ABSTRACT
As my title indicates, I am less interested in exploring here the formal construction of Lacanian theory, starting around 1969 with the hypothesis of the four discourses in the Seminar The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (Seminar XVII), than the intellectual, political and ideological context from which emerges, in Lacan’s view, the necessity to undertake an extension of formalisation itself. In fact, even if formalisation or the use of ‘mathemes’ appear quite early in his writings, for instance with the ‘Graph of Desire’ (Lacan 1957 –58/1998; 1958–59), one can consider The Other Side of Psychoanalysis as a turning point, opening a period in which the emphasis on formalisation becomes dominant in his teaching, and will be extended beyond the analytical logic, so as to translate a general logic of the social production of enjoyment.
