Lacan's real

Lacanians would be justified in criticizing this too partial, too one-sided perhaps, clarification of a complex notion, and one which, in Lacan, has evolved. Its only justification is its aim, which is to clarify for our students of art and literature what we mean by this term.

The term " real " belongs to Lacanian terminology. In any case, this term takes on meaning here only in the sense it takes on within a trilogy, the other two components of which are the " symbolic¹ " and the  " imaginary² ". These are indeed, according to Lacan, the " three essential registers of human reality ".

History

It's always enlightening to go back to the origins. Although he seems to have forgotten it in the end, it was from Georges Bataille that Lacan borrowed, if not the term, at least the concept of the real. Bataille distinguished between two structural poles of human society: the homogeneous, or domain of useful, productive society, and the heterogeneous, the site of the irruption of that which is impossible to symbolize. The latter term refers to the notion of the "cursed part", central to his approach. Indeed, his work takes as its object the irretrievable, the waste, the garbage, in short everything that is " other ", outside the norm, like madness or delirium. It is from Bataille's reflection on the heterogenous and on the impossible that Lacan draws the concept of real conceived as " reste ", then as " impossible ".

Lacan's conception of the real evolved. In his first topic, in 1953, he makes the Real (R) a " field ", framed by those of the Symbolic (S) and the Imaginary (I). The fields communicate, can overlap, intrude into each other.

In the Lacanian conception in fine of the " real ", elaborated in 1970, the term will become a pure " category ", always forming a system with the other two, to such an extent that the three categories will form the " Borromean knot ".

Lacan's evolution between these two dates takes place in the direction of the primacy of the real. Indeed, in the first topic - i.e. before 1970 - the symbolic occupies the dominant place, according to the SIR order. In the second, he assigns first place to the real, according to the order RSI. It was precisely in 1972 that this trilogy took on the name " Borromean knot " (in the image of the Borromeo family coat of arms, whose blazon comprised 3 rings linked together in the manner of the 3 Olympic circles, so that the disappearance of one would lead to the dissolution of the whole). The heraldic metaphor serves to emphasize that the category of the real is only meaningful in relation to the other two - from which it is nonetheless disjointed. It is, in fact, a real outside the symbolic and imaginary. Outside meaning. For meaning to exist, the symbolic and the imaginary must collaborate. But it is precisely because it is excluded from meaning that it interests us and that we can put meaning on it.

Real and reality

The difference between these notions is essential. The real is absolutely distinct from reality³. The latter belongs to the symbolic register (we are indeed bathed in an ocean of language). It is also based on the imaginary register. Reality, " is the real tamed by the symbolic, with which the imaginary is woven ". But the real is beyond reality. The real is that which, not having been experienced in reality, is a symptom of life. It's what doesn't work, what's wrong with existence.

The difference can still be read in their characters /// Unlike reality, the real is unattainable. Indeed, as it is unrepresentable, unthinkable and unspecifiable, it is hard to see how we can capture it. It's the blind spot of our knowledge. Lacan readily repeats that the real is the impossible. This is how " the truth holds to the real ", insofar as " to say it all is impossible : words are lacking⁴ ". A very old proverb by Sextus Empiricus  " the truth is at the bottom of the well⁵ "...

The real is also distinguished from reality by its function : as we shall see, it creates a hollowness, it makes a hole. It designates the very defect that is constitutive of structure, of the structural fact. Reality, on the other hand, is made up of constructions capable of masking or simply containing this lack, this irreducible outside.

Far from merging with reality, the real is, on the contrary, its limit point. In this sense, it has the function of an impasse : " when you get to the end, it's the end... and that's precisely what's interesting, because that's where the real " says Lacan.

The real is therefore the unhooking from reality. But at the same time, " in this reality, [...] the real [...] is already⁶ ", since both are situated outside the subject. The external world is constructed within the real, under the regime of the reality principle, but the real, beneath this constructed world, is ready to overwhelm it. " It's there, identical to its existence, noise where everything can be heard, and ready to submerge with its splinters what the "principle of reality" constructs there under the name of the external world⁷ ".

