| Lutecium a non-school of Lacanian/Freudian Psychoanalysis San Francisco, California |
| Community Seminar The trace: On the brink of Other and S2 with Rebecca Bauknight Ph.D. |
This seminar, in which participants have the option to present authors of their choice that address the trace, will offer us an
opportunity to deconstruct the trace so that we can strive to understand the particular relevance of the term through this place of
an initial confrontation between the subject and Other... within our time. Time appears to have something do with this
engagement. It is only within the subject’s time that the trace is apprehended. This is a particular time that has something to do
with a past but not everything to do with it as there is no pure repetition. It is that which doesn’t conform that becomes perhaps
something of the subject’s remainder..that defies full categorization regarding the time of the encounter with Other.
How might the structural, political, social and clinical implications of this confrontation with the trace, a term with an historical
philosophical value, denote that which is absented as other but none the less appears as a mark offering a perception of an
“outside” to continue to pursue beyond our own knowing (many knowings… knowledge of the pasts, knowledge of different
disciplines, cultures) the reckoning with that which lies beyond known parameters; the real, the uncanny, the unconscious. How
might an exploration of the trace work to continue Lacan’s effort to define the difference between truth and knowledge? How
might the trace incite an exploration of an “outside.”
Beyond the lock down of uber consciousness...over reification...a sovereignty that threatens the possibility of opening to “the
outsider” without/within...might the trace; that which demands the bar of repression but nonetheless returns us to that which is
speechless; offer us pause. How does the trace incite the curious to adventure forth without laying “sovereign” claim to its
meaning through an anxious filling up or prematurely naming it a “thing” into presence when its effect is precisely presence in
absence; an absence of definition; of what is “out there”....what is othered.. outside of conscious knowing. How does this trace
align itself with the slipping of signification into the signifier... the subject that lies between signifiers that cannot be fully anchored
by “meaning”. How do we participate in exploring such a term “the trace” within the scope of a Lacanian transmission which
produces that which signifies... that which gives “meaning” but at the same time considers the difference between truth/knowledge
between Masters/academic discourse and the savoir/analytic transmission and the arbitrariness of the signifier...the failings and
impotence of any final totality of “phallic meaning.”
This necessitates a pause with regard to words...with regards to both phallic and feminine economies within the analytic frames of
theory and practice. The trace speaks directly to the politics of power with regards to “universals’ through which subjects are
frequently turned into objects within the practice of psychoanalysis. The concretization of theoretical frames of what it means to
wonder “outside” is in question with regards to the trace... the brink on which the Other rests, threatens, resists.
We will continue to question the social and political and clinical implications and possible applications with regards to the
productions that we generate within our ongoing experimental pedagogy that strives to offer participants a risk in speech
towards truth(s). I offer the following quotes with much reverence for time...for a back and forth movement that catapults speech
and difference and the search for a truth that cannot exist without its past marcations and necessitates following an arc beyond
the horizon into the future. A confrontation with a brink beyond what can be known. A trace has the potential to effects us as
subjects within our own time to mark into the future what can be left behind that offers a startle, a stop, a pause, that marks and
makes an imprint...a difference. How do we make a difference in our world in... our times ? What do we give? What do we risk?
What is the trace of analytic transmission beyond the “same old”. How do we endure this brink, anticipate it, live with it, and what
in our case within our Lutecium project, how do we use the brink to move a transmission forth to deal with the stranger; the
outsider , the threat of the trace; the barred unconscious, that which is new. How does one leave the trace behind for others as a
pause before an inscription that is mimicked rather than re-read and re-written? The trace leaves room for a question that can
only be partially answered. Might the trace be used as a pause before a welcome; an open invitation to other.... to take us to the
brink.. move us into another economy that poises itself on the feminine jouissance... a renewal of speech... a production of
speaking subjects. How do we make room for the s2 to open to a psychoanalytic currency moving in the difference of time.
Speaking of the Trace:
“Then there is the trace, the footprint in the sand, the sign about which Robinson Crusoe makes no mistake. Here sign and
object separate. The trace, in its negative aspect, draws the natural sign to a limit at which it becomes evanescent.”
