Prieto - Writing The Subjects Knot - E - REP - 012 - 0169

WRITING THE SUBJECTS KNOT
Graciela Prieto
Translated by Kristina Valendinova
Association Recherches en psychanalyse | Recherches en psychanalyse

2011/2 - No 12
pages 169-179
ISSN 1767-5448
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Graciela Prieto, Translated by Kristina Valendinova critures du nud du sujet ,

Recherches en psychanalyse, 2011/2 No 12, p. 169-179.
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Recherches en psychanalyse, 2011/2 No 12, p. 169-179. DOI : 10.3917/rep.012.0169
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This document is a translation of:
Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis
122011
122011 Psychoanalysis, the Body and Society

Psychanalyse, corps et Socit
Theoretical Considerations
Writing the Subjects Knot

critures du nud du sujet
Graciela Prieto
Lacans focus on jouissance in the nineteen-seventies led to a fundamental revision of his entire
theoretical work. The structure of jouissance, incompatible with the principles of non-contradiction and
the exclusion of the third, requires the use of ternary logic. This logical necessity led Lacan to approach
the question of structure with the help of Borromean topology and to rethink psychoanalysis in the light
of writing and of the written traces a subject produces based on his knowing-what-to-do with his
sinthome. This article shows the foundations of this logical necessity and the forms of writing which
result from it.
Rsum :
Labord de la Jouissance dans les annes 70 produit un remaniement fondamental dans llaboration de
Lacan. La structure de la jouissance nadmettant pas les principes de non-contradiction et de tiers exclu,
implique une logique ternaire. Cette ncessit logique conduit Lacan penser la structure selon une
topologie borromenne et repenser la psychanalyse en fonction de lcriture, des traces quun sujet
crit partir de son savoir-y-faire-avec le Sinthome. Il sagira dans cet article de montrer les ressorts de
cette ncessit logique et les formes dcriture qui en rsultent.
Keywords: topology, clinic of the Borromean knot, writing, sinthome

Mots-clefs : topologie, clinique borromenne, criture, sinthome
Plan:
Introduction: The Spinning of Jouissance and the Weaving of Jouissances
The Logical Necessity of the Borromean Knot in Psychoanalysis.
Nodal Writing
Nodal Writing in the Psychoanalytic Clinic
Conclusion: Erasures and Rewritings
172
Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies.

Hosted by the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris Diderot at Sorbonne Paris Cit University.
Abstract:
While Lacan introduces the field of jouissance as

early as 1959, by adopting, in The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis, Freuds term Das Ding, it is only
in the later Seminar The Other Side of
Psychoanalysis (1969-70) that he introduces the
notion of the Lacanian field and marks a change
in his axiomatic system, moving from the axis of
desire to that of jouissances. A distinction has to
be made between phallic jouissance, which is
dominant in the speaking being and from which
the signifying function always slips away, and
the jouissance of the body, which in itself only
has an identity by virtue of enjoying itself,
suggesting that this jouissance is of another
order than phallic jouissance and is linked to the
essence of life [lavie].1 However, while the
body as such enjoys itself, it only enjoys itself
by corporizing [corporiser] the body in a
signifying way.2 It is therefore lalangue that
animates the jouissance of the body, a parasitic
animation therefore, because it originates from
a jouissance that is distinct from that of the
body, i.e. the phallic jouissance, carried by
semes. The problem stems from what is added
to the body: lalangue, which Lacan writes as one
word, as a reference to the term lallation, i.e.
the bath of sounds, both heard and emitted,
that the child is immersed in before he acquires
articulated language, and which is both joined
with and separate from meaning. Lalangue is
the reason why one language cannot be
compared to another and why this
incommensurability cannot be expressed in
words: we could say that it is the way in which a
given language produces equivocation. The
unconscious, Lacan writes, on account of
being structured like a language, i.e. lalangue
that it inhabits, is subjected to the equivocation
by which each lalangue is distinguished.3 The
real makes itself heard through what undoes
the differential system of language (slips of the
tongue, witticisms, etc.). Lalangue, this too
much, this echo that contingently exceeds
language, renders obsolete the notion of the
excluded third as required by grammatical and

linguistic methods of analysis.
Since classical logic proves unable to account for
the unconscious and therefore for the analytic
experience, the field of jouissances calls for a
logic that goes beyond the pair, beyond the
yes or no of binary logic. This call is
answered by the topology of knots, which
reveals the object a as what is wedged in by two
intersecting continuities that rein in a third
continuity, and which cannot be located in any
point. The manner in which the three registers
are tied together implies no particular order.
The Logical Necessity of the Borromean

