Saturation: Interpretation Machines

Note: The following is a transcript from an improvised talk that occurred online in August of 2023.

I’ll begin with this word, “saturation.”

I didn’t say “suture-ation” … because that would lead us toward the other side of jouissance: the relation of the subject to its signifying structure. This latter logic, suturation, was famously explored by Jacques-Alain Miller during his presentation in Lacan’s seminar of February 24th, 1965. But if we are to stand on the foundation laid by Lacan, seven years earlier, in 1958, when he distinguished ‘true’ from ‘false’ psychoanalysis, we are led to presume that ‘suturation’ is a false equivocation of ‘saturation,’ … false from the standpoint of psychoanalytic discourse.

Why?

Psychoanalysis depends upon the experience that it entails, it concerns the speaking-being’s particular relationship to speech and truth.

Psychoanalysis is not a hot soup, even if Miller thought himself a sous-chef during that presentation on suture. My point is that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get too carried away by the coolness of language, even if it involves homophony. At best, wordplay is a sauce … a joui-sauce that can be spread liberally upon discourse.

The word “saturation” was invoked often enough over the last few years of my seminars that it led me to highlight it by isolating it, even by elevating it.

Does that imply that it has been a master signifier? I wouldn’t say so.

It is strange when a word that designates a toxicity of jouissance stands in place of the master signifier, S1, spreading itself over it. In such cases, the master signifier swoons [s-ones] to jouissance, producing a-stew [S2] for one to enjoy. It is a stew that keeps you fed, which means that you are fed by enjoyment. That was even the basis for the American happy meal, and even the Western buffet, or what is frequently referred to as a ‘cold table.’ Children today, I’m told, are increasingly fed up with it. It is not quite the surplus enjoyment I imagined it to be when I was a child.

The point that I wanted to make was that interpretation should not be expected to desaturate jouissance. Instead, des autre ate. That’s another false equivocation: des autre ate. To my French Canadian ears, it carries more meaning than it might to yours. Lacan’s statement, in La Troisieme, was that meaning, which, to be clear, is a mode of interpretation … meaning can feed the symptom. And Freud, who moved from dream interpretation toward the analysis of symptoms, revealed that substitute satisfactions can pass, that the id and ego can form an alliance with one another, without any need of ‘fresh repressive measures.’

That raises problems for the practice and teaching of psychoanalysis.

To be honest, there are too many cooks in the psychoanalytic kitchen.

Even one is too many!

Hence, as Gilles Deleuze once said: ‘since each of us are many, there is quite the crowd!’ But there are too many people cooking up interpretations today, so much so that one feels compelled to choose which interpretations to digest and which to leave behind. And there is also a proclivity toward junk food — these are the dietary habits of the bricoleur. As for the buffet, it is a bookshelf too, and a social media wall — without limits. That’s always the question we ask at the buffet: what are its limits? It’s enough to make those of us who follow Lacan out to be picky eaters.

But des autre ate … that’s what psychotherapy sometimes shows us, namely that the therapist eats you up with interpretations, or else, he gets eaten up by his patients.

Anyway, I’m a bit excited today because I discovered that I have two questions, both of which have to do with the symptom fed by a particular mode of interpretation. I said ‘mode,’ which is a word also chosen by Karl Marx, and not ‘median’ or ‘medium.’ It seems to me that psychoanalysis does not operate according to the aphorism ‘the medium is the message.’ Our approach strives to establish a new relationship to an environment, which means that it institutes a new pact with not only jouissance but also the Other. Hence, to ‘eat one’s Dasein’ won’t get us very far: there must also be recognition from the Other.

This was a point that Miller made during his seminar on the ‘new.’ This already allows us to go much further than the media ecologists who merely take the object as environment, as medium. That’s not exactly our message. It was a point that Miller made when he said that the Lacanian father is the one who says ‘yes’ to the particularity or singularity of one’s enjoyment, that is — he says yes to desire. Or, to put it another way: against knowledge, and its ideals, the Lacanian father says ‘yes’ to the particularity of desire. Hence, it is not enough to study the environment, there is a transformative dimension to psychoanalytic experience.

