ABSTRACT
The assertion of paternal failing, so categorical in The Sinthome, has led many a reader of Lacan to think in terms of psychosis. Joyce has done as well as any unconscious. He created his language, in particular, lalanglaise, as well as other lalangues. In the case of Joyce, his art-dire corrected what could have been an outside discourse by reason of his de facto foreclosure of the paternal exception. From the negativism of no-saying, his Nego to paternal norms, Joyce moved to the Name of exception. As for Lacan – by moving from the logic of 'no-saying' to the Father of the Name, at the very moment when he recognised the unordered Real of symptoms – he was in fact confirming the superiority of the Name over the semblant. Over time, Lacan spoke out, repeatedly and virulently, against this Oedipus of families, but at the time of the paternal metaphor, it had a different ring to it.
