Lacan Quotes

“Shit on your whole mortifying, imaginary, and symbolic theater!”
― Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors.”
― Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955

“Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order: these terms in Lacan are not exactly synonymous, but they are intimately allied. They are sometimes spoken of by him as the ‘Other’ — as that which like language is always anterior to us and will always escape us, that which brought us into being as subjects in the first place but which always outruns our grasp. We have seen that for Lacan our unconscious desire is directed towards this Other, in the shape of some ultimately gratifying reality which we can never have; but it is also true for Lacan that our desire is in some way always received from the Other too. We desire what others — our parents, for instance — unconsciously desire for us; and desire can only happen because we are caught up in linguistic, sexual and social relations — the whole field of the ‘Other’ — which generate it.”
― Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

“What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian 'il n'y a pas de rapport ...': if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship between economy and politics, no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint, although—or, rather, because—these two levels are inextricably intertwined.”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View

“[B]y reinterpreting Freudianism in terms of language, a pre-eminently social activity, Lacan permits us to explore the relations between the unconscious and human society. One way of describing his work is to say that he makes us recognize that the unconscious is not some kind of seething, tumultuous, private region ‘inside’ us, but an effect of our relations with one another. The unconscious is, so to speak, ‘outside’ rather than ‘within’ us — or rather it exists ‘between’ us, as our relationships do.”
― Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

“What Althusser does… is to rethink the concept of ideology in terms of Lacan’s ‘imaginary’. For the relation of an individual subject to society as a whole in Althusser’s theory is rather like the relation of the small child to his or her mirror-image in Lacan’s. In both cases, the human subject is supplied with a satisfyingly unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object which reflects this image back to it in a closed, narcissistic circle. In both cases, too, this image involves a misrecognition, since it idealizes the subject’s real situation. The child is not actually as integrated as its image in the mirror suggests; I am not actually the coherent, autonomous, self generating subject I know myself to be in the ideological sphere, but the ‘decentred’ function of several social determinants. Duly enthralled by the image of myself I receive, I subject myself to it; and it is through this ‘subjection’ that I become a subject.”
― Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

“We see not because everything is visible, but because something always defies the eye, persisting beyond the remit of mere representation. This something, which Pasolini endeavors to situate at the heart of filmmaking, is preceisely 'that which always escapes from the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with itself in imagining itself as consicousness' (Lacan, 1998).”
― Fabio Vighi, Traumatic Encounters in Italian Film: Locating the Cinematic Unconscious

“Nietzsche said we will never rid ourselves of God because we have too much faith in grammar/language.

Lacan said because of the religious tenets of language, religion will triumph.

Chomsky, master linguist, says 'there are no skeptics. You can discuss it in a philosophy seminar but no human being can - in fact - be a skeptic.'

These musings shed light on Soren K's leap to faith idea. This is more nuanced than the circular leap of faith argument he's been wrongly accused of...

Soren is saying that, as we use the logic of language to express existence and purpose, we will always leap TO faith in a superior, all encompassing, loving force that guides our lives.

This faith does not negate our reason. It simply implies that the reasoning of this superior force is superior to our own. Edwin Abbott crystalizes this in Flatland.”
― Dr. Chester Elijah Branch, Lecture Notes

“The other concept of truth in Lacan situates the truth, so to speak, in the midst of reality. Here, the discontinuities, ruptures, standstills, and crises of reality are places or points of its truth. The truth is not some impossible and lethal Beyond that can be reached only by transgressing the limits of the Symbolic and the Imaginary –Lacan comes to present it as something that speaks between the lines, detectable in changes of discursivity, in the disturbances, interruptions, and slips of the discourse...”
― Alenka Zupančič, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

“L'unica cosa di cui si possa essere colpevoli è di aver ceduto sul proprio desiderio”
― Jacques Lacan, Il seminario. Libro VII: L'etica della psicoanalisi

“The abject impulse is inalienably connected with the feminine, specifically the maternal. As it forms out of the undefined morass of relations, surfaces and currents that existed before the Oedipal or mirror-stage coordinated them, the subject seems built around a primal sense of loss. The developing sense of the limits of the body is focussed on those holes in it's surface through which the outside becomes inside and vice versa: the mouth, anus, genitals, even the invisibly porous surface of the skin. It was the mother's body that was most connected with these crossing-points, as it fed and cleaned the undefined infant body. The sense that boundaries and limits are forming around this permable flesh is interpreted then as the withdrawal or even loss, of intimacy with the body of the mother, firstly in the increasing distance of the practical hygiene operations it performs and secondly, more remotely, beyond that in it's archaic ur-form as the body through which the child entered into the world.”
― Nick Mansfield

