The Experience of the Cartel

What is this thing called "Cartel"? The Cartel is an innovative way of studying in a group that the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan invented. It is the gateway to Lacanian psychoanalysis and to the School as it is its central organ and a device that makes psychoanalytic knowledge accessible to all rather than a select few. The Cartel offers an opportunity to work and discuss with peers, to produce something new and unique and thus contribute to the knowledge of psychoanalysis. With the Cartel, the School shows itself to be democratic, anti-authoritarian, putting at the center a desire for knowledge but from a position of docta ignorantia, that is to say, from an initial position of learned ignorance. 

The London Society of the New Lacanian School is organising an event around the experience of forming, working and being in a Cartel. With it, we aim at a wider audience: those who have been in Cartels already but also, and most importantly, at those who have never been in one but are interested in finding out more about it. We welcome anyone interested in getting a better idea of what Cartels are or simply a curiosity around psychoanalysis of a Lacanian orientation and its way of working. We encourage audiences from other disciplines that could make use of this unique device called the cartel to join us 

Three speakers will share their experience of being cartelisands, not from a theoretical perspective but through illustrating the singular learning effects that Cartels entail. We will try and capture something about the experience of the cartel for different cartelisands, as they pursue their personal theme of study with the help of others. Presentations will focus on the different components of the cartel experience: cartel formation, the day to day meetings, the role of cartelisand, the knowledge at stake in the cartel and the function of the plus one. Following these presentations we will open an informal space of discussion with questions from the audience. 

Come and join us on the 9th of July at David Game College in London! It will also be a great opportunity for people to express interest in forming a Cartel and get to know others who wish to do the same!

There are limited tickets. CLICK HERE to book now!

LS SEMINAR
The Castration Complex, Fixation, Repetition

The seminar, by Susana Huler, will be held over six meetings in a format that includes short interventions from colleagues who have been invited to bring their reading of some key texts ( see bibliography at the end*). It will be an occasion to dialogue and discuss in our community - from a particular angle - the different aspects of the forthcoming 2022 Congress of the New Lacanian School, which is on the theme of ‘Fixation and Repetition’.

On Saturdays 14:30-16:00 (UK time) | Online & In person

DATES:

13th November with Evangelina Bailo

18th December with Colin Wright & Philip Dravers

12th February with Roger Litten

9th April with Oriol Cobacho

7th May with Gabriela van den Hoven

11th June with Peggy Papada

NOTE: Please note that the session of the 19th March has now been changed to the 9th April

ARGUMENT

It is an original helplessness that pushes the infant to face the urgencies of life through repetitions that have their beginnings in points of fixation. Freud tried, in 1937, to clarify the limits of the psychoanalytical treatment: the circumstances of their endings were particularly problematic, as the refusal to accept castration would be, for both sexes, a motive for repetitions and the refusal of change. This was “a bedrock” that would be thoroughly investigated by Lacan, who would make the end of analysis and its theorization a real compass for the analytical work.

We see in analysis the repetitions that form systems. Whilst one of these systems is what Freud called the “castration complex”, we can discover as well, with the help of the late teachings of Lacan, the system of repetitions that he called “sinthome”. Conceiving symptoms as sinthomes became possible when jouissance was apprehended as outside the law of the Oedipus Complex: jouissance as a real without law that obeys only the Freudian Wiederhollungszwang, the compulsion to repeat, to strike again and again.

Susana Huler

PURCHASE A TICKET

*Central texts to approach these themes in the seminar are:

Freud:

From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (The ‘Wolf Man’, 1914)

Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (1914)

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1919)

Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937)

Lacan:

Seminar IV (on Little Hans) (1956-57)

The Signification of the Phallus (1958)

L’Etourdit (1972)

The Sinthome (1976)

Miller:

The seminar on the Wolf Man (1987-88)

Donc (1993-94)

The Being and the One (2011)

LS SEMINAR
A Study Seminar of The One-all-alone (J-A. Miller)

Tickets for the series: £50

This seminar will take place in person (London) on Saturdays between 11am and 12:30pm. 

Dates:

2021: 13th November, 18th December, 

2022: 12th February, 19th March, 9th April, 7th May and 11th June

Places for this seminar are limited. In order to participate, please contact the London Society secretary Colin Wright at ls.secretary1@gmail.com. 

Cartels: Fixation and Repetition & “Woman does not exist"

Dear colleagues and friends of the London Society,

Two of the main themes we’ll be working on during 2021-2022 are the theme of next year’s NLS congress, Fixation and Repetition, and the theme of the Great International Online Conversation of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, “Woman does not exist”. As part of our preparations, we are organising an online reading of Lacan’s Seminar XX, Encore, details of which will be revealed soon!

We are encouraging everyone to form cartels on the above themes so that you can actively participate in their development by pursuing your own questions.

There are many resources available already so that you can start thinking about the question you might wish to pursue:

Find the argument of the NLS congress, by Alexandre Stevens, President of the NLS, here: https://www.amp-nls.org/nls-messager/towards-the-nls-congress-2022-argument/ and on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/7XZ73C22AeQ

The argument for the WAP’s International Conversation, by Christiane Alberti, chair of the “Grandes Assises”, is available in print and video form here: https://www.grandesassisesamp2022.com/en/la-femme-nexiste-pas-2/

For further assistance with cartel work, please contact the LS members responsible for cartels: Sophia Berouka, sophia_berouka@hotmail.com & Oriol Cobacho, oriolcob@gmail.com

We look forward to a rich year of work around these exciting themes!

The Bureau of the London Society

ANNOUNCING