Borromean Knot

All occurrences

Where it appears in the corpus (112)

1. #01

   Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.118

   [The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-005) > Defrosting the signifer

   Theoretical move: Lacan uses Rabelais' frozen words allegory to establish the symbolic order's primacy and exteriority to the subject as the very definition of the unconscious, then develops this into a critique of Jungian archetypes, Jonesian symbolism, and existential listening practices—ultimately arguing that proper analytic technique consists in attentiveness to the literal, phonemic, polysemous signifier rather than to signification or meaning.

   the name-of-the-father could take the place of a fourth ring in the model of the Borromean knot, by way of writing

2. #02

   Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.166

   [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > Context

   Theoretical move: This passage provides a contextual and structural overview of Lacan's 'On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis,' arguing that the text marks a pivotal shift in Lacan's theorization of psychosis as a unitary clinical structure grounded in the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, situated within a four-period developmental arc in Lacan's broader work on psychosis.

   his twenty-third Seminar (Lacan, 1975–1976) where knot theory is used to operationalize the interrelations between the real, the symbolic and the imaginary.

3. #03

   Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.198

   [On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-007) > IV. Schreber’s way

   Theoretical move: The I-schema formalizes Schreber's psychotic structure as the product of foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father (P₀→Φ₀), while demonstrating that his delusion constitutes an efficient stabilizing solution rather than mere deterioration; madness is re-theorized as the extreme limit-case of human freedom in the face of constitutive lack.

   Contrary to a number of his later mathemes, like his theory of discourse, or the borromean rings, Lacan does not believe that the I-schema catches the real of psychosis.

4. #04

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_134"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_page_0151"></span>***O*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_140"></span>**Order**

   Theoretical move: The passage establishes the RSI triad (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) as Lacan's fundamental classification system for psychoanalytic theory, arguing that their profound heterogeneity is held together by structural interdependence, illustrated topologically through the Borromean Knot.

   Lacan explores this question of what the three orders have in common by means of the topology of the BORROMEAN KNOT in his 1974–5 seminar. They are not mental forces like the three agencies in Freud's structural model.

5. #05

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_134"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_page_0151"></span>***O*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_136"></span>***objet (petit) a***

   Theoretical move: This passage traces the full conceptual evolution of objet petit a across Lacan's work, showing how it migrates from a purely imaginary little other (schema L, 1955) through the object of desire/fantasy (1957) to the real cause of desire, surplus-jouissance, and finally semblance of being at the centre of the Borromean knot—demonstrating that the concept accumulates rather than replaces its earlier determinations.

   In 1974 he places it at the centre of the Borromean knot, at the place where the three orders (real, symbolic and imaginary) all intersect.

6. #06

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_189"></span>***sinthome***

   Theoretical move: The passage traces the theoretical evolution from Lacan's linguistic conception of the symptom (as signifier/ciphered message) to the topological concept of the *sinthome* as an unanalysable kernel of jouissance that serves as a fourth Borromean ring binding RSI, with Joyce's writing as the exemplary case of *sinthome*-as-suppléance in the absence of the paternal function.

   The 1975–6 seminar extends the theory of the Borromean knot...by adding the sinthome as a fourth ring to the triad of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, tying together a knot which constantly threatens to come undone.

7. #07

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_142"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_page_0161"></span>***P*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part26.xhtml_ncx_160"></span>**psychosis**

   Theoretical move: The passage establishes the Lacanian theory of psychosis as a clinical structure defined by foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, producing a hole in the symbolic order and imprisoning the subject in the imaginary; it further articulates the later reformulation via the Borromean Knot and the role of the sinthome as a fourth ring.

   In the 1970s Lacan reformulates his approach to psychosis around the notion of the BORROMEAN KNOT. The three rings in the knot represent the three orders: the real, the symbolic and the imaginary. While in neurosis these three rings are linked together in a particular way, in psychosis they become disentangled.

8. #08

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_ncx_202"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_page_0231"></span>***T*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_ncx_205"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part30.xhtml_page_0234"></span> **topology**

   Theoretical move: Topology is argued to be not merely a metaphor for structure but structure itself in Lacan's framework, privileging the function of the cut as a non-intuitive, purely intellectual means of expressing the symbolic order and distinguishing continuous from discontinuous transformations in psychoanalytic treatment.

   in the 1970s, Lacan turns his attention to the more complex area of knot theory, especially the BORROMEAN KNOT.

9. #09

   An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

   <span id="9781134780112_Part27.xhtml_ncx_162"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part27.xhtml_page_0185"></span>***Q***

   Theoretical move: The passage argues that Lacanian theory, despite its predominance of triadic schemes, consistently requires fourfold (quaternary) structures to achieve adequate "subjective ordering" — and traces how the fourth element variously occupies the positions of death, the phallus, the letter, or the sinthome across different theoretical moments.

   the sinthome as a fourth ring which prevents the other three rings in the BORROMEAN KNOT (the three orders of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary) from becoming separated

10. #10

    Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (alt. translation) · Jacques Lacan · p.295

    IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

    Theoretical move: This concluding passage makes two theoretical moves: (1) it positions the analyst's desire as a desire for absolute difference — the condition under which limitless love outside the law becomes possible — and (2) it provides a translator's glossary that operationally defines key Lacanian concepts (desire/need/demand, jouissance, the three orders, objet petit a, Name-of-the-Father, knowledge) as relational and context-dependent rather than static definitions.

    a question to which Lacan has addressed himself in his most recent thinking on the subject of the Borromean knot (Séminaire 1974–75, entitled 'R.S.I.').

11. #11

    Seminar XI · The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.295

    IN YOU MORE THAN YOU > TO CONCLUDE

    Theoretical move: This concluding passage of Seminar XI makes two theoretical moves: first, it articulates the analyst's desire as a desire for "absolute difference" that enables a love beyond the law; second, the appended glossary (translator's note) provides operational definitions of Lacan's key concepts—desire/need/demand, the three orders (Imaginary/Symbolic/Real), jouissance, objet petit a, and Name-of-the-Father—framing them as evolving and best understood contextually rather than statically.

    a question to which Lacan has addressed himself in his most recent thinking on the subject of the Borromean knot (Séminaire 1974–75, entitled 'R.S.I.').

12. #12

    Seminar XIII · The Object of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.66

    **Seminar 5: Wednesday 5 January 1966**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the classical philosophical reduction of the body and the real to three-dimensional homogeneous (spherical) extension is a fundamental deception about the subject and knowledge; by drawing on topology (the sphere, the cut, the hole, the cylinder, the torus), he proposes that a two-dimensional, edge-based topological structure—rather than metric space—is the proper framework for articulating the divided subject and its inscription in the real.

    it is enough for me to stitch them together to make emerge the figure of what is called quite simply in the language of young ladies, a ring. It is necessary of course to preserve the image of it as hollow to see what sort of surface we are dealing with.

13. #13

    Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.74

    Seminar 5: Wednesday 9 February 1972

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Objet petit a emerges not from any single term (demand, refusal, offer) but from their triadic knotting—a Borromean-style structure where each term only holds meaning through the others, and the "it's not that" at the heart of every demand is precisely the irreducible gap that generates the object of desire in analytic discourse.

    it happened, while dining with a charming person who is following Monsieur Guilbaud's classes that, like a ring on a finger, I was given something... which is nothing less, it appears, I learnt last evening, than the coat of arms of the Borromeans.

14. #14

    Seminar XIX · …or Worse · Jacques Lacan · p.171

    J Lacan - Pierce as astronomer > Someone in the audience - Mirror!