Relation to the symbolic

To try and explain what the category of the symbolic is all about, it's a good idea to take a more theoretical approach, and start from the construction of the subject. In the beginning was the child. A pre-oedipal child cultivating a fusional relationship with his mother, whose total jouissance (in the sense of possession) he enjoyed. But for Lacan, there is no subject until the infans (the one who doesn't speak) gains access to the symbolic (which is the order of language). But the operation comes at a price. Only the Oedipal separation gives him access to the symbolic order, the order of the father. For the subject to emerge, for the infans to access the logos, a loss is necessary (hence the famous " manque " constitutive of the subject, which is, for this reason, of the order of the real). He loses this mythical primordial jouissance forever: this is the irretrievable fall of the object a  (which also necessarily belongs to the order of the real), a fall that will henceforth be objectified both as a lost object, in the field of the real, and as a lack in the field of the symbolic, i.e. a gap in the matrix of signifiers. The lost object thus constitutes a hole in the signifying chain. The symbolic has bitten into the real (but at the same time, it's the real that has constructed the symbolic...). This makes Lacan say that the real suffers from the signifier, but at the same time builds the signifier⁸.

Since we're referring to the object a, it's necessary to provide some clarification on this denomination. What does Lacan mean by the object a ? in fact, by means of a letter, he puts a name on something that is in reality unnameable, like everything that belongs to the order of the real. With this letter, Lacan designates the lost object, the missing object, the loss suffered by the subject as a result of speaking. The letter's central function is to signify absence. The object a thus designates an impossibility, a point of absence. /// resistance. We bypass the real by representing it with a letter, like the x in algebra. But whereas the algebra of mathematicians allows us to lift the incognito of " x ", Lacanian algebra in no way proposes to resolve this unknown, doomed to remain " l'objet a "...

On a formal level, we can define a as that which is heterogeneous to the network of the signifying set. The signifying system produces a other that is foreign to it. It is a residual product, a surplus. The object a is the heterogeneous as excess generated by the formal system of signifiers. And it is this residual product, this heterogeneous product, of a real nature, that gives consistency to the homogeneous set of signifiers. The chain of signifiers therefore needs an eliminated product ( a ) to function. Which means we can also think of it as a hole in the structure. Not a static hole, but a sucking void, the source of a sucking force that attracts signifiers, animates them and gives consistency to the chain. As a result, the symbolic is perforated. Indeed, by definition, it is thanks to this lack that it functions - the signifier only having meaning in relation to another signifier (as linguistics teaches us).

Moreover, what characterizes the symbolic is the mobility of places. The real, on the other hand, is seamless, simple and compact. All places are fixed and occupied. It's " already there " - which contradicts " In the beginning was the Word " (the famous opening of John's Gospel). Before the verb, there is the Thing, the real, for Lacan. It is therefore prior to speech, just as it remains external to it. It is what is rejected, correlated with expulsion. It constitutes the irreducible remainder. This is why Lacan sometimes defines it as what suffers from the signifier. In other words, a signifier takes the place of the real, the place emptied of what was once an overflow of meaning. It is this casting out of the real that makes it foreign to representation; it is what resists all symbolization.

As opposed to the symbolic, the real enjoys, so to speak, an absence of absence. Despite conventional wisdom, the real is not hidden; there is no lack, no absence in the real. (Warning : it constitutes a lack, but itself is not " lack ", far from it!) It is " absolutely without fissure ". "What could be missing from the real?" exclaims Lacan. So the distinction between interiority and exteriority makes no sense at the level of the real.

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Another difference : unlike the symbolic, which is " that which can change place ", the real is " that which always returns to the same place - to that place where the subject, insofar as he cogitates, does not encounter it⁹ ". Hence the return, the insistent repetition.

Finally, the real is lawless, antinomic to meaning, to structure, impossible to negate. The real is the positive name for " hors sens ". This is why we must seek to pass beneath meaning.