- Jacques Lacan
“I have always been interested in this theme of survival, the meaning of which is not to be added on to living and dying. It is
originary: life is living on, life is survival [la vie est survie]. To survive in the usual sense of the term means to continue to live, but
also to live after death. When it comes to translating such a notion, Benjamin emphasizes the distinction between uberleben on
the one hand, surviving death, like a book that survives the death of its author, or a child the death of his or her parents, and, on
the other hand, fortleben, living on, continuing to live. All the concepts that have helped me in my work, and notably that of the
trace or of the spectral, were related to this "surviving" as a structural and rigorously originary dimension.”
- Jacques Derrida
“The point is that the relation, the subjective relation between an event and the world cannot be a direct relation. Why? Because
an event disappears on one side, and on the other side we never have a relation with the totality of the world. So when I say that
the subject is a relation between an event and the world we have to understand that as an indirect relation between something of
the event and something of the world. The relation, finally, is between a trace and the body. I call trace 'what subsists in the
world when the event disappears.' It's something of the event, but not the event as such; it is the trace, a mark, a symptom. And
on the other side, the support of the subject—the reality of the subject in the world—I call 'a new body.' So we can say that the
subject is always a new relation between a trace and a body. It is the construction in a world, of a new body, and jurisdiction—the
commitment of a trace; and the process of the relationship between the trace and the body is, properly, the new subject.”
- Alain Badiou
“As we recall, at the time that a stimulus is received, it goes either into the perceptual system or into the Unconscious and
produces a permanent trace. That particular trace might be energized into consciousness…long afterward…but it never comes
up as such; in fact, as Derrida argues, following Freud, the trace [die Bahnung] is primary. There is no “thing” there in the
Unconscious but simply the possibility for this particular path to be energized. When the track is opened up, and we have the
après coup perception of the originary trace, the impulse in the Unconscious is not exhausted. Unconscious impulses are
indestructible” (Of Grammatology, lxxxi-lxxxii).
- Spivak (re-reading Derrida)
“I’m fascinated by the phrase (“the possibility for this particular path to be energized.”Spivak) For me, it’s one of the clearest
articulations of how the writing process occurs—-by entering a creative space, we open this possibility “after the fact,” and are
given the chance to place on paper not an experience, not an accurate representation of an experience, but the “trace” of some
distant experience, of which the impulse to communicate, to come forth, is as necessary as life and death for the artist."
- Kim Caulder re-reading Spivak
opportunity to deconstruct the trace so that we can strive to understand the particular relevance of the term through this place of
an initial confrontation between the subject and Other... within our time. Time appears to have something do with this
engagement. It is only within the subject’s time that the trace is apprehended. This is a particular time that has something to do
with a past but not everything to do with it as there is no pure repetition. It is that which doesn’t conform that becomes perhaps
something of the subject’s remainder..that defies full categorization regarding the time of the encounter with Other.
How might the structural, political, social and clinical implications of this confrontation with the trace, a term with an historical
philosophical value, denote that which is absented as other but none the less appears as a mark offering a perception of an
“outside” to continue to pursue beyond our own knowing (many knowings… knowledge of the pasts, knowledge of different
disciplines, cultures) the reckoning with that which lies beyond known parameters; the real, the uncanny, the unconscious. How
might an exploration of the trace work to continue Lacan’s effort to define the difference between truth and knowledge? How
might the trace incite an exploration of an “outside.”
Beyond the lock down of uber consciousness...over reification...a sovereignty that threatens the possibility of opening to “the
outsider” without/within...might the trace; that which demands the bar of repression but nonetheless returns us to that which is
speechless; offer us pause. How does the trace incite the curious to adventure forth without laying “sovereign” claim to its
meaning through an anxious filling up or prematurely naming it a “thing” into presence when its effect is precisely presence in
absence; an absence of definition; of what is “out there”....what is othered.. outside of conscious knowing. How does this trace
align itself with the slipping of signification into the signifier... the subject that lies between signifiers that cannot be fully anchored
by “meaning”. How do we participate in exploring such a term “the trace” within the scope of a Lacanian transmission which
produces that which signifies... that which gives “meaning” but at the same time considers the difference between truth/knowledge
between Masters/academic discourse and the savoir/analytic transmission and the arbitrariness of the signifier...the failings and
impotence of any final totality of “phallic meaning.”
This necessitates a pause with regard to words...with regards to both phallic and feminine economies within the analytic frames of
theory and practice. The trace speaks directly to the politics of power with regards to “universals’ through which subjects are
frequently turned into objects within the practice of psychoanalysis. The concretization of theoretical frames of what it means to
wonder “outside” is in question with regards to the trace... the brink on which the Other rests, threatens, resists.