Knot in Psychoanalysis
Lacan went on to rethink psychoanalysis in the
light of this topology which deploys a ternary
logic and which entails the fourth dimension. In
the Seminars XXV: Le moment de conclure and
XXVI: Topologie et temps this theorization
results in the creation of a combinatorial system
of surfaces and knots, which weaves together
mathematics, psychoanalysis and poetry,
opening a field rich in clinical implications.
The definition of the symptom changes, including
a return to its archaic way of spelling Sinthome:
it is no longer either a message or a metaphor but
the jouissance of an element of the unconscious,
an arbitrary element, which Lacan calls a letter
because it is outside the signifying chain and thus
outside meaning. In its function of nomination,
the sinthome belongs to the order of saying, i.e. to
the symbolic, yet it occupies a real function, a
function of ex-sistence that creates the nodal link
between the three registers.
Within this field of jouissance, the impossibility
of establishing a sexual relationship creates the
need for an invention, by the unconscious, of a
knowledge that might make up for it. The
modalities of jouissance of each individual are
organized around this hole-point. These
multiple jouissances cannot be reduced to a pair
of opposites; although they are heterogeneous,
they are not mutually exclusive. The structure of
jouissance therefore rules out the principles of
173

Introduction: The Spinning of Jouissance

and the Weaving of Jouissances
122011
non-contradiction and of the exclusion of the

third, instead implying a ternary logic:
[] language does not allow a notation
such as x has a certain type of relationship
with y, and no other; which is what
authorizes me, since Peirce himself says that
for this one would need a ternary logic,
4
instead of the one we use, a binary logic [].
This logical necessity leads Lacan to rethink

structure from the perspective of a Borromean
topology. As opposed to science, which pursues
its project by manipulating the elements of the
symbolic system it operates with, theoretical
construction in psychoanalysis originates from
the clinic, which is formalized in its mathemes. By
including the hole that brings them into
existence, these mathemes do not form a
system; their writing differs from one to another,
which means that they cannot link up in a
rational way and hence they forbid imaginary
capture. Reduced to their pure literality, they are
the indivisible fragments of knowledge and as
such they do not let themselves be absorbed by
any demonstrative theorization.5 The Borromean
knot cannot be reduced to demonstration:
because no complete mathematical formalization
of it is possible, it can however become the basis
of another kind of writing.
Nodal Writing
Lacan defines mathematics as a science of the
Real in other words as impossible. Any
formalization which fails to take this
impossibility of demonstration into account runs
the risk of sliding towards the algebraic theory
of knots elaborated by mathematics. This
algebraic notation seeks to replace the plastic
object by a polynomial or by an algebraic group,
reducing the volumetric notation of the knot to
a one-dimensional notation, by quantifying the
linearity of some of its invariants. However,
Lacan does not choose this writing to account
for the use of the Real of the knot in the field of
psychoanalysis: [] the analytic thing will not
be mathematical.6 He uses drawings, i.e. flat
schemes, for the purposes of transmission, but
122011
he urges his students to construct his knots with

