What is Knowledge?

This evening I shall revisit one of the stakes underlying the title of this seminar itself, namely ‘knowledge.’ As I said last time knowledge by definition in this case is not a knowledge (of something) as such, it is instead what uses the infinitive (case) to introduce something non-finite (infini) into the core of infinity itself – something that lacks both subject and object.

It is the “absolute” in “absolute knowledge,” highly akin to what Lacan called “knowledge in the Real.” “In the Real” does not mean a real knowledge, but a knowledge aimed at the Real as ungraspable. As Lacan put it on 15-February-1977 for example: “There is (such a thing as) knowledge, not just anywhere, but in the Real. This knowledge tells the truth but does not speak, but in order to tell something you have to speak.”[1]

The crucial distinction for us is between unconscious knowledge and Imaginary knowledge, or a knowledge in which the Imaginary has assumed ascendancy, because what matters is how two knowledges can become three. It’s not about three rings which are being tied together, its how two can make three, which is something completely different. The relevant quote I referred to last time in relation to this was from Lacan’s seminar “Les Non-Dupes Errent,” (“Non-Dupes Err/The Names of the Father”) 21-May-1974, when he said “The Woman does not exist, a (une) woman can however be produced when a knotting or even better a braiding occurs.”

The dimension of the One (Un) is the unseen and unheard (of) way of writing a (une) woman. What I mean is the feminine presupposes a sudden putting into continuity between itself as One (Un féminin) and the universal All of “all men,” (tout homme), or masculine knowledge in a locus of ‘ek-sistence.’

Thus it is an experience of discourse that can be spoken about: What makes it such that the speaking being, insofar as “the unconscious is not that the being thinks, but that in speaking it enjoys (jouisse) and doesn’t want to know anything more about it, meaning, does not want to know anything about it at all.” Thus the “all” returns.

That was a quote from Encore, I think it was the seminar meeting Miller entitled “Knowledge and Truth.”

What makes this unseen and unheard (of) call to ek-sistence heard? This call is an “Enjoy” (jouis) not in the imperative form addressed to a YOU in the second person. The response is the appearance of a first person who responds by saying “yes” and, in French at least, “j’ouis.”[2]

This passage from the second to first person has come to be called the appearance of the Subject of the Unconscious.

According to the argument raised here, at the heart of knowledge, from the moment discourse as opposed to meaning comes to be heard, “There is” something that escaped Paul of Tarsus’s grasp, to wit that three negating acts of judging something to be impossible which are held to lead to an affirmation is a logic that goes beyond meaning.

There is a silence that is beyond words. It is a
“mumness,” (motus), a “don’t say a word,” as the saying goes – it is possible to enter the domain of ek-sistence so long as words form the material support of being.

Art leads us down this path, and so does psychoanalysis, which also seeks to give it a name, like Lacan did on 15-April-1980: “the Subject Supposed to Know is neither someone nor no-one. It is not every subject (tout sujet), and yet is not a subject which is nameable either. It is a certain subject, a certain one.” Thus the “one” (un) reappears, but this time not as the unary “one,” but “a certain one,” “a certain subject,” the visitor in the night. Its nature is signified by the hand of the angel on the door.

This reminded me of what my voice instructor was telling me this morning. In order for a listener to hear harmonics clearly, the sound being produced has to be stretched until it butts up against some form of resistance. The singer’s place is not in the clear light of day, standing beside the listener, but instead in the shadows.

It’s an explosive idea, I daresay, that within what I would call discourse the place of the listener is not that same as that of the emitter. This is what I mean by the appearance of a certain braiding, a knot which enables something new to enter into existence in the form of a listener who becomes able to hear the harmonics of a note to the maximum degree, (this is what gives its richness), but only on the condition that a kind of veil be draped over the one who is producing the sound itself.

Thus as you no doubt recall, “I speak with my body but without knowing it, and I don’t say any more than what I know.” This is the centerpiece of the dimension of enjoyment (jouir), of jouisssance. It’s what is at work in the voice of an analyzand, the appearance of “a (une) woman” to the degree this dimension of the feminine, as we know, is connected to the dimension of making heard, of sound rather than sonority, of a world other than the world of meaning.

Today I would like – I think I mentioned it last year – to make this call to ek-sistence heard via one of Nicolas Poussin’s paintings.

Picture yourself in the 17^th century, somewhere around 1625. French painters were relatively worse off than those in Italy, and so Nicolas Poussin went to Rome where he painted a picture entitled “Et in Arcadia Ego” – “I am Even in Arcadia,” Painting II, which was based on Painting I by the Italian artist Guercino. The most famous version was Painting III which is at the Louvre.

All three pictures bear the same words, “Et in Arcadia Ego,” but their significations become radically different when viewed from a perspective beyond the immediate sense of their words.

They follow a chronological order – Painting I dates from 1621-23, painting II from 1629-1630, and painting III from 1638-39.

The main item I want to point out is that in painting III a woman has been reproduced in place of the old man in painting II, who was himself a replacement for the skull in painting I.

This is a (une) woman who is quite surprising and enigmatic, insofar as she is dressed in classical garb and seems totally unrelated to the woman seen here alongside the shepherds in painting II.

The key question is what enabled the passage from painting II to painting III (there are about twelve years between them)?

In other words, what drove Poussin to redo painting II and leave us with this woman who seems to assume a new aspect every time painting III is viewed?

Because she is completely different from the woman in painting II who is taking part in what the shepherds are doing. She is one, unique, set apart from their debates. She is just there, unresponsively transfixed by an inner gaze.

Did the shepherd witness her arrival? What could he have seen? It is as if she were arriving from another world and her apparition transcends mere words.

Why did Poussin, (because this is the question that really concerns us), return during a moment in the aftermath, to the discourse of the All or the Universal, to the universe of meaning, and remake this painting in such a way as to instigate the appearance of this enigmatic, mysterious, reserved and yet fully-present dimension of the one (un) of a (une) woman? Without knowing it, Poussin left us with this question, the question raised by every speaking being.

What I’m trying to convey is that there may be discourse that exists beyond the circular meanings assigned by history and memory.

Lacan touched on this briefly, between two doors, (I mentioned this once before already, I think it was on 21-May-1974). He figured it was only after he let himself work on the question as to what discourse is that he touched on the link between sex(uality) and speech, and through it entered the domain of the unconscious.

Sex(uality) is how “all” men (tout homme), meaning masculine knowledge, are conveyed via the apparition of a (une) woman.

Panovsky said something very interesting in this respect. In his view, what Poussin introduced, via the angle of the woman, was an idea of finitude, as if she were saying “I am even in Arcadia,” and since she figures in the place of the skull, what she is ultimately saying is: “I, death, am even in Arcadia.”

This enables us to begin supposing the existence of some-thing other, because it stems from the dimension of the feminine as an opening onto some-thing Other, to the Thing.

I will stop here for this year.

Keywords:

Knowledge in the Real, masculine knowledge, braid, sexuation and speech, One, All Men, A woman, discourse, Nicolas Poussin, Paul of Tarsus.

Savoir dans le réel, Savoir masculin, Tresse, le sexué et la parole, Un, Tout homme, Une femme, le discours, Nicolas Poussin, Paul de Tarse.

Saber en lo real, Saber masculino, Trenza, Lo sexuado y la palabra, Uno, Todo hombre, Una mujer, el Discurso, Nicolas Poussin, Paul de Tarse

[1] Il y a du savoir, pas n’importe où, dans le réel. Ce savoir dit la vérité mais ne parle pas et il faut bien parler pour dire quelque chose.

[2] TR: The French “jouis” (Enjoy) sounds the same as “j’ouis” (“I hear”).