Lacunae - I Start From The Limit by Adrian R. Price

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015
I START OFF FROM THE LIMIT

On the first lesson of Seminar XX, Encore
ADRIAN R. PRICE
this name of Inconstancy, which hath so much been poisoned with slanders,
ought to be changed into variety, for which the world is so delightfull
John Donne
The real, the same that we meet at every turn in the oeuvre that stands as a
testimony to Freuds enquiry, is undisputed in its status as the the crux of the
psychoanalytic experience. Nevertheless, as it took on a more dominant place
in psychoanalytic doctrine it proved necessary to account for this real in logical
and structural terms. So it was that the teaching of Jacques Lacan followed the
requirements of an effort that aims above and beyond that which is immediately
manifest in the day-to-day course of an analysis, targeting a formalisation that
would hold the status of a demonstration in the mathematical sense. However,
the very condition of this effort is the fact that the psychoanalytic real, to be
understood as the real of the symptom and, more widely, the real of jouissance,
pitched as it is between the ontological and the discursive, has consistently proven
to be incompatible with the real of science that readily allows of a description
in mathematical laws and algorithms. This is precisely what led to Jacques-Alain
Millers assertion that the effort of formalisation in psychoanalysis tends rather
in the direction of a demonstration of the absence of knowledge in the real (Miller, 2012,
pp. 115-16), a project that is neither of capital importance to the scientist, nor
certain of achieving its aim, since demonstrating an absence is no easy matter.
Voices in the fields of logic and philosophy were making themselves heard
in the 1970s to refute the notion that the relation between the real and its
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I start off from the limit
nomination was as straightforward as hitherto reckoned. Kripke for one, in his

Princeton lectures1 to which Lacan explicitly refers in 1975, drew a persuasive
distinction between a description of the (imaginary) form of an entity and the
act of naming that transforms this entity in its Being. Slightly earlier, at the end
of Seminar XVIII, Lacan was already considering some of these paradoxes of
naming in relation to the real. For example, in the penultimate lesson we read:
In truth [] a proper name [] is only completely stable on a map
where it denotes a desert. These are the only things on a map that
dont change name. [] A desert only gets renamed when it has been
fertilised. [] This is not the case for sexual jouissance which science
does not seem to win over to knowledge. (Lacan 2006, p. 148)2
Lacan goes on to observe that sexual jouissance assumed a preponderant place

in psychoanalysis to the extent that this place was emptied out. Sexual jouissance
functions as a dam, holding back the advent of sexual relation. An oft-repeated
formula during this phase of his teaching, it also offers a first outline of what we
meet in the opening chapter of Encore under the term faille, a fault, in the sense
of a flaw or fault-line, of sexual jouissance.3
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To speak in terms of a fault-line of jouissance is not to imply that there is

no jouissance. On the contrary, jouissance lies on the side of that which there is.
What there is not is sexual relation. Lacans effort at this late stage of his teaching,
and especially here in Seminar XX, is to offer a finer account of the link between
non-relation and jouissance. This is what would allow Jacques-Alain Miller in
1999 to affirm that the last of the paradigms of jouissance in Lacans teaching
is the paradigm of non-relation, where jouissance is articulated to a point of
impossibility; an affirmation that ought not to surprise us if we take seriously
the formulation that jouissance belongs to the register of the real, and the real
belongs in turn to the category of the impossible.
Recall that Seminar XX is contemporary with Television, in which Lacan critiques the Freudian approach to jouissance as an apparatus of energetics (Lacan
1990, p. 9; pp. 18-19). Freud ends up positing a substance, a fluidic myth titled
libido4 but the infinite reserve of possible cases of jouissance cannot be treated
by algorithms in the way that this reference to energetics is liable to suggest.

This reserve is at once an accumulation and a fault-line of jouissance. As Lacan
will go on to say in La troisime: jouissance fait dfaut, fait dpt, it defaults and
by the same token forms a deposit. Nomination of this reserve of jouissance
by means of the signifier thus proves to be fraught with intricacies, such that we
are forbidden from thinking in terms of the absence or presence of a quantifiable substance when we turn to scrutinsing the oscillation between the fullness
of the reservoir and the emptiness of the desert. Depending on the paradigm
one adopts, its aspect and essence will alter.5
A name, a space, and its limits
The hypothesis that Lacan introduces here in the first chapter of Seminar XX is
that one can indeed treat and circumscribe the structure of sexual jouissance on
the basis of a closed topology in which one proceeds incrementally, step by step
as it were. The snag is how to get this process under way when one can foresee
neither the nature nor the number of the steps that will be necessary for this
treatment to carry through.
Lacan opens his examination on the logical status of jouissance here in Seminar XX by specifying that the jouissance of the others body, the enjoyment one
witnesses in the body of ones other, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient response.
The overriding evidence of this is that love demands more, and what comes in
response is more love. Love is able to constitute a response for the subject. It
constitutes a sign for the subject. To say that jouissance does not meet these
conditions of a necessary and sufficient response is already a logical approach.
The jouissance of the others body is indeed a response, only the response of
love, if it is effectively present, is more concrete, more palpable for the subject
to the extent that it enters the play of representations. This distinction between
the sign of love and a potential anonymity of jouissance is a critical point of
entry into this seminar. It signposts one of Lacans hypotheses that can be read
between the lines throughout the seminar: jouissance is determined by language,
by speech, but it is not fully articulated as such in distinct and precise signifiers.
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It is a matter, therefore, of ascertaining its signifying logic behind what emerges

through discrete signifiers associated with jouissance.
This demarcates the fault-line in the Other from which the demand for love
sets out. Lacan further proclaims that if this fault-line does carry a proper name,
if it is liable to nomination, then this name is Encore. In other words, it may be
possible to surmount the intrinsic condition of anonymity, but only through the
intermediary of a name that tells you: not enough, dont stop, keep going,
encore
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Thus, we have a space: the fault-line; which bears a name: Encore; and which
possesses at least one limit point: the point from which the demand for love
sets out. Lacan will even identify this limit point with the wall of amur, defining
the corporeal aspect of this amur in opposition to the biological body. What
interests Lacan is the body inasmuch as it symbolises the Other. That the body
symbolises the Other and not vice-versa is a somewhat surprising formula that
when first uttered in this opening lesson could give rise to some doubt as to just
how deliberate it is, were it not repeated in a more categorical fashion in the lessons of 19 December (Lacan, 1975, p. 21, p. 26) and 16 January (p. 39). Here,
the locus of the Other is a logical fault-line that requires symbolisation in order
to be tangible, and the body provides this symbolic material.

We have underlined the term faille. On page 12 of the Seuil edition we meet
the term bance in reference to the gap between the One and Being. Behind this
Being lies jouissance.
One Being
Just afterwards, Lacan will qualify this Being as the jouissance of the body as
an asexuated body. Meanwhile, on the side of the One, we would meet sexual
difference properly speaking, were there a relation by which this dimension could
be established and confirmed.
One
(sexual relation)
Being
(asexuated)
Lacan then speaks of a double characteristic of jouissance. On one side, it