actual strings and to manipulate them, in order
to escape the imaginary capture, which would
make them lose sight of the Real of their
structure. He seems to wish to prevent the use
of graphs, since they require a topology of (flat)
surfaces that remains trapped in twodimensional logic. Graphical or algebraic methods,
which can retrospectively be correlated with the
gaze and the voice, are able to capture what
constitutes the knots specificity, i.e. the hole it
clasps. The Borromean knot [] is a writing, a
writing that supports a real,7 and as a result it
changes the meaning of writing.8 Writing
becomes volumetric; inscribing, in the real of
the enjoying substance [substance jouissante],
the product of the operation of introducing the
signifier as a cut. Using a piece of string requires
three-dimensional writing, which is true even
for the flat scheme where we mark the overand-under movements of the string. Because
they are made of actual pieces of string, these
knots are subject to continual twisting and also
to wedging. In this way, the knot exceeds the
narrow static frame of the flat scheme, which is
only an artifice of representation expressing a
point of view, a trick of perspective.9 The
continual twisting of the string involves a fourth
dimension, whose imperceptibility to those that
inhabit it makes its ex-sistence no less real.
In order to make up for the deficiencies of
mathematical notation, Lacan highlights the
existence of a no-space [nespace], which plays a
role he had previously assigned to linguistery
in relation to linguistics, i.e. marking a specific
domain which is not part of science and of
which he says in Ltourdit that it is in no sense
metaphorical. This no-space in which nodal
writing unfolds, provides us with another way to
grasp the structure of the subject and therefore
of the analytic experience.
This experience shows us that insofar as he
speaks, the subject is only a subject by virtue of
the signifier. This subject, divided by the
signifier, is the logical consequence of the lack in
the Other. Lacans research aims to identify this
non-symbolizable point of inconsistency. As he
174

ahead of him [],18 paving the way for him. A

way Lacan explicitly takes in Linsu where he
argues that poetry, rather than logic, can
produce the effect of a hole that must be
targeted by interpretation.
The capture of the body by language, which
echoes in the various gaps of the body as an
imaginary, constitutes the different objects a.
Although an object a can be imagined, it does
not belong to the Imaginary the object a has
no being,19 it is only an unbeing [dstre], a
real hole and as such irreducible to a signifier.
Topology is only ever a mode of setting up the
hole. A hole brought into play in lalangue,
lalangue being constituted by the odds and ends
of the Real that are transmitted by the torn
fragments of writing. A Real that Lacan tries to
grasp through topological notation, a form of
writing that would not depend on the signifiers
precipitation. The writing of the Borromean
knot provides precisely that.
Nodal Writing in the Psychoanalytic Clinic

Starting from Lacans formulation that there is
no sexual relationship, the symptom is redefined
as what acts as a supplementation of the sexual
non-relationship, a singular fixation of jouissance,
an answer to the void left behind by the
inexistence of any Other that might inscribe a
secondary, complementary form of jouissance
that would establish a relationship. The topology
of Borromean knots allows the symptom to be
inscribed in the structure in a different way.
Lacan uses the archaic spelling sinthome
which produces multiple resonances, particularly
with the English sin: the equivocation is used
to emphasize the role of the symptom as a
correction of an error in the original binding of
the Borromean knot. The symptom is partially
an invention, a creation authorized by neither
the subject nor the Other; this is true whichever
the subjects structure may be psychotic or
neurotic.
For the neurotic it is the paternal metaphor that
provides the living being with meaning in his
relationship to sex and to death. By substituting
175

says in Ltourdit, structure is the real brought

to light in language.10 Structure is the result of
the living body being caught in the Symbolic, i.e.
the result of the manner in which the Real, the
Symbolic and the Imaginary are knotted together;
a structure that connects the places and
relations on which a topology is based.
By breaking with binary propositional logic,
nodal writing opens up the field of writing. The
image, insofar as it is constructed as linked to
both the word and the letter, can thus turn itself
into writing; this is the case especially in artistic
creation, where it can become the scriptural
basis of a style: [] The concept of style refers
as much to the inclusive element through which
art becomes language [] and to a constraining
element that was somehow compatible with
particularization.11 This particularization manifests
the singularity of a jouissance of lalangue, which
eludes language. It also allows Lacan to challenge
the status of psychoanalysis as a science: []
psychoanalysis is not a science, it is a practice,12
whose object is [] the unconscious as
participating in the real [of which.] there exist
only fragments that cannot be formalized.13
Jean-Claude Milner describes the homophonic
play which, beginning in the 1970s, weaves
through Lacans theorization as atom[s] of
poematic calculation [] as mathemes supplied
by lalangue itself.14 It is closer to an art, which
tries to describe what the stumbling of the bene
dicere may be able to identify regarding the real
of lalangue, what may be said about what
escapes language: The unconscious is a knowledge
articulated by dint of lalangue, the body that
speaks there only being held together by the
real it enjoys.15 A knowledge without a subject,
an invented knowledge, which, thanks to the
half-said truth, can engender new kinds of
knowledge. In what the work of art says beyond
the words of the artist himself, we are dealing with
the same type of knowledge. In psychoanalysis,
knowledge is also [] a knowledge under
construction,16 which shows [] only by being
legible,17 a knowing-how-to-deal-with lalangue,
of which the psychoanalyst must remember
[] that in this matter, the artist is always
122011
Imaginary and the Real [] This is what the

