The Male Sphincter

Dear Friend,

To answer your message where you wrote:

Before we state what we mean by a signifier, we must determine what we mean by a noun, and before we can say anything about a noun, we must talk about a 'no'. How can a 'no' be defined is a matter of logic - a propositional logic. What I ask is : when is a 'no' a name ? Two different logics may be needed  .

About two different logics - I have identified J.P Sartre on one side, and Lacan on the other. The former established a Serial logic - the later a Social logic. They both have been looking for the 'no'. They needed psychiatry (R.D.Laing) or art (S.Dali) to approach its definition, for at a certain point, our body must be part of the logic we define.
In other words: it is clear that bodies must be part of History, but it is not so clear with Mythology - when Oedipus was supposed to be no-body.
The same way, in our environment a part of us must take part in the 'no'.

Freud located this problem in the sex relation. There is a relation between genders, which defines a 'no'. The description of this mechanism is a logic which includes a part of our bodies/physiology- as I shall try to relate it hereby

Most of Freud's disciples forget that his topology was of sphincters. They follow his blunder when he forgot to mention testicles in his article devoted to the anatomical difference between genders. Today, we know why he forgot also to mention Oedipus (see Karl Abraham case) besides the historical Moses. For a time, these blind spots drove a focus on penis-envy and lacanian-death - but anatomy, embryology and physiology re-establish the facts that testicles make a difference between men and women. They also show that the inguinal sphincter - by the male groin/abdomen - gives way to a fort-da that female body/brain do not experience. Beside this difference all the pelvis is ruled between genders by anamorphosis - whose logic Lacan has mentioned.. Consequently I wrote in a (Lacanian) forum Castration [what we may call the 'no'] begins with the topological difference between male and female human bodies - e.g. fact that the former has a sphincter (a testicles fort-da principle) that the later have not. Then after, of course, since it brings a language at their mouth, it is carried and brought as an 'effect of language'. A woman answered That there is a topological difference between male and female human bodies, yes. But your mapping of sphincters in the aforementioned bodies appears rather peculiar...lest the sperm comes and goes... a rather farfetched fort-da...I would say Again you say this is what the female body does not have... Let me tell you the vagina is prone to behave as a sphincter even if, with Lacan: "it doesn't happen to all of them" I understood that I was not clear and had to make me more precise I was talking about something that is more known by men than by women. Testicles by the time around birth, migrate from inside the abdomen through a sphincter that is called inguinal, down to the outside of the body (actually there is still an outer envelop left- that one may read with Fabre d'Olivet, better than the rib of our catechism). During a period of time testicles can go back inside and outside again - this is the fort-da that I meant. It is most certainly known by some 'yogis'; and it looks like it took part in the 'miracle' that impressed so much the President Schreber (that few people still know as being a major case in Freud's study as well as in Lacan's references). It made my female correspondent notice that she had not seen what I meant - that she answered by denying - exactly as I said - scientifically. This lack in the female reflex introduces to the 'no'. There is no word in the mother tongue for the object of the inguinal sphincter - there is no inguinal fort-da projected onto the female brain. I began to write this thesis in Lyon /France (March 29, 1987  ) - I was already showing its relation with the Y chromosome, the cipher and the Conception of Time. I lectured in Hamilton/NewZealand (Oct 13, 1994  ) - a lite version for academics. It is currently alluded - nearly in an esoteric mode - on my web site ( & ) . Evidently it is not said in Institutions. For average men, it usually stays primarily repressed since their mother - female - did not reflex that precise 'inguinal' drive to them. It is easy to repress - it establishes no-body. Talking about this is also part of that logic. In the historical development we can see how Freud began to write about it, in mentioning it not.

Shall we write its logic form now ?

As I have released the  premise of the description of a relation (gender) - I may have supplied with a material that your expertise will integrate and formulate in return. This way one shall have satisfy the request that one shall be part of the logic (in accordance with the Freudian idea that sexuality/libido should be that part of mankind that would be part of his logic).
This is how I understand an 'integral' process of analysis.

To summarize : amongst the plural set of sphincters - which bases a polymorphic perversion - a boy seeks in his mother tongue the place of reality for his abdominal fort-da. As his mother has no such reference, the Symbolic signification of this missing hole is established. Castration and Name-of-the-Father result. In his Seminar March 20, 1973 Lacan precisely indicates the correlative relation between (a) and semblant [saming, meme  ] which results.

