1 Language: Much Ado About What? Jacques-Alain Miller That's a sentence with a question mark. Asa matter of fat, i could bean interrupted sentence: much ado about what happened yester- ‘day, what might happen tomorrow. You know how prominent inter- rupted sentences were in the experience of the distinguished late President Schreber. But "Much Ado About What?” is not am inter: rupted sentence. Itis a question. I is a question about what? The answer would be: It isa question about what. Danielle Bergeron just ‘some minutes ago asked, "What are you going to speak about?” Hold ther: About “what.” Which is not very informative. That isa question ‘mark, which isa queer sign. In Spanish, which isthe language and Titeratre taught by Henry Sullivan who wil speak later, you use two question marks, one being an inverted question mark. And if Thad answered Danielle Bergeron in Spanish, probably T would have pat this Spanish sign there to say in an unambiguous manner: “Tam speaking about language, Language is much ado, And the question is ‘much ado about what?" But the clearer point ofthe question is that there is much ado about language itl. Thave been speaking now for about five minutes and I imagine you wonder, what fs he talking about? You are wondering what Lm talking about inspite of the fact that-—T believe, 1 hope, Lam sure you understand every sentence that Ihave said. Am T right? That is {osay, you may understand every sentence Isay, even if my English isnot perfect, but that does not mean you know what Lamm aiming at, ‘You understand what Isay because itis in English, more ot les, 50 {nelfect you understand the literal meaning. You may even sce that there is for me much ado in that Iam moving my body: there is some ‘energy there. You know it is not my own language, but you do not have what we may eventually call the contextual meaning, what Lam aiming at, That isan experience which is, believe, fairly familiar at22 / Jacques Alain Miller such a conference. That i, you listen to speakers who look lke they Sinderstand themseles, and yo understand them because iis En filsh but atthe same time you may nonetheless wonder, what was {he speaker aiming a So eventually you may come toa point where Jeary Aba! Tha’ what be had n mind!” That i, sometimes you Jetahis meaning of aiming at fom the supposed literal meaning "We ca say tha this diference is ery preset, very abyiousin every naman communication, We might say isthe difference between Iiral meaning and textual meaning” We could also say withthe pilonopher Paul Grice that His the dflerence between what the aaa ean and what the speaker means with his words ona given "Sisson: And we might even distinguish between the semantic reer Shovand the speakers ference: When you introduce this distinction into the logical analysis of Tanguage, you have already introduced ‘tething very complex. As-a matter of fact, you have introduced the aifeence between signer apd sigoiied, and more than tha, betwen sigs section, When a sentence gocs on, and a whole discourse iat signers gos on, it would be woke doubled exactly atthe same time by signification. It would be Sp in faconstantrelationshipexisted betweena chain of signers [ia tupposcel hain ofsignfids, That would bea valualerelaion Ships the marriage of signifier and signified. "hina we Know is that, on the contrary, meaning has a sense of Jag. But actual meaning lags behind the letter of aim And the Atay meaning works i not better of clearer. It eaves you nthe dark For instance, perhaps You understand sta Wie better what Tam imningat now, But isi lagging bchind tis better that meaning ing behind bt, however, Ht much more boring when meaning tied, when you cam anticipate even before someone has bun 0 {alk what he or she fe siming a And you Know, wen you already ow hare ming a do not pay attention Sometins n pic of my personal quest for clarity of thinking ike wo delay the Understanding eflet bit. inthe analytic experience—because all that Thave sad refers to an analyte experience —you have no idea of Ati the patent means by what He or she says. And even if you have hc idea, is beter to forget i, better not to understand or believe “er inlrstand single word. You have no dea of wha yur patient Wiiming ats and he comes to sce your because he doesnot know what inci aiming a in bchavior that could be strange even to himsel, the srange things that happen to him with some participation from ime So in an analytic experience you suspend the connection between Language: Mace Ado About What? | 23 signifier and signified. You keep them separate. If your would-be patient says “depression,” which isa common word, you are not quick {o translate the depression of this patient into what another means bby depression. Or ihe says “love,” you immediately translate the use ofthat word precisely for only one subject, For instance, love