Lacanian Jurney

7/28/2019 Lacanian Jurney

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[Type the company name] | The American Theater of the Sinthome 1

The American Theater of the Sinthome

; aLacanian journey through the roar of Edward Albee and the desert dust of

Sam Shepard

The American Phantasm voiced




not incidental that the fiction writer, poet, andplaywright concern themselves

with “this thing” called“voice”. Sometimes you come close to the thing,

sometimes it has you in its grip or you have it in your grip, sometimes you

chase it down, sometimes it chases you down. Sometimes you lose it. It loses

you. Sometime you get lost in it. But when you can catch that place where it

belongs to you and other. The subject speaks.

I would like to follow a line of thinking where the partial object in

language that passes between a speaker to a listener operating in poetics,

theater, fiction, where free association is primary, is also operating in

similar fashion in the setting of psychoanalysis, particularly writing of thetype that works patterns of sound and associations, where imaginal

associations might be less tightly bound to being inhibited by any one

signifier, rather there is a way of working that offers a greater possibility

of para praxis, slips and slippages, where these interruptions in any tightly

wound narrative…enables the voice(s) of a story to find its way. We might

say a piece of the subject finds its way. Memory, reverie, thought, affect.

So it appears to sound not as a voice “taken on”, but rather the voice(s)

of piece(s) are heard. Voice(s) because the voice is operating betweenthe

body and the other of language. Between conscious and unconscious, between

signification and signified.Voice operates in such a way that any central

speaker dissolves, the identification to the central speaker disappears.

Yes...this is why we go to analysis to discover. “Who is this voice?”

Lacan indicates we want to know and we don’t want to know. We want to know

and don’t want to know about our symptom that remains mute, that is also

speaking in riddles. We want to hear all about it, and we don’t want to hear

it at all. The real is foreclosed. The drive cannot be accessed.The subject

resides in words.Lacan says it is “in words” that you will find the subject




(Lacan, 1975). The symptom embodied in the real offers itself into the

symbolic when it speaks. The voice is the conduit, the “ real” location

through which an “opening” operates and through which openings can occur.

This object a of the voice operates such that the analysand who attempts to

present a “ picture ” of himself to the analyst...suddenly finds that this

picture dissolvingthrough the words voiced in the context of the analytic

setting. The words tell another picture/story..photo/fiction… beginning their

operation of sliding in and around and outside the image conveyed through

words. But as we deal with language that is notseparated from the signified,

we are never fully operating outside of imaginary identifications to self andother as we speak. Yet, the signifier offers a slip into other

signifieds..other signifiers…these associations that comprise the chain of

signifiers…include the signified as well. If a signified is slipping out

from a metaphoric bind to the signifier, another signified.. a pictorial

association is on the horizon. The signified in its detachment gives way to

hinge onto another signified. In other words images set off by a signifier…

may produce the next signifier. But signifiers are always operating in

relation to imagery.The capacity of the associative quality of links produced

out of a metonomy has to do with the signifieds that move in the same way that

the dream images work to bring forth the sound of language that offer the

routes breaking through the more tightly wound fabric and weaves of language

that move through conscious processes. We are not simply textual machines,

but rather letters are related to perception, and the unconscious of the dream

world that subjects inhabit. And the voice of a subject who speaks with

breath, pauses, laughter, sighs, sobbing and at times, like with Dora,

coughing.




An analyst’sidentifications to the patient begins towork in consort with the

analysand’s representations so there is a moving in and out of these “snap

shots ” in a variety ofplacements.As Lacan draws in his Schema L (Lacan,

1955). The analyst’s snapshots and the analysand’s snapshots are crossing

on an imaginary axis. The analyst in tracking the nuances, plays of language,

phrases, words, utterances within framework ofanalytic knowledge is attempting

to follow the unconscious through the axis that cuts across the imaginary

axis.The analyst is tracking words, staying close to the analysands’ words

that may be directing the analyst towards an object “ a”… embedded,

camouflaged in the visual fieldthrough an “a “ that resides in an enigma of

the word, the signifier hidden in the field of speech. The analyst is

attempting to follow a symbolic axis, byhearing the words, the sound of words,

that may speak beyond the snap of the picture that the analysand wishes the

analyst to see…that may sneak out of the meaning the analysand wishes to make

and the meaning the analyst wishes to make through conscious ego processes.

In the analytic setting there are two divided subjects, two personal

unconsciouses, and with language the concealing and revealing aspects of the

unconscious through words at play. The analyst, bydialing down the noise of

countertransference that is vulnerable to the pull of the analysand who wishes

to place the analyst in a variety of positionsthrougha snap shot, is guided by

the analysand’s words. By serving as a transferential “ object”, the

analyst has a possibility of discovering where he/she is

objectified/represented through the lens of the imaginary. The transference

position enables what is enacted in the setting to serve as another

cluethrough which the analyst can make sense of what transpires beyond what

the analysand is showing in words. It is a clue of what the analysand wishes

to enact … in these photo/ fantasies of which the analyst is implicated…of




which the analysand is loath to speak. If the analyst does not gratify the

analysand through a reenactment(a belief that the scene is real or “

authentic), butenables him/herself to “be” implicated in a mise- en- scene

through transference operating, the ongoing curiosity about these placements

enable a further speaking about what lies outside the snap shot, but once

another snap shot is spoken another mise-en-scene arises … the real is

foreclosed but just outside the edges of what is shown in words. What is shown

in words, have little to do with the letter.

When Lacan says that “actors make good analysts ” the liquidity of ego serves

the analyst in ways that enable the analyst to move forth through the role inhis/her person in a way that honors and respects “ actual experiential

exchanges ” produced by the mise- en- scene. As well as to further the

direction of the Lacanian cure through being able to also live outside the

mise- en-scene in the analytic room using the “artificial setting” of the

analytic room to enable a subjects words to fall on the side of the hidden

object a conveyed through “ its ” voice(s). The analyst to do this is

framing through an analytic knowledge resting in the symbolic, but is also

resonating to this attempt (impossible to capture the object a.).that is

moving beyond reach to a tune. It is the moving target..that drives the

repetition compulsion..the suffering…the symptom of the analysand.

This object a of “The voice” is again emphasized when Lacan mentions in his

homage to Duras, “ It is there where the writer goesthat the psychoanalysts

should be ” (Lacan,1975).Lacan is indicating that the writer moves to the

other jouissance, the feminine jouissance that he begins to articulate in

hisencounter of James Joyce’s voice.




Voices to voices. Scenes of memory and fantasy… rising and falling. Where

the voice of the analyst melts into the brother, where the voice of the

analysand speaks to this brother. Where the voice of the analysand becomes her

father speaking to the analyst who is moved to the position of lover. Put

another way the actor that can act is not “being” an actor. “Being” an

actor, interferes with performance in the same way that “being” an analyst

interferes with analysis. In this sense psychoanalysis is not merely

knowledge, or a profession, it is very much a craft. That is passed through

analysis, transmission, voices…supervising, attuning the listening of those

committed to learning the craft; Learning to listen to the sense of the object

a through voice.

Lacan in his notion of the paranoic ego working to maneuver knowledge through

the mirror stage in a defense against the unknown sees at some level the

communication of knowledge, the teaching of knowledge through the academic

discourse as inhibiting speech at the site of the production of desire.

Because many times the speech utilized in academic discourse remains in the

service to produce replication and redundancy of prior knowledge by operating

in the service of thought, mentation, cogito, intellectualizations that

eclipse the partial object of voice…through demand or command to resound to

bodiesof thought..epic bodies of thought. The object a of the voice, like the

object a through the visual field rests in the” real”…the body. Not of “

bodies” of thought. But in the erogenous zones…on the edge of the lips, the

rims of the body. The symptom is carved through speech, the letter that is

first place between transgression and prohibition where the subject .resides.

..this letter may speak or not. May reach its destination or not. But if it

does…the subject speaks at the intersection of transgression and

prohibiton..at the corner of abjection and acceptability.




