The Other Side

Simply, in society, all that exists is founded on segregation, 
and on fraternity first of all.”  (Lacan, Seminar 17, p. 114).

“The founding crime [for a new society] is not the murder of the father [a reference to Freud’s myth of society's creation], but the will to murder he who embodies the jouissance [enjoyment] that I reject.” (Eric Laurent, Racism 2.0, Hurly-Burly, No. 11, 2014, pp. 217-222, 
also available on the analiticus blogspot.)

L’Envers de Paris is the name of a psychoanalytical association in Paris, France.

        L’Envers de Psychanalyse is the name of Lacan’s Seminar 17, which took place in Paris, 1969-1970, the year after the great turbulence of 1968.

        The Seminar was transcribed, then edited and published by Jacques-Alain Miller (in French) by Seuil in 1991. It was translated into English by Russell Grigg (a colleague based in Melbourne, Australia) and published by Norton in 2007. In his translator’s note at the front of the book, Russell remarks that ‘envers’ can be translated as ‘back’, ‘verso’, ‘lining’, ‘underside’, ‘flipside’, ‘underneath’, ‘bad side,’ with connotations of ‘the unseen’ and, of course, ‘the obscene’. He chose to translate the title as The Other Side of Psychoanalysis.

        And envers as a spoken or written word is not that far from enfer – the French word for hell.

       On 10 June, 2017, this coming Saturday, L’Envers de Paris is holding a study day, Segregations (see blog post of 9 May, below or via the sidebar index). The current chair of the association, Camilo Ramirez (a position held for two years at a time) decided to focus his group by inviting the dozen or so ‘vectors’ (the rather intriguing name of the study groups that conduct the work of the association) to focus on this topic. He originally thought about using the word ‘hate’ to guide the theme of study, but on reflection, he realised that this could lead into difficulties of its own. The repetition of such a hard signifier could have unintended consequences. So he chose ‘segregation’. The meeting on Saturday is the culmination of 18 months’ work on this subject.

        We can pick up the vector of interest that leads to Saturday’s meeting by thinking back to January 2015 when the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, and the ensuing attack at the kosher supermarket, occurred. In November 2016 the annual study days of the École de la Cause freudienne (ECF) were cancelled because the French Government suspended all public meetings in Paris following the attack on the Bataclan, the cafes, and the sports stadium. Camilo was part of the organising committee of those study days, or Journées, as they are called, so we can begin to see how he is touched by these events.

        The ECF is one of the seven schools of psychoanalysis that make up the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP), and has about 350 members, mainly in France. The idea of a school of psychoanalysis is central to the Lacanian orientation and can’t be assumed from anything you know already about organisation and bureaucracy. The School is a response to the necessity of forming an organisation but based on the knowledge arising from psychoanalysis. I won’t go into that here except to say that this contains the explanation for the invention of a second body called ‘Envers’. Envers de Paris is made up of people who are members of the ECF plus others. These others are people who are interested in psychoanalysis, but not necessarily as a clinical practice. Envers de Paris aims at forging links between psychoanalysts and people whose working lives are caught up with art, literature, film, science, law, adolescence, criminology, politics etc. By creating Envers, members of the ECF are able to be clearer about the work that makes up the ‘School’ of psychoanalysis, and the work that is involved in taking an interest in the cultural context of psychoanalysis. This makes use of the distinction that Lacan made between psychoanalysis in intension, and in extension – the emphasis is placed on ‘tension’. 

            In Seminar 17 Lacan elaborated his ideas of ‘the four discourses’ and in doing so demonstrated that the analyst’s discourse: 

is the other side of the master’s discourse:

Briefly, each discourse is made up of four static places in which four terms revolve.

 

The master’s discourse is the one that functions automatically in the unconscious.The discourse of the analyst provides a possible ‘antidote’ to that. This is the clue to the ‘other side’ that is carried by the name of Envers de Paris.

       I had already bought my tickets, and registered my place at the study day a couple of weeks ago. I am all set to attend the meeting on Saturday 10 June. The events of last Saturday, 3 June, at London Bridge make it horribly poignant now. But together with colleagues and friends, and under the banner of Envers de Paris, I hope that we can have a productive conversation (even across our two languages of English and French) about the horrors and the urgencies that face our cities today.