Reading Seminar VI – Desire and Its Interpretation (Chapters 19-20)

London Society Reading Seminar

Desire and its Interpretation – The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VI

A Course of Seminars with Susana Huler

“We shall resume our reading of Seminar VI from the lessons on Hamlet on and we shall come to know the use Lacan makes of the vector of desire in the direction of the cure. Lacan criticises analysis that works through identification and provokes the analysand to react with an acting-out of a perversion. This is read by him as a protest of the subject in defence of his desire. Lacan concludes that “Desire is the relation of the subject to his being.” (Susana Huler)

Chapters XIX & XX

Saturday, 27th February 2021, 14.30-16.00

This session will discuss the last chapter on Hamlet, “Phallophanies” and then set out on the next section with a chapter entitled “The Fundamental Fantasy”. Our topic for this session is thus pivotal. On the one hand, it gives us the opportunity to consolidate and review the advances Lacan has made in his reading of Hamlet; and, on the other, it allows us to broach the new and decisive status that he gives to the structure of fantasy by designating it – in the singular – as ‘fundamental’. This shift will be absolutely crucial for the development of Lacan’s teaching, as it shifts away from the regulation of desire by the Name-of-the-Father towards the institution of a new paradigm in which the formula “Man’s desire is the desire of the Other” ultimately gives way to the question of the singularity of the subject’s relation to jouissance as embodied by the object a.

This session will feature a short presentation by Oriol Cobacho and an extended commentary by Susana Huler.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS TICKET IS FOR A ZOOM MEETING FOR WHICH YOU WILL RECEIVE A LINK 24 HOURS BEFORE THE EVENT AND AT 1PM ON THE DAY.