Lacanian Compass New York Seminar 2025-2026

In 1996 Jacques-Alain Miller and Éric Laurent began to work together on Miller’s yearly seminar (The Lacanian Orientation), under the provocative title The Other that Does Not Exist and its Ethical Committees (L’Autre qui n’existe pas et ses comités d’éthique, 1996-1997). In our historical moment, it is “no longer that wars are worldwide; it’s that the world is at war everywhere,” as Guy Briole states in TLR 15; consequently, we want to return to this seminar by Miller and Laurent to consider the horrendous manifestations of the Other as semblant in our current political landscape, in the “United Symptoms” (as Miller refers to the United States), and elsewhere. We will read the six lessons, as they are called, from this seminar that are published in English, as well as two lessons from Miller’s seminar entitled The Disenchantment of Psychoanalysis (Le désenchantement de la psychanalyse, 2001-2002), published in English under the title “Milanese Intuitions.” The lessons from Miller and Laurent will be distributed to you, as the publications are difficult to locate.

Nancy Gillespie