means fucking for one person, but for another, love explicitly means not fucking. You can discover this only after some time. The obsessive patient will help you to understand what he is saying, i you spend & Tot of time, take much trouble, andl go to much ado to clarify what he says, what itis all about, And he clarifies all the more when what he isaiming at becomes even more obscure for himselfAnd that is why-— precisely becausehe is lost in what he isalming at—he generally takes ‘sim at one or another of his fellow creatures. Aiming at one’s fellow ‘creature isa shorteut in this search for what one is aiming at ‘But, lt us gt back after this litle introduction to “much ado about what." Perhaps we could write it asa prelogial senten ‘witha hole inside. Much adoabout "x. This eaves place fr substitu- tion, for trying out some answers. It is already a logical form, We could write Fx, the capital letter F being summary of the expression, “much ado about.” We are going to try some different answers, very simple answers to this hole in the sentence. Thelieve there is an answer which is already in everybody's mind, because we al hear it: Shakespeare's comedy. There isa sentence that 's already lexicalized for you, which is one possible answer- One possible value of "x" is, as you know, nothing. Since Lam advancing 2 theory that language is much ado about «dT intend to ‘consider this Shakespearean text, would lke also talk about “ado.” “Ado” is a wonderful word, which isa contraction of “ato,” whieh means “to do,” but in a contracted way: dealing. concern, trouble, labor, fuss exertion, oF fe souci, that by which someone is occupied cpr Ad generally van occupied and prexsaped ha to this value where x equals nothing, let us first take a simple ansiver. Because the idea that langue fs much ado about nothing is not the fist idea one has. The first idea one has may be: it s about something. Perhaps we could give as a first answer: it fs about noting. And as a matter of fact, there is a literary critic, Richard Grant White, who noted in 1958 that in the phonetic pron: ciationof Elizabethan England, “nothing” and “noting” sounded much the same. So we believe that in the very tile of Shakespeare's play24 1 Jacques-Alain Miler there is a pun, a play between “nothing” and “noting.” And you find in fact, various puns on “nothing” and “noting” in Much Ado About Noshing ‘So that isthe first idea: language is for denoting. That i, language is chiefly referential language, Language is here among us to help us express our thought, butehelly to indicate the right way to someone ls, to direct someone to the object we have in mind. Asin: "Bring Ie this!” And supposedly, in this imperative use of language, l have {select an object in the external world so that someone ean bring this object to me without ambiguity. But to have no ambiguity, you ‘would need targeting inthe word itself, and it would be something Tike: "Bring me item number three,” as they say during the judicial process. The very object is already targeted ina way that disambigu- dies the use of language. So let us say—I shall not expand on this point, which is the clearest of points—language i for reerence, for Feferential use ‘That is not tosay that in psychoanalysis we have no use for referen- tial language. Surely we have, For instance, a main topic of psycho- “analysis i the question of how to give appointments. If you do not five appointments—and with some success, without ambiguity — then there will be noanalytie session. And the topic of appointment — that is, how after an analvti session, to bring back, I would say, the tse of referential language—is always a very delicate matter. When yousay "Come back,” you may solve the problem by having an unmov able timetable, s0 that you will never again have to give another Appointment, because it wil all be set up for seven years. But gener- ally, that is not the case. Soanalysts also have a use for referential language. And we might ‘wonder, in that ease, what the relerence is, What isthe object that hhas tobe met? The objects the analyst himself, Hehas tous language toenable the other to meet him, and that is why he moves very litt. When he moves himself to go fora holiday to another country, tis the main topic ofthe sessions, Theanalysand isawaiting the reference For this reason one needs the analyst as a relerence in the analytic process. That is why analysands talk so much about him. Because he Fsinsome way the reference ofthe analytic process. That is why there is so much ado, so much concer about the analyst. And inthis wa. for the obsessional subject, ts very important that the analyst not ‘move. Sometimes if he merely speaks, iis too much, The demand, that the analyst be this way. For the hnysterieal subject, on the contrary, to make him move, to make the immovable relerence move, sa goal, and