Social media … can it feed the symptom? It saturates us, or, put another way, borrowing an aphorism from Marshall McLuhan: ‘it works us over, completely.’ I have no trouble suggesting that it’s incestuous, because it functions without limits. Some years ago I was asked for a recipe to make a-stew [S2] out of McLuhan and Lacan. I’ve never been a good cook, so I resisted it. It seems to me that this equivocation, ‘the medium is the mass-age,’ cannot guarantee any effect without risking continuity with its environment — a cooling or flipping of that medium, so to speak. To study the environment at this level, does it remain too clever in relation to it? Perhaps it remains caught up with the medium, unable to recognize it as an object of intelligence. Conversely, psychoanalytic discourse places a-stew upon the burning coils of truth, which makes it any apparently ‘hot’ medium (except that it also probes analysand’s to speak, which makes it characteristically ‘cool’).

That’s our mode of operation.

A question: is interpretation an object of psychoanalysis? It plays its part in the discourse of obsessionals, whose interpretations keep moving, as a ‘good work’ for the master. But, … would you believe it? … I was invited, recently, to discuss artificial intelligence with one of the foremost global technology companies. I’m convinced that they were disappointed by my remarks because the conversation approached its limits quickly, which means that I was able to shut them up fairly quickly. For them it was a matter of monetizing intelligence, through its possible therapeutic applications. Take note of the complicity of science, capitalism, and therapy (even when we add the prefix ‘anti-’): it is not clear how to distinguish them from one another. They are the same machine, the same symptom. Perhaps this was why Lacan claimed, in the final instance, that there is only one social symptom.

A second question: is intelligence itself a symptom? What stops us from pursuing this question, other than our fear of being reduced to stupidity? It would be an achievement, in some sense, especially for those whose intellect moves too fast for their own good: we can find them all around us, in our environment, on twitter, in the university, and in the clinical consulting rooms. It was what Lacan named “philosophy,” reminding us that we all do it more than we are prepared to admit.

But ‘feeding the symptom with interpretation’ is not necessarily homologous with taking ‘interpretation as a symptom.’ That is what constitutes my bold step forward. When interpretation is taken as a symptom, we call it ‘artificial intelligence.’ In a word: it is not stupidity that troubles me, it’s intelligence. What can be done with it? Perhaps it is a matter of putting it in its rightful place. As you know, Lacan said that there is nothing so special about the outcome of psychoanalysis: ‘madness or stupidity, take your pick!’ So we cannot so easily claim that the ‘mad’ are without ‘intelligence.’

The speaking-being can bring a-swoon [S1] to a-stew [S2]. To bring a swoon to a stew doesn’t seem to mean much — at least according to what is problematically called ‘common sense’ — because it transforms a verb into a noun, and then that noun relates to another to which there was no prior relation. In other words, it’s a knowledge, an S1–2, a-swoon too. That is how the S of the signifier, without any bar, swoons to the Other. And there is much more meaning in it than we are perhaps prepared to admit. To see the meaning in it is to recognize madness.

The signifier can be saturated in joui-sauce. It is why I once raised the word ‘saturated’ to the title of a little essay, ‘seven saturated signifiers.’ Traditionally, those three Ss were reserved, within Lacanian psychoanalysis, for the sujet-suppose-savoir, the subject supposed to know. But it is the one who knows, all alone, not the Other supposed to know; which makes knowledge into a presupposition. It is as if we cannot digest the Other, so the Other comes to us now ‘predigested.’

The speaking-being speaks with its jouissance. I wonder, therefore, about the master signifier. Where is it? Is that what one goes in search of during an analysis? Lacan claimed that perhaps it is possible to invent one. He said that all of our signifiers are only ever received; could it mean that we are quite possibly full of them, all of them. He did not say, at this time, that we are trapped in a web of signifiers; that is one of those Lacanian aphorisms that are often taken as a presupposition. When we presume the s-barred, we risk missing the way that the s spars against the Other, and, in particular, against the father.