    Theoretical move: The passage uses Peirce's semiotic triad (representamen-object-interpretant) to argue that signification is an interminable, infinite chain of interpretation launched from an irreducible first separation — a structural move Lacan glosses as "existence is insistence" — and aligns the Peircean triadic logic with the Borromean three-way irreducibility, where no dual relation suffices and only an irreducible triad holds.

    the semiotic triangle… reproduces the same ternary relation that you had quoted in connection with the Borromean coat of arms. Namely… the three poles are linked by this relation that does not admit of multiple dual relations but an irreducible triad.

15. #15

    Seminar XIX bis · The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst · Jacques Lacan · p.72

    The Psychoanalyst's Knowledge > **3"¹ March 1972**

    Theoretical move: The Borromean knot is introduced as a topological figure whose structural property — that removing any one ring dissolves the chain entirely — poses the fundamental question of the conditions of the discourse of the unconscious and of what language is, linking topology directly to grammar and the unconscious.

    I spoke in short about this thing that I summarised in the Borromean knot. I mean a chain of three, which is such that by detaching one of the rings from this chain, the other two cannot hold together for a single instant.

16. #16

    Seminar XIX bis · The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst · Jacques Lacan · p.73

    The Psychoanalyst's Knowledge > I ASK YOU TO REFUSE WHAT I AM OFFERING YOU.

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the entry of language into the speaking being structurally voids the "second sex" (the Other as *heteros*), making sexual difference not a natural binary but a topological-linguistic problem: there is no sexual relationship because "the Other" is the very locus that language empties of being, and universals like "Man" and "Woman" are linguistic constructs required by language itself, not grounded in animal copulation.

    the presence of the third establishes a relation between the other two. This is what is meant by the Borromean knot.

17. #17

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.121

    **IX**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that jouissance is the substance of thought and that its irreducible gap from language—marked by the cry "that's not it"—demonstrates that structure and jouissance are co-constitutive, grounding the non-existence of the sexual relationship; Christianity and Aristotle serve as foils to show how philosophical and theological traditions have covered over this gap with the fantasy of knowledge and soul.

    Last year... I took as my theme a formulation that I felt I could base on the Borromean knot: 'I ask you to refuse what I offer you because that's not it'

18. #18

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.133

    **¹⁰⁷x** > Rings of string

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the impossibility of metalanguage to pivot toward topology: because the symbolic ex-sists rather than being, and because language can only be transmitted through further language, the matheme/formalization points beyond itself to the Borromean knot as the structural figure that can 'operate' on the first knot—linking writing, jouissance, and the non-rapport of sexuation under a single topological framework.

    it is by making three toruses out of it, using a little thingamabob I already showed you called the Borromean knot, that we shall be able to operate on the first knot.

19. #19

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.141

    **¹⁰⁷x** > Rings of string > Answers 119

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that topology founded on the Borromean knot and rings of string — rather than on dimensional cuts — provides a more fundamental approach to space, ultimately identifying the "inner eight" produced by reducing the Borromean knot as the symbol of the subject, and the simple ring as object a, thus grounding the cause of desire in topological structure rather than intuitive spatial intuition.

    What the Borromean knot demonstrates is not the fact that it is made of a ring of string, around which it suffices to bend another ring like two ears such that a third, linking the two loops, cannot become unbuckled due to the first ring.

20. #20

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.134

    **¹⁰⁷x** > Rings of string

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of Borromean knots and rings of string to ground a theory of desire, the subject, and the Other: object a is the void presupposed by demand, the subject's division is structurally equivalent to the 'bending' of a ring, and the Other is not additive to the One but is the 'One-missing' — a difference internal to the One rather than supplementary to it.

    Here is the Borromean knot - I already put it up on the blackboard last year. It is easy for you to see that no two rings of string are knotted to each other, and that it's only thanks to the third that they hang together.

21. #21

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.179

    **Seminar 9: Wednesday 20 March 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the true from the real by arguing that truth can only be "half-said" (because jouissance constitutes its limit), while the real is accessible only through the impasse of formalisation; the mathemes (objet a, S(Ø), $) are introduced as written supports that, unlike speech, can designate the limits where the symbolic encounters the real—culminating in the claim that the phallic function is a contingency (ceases not to be written) rather than a necessity or impossibility.

    what shows us the conjunction of these three terms is precisely what is inscribed in terms of this triangle, of this triangle constituted by the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real

22. #22

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.257

    (3) Naturally since I made a small mistake

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Borromean knot topology to ground the asymmetry between the One and the Other (woman as "less One"), arguing that mathematisation alone accesses the Real—defined as the mystery of the speaking body and the unconscious—while distinguishing the Real from both fantasy and traditional reality.

    We must have the means of showing that it is the only solution. Now the state we are at up to today, is that there is no theory of knots.

23. #23

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.246

    Seminar 12: Wednesday 15 Ma y 1973

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that there is no metalanguage by distinguishing the Symbolic from being, grounding formalisation in the act of saying rather than in ontological subsistence, and then demonstrates how topology—specifically the Borromean knot and the torus—provides the only adequate 'writing' of what cannot be said about the sexual non-relation and the structure of the subject.

    it is by remaking three toruses of it by the small device that I already showed you under the name of Borromean knot that we are going to be able to bring about, say something about what is involved in the use of the first knot.

24. #24

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.272

    Seminar 13: Wednesday 26 Jun e 1973

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the subject is constituted by the signifier (as hypothesis necessary to lalangue), that love is grounded in a subject-to-subject relation of unconscious knowledges, and that the sexual non-relation is modalized through the logic of necessity/contingency (ceasing/not ceasing to be written), with love as the illusory passage from contingency to necessity.

    this ring whose possible knot with another I began to examine.

25. #25

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.248

    (3) Naturally since I made a small mistake

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Borromean knot as a topological demonstration that the One (ring of string enclosing nothing but a hole) grounds both the structure of desire—where the objet petit a is not a being but a void supposed by demand, sustained only by metonymy—and the logic of mathematical language, where removing a single element disperses all the rest simultaneously.

    it is uniquely by the third that they hold together... it is enough to cut one of these knots for all the others to be free of one another at the same time.

26. #26

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.232

    J.Lacan-... of this? > **Seminar 11 : Wednesday 8 May 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that jouissance (enjoyment) constitutes the substance of thinking and is irreducibly linked to the inertia of language, such that the sexual relationship remains inexistent and unthinkable — a gap named the Other — and all cultural, religious, and philosophical formations (including Christianity's baroque obscenity and Aristotle's active intellect) are so many failed attempts to make enjoyment adequate to the sexual relationship, with castration as the only price of any apparent satisfaction.

    a well known knot which is called the Borromean knot. The formula: I ask you to refuse what I am offering you because it's not that

27. #27

    Seminar XX · Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge · Jacques Lacan · p.228

    J.Lacan-... of this? > **Seminar 11 : Wednesday 8 May 1973**

    Theoretical move: Lacan redefines the unconscious against the Aristotelian premise that "being thinks," positing instead that being-in-speaking *enjoys* and wants to know nothing about it — thereby making jouissance, not knowledge-drive, the motor of the unconscious — and then traces how this claim restructures the relation between truth, science, Christianity, and the barred subject.

    You should note here simply that there is every advantage in unifying the expression for the symbolic, the imaginary and the real; as, I am saying it to you in parenthesis, Aristotle did, in not distinguishing movement from alloiosis.

28. #28

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.161

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 10: Tuesday 15 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot provides the only adequate structural account of desire, the Symbolic, and the Name-of-the-Father: the Symbolic consists precisely in the hole it makes, the prohibition of incest is not historical but structural (identical with that hole), and the Name-of-the-Father is the Father-as-naming that knotted through that hole – a logic that admits an indefinite plurality of Names-of-the-Father, each resting on one hole that communicates consistency to all the others.

    a desire is not conceivable without my Borromean knot.