that is why eventually the Lempuage: Muck Ado About What?! 25 hysterical subject wil ive much ado tothe analyst about hms and willy to cic s testimony that there fife i that subj Since n sme sense the analyst fs the reference of the analyte process, he may take avery simple way of interpreting what the Patient ayn, No matter what the patent tris to sn the analy can ays ony“ You ae aiming a me, You are speaking of nothing ele ‘ham me: That is transference interpretation, Transference interpre tation gives the solution to the question of interpretation, an instant Knowhow for would-be analysts: for any relerences the patent presenting ya alway substitute yourself ra refrence, and you wl fever eta not recommending ht ying ho ho the So in this first answer tothe question, we suppose that language an apparatisa machine, a tol for relerence. And what must be ald that in the philosophy oflanguage hich sn your county sin ‘Great Britain the mainstream of pilophy language considered is amsiyzcd,chicy as an apparatus, a machine tol for reference ‘And there is some truth nseing language as tol fr reference. ‘hr anguage inthe dncours ofthe master—that what I demon Straten the example ofthe imperative —the necessity a disambig ia necesty To give orders, or evento make people produce Sind this forthe management of production it vals question of mastering the ambiguities of language such that the employee will ow exactly what he has tod. Language cena ol or erence takes onall ts meanings inthe dlgcurae ofthe master forthe maser. (Something really curious to understand is how the Japancee have iastered the disambiguation af language s0 wel, when there ae tany more posible for ambiguty nthe tongue than In ours) But what we earn through thos who analyze languages ol or references precisly that it fsnot sucha goed machine lor eerence. If innguage were really tool dedicated to eerence, the conluion ould be: Ht doesnot fi. we spoke in quantification language, in {uantifeaton logic, then everything would be fine. But on the com. tray, when vos ead logical anaysinol lavage, what yo find om very pageison the contrary misunderstanding end pages and pages vette eat! arods ommdetstnatings nl erin contr them fsa mater of foc, a tris maser dose not take wo much ime to disambiguate language. Think of Napoleon who sald that 9 good drawing ts better than long dicoure: A trac master docs not ake time to speak He shows by the farms onentation genture what ‘you have todo. So there isa connection between Felerentiaity and26 | Jacques Alain Miler mastery. Indcedsif ime is money, space is also money. Everything has fo be ina true or precise place, fr instance, to be fetched And so the analysis of language, which is now dominant in your ‘Country, can be said (o have begun with Bertrand Russell in 1905 with the theory of description, the same year as the "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” by Freud. Russell sought to disambiguate Tanguage, considered asa tool for reference, along the line of Gottloeb Frege. At that time Russell said in so many words: use Frege 10 inguage.” That is, what problem do you come to at the very moment you try (0 figure language as a tol for refer Immediately-—that is in 1905--you soe the problem: that you can speak of something that does not exist. The obvious problem is, as a matter of fact (his is not a contrived Lacanian rick), that there are “Emply, vacuous descriptions in language. You know the example of ‘Russell, which he pondered about so mach; short text which isreally the father ofall philosophical literature in your country sine then. His example was: “The King of France is bald.” The sentence, “The King of France is bald,” retains all its meaning for an Englishman, Englishmen know about France very well, and about the political regime of France ‘When you arean analyst you always give more weight tothe exam ple than to what the rule is. I could expand a lot on Russel’s “The King of France is bald.” As a matter of fact, itis a double example; pot only does the King of France not exist, his hair does not exis, tither, So the example has something to do with the idea tha King is naked, or the Emperor has no clothes. That is clear, He isnot nly without a crown, he is also without hai kingdom for my hai.” but never mind Thave been talking for guitea while about this King of France who docs not exist. You can do that. It is an example of what Russell immediately encountered: that in language, you can have much ado fibout nothing. And in thi case, you are speaking about somet ‘the saying of it, as You would speak about the President of the United States who exists, But by the form of the sentence language docs not enable you to know if what you are referring to exists oF not. ‘So there comes disambiguation; that isto say, trying to do things ‘with language, such as in an electric game where you know you have Toxgive answers. So you pull the plug and put it inside the game, and tither a red light or green light goes on to tell you whether your fanswer is truc or not. Well, the effort o make a logical analysis of Language: Much Ado About What? (27 language is to get to that, That is what Rudolf Carmap tried with ‘Martin Heidegger in the same way. He believed that i he translated the sentence by Heidegger logically he could ascertain that it did not ‘mean anything. ‘So that i the ist conclusion you come to,not with psychoanalysis, but witha logical analysis of language: that language produces refer: fence to nonentites, And that is why, for instance, an adversary of RRussel’s who is called Alexis Meinong had the idea of distinguishing {hwo categories of objectsobjects which exist and objects which do hot exist-to extend a bit our ontology. He even had the idea that all, those objects which did not exist could be situated in the nul et, ‘were like the population of the null se. “The whole philosophical logical analysis of language is grounded ‘on nothing other than errors of reference. This philosophy breeds on terrors of reference. For instance, Ihave here a text by Saul Kripke that Stuart Schneiderman has given me. That is the kind of problem you find inside this text, a problem advanced by Keith Donnellan. ‘Suppose someone at a gathering, glancing ina certain direction, says tohis companion:"The man over there drinking champagne is happy Tonight". Suppose both the speaker and hearer are under a false im pression and, rather thatthe man to whom they refer i a tectotaler ‘sinking sparkling water. Not drinking champagne, but drinking wa ter, That isan example ofthe kindof problem Kripke and Donnellan refer t, ‘So it is a plague with language, the fact that language which is supposedly meant to refer to things generally fails to. In fact, you hhave to use very stringent means to obtain a clear univocal reference through language, The most intelligent of logicians clearly has the hotion that reference is aot at all primary within language. Willard ‘Van Orman Quine does not have the idea, for instance, thatthe child saying “milk—or someone showing the child a glass of milk saying Siilk—vwould be the primary use of language. Ouine knows well, Weed, that to say the word “milk” when looking ata glass of milk is ‘very ambiguous, The word "milk" could signify the glass itself, oF the bottom, of the table on which the glass is sitting. Or “milk” could ean "I want to drink what is inside". Or, or instance, chi might ‘iy “milk” to reler to other liquids or other things to eat ‘So. you note Quine doesnot entertain the idea that the chief use of Tanguage i #0 say “milk” when you have a glass of milk in front of {you He knows that you nced a sentence. Donald Davidson, his pupil foes further, saying your do not only need a sentence, you need all Tanguage to be able to really connect the word “milk” with the glass ‘of milk And even then it isnot so sure you wll manageit, Forinstance,28 | Jacques Alain Miler ‘€4cis sparkling milk, there could be some discussion about whether itis milk or not. Or, for instance, people who like pure milk directly from the cow and are given pasteurized milk instead would say that this is not milk ‘The problem is very dificult. And already you have to admit that sentences—at least sentences—are primary in semantics, That is 10 say—and Quine says it, not Lacan—words are dependent on sentences {or their meaning. First Jeremy Bentham-—and Frege himsell--knew very well that you do not have any direct connection between words and reality, because words are dependent on sentences; that Is, om articulation with other words. And the question of reference for some fone like Quine comes after sentences, when you get to isolate the predication of individuated words in sentences: there you can begin a the summit. You can begin to wonder if something corresponds 10 44. And when Quine wondered if something corresponds to it, his answer was that the reference of language is always inscrutable That is tosay, there isno way totell what thesingular terms ol the language refer to. That i a thesis advanced prior tothe idea of an indetermi nancy in translation. This means that we ought, as Quine says, to ‘observe the behavior of our neighbor in order to know what he means in what he says. But even the totality of Behavioral evidence, actual and potential, will never enable us to ascertain with complete cer- tainty what the referents are of what our neighbor says, Tremendous, someone goes to Quine—not to the logical apparatus of Quine bul to those passages—one finds him completely subversive. Its through Quine that you can get to Lacan, I would say. The conclusion of Quine’s ontology, as a matter of lactis tht there is no absolute reference, only a related reference. And at the end of our ‘quests, he says, we acquiesce in our mother tongue and take its Wor at face value. At the end, with language, there is @ point where one must desist from one's inquiry and accept something at lace valu, for what itis, m Before Quine, Frege had already invented a simpler way to proceed He did not get into questions concerning various references. His sim plification was to say that there were two references forall lana ‘that language was much ado about two references only: the true an the false. And he considered that a true sentence had asa reference, ‘ot the object of which we talk, but rather the truth, And a false sentence has a reference of false. There is already in Frege, then, the ‘dea of how we can eventually simplify what the reference ol language Langage: Much Ado About What? | 29 is, We may consider various objects as references, existing or not, but Frege himself considered the reference of language tobe the rue and the fa ‘Let us say that with Lacan we proceed only one page further, and already we begin to understand, perhaps, that the question of refer- fence cannot be solved in terms of correspondence that Is, a corre: Spondence between milk in my mouth asa word and milk in the glass {asa substance, The next time “milk in my mouth” might be a drink. ‘On the contrary, when you are at the level of sentences, what are the referents of sentences not of names, not of words~but of sentences themselves? The problem with sentences is that some are true on. some occasions. The same may be true on one occasion and false on ‘another ovcasion. Quine called these “occasion sentences" “That is also Hegel's example at the beginning of The Phenomenology of Spirits Lsay itis daylight. But when Tam here at Kent, Ohio, there {Sno way of knowing it, because one cannot distinguish the difference betwen daylight and night very well in this auditorium. But let us suppose we see the daylight, and even say itis daylight. It is a true nce. And when speak, there isalwaysa reference tothe present. ' example is very clear. You write i down, but immediately, ‘when you write down "It is daylight.” the reference evaporates be- ‘cause the sentence remains at the same place, with the same meaning. ‘When the day ends and night begins, this sentence which was a true sentence grows into a false sentence. So writing has this immediate consequence in Hegel: thatthe reference of language evaporates. So ‘writing is much ado. But in this sense, writing is much ado about nothing. And that is why Mallarmé, who was Hegelian, thought pre- Cisely that writing was writing about nothit ‘red from the point of writing was in itself a dissolution of the reer~ fence, and even of the writer himself "La disparition elocutire da poete” (the clocutoty disappearance ofthe poct)says that 19th century Titerature is hounded by the idea. Flaubert wrote a book about noth- ing, Mallarmé a book about everything-both of them in this post- Hegelian sense of considering writing ‘And so from this point of view, correspondence is not the keyword ‘of the theory of langtiage—not correspondence theory, but rather & ‘disappearance theory as.a theory of language. From this point on, if You extend to specch itself what is so clear when it isa question of “writing, you no longer say that language expresses something. On the contrary, you say that language rulliies the referent. You say that Tanguage erases the relerence. You draw the theory of language from \writing as such, saving that one always speaks of what doesnot exist, because even if exists, the very fact of speaking of It makes It30 1 Jacques Main Miller a roca bis happy or not, and so on, . that happened to elephants in thei lives wae something thes nace few: that we have the word “elephant,” and thatthe ener oe ih Le te eae at “le mot est la meurire de la chose” (the word isthe mander oh ne seein ec teem oC things by words It poes up tothe o 5 UP Lo the pn jours that ss a the point where you et tjoy words instead of enjoying th a anti psiion on langage sno pre Lacan Twelloy ing anttgglancimrtnf meta ra ic a he century. In France jst afer the war Maree Bag asthe cle proponent ofthis ontion the ticryof wring neg Mriting is fundamentally an activity ina void, creating a void. Writing is always writing in the ditcction of an absence In blag Ae But chilyiisan Hogclion tury whi sr 1 rie Helder whe ac stent, Pethaps yen might get a what am saying that you could efor an archacoons cs eriicism such asi is practiced nowadays nthe Une Se wv lcd in the “nothing” area, Tak, reference the definition oa signby Charles Sanders Pee aes tsignby Charles Sanders Pirce-an Aner am linguist You know the dentin the sign represen sone Language: Much Ado Abou What? | 31 for someone. The difference which is hereby introduced in this schema~something, someone, and the signi this: an erasure ofthe Something. Iti