Through a Glass Darkly

“I can stay up all evening till the middle of the night... when we get to see the planet fly by, and I get to look at the telescope.” Leo, to his mother and aunt, regarding the recently-discovered planet, “Melancholia” in Lars von Trier's film of that name (2011) [1].

Scientists have done a great deal of research suggesting that conservatives —who in the US have increasingly had to kowtow to the religious right for at least 30 years — are naturally inclined toward their biases, research which author Chris Mooney has analyzed in a book provocatively called, The Republican Brain: TheScience of Why They Deny Science – and Reality [2]. Here are a scientific critique [3] of the book and a critique of the criticism [4]. But Lacan's lecture in my last entry suggests that even this appearance of naturalness can be manufactured. Wanting to go deeper into this process, and to investigate the relationship between truth/belief and knowledge/science, I again consulted Lacan, this time through the lecture, “The Power of the Impossibles” [5]. This topic involving science, I'll navigate it using the science fiction drama quoted above.

The movie begins with a surreal montage -- all shots in slow motion -- over a majestic  instrumental from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde [6]. (The music, at first sorrowful, becomes almost triumphant by the end of the sequence.) The montage includes a shot of Leo's aunt, Justine, in a wedding dress, running through a forest clearing, grey yarn clinging to (and rippling from) her ankles and dress as well as from the trees We also see celestial events and two artistic references -- a burning print of Breugel’s “Hunters in the Snow” [7], and a shot of Justine that recalls the pre-Raphaelites' depictions of Ophelia [8].  The music ends, the screen goes black, and the movie title appears, followed by the intertitle, “Part one: Justine.”

The camerawork changes to a shakier “documentary style” as it shows us a stretch limousine attempt to bring the newly-married Justine, with her groom, Michael, over a narrow winding road to the reception. We see the couple's affection for each other as they assist, taking turns replacing the driver and guiding the car around the sharp curves. When they get to her sister, Claire’s, and her husband, John's fabulous mansion, host and hostess complain that they are two hours late, for which Justine and Michael apologize profusely, and Michael teases Justine about having chosen the stretch limo. Justine agrees, to her sister’s anxious question, that she “really wants this,” then looks up at the sky and asks about one of the stars, “the red one.” John, surprised that she can see it, says that it's Antares, the main star in the Scorpio constellation. We can use the apologies and the constellation’s symbolism [9] to herald Lacan’s lecture, which he begins by naming “shame” as

…the one sign whose genealogy one can be certain of, namely that it is descended from a signifier. [10]

 Inside, the butler, “Little Father,” asks her to participate in the wedding lottery, and she smilingly adds some beans to a jar. The people applaud as the bride and groom enter the reception hall, and Justine embraces her nephew, who congratulates his “Aunt Steelbreaker,” and her father, Dexter, who introduces her to the women on either side of him (both named Betty, and both much younger than he is.) After Justine greets the others, her mother, Gaby, says she doesn't want to make a speech, and her father annoys Gaby by taking three spoons, telling the butler that he and his companions weren’t given any, then also taking the three replacements. Justine's boss, Jack, gives the first toast, “jokingly” chiding her for not having given him a tagline [11] for their new campaign and announcing her promotion to his advertising firm’s art director. This brings us to Lacan's topic—“how to behave in the face of culture.” [12]

{Lacan discusses how we may find light allowing us to take the question in another way, then brings in the concept of the alethosphere, a concept defined elsewhere as “a kind of high-tech heaven, a laicized [13a] or ‘disenchanted’ space filled none the less with every techno-scientific marvel imaginable…”} [13b]

Dexter starts his toast: “So, what can I say without talking about your mother? – my wife of yesteryear – which is exactly what I don't wish to do. I don't think that I would be revealing any secret if I were to say that she can be very domineering at times...” Gaby protests, “What a load of crap!” expressing the opinion that she “hates marriages…Especially when they involve my closest family members.” {I should post my next Lacan quote before the end of the dinner. In discussing “the other side of psychoanalysis,” he tells his students to}

...quickly make provision in them for enough shame so that when the festivities begin, there is no lack of seasoning. [14]

 After whispering to Gaby, “Who did you even bother coming?” Claire notices her father kissing both Bettys’ hands, then Justine closing her eyes. She brings Justine into the library, telling her not to make a scene. As they return to the reception and a guitarist starts to play, Justine leaves the building. We hear Tristan und Isolde again as she takes a cart to the golf course and watches the stars. She returns soon after the wedding planner asks where she is, then Michael gives a speech for her. He is somewhat inarticulate and self-effacing (to the point of irritating Gaby) but loving.  Claire tells the guests to move to the living room and announces that they will cut the cake at 11:30. We see Justine dance with Michael, John, and Jack, and her father dance with the two Bettys, then, when Leo asks to go to bed, Justine offers to take him up. After reassuring him that she is still his Aunt Steelbreaker and that they can still build caves together, Justine falls asleep herself, and Claire has to come wake her, asking what is wrong. Justine replies, “I’m trudging through this... Praying really hard. It's clinging to my legs. It's really heavy to drag along.” This conversation can give a sense of Lacan’s next point, defending “the other side of psychoanalysis”:

You’ve got enough to open a shop. If you are not yet aware of this, then do a bit of analysis, as they say. You will see this vapid air of yours run up against an outlandish shame of living. [15]

 Claire tells her, “Don't say a word to Michael,” then leaves.  We get a series of shots: first in the Hall, of John with the cake knife; then in the bathroom, of Justine lying perfectly still in the tub; then back in the hall, of John offering to get her to come down (Claire adding, “and my Mom, too.”) Then John goes to Justine’s door, telling her they’re ready to cut the cake, and gets no response. When he knocks on Gaby's door and gets no answer, he enters and finds her clothes on the bed and the bathroom door locked. He then knocks on that door, and she answers, “When Justine took her first crap on her potty, I wasn't there. When she had her first sexual intercourse, I wasn't there. So give me a break, please, with all your fucking rituals.” We’ll use this expression of maternal repentance to deliver a fable, from the novel, El Criticón, which Lacan relates in the next section:

Truth is in labor in a town that is only inhabited by beings of the highest purity. This doesn’t stop them from taking flight, and under the influence of a hell of a fear, when they are told that truth is like having a child. [16]