Names-of-the-Father are, the first names,
insofar as they name something [].22
This multiplication of the Names-of-the-Father
leads Lacan to rethink nomination as something
that only has to do with the Symbolic. At the
end of the Seminar RSI, three pages23 are
devoted to imaginary and real nomination,
which, Lacan argues, concern inhibition and
anxiety respectively. Imaginary nomination is
supported by the infinite straight line:
[] this line is very precisely not what
names anything whatsoever in the
Imaginary but what, precisely, acts as a bar,
inhibiting the handling of all that is
demonstrative, of all that, articulated as
Symbolic, creates a bar at the level of
imagination itself and yields what is at stake
24
in the body []
This statement in fact seems to reject the term

nomination when referring to the Imaginary. As
for anxiety, it constitutes the nomination of the
Real. How should we then understand a
nomination that would be outside the signifying
function?
In Le moment de conclure, Lacan will stress the
necessary gap between these two registers.
Inhibition and anxiety as the effects of,
respectively, the imaginary and the real
invasion, are no longer associated with
nomination but instead with what appears in
the gap between the Imaginary and the Real.
The Symbolic is the only register that can divide
[se ddoubler].
This has to do with the double essence of
language: it is simultaneously the letter, linked
to the glottal and phonetory jouissance outside
meaning, and a system of signifiers, which, in
their combinations, form a chain and produce
meaning. The Imaginary and the Real cannot
divide because the field of their intersection,
where the Other Jouissance [Jouissance Autre] is
produced, does not exist as a closed field; it is
here that Lacan situates the true hole. The
opening of this field results in their notation as
straight lines stretching to infinity, but
interlaced in the knot:
176

itself for the signifier of the mothers desire, the

Name-of-the-Father is responsible for quilting
discourse and binding the Imaginary to phallic
signification. The Name-of-the-Father introduces
the prohibition of incest, which creates the hole
of the sexual non-relationship in the Symbolic. It
therefore introduces the temporal dimension
into generational order and therefore a
historicizing discontinuity, which separates the
subject from the vacillation of identification
proper to the specular relation, where the child
remains stuck to the mother. While occupying
a position of exception, the signifier of the
Name-of-the-Father is crucial to the constitution
of the signifying chain, since its function is to
give names to things and [] nomination is the
only thing of which we can be sure that it makes
a hole.20 Lacan will therefore make the Nameof-the-Father the neurotics symptom, as the
fourth ring which binds together the three
others.
Its foreclosure in psychosis leads to the signifier
separating itself from the chain. Some of the
subjects identifications assuming the mothers
desire can appear to cover over this void,
producing what Colette Soler has called a fake
identification [identification postiche].21 It is
therefore necessary that an incidental
encounter, by calling upon the Name-of-theFather, reveal the latters deficiency. In
psychosis, the eroded identification dissolves
the relation to the Imaginary since the latter is
not tied in with the other two registers, but only
held in place, contrary to neurosis where the
identification is substituted by another. This
substitution is made possible by the fact that
the Imaginary is tied to the two other
consistencies by the ring of the Sinthome.
Already in 1958, in his text On A Question Prior
to,
Lacan argues that the deficiency of the Nameof-the-Father can be supplemented in its
function of quilting; he thus anticipates the later
pluralization of the Names-of-the-Father and
the essence of his theorization based on the
introduction of the Borromean knot as a writing
relying on ternary logic: the Symbolic, the
122011
The subjects structure results from the type of