constitutes an obstacle, because it is an enjoyment of ones own body at the level
of the organ the phallic organ and not the jouissance of the womans body.6
On the other side, the jouissance of the body qua jouissance of the body of the
Other falls under the sign of infinitude.
This infinitude is consistent with the infinitude that is a property of any
whole number. Here and elsewhere7 Lacan takes care to explain that this is not
a reference to the sequence of whole numbers that stretch to infinity without
meeting any limit, but rather to the interval between each whole number that is
necessarily limited by the properties of the number itself. Each whole number
constitutes a limit to the infinitude of points that reaches to the right towards
the higher number, n + 1, and to the left towards the lower number, n 1. The
canonical example in mathematics is provided by the case of the real numbers
between 0 and 1. For our purposes, we shall be looking at the interval [0,1], which
is formed of the set of real numbers between 0 and 1, 0 and 1 included. This
stands in contrast, for example, to the interval (0,1), which is formed of the real
numbers that lie strictly between 0 and 1, but from which 0 and 1 are themselves
excluded. In both cases, even though the real numbers that lie between 0 and
1 are bounded in the sense that they must be greater than zero but less than
one, there will be an infinite number of them. If you set out to list the totality
of elements that are members of the set of real numbers between 0 and 1, you
will never reach the end. When you take any two points on the line that stretches
from 0 to 1 two points that you can label A and B you can always set down
another point between these two points, a mid-point C that results from bisecting
the [A,B] segment, and so on and so forth. Later, we shall see the importance of
having included the limit points within the set when we look at the theorem of
compactness which accounts for the topological nature of such intervals.
Here, Lacan asserts that a woman, just like men, is subject to the condition
of not being able to reach the limit. The limit is set as a limit point, but on no
account can it be reached.
In the French text, on page 14, we find faille [comma] bance. This
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time the two terms, fault and gap, stand side by side. This is the fault-line
that is named Encore inasmuch as jouissance is neither necessary nor sufficient.
Where previously Lacan was speaking of the fault-line in the Other, now he is
referring to the fault-line in jouissance. On the one hand, we can lay the emphasis on the correspondence between Other and jouissance, whilst on the other,
we can foreground the notion of a locus. The locus of the Other was a staple
of Lacans classical teaching. Here he is speaking of a locus of jouissance that
entails a certain dimensionality, a certain architecture, which arises not from a
physical organic structure, but from a topology. We have a potential anonymity
at the level of jouissance, and then we have the proper name that treats it at the
level of the demand addressed to the Other, but ultimately what is at stake is
the same fault-line. This is where we pass from a fault-line in jouissance to the
fault-line itself, as a fault-line of jouissance. What jouissance is at issue now that
it has been localised in this fault-line?
Compactness, presented as a hypothesis
If we transpose the above into the language of mathematics, we shall say that
just as topological space is a pair constituted of a set, X, and a collection of
subsets that form the topology of X, we can say that the set named Encore is
comprised of a collection of subsets of jouissance. This space is constructed
such that, given an infinite collection of subsets that cover the space, one may
select a finite number that cover it adequately. To realise this, the space must meet
two criteria. It must be:
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1. bounded, in the sense that the elements that it contains may not exceed
the limit points of this topological space, that is, the One of the signifier and Being (as the Being of jouissance);
2. and closed, in the sense that these limit points are included in the space
thus defined.8
This second condition is critical. It allows Lacan to treat the fault-line of jouissance in terms of compactness. The space that Lacan presents is compatible
with the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem that is valid for bounded sequences in

metric spaces. First posited by Bernard Bolzano in 1817, this theorem would later
be complemented by the Heine-Borel theorem (sometimes termed the BorelLebesgue theorem), which holds that a subset of a metric space is compact if
it is complete and totally bounded. Borel set out a first version of this theorem
for countable coverings in 1895; Lebesgue and others generalised its application
over the following years to encompass arbitrary coverings.9 For our purposes,
we shall limit ourselves to considerations on compact spaces in the frame of
metric space. To use the same example as above, we shall say that the set [0,1] is
compact, whereas the set (0,1) is not.
Lacan seems to be drawing above all else on the recent reprint of Topologie gnrale by the Bourbaki group (Bourbaki, 1971) for his understanding of
compactness. There, the Borel-Lebesgue theorem is introduced by means of a
deduction via complementaries from the axiom that every family of closed sets of
X whose intersection is empty contains a finite subfamily whose intersection is empty (Bourbaki, 1966, p. 83). It should be borne in mind that the Bourbaki presentation of
compactness that is usually read today in the 1971 volume (or the 1966 English
translation) actually dates from its first publication in 1940. It is a perfectly valid
introduction to compactness, but from todays perspective looks somewhat idiosyncratic. Since then, it has become far more common to begin the other way
around: with a topological space covered by an infinite number of open subsets,
from which one then seeks to establish the finite collection or family of subsets
that covers the space.
Lacan respects the ordering employed by Bourbaki in that he first establishes a
characterisation of a compact space with the aid of closed sets, considering their
intersection, rather than their union. Thus, when he says, the very definition of
compactness, he is referring to this axiom. Today this strikes us as more than
a little peculiar, but whether one approaches the space in terms of the union of
open subsets or in terms of the intersection of closed subsets, the result is in
fact the same: these are two dual presentations that each account for the same
infinite topological space.
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The difficulties that this passage has presented to commentators over the
decades are not due solely to Lacans drawing on the idiosyncratic Bourbaki
ordering; he is imprecise in his articulation.10 When he says the intersection of
everything that is enclosed within [the faille, the fault-line] having been accepted as
existing in a finite number of sets, he is referring to the operation that consists
in selecting closed sets that possess the finite intersection property. When he says that
what results from this is that the intersection exists in an infinite number, we
have to understand that the intersection of the finite number of closed subsets
contains an infinite number of points (the points of the set that thereby proves
to be compact).
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Lacan uses this manner of characterising a compact space to account for

sexual jouissance qua phallic jouissance. We insist on this fact since many commentators have spoken of this chapter as introducing the compact space of
feminine jouissance. At no point does Lacan say anything of the like. He says first
of all that the space of sexual jouissance is compact, and later he will introduce
the hypothesis that womans position in relation to sexual jouissance possesses
a structure that may be understood as the complement to the male structure
that covers this same space of jouissance. We shall see both the nuance and the
equivocation that Lacan adds when he approaches this space from the angle of
woman. In this first phase, what is at issue is the compact space of sexual jouissance, and here Lacan states perspicuously that jouissance, qua sexual, is phallic.
Therefore, at this level, the proper name Encore refers to the phallus, and the faille
is identified with its homophone, the capital phi. Another detail that ought not
to be lost sight of is that Lacan is not defining the logical formulas of sexuation
here; he is drawing on a mathematical model in order to consider the field in
which the formulas operate. This move from logic to mathematics is indicative
of the move from sexuation to jouissance.
According to this first characterisation, each case of jouissance may be considered to be sexual to the extent that it is localised with respect to the subjects
Being and converges towards the One of sexual relation. Each case, being singular, constitutes a set that contains a multiplicity of constitutive elements. As
such, these cases neednt be pursued in their infinite recurrence for certain key
elements to be distinguished within them that cluster around a point of accumulation

