Speech goes via the body and, in return, it affects the body that emits it...
Speech goes via the body and, in return, it affects the body that emits it. In what way and in what form does speech affect the body that is its emitter? It affects it in the form of phenomena of resonance and echo. The resonance and echo of speech in the body are the real, both of what Freud called the ‘unconscious’ and the ‘drive’. In this sense, the unconscious and the speaking body are one and the same real. I’m going to say it again so that this essential punctuation doesn’t elude us. There is equivalence between the unconscious and the drive insofar as both terms have a common origin which is the effect of speech in the body, the somatic affects of language, of lalingua.
Henceforth, the unconscious at issue is not an unconscious of pure logic but, so to speak, an unconscious of pure jouissance. To designate this new unconscious, Lacan forged a new word, a neologism that is starting to repeat, the parlêtre, which is altogether distinct from the Freudian unconscious that belongs to the ontological and ethical order, as we have seen. On the contrary, the parlêtre is an ontic entity, because this entity necessarily has a body, since there is no jouissance without a body. The concept of parlêtre hinges – this is what I am putting forward – on the originary equivalence between unconscious and drive.
Therefore, this involves an unconscious that is different from the Freudian unconscious, which gives Lacan occasion to make a prediction: the Lacanian parlêtre shall one day supersede the Freudian unconscious. This prediction is not entirely serious. Lacan knew that the traditional names have an enduring and resistant power that it’s hard to put an end to. But he is indicating here that he has crossed the limits that Freud ascribed to what is involved in the unconscious, since at the level on which Lacan places his measure, the binary difference between unconscious and drive disappears. It cannot be said that the late teaching prolongs Lacan’s trajectory. It marks a swing, a reversal, that goes hand-in-hand with a critique of the vast architecture shaped by his previous conceptualisation.
Jacques Alain Miller - Habeas corpus. World Association of Psychoanalysis. XI Congress. Under Transference. 2016.