knotting that exists between the three registers:
Real, Imaginary and Symbolic; the last, as Lacan
says, always misfires, hence the necessity of the
sinthome. The original knotting results from a
cut applied to the projective plane. The
signifier is a cut [] the structure of the subject
has the structure of a surface, at least when
defined topologically.25 The move from the
projective plane to the Borromean knot is a
simple operation, regardless of the type of the
latters immersion in three-dimensional space: a
cross-cap or a Boys surface, which is another
form of immersing the projective plane in three
dimensions, starting from a Mbius strip with
three half-twists.
Lacans discussion of the case of Joyce leads him

to elaborate the question of the possibility of
repairing an error in the tying-in of the three
registers, as well as to limit nomination to the
sinthome as a fourth term. The question of the
plurality of the Names-of-the-Father now seems
to indicate that the Name-of-the-Father as
sinthome is not the only signifier able to
function as what joins the Real, the Symbolic
and the Imaginary together. The idea of the
sinthome as something that is produced at the
exact same place where the error in the
knotting occurred opens up the possibility of
constructing a sinthome in psychosis, that is to
say in a situation where the Name-of-the-Father
has been foreclosed.
The Surface of the Boy

177

The only register that can divide and form a

circular link with the fourth term is the
Symbolic. In the flat scheme, this can be
represented as follows:
122011
Here we see the three singular points that the

duplication transforms into crossing-points:
This interlacing entails the necessity of the

construction and subsistence of the Sinthome,
so that something of the imaginary fabric of the
This movement shows us the three singular

points where Boys surface intersects with itself
in more than three-dimensional space; its
immersion implies a non-traversability of the
surface by itself and therefore the hole.
Duplicating the Mbius strip with three halftwists gives us the trefoil knot:
The knots possibility or impossibility of

intersecting itself in a double point, a
traversability that involves a moment of
indecision neither yes nor no inscribes the
knot in the field of ternary logic. This property of
knots necessitates a space of immersion of
more than three or even four dimensions, since
the topological flexibility of the knot entails the
fourth dimension. The immersion of the knot in
three-dimensional space projects the temporal
dimension across an expanse as a succession.
The possibility of auto-intersection allows us to
suppose that accidents may happen when the
plane is immersed in the three-dimensional
space produced by the signifying cut in enjoying
substance, and allows us to conceive of how two
of the three registers may become interlaced:
body can be maintained in its consistency,

which Lacan calls body-sistency [corps-sistence]:
The corde is also the corps-de. This corps-de is
178

The duplication of the Mbius strip with three

half-twists, where the cut operates a passage
from the projective plane to the trefoil knot; the
latter, though it only has one element, [] is
the same knot as the Borromean knot, even
though it does not have the same
appearance.26
122011
parasited by the signifier [].27 The corps-de of

the Symbolic grants the neurotic subject, who
inhabits language, a body. On the other hand,
the psychotic subject, who has not made
language his habitat, resides outside discourse
but not outside language. The question remains
as to [] what kind of invention, what kind of
machine he will construct (machina means
invention) based on this discourse, in order to
delimit the real.28
This is what Lacan observes in the case of James
Joyce, who was able to construct a Sinthome
through literary creation and, as a result, repair
and stabilize his psychic structure. By
establishing a ternary link between the two
interlaced registers, the Real and the Symbolic,
the Sinthome allows him to hold the Imaginary
register in place; this concerns primarily the
imaginary aspect of the body, which in the
beating scene29 slips outside the structure. If in
Joyces case the Sinthome holds, it is thanks to
its being linked to the Name-of-the-Father,
metaphorically absent yet metonymically
functioning through the bond of the letter. The
initials of Joyces proper name, James Joyce
J.J., are the same as those of his father, John
Joyce; hence they seem perfectly suitable to act
as a stand-in for the foreclosed Name-of-theFather, thus remaining rooted in what he
rejects. By making this Name his ego, which
Lacan designates as Joyces Sinthome, he
constructs a wholly singular ego, one that is
122011
woven from the signifier, and is therefore of a