29. #29

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.101

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 7: Tuesday 11 March 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan reframes the Names-of-the-Father as identical to the RSI triad (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary), argues that the phallus furnishes the consistency of the Real while enjoyment ek-sists with respect to it, and situates naming/the Borromean knot as the structural answer to the philosophical impasse between realism and nominalism about language and the Real.

    this amounts to something that is no more demonstrable than the Borromean knot, this amounts to a showing (monstration).

30. #30

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.142

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 9: Tuesday 8 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Borromean knot's topology — particularly the distinction between ek-sistence (the track/cycle) and the hole — as the operative figure for primordial repression (Urverdrängt), arguing that the difficulty of mentally grasping the knot is itself the trace of an irreducible, foundational repression, and that the inexistence of the sexual relationship is not a failure but the very structure knotted into being.

    the fact that the accessibility constituted by this sphere and the cross presents it as an example of a missed mathesis, missed inexplicably by a hairs breath, never familiar in any case, why not see in the manifest aversion that this entails, the very trace of this first repression?

31. #31

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.81

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 5: Tuesday 11 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knotting of the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real requires a fourth supplementary element—the Name-of-the-Father (functioning as a fourth torus)—to hold the three registers together, while simultaneously opening the question of whether this paternal supplement is strictly indispensable or merely historically contingent in Freud and in current analytic practice.

    if we start from the requirement of making a Borromean knot not of three, but of four, we must suppose these three independent toruses

32. #32

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.93

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 6: Tuesday 18 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan reframes ek-sistence as the Real dimension of the Borromean Knot, uses this to articulate the triadic RSI structure as an "infernal trinity," and pivots to redefine the symptom—against both Hegelian repetition (via Kierkegaard) and Marxian social analysis—as the particular way each speaking being (parlêtre) enjoys their unconscious.

    it is through it, through this in, in the a – write that l apostrophe a – that there is played out as one might say the fate of the knot, that if the knot has an ek-sistence, it is by belonging to this field

33. #33

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.153

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 10: Tuesday 15 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot is not a model or representation but the Real itself — its topological structure (where breaking one element unknots all others) grounds the concepts of the unconscious as Real, the non-existence of the sexual relationship, and hainamoration, while the signifier is redefined as that which makes a hole, linking the Symbolic to the Real through knotting.

    We call a Borromean knot what is constituted in such a way that by subtracting one of these elements…it is enough to break one of these elements in order that all the others should be also unknotted from each of them

34. #34

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.167

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 10: Tuesday 15 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan re-reads Freud's three identifications through the topology of the Borromean knot, arguing that the cartel's structure (three plus-one) is grounded in the Name-of-the-Father as the fourth term that knots the triskel of Symbolic, Imaginary and Real into a genuine Borromean bond, thereby locating identification, love, and desire at the topological heart of the social knot.

    the four is what in this double buckle [IX-7] supports the Symbolic by what in effect it is made up of, namely, the Name-of-the-Father. Nomination is the only thing about which we can be sure that it makes a hole.

35. #35

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.22

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 2: Tuesday 17 December 1974**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot is not a model (which would be grounded in the Imaginary) but rather a writing that directly supports the Real; the three registers (R.S.I.) achieve consistency only by holding together, and jouissance ek-sists to the Real as a hole, with phallic jouissance functioning as the nodal term that analytic experience discovers as primary.

    This already, just by itself, designates that not only can the Real be supported by a writing but that there is no other tangible idea of the real.

36. #36

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.86

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 6: Tuesday 18 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the Borromean knot as the primary topological operator of his theory, arguing that its three constitutive dimensions—consistency, hole, and ek-sistence—correspond respectively to the Imaginary, Real, and Symbolic; the passage works through errors in flattening the knot to demonstrate that mathematical/geometric intuition is rooted in the cord (material consistency) and that the straight line as infinity is itself a ring, implicating the knot structure throughout.

    the knot qua Borromean that I ended up with. How did I end up with it?

37. #37

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.15

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 1: Tuesday 10 December 1974**

    Theoretical move: Lacan assigns the Borromean knot to the Imaginary register (grounded in three-dimensional space), then uses it as a topological framework to redistribute Freud's triad of Inhibition/Symptom/Anxiety across the three registers: Inhibition as arrest in the Symbolic, Anxiety as arising from the Real, and the Symptom as the effect of the Symbolic in the Real—with Jouissance locatable at the intersections of the knot.

    the Borromean knot, in so far as it is supported by the number three, belongs to the register of the Imaginary. It is in so far as the Imaginary is rooted in the three dimensions of space.

38. #38

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.43

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 3: Tuesday 14 January 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan reframes the Borromean knot topology as the minimal structure of existence (ek-sistence), arguing that Freud's Oedipus complex functions as a fourth term (psychical reality) needed to knot the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real because Freud lacked the three-ring Borromean solution; analysis itself operates by making the Real surmount the Symbolic at two crossing points, rendering the fourth term (Oedipus complex / Name-of-the-Father) superfluous.

    The thing, is nothing less than the urverdrängt, the original repressed, the primal repressed, and that is why I advise you to practice my two little things [III-1 & III-2].

39. #39

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.120

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 8: Tuesday 18 March 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of oriented Borromean knots to argue that the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real are homogenised by 'consistency' (similarity, not sameness), and that the necessity of 'flattening-out' the knot to demonstrate its uniqueness exposes a fundamental limitation of conceptual thought in grasping the Real — a limitation that underwrites the formula 'there is no sexual relationship.'

    I immediately related this knot to what from then on, appeared to me like rings of string… which was for me recognisable in what I had stated from the start of my teaching.

40. #40

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.13

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 1: Tuesday 10 December 1974**

    Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar XXII by arguing that the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary only acquire a "common measure" — i.e., can be said to be genuinely three — through the Borromean knot, which provides the minimal topological structure (requiring three as its minimum) that holds them together; this displaces Freud's spatial-geometrical (sack) topology in favour of a knot-based topology, and identifies the Imaginary as grounded in the body, the Symbolic in equivocation/writing, and the Real as strictly unthinkable.

    I only found, in a word, a single way of giving these three terms, Real, Symbolic, Imaginary their common measure by knotting the, with this bo-bo…bobo…Borromean knot.

41. #41

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.149

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 9: Tuesday 8 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues, via topological analysis of orientation, that the Borromean knot is not intrinsically orientated, but that as soon as one of its three rings is specified (coloured, or rendered non-orientatable by being treated as an infinite straight line), two distinct orientated Borromean knots necessarily emerge — a result that bears on the structural irreducibility of dextro- vs. laevo-gyratory gyres and, implicitly, on the sexuation of topological space in his clinical theory.

    No manipulation of the knot of three – I tried it because I had hoped that the Borromean knot would perhaps give it to us – gives unambiguously the definition of laevo or of dextro.

42. #42

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.68

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 5: Tuesday 11 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses an anecdotal tour through Nice, Strasbourg, London, and his reading of Strachey's *Queen Victoria* to advance the theoretical claim that the sexual non-relationship is confirmed by historical-biographical evidence, while elaborating the resistance of different *lalangues* to the unconscious and reiterating that "The woman does not exist" but that women (as not-all) have a privileged, unmeasured relation to liberty and to the unconscious.

    what in my little schema depicting the Borromean knot (IV-2) is characterised by a special accentuation of the hole in what faces up, as I might say, in what faces up to the Symbolic

43. #43

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.180

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 11: Tuesday 13 May 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses projective geometry (points at infinity, Desargues) and the topology of the Borromean knot to argue that the unknotted status of two terms is precisely the condition for their being knotted by a third, and then extends this to a fourth term—nomination—distributed across the three registers (Imaginary, Real, Symbolic), with each mode of nomination corresponding to inhibition, anxiety, or symptom respectively, and ultimately to the Name of the Father.

