New Seminar: Antithetical Meanings And Indiscernible Names

Additional Short Term 2018 Fall Seminar

Title: Translating and Reading J. C. Milner's Antithetical Meanings and Indiscernible Names

Dates: Nov. 3, 17, and Dec. 1

Time: 10:00am-12:noon

Seminarist: Aria Lotfalian

The immediate aim of this short term seminar is to introduce a translation of J. C. Milner's article "Antithetical Meanings and Indiscernible Names" (published in Le périple structurale, Verdier, 2002).A student of Lacan, J.C. Milner, linguist at Paris VI, helped clarify many of the Lacanian propositions in a return to the fundamentals of linguistics.

The import of introducing this text may be summarized as follows: Freud made use of the notion of the antithetical meaning of primal words (taken from the comparative philologist Karl Abel) to situate a peculiar characteristic of unconscious thought: namely, that it is indifferent to negation. A careful consideration of this affirmation leads to the conclusion that these unconscious elements entail an identity that is disjunct from the order of resemblance and representation.  It is the theory of this identity - which Freud will further elaborate under the term repetition - that is at stake in the notion of the unconscious. Lacan will later develop this theory within the problematic of the definition of structure (or, the signifier). This is done in refutation of the Saussurean definition of structure (or, the sign) which excludes not only any equivocity of meaning but the primitive as such. In this critique of the saussurean sign what comes to the fore is the instance of the letter and the priority of the text.

The mediate aims of the seminar will be: (a) to put the translation to the test of an initial reading by those attending the seminar, (b) to provide the proper historical backgrounds to the texts involved, (c) to give a preliminary presentation on the general outline of the argument of the text and the problems of translation and reading that it has posed to the seminarist.

The following texts will be provided as the only materials necessary for the seminar:

1) The translation (the original french will be provided on request)

2) Benveniste's article "Remarks on the function of language in the Freudian discovery"

3) Freud's article "The Antithetical Meanings of Primal Words" and excerpt from Interpretation of Dreams (Ch. VI Section C)