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

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Voices becoming other voices. Voices from the dead and living. Hypnotized voices. Sober voices. Working voices. Voices in anguish. Sam Shephard fromTongues.

The object a, Voice Right out of the gateLacanian psychoanalysis is performative.In this paper I will concentrate on the resonance that occurs whenan aesthetic production yields to an untranslatable aspect of voicethe voice as partial object.As Lacannotes, the voice can move as a partial object through the partial drive, evocatory drive. Just as the object little a is hidden in the visual field, so the conception of the function of language as communication hides the object of the voice. (Stafford,Ex Nihilo). How does the voice travel so that something might also be heard? How does the object a in the visual field catch the ear, not the eye, even though it is never fully heard. Rather its enigma is heard? I believe when we speak of psychoanalysis, we speak of the words through which the untranslatable object a moves forth, but we often speak to the object a of the imaginary as if it is only a sighted image, yet this sighting is moving andsensed through oral and written aspects of transmission. The gaze and the voice are not so discreet and a very crude read of Lacan is that the image is imaginary and that language is symbolic. But if words do indeed appear to dissolve in such a way that only images are seen, this temptation to get lost in the imaginary simply emphasizes that the words that are actually conveying the imaginary are dismissed. The words in analysticsessions (the talking cure)are conveying the image. There is much to say about the difference between writing and oration that is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is not incidental that the fiction writer, poet , andplaywright concern themselves with this thing calledvoice. Sometimes you come close to the thing, sometimes it has you in its grip or

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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 the type 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 dont want to know. We want to

know and dont want to know about our symptom that remains mute, that is also speaking in riddles. We want to hear all about it, and we dont 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.

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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 and other 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 analystsidentifications to the patient begins towork in consort with the analysands 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 analysts snapshots and the analysands 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
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the

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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 analysands 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 enactin these photo/ fantasies of which the analyst is implicatedof 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 arisesthe 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
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role in his/her person in a way that honors and respects actual experiential exchanges produced by the mise- en- scene. mise- en-scene in the analytic room using As well as to further the direction of the Lacanian cure through being able to also live outside the 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 sufferingthe 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 Joyces 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, voicessupervising, 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
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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 voicethrough 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 realthe 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 doesthe 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. Those working on Shepards production Sam Shepard. Tongues, purposively changed

locations as 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
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turn it into monologue or dialogue, trance poem or whatever. improvisational, spontaneous ways of finding voice offers a

These 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 ruminatingobscure poeticrunning up against the grain of the more reasoned academic American style of writing about analysis. The Americans were emphasizing the tamable aspect of the threatof 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. Lacan in 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
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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 imaginaryif there is to be an honest performance of Freudian psychoanalysis where the analytic voicecan find its release and can take its flight home to the personal unconscious.Intimations, particularities, its tricky arrangementsrearrangements 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 Stanislavskis 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. Strasbergs 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
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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 unconsciousinfluenced 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 Freudlost 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 ego psychology 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 immigrants capacity to survive World War II became something of special credence perhaps regarding these survivors of the holocaust. The individuals 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
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movement that wasprominent in Europe. While Freud abstracted from the clinic through academic routes, the voice that would continue to carry Freuds unabridged death drivewas the voice of American Dramatic Theater. Theater productions were much more influenced by Paris than the medical establishment through which Freuds death drive would be obliterated. Lacan in returning to Freud moves against the edification of Freud to fit the bourgeoisieAmerican post- war attitude. In Lacans 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 in revisions 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 faintdifficult to hear. Lacans 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 aperformatively speaking. Here we note that for some this would be an irresistible seductionthat would prompt speaking, talking, and acting and dressing in imitation Lacans 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
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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. between transgresson and Rather the subject regardless of voice. We can symptomatic relations to law is offered a time to find their own voice prohibition.Sinthomatic 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 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
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written

about psychoanalysis are as hidden as they are revealing. They can bar, as

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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. Lacans encounter, Bakero (2012) will say transference?to Joyces text. Lacanhears asuppleance 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 not so 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. cooptpsychoanalysis. Here Lacan could challenge the languaging pressured by a superegoic force that would threatened to But we have to ask what does this say about the It actually says quite a bit. The audience that got Joycereally got Joyce.

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
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could give way to an encounter of what was not so bound by the law of the fathernot 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 compulsionrather 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 the subject so thatthe 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 Archives. (have yet to track down date ) Ex Nihilo, Apres Coup

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