different substance than the Imaginary of the
body that usually imparts it its consistency.
Joyce constructs this proper Name by means of
a singular style of writing; we can glimpse the
interlacing of the Real and the Symbolic in the
phenomenon of the epiphanies, which have a
necessary role in Joyces writing: [] all of his
epiphanies are invariably characterized by the
same thing, which is very precisely the
consequence of the error in the knot, namely
that the unconscious is connected to the real.30
The fact that the Sinthome is limited to a single
point leaves room for much more wavering
between the registers, and the fact that the
Imaginary is simply withheld does not constitute
a possibility of separation. The contiguity
between John and James, produced by their
initials, is reflected in the reproduction of the
fathers alcoholism, as a means of retaining an
element of the body image.
In psychosis, the Sinthome does not function as
a metaphor: in order for it to persist as a letter
of jouissance capable of producing a proper
name it must maintain a link with the father.
This link is not metaphorical but metonymic, a
trait of the father or of his name is extracted
and plays a role in the subjects own naming of
himself. The Sinthome can thereafter function
as a stopping point outside the Oedipus myth, in
a sort of jouissance closed in on itself, a
jouissance outside meaning.
This interlacing between two registers can also occur between the Real and the Imaginary, leaving the
Symbolic adrift; however, in such a case no Sinthome can produce a new tying-in.
179

reveals and covers over the void of the Thing, of

the opaque jouissance linked to life, to the
living, which belongs to the order of the Real.
The Real can therefore never be the excluded
order because it is inherent to the living being
and so is inevitably part of any knotting. The
neurotic structure presupposes the occurrence
of an error [ratage] at two different points,
leaving the three registers simply superimposed:
Hence the necessity of constructing a sinthome, which can tie the three registers together in a
Borromean fashion:
By dividing the defective Symbolic, Lacan

constructs a new type of Symbolic, a [] circle:
+ S, which gives us a new type of S,33 and the
fourth term is given a singular position, which
specifies its function in neurosis as the Name-of-
the-Father, the father as a name and as naming:

[...] there must be four because the four is what
in this double loop supports the Symbolic by
what it is in fact made for, namely, the Name-ofthe-Father.34 The Symbolic is nonetheless
180

The subject, having lost all anchoring, is left to

stray. The body [] is first of all what can carry
the mark conducive to arranging it in a series of
signifiers31 a body of the Symbolic, which,
once it has been incorporated, produces the
body in the common sense of the word, the one
[] whose Being is thereby sustained does not
know that it is language that grants this body to
him, to the extent that it would not even be
there, were it not capable of being spoken of.32
This impossibility has to do with the necessary
condition of the persistence of the sinthome,
namely that it can only subsist as hooked onto
to the Symbolic, since it is here that the function
of naming can be extracted, which limits
jouissance.
By granting the subject a proper name a
signifier without a signified nomination both
122011
necessary in order for something to appear that

has this function of nomination: [] what is
involved in the distinction in the Symbolic of
name-giving is included in this Symbolic.35
The Name-of-the-Father as a Sinthome permits

of distinguishing between the three registers
which are tied together in Borromean fashion,
forming the central triskele knot, where the void
of the cause of desire can be circumscribed and
clasped, introducing the subject into the
temporal dimension implied by the knot and
thus inscribing him in the generational order.
Conclusion: Erasures and Rewritings

The Borromean knot corresponds to the writing
of a discursive logic which cannot be restricted
to the affirmative or negative statements of
binary propositional logic but makes room for
interrogative, suspensive and even equivocal
statements, thus allowing for the manifestation
of the unconscious. In this way, it separates off
from the psychiatric discourse, which tends to
be increasingly reduced to the descriptive
classification of phenomena understood as a
series of lines of behavior.
In the final years of his teaching, Lacan situates
the Borromean knot inside the torus a reversal
Bibliography:
Adorno, Theodor W. (1997). Aesthetic Theory. Transl.
Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: The Athlone Press.
Lacan, J. (1962). Le sminiare IX, Lidentification.
Unpublished.
122011
[retournement] of the Symbolic which brings