 John returns to the Hall, thanks his guests for their patience – “We're just having a little issue with the wedding dress” – and asks Claire, under his breath, “Is everybody in your family stark raving mad?” His anger building as he thinks of his hospitality, money and 18-hole golf course being taken for granted, he returns to Gaby's room, grabs her clothes, puts them in her suitcase, and throws it to the bottom of the exterior staircase. (Right afterward, Little Father comes out and brings it back in.) We then see Justine back with Michael, and they cut the cake. She tries to apologize to him, but he tells her to never say she is sorry – he says he has noticed she’s not feeling well tonight – he blames himself for not having taken care of her lately, and he brings her to the library and shows her a photo of a plot of land he bought for them both –where he plans to grow an apple orchard where she can sit in the shade on days when she’s “feeling a little sad.” He gives her the photo, and she says that she'll always keep it with her, and, after they briefly fondle, she leaves the room. When he looks down, he notices that she has left it on the sofa. I hope you can bear my playing with the orchard reference to bring forth another quote from this section:

You will see this, for example, “ignoble consciousness is the truth of noble consciousness.” And it’s dispatched in a way that draws you up short. The more unworthy you are—I won’t say obscene, that’s been out of the question for a long time—the better off you are. That really clarifies the recent reforms of the university, for instance. Everything, credit points—to have the makings of culture, of a hell of a general, in your rucksack, plus some medals besides, just like an agricultural show, that will pin onto you what people dare call mastery. Wonderful! You’ll have it coming out of your ears. [17]

 Later, when Justine looks in on Leo, John accosts her: He tells her that she'd “better be goddamn happy," asking if she has any idea how much the party cost him (“for most people, an arm and a leg.”) When she says that she hopes he feels it is well spent, he says that it depends on whether they have a deal – that she'll be happy. She agrees, and he smiles when she tells him, at his request, how many holes his golf course has. We’ll let John’s little test help us examine an odd claim of Lacan’s, that our

shame is justified by the fact that you do not die of shame, that is, by your maintaining with your force a discourse of the perverted master—which is the university discourse. [18]

 She returns to the reception and briefly dances with her father, nodding when he asks, at the end of the song, if she is happy, then taking her leave. She then bumps into her boss, who introduces her to his nephew, Tim. Jack says that he just hired him based on his lack of an education – perfect for public relations. Saying that he is paying him a very good salary, he tells her that Tim will be fired if he doesn't get a tagline out of her by the end of the night -- “which sucks, considering the debts he's in.” She walks away, a little disgusted, and Jack tells Tim to follow her to “be there at the time of birth.” Tim and Justine dance, she leaves the room, and Tim follows her to the library door, showing her the campaign picture and asking her for the tagline. She says, “spare me,” and enters, shutting the door behind her. Jack’s order and picture can direct our attention to what Lacan is indicating in his diagram (a diagram discussed in my last entry,) that one should

focus on … production—[on] the production of the university system. A certain production is expected of you. It is perhaps a matter of obtaining this effect, of substituting another for it. [19]

 Michael is still there (holding the photo) with Claire. He leaves, and Claire says that she thought Justine “really wanted this,” adding, “Michael has tried to get through to you all evening to no avail.” Justine protests that she does want this – “I smile and I smile,” but Claire accuses her of lying to all of them and also leaves. Justine replaces the open art books displaying abstract prints with ones with more representational works (including “Hunters in the Snow” and “Ophelia”) and goes to her mother's room.  She brings her luggage inside, and Gaby asks, “What do you want in this place? You've no business here. Nor have I.” Justine tries to talk to her, saying that she's “a bit scared,” and Gaby (keeping her back to her through most of their conversation) asks, “A bit? I'd be scared out of my wits if I were you.” Justine says that her fear is not what her mother thinks - “I have trouble walking properly,” and Gaby replies sadly, “You can still wobble, I see. So just wobble the hell out of here...” We then see Justine sitting in the reception hall holding the photo (as Tim sits beside her.) Then she sees Michael, and walks toward him, and they seem to be looking for words to say to each other. A waitress approaches the bride with some liqueur and a glass. Justine waves it away, but Claire takes the bottle and has her drink directly from it. Michael takes a swig himself, making Justine laugh, and they kiss passionately. Claire calls for everyone to go outside as Dexter asks for another glass, mistakenly calling the waitress “Betty.” Justine asks him if they can talk, but is unable to reach him. They go outside and we hear Tristan and Isolde again (oscillating between sweet and ominous) as the guests make hot air balloons, writing good wishes on them before letting them go. Justine, through John's telescope, watches them ascend, then closes her eyes, and we see shots of stars surrounded by colorful deep space clouds. Back inside, Justine and Michael stand on a balcony above the guests; Claire takes Justine's bouquet and drops it over the railing before the couple leave for their room, and the last shot from the scene is of their father smirking up, clapping very slowly. In the bedroom, Justine sits down, exhausted. Asking Michael to sit with her a little while, she gently rebuffs his attempts at lovemaking, then asks him to re-fasten her dress and goes outside. After getting to the golf course she turns and finds that Tim has followed her, still holding the picture and a notebook. She pushes him onto the sand trap, gets on top of him, and they copulate. The sand trap can warn us that

… if you want your remarks to be subversive, you must take great care that they don’t get too bogged down on the path to truth. [20]

 We then see her inside as she dances with her father again. She says she really needs to talk to him, and has the butler prepare him a room. Afterward, Jack approaches her and asks her to join him and Tim for soup, and casually tells them both that Tim is fired. She replies that she has been thinking of a tagline that would “effectively hook a group of minors on our substandard product, preferably in a habit-forming way” She says she considered trying to sell Jack to the public, which brought her back to where she started at – nothing. She continues, “Nothing is too much for you, Jack. I hate you and your firm so deeply I couldn't find the words to describe it. You are a despicable, power-hungry little man, Jack.” Telling her that “there aren't too many jobs out there,” Jack turns to go, smashing his plate against the catering van. As he drives away, Michael emerges from the house and says goodbye, telling her “This could have been a lot different,” to which she replies sadly, “Yes, but …what did you expect?” He answers, “You’re right” and leaves. This unhappy ending can symbolize Lacan’s next admonition:

It is worth noting that I put psychoanalysis on their guard, by connoting this locus they are engaged to through their knowledge as ‘ love,” I would say to them straight away: one does not marry truth; there can be no contract with her, and even less can there be any open liaison. She won’t stand for any of that. Truth is firstly a seduction, intended to deceive you. If you are not to be taken in, you must be strong. This is not the case with you. [21]

 Her sister walks by, and Justine grabs her arm, pleading, “Claire,” who answers, “Sometimes I hate you so much.” Tim, noting that she is short of a job and a husband, humbly offers his services – “We could be a great team – we had good sex.” She says that doesn’t seem like a good idea, and he leaves. We then see Little Father telling Claire about the bean lottery (the count was 678, and no one had guessed right) and asking about the prize, to which she replies, “Throw it away.” Justine goes to Dexter’s room and finds a note: “To my beloved daughter, Betty. I'm as proud of you as any father could be. But I couldn't find you and I was offered a ride home I couldn't refuse. See you soon. Kisses from your stupid Dad.” We see a shot of her sitting on a stack of chairs in the empty hall, then of Claire waking her where she had passed out, on the library sofa. Justine says, “I tried, Claire” and her sister answers, “Yes, you did. You really did.” We can let Claire’s encouragement re-sound Lacan’s:

And then, these initial responses that have so bewildered you here, and that, it seems, went across over the radio much better than people think, have confirmed the principle that I have adopted, and this is one of the methods by which it would be possible to take action upon culture. [22]

 They go riding together, and when Justine’s horse, Abraham, refuses to cross a bridge, Justine looks up at the blue sky and says that Antares is missing from the Scorpio constellation. An intertitle comes up saying, “Part two: Claire,” and we get shots of her perfectly-manicured lawn and beautifully-decorated rooms as we see her and Little Father preparing for a guest. Then John hands her the phone, saying, “I swear to God, your sister can't do anything by herself.” Claire talks Justine into taking a cab that they had arranged to bring her to their mansion. After arguing that Justine is a bad influence on her and Leo and dismissing Claire’s assertion that she is ill, John reproaches Claire for breaking her promise not to read about Melancholia on the internet again. She confesses that she is afraid of “that stupid planet,” but he says that there is nothing to fear, that it will be an amazing experience “First it was black, now it's blue. Blocking Antares, hiding behind the sun.” “…you have to trust a scientist.” The taxi arrives, and John pays him as Claire and Little Father help a shell-shocked Justine out. Leo hugs her and asks when they can “build those caves,” and John and Claire tell him not to worry her about that right now. Later, John asks Claire what she is cooking, and she answers, “meatloaf... If that's doesn't get her out of bed, nothing will.”  Perhaps Claire’s bait can help us grasp the meaning of Lacan’s next words:

When one is caught by chance at the level of a large public, of one of these masses that a type of medium presents you with, why not precisely raise the level, in proportion to the assumed ineptitude—which is a pure assumption—of this field? Why lower the tone? Who do you have to rope in? It is precisely the game of culture to engage you in this system, namely, once the aim is reached, you can’t tell head from tail. [23]

 Claire tries to give Justine a bath, but Justine cannot step into it, eventually squealing like a small child and dropping to her knees,  After Claire puts Justine's hand in the warm water and tries to coax her a little more, she calls this attempt practice for tomorrow. She later brings Justine to the dining room, and although Justine smiles at the smell of meatloaf, after taking a bite, says it “tastes like ashes” and starts to cry, and Claire has Little Father take her to bed. After excusing himself, Leo goes to her bedside, reading her an article about the Melancholia fly-by, and when Claire enters and tells him not to frighten his aunt about it now, Justine, with her eyes still closed, tells her, “If you think I’m afraid of a planet, then you’re too stupid.” Afterward, Justine is able to go out with Claire to the garden, where they pick flowers and blueberries. Suddenly, it starts to snow and Justine smiles. We then see her at the table eating jam (with obvious enjoyment) out of a jar. In the next scene, Justine is in the stable brushing Abraham while John and Little Father stash fuel and other supplies there. John explains to her that they brought “just a few things we're gonna need in case Melancholy gets really close” and says not to tell Claire. After they leave, Claire makes Justine ride with her again, and when Abraham stops at the bridge Justine beats him until he falls. Justine, looking up, points to Melancholia, saying, “There's your fly-by.” Justine’s superior vision can help us see how

…[The psychoanalyst] repudiates the mode of unearthing a shadow and then pretending it is carrion, repudiates being valued as a hunting dog. Hi[s] discipline steeps him in the fact that the real is not initially there to be known—this is the only dam that can hold idealism back. [24]

 As Claire and Justine have tea on the patio, John and Leo drive up in the golf-cart with a telescope. Little Father approaches John to help him, but is told not to touch the instrument. Leo runs to Claire, showing her a stick with an attached wire forming a large loop at one end. John proudly tells her that Leo had made it: “If you adjust the steel and point it towards the planet from your chest it'll tell you how fast it's approaching and ultimately how fast it will recede.” Later, Claire is looking at a website with the title, “Earth & Melancholia Dance of Death,” when the power goes off. She calls for John, who reassures her. “We're prepared for this. The power will be back on in a few days. Claire... Tomorrow evening Melancholy will pass us by and you'll never have to see it again, okay?” He promises that there is no chance that the scientists have miscalculated. His promise can draw us to Lacan's next point:

To be truthful, it is only from where knowledge is false that it is concerned with the truth. All knowledge that is not false couldn’t give a damn about it. In becoming known, only its form is a surprise, a surprise in dubious taste, moreover, when by the grace of Freud it speaks to us of language, since it is nothing but its product. [25]

 John concludes, “It's rising again. Just like the moon. Because of the Earth's rotation. Exactly like they said it would.” Later, we see Claire return from the village, and John asks if she is hungry. When she says she isn’t and passes him, he follows her into the library, seeing her take out a bottle of pills. He asks if she plans to kill them all, then says, “Maybe I should take those.” She locks them in a drawer and hides the key behind a book, saying, “Don't touch them. Don't you touch them.” With John's lunar reference and Claire's concealment in mind we’ll consider the following revelation…

This is the other face of the function of truth, not the visible face, but the dimension in which it is necessitated by something hidden. [26a]

...and learn a concept Lacan will bring up soon, but doesn’t define, in our present lecture – the “lathouse.” He defines “lathouses” as:

‘false objects’… Thus the quarrel over images that has been stirring up the art historians and critics is itself at base an off the track question about jouissance which in today’s world has taken on a global dimension. The true object would be Lacan’s object a (which moreover is a semblant, a logical consistency without substance), the false being the lathouse, i.e., an object that is made up of enjoying substance. (Scholarly citations removed.) [26b]

We see Claire in the stable watching the horses “spook,” then re-entering the library, where Justine is eating chocolate mints. Claire tells her that it’s time for her bath, but Justine says she has already had one. Claire expresses concern that, for the first time, Little Father didn't come to work without giving advance notice, and Justine says that this might be a time when he needs to be with his family. Claire responds, “It'll pass us by tonight. John is quite calm about it,” explaining that “John studies things. He always has.” Study being a task of two of the “impossible professions,” Lacan had enumerated in his last lecture, the word may help us remember Lacan's next warning:

[O]ne mustn’t tease the lathouse too much. What does undertaking this always assure? What I am forever explaining to you—it assures the impossible by virtue of the fact that this relationship is effectively real. The more you[r] quest is located on the side of truth, the more you uphold the power of the impossibles which are those that I respectively enumerated for you last time—governing, educating, analyzing on occasion. [27]

 Justine says sadly that the Earth is evil and that nobody will miss it. Claire, taken aback, blurts out, “but where would Leo grow up?” Justine repeats that life on Earth is evil, and when Claire says that there may be life somewhere else, says with conviction that there isn’t. To Claire’s questioning, Justine says, “I know things.” At Claire’s skeptical reply, Justine says, “678” the number, that no one else was able to guess, of beans in the lottery. Leo enters, saying the words at the top of this entry, and we later see John wake him to watch the fly-by. Then the family gathers on the terrace, and we see Claire's terrified face before the large planet rises. John has her look through the telescope, and she relaxes and says that it looks “friendly.” He says that is what he had been trying to tell her. Later, however, when he says he’d like to raise a toast to life, Claire bristles -- “What do you mean, to life? You said it was going to be okay!” This cross-questioning [28] of her husband's authoritative claim can summon the next section of Lacan's lecture, where he posits that shame is

…the hole from which the master signifier arises. If it were, it might perhaps not be useless for measuring how close one has to get to it if one wants to have anything to do with the subversion, or even just the rotation, of the master’s discourse. [29]

 John calms her, explaining that “when dealing with science and calculations of this magnitude... you have to account for a margin of error.” He has her use the wire device their son made. When she looks through it for the first time, he says that it will be smaller in five minutes. When she looks again, she says, crying with relief, that it is. He answers, “Of course it is … It's moving away from us at over sixty thousand miles an hour. We’ll use the stick-and-wire gadget to convey Lacan’s idea that the master signifier is what makes

… something that spreads throughout language like wildfire … readable, that is to say, how it hooks on, creates a discourse. [30]

Claire tucks Leo into bed and sees Justine standing solemnly behind her. She tells her, “Be happy, please,” and Justine replies that she’s happy that Claire is. Claire lets out an exasperated laugh, saying that it’s easier for Justine, who always assumes the worst, and Justine agrees that it sometimes is. Claire goes out to the terrace the next morning, looking refreshed, and asks John if he wants tea, but he is staring, worriedly, through the telescope. She lies on a chaise lounge and dozes, and when she wakes up he is gone. She uses the device and sees that the planet is getting larger. She searches for John, checks the drawer where she had kept the pills, and finds the bottle is empty. When she asks Justine if she has seen John, she replies that she hasn’t, and remarks that the horses have calmed down. Claire goes to the stable and finds John’s body. She covers him with hay, lets Abraham loose, and returns to the house. She prepares breakfast for Justine and Leo and tells Justine that John had ridden to the village, then looks again through Leo’s gadget and finds that Melancholia has come much closer. The gadget can now convey

… the other side, where everything can be threaded onto a little stick, where one can place them, the little pile that they are, along with others who are, as is the nature of the progression of knowledge, dominated. [31]

She suddenly grabs Leo's hand and tells Justine to follow her. She tries to start one car, then another, but neither work, though she is able to start the golf cart. When Justine asks where she is going, Claire answers, “To the village. Come.” Justine counters, “This has nothing to do with the village.” Justine’s answer, referring to Claire and John’s elite status excluding them from solidarity with the villagers, can act as a foil to Lacan’s assertion that his schemas can justify

…that the student is not displaced in feeling a brother, … not of the proletariat but of the lumpen-proletariat. [32]

The cart stops working as Claire gets to the bridge, and she tries to carry Leo, but just then it starts to hail, forcing her to return to the mansion. After putting him to bed, she talks to Justine, saying she wants the three of them to be together when it happens, suggesting they meet on the terrace for a glass of wine. Justine, stone-faced, mocks her, “How about a song? Beethoven's Ninth...” Mention of the piece can invoke Lacan’s claim that what is produced in the university discourse is

… something cultural. And when one thinks like the university, what one produces is a thesis. [33]

Justine calls Claire’s plan “a piece of shit” and ridicules her desire to make the end “nice” Claire, for the second time, says, “Sometimes I hate you so much…” Later, Justine sees Leo standing alone on the terrace looking worried. He tells her that he’s afraid that the planet will hit them after all, recalling that his father had said that if that happened, there would be nothing to do and nowhere to hide. Justine answers, “If your dad said that, then he's forgotten about … the magic cave.” When Leo asks if everybody can make one she replies, “Aunt Steelbreaker can.” We see her showing him how to strip bark from a fallen branch, and together they make a sort of uncovered tepee. With her new confidence, Justine can incarnate a new master signifier, to which Lacan says the order of production is always related —

…not simply because that discerns it for you, but quite simply because it forms a part of the presuppositions according to which everything in this order is related to the author’s name. [34]

We hear Tristan und Isolde again as Justine has Leo sit inside the cave, then gently brings Claire inside it. After entering it herself, Justine adds one more branch and tells Leo to hold her hand and close his eyes. Claire, trying not to cry, takes his other one, looks at Justine’s face, and takes her hand. We get a close-up of Claire as she silently weeps, then at Justine's serene demeanor. As the music crescendos we see Melancholia come closer and closer until it fills the sky, then flames approach, engulfing the screen. We hear a crash, a sound which continues for a few moments after the screen goes black, then a minute of silence before the music resumes for the final credits. We can end our account of the lecture on the subject of credit, about which Lacan says

…As you can see, there is not much reason for you to worry that what comes out of you carries the label of what concerns you. This [is] such an obstacle, let me assure you, to the publication of anything decent—if only because of the fact that even within what you might be naturally interested in, you believe that you are obliged, in the name of the laws of a thesis, to refer it to the author—he is talented, it’s unconvincing, he hasn’t got ideas, what he says is not totally stupid. And if he has contributed something important that may not concern him in any way, you are absolutely obliged to think that this is a mind that thinks. And [that can screw you up] for a long time…if this phenomenon takes place [for you], which is frankly incomprehensible, given what it is that I put forward for the majority of you, it is because I happen to make you ashamed, not too much, but just enough. [35]

I’ll end this post with a more mundane illustration of some of the aforementioned concepts in an article about current “master signifiers.” [36]

1. Lars von Trier. Melancholia. (2011.) in: springfieldspringfield.co.uk. (Undated.)

2. Chris Mooney. “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality.” (April 1, 2012.) in: amazon.com. (Undated.)

3. Dan Kahan. “The Ideological Symmetry of Motivated Reasoning.” (December 13, 2011.) in: culturalcognition.net.

4.  Paul Rosenberg. “Disputing the science of conservative anti-science.” (22 Aug 2012.) in: aljazeera.com.

5. Jacques Lacan. “The Power of the Impossibles” from The Other side of Psychoanalysis. (1970) in: springhero.wordpress.com. (July 3 - 9, 2010.)

 6. “Tristan und Isolde.” in: Wikipedia. June 13, 2014.

7. “Hunters in the Snow.” in: Wikipedia. May 26, 2014.

8. “'pre-raphaelite’ Ophelia.” in: Google Images. Undated.

 9. “Scorpion #In Culture.” in: Wikipedia. June 24, 2014.

10. Lacan. “Impossibles [1.]”

11. While discussing this campaign, Jack projects an image on a large screen of partially-undressed women in spiked heels lying in contorted positions on a floor.

12. Lacan. “Impossibles [2.]”

13a. “Defrocking.” in: Wikipedia. March 31, 2014.

13b. Slavoj Zizek. Lacan: The Silent Patners. (2006.)

14-15. Lacan. “Impossibles [2.]”

16-20. Lacan. “Impossibles [3.]”

21-23. Lacan. “Impossibles [4.]”

24-25. Lacan. “Impossibles [5.]”

26a. Lacan. “Impossibles [5.]”

26b. Pierre-Gilles Guéguen. “Don’t Blame It on New York!” in:lacan.com. (2013.)

27. Lacan. “Impossibles [5.]”

28. Coincidentally(?), Sutherland played a perjuring officer in A Few Good Men (1992.)

29-32. Lacan. “Impossibles [6.]”

33-35. Lacan. “Impossibles [7.]”

36. James S. Fell. “The Toxic Appeal of the Men’s Rights Movement.” in: time.com. May 29, 2014.

Drive

“It's all very simple really: Women, money - It's like a movement of perpetual revolt” – journalist Robert Poiccard, advising his lovelorn friend in Godard’s Masculin/Féminin [1]

The economist linked to in my last entry, Paul Krugman, has traced the wealth disparity that has been growing in the United States over the past 35 years to “movement conservatism” [2] – a movement led by organizations like The Heritage Foundation. These organizations urge arguments such as that more money will motivate people to create more wealth, wealth that will eventually benefit everyone. But there is research that shows that offering more money is not an effective way to foster better work. (In fact, it seems to often be a hindrance. [3])  Wondering how this and other [4] information has done little, if anything, to start turning the tide to a more equitable society, I consulted Marxist psychologist Jacques Lacan’s lecture “The Impotence of Truth.” [5]  For assistance, I’ll turn to the movie by his fellow countryman, quoted above.

The film opens in a restaurant, and we meet Paul, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, famous for his earlier portrayal of Antoine Doinel, a working-class adolescent in Truffaut’s 400 Blows [6]. Like Antoine, Paul is an aspiring writer, and we hear his thoughts as he starts to compose a story of the monotony and toil of a nameless boy from Marseilles.

{We can let this exposition usher in Lacan’s lecture, in which he sets the goal of demonstrating the relationship between the “analyst's” and “master's discourse” [7] using the news media’s “attempt to minimize the seriousness of failed, suppressed little demonstrations” while it disingenuously asks what is “eating” university students. [8]}

Paul recognizes a young woman, an aspiring pop singer named Madeleine Zimmer [9], and he asks about a friend of hers, Dumas – someone who, Paul has been told, might be able to get him a job. She says that he is probably referring to Marcel Dumas, who works on a magazine, and asks if Paul is looking for work. He says he has just finished his military service, and he goes into depth about how oppressive he found the experience, how it confirms that even relative freedom is difficult to achieve for a young Frenchman who has had “the wrong education,” and that his oppression will likely continue in the country’s military/industrial complex – “Discipline and finance share the same logic.” We can extend the connection Paul makes, and its relation to education, to Lacan’s four discourses, three of which he refers to early in the lecture as those of the “impossible professions.”

[the overlapping discourses of governing, educating, and analyzing] which are nothing other than the signifying articulation, the apparatus whose presence, whose existing status alone dominates and governs anything that at any given moment is capable of emerging as speech. [10]

Madeline agrees that Paul’s service “doesn’t sound like much fun,” and, after Paul goes into more detail about his troubles (and those of workers in general,) she says that Dumas will be meeting her at the restaurant. This seems a good place to add another early point of Lacan’s, that not working is out of the question, an “impossibility” which

… is surely an accomplishment of what I am calling the master’s discourse. {Lacan compares the S1/S2 relationship in his discourse charts to that between a human’s “carrion” and the faithful dog that is incapable of resisting anything that comes from its master’s plate.} [11]

Angry voices interrupt them – a couple at another table are arguing, the man calling the woman a “slut.” When she says she is sick of his insults, he says that is all she understands – she doesn’t know what she wants. She starts to leave with their son, Patrick, but his father wrests him from her and leaves. After yelling after him, “Find someone else to slave for you!,” she goes back to their table, takes a gun out of her purse, runs outside (while Paul calls for her to shut the door,) and shoots him. This exchange and outcome can summon Lacan’s insight that there

… is obviously no better way to pin down the master signifier S1, which is up there on the board, than by identifying it with death…{Lacan credits Hegel with showing that the outcome of a series of dominant/submissive relationships} is that in the end it is the slave who, through his work, produces the master’s truth, by pushing him down underneath. By virtue of this forced labor, as you can see from the outset, the slave ends up, at the end of history, at this point called absolute knowledge. [12]

The setting changes to a café where Paul meets his friend Robert. They discuss a strike and a petition to free political prisoners, and they agree - to an intertitle - that “human labor resurrects things from the dead.” Paul then imitates another customer to refute the idea that putting yourself in others’ shoes helps a person understand them, and Robert counters by borrowing sugar from a woman at another table to get a look at her breasts. Paul follows in his footsteps and experiences the same admiration.

In the next scene we meet two of Madeline’s friends, if only briefly. We spot one, Catherine, right before seeing Paul at the job that Madeline had gotten him. Then we watch a female reporter typing behind him and hear a voice-over of her article – “What do Young Girls Dream About?” The article describes various Parisian “girls,” - when she gets to those of the bourgeois class we see Madeline buying a dress, and when the article concludes that “the average Frenchwoman doesn't exist,” we see Catherine again. We can use these associations as a signal that

...Truth has more than one face. But that’s the point, what could be the first line of conduct to maintain as far as analysts are concerned is to be a little suspicious of it, and not to become all of a sudden mad about a truth, about the first pretty face encountered at the first turn in the road. [13]

Paul runs after Catherine, and when he catches up to her, she gestures toward what he wants. He turns back, knocks on restroom door – and Madeline emerges. He tells her that she had said she would go out with him that day, which she denies. He accuses her of being a liar, and when she acts surprised asks, “Don't you ever lie?” With this dialogue we can recall another point about Lacan's discourses. Lacan, referring to his diagram, says:

it is now a matter of seeing, as is already indicated by the place given to the term “truth,” whether it might be at the level of the second line that one would have the last word. However, at the level of the second line there is no suggestion of an arrow. And not only is there no communication, but there is something that acts as a block. [14]

They flirt while she brushes her hair, expressing different ideas about what the center of the world is for each of them – his: love, and hers: herself. We hear Paul’s voice reading from his diary as he discusses his political hopes and activities and his “progress” with Madeline, who has now introduced him to another friend of hers, Elisabeth. He notes that Robert is interested in Catherine (while we get views of her backing away from his advances and looking fondly at Paul) and comments, “probably a virgin, but good militant material.” Afterwards, we watch Paul divert a military driver while Robert sprays “Peace in Vietnam” on his car, and we hear Madeline’s voice reading her own diary, with thoughts that include her hopes that Paul won’t become a pest if she sleeps with him and that, when her record sells, she can buy a Morris-Cooper. [15] These expressions, showing the various disconnects between our couple, especially their hopes, drive home Lacan's claim that what blocks truth:

… is what results from the work. And what a certain Marx’s discovery accomplished was to give full weight to a term that was already known prior to him and that designates what work occupies itself with—it’s called production. [16]

We see Madeline from her bedroom watching a train, then see Paul and Robert inside it, before the camera focuses on a depressed fellow passenger as others off-screen hurl racial and sexual slurs at each other. A white woman says that “níggers” are “killers in the making,” and a man of African descent retorts that her dream is to be a “Hollywood whore,” then adds that white people don’t understand black musicians – “It's not about desire or the blues.”  He claims that if someone told Charlie Parker, “throw away your sax...and you can kill the first ten whites you see, he'd do it — He'd never play another note.”  As he talks, Paul looks at the woman, starts, and says, “Watch out!” - The woman, who has a gun on her lap, asks him, “What are you staring at?!” We can let his warning echo Lacan's caution about university discourse, a

...position of unheard-of pretension of having a thinking being, a subject, as its production. As subject, in its production, there is no question of it being able to see itself for a single instant as the master of knowledge ... Let’s be careful, this is indeed what is dangerous about it, but all the same it does have the strength to be articulated in this way, as one can see by reading people like Aristotle, principally, who have not read Hegel. [17]

We hear gunshot, and the next intertitle answers her: “Nothing: Just A Woman And A Man And An Ocean Of Spilt Blood.” The scene changes to Elisabeth and Catherine dressing while discussing the most important physical aspect of sexuality (Catherine thinks it is the skin, Elisabeth, the genitals and eyes), then Catherine asks if Elisabeth thinks Paul is “good in bed.” Catherine's question can reveal her “truth,” the truth

...is that she has to be the object a in order to be desired. The object a is a bit thin, at the end of the day, although, of course, men go crazy about it and they are unable even to suspect that they could get by with anything else—another sign of the impotence that covers the most subtle of all impossibilities. [18]

After the next intertitle, “The Mole Is Blind, Yet Burrows In A Particular Direction,” Paul brings an impatient Madeline into a bar, and after he has them sit in three different places (in unsuccessful attempts to get the proper ambiance,) Madeline gets up to leave, and Paul asks her to marry him. These movements can help us imagine another configuration of the terms that form the discourses – that of the analyst’s discourse. Lacan notes that what the analyst produces

… is nothing other than the master’s discourse since it’s S1 which comes to occupy the place of production. [19]

Madeline tells Paul that they will discuss his proposal later. We hear her singing to a bouncy pop tune, during this scene and into the next, declaring her faithfulness but wanting time to dream – a song that goes into a montage showing Paul’s frustration and her indifference. Later, after she and Elisabeth decide that they have “had enough of him for the day,” a woman asks if he would like to take some pictures with her in a nearby photo booth. Inside, she offers to let him see her breasts for 15,000 francs, and after he says he has only 10,000 and she says that he can look but not touch, he leaves. The anticipation and frustrated longing in these scenes can give some sense of a concept Lacan introduces here – the concept, “jouissance.” Lacan contrasts this concept to his concept of the (hysteric) subject:

Whatever fertility the hysteric’s questioning has displayed, questioning which, as I have said, is the first to introduce the subject into history, and although the entry of the subject as agent of discourse has had very surprising results, the foremost of which is that of science, it is not here, for all that, that the key to all the mainsprings is to be found. The key lies in raising the question of what jouissance is. [20]

Paul enters another booth and pays to make a disc, recording a free-form poem expressing his desire for Madeline and enjoining her to remember a romantic time they had together. This display lets us look further into the aforementioned concept, a state that Lacan describes as limited, although he says that we don’t know by what processes:

We simply know that we have ended up considering to be natural the mollycoddling that a society that is more or less orderly maintains us in, except that everyone is dying to know what would happen if things went really bad. Hence this sadomasochistic dread that characterize our nice sexual ambiance. [21]

The scene ends on a surreal note, with Madeline's voice singing about her heartbreak while Paul goes into an arcade and gets threatened by a man with a knife who ends up stabbing himself with it. This event can symbolize the split that is created in a being who has been taught a language:

It is on the basis of the split, the separation, between jouissance and the henceforth mortified body, it is from the moment that there is a play of inscriptions, a mark of the unary trait, that the question arises. There is no need to wait until the subject has shown itself to have been well hidden, at the level of the master’s truth. The subject’s division is without doubt nothing other than the radical ambiguity that attaches itself to the very term, “truth.” [22]

In a Laundromat, Paul and Robert argue when Paul says he can’t help Robert put up posters that Saturday, because he will be with Madeline that day, and that she wouldn’t want to go with him and Robert. Robert tells Paul that “there are no individual solutions” and makes the observation quoted at the top of this entry. Paul says that he might leave Madeline, but that he has lost his room, and she might let him live with her. He expresses dislike for her friend, Elisabeth, and Robert says he likes her freckles. Paul says that “Catherine is a better bet,” but Robert disagrees, saying that she had slapped him when he asked what make of bra she wore.  The two speculate loudly on the question while a woman walks by, and then laugh at an obscene joke of Paul’s. Paul’s communist friend can embody another aspect of the concept jouissance:

We have to begin by seeing why it is that the master’s discourse is so solidly established, to the point where few of you, it seems, judge how stable it is. This stems from something Marx demonstrated—without, I have to say, emphasizing it—concerning production and which he calls surplus value, not surplus jouissance. [23]

Over another montage, Paul, Madeline and their friends paint verbal pictures of their time and of the “near future.” Elisabeth says that soon, “each citizen could well be wearing an electrical apparatus designed to stimulate pleasure and sexual satisfaction” and Catherine has the final word: “Give us this day TV and car, but deliver us from freedom.” Later, we see Paul and Catherine in the dining room of his new home – Madeline had let him move in. Eating a banana, Catherine reads a passage aloud from a poetry book [24] asking a Marquis if he has the right to be as debonair as he appears. Paul charges that Catherine's apparent straightforwardness is a defense, and says it is a shame that he is interested in Madeline, not her. Catherine says that Madeline asked her to tell him that she is afraid of getting pregnant (and, to Paul’s questioning, says that she isn’t herself—Catherine has a diaphragm, a device which Madeline wouldn’t use.) Madeline and Elisabeth then join them, and Elisabeth says they should bathe and go to bed. When Paul plays a Mozart LP, Madeline, annoyed, leaves the room while Catherine stays and listens.  After drawing her attention to his favorite part of the work, Paul leaves the room and watches Elisabeth's and Madeline's shadows behind the shower doors, then, when Catherine walks by, complains that there’s no paper in the bog. Catherine tells him to use a copy of Le Figaro, [25] and laments that Beaumarchais [26] invented the word “Figaro,” and now it's a synonym for “bourgeois.” These references to former cultural icons can bookmark Lacan’s next point, that

…Something changed in the master’s discourse at a certain point in history… [O]n a certain day surplus jouissance became calculable, could be counted, totalized. This is where what is called the accumulation of capital begins. [27]

In the bedroom, Elisabeth tells Catherine to let Paul sleep in her bed, but Madeline overrules her. When Elisabeth tells Madeline to move her “backside” over, they all joke about what synonym should be used instead. Madeline asks how they should refer to the sexual organs, and Paul says, “three-piece suit.” Later, Catherine and Paul discuss the Marquis de Sade and play with a toy guillotine and accessory doll. We hear a speech on the radio where an official boasts that their “nation took up Turenne's sword...launching the first army of justice into Europe,” and Paul helps Catherine chop off the doll’s head.  We can use this decapitation as a foil for Lacan’s comment on the consequences of the aforesaid accumulation:

Don’t you feel, in relation to what I said before on the impotence of conjoining surplus value with the master’s truth, that ground is being won here? I am not saying that it is the most recent step that is the decisive one, but the impotence of this conjunction is all of a sudden emptied. Surplus value combines with capital—not a problem, they are homogeneous, we are in the field of values. Moreover, we are all up to our necks in it, in these blessed times in which we live. [28]

We find in the next segment, “Dialogue With A Consumer Product,” that Paul has gotten a second job, taking public opinion surveys. We watch him interview a woman who had been chosen as that year’s spokesperson for the magazine, Miss 19. She had previously been studying for her Baccalauréat [29], but now “everything changed,” and she feels lucky and satisfied with her high school diploma, since in her new position she gets a car and “fabulous trips.” She has difficulty answering many of Paul’s questions, afraid of getting “muddled,” and doesn’t know whether there is a war going on.  The ability to commodify a human being can demonstrate the expanding power of the present master signifier:

What is striking, and what no one seems to see, is that from that moment on, by virtue of the fact that the clouds of impotence have been aired, the master signifier only appears even more [un]assailable, precisely in its impossibility. Where is it? How can it be named? How can it be located?—other than through its murderous effects, of course. [30]

In the next scene, Paul plays pinball at a restaurant where Elisabeth works, then orders her to bring dinner for the two of them (and for the tardy Madeline) to the table. He frets that if Madeline appears at the Olympia [31], he will kill her. Elisabeth tells him that he has to work it out with Madeline. As he starts to eat, she gives him a sidelong glance and asks if he's still thinking about Madeline. He says no — looking at his mashed potatoes reminds him of when his father had, when eating potatoes, re-discovered why the earth goes round the sun. He smiles, reminiscing having gotten the mashed potatoes thrown in his face for being sarcastic about the “discovery.” This mention of a universal force can emphasize the enormity of the task Lacan asks us to consider:

Denounce imperialism? But how can this little mechanism be stopped? [32]

Madeline enters, saying that she has been to the studio, and gives an autographed pop record to Elisabeth and a less modern one to Paul. Paul says he would have preferred Bach's Concerto in D, and whistles the melody. While he occupies himself, Elisabeth strokes Madeline's hair and nose, and Madeline smiles at her until Paul looks back at them. They observe a woman (from the first scene) at a nearby booth discussing her price with a potential John. Watching this move from one form of exploitation to another, we can ponder Lacan's next passage:

Where do things stand now with the university discourse? Nowhere else can there be any possibility that things should move a bit. How can they move? I reserve the right to point this out to you later since, as you can see, I am going slowly. But I can already tell you that at the level of the university discourse the object a comes to occupy a place that is in play each time it moves, the place of more or less tolerable exploitation. [33]

Elisabeth then notices that a woman at another table looks just like Brigitte Bardot (who she in fact is) and we hear her with her colleague discuss her delivery of some lines for a play called, The Marvels—he thinks she should deliver them more quickly. The famous sex symbol incarnates an object a of the time. Lacan notes:

The object a is what makes it possible to introduce a little bit of air into the function of surplus jouissance. [34]

Asking Brigitte to re-read a portion about “the projects,” he tells her to forget that she has rehearsed it. “Do it as if you were reading it for the first time.” She complies, and we get a view of a bleak section of Paris while she reads, “There was nothing, nothing at all. They were lost and happy, nothing left to desire.” This “nothingness” can let us meditate on our own status:

You are all an object a, insofar as you are lined up there—so many miscarriages of what has been, for those who engendered you, the cause of desire. And this is where you have to get your bearings from—psychoanalysis teaches you this. [35]

Paul and his three roommates enter a theater, and, after they sit down, Elisabeth has Paul move to insert herself between him and Madeline, but when Paul sits next to Catherine, Madeline switches seats with her and tells Paul that she loves him. An audience member calls out, “Have you finished, darlings?,” and Paul yells back, “Shut up, Trotskyite!” They watch a scene, a parody of Bergman's The Silence, a scene in which a man rapes a woman. The Trotsky comment can help us focus on the picture Lacan is drawing

Please don’t bore me stupid telling me that I would do well to point out to those who are agitating here and there that there is a world of difference between the miscarriage of the high bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat. After all, the miscarriage of the high bourgeoisie, as miscarriage, is not obliged constantly to carry its incubator around with it. [36]

Back at the apartment, we see Catherine and Robert in the kitchen. Robert asks her why she loves Paul (which she denies several times during the conversation) and not him. After more questioning, she says that the things he wants to know are none of his business. He replies, “But I love you, so I want to know what you're like.” Catherine answers, “Well, if it isn't mutual, it's just egoism on your part.” Robert's egotism reflects an anecdote of Lacan's, one that illustrates

... that the claim to situate oneself at a point that would all of a sudden be particularly illuminated, illuminable, and that would manage to make these relations move, must not, all the same, be elevated to the point to which things were pushed by a person—a little recollection that I give to you—who accompanied me for two or three months of what it is customary to call the folly of youth. This delightful person said to me, “I am of pure proletarian race.” [37]

When Catherine, to Robert’s question, says she’s not particularly interested in democracy, he asks if she is interested in anything that goes on around her. She protests that she is curious about many things, but says it's difficult to give an example. They ask various questions of each other, and she points out continually that many of his questions (such as whether she's had sex) are none of his business, then Robert starts reading a paper, and Catherine asks what it is. He says it is his lecture for his cell. She starts washing dishes and asks, “Why is a workman described as skilled, but not actors or clerks?” He says it's explained in his lecture. He says he belongs to the category of skilled worker capable of executing a “complete revolution,” and reads his speech, comparing producing complex machinery to the revolutionary process. She takes the paper and reads the last part, “while working, your mind functions since you already know the outcome...no pun intended, but this, too, is the revolutionary spirit.” The delusion of perfection expressed in Robert’s paper continues the aforementioned theme:

We are never finally done with segregation. I can tell you that it will only ever continue to increase. Nothing can function without it—what is happening here, as the a, the a in living form, miscarriage that it is, displays the fact that it is an effect of language. [38]

After an intertitle saying, “This Film Could Be Called, The Children Of Marx And Coca-Cola.  Make Of It What You Will,” we see Paul and Catherine walking down the street. A man asks Paul for a light, and when Paul brings a matchbox out, he takes the whole box. Paul goes after him, then returns, telling Catherine that he has set himself on fire. Catherine argues that she would have heard him if that had happened, and asks why he would do it outside the American Hospital. Paul says that he had taped his mouth shut. He says that the man left a note and tells her to go see for herself. When she returns she says he is dead, and that the note says, “Peace in Vietnam.” With this darker evocation of an early scene, we can remember that,

[b]e that as it may, there is in every case a level at which things do not work out. It’s the level of those who have produced the effects of language, since no child is born without having to deal with this traffic by the intermediary of his beloved so-called progenitors, who were themselves caught up in the entire problem of discourse, with the previous generation behind them also. And this is the level at which it would really [be] necessary to have made enquiries. [39]

As they reach their destination, Catherine asks Paul if he loves Madeline, and he answers, “Don’t start that again!” They enter a studio, and we hear Madeline singing, making her new disc. After Paul interrupts her, the Director asks Madeline, in American English. to try it again, and sing it “very sweetly.” Madeline listens to the recording and asks him if it could be re-done the next day, and he consents. A reporter from Radio One is waiting outside, and Madeline tells Paul to get “the car.” During Madeline's interview, Paul asks Catherine where he is supposed to get one, and she says, “You said you were a whiz kid, so prove it.” When he goes to “make a call,” Catherine wanders back to where Madeline is being interviewed, and looks on innocently as Madeline answers various questions, such as her favorite music, which she claims is “The Beatles; and for the classics, Bach” The interviewer asks if she has joined "The Pepsi Generation," and she replies yes, she loves Pepsi. After the interview, Madeline and Catherine meet Paul, who, to Madeline's surprise, has managed to trick the War Ministry into thinking he is a general in need of a car – a trick that Paul and Robert had tried before. These rotations and switchings can help us recall the next passage:

If it’s one’s wish that something turn—of course, ultimately, no one can ever turn, as I have emphasized enough—it is certainly not by being progressive, it is simply because it can’t prevent itself from turning. If it doesn’t turn, it will grind away, there where things raise questions, that is, at the level of putting something into place that can be written as a. [40]

We get a montage of street scenes and a voice-over of Paul's thoughts on his opinion polls. “I discovered that all these questions I was asking French people...expressed an ideology of the past and not of the present.  I had to remain vigilant; I had gleaned a few insights as guidelines.  A philosopher is a man who pits his awareness against opinion. To be aware is to be open to the world.  To be honest is to act as though time didn't exist.  To see life, to really see it, that is what wisdom means. Such philosophical musings resonate with Lacan's next question:

Has that ever existed? Yes, no doubt, and it is the Ancients who, in the end, give us its strongest proof and, subsequently, over the course of ages, the informal, classical things that in some way were copied from them. [41]

The final scene takes place at a police station. An officer (or detective) asks Catherine what had happened. She replies that Paul's mother had left him money, and he had bought an apartment. Elisabeth told her that he and Madeline had argued, because Madeline had wanted Elisabeth to move in. Catherine thinks that he wanted to take photos and probably moved too far back, falling to his death, and she concludes that it couldn't have been suicide. The policeman then questions Madeline, who says that it happened just as Catherine said. The officer says that he has heard she is pregnant, and asks what she is going to do. She says that she doesn't know, but that Elisabeth had mentioned curtain rods. We see the word, “feminine” on the screen, then, to the sound of gunshot, all the letters disappear except for the ones that spell, “fin.” Lacan concludes:

For us, at the level at which things are happening for the moment, what can this point of auscultation, everything that in the body remains alive, remains as knowledge, the nursling, … what can this hope for ? [42]

1. Jean-Luc Godard. Masculin Féminin. (1966) in: transcriptvids.com. December 10, 2012.

2. Paul R. Krugman. The Conscience of a Liberal. 2007. in: books.google.com. Undated.

3. “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation” 2003 The Review of Economic Studies Limited in: Oxford Journals (January 1, 2003.)

4. “The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all” (January 18, 2013.) in: Oxfam.org. (02/2013.)

5. Jacques Lacan. “The Impotence of Truth” (1970) from The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. in: springhero.wordpress.com (June 24 - July 1, 2010.)

6. “The 400 Blows.” in: Wikipedia. June 1, 2014.

7.“Four discourses.” in: Wikipedia. July 29, 2013.

8. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [1.]”

9. Played by singer Chantal Goya in her first acting role. “Chantal Goya.” in: Wikipedia. December 15, 2013.

10. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [2.]”

11. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [2 & 3.]”

12. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [4.]”

13. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [5.]”

14. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [6.]”

15. “Mini.” in: Wikipedia. June 2, 2014.

16-19. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [6.]”

20-23. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [7.]”

24. “Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux.” in: Wikipedia. May 13, 2014.

25. “Le Figaro.” in: Wikipedia. April 17, 2014.

26. “Pierre Beaumarchais.” in: Wikipedia. May 8, 2014.

27-28. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [7.]”

29. “Baccalauréat.” in: Wikipedia. May 28, 2014.

30. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [8.]”

31. “Olympia (Paris).” in: Wikipedia. May 16, 2014.

32-42. Lacan. “Impotence of Truth [8.]”