| Lutecium a non-school of Lacanian/Freudian Psychoanalysis San Francisco, California |
| The American theater of the sinthome: A Lacanian journey through the roar of Edward Albee and the desert dust of Sam Shepard Workshop by Rebecca Bauknight, Ph.D. _______________________________________________________________________________ |
The American Phantasm Voiced
Lacan’s voice works as a theatrical production. In this presentation, I will concentrate on the human appeal that an aesthetic production
holds when cohesive conscious meaning gives way to the untranslatable aspects of the human condition. How is this revealed in the
embodied voice of the psychoanalyst ? I would like to demonstrate the craft involved in hitting a certain depth that resonates in the
theater to better understand what Lacan meant when he said “good actors make good psychoanalysts”. I believe that Lacan marks a
place that actors and dramatic theatrical productions travel whereby the audience is brought into a melding of identifications and is
confronted with Freud’s symptom. Lacan’s positioning of the hysteric’s discourse next to the analytic discourse has a significant
bearing on libinal discourse in relation to the unconscious, symptom, ego and its defenses. The discourse of the symptom is perhaps
best represented through a libinalized text that gives way to disinhibition of subjective expression by emphasizing the dislocation of
identity through indiosyncratic trains of thought and speech that resist reduction to central organizing themes. This has grave political
and social consequences as it positions the unconscious as a territory that remains constantly moving beyond the Other’s conscious
“understanding or colonization” thus enabling a subject to inhabit their own personal unconscious wherein one chooses to be absorbed
by a mass consciousness or to give voice to the symptom’s remainder. Enabling the singular voice. Within the parameter of dramatic
theater there is a permission to open to a supple and pliable gaze. A gaze that is not prematurely interrupted by conventional values
and language (superego) but spans and opens to a depth, a deep probe into the intricacies of the chaos of the human conflict and
suffering that a more “knowledgeable reasoned languaging of reality is poised to defend against.” The theater offers a place for the
singular voice. A voice that is perched between the real and the imaginary.
Lacan describes the kernel of the symptom as that which holds a residue of the Real. His work in Le Sinthome (1975) was contoured by
the writings of James Joyce. Lacan traced the structure of the symptom through the complex linguistic productions that manifests
through a stream of conscious writing that was not so held back or oppressed by an over accommodating neurotic organization.
Lacan noted that a language that is built upon a desire to replicate itself “repetitiously” would necessarily inhibit or censor a language
closer to the free association that opens to the conflictual aspects of the symptom. Lacan placed the tendency to inhibit the symptom
between the imaginary and symbolic. Something in the “suppleance of Joyces text” that expressed the relationship between the subject
and a phantasmic occasion ….. set between the Imaginary and Real….exposed a set of signifiers not so encumbered by the identity of
the subject that necessarily represses the fantasm through an endless production of coheseive meanings. Meanings that defend
against and inhibit the kernel of the Real within the symptom. Joyce’s text produces signifiers that are marked in such a way that others
respond..because the nonsense signifiers, those that do not follow the chain, that have no subject, hit at the level of the untranslatable
phantasm that exists within all symptoms. These are excesses that are generally barred by the phallic jouissance of making meaning.
Lacan never psychoanalyzed Joyce’s text rather he heard the text and reworked his understanding of the symptom based on his
reception of a work that marked a revolutionary literary style. This stream of conscious style continues In Beckett’s, Albee’s and
Shepard’s theater….. the symptom is guided through an embodied voice that makes sense to us because it strikes the psyche at the
same pitch.. Beckett and Joyce were contemporaries. The exchange between Becket and American theater opened American theater
to voicing the “symptom.”
The American theater marked a place that made sense to us precisely because it makes no sense. We enter not only into the symptom
but the aspect of the symptom that is un-interpretable and unreasonable. A voice the American theater beginning with the fifties and
sixties appeared to be built on. Off and off -off broadway was committed to showcase ,at the time, controversial work s of Albee and
eventually Shepard and the works of the experimental “ Open theater”. The disturbing qualities of dissolution set with the American
family appealed to this aspect of American culture that was contouring symptoms by way of a particular phantasm. What can we
understand about the American Psyche through the plays that hit at phantasmic level…that found its voice in the American theater ?
The American plays exposed the nightmare of the American dream through the singular voice that hits at a symptom..lodged between
the imaginary and the real. How do we as psychoanalyst work at the level of the phantasm rather than rigidifying neurosis by supplying
interminable and “ gratifying meanings “ at the juncture of secondary identification that colludes with a particular American narcissism
that censors the symptom. A narcissism that can perpetuate a parasitic neurosis that mimics and repeats rather than enabling any
possibility of cathexis and finally a termination of analysis. New speech. Revolutionary speech. A curiosity about that which has not
been located…”the Other”. A renewal in speech. A singular speech.