Real and brutality

The real is therefore absolutely other. Such otherness constitutes permanent violence. This is felt in the form of a " reste " : something that resists, that insists ; a desiring reality, inaccessible to all subjective thought. Indeed, the " ça " is de-subjectivized  it speaks, it acts. And the id is violent, due to the brutality of the drive that moves it.

So, since this reality is unbearable, we hide it from ourselves by means of a fantasized reality. While, as we've just said, the id is desubjectivized, there is a subject of fantasy. The id is always "dressed". But fantasy isn't always enough to contain the drive, which then makes itself felt in its purest form. When fantasy doesn't /// is no longer enough, dissolves, anguish emerges.

This is why we seek to attenuate, by domesticating or diverting it, the brutality of reality. Because, paradoxically, it is on this attempt that literature, and all works of art, are founded. Text has the function of clothing...

Relating to the incomprehensible

We've seen that the real designates a reality impossible to symbolize. It is this resistance to the logos and its radical otherness that make it incomprehensible.

This absolutely other gives itself by evading, as lack (attention : we feel it as lack, but it doesn't lack, doesn't contain lack. It is flawless), jouissance, or death. As a result, we shouldn't see the incomprehensibility of a story as the mark of a failure of literature, but as the index of the strangeness of the other, which is irreducible to the logos, that is, to the symbolic order.

Relationship to contingency

Far from saying that every real is possible, it's only from the not possible that the real takes place. What the subject seeks is the real as precisely not possible. " The real is the impossible¹⁰ ", which Lacan defines as " that which does not cease not to be written¹¹ ". It is in contingency, defined as " that which ceases not to be written ", that the moment of encounter with the real is situated  the real is what proves itself when the encounter occurs. Something then ceases not to be written.

Conclusion

The real postulates a violence done to " good order ", to the order of the logos. Because good order wants nothing to do with the unacceptability of reality. At the heart of the system lies this lack, this crack or fission of radical, intransitive violence. And writing, in its attempt to re-present this rupture, can only erase it. It merely sutures it. It comes to the rescue of "good order", restoring it. And yet, in some works, we see asperities where this reality returns, a reality that the traditional tools of narratology and poetics cannot account for. The challenge for writers, then, is not always to construct a work of fiction with an air of reality, as one might think, but to make reality happen. It's these moments when the real returns that it's interesting to point out. As you'd expect, the difficulty lies in evoking the real  it takes cunning to recognize it and avoid mistaking it for reality  then to summon it, since it eludes naming. So we have to trap it - that's the role of " devices " in terms of creation. At the level of reception, we need enough cunning not to remain trapped by the lures, captives of the devices.

These devices are encountered in scenes, by means of screens. The scene's signal is ignition. Indeed, all this can only operate in fulgurance.

Bibliography

F. BALMÈS, Ce que dit Lacan de l'être, Collège International de Philosophie, PUF, 1999
J. LACAN, Écrits, Seuil, 1966 (see especially chapters " Au-delà du principe de réalité " and " Réponse au commentaire de Jean Hyppolite ")
- Le Séminaire, livre IV, La Relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes, Seuil, 1986
- Le Séminaire, livre VII, L'Éthique de la psychanalyse, Seuil, 1986
- Le Séminaire, livre XI, Les Quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Seuil, 1973
- Le Séminaire, livre XX, Encore, Seuil, 1975
- Autres écrits, Seuil, 2001 (see especially the chapters " Radiophonie " and /// " Television ")
S. LOJKINE, La Scène de roman, A. Colin, 2002
J.-A. MILLER, Conférence à Toulouse, 2006
E. ROUDINESCO, Jacques Lacan. Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'un système de pensée, Fayard, 1993
E. ROUDINESCO & M. PLON, Dictionnaire de la psychanalyse, Fayard, 1997
S. TRIBOLET, Freud, Lacan, Dolto enfin expliqués, L'Esprit du Temps, 2008

Notes