Quadripodal Musings

Displacer Beast!

I am still hoping to find some kind of generative poetic that will let me work with theory differently than I have largely had to up until now. I know that the dissertation will have to explain things and exemplify things - but I'm maybe reacting to the imposed telos of it all. Is there no way to demonstrate knowledge other than the University Discourse? What would any of these be like as the upper line of a quadripode of Lacan's discourse theory.

Yes, I said quadripode.

Aloud, while I was typing it.

 Here is the graph of the positions…

So then, here are the two other upper lines I alluded to before we stumbled over quadripode (quadripode oh quadripode…) I would like to nominate for consideration (meaning someone out there explain them to me!)…

a → S1

a → S2

In each the agent is object petit a.  Discourse issues from the cause or object of desire in each case. The first addresses an other as Master and the second addresses an other as Knowledge.   

object a as agent seems to me to always be the tough one to think on par with the others. It is easy as pie to imagine individual statements of arguments as being delivered in the discourses of the Hysteric, Master, University. But the Analysts does really say that much to begin with, and it is always as if what they say is coming back at you from things you've already said. anyway. 

That is to say, I can imagine - in a somewhat Marx Brothers fashion, ordering a meal in a restaurant in the mode of those other three discourses. ...But how would the analyst order anything if we understand their discourse as situated in the analytic session? 

Waiter: Do you want to start with drinks?

Star..? (the waiter had dropped the 't' at the end of "start", though it could have been a accent thing, after all, they've just met)

Waiter: I can take the food order then if you're ready.

…

Waiter: I'll give you a few minutes. (muttering 'nutcase' as he heads for the kitchen)

Whether any meal could in fact ever be ordered is unclear, perhaps the hopefulness of the waiter who is under pressure to sell tonight's special might leak out somehow, get repeated and appear to satisfy the wish i.e., be heard an order. Though the difficulty would repeat with the side dish and salad dressing.

But, it would seem to me (and I argued this with a literary example elsewhere) that what is different in the analyst's use of the discourse of the "analyst" discourse is a very restrained, even refused relationship to the sort of 'agency' that is exerted by the S1, S2 and $ in their respective turns in the agent's position. To point to one very easy difference…

If one attempts to intervene in discussions or to interpret, in the analytic sense of that term - echoes slips of the tongue and mis-speech of any sort, refusing to gratify questions with answers or attention, interrupting now and then with utterances that are annoyingly neither clearly questions or answers, etc etc what, in my experience happens is, people get angry or annoyed, or they just treat you like you're maybe on meds or something and give glassy smiles back your way. Now one could complain that I am grossly underestimating what analytic technique is all about etc - fair enough. I'd still argue that no counter argument is really allowed - analysis is purported to work whether I as analysand know doodley squat about the theory - ergo, first impressions are not something that could be shrugged off, rather they would be aspects of the interaction for the analyst to interpret. Just saying that if the above first impressions may be overly negative, there is enough there I think to nonetheless mark the trends in the analysts discourse that work at odds to most social styles of discussion and interaction that we are involved within. 

What none of the other discourses seem to have is an ethic. As such, if we think of the discourse formerly called the Analyst's as being without any ethic, then what might it better be called…? Maybe the Discourse of the Pervert? (I'm not the first to have noted that the top line of the discourse also resembles the formula for perversion a <> $ ).

There is much more to say but I'm just staring at these and spinning lines ...

a → S1

a → S2