Department Chair
Dr. Ralph L. Wahlstrom
Date of Award
8-2018
Access Control
Campus-Only Access
Degree Name
English, M.A.
Department
English Department
Advisor
Dr. David N. Ben-Merre
Department Home page
http://english.buffalostate.edu/
First Reader
Dr. David N. Ben-Merre
Second Reader
Dr. Macy P. Todd
Abstract
In 1963, having been ousted from the International Psychoanalytic Association, the public intellectual Jacques Lacan faced a crucial moment in his career. Set to deliver a yearly seminar on his own concept, the Name(s)-of-the-Father, Lacan reads his institutional expulsion as a defining moment for psychoanalysis itself. Consequently, only a single class is held on the subject, and Lacan vows to never recommence the course. “I will never take up this theme again,” he insists, “seeing there the sign that this seal would not know how to be lifted again for psychoanalysis.” One could say the interruption presents a “lacuna” in Lacan’s work which he is subsequently “laconic” about.
But Lacan’s reports of his dispute with the Association are fraught with contradictions. One moment the incident is a typical power struggle among colleagues; the next, Lacan renders it an infernal drama over Sigmund Freud’s legacy. By reading Lacan’s pronouncements about his fateful seminar and the Names-of-the-Father to the letter, it becomes apparent there is more to the story than meets the eye, with the theatrical “excommunication” perhaps serving as the (absent) center of his discourse and the “Lacanian orientation” as a whole….
Recommended Citation
Busshart, Garrett, "The Lacanian Real as Absent Cause: The Name(s)-of-the-Father, or Les Non-Dupes Errent" (2018). English Theses. 26.
https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/english_theses/26
Note: To access this document you must have a Digital Commons account using a valid Buffalo State email address or be accessing the internet through the Buffalo State campus network.
COinS