    In taking this stage of the Borromean knot, we support by the very number the circles or the journeys that are at stake for any knot whatsoever

44. #44

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.73

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 5: Tuesday 11 February 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot provides the model for a "Real meaning effect" in analytic interpretation: by homogenising the three registers (Symbolic, Imaginary, Real) as equally consistent and showing their non-chain knotting, he repositions the analytic saying (*dire*) as what makes a knot—not mere word-use—while introducing "ek-sistence" as the Real correlate of the knotted Imaginary.

    there is no Borromean knot. Even though the Borromean knot lends itself, lends itself to a quite flourishing richness of figures of which there is precisely no trace of in any art.

45. #45

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.174

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 11: Tuesday 13 May 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of the Borromean knot to argue that the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary are not distinguished by their threeness alone but by the specific logical properties of the knot (necessity and sufficiency of each element), and introduces 'nomination' as a fourth element that knots an otherwise unknotted triad — advancing toward a topology of four that will structure his next year's work (4, 5, 6).

    In order for a knot to be Borromean, for a knot to be 'bo', it is not enough that it should be a knot, it is necessary that each of the elements, this term it is necessary and it is sufficient, is not given its full meaning unless it is referred to the knot

46. #46

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.36

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 3: Tuesday 14 January 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan deploys the Borromean knot as a material figure of "consistency" — a real, non-linguistic holding-together that underlies the knotting of the three registers (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) — and uses this to argue that topology, not geometry, is the proper medium for grasping what psychoanalysis works on, while also implicating number (via Peano's successor axiom) and the dimension of the spoken being (dit-mansion) in the same problematic.

    What you see on the right [III-1] is the good old granddaddy Borromean knot, the Borromean knot of four, in which it is easy, immediate to see, that if you cut any one of these rings of string, the three others are free.

47. #47

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.117

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 7: Tuesday 11 March 1975**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the phallic Real constitutes man's fundamental affliction — "aphligé" by a phallus that bars him from genuine access to the body of the Other — such that all discourse, especially the Discourse of the Master, is grounded on a semblance that phallus-as-signifier-index-1 installs; the Name-of-the-Father is reread as a merely tribal supplement to the Borromean knot, and unconscious signifier-copulation (savoir) is what gives rise to the subject as pathème divided by the One.

    this knot four to the Symbolic [VII-3]. It is the quite useless complement of the fact that it is the signifier one and without a hole, without a hole that it is permitted to use in the Borromean knot

48. #48

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.136

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 9: Tuesday 8 April 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Imaginary is structurally "stuck" in the sphere-and-cross figure (a pre-topological image of the body), and that the Borromean knot represents the proper topological instrument for escaping this captivity — linking the knot's discovery to the analytic discourse as a new social bond and to the Freudian "hole" in the universe, while insisting that truth can only be half-said.

    it is altogether linked to this order of event or advent, as you wish, that is called the analytic discourse, and in so far as I defined it as a social bond emerging in our day.

49. #49

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.59

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 4: Tuesday 21 January 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the thesis that "a woman is a symptom" for a man, grounding this in the structure of phallic jouissance, the non-existence of The woman (not-all), and the logic of belief — distinguishing believing-in (the symptom/neurosis) from believing-her (love/psychosis) — while also reformulating the paternal function as père-version and redefining the symptom as an untamed form of writing from the unconscious.

    being buckled implying the hole without which there is no knot

50. #50

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.108

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 7: Tuesday 11 March 1975**

    Theoretical move: The passage advances the thesis that the Real is defined by its ek-sistence *outside* meaning—as the impossible, the expelled, the anti-meaning—and that the Borromean knot of Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary is the structural form of the Name-of-the-Father, with feminine ek-sistence (as symptom) arising where the Symbolic circles an inviolable hole and the not-all resists phallic universality.

    It ek-sists with regard to the Symbolic in so far as the Symbolic turn in circles around an inviolable hole, otherwise the knot of three would not be Borromean. Because that is what it means, the Borromean knot, it is that the hole, the hole of the Symbolic is inviolable.

51. #51

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.52

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 4: Tuesday 21 January 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Borromean knot's topological properties to argue that the three consistencies—Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real—are irreducibly linked and that this triadic structure grounds both representation and the subject's condition, while the objet petit a (small o), as cause of desire rather than its object, marks an irrational, non-conjunctive gap between the One of the signifier and the One of meaning.

    it is a knot that holds together, as you have already several times heard from my voice, it is a knot that holds together because it has three rings.

52. #52

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.130

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 8: Tuesday 18 March 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean Knot—understood through the topology of the torus—displaces the insoluble question of objectivity and grounds the three consistencies (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real) as irreducible, such that their triple points generate meaning, phallic jouissance, and the Name-of-the-Father respectively; identification is then reformulated as three distinct operations corresponding to the three registers of the knot's real Other.

    The notion of knot that I am putting forward can no doubt be imagined, as I said, be depicted between the Imaginary the Symbolic and the Real, without loosing for all that its weight of Real

53. #53

    Seminar XXII · R.S.I. · Jacques Lacan · p.29

    **Introduction** > **Seminar 2: Tuesday 17 December 1974**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot structures the three registers (R.S.I.) such that phallic enjoyment, ek-sistence, and the hole are each topologically grounded: phallic enjoyment is produced through the knotting of the Symbolic ring; the Real is made by jouissance that ek-sists; and the sexual non-relationship is inscribed in language rather than filled by it, with anxiety marking the limit of enjoyment of the other body.

    the nodality proper to the Borromean knot and from the fact that something which here is drawn as a ring, as a ring of string, as a ring qua consistency that constitutes the Symbolic.

54. #54

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.176

    Seminar 10: Wednesday 13 April 1976 > There you are!

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the Borromean knot as the first genuine philosophical writing—a "logic of sacks and cords"—and uses Joyce's anomalous relationship to his own body (body-as-foreign, affect that "drains away" like a fruit skin) to theorise a specific ego-function that writing fulfils when the normal bodily imaginary fails, distinguishing this from the Freudian Unconscious as ignorance of the body.

    by this recourse to what can only, only be written in the noeud bo. Which cannot but be written in order for it to be turned to account.

55. #55

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.115

    Seminar 7: Wednesday 17 February 1976

    Theoretical move: The sinthome is theorized topologically as a fourth ring that repairs an error in the Borromean knot—where the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real come undone—and is deployed to explain both Joyce's artistic practice (as compensation for paternal lack) and the clinical phenomenon of imposed words in psychosis, thereby linking the topology of knotting to the structure of symptom formation and paternal function.

    for the Borromean knot, contrary to its name which, like every name, reflects a meaning, there is the meaning that allows meaning to be situated somewhere in the chain, in the Borromean chain

56. #56

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.175

    Seminar 10: Wednesday 13 April 1976 > QUESTIONS

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot/chain must be written (not merely thought) to function as a support for thinking, and that this written topology transforms the very meaning of writing by granting it an autonomy irreducible to the signifier's precipitation—the latter being Derrida's domain—while the knot's own logic operates through the 'dit-mension' (dimension of the said), which structurally implies that what is said is not necessarily true.

    It is not easy to see it functioning even by only thinking about it this time, by cutting the term, in cutting the la from penser. It is not easy. It is not easy even at the simplest level. And this is why this knot carries something with it. It must be written to see how it functions, this noeud bo.

57. #57

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.21

    **Seminar 2: Wednesday 9 December 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan pivots the Borromean knot from a topological figure to a methodological foundation, arguing that the knot's three-fold structure (Symbolic/Imaginary/Real) captures the subject as constitutively divided by language, which operates not as an organ or message but by making a hole in the Real — thereby placing psychoanalysis in opposition to both science's objectivism and Chomsky's organicist linguistics.

    It is entirely based on the equivalence of an infinite straight line and a circle... the knot, in so far as it is Borromean, substantifies.

