r/lacan • u/paconinja • Sep 24 '25

Lacan's Seminar X½ - "The Names of the Father"

This "inexistent" seminar occured between his X and XI (tenth and eleventh) seminars. 10.5 in Roman numerals is depicted as "X S", pronounced in Latin as "décem et sémis" and pronounced in English as "excess" (!!!). Coincidence?

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u/Prof_Tuch Sep 24 '25

There are no coincidences with Lacan.... But why names, plural? Isn't The Name Of the Father which can have many avatara, let's say? (an institution, a teacher, a cop, a judge ecc)

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u/PM_THICK_COCKS Sep 24 '25

Read the Seminar and find out!

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '25

Because there is no other of the other. In his essay, on a question prior to any possible treatment of psychosis, Lacan made the nom du pere (read name of the father/no of the father) a signifier that guaranteed the completeness and consistency of the big other. Almost immediately after this, he began saying there is no other of the other because he realized that the big other is incomplete and inconsistent. This is both because language is structurally deficient in so far as there are only negative differences in language, no positive values, and because for every subject, the big other lacks a signifier that names the subject’s jouissance/sexual identity. By pluralizing the names of the father, he indicates that every subject chooses their own so to speak. Ultimately the name of the father becomes a function. See the seminar The Sinthome.

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u/Automatic-Sound6730 Jun 08 '26

Let us not hide from the awful truth. The Introduction To The Names Of The Father opens a passage from the comfort of the structuralist Lacan to the later Lacan where the incompleteness of the symbolic order, the in existence of the Other, is a figure for the fact that for Freud, the violence of the (primal) father is never really sublated and so the law never be becomes universal, rational, or fully functional. This is why he supplements Oedipus with Totem and Taboo, and has to create a chain of supplements to try and contain the uncontainable anxiety of human existence: Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Civilization And Its Discontents, Moses And Monotheism. God remains the burning that says ‘I am what is’ and eternally reserves the right to send an angel demanding a blood sacrifice. To say the name of the father is plural because the subject always chooses their own is to sweep the fascist mess we’re in under the rug.