Lacan’s voice works as a theatrical production. In this presentation, I will concentrate on the human appeal that an aesthetic production
holds when cohesive conscious meaning gives way to the untranslatable aspects of the human condition. How is this revealed in the
embodied voice of the psychoanalyst ? I would like to demonstrate the craft involved in hitting a certain depth that resonates in the
theater to better understand what Lacan meant when he said “good actors make good psychoanalysts”. I believe that Lacan marks a
place that actors and dramatic theatrical productions travel whereby the audience is brought into a melding of identifications and is
confronted with Freud’s symptom. Lacan’s positioning of the hysteric’s discourse next to the analytic discourse has a significant
bearing on libinal discourse in relation to the unconscious, symptom, ego and its defenses. The discourse of the symptom is perhaps
best represented through a libinalized text that gives way to disinhibition of subjective expression by emphasizing the dislocation of
identity through indiosyncratic trains of thought and speech that resist reduction to central organizing themes. This has grave political
and social consequences as it positions the unconscious as a territory that remains constantly moving beyond the Other’s conscious
“understanding or colonization” thus enabling a subject to inhabit their own personal unconscious wherein one chooses to be absorbed
by a mass consciousness or to give voice to the symptom’s remainder. Enabling the singular voice. Within the parameter of dramatic
theater there is a permission to open to a supple and pliable gaze. A gaze that is not prematurely interrupted by conventional values
and language (superego) but spans and opens to a depth, a deep probe into the intricacies of the chaos of the human conflict and
suffering that a more “knowledgeable reasoned languaging of reality is poised to defend against.” The theater offers a place for the
singular voice. A voice that is perched between the real and the imaginary.
Lacan describes the kernel of the symptom as that which holds a residue of the Real. His work in Le Sinthome (1975) was contoured by
the writings of James Joyce. Lacan traced the structure of the symptom through the complex linguistic productions that manifests
through a stream of conscious writing that was not so held back or oppressed by an over accommodating neurotic organization.
Lacan noted that a language that is built upon a desire to replicate itself “repetitiously” would necessarily inhibit or censor a language
closer to the free association that opens to the conflictual aspects of the symptom. Lacan placed the tendency to inhibit the symptom
between the imaginary and symbolic. Something in the “suppleance of Joyces text” that expressed the relationship between the subject
and a phantasmic occasion ….. set between the Imaginary and Real….exposed a set of signifiers not so encumbered by the identity of
the subject that necessarily represses the fantasm through an endless production of coheseive meanings. Meanings that defend
against and inhibit the kernel of the Real within the symptom. Joyce’s text produces signifiers that are marked in such a way that others
respond..because the nonsense signifiers, those that do not follow the chain, that have no subject, hit at the level of the untranslatable
phantasm that exists within all symptoms. These are excesses that are generally barred by the phallic jouissance of making meaning.
Lacan never psychoanalyzed Joyce’s text rather he heard the text and reworked his understanding of the symptom based on his
reception of a work that marked a revolutionary literary style. This stream of conscious style continues In Beckett’s, Albee’s and
Shepard’s theater….. the symptom is guided through an embodied voice that makes sense to us because it strikes the psyche at the
same pitch.. Beckett and Joyce were contemporaries. The exchange between Becket and American theater opened American theater
to voicing the “symptom.”
The American theater marked a place that made sense to us precisely because it makes no sense. We enter not only into the symptom
but the aspect of the symptom that is un-interpretable and unreasonable. A voice the American theater beginning with the fifties and
sixties appeared to be built on. Off and off -off broadway was committed to showcase ,at the time, controversial work s of Albee and
eventually Shepard and the works of the experimental “ Open theater”. The disturbing qualities of dissolution set with the American
family appealed to this aspect of American culture that was contouring symptoms by way of a particular phantasm. What can we
understand about the American Psyche through the plays that hit at phantasmic level…that found its voice in the American theater ?
The American plays exposed the nightmare of the American dream through the singular voice that hits at a symptom..lodged between
the imaginary and the real. How do we as psychoanalyst work at the level of the phantasm rather than rigidifying neurosis by supplying
interminable and “ gratifying meanings “ at the juncture of secondary identification that colludes with a particular American narcissism
that censors the symptom. A narcissism that can perpetuate a parasitic neurosis that mimics and repeats rather than enabling any
possibility of cathexis and finally a termination of analysis. New speech. Revolutionary speech. A curiosity about that which has not
been located…”the Other”. A renewal in speech. A singular speech.
| This Workshop is offered Sunday, October 11, 2009, 10am - 2pm Flood Building, 870 Market Street, San Francisco Room - TBA ________________________________________________________ |
Fee: $80 professionals / $60 interns / $40 students