58. #58

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.99

    **Seminar 5: Wednesday 20 January 1976** > Jacques Aubert's intervention > *Where now?*

    Theoretical move: The passage poses a foundational question about the threshold at which significance (as written) distinguishes itself from the effects of phonation, locating the proper name as the privileged site where the signifier's function and phonation intersect — and framing the Borromean knot as only emerging beyond a triple relation.

    As regards the knot, this only begins to exist beyond the triple relation. How does it happen that this triple relation should have this privilege?

59. #59

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.158

    Seminar 10: Wednesday 13 April 1976

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that his invention of the Borromean knot as a writing of the Real constitutes a 'forcing'—a traumatic inscription of a new symbolic form—that both responds symptomatically to Freud's energetics and exposes the absence of any Other of the Other, while also identifying the Real as his own sinthome rather than a spontaneous idea.

    I have written this Real in the form of what is called the Borromean knot, which is not a knot, which is a chain, a chain having certain properties.

60. #60

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.144

    Seminar 9: Wednesday 16 March 1976

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the Real as fundamentally unbound and orientating-without-meaning, distinguishes a more radical foreclosure than that of the Name-of-the-Father, and ties the Death Drive to the Real itself, while the matheme (and the Borromean knot as topological device) are offered as instruments for reaching "bits of Real" that resist symbolic embroidery.

    This is the last thing that Soury and Thome gave me. It is my kind of Borromean knot, made of two infinite straight lines and of something circular.

61. #61

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.97

    **Seminar 5: Wednesday 20 January 1976** > Jacques Aubert's intervention > *Where now?*

    Theoretical move: Jacques Aubert's intervention traces Joyce's deployment of legitimacy, certitude, and the voice-effects of the signifier across his work, while Lacan closes by grounding these in the Borromean knot and its irreducible topological ambiguity (the indistinguishability of its rings without colouring), arguing that right/left orientation cannot be expressed in the Symbolic.

    If I am to believe Soury and Thome... if one can locate the duplicity of this knot, I mean that there are two of them, only because the circles, the rings of string are coloured.

62. #62

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.184

    Seminar 10: Wednesday 13 April 1976 > There you are!

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of the Borromean knot to reframe Joyce's ego as a reparatory/corrective function that compensates for the failure of the Imaginary to knot properly with the Real and the Unconscious, thereby subordinating Joyce's singularity to the structural logic of père-version (perversion-as-father-function) and arguing that all human sexuality is perverse in Freud's sense.

    It is constructed altogether as a Borromean knot. And what strikes me, is that he was the only one that this escaped.

63. #63

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.35

    **Seminar 2: Wednesday 9 December 1975** > QUESTIONS

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses a seminar Q&A to clarify the topological function of the Borromean knot as the fourth term (symptom) that holds RSI together, argues that the Real operates as a third pole mediating between body and language rather than being reducible to either, and distinguishes the knot from a 'model' on the grounds that it resists imagination while topology itself remains insufficient to prove its four-fold Borromean realisation.

    When you go from the Borromean knot of three: Real, Imaginary, Symbolic to that of four in which the symptom is introduced, the Borromean knot of three as such disappears.

64. #64

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.20

    Seminar 1: Wednesday 18 November 1975

    Theoretical move: By introducing an infinite straight line into a "false hole," Lacan demonstrates topologically that this operation converts it into a genuine Borromean hole — the infinite line playing the structural role that allows the knot to subsist. Hegel's figure of the circle is invoked as a philosophical precursor that grasped circularity's function, though without addressing the Borromean stakes.

    this makes of this false hole a hole which subsists in a Borromean manner, this is the point on which I will end today.

65. #65

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.30

    **Seminar 2: Wednesday 9 December 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot—understood as the concrete support of any relation between things—constitutes the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary as interdependent, and that the parlêtre's bodily status depends entirely on this knot; Joyce's art is then positioned as uniquely aimed at substantialising the fourth term (the sinthome) that completes and holds this knot.

    The knot qualifies as Borromean. In other words uncutable without dissolving the myth that makes of the subject, of the subject not supposed, namely as real, no more diverse than anybody that can be signalled as parlêtre

66. #66

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.67

    **Seminar 4: Wednesday 13 January 1976** > W w e W.

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses Joyce's riddle (the fox burying his grandmother) as an exemplar of the analytic response — necessarily "stupid" relative to the poem-like symptom — and argues that meaning is produced by suturing/splicing the Imaginary to the Symbolic, while simultaneously splicing the sinthome to the parasitic Real of enjoyment; the Borromean knot is the structural model for this therapeutic operation.

    To make a knot with what I will call a Borromean chaî-noeud [chain-knot?], is this not an abuse? It is on this question, that I will leave hanging.

67. #67

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.14

    Seminar 1: Wednesday 18 November 1975

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean Knot must be understood as a tetradic (four-ring) structure in which the sinthome serves as the fourth element linking the otherwise separate Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real; the Oedipus complex is recast as a symptom/sinthome, and the father's name is itself a sinthome, with Joyce's art exemplifying how artifice can work upon and through the symptom via equivocation in the signifier.

    Yeah! In order that the condition should be explicitly posited that starting from three rings (anneaux) one makes a chain, such that a break in a single one renders the two others, whatever they may be, free from one another.

68. #68

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.131

    Seminar 7: Wednesday 17 February 1976 > **Seminar 8: Wednesday 9 March 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the Borromean chain's topological manipulability (turning inside-out, colouring, orientation) to argue that the Real is not a single ring but is constituted by the knot-relation itself, and that the circle's hole—not its closure—is what founds both set theory's not-all and the chain's supple geometry as opposed to rigid, formal demonstration.

    let us talk about what is at stake: the chain, and the chain that I was led to articulate, indeed to describe, by joining to it as I was led to do, the Symbolic the Imaginary and the Real.

69. #69

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.45

    **Seminar 3: Wednesday! 6 December 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan deploys the Borromean knot topology to distribute the three registers (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) as structurally equivalent yet functionally differentiated supports—assigning consistency to the Imaginary, the hole to the Symbolic, and ex-sistence to the Real—and argues that a fourth term (the sinthome) is always required to prop up the subject, which the minimum Borromean chain of four demonstrates.

    these three circles of the Borromean knot have this something which cannot fail to be retained, which is the fact that they are, all three equivalent as circles.

70. #70

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.53

    **Seminar 4: Wednesday 13 January 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot is the proper topological support for "first truths" about the Real, which is founded precisely by excluding meaning; and that the speaking being's (parlêtre's) only consistency is bodily/imaginary, while the knot — not the cord — is what properly ex-sists, grounding both truth and the analyst's responsibility in know-how (savoir-faire) rather than in any Other of the Other.

    This as you can see, is a Borromean knot. It does not differ from the one that, I remind you, I usually draw, which is made like that. It only differs from it by something which is not negligible, which is that this one can be distended in such a way that there are two rings as extremes and that it is the one in the middle that makes the connection.

71. #71

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.105

    **Seminar 5: Wednesday 20 January 1976** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 10 February 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses Joyce's relationship to madness, faith, and writing as a clinical-theoretical probe to distinguish the true from the Real, locating jouissance (including masochism) in the Real rather than the true; he simultaneously advances a topological argument about the Borromean knot and the torus as the best available "physics" for measuring belief and subjective structure.

    My good friends, Soury and Thomé, noticed that, they managed to decompose the relationships of the Borromean knot and the torus.

