Hermetic theft

Shoshana Fehlman in a book on Lacan writes

Each time the analyst speaks, interprets in the analytic situation, he gives something asked of him. What he gives, however, is not a superior understanding, but a reply. [...] the interpretative gift is not constative (cognitive) but performative: the gift is not so much a gift of truth, of understanding or of meaning: it is, essentially, a gift of language.

I am reading here the story of an economy of theft. What is stolen to give the gift? When I first read this passage I tripped over the idea that a reply could lead to a gift of language. Something of the reply seemed caught in an imaginary relation of hilarious specularity. Rereading allowed greater specificity to come: a gift of language is not a language gift but a gift from language. The performance perforates. It is not only not constative it is also not constitutive.

Both call and reply are given through language. And indeed a reply is a form of call. This is not so reductive as it may seem. We can ask who or what asks the analyst to give. The reply is in a sense an interrogation of the who or the what this is asking. To interpret is to interrupt so that interrogation, questioning, gifting, giving, may take place there.


And so for day 112
05.04.2007