ABSTRACT

Let me turn now to the father of the name, to the saying that names. I have already mentioned that if the father is a saying, whatever this saying may be, he is not, cannot be, a dead father, a simple signifier. We are beyond the father of the oedipal metaphor of the signifier about which we could have believed that it was transported by the desire of the mother. This is why, starting with “L’étourdit”, Lacan looks for the mainspring of foreclosure on the side of the father instead. A saying is not a living breeder [ reproducteur ] either. Hence the question that I evoked: why name what names father? We must suppose that there is in naming a power of generation, of engendering, but which one?