72. #72

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.171

    Seminar 10: Wednesday 13 April 1976 > QUESTIONS

    Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes the sinthome from psychoanalysis proper, arguing that it is the *psychoanalyst* (not psychoanalysis) who functions as a sinthome — a "help against" in the biblical sense — and that the Real, as lawless and devoid of meaning, may itself be illuminated as sinthome; simultaneously, the Borromean knot is defended as a topology that can hold Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real together as separable rings without a common point.

    the implication of what I call the Borromean chain is that there is not between all that is consistent in this chain, that there is not properly speaking any common point

73. #73

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.48

    **Seminar 3: Wednesday! 6 December 1975**

    Theoretical move: Lacan advances the argument that the Borromean knot of three (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real) constitutes the minimal support of the subject — and is itself the structure of paranoid psychosis — while the Sinthome emerges as a necessary fourth term that knots the three rings when they would otherwise come apart, with phallic jouissance located at the conjunction of the Symbolic and the Real, and meaning at the conjunction of the Symbolic and the Imaginary.

    as regards the knot of three that homogenises the Borromean knot, there is on the other hand, only one kind.

74. #74

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.123

    Seminar 7: Wednesday 17 February 1976

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the sinthome is precisely what installs sexual non-equivalence and thereby makes the sexual relationship possible: it is not despite the absence of the sexual relationship but through the sinthome (which repairs the failed Borromean knot asymmetrically) that something like a relation is structured, such that woman is the sinthome for man and man is a "devastation" for woman.

    by repairing with a sinthome at the very point were the slip has happened, you will not get the same knot by pulling the sinthome at the very place where the transgression happened, or indeed by correcting it even by a sinthome at the two other points

75. #75

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.110

    **Seminar 5: Wednesday 20 January 1976** > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 10 February 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Joyce's artistic ambition functions as a topological compensation for a de facto Verwerfung (foreclosure) by the father, and uses this to stage the broader claim that the Borromean knot articulates the entanglement of Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real — with the sinthome as the supplementary loop that prevents their dissolution, while also developing the logic of per-version (père-version) as the son-to-father relation structuring the drive.

    what is wrongly called a Borromean knot, namely, a chain knot which naturally generates the trefoil knot... the Borromean knot is not a knot, it is a chain.

76. #76

    Seminar XXIII · The Sinthome · Jacques Lacan · p.138

    Seminar 7: Wednesday 17 February 1976 > **Seminar 8: Wednesday 9 March 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Borromean knot's essential property is the "false hole" produced when two circles conjoin, and that it is the Phallus—as the verifier of this false hole—that constitutes the Real; he then extends this topological claim to the sinthome (specifically Joyce's), lalangue, and the relation between the sexes, positioning the phallus as the sole signifier that creates every signified and thereby verifies the Real.

    The Borromean chain would not take place if there were not this thing that I am drawing (VIII-17)... what is proper to it and what is what I will call the false hole (faux-trou).

77. #77

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.50

    So then what is this lack? > **Seminar 5: Wednesday 18 January 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the topology of the Borromean knot—approached through plaiting (tresse/quatresse), tetrahedra, and the torus—to argue that all nodal knotting is fundamentally toric, and then maps the four-element quatresse onto the registers of Real, Imaginary, Symbolic, and Symptom, concluding that the Real is specially suspended on the body and that language (the signifier as symptom) supplies for the absence of a sexual relationship.

    the plait is at the principle of the Borromean knot. That is to say that after six times, one finds, provided one crosses these three threads in an appropriate fashion… the Borromean knot

78. #78

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.93

    **Seminar 8: Wednesday 8 March 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the Real cannot constitute a universe on its own but only through its knotting with the Imaginary and Symbolic via the Borromean structure, and that the torus — not the simple ring — is the proper topological unit for this knotting; he further exploits the distinction between metaphor and structure to insist that topology here is structural (not merely analogical), while his anecdote about his grandson reframes the Unconscious as the intrusion of words one does not understand — language as parasitic.

    The Real does not constitute a universe, except by being knotted to two other functions… these three tori are Borromean knots? Absolutely not.

79. #79

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.45

    So then what is this lack? > **Seminar 4: Wednesday 11 January 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Knowledge (as unconscious signifier-effects) and Truth have no relation to one another, that the unconscious is structured as signifier-effects rather than philosophy, and that psychoanalysis is a 'scientific delusion' awaiting a science it may never produce — pivoting through the Four Discourses, the Borromean Knot, and the parlêtre to situate the irreducibility of the Real to matter.

    This is what I described, at one time, by the term knot for something that is not a knot, but effectively a chain. This chain all the same, it is striking that it can be flattened out.

80. #80

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.60

    So then what is this lack? > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 8 February 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan introduces topological figures (flattening of the Borromean knot) to generate the Real/Imaginary distinction, then cedes the floor to Alain Didier Weill, who constructs a multi-stage circuit using the Graph of Desire and the Purloined Letter schema to theorise the *Passe* as a process by which successive inversions of knowledge between subject (Bozef) and Other (the King) propel the subject through positions of innocence, duplicity, and finally radical exposure before the Other.

    A flattening out, for example that I made for you with the Borromean knot, is a system. I am trying of course to crush this Borromean knot, and this indeed is what you see in these two images.

81. #81

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.105

    **Seminar 9: Wednesday 15 March 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes sense (double-sens, meaning-effect rooted in the duplicity of the signifier) from meaning (a purely empty knotting of word to word), and uses torus topology to articulate the relations between Symbolic, Real, and Imaginary—arguing that anxiety is the symbolically real, the symptom is the only real thing that preserves sense, and that there is no sexual relationship except incestuous, with castration as the only truth.

    the reversible torus from which he approaches the Borromean knot is something which, for the knot in question, presupposes that one single torus is reversed.

82. #82

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.83

    So then what is this lack? > **Seminar 7: Wednesday 15 February 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan re-reads "The Purloined Letter" through the figure of Bozef (introduced by Alain Didier Weill) as an incarnation of Absolute Knowledge — knowledge that is in the Real but does not speak — to argue that the Borromean topology of RSI, the structure of the Passe, and the objectification of the unconscious all hinge on the same redoubling of knowledge ("I know that he knows that I know that he knows"), while distinguishing the silent, real truth from the lying Symbolic and the false-but-consistent Imaginary (consciousness).

    This is a Borromean chain. As you see, this element here, could be folded back, in such a way that these two circles are buckled like the ones that you see here, which is what a Borromean knot realises.

83. #83

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.5

    **Seminar 1: Wednesday 16 November 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar XXIV by proposing 'une-bévue' as a superior translation of the Unbewusst, then pivots to argue that the end of analysis is not identification with the analyst or the unconscious but rather 'knowing how to deal with one's symptom' — and grounds this clinical proposition in a topological account of the torus (and its inside-out inversion) as the proper model for the relationship between inside and outside, Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real.

    What I put forward in my Borromean knot of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, led me to distinguish these three spheres and then, afterwards, re-knot them.

84. #84

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.11

    **Seminar 1: Wednesday 16 November 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan proposes that the three classical Freudian modes of identification (paternal, hysterical, and identification to a single/any trait) can be mapped topologically onto three distinct operations of turning the torus inside out, using cuts on the toric surface to produce what he calls the "torus-rod" — thereby grounding a typology of identification in topology rather than clinical description alone.

    these two modes of folding of the torus being joined to a third which for its part is the following: Supposing that we have a torus in another torus

85. #85

    Seminar XXIV · L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre · Jacques Lacan · p.23

    **Seminar 1: Wednesday 16 November 1976** > **Seminar 2: Wednesday 14 December 1976**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the topological operation of turning the Symbolic torus inside-out—analogous to what psychoanalysis performs on the unconscious—produces a fundamentally different arrangement than the Borromean knot: the Symbolic comes to totally envelop the Real and Imaginary, raising a structural problem about what a completed analysis actually does to the subject's organization of the three registers.

    turning the symbolic torus inside out, will totally envelop the Imaginary and the Real. This indeed is why the use of the cut with respect to what is involved in the Symbolic presents something which risks...provoking something which might be specified as a preference given above all to the unconscious.

