ABSTRACT

This chapter begins with the oral version of the lecture on J. Joyce. In it, J. Lacan protested that there had been a mistake in the printing of the title: "Joyce the symptom" had become "Jacques the symbol". The exploration of what was supposedly wrongly knotted in Joyce's case shows that what is really at stake theoretically is the articulation between the symptom and the symbolic. The real of the symbolic is the equivocation to which the signifier was now reduced. The term "symbol" has to be understood in this sense when Lacan speaks of the overtaking of the symbol by the symptom. The ambiguity inherent in the term comes up again in Lacan's question regarding therapeutics. Indeed, Joyce's art foils the symptom by creating a sinthome: the sinthome replaces the original symptom by playing with the symbol. Lacan's idea about art foiling the symptom seems, therefore, somewhat paradoxical.