that incarnates the phallus. The locus of jouissance remains heterogeneous, but
right across it one meets this element, this point, that carries a phallic denotation.
This characterisation is consistent with the more general identification of the
finite intersection property with a centred system of sets.
Lacan provides an illustration of this perspective in his reading of the race
between Achilles and the tortoise. Zenos paradoxes have given rise to a number
of commentaries and attempts at resolution over the centuries. A synthesis of
glosses from the turn of the twentieth century was presented and analysed by
Alexandre Koyr in 1922, where he concludes that, the difficulties that arise
[from these paradoxes] do not concern movement qua movement, they touch
on movement only to the extent that it unfolds in time and space. Next, he
takes one step further by effectively eliminating the dimension of time so as
to consider the spatial dimension alone: spatial distances, trajectories and their
respective relations (Koyr 1922, p. 20). In the terms of Bergsons critique, we
have just cast out the real of movement to retain nothing but a mere symbolic
cartography. Koyrs understanding, and Lacans too, is quite different. For them,
it is a matter of touching on the real of structure precisely by stripping it of
everything that pertains to reality in the descriptive sense.
Of all Zenos paradoxes, that of Achilles and the tortoise presents as the most
difficult to resolve since the end of the racetrack, which would function as the
upper bound, in spatial terms, is more often than not omitted from the description, or implicitly collapsed into the notion of a temporal end.11 The terms of
the paradox foreground instead the point at which Achilles would catch up with
the tortoise, which cannot be materialised spatially since, according to these same
terms, their paths converge without ever intersecting. Yet, given that to catch up
with the tortoise one needs to know where she is heading, one has to take into
account the steps she takes. So, we have disregarded the temporal dimension, as
did Koyr, in order to focus solely on the spatial aspect of the paradox. Next,
we treat the spatial distances specific to the respective steps of Achilles and
the tortoise as units that we hold to be equivalent, despite the fact that they
are not equal (Koyr 1922, p. 25). Each step that Achilles takes corresponds
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to a step taken by the tortoise. This is where Lacan introduces a detail that was
unheard of in previous analyses of the paradox: Achilles cannot draw level with
the tortoise (or only draws level with her at infinity, which amounts to the same
thing), he can only overtake her. Most commentators concur in supposing that the
race would end when Achilles catches up with the tortoise. Lacan, however, in
adding this detail that Achilles can overtake her, accentuates the fact that there
is no common measure between the stride of Achilles and the stride of the tortoise. We will never find an algorithm or any other artifice capable of rendering
them equal. Achilles sprints towards the point he believes to be the end, but
in so doing effectively overshoots the upper bound of the space to be covered.
He overtakes the tortoise in the sense that he takes larger steps at a faster pace.
Her stride, meanwhile, becomes shorter and shorter. She proceeds in much
the same fashion as Cantor in his infinite intersection, tracing her path towards
infinity by marking out ever shrinking sets. This aspect of the paradox is surely
what inspired Carrolls dialogue in which the tortoise leads Achilles into an infinite regression.
Lacan presents this version of compact topology as a first hypothesis.
Already, in the vocabulary he is using, we can hear that Lacan is undertaking not a
direct treatment of the theorem of compactness (which had been well established
for at least a century), but rather a hypothetical application of compactness to
the space of jouissance.
Next, he will present what he calls the complement to this hypothesis.
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The not-all and the problem of its existential import

Whilst Lacans characterisation of the compact space by means of the intersection of closed sets was consistent with a universal phallic presentation of
jouissance, when he turns to its complement, that is, the union of open sets, this
provides him with a means of establishing a topological treatment of jouissance
from the perspective of the logic of the pas-tout, the not-all. Before we turn to
Lacans use of the union of open sets in the first lesson of Encore, we need to
remind ourselves of the preliminary work on the not-all which would have been
familiar to Lacans audience from the previous years seminar, ou pire, and, to a
lesser extent, from Ltourdit, which had been delivered in July 1972 and was
soon to be published in the long-awaited fourth issue of Scilicet.
It has often been contended that Lacans development of the not-all was
first instigated by Jacques Brunschwigs article La proposition particulire et
les preuves de non-concluance chez Aristote, published in the tenth and final
issue of Cahier pour lAnalyse at the end of 1969, though in fact we meet an initial
elaboration of the theme in the lesson of 17 January 1962 from Seminar IX, thus
predating the Brunschwig article by a full seven years. Brunschwigs study concerns the thorny problem of the existential import, in Aristotles term logic, of
particular propositions. His isolation of a minimal particular and a maximal particular
in the Prior Analytics, and their implications for two variants of the i-form and
the o-form, may indeed have provided Lacan with a fresh prompt to return to his
earlier readings, and so a brief consideration of the article will not be unhelpful.
Drawing heavily on Robert Blanchs recently published work, though with
a markedly different purpose12, Brunschwig notes that the crucial difference
between Aristotles formal language and the modern formalist approach to the
logic he founded lies in Aristotles almost total reliance on natural language, with
all its inherent equivoques, to speak of logical entities that are not described or
illustrated except in that language. Aristotle uses a multiplicity of expressions
for one same logical constant, [which] shows that what interests Aristotle is
the unique signified that he is targeting through these expressions (Brunschwig
1969, p. 6). In the case of the particular, in the opening sentence of the Prior
Analytics, we find it defined as ,
belonging to some, or not to some, or not to all. Thus, in the very opening
words of the Prior Analytics, the affirmative particular is defined just once, whilst
the negative particular embraces two definitions: not to some, and not to
all.13 The two possible readings14 of the particular in the Prior Analytics each lead
to different consequences for the relations between the full set of terms as set
out on the square of opposition.
In the first reading, the positive and the negative particular are compatible.
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This allows the traditional logical square to be maintained with its customary
relations (that is, contrariety between a and e; contradiction between a and o,
and between e and i; yielding subaltern relations of implication between a and
i, and between e and o). In this version, saying that i and e are compatible means
that they may both be true, but they do not have to be. The important thing is
that they not both be false. This reading yields the particular said to be minimal:
minimally, only one of the statements i or o needs to be true.
The second reading introduces implication between the affirmative and the
negative particular, between i and o. In so doing, however, contradiction between
a and o, and between e and i, can only be maintained at the cost of yielding a similar relation of implication between a and e. Likewise, what were hitherto relations
of implication between a and i, and between e and o, transform into relations of
contradiction. The paradoxical result, as Brunschwig explains, is that each of
the universals cannot contradict one particular without contradicting the other
particular, which is its equivalent (Brunschwig 1969, p. 7). This reading yields
the particular said to be maximal: maximally, both statements i and o are true.
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Brunschwig argues that whilst Aristotle effectively rules out the maximal in
favour of the minimal in his definition, it has nevertheless to be acknowledged
that in the concrete examples he gives of particular propositions Aristotle
regularly uses terms that are linked by a maximal relationship of belonging
(Brunschwig 1969, p. 9). The ensuing part of the article which is actually its
main thrust since the section we have paraphrased here corresponds to little more
than Brunschwigs introduction to the apparatus argues how Aristotle progressively liquidated the maximal connotations of the particular as he worked his
way through his different proofs.
Lacan mentions the Brunschwig article just once, in Seminar XIX, paying
tribute to how it perceives with great assurance how
existence can in no way be established except outside the universal,
which is precisely why he [Aristotle] locates existence at the level of
the particular, a particular which is on no account sufficient to sustain
it, even though it gives the illusion of doing so by virtue of the use of
the word some. (Lacan 2011, p. 105)
There you have it for the full extent of Lacans explicit reference to the Brunschwig article and the findings it presents. And this is where the difficulties begin.
In the key section on The Four Forms of General Statement that features
in the chapter on the Organon from their 1962 book on The Development of Logic,
William and Martha Kneale consider the inconsistencies that can arise when
one attempts to reform Aristotles logic by holding particular statements to
be equivalent to statements about existence. Furthermore, whereas particular
affirmative statements can be converted into universal negative statements with little
change in meaning, the same is not true of universal affirmatives and particular negatives (Kneale & Kneale 1962 pp. 58-60). As we read in the Kneale and Kneale,
Aristotle claims (in Book I: 2, 25a) that the universal affirmative allows of partial
conversion to the particular, but this doctrine is obviously connected with his
assumption that universal statements entail their subalterns. As we have seen
from the Brunschwig article, inference to subalterns is not always valid.
In ou pire, Lacan plainly distances the negative particular from his version
of the negation on the universal, the not-all: Contrary to the function of the
particular negative, namely that there are some who are not, it is impossible to
extract such an affirmation from the not-all [du pas-toutes] (Lacan 2011, p. 46).
For Lacan, it is essentially a matter of taking into account the act of saying
no to the phallic function. In Ltourdit, he writes that this saying no is
to be grasped as a containment, a response and a rejection, rather than
a contradiction, a negated reprise, or a rectification (Lacan 2001, p. 453).
This implies that the position from which this act of saying no makes itself
heard has also to be modulated with respect to the positioning of the exception:
whereas the phallic function can be flatly negated in such a way as to ground an
existential position (in which case we obtain the contradiction to the universal
affirmative which is familiar to us from the male side of the table of sexuation),
the saying no at issue here is a contained act, which cannot be wholly identified
with a particular one or some who negate the phallic function.
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This would seem to account for the fact that Lacan makes such scant reference to Brunschwigs 1969 article, and indeed Brunschwig himself is said to have
been somewhat bemused at commentators frequent matching of his text with
Lacans developments from the early seventies.15 At most, it might be surmised
that Lacan draws inspiration from the rearrangement of the square of oppositions that Brunschwigs maximal reading of the negative particular requires, and
promotes a distribution of sexuation that is built around a relation of contradiction between the universal affirmative and the particular affirmative (just as
Brunschwigs second square of oppositions stipulates contradiction between a
and i, thus invalidating inference to subalterns). But a comparison between the
foursquare table that Lacan provides in Seminar XIX (Lacan 2011, p. 202, p. 207)
and the second of Brunschwigs squares shows that the coincidences end there.

For our purposes here, we shall recall that the conventional o-type proposition
allows of representation in a Venn diagram. Thus, Some A does not belong to
B would be represented as follows:
AB
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This kind of sharp demarcation between fields allows categorical syllogisms

to be elaborated, as in the various modi formalised by the mediaeval philosophers.
Lacan, however, is moving in the opposite direction from such clearly bounded
domains and the deductive relations between premiss and conclusion that they
enable.

In Seminar XIX, Lacan defines the not-all as follows: It is reserved to this not-all
[au pas-toutes] to indicate that somewhere, and nothing more, woman has a relation
with the phallic function (Lacan 2011, p. 46). This first definition anticipates the
more elaborate version seven months later in Ltourdit:
[F]or having entered as the other half through the saying of women,
the subject is determined by the fact that, since there exists no suspension in the phallic function, all may here be said thereof, even that
which is of a provenance without reason. But this is an all that lies
outside the universe, which is read all at once from the quantifier as
notall. (Lacan 2001, p. 466)
Written here in one word, unhyphenated, the closing comme pastout resounds as
comme partout, like everywhere. Thus, there is a contrast between the universe
of the all and the everywhere that only belongs to the register of the all insofar
as it bears the negation that forbids it from functioning as a universal. This move
is designed to free us of any notion of a closed set of women, promoting
instead a domain that brooks no exception to the phallic function, but which
cannot be totalised as a universe. This domain is therefore a somewhere, an
anywhere, and an everywhere, but without the limit point that would ascribe
to it the property of the universal. The circles of the Venn diagram prove to be
inadequate in accounting for the domains described by the formulas of sexuation,
just as they will prove to be especially inadequate for describing the topology
of jouissance.16
Note that this somewhere is implicated by an act of saying, and not by any
form of existence. Lacan has just said that the thrust of this act of saying is
not to be understood as testifying to the existence of a subject through saying
no to the phallic function. On the contrary, as he develops it in the following
paragraph:
The subject in the half where there is determination by the negated
quantifiers, given the fact that nothing existent constitutes a limit to
the function, there is no means of ensuring anything whatsoever by
way of a universe. Thus, grounding themselves in this half, they [elles]
are notall, with the sequential effect, and by virtue of the same, that
nor is any one of them all [toute]. (Lacan 2001, p. 466)
This paragraph takes us from the first negated quantifier, ( x) x (Not all
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x has the property phi of x), to the second, ( x) x (There exists no x such that
not phi of x), thus introducing the negated existential implication in the final twist
to Lacans theory of sexuation. If the existence of a subject who says no to the
phallic function cannot be grounded on womans side, it is because such a subject
would constitute a limit point to the domain and thus enclose it, effectively forming a universe. To say that at the level of singular existence there is no example
here of an exception to the phallic function has the consequence of forbidding
us from reading the negation of the universal as a negative particular applied
in extension to a plural proposition. It is not: some are and some arent.
Rather, not all of a woman belongs to the phallic function.
This clarification is important because the formula ( x) x might at
first blush seem to lend itself to a reading on the side of the universal, yet this
is precisely what Lacan is taking great pains to circumvent. He has led us from a
not-all that is specifically indexed to a plurality, since in French the term pastoutes
is both gendered and plural, to an existential proposition with a singular connotation, albeit in a negated form. But the latter feeds back into the former, allowing
a logical deduction to be made as to the status of any one of the subjects who
align themselves with the not-all, without treating them as a totality. This singular reading of the not-all does not contradict the suite mentioned in the passage
(which we have rendered as sequential effect) and we shall see shortly how
the extention of a suite or sequence of cases might correspond to the singular
variable in question.
146
This is the moment to remind ourselves that whilst using the singular all conforms to a long-standing tradition of Aristotelian term logic in English, it may
also be remarked that Robin Smith, drawing on (Geach, 1972, p. 69), contended
that translating the affirmative as belongs to all is an unnecessary barbarism, with the plural form, belongs to every, being more advisable (Smith
1989, p. ix). However, this opinion runs counter to that found in the Kneale
and Kneale: in some modern versions of Aristotles doctrine the difficulties of
his account of opposition are unnecessarily aggravated by use of examples and
formulae in the plural (Kneale & Kneale, 1962, p. 61).17
Crucially, this is where we meet one of Lacans less conspicuous departures

from the classical term logic, since whenever he uses the Greek vocabulary, he
does not cite the well-known singular form from the opening lines of the Prior
Analytics, but a plural form for which he never provides a specific reference18:
. This term has proven much harder to track down. It occurs just once in
the Organon, in On Sophistical Refutations, X, 170b, 33. A more likely source is the
passage from De Interpretatione to which Lacan alludes when he first mentions the
not-all in his Seminar, on 17 January 1962, but this time the precise reference is
obfuscated by Lacans choice of example: the Latinised (non) omnis homo mendax,
presumably a nod to Luthers commentary on Psalm 116. Nevertheless, whatever
Lacans source might be, his frequent use of the plural pastoutes indicates that the
condition of the not-all is to be inferred as the condition of each subject who
could be described as a woman, and not of some women.
To return, then, to page 466 of Ltourdit, we have seen that Lacan has
read the negation on the existential quantifier from the angle of its consequence
on the negation on the universal quantifier. Next, he zooms in on the formula
( x) x to extrapolate the impact of the saying of woman at the singular
level of her jouissance:
How much easier, is it not, even a delight to pledge oneself, to charge
to the account of the other quantifier, the singular of a confine,
leading as it does to the logical power of the notall being inhabited by
dint of the recess of jouissance that womanliness tucks away, even on
coming to conjoin with what maketh thomme(Lacan 2001, p. 466)19
What is at stake here is a domain endued with a confine. Invariably plural in

French, confin comes from the Latin confina, with end or with bound. Thus,
in this very deliberate use of the singular we have a tentative articulation between
what we have so far encountered only as a somewhere or an anywhere,
and the containment we saw back on page 453. Here the non-univeralisable
domain that knows no limit matches up, despite everything, with a bounded
and closed topological space.
What is the existential import of this confine? How does the not-all that defines
147
each woman come to be inhabited by means of this recess? If there exists

no woman who does not conjoin with sexual jouissance qua phallic jouissance,
how exactly does the topological space of sexual jouissance find itself assuming
the status of conjoint to the logical condition of the not-all?20 These are the questions that Ltourdit was to leave hanging for another six months, until the
opening lesson of Encore.
Compactness, presented as a complement to the initial hypothesis
Returning to the presentation of compactness in the first lesson of Encore, the
version that Lacan opens nominally as the complement to this hypothesis of
compactness is consistent with the more conventional definition of compactness that we saw earlier: the covering formed by the union of open subsets.
We simply need to add that the parenthesis that reads, that which is defined as
greater than one point and less than another, but in no case equal either to the
point of departure or the point of arrival, concerns these open subsets, and
therefore seeks to define neither the ambient topological space nor the limit
points of the space.21
148
The effort to theorise this inroad to jouissance in terms of compact space