We are full on signifiers, it’s olive stew (all of S2). In other words, it is a recipe for anorexia. [laughter from participants] You can laugh! Unfortunately, I know too much about it … because this word, ‘predigested,’ was once highlighted by my analyst. I am only teaching from my own experience, and what I can tell you is that the anorexic is perhaps full on ‘infinity.’ That’s what the therapists, scientists, professors, and capitalists — those triumphant philosophers of our time — keep cooking up for us cold: infinity. The anorexic is simply the one for whom ‘nothing’ is chosen in place of the ‘fullness of infinity.’

The symptom and the body. They are merged in the imaginary. It is an imaginary inflation of the body, that is, of the ego, without recourse to the master signifier. The body inflates, the one in the mirror, and the symbolic shrinks away to nothing. You know, when anorexia became a concern in America, it was after all of the fathers went away to war. God knows the horrors that were going on out there on the frontlines. We can only imagine the bombs, the killing, the tyranny. It was real. What is fascinating is that the word anorexia introduces a negation, a negation which is nothing of the sort! Anorexia is in actuality defined not by the rejection of food, but by the absence of rejection inflationary jouissance. In any case, it is a matter of bringing the real back to the body. So, the question that Lacan asked was if one could invent a signifier without meaning, one not received from the Other?

I’ll return to my thread: the word ‘saturate’ means to ‘remain full,’ and it emerged with such a meaning during the 16th century as an invention of science. Obviously, science has for a long time been quite full of itself — what can stop science? In any case, it is equally obvious that saturation is a principle of exclusion, one that promotes isolation from the world (since there is already too much on one’s plate). There are even some who insist upon growing their own food (it is always in abundance for them) and living on their own farm. To eat what one grows for oneself and not what is perhaps offered to them from the market .. does it imply a farm without lord? It is with the lord that one begins to experiment with the contours of infinity; hence the edge-lord asks, much like the trifler in a video game, ‘what are the boundaries to infinity?’

Maybe psychoanalysis can offer a first point of contact with the world. Those timeless feuds of social media, so characteristic of the feudal mode, signal contemporary discontents: it is in the nature of feudalism to repeat itself and not to become incorporated into the dialectics of capitalism. The transition from feudalism to capitalism marked the invention of a threshold or an interface with the Other. The history of political economy shows us that it is only through capitalism and science that analytic discourse was able to take hold. Capitalism is a ‘vanishing mediator’ only to the extent that it introduces the very ‘mediation,’ without saturation, that would allow serfs to cook up a preliminary relationship to the world.

Those who live on farms, and in the village, have for a long time scoffed at the cold intelligence of the city-dweller. This is why I insist upon bringing intelligence to the point of its stupidity. It is a continuation of my anarchism … this time in a ‘Maoist’ key.

When I say that intelligence is an object, I mean that it is a gadget. We are on the cusp of possibly realizing that artificial intelligence is the route through which science approaches fiction. Lacan said that woman is a symptom, but today we can see that your girlfriend is also a fiction, and you can download her for $19.99. With the gadget, intelligence will take hold of the sexdoll, and she will eradicate the real in its entirety. Can the scientist accept the lie that is necessary for its point of contact with the world? Or are they too smart for their own good? The sexbot comes ‘predigested,’ since you already know in advance, once you pay $19.99 that she is prepared to sleep with you. It is the crowning achievement of ‘consent culture.’ There are no limits to the enjoyments now on offer.

Lacan said: “there is but one social symptom: every individual is in effect a proletarian, that is to say that no discourse is at the disposal of the individual by means of which a social bond could be established.”

Can we say that the proletarian is fed up with feudal capitalism, and with the responsibilities continually put onto his plate? It means that the proletariat is to be invented, out of necessity. Without the factory, there is only the bedroom — and the universe populated by those non-dupes who wander, lost, and without maps or even a guiding star named ‘desire.’ They are fed up with infinity, and with the feuds, and they are cooking up new schemes to reach out to us.

What has been called the ‘party’ in Marxism cannot anymore make a pretense at expressing the ‘common interests’ of workers, because, quite simply, the category known as worker, in its traditional form, has been replaced by those who enjoy. There is nothing anymore in common among each proletariat — they emerge, one by one. It leads them into an analysis, and we are prepared to receive and recognize them as they reach out to us from their bedroom and social media walls.

I’ll stop here.