For the academic discourse this necessitates a certain severing of the voice

that is in fact compelled in the analytic setting where an entirely different

form of speaking and listening to words are moved through the practice of

free association. We could say this practice is much more kindred to the

stream of consciousness of Joyce, Beckett, and their influences on the

American playwrights such as Albee and Shephard moving through the specific

history and themes of American theater .

“Voices becoming other voices. Voices from the dead and living. Hypnotized

voices. Sober voices. Working voices. Voices in anguish. ” Sam Shepard.

Those working on Shepard’s production Tongues, purposively changed locationsas they were writing. Shepard describes writing scenes in different settings;

“ a restaurant, a beach , a park, hotel rooms, we sat in a truck and then

towards the end of writing the piece we would meet up at the location of the

Magic Theater San Francisco and perform the piece. Shepard remembers; “

Sometimes we would just talk without trying to push the content into the

structure of the piece. Other times the talk would be translated verbatim and

we would write things down on the spot and then turn it into monologue or

dialogue, trance poem or whatever.” These improvisational, spontaneous ways

of finding voice offers a less intellectualized approach to expression that is

more in keeping with making sense of free associations. Derived through

specific locations. Derived through subjects in specific locations. In the

place and time of the personal unconscious.




Style

The writing productions that were also influencing Lacan through a stylethat

was meandering ruminating…obscure poetic…running up against the grain of the

more reasoned academic American style of writing about analysis. The Americans

were emphasizing the tamable aspect of the “ threat ” of a wild unconscious

through an adaptive ego writing style that that was clear, crisp andreasoned.

The Americans would emphasize shoring up,Lacan on the other saw the danger

that was being created by attempting to damn up the unconscious through a

psychoanalysis that was moving towards a “winning” approach; the successful

analysis based on a capacity to “function” and adapt to “society”. Lacanin returning to Freud fought the tendency to “normalize” the subject in the

image of the analysts “ ego ” concerned that analysis would be hygienized

rather than separated from the conventions that through the psychoanalytic

discourses that could be deconstructed. What the analysand does with what he

hears of his own unconsciouswould lie in the hands of the subject.

By studying the way the voice works in the theater as opposed to academic

discourse, we may in fact be much closer in line to the voice operating as

partial object in an analysis. It is this type of voicing that is operating

in the analysis that then crosses back over into the psychoanalytic discourse

to become the transmission of psychoanalytic discourse. The subject speaks.

When this aspect of voicing is not reached within the analytic setting or is

lost on the way to explication in a theory of psychoanalytic discourse that

turns into academic discourse then the voice as partial object disappears and

the transmission of psychoanalysis fails. This is important consideration in

any question of how psychoanalytic transmission occurs. The voice speaks the

specificity of the objectthrough a name, an inheritance, a location, a




symptom. It is spoken through the voices of voiceof a subject operating in the

time of a personal unconscious. Operating on knowledges; overt, covert,

subliminal, transhistorical, unconscious, consciousof the Other.Operating

through a symptom speaking that exist in between the real and symbolic

suspended in the imaginary … if there is to be an honest performance of

Freudian psychoanalysis where the analytic voice…can find its release and can

take its flight home to the personal unconscious.Intimations, particularities,

its tricky arrangements … rearrangements through the way, the route, a pass,

that this voice might travel enabling another radical return to the Freudian

unconscious.

The component of the voice explored through “ method acting ” , particularly

during the Strasbergs’ actingmethod based on the Stanislavski’s work

depicted a certain reality which was catering less to the audience and more to

an actuality that would work through a theater set (here actors backs, for

example, might be turned away from the audience). The audience was no longer

being “ entertained, accommodated. Strasberg’s“method ” - acting required

actors to switch scenes, switch characters, to increase the flexibility with

the whole entire script for the purpose of understanding where each actor was

located as one of an entire ensemble , a voice, fragmenting into many voices

through characters. The American theater, no doubt bolstered by the influence

of stream of consciousness and non- plot plays offered the space to

experiment with and express the transient and fragmented nature of an American

identity that was being produced to resist forces that championed the post-

world war assembly line of a mass production. The theater was tracing the

transienceand disillusionment ofthe complexity of the post -war

Americanpathos.The American theater was generating, through a style of acting

and writing a way to “voice” theobject a…the death drive. Speaking through




subjects. Subjects existing in the time of the personal

unconscious…influenced by intimate knowledges of family, location, time. The

theater influenced by Beckett and others, as well as Freud in operation

through the avant- garde as opposed to academia, and the American

psychoanalytic organizations shutting out the lay analysts openedto the

Freudian death drive and ushered it into the American public. The American

Institutionalized Freud…lost its voice. The voice of id.

