Lacan, the Devil
ANNAËLLE
LEBOVITS-QUENEHEN
Lacan, Music
JUDITH MILLER
DIEGO MASSON
How Lacan
BENOÎT JACQUOT
Lacan's Smile
FRANÇOIS CHENG
Lacan
PHILIPPE SOLLERS
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]
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?
[...]