The symbolic returns the 'no' as 'nhole'. Is this graph of nholedge representing a first logic ?
There is no indication that Lacan realized that another differential sphincter was mirroring the "germen-letter" he mentioned in this first graph. The vowel allows the mother tongue to remark the saming-to-be, as the study of the vocal organ (voice box) shows likewise a post-natal radical migration topology, with a real object etc...

Does it makes sense and can you formulate this first logic ?

WTHEAUX 980214

SECOND PHASE

The Lacanian forum stood quiet while my friend answered. He first made more precise his point as follow:

First, going slowly, before all the talk of what is a signifier,
1/ one must say what ONE signifier is.
but before doing this,
2/ one must say what is a name (nom),
but before doing this,
3/ one must say what is a non . (non)

He also explained that he could not yet formulate this first logic for :
The notion of a sphincter is important, and I would not want to deny any one a topological delire ( in fact, I have nothing against delires as such, in so long as they are constructed), yet, the notion of a border must be examined in and of itself before going into the gender distinctions.

The question is how can one write these borders and their functions in a rigorous writing ?

He said he had no space/time to detail this writing which has already been done as
For example, Lacan shows, how the structure of the rim is that of the Theorem of Stokes and how this rim structure is involved in, but not to be conflated with a topology of knots: for example, what is a called a "repaired" trefle knot is named by Lacan la noeud de la difference sexuelle.

He also wrote

I am hoping the debate will proceed to this level.-- the sphincter net page should be explicitly formulated as such (without complexifying things from the beginning with bio-metaphors: things are already complex enough with the word "border", why precede any further until this term has been defined ?), they should be numbered, with any counter-examples submitted.

The reaction in the forum and the present claim that logic can address the issue as long at it proceeds at its own level are, in my opinion, good counter-example at that point. It gives sign for me to make another step, expecting that some day, specialists of Stokes and 'fixed clovers' will indicate where and how it applies. I make hereby my second step with the first article I wrote about the gender topology.
It is titled _The_Function_of_the_Organ_  (indicating something that W.Reich had missed also).

It is clear that the border/rim that makes the inguinal sphincter does not suffice for basing the human psychism (this male specificity is frequent amongst animal species). For instance, when one of Lacan's best friend, Francoise Dolto said that Women could not reach the Zero and added, after reflection. I don't know - she was speaking about the human species. The inguinal rim must be coupled together with some function of the brain.

At the foundation of his topology, Lacan made precise that his model included this biological organ - as for instance the concave mirror in the Optical Model stands for the cortex. I indicated this to my reader, at the beginning of _The_Function_of_the_Organ_, with a simplified schema:

The neurological cortical projection of the body is at the foundation of the language  - with several other little things, it makes a necessary component to figure out any specificity of human nature. To make it clear, many graphs in The_Function_of_the_Organ describe this neural topology - amongst them, here is another picture that will introduce the second rim function which elaborates the gender logic.

We have now two levels or simply two rims/borders ;

and I ask my friend again : can we start to apply the vocabulary of logic with this ?

WTHEAUX 980226

PRACTICAL PHASE

Topologist kept silent. Meanwhile, the woman spoke. She told a story :

1) The babies was born with the testicles not having yet accomplished their descent into the bag...
2) then the doctor says it is no serious problem,
3) and this is how the event takes place a few days after the baby is born.

Here we have a practical example of the situation. 1) Something that the mother could not answer, brought her to ask the collective knowledge (I call it S2). 2) The 'doctor' who represents S2 said that he had 'nothing' to say about that. 3) Here is the normal situation.

Of course I read this story as a myth. It tells that the normal situation has a silent history, during which one do not know what the baby thought. But we are entitled to assume that 1) the infant asked a Che Vuoi? to his anxious mother, and that 2) the mother asked the father who said nothing (because his mother tongue has no word for that), so 3) that is the normal situation.

Let's also assume that in another variation of the myth, the mother too ask a Che Vuoi? to her son, when he is looking for hearing a significand about what happens to some of them (amongst the male babies).

(sudden entry of the topologist on the imaginary stage:)
ENOUGH WITH MYTH ! Requested the logician - let's go to something Real...
Ok, Ok, said Prometheus, who gave another excerpt from The_Function_of_the_Organ : he ripped off 2 pictures and said :

In the picture above we see the stimulation of the question,
and in the picture bellow we see how the difference of cortical projection
base a S1 and a zero which causes a nothing in  their collective knowledge, S2.