thus equates with Lacans search for a new approach to Being sexuated in the
feminine, one which does not go via the body, but via what results from a logical
exigency in speech (Lacan 1975, p. 15). From this angle there is admittedly some
credence to be lent to the notion that the first chapter of Encore presents womans
jouissance in terms of compactness, only the route that Lacan takes in unfolding
the logic that would support it is far more subtle, and obliges us to word it in the
following terms: the presentation of jouissance in the opening chapter of Encore
includes one version, sharing key properties with the logic of the not-all, that
conforms to the conventional presentation of a compact topology; but as noted
above, this does not exclude another version, sharing key properties with the logic
of the all, that conforms to a less common presentation of a compact topology.
Aside from the afore-cited passage from page 466, Ltourdit deals very little
with the question of jouissance. Seminar XIX introduces the quantifiers of sexu-
ation as possible ways of writing a function of jouissance (Lacan 2011, p. 20),

but it is only here in the seminar Encore that we meet this first articulation between
the logical quantifiers of sexuation and the topological space of jouissance.
Compactness allows Lacan to take a step further by distinguishing between a
woman, qua open set disjoined from its limit, and her jouissance qua sexual, which
like all sexual jouissance is bounded and closed within a space (even if, within
this space, it can extend to infinity). This opens the question as to whether one
woman is sufficient to account for the topological space of sexual jouissance, a
question which did not arise within the perspective of the all where the operation of castration clearly demarked a uniformity between the range of cases of
sexual jouissance and each x that conforms to the conditions of membership
in the closed set.
The domain that accounts for the feminine logic is not closed: it contains
elements that are not and shall not be specified. Just like the subsets that cover
the compact topological space, each open set may contain points that are not
included within the bounded space, which exceed this space. This offers a logical
formalisation of what Lacan writes in Ltourdit, again on page 466: a woman
is the lone one in that her jouissance goes beyond, the jouissance that is formed
from coitus. This formula is echoed shortly afterwards in the sentence: the
jouissance that one obtains from a woman divides her, making a partner of her
solitude, whilst union remains on the threshold.
This union [] on the threshold is the One of sexual relation that bounds
the topological space without constituting an accessible point. Within the bounds
there is sexual jouissance, beyond the bounds, not solitary jouissance, but jouissance whose partner is solitude.
Constructing existence
This is the first and last time in his Seminar that Lacan will mention the theorem of compactness in relation to jouissance. Nor will it find any elaboration
whatsoever in his writings. Further still, Lacans recourse to the two models of
149
compactness built from complementaries is, perhaps, by implication, further

problematised in the lesson of 20 February when he stresses that womanly jouissance is supplementary and not complementary, since speaking in terms
of complementarity amounts to sliding back into a logic of the all (Lacan, 1975,
p. 68).
To conclude, I would like to consider an aside that Lacan voices in this first
lesson and which from one perspective already seems to anticipate the clarification to come in February by introducing a certain restriction on the use of the
classical theorem of compactness with respect to the not-all.
Lacan indicates that, on mans side, the jouissance of the phallic organ stands
as an obstacle to the movement towards the Other, thereby preventing sexual
relation from being realised. On womans side, however, Lacan does not specify
the existence of any such obstacle. If sexual relation is not realised for a woman,
if she does not meet this limit point, it may be because she too is impeded by the
obstacle of the organ, her partners or even her own, but perhaps instead this
means that the limit point is not included within the space of sexual jouissance,
or cannot be covered.22 Recall that to affirm that the limit point is not enclosed
within the topological space, or that it does not fall under a covering, is to affirm
that the topology cannot be conclusively characterised as a compact topology.
150
Lacan goes on to specify that on this side the side of the complement to
this hypothesis of compactness there is a requirement to count. Here, he is
effectively zooming in on the way that the finite family of open sets is selected
from the infinite series in order to form a sub-covering. He adds that, for them
to be countable, an order has to be found, and we have to pass through a prior
phase before supposing that this order can be found. This supposing is the
same that we meet in Seminar XIX to posit a Cantorian bijection, that is, to posit
a relationship of equivalence in the absence of a relation of equality, which is
what we saw in Koyrs Cantorian reading of the Achilles. Applying a bijection
establishes that the elements of a set are countable, an indispensible criterion
when dealing with an infinite set. If we accept the argument of equivalence, we
can indeed start counting, but Lacan leaves open the possibility that we do not
accept it.
The perspective that takes shape here on the basis of this aside is confirmed
to some extent when we refer back to Ltourdit. The following passage shows
that what Lacan draws above all else from Cantor is the notion of an inaccessible:
The support of the two [deux] that twains [faire deux], which this
notall seems to tender us, forms an illusion, but the repetition that is,
in sum, the transfinite, shows that what is involved is an inaccessible,
on the basis of which, its enumerable being a sure thing, its reduction
becomes so as well. (Lacan 2001, p. 467)
This is a condensed presentation of what had been developed in Seminar XIX

(Lacan, 2011, pp. 175-923). The allusion here is to Cantors inaccessible cardinal,
the transfinite Aleph-naught that serves to posit a limit to the set in a different
manner from the existential exception. It is a paradoxical limit because it is an
inaccessible limit, but this is all that it takes to be able to start to enumerate
the elements of the set by means of transfinite induction elements that, by
essence, cannot be enumerated. Lacans playful use of the expression in sum
is an allusion to the summation of an infinite sequence, which produces a series.
The stronger definition of inaccessibility given by Sierpiski and Tarski in 1930
runs as follows: an infinite cardinal number m is inaccessible if each product (and,
therefore, also each sum) of fewer than m numbers < m is < m. In 1947, Gdel
included an endnote to his text on Cantors continuum problem where he gives
this definition, and goes on to open a parenthesis asserting that the same definition may be applied to finite numbers: 0 and 2 and no others are inaccessible
in the strong sense (Gdel, 1947, pp. 186-724). Lacan uses this to read the inaccessibility of Aleph-naught as a repetition of the inaccessibility of the number
2. To the extent that the points between 1 and Aleph-naught are denumerable
(for example, in the case of the positive integers), so too are the points between
1 and 2. Thus, one sets off from the illusion to arrive at something sure:
an enumeration that can then be reduced. Reduction here seems to be a nod
to Russells axiom of reducibility, to which Gdel was more sympathetic than
many.25 In this context it would presumably entail reducing the series to the notall predicate. Notice, however, the curious circularity of the argument: we start
off from the sexual difference that the not-all seems to offer, and on this basis
build an interval that in turn accomodates a manifold (eux), only to conclude as
151
to the inaccessibility of this difference.

Another possible reading of this reduction is to see it as a foreshadowing
of Lacans use of the compactness theorem, where what is at stake is to extract a
finite covering from any which infinite covering of a compact space. But moving
from the logical formulas in Seminar XIX and Ltourdit to the mathematical
model in Encore obliges us to consider how taking jouissance into account modifies the existential import of the not-all.
At the close of the lesson of 10 April 1973 from Encore, Lacan specifically
mentions, somewhat ambiguously, that his question pertains to a jouissance that,
with regard to everything that serves a purpose in the function of Fx, belongs
to the order of the infinite (Lacan, 1975, p. 94). He then proceeds to a more
sophisticated formulation of the not-all that contrasts with the references he was
using the previous year. He tells his audience that although conventionally one
cannot posit that the not-all entails the existence of something that is produced by
a negation or by a contradiction, one can posit it as an indeterminate existence, as
is done in intuitionistic mathematical logic. Furthermore, within this model, to
posit a there exists, one also has to be able to construct it, that is, to know how
to find out where this existence is (Lacan, 1975, p. 94). The operative word here
is construct. In appealing to a constructivist model, Lacan seems to be moving
away from the classical Cantorian model of sets bounded by transfinites.26
152
In a certain sense, the question is no longer as to whether the not-all set can be
ordered, because according to Cantor and Zermelo, every set has an order (if we
take the Axiom of Choice). Rather, the question is as to whether a not-all grouping
can even be posited as a set. This accounts for why the famous dit-femmation
that Lacan singles out (Lacan, 1975, p. 79) is not restricted to the word of hurtful intent: playing spokesperson of the Athena doctrine, a more commonly met
recourse in our day, is merely the other face of the same coin.
Intuitionism problematises to varying degrees the notion of a set for infinite
sequences. Its founder, the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer, even went so
far as to replace sets with his concepts of Spreiding, or spread, and species,
which accommodate Wahlfolgen, or choice sequences.

