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To resume again...

Lacan, the Devil
ANNAËLLE
LEBOVITS-QUENEHEN

Life of Lacan
J-A MILLER

Lacan, Music
JUDITH MILLER
DIEGO
MASSON

How Lacan
BENOÎT JACQUOT

Lacan's Smile
FRANÇOIS CHENG

Lacan
PHILIPPE SOLLERS

The Reverse
of a Postscript
JEAN-CLAUDE MILNER

Lacan the Poem
FRANÇOIS REGNAULT

Lacan on the Spot
CATHERINE CLÉMENT

Lacan, Red Lights
ADRIAN DANNATT

The Split Collector
GÉRARD WAJCMAN

Lisa Yuskavage
CL INTERVIEWS JA



          

Lacan, Red Lights
[excerpt]








Adrian Dannatt

 

 

It will be famous forever, Vie de Lacan by Jacques-Alain Miller, for its astonishing revelation that the great man had an absolute hatred of traffic lights, or rather of red lights, that he simply could not abide them, refused to obey them.

[...]

After all, the traffic light is a staple of semiotics. An easy example for anyone starting studies of Saussure is the question of why, and how, we come to associate these colors with stop and go, the most straightforward demonstration of signifier and signified.

Red originally meant danger because of the color of blood and of fire, there is nothing more fundamental than that, and in French the word feu rouge makes this obvious. Should one wish to delve into Cabbalistic letter-games, one might even ponder the way the word feu is included in "Freud" and whether Feu rouge might not suggest a jumbled approximation of Freudien.

What are we to make of the man who coined the concept of the "drive" reacting so strongly on being stopped during just such a drive, being halted on his own drive?

[...]





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