in order to be valid, cannot be reduced to the opposition between neurosis and psychosis. In effect, it is by depriving himself that the poet of courtly love produces a woman-object, transforming this element into symbolic operator which structures his stance from then on. This woman-object is presented as impossible or as non-human partner. This analysand's work is well situated in this place, the public having never become a partner for him. Finally, we should add that Lacan, by putting it into practice as well as by affirming it theoretically in this same text on Marguerite Duras, emphasizes that in his work "the artist always precedes him (the analyst) and that he (the analyst) does not have to play the psychologist where the artist paves the way for him. This is precisely what I acknowledge to be the case in the ravishing of Lol V. Stein, where it turns out that Marguerite Duras knows, without me, what I teach." Not to do psychology was my principle. Lacan noted a little farther along that "the practice of the letter converges with the usage of the unconscious." 1 It is from this convergence that this analysis is done.
Let us summarize:
- The products of sublimation do not spring from interpretation through the effect of meaning, and thus do not deliver the truth of the subject.
- Sublimation returns, however, to a function which has structuring effects in the social sphere. What is this function? Where the signifying function creates a void, art presents itself as organizing this void through an object. The notion of effect obtained on and in the Other is thus essential in sublimation.
- What is the nature of this convergence noted by Lacan between artistic practice and analytic practice, or again, later in his teaching, between sinthome and art?

[...]
 
1. Lacan Jacques, "Hommage fait à Marguerite Duras du ravissement de Lol V. Stein," Ornicar? 34, Paris: Navarin, 1985. English translation by Peter Connor, "Homage to Marguerite Duras, on Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein," Marguerite Duras, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1987.



Art: Alejandra Seeber - Caratapiz - oil on canvas, 2004
courtesy of the artist.

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