Lacan does not develop his reference to intuitionism and constructivism any
further, but two aspects of Brouwers mathematical legacy are particularly pertinent to our considerations here:
1. First, Brouwer holds that choice sequences reflect the constant presence of a scheppende subject, a creating subject. This notion of a creating subject was devised as an ideal mind that would be performing and
hosting the mathematical operations, step by step, without interference
from individual psychological factors. However, the sequences are
performed contingently, in the flow of time. We might hazard an analogy between Brouwers ideal mathematician and the ideal dream
worker, Freuds unconscious subject that does not think, calculate, or
judge (Freud, 1900a, p. 507).27 The spreads are chains of signifiers that
are generated subjectively, as opposed to algorithms or data strings, and
thus, at whichever point the development of the sequence has reached
at any given moment, one finds there the subject who is responsible for
them, much like the dreamer who occupies each of the places in the
dream.28
2. Second, Brouwers fan theorem allows for a constructive substitute for
compact sets. A fan is a finitely branching spread that is accounted for
by bars that have been clipped from longer spreads.29 This so-called
bar induction offers an effective analogue to transfinite induction. In 1958, Georg Kreisel proposed an axiomatisation for lawless
sequences ranging over fans (Kreisel, 1958). These lawless sequences,
aside from being the strongest case of time-dependent, subject-dependent objects (van Atten, 2007, p. 96), betray the same condition as
described by the not-all quantifier: there is neither closure, nor determination. Thus, each of the topological descriptions presented in the first
chapter of Encore may be reproduced using intuitionistic characterisations.
Lacan seems to be transposing in all likelihood unknowingly30 something
153
strongly akin to this constructive model into the field of psychoanalysis when
he turns to the feminine myth of Don Juan. Here, once again, we need to be
attentive to the nuances. Many commentators have read the passage on Don Juan
as describing mans approach to woman, but this is the exact opposite of what
Lacan sets out. It concerns what the other sex, the male sex, is for women. We
are not looking at a recipe for the man in his approach to womens jouissance, as
some have chosen to read it, but at womans approach to something particular to
her, in passing via this fantasmatic character who places her among other women
in a series that can be enumerated. This is one way, and there are surely others,
of incarnating the man whom she will use as a relay, whereby she becomes this
Other unto herself, as she is for him (Lacan 1982b, p. 92).
154
We may note that there is nothing in this passage that contradicts or modifies what Lacan had developed on Don Juan in Seminar X: as an incarnation of
this absolute object in a womans fantasy, he is, as a man, in a position of radical
imposture. It is not certain that he desires, nor even that he enjoys. Don Juan is
not the father of the horde who enjoys all the women. He is the one who, quite
to the contrary, allows jouissance to be approached by setting down names. What
we singled out earlier as cases of jouissance, a jouissance that would perhaps be
anonymous were it not for the phallus, here transform into names of women.
Each woman takes the place of a case of jouissance, and allows of a nomination. The myth of Don Juan allows for a kind of axiomatisation, just as Lacan
qualifies the fantasy as an axiom. A name is set down, which is then enumerated.
In effect, the notion of the countable sounds more like an enumerable, and
resembles far more Brouwers concepts of spread and species than the open set of
classical mathematics. Note that the Being that is concerned by this naming is
not some multiplicity of supposed female beings, but the singular Being of the
enumerating subject.
As we have seen, Lacan is tackling two intimately linked but nevertheless
distinct issues: first, the inaccessible limit that is implied by the negation on
the universal quantifier; and second, the status of the limit point that bounds
the locus of sexual jouissance and its implications for an existential construction. If, as we have suggested, Lacan implicitly excludes one of the limit points
from the space of sexual jouissance when he takes the inroad of the not-all, the
One reaffirms its presence, in a certain sense, within the space of the interval,
as a requirement. Something similar also holds for Being, which previously
constituted the other boundary of the topology, but is now identified with a
requirement of infinity (Lacan, 1975, p. 15):
(Requirement of the) One
(Requirement to count, un(e) par un(e))
Being
(Requirement of infinity)
This is how one can, from the second perspective (the so-called complement
to the hypothesis of compactness), start off from the limit, despite what might
be an absence of limit point within the covering collection. Or, to figure this differently, one uses the One in a different way: it is no longer the fusional One
that marks the place of (impossible) relation, it is the One that repeats across the
domain each time that it is enumerated under a different name. It is precisely this
rigorous requirement of naming and enumerating that distinguishes the feminine
encore from the persistent divergence met in male sexuality, with its resulting
centrifugal tendency (Lacan, 1982a, pp. 84-85), the same that according to the
terms of Ltourdit renders a man clumsy in imagining that having two of
them makes her (la) all (Lacan, 2001, p. 469).
Russell Grigg has argued that the reference to the enumeration of cases
implicitly means taking the formula ( x) x in extension, thus producing
two readings of the not-all (Grigg, 2005, p. 65). We would nuance this observation by suggesting that the enumerating subject is not to be identified with the
axiomatising operator that enables the enumeration (in the example given, the
fantasmatic Don Juan). As Mark van Atten has argued in his analysis of choice
sequences, we have to keep in mind the distinction between the identity of the
process and the identity of the sequence that is constituted in it, with the latter
being founded on the former (van Atten, 2007, p. 91-231). In our reading, one
singular creating subject is present across each step of the spread that is being
generated, and the condition of the subject as not-all is equivalent to the condition
of the spread itself. In other words, each case in the enumeration contributes
to the description of one single variable that is thereby defined in ( x) x.
155
Adopting the intuitionistic model with respect to the not-all brings with it the
consequence that the inscription of ( x) x will prove to be contingent, and not
necessary. Indeed, this is how Lacan approaches the transfinite the following year
in Seminar XXI, which he reads as dependent upon Cantors act of saying. And he
will add, in the lesson of 19 February 1974, that, the little bar Ive been placing
above the inverted A, which allows the not-all to be written, ought to be replaced
by the sign for the countable, namely Aleph-naught. The expression allows to
be written is not innocent here: it denotes a specific mode of inscription that
depends upon the contingency of the enumerating process as performed by a
subject in time.32 The inscription does not, however, constitute a knowable entity.
This, in any case, is as close as we have come to a demonstration of an absense of knowledge in the feminine real.
The above text is a slightly revised version of the lecture presented at Barnard College, Columbia
University, New York, on 13 November 2013, at the invitation of Maria Cristina Aguirre. It is an
expanded version of the paper delivered in French to the Pont-Freudien association in Montreal
on 11 September 2013 at the invitation of Anne Braud.
156
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A transcription of Kripkes lectures was published in 1971 in (Davidson & Harman, 1971). It
was reprinted in 1980 as the book Naming and Necessity (Kripke, 1980).
2
Here in the mid-seventies the vocabulary is specifically one of naming, clearly influenced by
Kripkes work to which Lacan was exposed by Franois Recanati, the French translator of Naming
and Necessity and a regular contributor to Lacans seminar between 1971 and 1973. This should
not detract from the fact that the same theme had been present in Lacans teaching from a much
earlier date, albeit couched in the vocabulary of the time. See for example Lacans 1960 letter to
Winnicott: the signifier marks the real as much and more than it represents it (Lacan 1990, p. 76).
3
Except where noted, all quotations from Seminar XX reference the French text published by
1
Seuil: (Lacan, 1975).