a fundamental difference, and it establishes the sign, felity which replaces and erases the thing, We in thing metaphor, the conclusion of the metaphor is the erasure of the r= 0 what we have as a point of departure for Lacan's teaching on language, 1 would say is Hegel and Saussure. That i, the disappear- taken along with the fact that sentences are pri- could write it asa metaphor #22. but with this proviso: that in this ance of reference ‘mary insofar as the meaning of the word is depender i, Is dependent on language—such that the word is always depen dent on other words. And that is precisely the concept of articulation ‘When you define a sign as such in Peirce's way you have only one to define: a sign, something, and someone. If you take seriously the proposition that the word has a meaning only in connection with bother words, you can never define just one signifier. You always define ‘wo. So the minimum of the sign is one, but the minimum of the signifier is two, You can understand the difference between sign and signifi inthis sense. A sign is supposed to take its meaning from the i from another Takes two, and the minimum of signifies, I would say, {'S, and S, which you find as such in Lacan, as simple as that. Thave listened to many questions about the concept of the symbolic ‘order. Well, the important thing in the symbolic order isthe concept ‘of order itself: that is, a dimension, a self contained dimension. Sym- bolic order has no meaning if itis not the vacuousness of reerence, ‘such that a signifier is connected to another, snd in the place of the Feference we can put an object witha bar which looks like the signifier ‘of the null st Lacan says that language is nota code. A code is computed by the Fixed correlation of signs tothe reality they sigoify-In a laeuage, the contrary, the various signs—the signifiers—take on their value from their lation to one another, That is the meaning of symbolic torder. The symbolic order is effectively a sell-contained dimension land is not grounded on correspondence, but on circularity. That is {is defined through other signs. And when Lacan proposes a dei- nition of the signifier itis a circular definition he gives: a signifier subject for another signifier, That is not trv definition, because in the definition itself, you have the word to define, This circularity is very well detailed by Ouine who asks: ‘What is an F?™ IT ask what is an F, the only answer is, "An Fis.a G." That is the32 / Jacques Alain Miller structure ofall answers to all questions about a word: you define a ‘word by another one. And Quine says, the answer makes Only relative sense, a sense related to the uncritical acceptance of G. That isthe foundation. But if you stop here, itis the foundation of an infinite ‘metonymy. What is an Fis a G, and a G is something els, ete ‘But do not forget that this infinite mctonymy is based on the p nary metaphor, the primary metaphor that killed the thing, as Lacan wught. And at the basis ofthis there isan erasure-So you sce that we have now a new ternary. We had the sign before the something, and the someone. Now we have something else. We have one signifier (S)) land another one that is necessary for this one to have a meaning (S) and we have the suppressed subject (S). That is our new ternary, ‘replacing the Peircean ternary. Moreover, we are not only saying that relerence is ambiguous, we are also saying that relerence is vacuous, 1nd to speak is always to speak about nothing. That is, nothingness ‘enters reality through language. You can say that in another way: reference isthe void. But this void is created by language. That in we replace the correspondence theory of language by a efcation theory ‘of language, the first creation being a lack, and in this sense itis lack of all things. On this I would difler with Professor Henry Sullivan, when he seems to suggest that desire as lack could be a condition of language. I agree with the importance of desire as lack, but T would ‘say that desire as lack has language as its condition. Avoid would be unthinkable in the real if not for signifiers.“Creation’--first of the void by the signifier—is the key word, not “correspondence 1, generally speaking, we do not take signifiers as that which describes reality. We take signifier as what enters the ‘eal to structure reality That is seemingly a base structuralist point of view. That is itis too simple to always speak ike Quine of chats tnd trees when we know from anthropology thatthe “supposed say ‘ages have names for what we donot even see and for what we cannot ame. In English we say "you" to everyone; every man and woman We say “you.” How poor that is as a language! In Japan you have one word for “you” when itis a woman and another “you, a diferent word, when it isa man. You have another word when its superior i a superior woman, oF