The Letter, Issue 52, Spring 2013, Pages 1 - 27
READING L’ETOURDIT: FIRST TURN
CHAPTER 3: THERE IS NO SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP
Christian Fierens
(79) Chapter 1 was centred on the said as it operates in the master and academic discourses. Chapter 2 demonstrated saying in the scientific and psychoanalytic discourses. Ab-sense separates these two chapters. On the one hand, saying ex-sists with respect to the said, does not belong to the dit-mension of truth and on the other hand the said is always only half-said, has no hold whatsoever on saying; impossible in the dit-mension, saying is demonstrated from the impossibility of the said. The rupture between the first and second chapters or the impossibility between said and saying will be put to work in the third chapter: there is no sexual relationship.
We will grasp in these pages the passage from relationship to non- relationship, from the possible to the impossible, from the discourse of the master to the discourse of the analyst. This passage is accompanied by a displacement of Lacanian theory: the theory of discourses has as matrix the discourse of the master; it is built on the meaning-relationship and on the possibilities offered by the signifier. In this sense, it is centred on the symbolic and the practice which flows from it turns around the signifying word and its deciphering. In opposition to the theory of discourses, the theory of the formulae of sexuation has as nexus the absence of sexual relationship; it is built on the phallic function which here supplies for it. In this sense it is centred on the real and the practice which flows from it turns around enjoyment and interpretation.