about equivocation. The question of turning the
torus inside out following a cut should be
connected to the reversal of the orientation of
the knot, which Lacan discussed earlier in
Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent.
This reversal of the knot, brought about by
equivocation, changes the sens(e) in both senses
of the word: as meaning and orientation.36
Turning the torus inside out involves cutting and
splicing. Equivocation itself is an operation of
cutting a cutting off of meaning and its
splicing, which reconnects it in a different way.
It can therefore function as the operator of a
writing of separation, in which the voice makes
itself heard by an effect of jous-sens,37
releasing the subject from his fixed position.
This separation, which concerns the Other of
desire, [] brings the subject back to the
opacity of the being he receives through his
advent as a subject.38
The opacity refers to what holds the three
registers of the Borromean knot together when
they are not linked with each other but
nonetheless clasp the triple central point, the
void of the Thing, which the different objects
designated by the letter a come to cover over.
Separated from the signifier, the letter can join
the living body to language because it is part of
the Real due to the glottal jouissance it delivers
and simultaneously of the Symbolic, insofar as it
carries the signifier, as well as of the Imaginary,
by virtue of being not only an acoustic image
but also a picture.
Consequently, the invention of unconscious
knowledge can only be of the order of the
written, defined by Lacan as the knowledge
presumed to be a subject [Le savoir suppos
sujet],39 thus producing a new rewriting of the
subjects knot.
Lacan, J. (1974). Le sminaire XXI, Les non-dupes errent.

Unpublished.
Lacan, J. (1975). La troisime. Lettres de lcole
freudienne, 16.
Lacan, Jacques (1975). Lecture at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (2 Dec 1975). Scilicet, n 6-7.
181

Notes:
1
[Transl. note: lavie is Lacans transcription of la vie or

life, which he uses especially in the Le sminaire, XXI,
Les non-dupes errent: Lavie that on this occasion I would
write indeed as I did with lalangue, in a single word. This
would only be to suggest that we do not know much
about it except that it needs washing (elle slave). 24
April 1974, unpublished. ]
2
Lacan, J., (1999). The Seminar, Book XX, Encore. On
Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge,
(1975). Transl. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, p. 23.
3
Lacan, J., (2001). Ltourdit. In Autres crits. Paris: Seuil,
p. 490.
4
Id., (11 January 1977). Le sminaire XXIV, Linsu...,
unpublished.
5
Milner, J.-C. (1995). Luvre claire, Lacan, la science, la
philosophie. Paris: Seuil, p. 132.
6
Id., Encore. Op. cit., p. 117.
7
Lacan, J. (17 December 1974). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I.,
Unpublished.
8
Lacan, J., (2005). Le sminaire, livre XXIII, Le Sinthome.
Paris: Seuil, p. 144.
9
Ibid., Op. cit., p. 83.
10
Id., Ltourdit. Op. cit., p. 476.
11
Adorno, T. W. (1997). Aesthetic Theory. Transl. Robert
Hullot-Kentor. London: The Athlone Press, p. 205.
12
Lacan, J. (1975). Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (2 December). Scilicet, n 6-7, p. 53.
13
Id., (1976). Neuvime congrs de lEFP Strasbourg.

Lettres de lcole freudienne, n 19, p. 558.
14
Milner, J.-C. Luvre claire. Op. cit., p. 165.
15
Lacan, J. (1975). La troisime. In Lettres de lcole
freudienne, n 16, p. 189.
16
Id., (12 March 1974). Le sminaire, XXI, Les non-dupes
errent. Unpublished.
17
Id., Lacte analytique, Rsum du Sminaire, XV. Autres
crits. Op. cit., p. 376.
18
Id., Hommage Marguerite Duras. In Autres crits.
Op. cit., p. 192.
19
Id., (4 April 1974). Les sminaire XXI, Les non-dupes
20
Id., (15 April 1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I. Unpublished.
21
Soler, C. (2008). Linconscient ciel ouvert de la
psychose. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, p. 17.
22
Id., (11 March 1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I.,
Unpublished.
23
Ibid., (13 May 1975).
24
Ibid.
25
Id., (30 May 1962). Le sminiare IX, Lidentification.
Unpublished.
26
Id., Le sminaire livre XXIII, Le Sinthome. Op. cit., p. 42.
27
Ibid., (15 February 1977). Le sminaire XXIV, Linsu.
Unpublished.
28
Normand, M. (2003), Les vhicules du sujet, in Pense
psychotique et cration de systmes, edited by Fabienne
Hulak, Paris: rs, p. 233.
29
[Transl. note: Lacan discusses this scene from The
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, of Stephen enduring
a beating at the hands of his classmates, in Le sminaire,
livre XXIII, Le Sinthome, Op. cit.]
30
Id., Le sminaire, livre XXIII, Le Sinthome. Op. cit., p. 154.
31
Id., Radiophonie. In Autres crits. Op. cit., p. 409.
32
Ibid.
33
Id., (2 December 1975). Lecture at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. In Scilicet, n 6-7. Op. cit., p. 59.
34
Id., (15 April 1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I. Unpublished.
35
Ibid., (11 March 1975). Unpublished.
36
[Transl. note: the French sens means both meaning,
signification and direction, orientation changer le
sens can therefore mean to change the meaning but
also to turn in a different direction.]
37
[Transl. note: this pun on jouissance, jous-sens or I
hear meaning appears in Le sminaire X, Langoisse.]
38
Id.,Position of the Unconscious. crits. Op. cit., p. 844.
39
Id., (9 April 1974). Le sminaire XXI, Les non-dupes
182