Before turning off the light, the stage manager mentioned again that the Inguinal Sphincters were the only significative features in human anatomies of men/women which cause this possibility that - without a doubt - was followed by a series of cultural consequences in the talking species.

WTHEAUX 980307

OBJECTION PHASE

The pure woman answered in the dialectic of intellectual libido. She appreciated the page so far and said :

What a signifier (aka significand) addresses is an image and a sound. (thus) I cannot follow the idea of the peculiar testicle in control being an S1; since it has no image, since it has no sound.

Since I agree with my objector, I must explain why.
Even with the media of the neural representation, the testicle Fort-Da makes a paranoiac circuit:

It is 'paranoiac' because it consists of a dual link. The lack of the feminine abdominal Fort-Da would at the best make a lark  (left) - in comparison to the requested triple link which achieves a subjectivity according to the lacanian 'borromean knot' (right).

Every body had almost left when the stage manager reappeared in a Joker outfit with a monkey :

People who study the human language, he said, know that apes share with human infant an anatomic feature - this is Darwinian and we call it phylogenesis - which takes place in the throat. Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal had probably noticed that too. After a few months, the human trachea slides down and opens a space which is well known by linguists, for it allows the production of a sound which is called vowel. This picture shows a human adult (left) in control of a vowel, in comparison to a new born human (right) who cannot figure out anything like that in his brain No need to say what it means for the History of the Letter and ancient Alphabets. We shall be blessed enough if we realize what it means after the objection we had encountered. The testicle Fort-Da first round has shown something that can be reapplied there. Yet, the vowel (actually a resonant phenomenon, that linguists call Formant, e.g. exactly what Lacan's Optical Models describes as 'real image' - as well as Plato, a real sound in the Cave) will not call the infant for any S2 - but the infant will recall from the mnemonic environment of the adult, an image of him/herself when he/she was having not in front of his/her parent. Picture shows (pink) the past, where the adult finds the image of him/herself (blue), when he/she was an infant, vowel having not, in front of an adult An 'image' has come, instead of S2, to address the issue of a real 'sound' - making thus a circuit which is not subjected to the above objection : The picture shows the image of the past and the sound of the parents tongue

WTHEAUX 980309

FINAL SCENE

The parlour is quite empty now - a real Lacanian dream (731022).

The logician has left asking : What is an edge ? This is the answer. This discourse is an edge ; and the ob-session is to search in an edge outside. Also an edge is in sexuality, no freudian ignores that. It is not possible to speak about an edge - it cannot be formulated (such formula would simply be a code  ) ; it can be identified.

As we begin to realize that id speaks - that the DNA is a linguistics - we shall gradualy identify with who. The formula, the code of this edge is 3. The Borromeo family, the saint and the psychoanalyst Lacan conclude that it is made of holes or sphinxters, surrounded by symbols.

I began with the testicles for it will carry the final question. The testicle sphinxter has no name in the mother tongue. The art can support its meaning as Dali  did - hardly knowing y - when the body is a letter,  rather than a fantasm,  without answer :  .

Another way for the inguinal fort-da to be initiating sexuality is a locking  that the borromean knot helps to examplify.

We must consider three fort-da without answer (the testicle's is not reflected in mother tongut, nor the vocal formant's by the infant, nor the memory image in one's mirror) ; not being locked means that the meaning draw back :

The Meaning does not fade aback away when it is 'locked', yet, not by a simple trait as it is in the lark project of madness (paranoia - as said above  ) ; instead of a univoque lark, the lock is also a fort-da :  (as said in previous page  ).

This is how the Lacanian project makes sense.
The way to make 3 fort-da is to combine the three locks in the borromean way :

This may the combination of the 3 fort-da, described in this page. This closed system is adequate to the Hermetic representation of the body . This illustration is also opportunate since one of its sphinxter evokes a cosmic orbe - perhaps, this visual perspective will evoke for some psychoanalysts that the three prisonners of the (Lacanian) Logic of Time have to deal with an environmental representation of themselves.
This is an edge. An edge includes its environment. What I don't know - and nobody answers - is how and why the Y (DNA) is implied there.
What is the relation between the Y and the sphinxter ?

I know what we would say : the Y has nothing to do with the sexual neuro-anatomy. They are not related.
Ah! Oh! Yes... It is the Unconscious.

WTHEAUX 980327

BEFORE GOING TO SLEEP

In this Hermetic picture before the halt of the Renaissance
the transvestite who carries an @ on the right asks the hermaphrodite:
What is this piece of cake you hold in her hand ?

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© CYBEK of New York, 1999.