1. Summary 1. Overview of the concept of Subject a.

Postructuralists: deconstruct and dispel the very notion of the human subject i(deconstruct Kants independent learner? How?) b. Lacan: maintain the concept of subjectivity. What is it + How to be a subject/precipitate subjectivityii 2. Part 1 of the book: Otherness a. Definition Otherness as that which is alien or foreign to an as-yet-unspecified subject. iii b. Exception to otherness In Lacans work, that which takes exception is twofold: the subject and the object iv 3. Part 2 of the book: Subject as a relationship to the symbolic order a. 1st face of the Lacanian subject: subject as a fixated relationship with the O i. What is a subject 1. Subject is a positioning/stance in relation to the Others desirev (E.g. a position in relation to my mothers desire) ii. Jouissance 1. The subject begins to adopt a stance as a primal experience of pleasure/pain or trauma. vi 2. Then jouissance: the subject comes into being as a form of attraction toward and defense against a primordial experience which is called jouissancevii 3. being: as something granted the human subject due only to its fantasized relation to the object (?)viii 4. Then jouissance can traumatic encounter with the Others ix desire: the subject, lacking in being (meaning understanding of what he puts in the unconscious when we take a pleasure as primal?), consists in a relation to the Others desire as thrilling yet fascinating yet overwhelmingx iii. Subjects existence is sustained by fantasies constructed to keep the subject at just the right distance from that dangerous desire, delicately balancing the attraction and the repulsion. xi iv. Examplexii 1. A child wishes to be recognized by its parents as worthy of their desire, their desire is both mesmerizing and lethal (jouissance).

2. Subjects existence: a position adopted to the Other (parents rules) that balance the attraction and the repulsion. b. Second face of the Lacanian subject: overcoming the fixated the subject i. First face: subject as a fixation to obtain jouissance 1. The subject is a fixation/symptomatic way of getting off the jouissancexiii 2. The sense of being provided by fantasy is a false being ii. Second face: overcoming/traversing the fixation 1. Traverse this fixation: reverse ones position in relation to the Others desire. I realize I am responsible for choosing the Others desire as the primal source of my desire. Thus I realize Others desire is NOT NECESSARILY my primal source of desire. 2. I.e., subjectivization, a process of making ones own something that was formerly alienrealizing what had been previously taken as a foreign roll of the dice can actually be taken by my hand. xiv 3. Thus: the traversal shifts the way in which one obtains jouissancexv 4. Others desire becomes the subject of my own fate > My pleasure does not necessarily come from my parents desire, but I am the subject of my own fate. Not it happened to me but I saw, I heard, I acted xvi 5. Question: does it mean a. parents want me to speak fluent English > I want to speak good English (Loyal internalization of O) OR b. parents want me to speak fluent English > I want to be a Cantonese actor (Transformed the Other when subjectivize) 4. Part 3: Object a. Object as the cause of desirexvii i. Example 1. Parents as the cause of the childs being, thus taken as the cause of the childs desire. So parents: the object. xviii 2. The childs relationship with his parents (the object) is a fantasy when the child sees himself in respect to the object, i.e. the object incites his ideas causing jouissance.
xix

ii. The object is NOT something that satisfies desire. I.e., desire is not some preexisting entities that the object ensues to satisfy. Instead, the object is WHY we have desires. xx iii. The analyst not as the all-knowing Other but as the object a that causes desires to disturb the subjects fantasyxxi b. Object as the cause that upsets the smooth functioning of structures, systems and axiomatic fields, leading to aporias, paradoxes and conundrums. xxii i. The real which is encountered at the points where languages and the grids we use to symbolize the world break down. xxiii ii. E.g. homosexuality c. Object as the signifierness of the signifier (Others desire as the signifier of my desire), which is polyvalent, leading to different the articulation of desiresxxiv d. Two faces of the object, a and S() which is not binary opposition but a form of Godelian structuralism where every system is decompleted by the alterity or heterogeneity it contains within itself , xxv 5. The Other a. Other is the foreign language we must learn to speak which is euphemistically called our mOther tongue. Discourses and desires of other internalized as our own, meaning we think these desires are our own, but we somehow feel we do not want these. (13) b. Other in Ego (5) i. What is the Other of Language 1. Before our birth, the parents speak of a language about us (our name, etc.), a language which is handed down by precious generations. They constitute the Other of language (5) 2. Baby needs to use the language to speak what they want, but this language may not correspond to their own particular demands. (6) ii. DESIRE/JOUISSANCE formation 1. Because of this slippery ground of language, the babies DEMAND is molded through the Other of Language into DESIRE! (6) Or Mirror phase (36-37) 2. We conceive this DESIRE AS THOUGH the DEMAND of our very own, although it is not: Constantly responding a babys cries with food may transform all of its discomforts, coldness, and pain in hunger. Meaning in this situation is thus determined not by the baby but by other people. (6) 3. The dilemma:

a. Our demand without the Other is inarticulable, but once articulated through the Other our demand is transformed into other wishes (desires) Or b. To stay true to oneself, one resists the Other, but to join the community, one needs to mediate oneself through the Other. 4. The alienation in language and jouissance a. According to Lacanian theory, every human being who learns to speak is thereby alienated from her or himselffor it is language that, while allowing desire to come into being, ties knots therein, and makes us such that we can both want and not want one and the same thing, never be satisfied when we get what we thought we wanted, and so on. 5. There is no desire without language; (so even desires in the unconscious is mediated through language) c. Other in the unconscious (3-4), Ch 2 Ego Attribute: Conscious Intentional (3-4) Alienated due to language (7)

Other Attribute: Unconscious Unintentional (3-4) Foreign as well (7-10)

Unfolds a desire I take as my own Unfolds/at least filled with the Other (which to a certain extent is in fact the desire that I dont feel is my ownI Others) am only forced to act i. Unconscious is not the truer self/subjectivity; it is itself the foreign, unassimilated Other, or filled with the Others desire. (Note, there is an exception: subject of the unconscious). (9) 1. Example: schnob to mean I felt that my mother hates my father so to please my mother I hate my father. I wasnt the one who reproaches my father. She was. 2. A certain image or metaphor may come to mind without our having sought it out or in any way attempted to construct it. (14) 3. My Example: true, like tutorial, I want to explain something using someones theory, but I cant quite explain it well. In this case I am explaining something using the Others language which my ego has no control/mastery. 4. Another example: Young Albert Einstein overhears his fathers commenting: Hes lazy, hell not amount to anything. He took it as a comment to him, and later, without knowing why, whenever he does math tests he will not be able to perform

well. But this comment is in fact for the boy in the neighbourhood! (10) 5. Cybernetic analogies ii. Unconscious is language, meaning it is the language that makes up the unconscious. (8) 1. The unconscious language obeys a kind of grammar/ a set of rules that the transformation and slippage that goes therein. (9) 2. Unconscious language is signifying elements unfolds according to precise rules over which the ego has no control whatsoever. (9) 3. Example: (8) a. job ego discourse spoken as snob the unconscious discourse. b. Conversation and conservation are different ego discourse; Substitute conversation with conservation unconscious discourse. c. Speaking blister as sister (15) iii. The rules of the unconscious language (Ch 2) 1. Two features of language in the unconscious level a. The autonomous functioning of language in the unconscious level b. The indestructibility of the unconscious contents 2. What is artificial language, which is similar to the language of the unconscious a. Syntax means: forbidding/predicting certain combinations, or setting rules in the signifying chain i.e., not forbidding/predicting what will happen in reality (e.g. not predicting whether the next throw will be head/tail), but forbidding/predicting what cannot happen within the signifying chain (e.g. in our numbering, if there are one 1 and one 3, there must be one 2). b. The ciphering of the world into the language of the unconscious is like constructing a symbolic system that brings with it a syntaxthat is not inherent in the preexisting reality. I.e., the resulting possibilities and impossibilities can be seen to derive from the way in which the symbolic matrix is constructed c. The numeric chains, which helps remembering/keeping track of numbers, actually performs its function by not allowing one to appear before enough of the others This constitutes a type of memory: the past is recorded

in the chain itself, determining what is yet to come. So several features of remembering d. The grey matter/nervous system is incapable of accounting for the eternal and indestructible nature of the unconscious content (meaning infinite possibilities?). Matter seems to behave in such a way as to necessarily lead to a gradual decay or decrease in the amplitude/quality impression e. And: things are not remembered in an active way/some subjective participation, but remembered in a passive, involuntary way f. Question: The unconscious cannot forget, in an autonomous, automatic way, it preserves in the present what has affected it in the past, eternally holding onto each and every element, remaining forever marked by all of them (but the language of the unconscious cannot account for the eternal nature of the unconscious? The each and every element is the syntax, e.g. 1 + even no. 2 + 3, not the entirety of the head and tail throw, right? iv. The unconscious and meaning/reason 1. The conscious deals with reason/meaning, but reason/what is meaningful achieves clarity by ignoring something 2. The unconscious has nothing to do with reason/meaning a. Serge Leclair can isolate a sequence/an order not because its meaningful, but because its irreducible and insane character as a chain of signifiers. b. Interpretation does not reveal meaning, but reduce signifiers to their nonmeaningrat = penis, my desire = my mothers desire is taken as irreducible in our signifying chain but this equalization is meaningless/ does not make sense! c. To show that it is the meaningless signifier that subjugate the Rat Man, not meaning. v. The unconscious is not dependent on any subjectivity vi. Comparison with Freud: 1. Comply with F: Freud doesnt mean the unconscious as feelings that cannot be expressed with language; but what he means is the unconscious also adopts another language, just that this language is alien to the grammar of the language we use in the ego discourse. (8) 2. Not comply with F: the unconscious may not unfold the repressed self; the unconscious is full of the Others discourse