4
Curiously, the English-language translation gives titrated for what he calls libido, without
there being anything in either the text or the original recording that would support this allusion
to titration.
5
We have tackled this intricate interplay between nomination and the real of jouissance in (Price,
2012).
6
As Lacan had said ten years previously in Seminar X: Since man will never bring the leading edge
of his desire this far, one is able to say that mans jouissance and womans jouissance will never
conjoin organically (Lacan, 2014, p. 265).
7
For instance, again in Seminar X, Lacan was already insisting on finite desire in opposition to a
more circumspect infinity of desire:
this pseudo-infinity is due to one thing alone [...] the whole number. [...] This false
infinity is linked to the kind of metonymy that, concerning the definition of the whole
number, is called recursion. Its the law we accentuated forcefully last year with regard
to the recursive One. But [...] this One, to which at the end of the day the succession
of signifying elements, insofar as they are distinct, are reduced, does not exhaust the
function of the Other (Lacan, 2014, p. 26).
160
In 1962, the Other embraces the One plus the object a. In 1972, the Other embraces the One plus
the fault-line that is structured in accordance with a true infinity (like the infinity of a compact
space).
8
The sole published English-language translation of Book XX lamentably offers the reader no
means of finding his bearings in this distinction, failing as it does to respect the standard mathematical terminology.
9
For a much fuller account of the historical development of compactness, see (Pier, 1980).
10
Mention cannot be made of this passage without a brief review of the numerous and often
contradictory commentaries it has spawned. Lacan is indeed uncharacteristically rapid in his presentation of the elements necessary for a clear comprehension of the mathematical theorem at
issue. Such as it is reproduced on page 14 of the Seuil edition, this passage incurred, somewhat
notoriously, the scorn of Sokal and Bricmont in 1997. Aside from what they perceived to be a
general imprecision in the argumentation of this chapter, Sokal and Bricmont attacked in particular
its ostensible definitions of an open set and a limit. Some commentators strove to reply to this part
of their critique by brushing up the passage, notably the mathematician and psychoanalyst Nathalie
Charraud (Charraud, 1998) and the academic Henry Krips (Krips, 2000), but in so doing they did
not manage to head off the renewed critique that Sorkal and Bricmont published in Metascience.
Indeed, Sokal and Bricmont refute Kripss commentary on open and closed sets, as well as his
elaboration on finite and countable coverings. Other commentators have tried to decipher
this passage by referring to other sources, notably the recording of this lesson of the seminar
on which one can clearly hear Lacan utter en un nombre fini densembles and not sur un nombre infini
densembles (Lacan 1975, p. 14) and on which the parenthetical remark that includes se dfinit comme
plus grand quun point, plus petit quun autre &c. (Lacan 1975, pp. 14-15) does not seem to qualify
the concept of limit, but rather that of an open set. The following readings each take this inroad:
(Krutzen, 1993), (Landmann, 2008), and (Cesbron-Lavau, 2007). Notwithstanding the fact that
the Book of Seminar XX was published by ditions du Seuil during Lacans lifetime (1975), it has
to be admitted that Lacans words as preserved on audio tape offer a sharply divergent version of
the details that were to become the object of Sokal and Bricmonts critique. What we do take on
board in their critique is that, so long as neither the points of the space, nor the open sets, have
been defined in Lacans analogical use of them, it is hard to offer a comprehensive reading of this
application of topology to the space of sexual jouissance.
11
On this and related issues, we would refer the reader to (Allen, 2008).
12
Blanch the logician and epistemologist was seeking to formalise further Aristotelian logic,
whereas Brunschwig the historian and philologist was concerned with identifying the particularities
of Aristotles thinking in his time. Note that Blanch expanded the square of oppositions into a
logical hexagon that embraces six statements.
13
Furthermore, as Brunschwig also observes, the status of the two occurrences of the conjunction or ought not to be accorded equal weight, since the first marks the disjunction between
the affirmative particular and the negative particular, whilst the second conforms more to the
usage of the English or that we find defined in the OED, 4.a.: connecting two words denoting
the same thing, in this case denoting the negative particular. Brunschwig will add, however, that
this inference cannot be established from the grammar alone, but is dependent upon elements
developed further on in the text (Brunschwig, 1969, pp. 9-10).
14
Actually, he offers three, but the third is proffered as a recreational amusement and is immediately discounted as bearing nothing that would allow it to be upheld. It consists in dispensing
with any relations of contradiction between universal and particular by transforming them into
relations of implication (Brunschwig, 1969, p. 8).
15
Regrettably, the same author who took the initiative of tracking down Brunschwig in the year
prior to the latters death, putting him to the question on this matter, saw fit in his article to blur the
boundaries between the remarks of the deceased and his own notions, for which he was seeking
higher authorisation. The reader of this Hommage (Darmon, 2010) is thus left utterly in the dark
as to Brunschwigs actual reckoning of Lacans work, with its author exposing himself in his chief
mission of debunking contemporary commentators, rather than that of transmitting any precious in extremis observations from the historian. For examples of explicit and extended matching
between Lacans not-all and the maximal reading of the negative particular, see (Le Gaufey, 2008)
and (Grigg, 2005, pp. 53-65).
16
This has not stopped them from being used for just that, by the very same surely this is no
coincidence who floundered in his born rendering.
17
Recent translators and commentators have tended to maintain the use of all, notably Gisela
Striker in (Striker, 2009). See also the note on Every and all from the chapter on The Orthodox
dictum Semantics in (Malink, 2013).
18
Cf. the opening lesson of Seminar XXIII:
Hence my formula about woman, which Im pegging out, as it were, for your use, by
using the , which is the opposition, dismissed by Aristotle, to the universal of
the , and which I picked out from the Organon. I havent managed to find it again, but
I did read it there, sure enough that my daughter, who is here today, put her finger on it
and swore to me earlier that she would find the place again for me (Lacan, 2005, p. 14).
Thomme is both tout homme, everyman, and tome, the tomos of a cut or a section, since the phallic function localises jouissance at a specific site or sites in the body as the result of castration.
19
161
Womans conjoining with the man could be her sexual encounter with the man or her hysterical
performance of faire lhomme, playing the man (Lacan, 2001, p. 464).
20
A conjoint is also a spouse.
21
In the Seuil version, this definition is appended to the limit: la limite est ce qui se dfinit comme
&c. See endnote 10 above.
22
Consider, too, Lacans later reflection on Nagisa Oshimas film In the Realm of the Senses:
S of barred A is something altogether different from F. It is not that with which man
makes love. In the end, he makes love with his unconscious, and nothing more. As for
what the woman fantasises, if this is really what the film presents us with, it is something
that, either way, impedes the encounter (Lacan, 2005, p. 127).
Recall that the fantasy of the woman in the film is to kill her partner. She then cuts off his penis.
Lacan stresses that her fantasy is not the act of castration itself.
23
We refer to the Seuil text with one proviso: Lacans remark that Aleph-naught se trouve raliser le
mme cas, has been expanded to read se trouve raliser le mme cas que le 1. In our understanding, 0
realises the same case as 2.
24
In Gdels revised version of the article in 1964, the same note has been amended to include
the observation that since (non strong) accessibility is not equivalent to strong accessibility for
finite numbers, its equivalence is doubtful in the case of transfinite numbers (Gdel, 1964, p. 265).
25
Note also that in his 1944 article on Russells mathematical logic, Gdel wrote of this transfinite theorem of reducibility (1944, p. 136), but removed the formula from the 1964 and 1972
reprints of the text.
26
This aspect of the not-all has also given rise to a recent disputation that is of some pertinence
here. In section IV of his Note threaded stitch by stitch in the appendix to Le sminaire livre
XXIII, Jacques-Alain Miller argues that
162
Aristotelian quantification is inscribed into a universe of discourse that is finite.