We will continue to question the social and political and clinical implications and possible applications with regards to the
productions that we generate within our ongoing experimental pedagogy that strives to offer participants a risk in speech
towards truth(s). I offer the following quotes with much reverence for time...for a back and forth movement that catapults speech
and difference and the search for a truth that cannot exist without its past marcations and necessitates following an arc beyond
the horizon into the future. A confrontation with a brink beyond what can be known. A trace has the potential to effects us as
subjects within our own time to mark into the future what can be left behind that offers a startle, a stop, a pause, that marks and
makes an imprint...a difference. How do we make a difference in our world in... our times ? What do we give? What do we risk?
What is the trace of analytic transmission beyond the “same old”. How do we endure this brink, anticipate it, live with it, and what
in our case within our Lutecium project, how do we use the brink to move a transmission forth to deal with the stranger; the
outsider , the threat of the trace; the barred unconscious, that which is new. How does one leave the trace behind for others as a
pause before an inscription that is mimicked rather than re-read and re-written? The trace leaves room for a question that can
only be partially answered. Might the trace be used as a pause before a welcome; an open invitation to other.... to take us to the
brink.. move us into another economy that poises itself on the feminine jouissance... a renewal of speech... a production of
speaking subjects. How do we make room for the s2 to open to a psychoanalytic currency moving in the difference of time.
Speaking of the Trace:
“Then there is the trace, the footprint in the sand, the sign about which Robinson Crusoe makes no mistake. Here sign and
object separate. The trace, in its negative aspect, draws the natural sign to a limit at which it becomes evanescent.”
- Jacques Lacan
“I have always been interested in this theme of survival, the meaning of which is not to be added on to living and dying. It is
originary: life is living on, life is survival [la vie est survie]. To survive in the usual sense of the term means to continue to live, but
also to live after death. When it comes to translating such a notion, Benjamin emphasizes the distinction between uberleben on
the one hand, surviving death, like a book that survives the death of its author, or a child the death of his or her parents, and, on
the other hand, fortleben, living on, continuing to live. All the concepts that have helped me in my work, and notably that of the
trace or of the spectral, were related to this "surviving" as a structural and rigorously originary dimension.”
- Jacques Derrida
“The point is that the relation, the subjective relation between an event and the world cannot be a direct relation. Why? Because
an event disappears on one side, and on the other side we never have a relation with the totality of the world. So when I say that
the subject is a relation between an event and the world we have to understand that as an indirect relation between something of
the event and something of the world. The relation, finally, is between a trace and the body. I call trace 'what subsists in the
world when the event disappears.' It's something of the event, but not the event as such; it is the trace, a mark, a symptom. And
on the other side, the support of the subject—the reality of the subject in the world—I call 'a new body.' So we can say that the
subject is always a new relation between a trace and a body. It is the construction in a world, of a new body, and jurisdiction—the
commitment of a trace; and the process of the relationship between the trace and the body is, properly, the new subject.”
- Alain Badiou
“As we recall, at the time that a stimulus is received, it goes either into the perceptual system or into the Unconscious and
produces a permanent trace. That particular trace might be energized into consciousness…long afterward…but it never comes
up as such; in fact, as Derrida argues, following Freud, the trace [die Bahnung] is primary. There is no “thing” there in the
Unconscious but simply the possibility for this particular path to be energized. When the track is opened up, and we have the
après coup perception of the originary trace, the impulse in the Unconscious is not exhausted. Unconscious impulses are
indestructible” (Of Grammatology, lxxxi-lxxxii).
- Spivak (re-reading Derrida)
“I’m fascinated by the phrase (“the possibility for this particular path to be energized.”Spivak) For me, it’s one of the clearest
articulations of how the writing process occurs—-by entering a creative space, we open this possibility “after the fact,” and are
given the chance to place on paper not an experience, not an accurate representation of an experience, but the “trace” of some
distant experience, of which the impulse to communicate, to come forth, is as necessary as life and death for the artist."
- Kim Caulder re-reading Spivak
| This Seminar meets 6pm - 8pm on Thursdays: 1/6, 1/20, 2/3, 2/17, 3/3, & 3/17 Flood Building, 870 Market Street San Francisco This seminar will also be webcasted live |
Seminar Fee: $400