inferior. or ‘when i isan old! man, young man, baby-—all those "you" 's. What i= ‘simplified in our language by a "you" ison the contrary pulverized in Japanese, Thus the Japanese translator of Lacan said to me once, ‘because he was so sensitive to ths: ‘When I hear people ofthe West, always feel that perhaps they speak to God!" This pronoun problem of "you" is causing great difficulty for psychoanalysis in Japan, be cause the idea of the great Other is dificult thing for then Language: Muck Ado Abou What? | 33 The consequence of allthis is that an evolutionary point of view concerning language is very dificult to bring back. ‘we eannot imagine the slow, grad language ereated at one stroke isa holistic theory T would say. It ‘child can learn language, itis on the precondition that hei already in language. And in language, the minimal example, taken by Lacan from Freud, is the FortDat, which is §y'S,. That is the minimam, ‘which is sulicient to write the entire library of Babylon. So when Quine looks for the root of reference, the root of relerence ‘And itis in that sense that Lacan ean say thatthe signifier appears ex nihilo, Thats, itereates a void. But where does itcome rom? Itcomes from the voi. ‘And you, the someone, where are you in this consideration? In this ternary, you are nothing more than the nullified object. What is possible to say is that you as a subject of the signifier are nothing ‘more than a null set. You are equivalent tothe bar orto the void, and itis in that sense that Lacan ean say, thatthe subject isthe ellect of the signifier. That is the same sentence as “Words are the murderers of things”. That is to say that what we call the subject in analysis is ing more than a function of the combination of signfirs, You might think it isa very far-fetched idea, but itis an idea necessitated by the notion that speech in analysis and interpretation can change the subject. If we take as our point of departure the idea that speech tnd interpretation can change a subject, the simple way to formalize this is to say: The subject is nothing more than the elfect of the ‘combination ofthe significrs. And so we say that is truth, truth asa ‘elation, an effect induced by a combination of signifiers at a given time. That is why Lacan pat the subject atthe place of the truth value in his various schemata, ‘The gist ofthe question is this Isitenough to recognize ness of reference? Is it enough to say, in some way, that relerence Is nothing more than this meaning, and that language does not refer to anything, does not describe? This could give eredence toa kind of Zen analysis. Lacan begins his Seminar by alluding to the Zen practice ‘which actually teaches pupils that language does not refer and does not describe. Zen teaches pupils to accept as the answer toa question, stick, for instance, when they are looking for a reerence. And there psychoanalysis: a learning of the vacuousness Js present immediately in analysis is already this vacuousness of reference. Tha isthe ist effect you are subd to when you enter analysis. You are going to speak of «lot of things to your analyst. You are even going toask for help, or comprehension, And the supposed “benevolent neutrality,” which is a psychologial341 Jacques Alain Miler ‘way of saying things, is nothing other than keeping a distance from the reference and inviting the subject to see the pure combination of Sigifiers."Benevolent neutrality,” isthe evacuation of reference, That is why you can make fun of an analyst who says: "You say that, but ‘what do you mean by that?" But the gist of analysis is that it refers you to the pure combination of signifirs. puts the reference o void ‘ata distance. Entering analysis is thus progressive evacuation of reference or void “which takes the place ofan object, a new object sil broader. Tha is to say, language not only has effects of meaning, it also produces. And the secret of psychoanalysis is precisely how to get to this new kind of reference which Lacan called object, object a which isa new kind of reference that analysis clarifies. And itis in this that we are atthe same time inthe vacuousness of reference, but asa condition forthe ‘emergence of a reference unheard of up until now. It is a kind of reference which is precisely something, not nothing, and which we cannot get o, which we eannot take asa member ofthe st of signifi, [Let us say that it isa remainder. Freud spoke ofthe quantum of affect, ‘that quantum of affect which does not find a place. There are still people like Otto Kernberg who believe that Lacan dacs not speak of alfect. Yet, thats the contra point of Lacan's theory of psychoanaly- sis, But surely Mr. Kernberg cannot recognize allel under the guise ‘ofthe object a That is why we can say hysterics were at the beginning ‘of psychoanalysis. 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