86. #86

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.11

    13.12.77 (CG Draft 2)

    Theoretical move: By demonstrating that reversing any one torus in a Borromean knot produces topologically distinct figures (some more complex, some equivalent), Lacan argues that the Borromean knot is asymmetrically sensitive to where and how a rupture or reversal occurs — privileging one torus relative to others produces qualitatively different relational consequences, including the possibility of dissolving the knot entirely.

    by reversing any one whatsoever of what is called the Borromean knot, one obtains the following figure... the Borromean knot behaves differently according as the rupture happens in a different way on the reversed torus.

87. #87

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.30

    **Two lines of numbers**

    Theoretical move: Lacan develops a topology of the Real grounded in writing, arguing that (1) the Real is only accessible through writing as artifice, (2) the torus—unlike the sphere—introduces a structural asymmetry and equivocation between inside/outside and hole/rod that models the living body and sexuality, and (3) the Borromean knot's necessary alternation formalizes the non-relation, with zero as hole and one as consistency providing an arithmetic analogue for chain-topology.

    It must alternate [V-5]. It can just as well alternate in the opposite direction [V-6], in which there consists very precisely the asymmetry...it must be asymmetrical. It must be like this to reproduce the way in which I drew it the first time.

88. #88

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.50

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Seminar 7: Wednesday 21 February 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses a topological dispute about toric knittings and mirror-inversions to assert that a mirror-image is not identical to its original figure, introducing an "essential difference" produced by a single inversion — a claim that does theoretical work on the non-coincidence of the subject with its mirror representation and on the nature of topological equivalence in his knot theory.

    what is at stake is something like this... this triple thing that I tried to reproduce there, this thing with three elements

89. #89

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.12

    Perpendicular section 2

    Theoretical move: The passage advances a topological argument that the dissolution of the Borromean knot depends on the direction of the cut made on a reversed torus — longitudinal (concentric) cuts dissolve the knot while transversal (perpendicular) cuts do not — and extends this to a six-fold Borromean structure, positing that the results of reversal differ depending on the structural arrangement of the rings.

    the fact is that by sectioning (2) the reversed torus in the way that I have just done, the Borromean knot is undone. On the contrary by sectioning in this other way (1)... the Borromean knot is not dissolved

90. #90

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.97

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Annexe to Session VIII** > **Seminar 11: Tuesday 18 April 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan and collaborators work through the topological properties of the Möbius strip—its half-twists, edge-knotting, flattening into regular polygons, and relationship to the torus—as preparatory groundwork for investigating whether a Borromean knot can be constructed from a threefold knot, showing that topology functions here as the operative language for structural relations in the theory.

    I apologise to you. There is a way of making a Borromean knot with a threefold knot. Nevertheless the question is whether there is another way of making a Borromean knot with the threefold knot.

91. #91

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.101

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Annexe to Session VIII** > **Seminar 12: Tuesday 9 May 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the topological operations on the torus, Möbius strip, and Borromean plait are not merely formal exercises but reveal the structural gap between the Imaginary and the Real — a gap that constitutes inhibition — and that this triadic RSI structure is intrinsic to psychoanalysis, specifically to distinguishing representation from object.

    to obtain the unknotting of the plait, I am talking about the Borromean plait. Therefore the equivalent of the Borromean plait, is exactly what is posed as unplaitted

92. #92

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.4

    **Seminar I: Wednesday 15 November 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan opens his final seminar by positioning psychoanalysis as an irrefutable practice of equivocation (not a science), grounding this in the non-existence of the sexual relationship, the inadequation of the Symbolic to the Real, and the analyst's function as rhetor — then transitions to topological exploration of the Borromean knot and torus as structural models for the RSI (Real-Symbolic-Imaginary) articulation.

    I must trace out for you what is involved in what I called, I put forward in the form of the Borromean knot... here all the same is what I can add to the dossier of this Borromean knot.

93. #93

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.88

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Annexe to Session VIII** > **Seminar 10: Tuesday 11 April 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan reconfigures the topological grounding of psychoanalysis by moving from a simple Möbius strip to a doubled/tripled one that flattens into a threefold knot, arguing that the absence of the sexual relationship—screened by the incest prohibition and crystallised around the Oedipus myth—requires a material geometry of thread and fabric rather than a metaphorics of thought, because the passage from signifier to signified always involves a loss that mere 'free association' cannot overcome.

    The threefold thread, I mean what is properly speaking a knot, a knot that is said to have three points of intersection, this is what flattens out our Mobius strip.

94. #94

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.16

    **Seminar 3: Wednesday 20 December 1977**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that both analytic speech and analytic intervention are fundamentally acts of writing/equivocation rather than saying, and develops a topological identification of fantasy with the torus within the Borromean knot structure, mapping three coupled pairs (drive–inhibition, pleasure principle–unconscious, Real–fantasy) onto a 'six-fold torus'; simultaneously, he reframes the end of analysis as recognising what one is captive of (the sinthome), and characterises science, history, and psychoanalysis itself as forms of poetry rooted in fantasy.

    the Borromean knot is that which, in thought, constitutes matter. Matter is what one breaks, there also in the sense that this word ordinarily has.

95. #95

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.66

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Seminar 8: Wednesday 14 March 1978**

    Theoretical move: Through Soury's presentation, the passage deploys the topology of torus reversal (by holing vs. by cutting) to demonstrate that the two operations differ precisely in whether they preserve or dissociate the coupling between inside/outside and the two faces of a surface — a distinction that carries structural implications for how topological transformations can model psychoanalytic concepts such as Objet petit a.

    there is a Borromean configuration, namely, that the inside and the outside and the edge of the hole form a Borromean configuration.

96. #96

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.35

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]*

    Theoretical move: Soury demonstrates that the threefold Borromean chain is the generative/exemplary element of chain operations (analogous to the arithmetic 'one'), while the twofold chain is a degenerate/neutral element (analogous to zero), establishing a systematic arithmetic of topological chain structures; Lacan then intervenes to expose an unmastered conceptual gap in the categories of interlacing versus interlocking.

    the Borromean chain, the threefold chain appears as the generating case, the exemplary case, the case which engenders all the rest, namely, that the exemplarity of the threefold chain can be demonstrated.

97. #97

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.81

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Annexe to Session VIII** > **Seminar 9: Tuesday 21 March 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan and Soury work through the topology of toric reversal—demonstrating that holing enables inversion of inside/outside on the torus and that the two descriptions of reversal (with or without a complementary "hand"/torus) are equivalent—advancing Lacan's broader project of grounding psychoanalytic concepts in topological rather than intuitive spatial logic.

    these two complementary tori two interlaced tori, the hand which grasps being itself a torus.

98. #98

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.56

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Seminar 8: Wednesday 14 March 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan and his collaborator Soury advance the thesis that the Borromean topology must be re-grounded in toric surfaces rather than simple rings, and that the distinction between holing and cutting a torus (the latter being strictly more powerful than the former) carries theoretical weight for the topological treatment of desire and demand—cutting implicitly contains holing while enabling additional reversals not available through holing alone.

    I emptied, as one might say, these rings of string with which I formerly made Borromean chains. I transformed these Borromean chains not into tori, but into toric fabrics.

99. #99

    Seminar XXV · The Moment to Conclude · Jacques Lacan · p.46

    **X**: What does systematising mean? [*Laughter]* > **Seminar 6: Wednesday 14 February 1978**

    Theoretical move: Lacan works through the topological construction of the threefold Borromean knot from a double-loop starting configuration, arguing that it achieves a genuine knotting only when closed circularly, and that this triadic structure directly mirrors the clinic's triad of Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real.

    I introduced it because it seemed to me that it had something to do with the clinic. I mean that the trio of Imaginary, Symbolic and Real seem to me to have a sense.

