Hoop Nets of the Unconscious

Lectures on Seminar XI Continue on Wednesday

I can't wait to discuss this diagram on Wednesday -- and not just because it’s the icon for Lectures on Lacan!

Notice how Lacan presents it in Seminar XI:

When I speak to you of the unconscious as of that which appears in the temporal pulsation, you may picture it to yourselves as a hoop net (nasse) which opens slightly at the neck and at the bottom of which the catch of fish will be found. . . . we must consider the subject, in terms of the hoop net—especially in relation to its orifice, which constitutes its essential structure—as being inside. What matters is not what goes in there, as the Gospel has it, but what comes out (pp. 143-44).

Recall, also, the diagram of repression we developed in our first session on Seminar XI and expanded in our last discussion, where the temporal pulsations of the unconscious are readily apparent — here marked by yellow asterisks:

Now, imagine one of these, viewed from above, in place of each asterisk:

Boom, you’re a Lacanian.

See you Wednesday.

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