Lacan, J. (1975). Le sminaire XXII, R.S.I. Unpublished.

Lacan, J. (1976). Neuvime congrs de lEFP Strasbourg.
Lettres de lcole freudienne, 19.
Lacan, J. (1977). Le sminaire XXIV, Linsu Unpublished.
Lacan, J. (1999). The Seminar, Book XX. Encore. On
Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge.
(1975). Transl. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton
Lacan, J. (2001). Autres crits. Paris: Seuil.
Lacan, J. (2005). Le sminaire livre XXIII, Le Sinthome.
Paris: Seuil.
Lacan, J. (2006). crits. Transl. by Bruce Fink. New York:
Norton.
Milner, J.-C. (1995). Luvre claire, Lacan, la science, la
philosophie. Paris: Seuil.
Normand, M. (2003). Les vhicules du sujet. Hulak, F.
(Ed.). Pense psychotique et cration de systmes. Paris:
rs.
Soler, C. (2008). Linconscient ciel ouvert de la psychose.
Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail.
122011
122011
The author:
Electronic reference:
Graciela Prieto, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Practicing Psychoanalyst.
Member of the cole de Psychanalyse des
Forums du Champ Lacanien & associated
researcher at the Center for Research in
Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society.
cole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ
Lacanien France
118 rue dAssas 75006 Paris
France
Graciela Prieto, Writing the Subjects Knot,

Research of Psychoanalysis [Online], 12|2011
published Dec. 22, 2011.
This article is a translation of critures du nud
du sujet
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Graciela Prieto, Translated by Kristina Valendinova critures du nud du sujet ,

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How to cite this article:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Graciela Prieto "critures du nud du sujet",

Electronic distribution by Cairn on behalf of Association Recherches en psychanalyse.

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This document is a translation of:

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

122011 Psychoanalysis, the Body and Society

Writing the Subjects Knot

Keywords: topology, clinic of the Borromean knot, writing, sinthome

Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies.

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Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

While Lacan introduces the field of jouissance as

excluded third as required by grammatical and

The Logical Necessity of the Borromean

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Introduction: The Spinning of Jouissance

non-contradiction and of the exclusion of the

This logical necessity leads Lacan to rethink

he urges his students to construct his knots with

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Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

ahead of him [],18 paving the way for him. A

Nodal Writing in the Psychoanalytic Clinic

Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies.

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says in Ltourdit, structure is the real brought

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

Imaginary and the Real [] This is what the

This statement in fact seems to reject the term

Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies.

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itself for the signifier of the mothers desire, the

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

The subjects structure results from the type of

Lacans discussion of the case of Joyce leads him

The Surface of the Boy

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The only register that can divide and form a

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

Here we see the three singular points that the

This interlacing entails the necessity of the

This movement shows us the three singular

The knots possibility or impossibility of

body can be maintained in its consistency,

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The duplication of the Mbius strip with three

parasited by the signifier [].27 The corps-de of

woven from the signifier, and is therefore of a

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Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

Recherches en Psychanalyse Research in Psychoanalysis

reveals and covers over the void of the Thing, of