100. #100

     Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.208

     *Seminar 14*: *Wednesday 21 March 1962* > *Seminar 18*: *Wednesday 2 May 1962* > Lacan

     Theoretical move: Lacan argues that topology—specifically the theory of knots and surface dimensions—is necessary to account for the subject's relation to desire and the constitution of the imaginary mediating function (i(o)), and that anxiety arises precisely when this imaginary mediation is lacking; topology is proposed as the proper formalism to replace naive spatial intuition derived from the specular image.

     the most elementary knot, not the one which I only made because I could not have woven for myself a piece of string which would close on itself, simply this (schema) the most elementary knot, the one which is traced out like that, suffices to carry with itself a certain number of questions

101. #101

     The Triumph of Religion · Jacques Lacan · p.91

     It is a philosophical problem.

     Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes his analytical project from philosophy by grounding the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary as three functional "ropes" that keep analytic practice rigorous, not as philosophical propositions — and defends the "Kant with Sade" article as a genuine theoretical intervention that went unrecognized.

     I hold onto those as the three little ropes that alone allow me to remain afloat.

102. #102

     The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within · Mari Ruti · p.244

     8. *The Sublimity of Love* > *Notes* > 8. Here is one example:

     Theoretical move: The passage, drawn from endnotes, argues that the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real are each structurally necessary components of bearable human coexistence: the Symbolic Third mediates between subjects and the monstrous Real Thing, the Imaginary enables identification with the other, and the Real supplies the dynamism of singular passion—while also elaborating the sinthome as a meaning-producing enigma that is opaque, poetic, and irreducible to ultimate signification.

     all of his epiphanies are always characterized by the same thing, which is very precisely the consequence that results from the error in the knot, namely the fact that the unconscious is connected to the real

103. #103

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 4 </span><span id="ch4.xhtml_p191" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 191. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Thing

     Theoretical move: The chapter pivots from a dualistic (imaginary/symbolic) framework to a triadic one (imaginary/symbolic/real integrated via the Borromean Knot), arguing that Freudian dualisms internally require development into triadic structures, and that the split, Other-bound subject disclosed by psychoanalysis—together with Nachträglichkeit—fundamentally challenges any philosophy premised on a unified representing subject.

     The three categories must be rigorously integrated in a fashion that does justice to Lacan's comparison of the three registers to the interlocking rings of a Borromean knot.

104. #104

     Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.134

     <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 3 </span><span id="ch3.xhtml_p133" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 133. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Freudian Dialectic > <span id="ch3.xhtml_p134" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 134. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>The Formative Power of the Image

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Lacanian Imaginary—centered on the unifying power of the mirror-stage gestalt—is the indispensable complement to the Symbolic, and that it is precisely this imaginary function (the organism's detachment from instinct via perceptual form) that explains the constancy, variability, and "perverse" character of the human drive as distinct from animal instinct.

     Lacan's insistence upon the absolutely integral relation of the three registers, which he likened to the three interlocking rings of a Borromean knot.

105. #105

     The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.173

     Conceptual Stakes of Repetition: Deleuze and Lacan

     Theoretical move: By contrasting Deleuze's "realization of ontology through repetition" with Lacan's account of the symbolic cut as primary, Zupančič (drawing on Dolar) argues that tyche is the gap internal to automaton—i.e., the Real is not opposed to the Symbolic but is its constitutive impasse—and further that repetition and primary repression are co-extensive rather than causally related, so that alienation, the signifying dyad, and the forced choice together explain why repetition cannot be dissolved by successful interpretation.

     To say that for Lacan the symbolic cut is primary does not mean that the other two registers (the Real and the Imaginary) gradually develop from it. They all emerge at the same time

106. #106

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.216

     <span id="page-191-0"></span>*Glossary of Lacanian Symbols* \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \_ > There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

     Theoretical move: This endnote cluster clarifies several technical concepts—S(A) as signifier of the barred/lacking Other, sublimation, subjectivity vs. subjectivization, sexuation structures as strict contradictories—while defending Lacan's theoretical innovations against feminist and structuralist misreadings.

     those with masculine structure might be said to symbolize the real (object) of the imaginary (fantasy), which corresponds to SRI, while those with feminine structure realize the symbolic of the imaginary, which corresponds to RSI

107. #107

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.162

     <span id="page-156-0"></span>Psychoanalysis and Science > **The Three Registers and Differently "Polarized" Discourses**

     Theoretical move: Lacan's late discourse theory in Seminar XXI reorganizes discourses not by agent/position (as in the four discourses) but by the sequential *order* in which the three registers (RSI/IRS/etc.) are traversed, and this allows Fink to argue that psychoanalysis—as an IRS discourse that "imagines the real of the symbolic"—is a praxis unifying theory and clinical practice, sharing this orientation with mathematics and potentially the best of science.

     terms used to describe the 'orientation' of knots like his Borromean knot (see Seminar XXI, November 13, 1973)

108. #108

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.143

     THE PHALLUS: ONE OF W~ S PARTNERS > <span id="page-141-0"></span>**A New Metaphor for Sexual Difference**

     Theoretical move: Lacan's account of sexual difference introduces a genuinely new topological metaphor—grounded in the cross-cap and set-theoretic distinctions between open and closed sets—that replaces the classical Western model of concentric spheres and recasts masculine/feminine structure as closed/open sets respectively; this is further characterised as a "Gödelian structuralism" that systematically points to incompleteness and undecidability within any formal system.

     This process finally comes to an end, in a sense, when Lacan encounters the Borromean knot which takes the three registers-the imaginary, symbolic, and real-as equally important.

109. #109

     The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.233

     <span id="page-231-0"></span>**Index**

     Theoretical move: This is the index of Bruce Fink's *The Lacanian Subject*, listing key concepts, proper names, and page references — a non-substantive navigational apparatus with no original theoretical argumentation.

     Borromean knot, 123

110. #110

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.)

     Žižek Responds! > [Hospitality, Hostility, and the “Real” Neighbor](#contents.xhtml_ch8)^{<a href="#8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_en8-1" id="8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_nr8-1">1</a>} > Žižek with Derrida

     Theoretical move: The passage argues that Žižek and Derrida converge on the ethical injunction to love the "real" neighbor (the refugee as monstrous, anxiety-producing other), while Žižek's Marxist critique surpasses liberal-deconstructive approaches by insisting that capitalism's malfunctions (including refugee crises) are structurally necessary rather than accidental disturbances amenable to cosmetic reform.

     We can reread Derrida's account of the other in terms of the Lacanian Borromean knot, which unites the three orders of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.

111. #111

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.) · p.241

     Žižek Responds! > [On Žižek’s Interpretation of Lacan’s “Kant with Sade”](#contents.xhtml_ch10)

     Theoretical move: The passage maps Žižek's reading of Lacan's "Kant with Sade" as a three-ring itinerary, arguing that Žižek's key theoretical contribution is to foreground the more implicit and disturbing second principle—that Kant is the truth of Sade (Sade as closet Kantian)—over the better-known first principle (Sade as the truth of Kant), and connects this to the concept of the "second death" as a condition for radical creation ex nihilo.

     unlike the three rings of Lacan's notorious Borromean knot, this set of rings is both strictly hierarchical and impossible to untie

112. #112

     Žižek Responds! · Todd McGowan & Dominik Finkelde (eds.)

     Žižek Responds! > [<span class="grey">INDEX</span>](#contents.xhtml_end1)

     Theoretical move: This is a back-matter index passage listing proper names and Lacanian sub-concepts with their page/anchor references across the volume; it is non-substantive and performs no theoretical argument.

     Borromean knot [here](#8_iek_and_derrida_hospitality_hostility_and_the_real_nei.xhtml_IDX-672), [here](#10_reading_the_illegible_on_ieks_interpretation_of_lacan.xhtml_IDX-673)