ABSTRACT
This chapter examines lessons thirteen to twenty-two, the author noting that this delineation differs from the one imposed on the seminar by Jacques-Alain Miller’s editing, and allows for her to balance out some of the important points made by Lacan in this section of the seminar. Remarking that lessons thirteen to nineteen represent one of Lacan’s most celebrated incursions into literature, his reading of Hamlet, the author also comments on the use of the literary text at other times in his teaching. Commenting on Lacan’s reading of Hamlet as uniquely his own, the author points out how he starts with Freud’s question: what in the unconscious corresponds to Hamlet’s conscious procrastination? In contrast with Freud, the author notes, Lacan’s own question will be what has to happen in Hamlet to make the final act possible, what can bring about a rectification of desire for him? Lacan’s reading of Hamlet is seen as corresponding to the themes of the seminar, introduced as a tragedy of desire and as a drama of subjectivity. The commentary in the chapter follows five moments in the play: the revelation of the ghost, the collapse of the fundamental fantasy into its component parts, Ophelia as o-object, the desire of the Mother, and the graveyard scene. The author hails this section of the seminar as an extraordinary achievement, managing on the one hand a totally valid reading of the play and a brilliant exposition of the teaching of desire.