It is important to note that this was also time of exodus from Europe of

psychoanalytic immigrants attempting to gain a foothold through the medical

establishment. Interestingly, their discourses established American egopsychology which in many ways indicated that these immigrants harbored

anidealism about the ego that was no doubt impacted by their own relationship

to a lived nightmare that may have spawned a strong Darwinian message. The

strong survive, the weak parish. The immigrant’s capacity to survive World

War II became something of special credence perhaps regarding these survivors

of the holocaust. The individual’s capacity to survive mass destruction was

based on an individual “will” against all odds perhaps meshing well with the

American “success” of winning the war. This survival orientation along with

the lure of “authorizing” psychoanalysis through medical establishments in

America anchored the voice of a psychoanalysis that was on the side of the

adaptive ego defenses rather than on the side of maintaining the Freudian

unconscious. Yet, the medical establishment was not the only route where

psychoanalysis traveled. However, when psychoanalysis began to become a

profession, the American professional associations distanced themselves from

the lay analyst movement that wasprominent in Europe. While Freud abstracted

from the clinic through academic routes, the voice that would continue to




carry Freud’s unabridged death drive…was the voice of American Dramatic

Theater.

Theater productions were much more influenced by Paris than the medical

establishment through which Freud’s death drive would be obliterated. Lacan

in returning to Freud moves against the edification of Freud to fit the

bourgeoisieAmerican post- war attitude. In Lacan’s later work as he begins

to place more emphasis on the real, Lacan returns to the erogenous impasses

Freud maps on the real of the body to further his commitment to the Freudian

unconscious and to place the symptom as a lens through which any “body” of

knowledge is generated so that the partial drives, would not be lost inrevisions of psychoanalysis through the clinical practice or the academic

explorations. We could say thatin both instances, the clinic and in academia,

the voice as partial object became faint…difficult to hear.

Lacan’s voice as a psychoanalyst, however, was loudly resonant. Meandering,

associative, jokes, puns, playing around … all the while transmitting the

analytic discourse that was directed towards death drive. His performance

spoke the return to theunconscious in a speaking that often occurs in the

analytic setting. The transferences to Lacan were in large part to a voice

that could resonate to the tune of the object a … performatively speaking.

Here we note that for some this would be an irresistible seductionthat would

prompt speaking, talking, and acting and dressing in imitation Lacan’s style.

Memorizing text or seminars line by line. A certain mirroring transference

occurred wherein this taking on of the personae of the person of the analyst

in some way offers this possibility of finding the voice imagined by the

neurotic as ultimate jouissance afforded to Lacan as the originator… the lead

actor in his radical return to Freud. The Primal father. Or in some more

perverse sense a fetish through which the pervert becomes bound in an




instrumental way to fetishize, to slip into the skin of Lacan. To in a sense

complete Lacan, parasitically.But this is exactly why Lacan indicates that the

actor makes a good analyst in that psychoanalysis cannot work through

symptomatic placements of Lacan on the side of inhibition of the neurotic or

disinhibition of the pervert. Rather the subject regardless of symptomatic

relations to law is offered a time to find their own voice between

transgresson and prohibition.Sinthomatic voice. We can acknowledge that Lacan

found his very Frenchvoicing of Freud, but psychoanalysis is not owned by any

geography. As the unconscious is not specific to a cultural location. It rises

and falls in accordance to where it is permitted to speak and whereit is

heard. This could as easily be Harlem as Paris. And might be.In this sense

Psychoanalysis rises and falls on the singular voice in the time of the

personal unconscious. It is an intimate enterprise. That is transmitted in

letters. Letters that are often received as intimate, not necessarily

disclosing, but intimate. The letter lies in between transgression and

prohibition. These letters that are spoken and written about psychoanalysis

are as hidden as they are revealing. They can bar, as well as raise the bar.These letters of psychoanalysis.