“To suggest that we look to the past, to Freud and Lacan, in order to find a new ethical code may seem counterintuitive, but when capital reterritorializes the psyche into systems based on their compatibility with viral market shares of the mental health topographical map, it is hard to argue for an ever-forward, arc of history that always bends toward justice. This is where ethics must come into play.”
― Eliot Rosenstock, Žižek in the Clinic: A Revolutionary Proposal for a New Endgame in Psychotherapy

“The positive fruit of the revelation of ignorance is nonknowledge, which is not a negation of knowledge but rather its most elaborate form.”
― Jacques Lacan, Variations on the Standard Treatment, Écrits

“One way of dying is to make your death alter the state of things in such a way that you no longer have any reason to be a part of it. Thus death can have the effect of a prophetic disappearance. Such were the deaths of Barthes and Lacan, I believe: the world has taken another direction since, in which these subtle figures would no longer have had any meaning. The death of Sartre, by contrast, left the world unchanged and seems an ineluctable, but insignifi cant event. Before dying, he was already to live in a world that was no longer his own.

So far as existence is concerned, as Ajar [Romain Gary] would say, it needs to be taken in charge by someone. No one can be expected to bear the responsibility for their own life. This Christian and modern idea is a vain and arrogant proposition. Moreover, it is a groundless utopian notion. The individual would have to be able to transform himself into the vestal, or the slave, of his identity, control all his circuits and all the circuits of the world which meet in his genes, nerves and thoughts. An unprecedented state of servitude. Who would wish to have salvation at such a price? It is so much more human to put one's fate, one's desire, one's will into the hands of another. Circulation of responsibilities, declension of wills, perpetual transfer of forms . Apart from this subtle path, which is attested to by a great many cultures, there is only the totalitarian path of a collective assumption.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“Lo mejor que puede suceder al hombre son los destrozos de su vida", sentencia lacaniana cuya veracidad comprobé hasta las últimas consecuencias.”
― Gérard Haddad

“La atmósfera pronto se tornó irrespirable, y frente a la idiotez a gran escala mi desenfado puede alcanzar alturas insospechadas.”
― Gérard Haddad, Le jour où Lacan m'a adopté

“Los períodos sombríos de existencia, ¿no son acaso aquellos en los cuales el deseo se agota?”
― Gérard Haddad, Le jour où Lacan m'a adopté

“Saber aquello que el partenaire va a hacer no constituye una prueba de amor.”
― Gérard Haddad, Le jour où Lacan m'a adopté

“Quizá la mayoría de los jóvenes judíos de mi generación eran más proclives a los encantos de la playa, la emoción de los primeros flirteos, y las partidas de póker. La ventaja de la neurosis, y de hecho tiene algunos beneficios, fue mantenerme distante de esta estéril ociosidad.”
― Gérard Haddad, Le jour où Lacan m'a adopté

“Mi patriotismo era una conquista de la dignidad. Si ésta era ilusoria, ¿qué sentido tenía este patriotismo?”
― Gérard Haddad, Le jour où Lacan m'a adopté

“All feelings of completeness are tragic.”
― Syed Buali Gillani

“Antigone emerges as a figure of pure desire precisely because, with her words and actions, she incites in others this tenacious question: What does she want? She states what she wants from the outset, yet there is no one in the play who is not baffled at one point or another by this question: OK, she wants to bury Polyneices, but what does she actually want?”
― Alenka Zupančič, Let Them Rot: Antigone's Parallax

“At the core of Lacanian ethics if therefore the idea that the subject who steps into the real - the place of the lack in the Other - severes its ties to the symbolic order. Such a subject is no longer embarassed by its inability to adhere to the rules of social behavior but instead embraces - feels compelled to embrace - the destructive energies of the real. This subject is not interested in trying to solve its problem within the parameteres of the system but rather insists on changing the game entirely, on defying the very structuring principles of the system, which is why the act opens a gateway to what might, from the perspective of the established order, seem completely inconceivable (or even utterly insane).”
― Mari Ruti, The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects

“Understandable, this all may be an illusion; yet my ambition remains steadfast - to be the most captivating mirage in the panorama.”
― Syed Buali Gillani

“At the core of Lacanian ethics is therefore the idea that the subject who steps into the real - the place of the lack in the Other - severes its ties to the symbolic order. Such a subject is no longer embarassed by its inability to adhere to the rules of social behavior but instead embraces - feels compelled to embrace - the destructive energies of the real. This subject is not interested in trying to solve its problem within the parameteres of the system but rather insists on changing the game entirely, on defying the very structuring principles of the system, which is why "the act" opens a gateway to what might, from the perspective of the established order, seem completely inconceivable (or even utterly insane).”
― Mari Ruti, The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects

“Lacan destaca que é importante fazer a distinção entre a imagem narcísica i(a) e o que se desprende em sua própria constituição, a, já que este último está sempre velado, mascarado atrás do primeiro. Para ele, o melancólico necessita passar através de sua própria imagem para atingir esse objeto que o transcende e para dar-se conta de que sua queixa de ser nada em verdade não se dirige à sua imagem especular, ou seja, não é uma queixa de má aparência, porém de “ser o último dos últimos”. E não apenas de “ser”, mas também de “ter”, na medida em que a auto-acusação implica o ter sido arruinado. Lacan fala, ainda, em suicídio do objeto. Ele aponta que o objeto se constituiu, mas que por alguma razão desapareceu. Em suas auto-acusações, o melancólico está inteiramente no simbólico, assinala ele no seminário A transferência.”
― Urania Tourinho Peres, Depressão e melancolia (PAP - Psicanálise)

“Na festa do capitalismo avançado em que vivemos, encontramos basicamente duas categorias de sujeitos: aqueles que aproveitam a festa até a última gota, se deixam consumir e seguem as prescrições do excesso em práticas hedonistas em que o prazer só pode ser obtido na ultrapassagem de medidas; e os que não se acham merecedores do convite ou não sabem como consegui-lo, os barrados no baile. Poderíamos dizer que essa dupla e extrema forma de expressão, em crescimento na contemporaneidade, seria, em grande parte, fomentada pelo pano de fundo do capitalismo avançado e, de formas diferentes, contribui para ampliar o distanciamento do sujeito em relação ao registro do desejo, ilustrando o crescimento da dimensão do gozo.
O conceito de gozo teve suas primeiras formulações em Freud, no início de seu percurso, referido ao gozo sexual, e mais adiante em sua obra, embora não com esse termo. Depois de 1920, Freud faz referência a determinadas condições em que o sujeito obtém satisfação com o próprio sofrimento. Com a segunda teoria pulsional e o advento da pulsão de morte, avança nesse terreno intermediário entre o prazer e a dor que se enlaçam e se confundem. Coube a Jacques Lacan, em sua releitura do texto freudiano, nomear e definir o gozo como um dos conceitos de maior fertilidade para a abordagem das condições de vida contemporâneas. Para uma pesquisa mais ampla das depressões, é importante mencioná-lo, na medida em que as depressões podem ser consideradas, hoje, uma modalidade narcísica de gozo.”
― Sandra Edler, Luto e Melancolia - À sombra do espetáculo

“Não há outra possibilidade de o inconsciente vir à tona senão no dizer. No entanto, no dito, a verdade do sujeito propriamente dita estará perdida na sua integridade, visto que aí aparece sob o disfarce do sujeito do enunciado, única forma da “verdade do sujeito” poder emergir, ainda que se “meio dizendo”.
Não só o sujeito emerge de maneira disfarçada: também seu discurso articulado é uma forma de disfarce em relação à verdade do desejo do sujeito.
Portanto, o “eu” que aparece no discurso como sujeito do enunciado, capturado pela ordem subjetiva, acaba por ocultar o sujeito do desejo. Nesse ato de ocultação, se dará a objetivação imaginária do sujeito, que se vê identificado com as representações que aparecem no discurso. Essas representações ou “lugares-tenentes”, em que o sujeito se perde em sua verdade, acabam por reduzi-lo a uma representação imaginária, de que o sujeito lançará mão para se identificar.
Nesse sentido, o eu (sujeito do enunciado) aparece como substituto do sujeito em si (sujeito da enunciação): na medida em que este último escapa à possibilidade de ser representado, é o eu que aparecerá para o sujeito como o seu representante. Trata-se, portanto, de verificar como o eu pôde ser construído como representante do sujeito.”
― Isildinha Baptista Nogueira, A cor do inconsciente: Significações do corpo negro

“Finalmente, do grupo de Bataille, no qual Blanchot se forma, Lacan retira uma maneira alternativa e disruptiva de olhar para as ciências humanas. Ao repetir a estratégia barroca de fazer uma ciência sobre aquilo que a ciência moderna exclui para poder se constituir como método e programa de investigação, Bataille propõe a noção de heterologia como um tipo de antropologia baseada no estudo do que uma sociedade teve que excluir e negar para se constituir como tal. Essa parte exilada, da qual não conseguimos nem nos separar e que tampouco conseguimos integrar, será chamada de parte maldita, embrião do futuro conceito de objeto a em Lacan.”
― Christian Dunker, O estilo de Lacan

“We thus have three levels of antagonism: the Two are never two, the One is never one, the Nothing is never nothing. Sinthome—the signifier of the barred Other—registers the antagonism of the Two, their non-relationship. The object a registers the antagonism of the One, its inability to be one. $ registers the antagonism of Nothing, its inability to be the Void at peace with itself, to annul all struggles. The position of Wisdom is that the Void brings ultimate peace, a state in which all differences are obliterated; the position of dialectical materialism is that there is no peace even in the Void.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism