Often Overlooked Essays in Écrits: "Response to Jean Hyppolite's Commentary on Freud's 'Verneinung'"

Good Lacanians, like good Hegelians, often enjoy counting.

Odd-numbered counts tend to be the most productive. Hence, today’s triangulated podcast episode, which features Lacan’s response to Hyppolite’s commentary on Freud’s little 1925 essay on “Negation.” Three essays in one episode — hang on, y’all!

But it’s a single even number — 4 — that often keeps Hegelian and Lacanian thought moving, so be on the lookout for a quadrangle of terms in today’s episode: affirmation (Bejahung), negation (Verneinung), repression (Urverdrängung and Verdrängung alike), and the primitive rejection of all three experiences characteristic of psychosis: foreclosure (Verwerfung).

But enough about modern dialectical thought (even though this is almost certainly why Lacan invited Hyppolite to comment on Freud’s little essay in the first place). In today’s episode, you’ll also hear how the real wanders errantly through the symbolic (shoutout to Badiou), how origins differ from genesis, especially in analytic experience (shoutout to Benjamin), how most disagreements are founded on patterns of consensus (shoutout to Rancière), and how the non-liar’s paradox, ever overshadowed by its more famous sibling, applies throughout (shoutout to Eubulides).

And props to anyone who understands my use of Korean in this episode — you know, to make up for my chaotic German from start to finish.