The Sinthome as Stylized Voice

Lacan describes the kernel of the symptom as that which holds a residue of the

Real. His work in Le Sinthome (1975) was influenced by the writings of James

Joyce. Lacan traced the structure of the symptom through the complex

linguistic productions that manifests through a stream of conscious writing

that was not so held back or oppressed by the cohesive meaning that comprises

a social conversation..or we might even say a “ rational ” dialectic. This

does not mean that the rational or secondary processes are devalued. Not at

all. But as both repression and revelation happen in language, the




deconstruction of the intellectual paranoic egoic defenses comprising

languaginggive way to voice. The snap shot of intellectual ideas, give way to

the voice (s) that stray out of the shot. But are within ear shot. Lacan

places the inhibition of the symptom between the imaginary and symbolic. We

might say that in Seminar XX, Lacan begins to look at the relationship to the

symbolic in terms of phallic and feminine jouissance wherein the symptom is

either constrained by a fear of castration related to transgression of the

law, or the symptom may be less bound to the phallic jouissance and more

resonate with a feminine jouissance which emphasis the imaginary that has a

certain access to the foreclosed real through a less encumbered relationship

to the law of the father. Lacan’s encounter, Bakero (2012) will say

transference?to Joyces” text. Lacanhears a“suppleance” in Joyces text ”

that expressed the relationship between the subject and a phantasmic location

….. set between the Imaginary and Real. That we might say could plug up the

real (in words) to ward off a full immersion into psychosis. This suppleance

enabled Joyce to function by utilizing signification to work through an

underlying psychotic structure by engaging a symbolic. The symbolic was notso taken over by a neurotic accommodating a father, but rather words we could

say were more on the side of the realand in this way would transgress, the law

of the father. Here Lacan could challenge the languaging pressured by a

superegoic force that would threatened to cooptpsychoanalysis. But we have to

ask what does this say about the audience that got Joycereally got Joyce. It

actually says quite a bit. The audience that appreciated Joyce was not

comprised of only psychotics. There was a resonance with perhaps another

jouissance, the Other jouissance that was not phallic and not necessarily

psychotic. The other jouissance could dismantle the symbolic structures that

begin to get stagnant and confused with “ the ” truth.Lacan began to

understand that the symbolic often fossilized into phallic meaning such that a




regression to a gaze stifled the subjects speech and catered to a knowledge

that believed it was the “ real ” . This worked against and inhibited the

kernel of the Real within the symptom where the layer of the gaze would have

to be deconstructed through a retroactive movement against the conclusive

meanings breaking out the enigma of the signifiers so that the mirage of the

gaze, the veneer that covered the unconscious in a bounded way that protected

castration anxiety could give way to an encounter of what was not so bound by

the law of the father…not so bound in inhibition..a fear of the transgression

of which the letter was lodged. It was this piece of clinical analytic

workthat Lacan began to move through his reading of James Joyce to articulate

how the symptom might develop into a sinthome where a subjects voice could be

heard. Where the symptom is no longer weighted by a phallic jouissance where

the foreclosed real will inevitable returning in the trauma through the

repetition compulsion…rather than falling as a voice into making” a sense, a

jouissense , that is not perhaps so intellectual, but enables a speaking on

the side of the voice. Carving what is uncarvedof the symptom in a way that

enables the tick or the affliction to now work on the side of the life of thesubject so that…the subject speaks.

References:

Bakero, Martin 2012, Presentation Apres Coup, NYC

Lacan, Jacques (1975) Le Sinthome, Cormack Gallagher (trans) Ireland

Lacan, Jacques (1985) Homage to Duras, Onicar Journal, Paris

Lacan, Jacques (1975)_Geneva Lecture on the Symptom, Russell Griggs (Trans)

Shepard, Sam (1984) Seven Plays, Random House, Inc. NYC

Stafford, Mark (have yet to track down date ) Ex Nihilo, Apres Coup

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