Therefore, whether maximal or minimal, Aristotles not-all plays only on lack and incompleteness [...]. Lacans not-all is deployed on the contrary in an infinite universe, and it
is constructed on the intuitionistic model of a choice sequence: the emphasis shifts to the
impossibility of stating the universality of the predicate. If the law of the formation
of the series (all As are B) has not been posited at the outset, however far the series is
pursued, and even if from one moment to the next it has been confirmed that there is
no A that is not B, it will be impossible ever to conclude that this is the case for all of
them. As such, the sequence is lawless. (Lacan, 2005, p. 208)
The Australian philosopher Russell Grigg (Grigg 2005) takes issue with this reading of the not-all,
alleging that Miller is incorrect in asserting that the universe of discourse in Aristotelian logic is
finite. Grigg does, however, side with those commentators who, like Miller, read the Lacanian not-all
as compatible with the negative particular, but he amplifies Millers diagnosis of an intuitionistic
model of a potential infinite in Lacan, contrasting it with the Cantorian model of the actual infinite.
For more on the infinite in antiquity, see (Koyr, 1949, pp. 34-5). On related issues of actualised
subjective infinity and objective infinity, see J.H. Prynnes remark to Keston Sutherland, and Sutherlands
reply, at: vimeo.com/90546839. Prynnes remark is in response to (Sutherland, 2014).
27
Brouwers creating subject has also been likened to Husserls version of the transcendental subject
(van Atten, 2007, p. 21), but the same author shows that non-lawlike sequences in no way fit into
Husserls picture (p. 15). Lacan matches Marxs ideal worker with Freuds dream-work in Television
(Lacan, 1990, p. 14, p. 19, p. 46). We understand the absence of calculation at the inter-subjective
level: there is no calculation or judgement as to the reception of the work, only a brand of calculating that is restricted to giving things a new form (Freud, 1900a, p. 507).
28
All the places is not to be understood as all the characters, as Malcolm Lowry would say of
his Under the Volcano (quoted in Sinclair, 2013, p. 179), but as every noun, verb, adverb, preposition,
article, and so on. Cf. Lacans comment on Finnegans Wake: the dreamer is not any one character,
he is the dream itself (Lacan, 2006, p. 125), and also: I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that
is being written, even if it looks like a subject (Lacan, 1977, p. xl).
29
For more on Brouwers fan theorem, see (Petrakis, undated).
30
Lacans reference to intuitionism features much further on in Seminar XX. However, it is interesting to compare the intuitionistic critique of the Cantorian model with the critique by C. S. Peirce
that was presented by Franois Recanati in the penultimate lesson of Seminar XIX. Recanati isolates
the Peircean concept of potential, which is
the locus in which impossibilities are inscribed, it is the general possibility of non-effectuated, that is, non-inscribed, impossibilities. However, in relation to the inscriptions that
are produced there, it does not entail any necessity; thus the 2 has no rational explanation
in Hegels sense, that is, it has no necessary explanation. (Recanati, 1973a, p. 58)
Recanati develops this in a letter addressed to Lacan on 18 June 1972, which Lacan published in
issue 4 of Scilicet (the same that includes Ltourdit):
A potentiality is only ever realised individually, but then its potentially is destroyed.
Only the potential embraces indistinctly all the points of a set. Thus the potential has no
common measure with the order of its individual realisations. (Recanati, 1973b, p. 64)
Recanati concludes with the observation that, the ground forms the link between the potential
and singularity. Our hypothesis is that Lacans approach to jouissance as possessing a compact
topology is an attempt to formalise this ground.
On the coincidences between Peirces notions and Brouwers, see (Putnam, 1995, pp. 15-16) and
(Mayo-Wilson, 2011).
31
Van Atten compares the unfolding of the choice sequence to the unfolding of a melody (2007,
pp. 93-4). Could this be the same property to which Kierkegaard demonstrated such great sensitivity when he qualified the myth of Don Juan as intrinsically altogether musical (Kierkegaard,
1987, p. 57)?
32
Akihiro Kanamori has argued that a historical misrepresentation has been perpetrated that
constantly pits constructivity against Cantorian and post-Cantorian methodology. In fact, it is
somewhat ironic but also revealing that pushing the mathematical frontier of the actual infinite
past Aleph-naught, grew out of work by analysts with a definite constructive bent (Kanamori,
1996, p. 16). Alain Badiou criticised Lacans use of the not-all for what he perceived as a failure to
deduce an affirmative existential premise from the negation on the universal, and he sees this as a
result of Lacans reliance on a model that is pre-Cantorian (Badiou, 1992, p. 296). In the aforecited article, Grigg reponds to Badiou by making a persuasive case for Lacan as a constructivist in
his mathematics, while still remaining classical in his logic (Grigg, 2005, pp. 58-60). Our critique
163
of Badious article is slightly different: Badiou goes looking for the infinite field in which the notall operates, and finds it in feminine jouissance (Badiou, 1992, p. 293). We have shown that Lacan
uses compactness to inscribe the not-all as a covering on the bounded yet infinite locus of sexual
jouissance. Other jouissance is only implied as that which falls under the covering, though not
within the bounded interval. But not even this implication is mentioned by Lacan, who carefully
restricts his argument to the field of sexual jouissance, for which he posits two complementary
characterisations. It is Badious identification of the not-all with feminine jouissance that leads
him into his various divergences from Lacans use of the formulas of sexuation. Then, he strays
further off course by seeking to refute Lacans use of the definition of strong accessibility, seemingly unaware that his quarrel is with Sierpiski, Tarski, and Cantor, and not the psychoanalyst.
164

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Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I START OFF FROM THE LIMIT

I start off from the limit

nomination was as straightforward as hitherto reckoned. Kripke for one, in his

Lacan goes on to observe that sexual jouissance assumed a preponderant place

To speak in terms of a fault-line of jouissance is not to imply that there is

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

by algorithms in the way that this reference to energetics is liable to suggest.

I start off from the limit

It is a matter, therefore, of ascertaining its signifying logic behind what emerges

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

Lacan then speaks of a double characteristic of jouissance. On one side, it

I start off from the limit

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

with the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem that is valid for bounded sequences in

I start off from the limit

Lacan uses this manner of characterising a compact space to account for

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

elements to be distinguished within them that cluster around a point of accumulation

I start off from the limit

The not-all and the problem of its existential import

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I start off from the limit

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

the word some. (Lacan 2011, p. 105)

I start off from the limit

This kind of sharp demarcation between fields allows categorical syllogisms

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I start off from the limit

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

Crucially, this is where we meet one of Lacans less conspicuous departures

What is at stake here is a domain endued with a confine. Invariably plural in

I start off from the limit

each woman come to be inhabited by means of this recess? If there exists

The effort to theorise this inroad to jouissance in terms of compact space

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

ation as possible ways of writing a function of jouissance (Lacan 2011, p. 20),

I start off from the limit

compactness built from complementaries is, perhaps, by implication, further

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

This is a condensed presentation of what had been developed in Seminar XIX

I start off from the limit

to the inaccessibility of this difference.

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

which accommodate Wahlfolgen, or choice sequences.

I start off from the limit

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I start off from the limit

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

Charraud, N. (1998). Mathmatiques avec Lacan. In Jurdant, B. (ed.) Impostures

I start off from the limit

Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Blackwell.

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I start off from the limit

Seuil: (Lacan, 1975).

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I start off from the limit

Aristotelian quantification is inscribed into a universe of discourse that is finite.

Lacunae | issue 11 | November 2015

I start off from the limit

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