Plenary Hall
FOUR CURRENT FORMS OF DISCONTENT
1 - CONSPIRACIES
Chaired and moderated by Lilia Mahjoub
There are two forms of conspiracy
The conspiracy of conspirators and the conspiracy of conspiracists
One wants to bring down an abhorred, illegitimate authority
The other denounces a falsifying, lying authority
Both have a fundamentally malicious Other as their partner
Both speak the same language, that of their malicious Other
How is this language formed?
Where does it find complicity, on the side of the subject and on the side of politics?
Conspiracy against language or conspiratorial language?
Around these points, three interventions will be presented and discussed
2 – THE BODY
Chaired and facilitated by Dominique Holvoet
Man has a body and he has just the one
Man speaks – the body enjoys
It is truly the encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table. (cf Lautréamont, The Songs of Maldoror)
Lacan says it better and opens new paths:
« LOM, LOM de base, LOM cahun corps et nan-na Kun.
Faut le dire comme ça : il ahun… et non : il estun… (cor/niché).
C’est l’avoir et pas l’être qui le caractérise.
Il y a de l’avoiement dans le qu’as-tu ? dont il s’interroge fictivement d’avoir la réponse toujours.
J’ai ça, c’est son seul être. »*
It struggles along and once in a while it gets sung.
For how can one know where jouissance holes up?
First by constructing fictions and when it bites: ouch! I've got it…; or the other way around
“That”: the body and also the event
Three presentations about this discordance and its symptoms will be given and discussed
* Lacan J., « Joyce le symptôme », Autres écrits, Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 565 (for the English translation see “Joyce the symptom”, TLR 5, pp.13-14).
3 - WAR
Chaired and Facilitated by Gil Caroz
That is how the war started, probably, though by now it is too late to know precisely.
It is spreading across the grey plain. It fills space.
Sickness that ruptures membranes and sets the lymph flowing. It has chosen places inhabited by man.
It has burst the dykes. It has touched the earth with the tip of its cone of pain, a single nerve among millions of nerves. It has sought out the body of one girl among the millions of other girls.
…………………………………………
But of course war has always been war and exists outside thought.
It is everywhere.
In the night’s dreams, in the sun’s gradual setting, in love, in hatred, in vengeance.
It has only just started.
…………………………………………
It is not an accident. It is not an event. It is war.*
* J.M.G. Le Clézio, War
Three presentations will be given and discussed.
4 - OUR CATASTROPHES
Chaired and facilitated by Éric Zuliani, President of the ECF
Presentations by Geert Hoornaert and Éric Laurent
Speech conspires, it conspires against or for truth, it depends...
But its impact is real and is marked on the body one has, which takes its cruelty.
Or it makes some others pay for it, as war shows,
when the powers of destruction are summoned.
Speech leaves us alone to face our catastrophes, in the clinic or in civilisation.
This is our chance, because we still have lalangue
“It is lalangue that civilises this jouissance.” *
*J. Lacan The Third