vii. Questions 1. Question 1: Ego has parts of Other. Ego is just a position I choose to mediate my relationship with the Other? 2. Question 2: The Others being described in (a) and (b) are different. (b) refers to a language I havent mastered, but (a)s the Other of Language refers to a language I have mastered! > the formation of subjectivity? 3. Question 3: mirror stage and the Other of language > the later supersedes the former? 4. What is the real event? Fort-Da game (Ch. 2) d. The Other and Structuralism, and the subject i. Structuralism in the body 1. Structuralism at work in the bodyi.e., the body at the mercy of language/symbolic order. 2. E.g. the psychosomatic patient, who feels pain at the wright hand-side of his waist because someone tells him the appendicitis is on the right-hand-side. Its going to hurt not in your biological organ, but where you believe the organ is located. ii. Language/symbolic order automates your feeling/your physical perception. iii. Thus the body is subordinated to these different Others; our fantasies can be foreign to us, for they are structured by a language which is only tangentially or asymptotically our own, and they may even be someone elses fantasies at the outset. I reproach my dad but I hate myself reproaching my dad at the same time. This is because it is not entirely my desire to reproach my dad; since birth, my mum accuses my dad of this and that, and to please my mum, I reproach my dad. That is one of the things that people find most alienating: even my fantasie do not seem to be mine. iv. But the subject is also responsiblethe subject has a role in the choice of his/her symptom. (Ch. 5/6) 6. The real a. Definition of the real i. The real is that which has not been able to be put into words, but words leave a trace of its existence. The letter kills, but we learn this from the letter itself. b. Examples of the real i. Time before the word ii. An infants body before it comes under the symbolic order iii. 3 after 1 (Head and tail) c. Real and reality (symbolic order/fantasy)

i. Reality as that which is named by language and can thus be thought and talked about ii. Real is that which precedes language, it ex-sists. iii. Ethics of psychoanalysisanalysts job is to intervene in the patients real (no fantasy), not in the patients view of reality (with fantasy) (Example of that?) d. Trauma and the real i. Trauma implies fixation (obsession with sth, e.g. obsession with particular types of women that torture him), and fixation is beyond language > by inciting the analysand to associate the fixation with more signifiers through dialectization (ch. 5), it can surface the fixation a little bit ii. Real before letter and real after letter 1. Real 1 > real before the letter; 2. Real 2 > real after the letter a. Showing the impossibilities within the symbolic that is generated by the symbolic b. E.g.: immediately after 1, 3 is a residue. This is called caput mortuum. It is the other of the chain, but the chains validity is built upon it. It is the impossibility c. This caput mortuum has certain materialityit is not what the letter says, but its effect on the acharacters, that causes the materiality (The Purlioned Letter) (?) iii. Real 2 as the cause that the analysts through interpretation hit iv. Real 2 to deduce the impossibility of the Wholeness of Other (The set cannot be the set of all set; an axiom cannot be an ultimate standard of justice because if it can be, nothing judges whether this axiom is just) v. Structure vs cause/object a/caput mortuum e.

7. Critique/Questions a. Traverse the fantasy reach truth: realize what Ive taken as my primal source of desire is what I can choose to dissipate reach truth b. The difference between fantasy(I think I want this (I have a desire), but this is in fact mediated by the Other, which is not exactly what I want, but just in fact a jouissance) traverse the fantasy (I know the fact that I have this is not my desire but a mediation of others desire)

Fink, Bruce. Psreface. The Lacanian Subject: Between language and Jouissance. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995. Print. ii Preface iii Preface iv Preface v Preface vi Preface vii Preface viii Preface ix Preface x Preface xi Preface xii Preface xiii Preface xiv Preface xv Preface xvi Preface xvii Preface xviii Preface xix Preface xx Preface xxi Preface xxii Preface xxiii Preface xxiv Preface xxv Preface