Lacan Unary Trait PDF

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 2, no.
1-2, 2006
Count-as-one, Forming-into-one, Unary

Trait, S1
Lorenzo Chiesa
Abstract: While a significant amount of research has recently been carried out that investigates
the similarities and differences between Alain Badiou and Jacques Lacans theories of the subject,
less attention has been paid to the direct relationship between the latter and Badious set-theoret-
ical ontology. This article applies some of the most important conceptual propositions advanced
in the first two parts of Being and Event to the key psychoanalytic issue of the identification of the
conscious and unconscious subject as expounded by Lacan in his ninth Seminar, Lidentification.
More specifically, this article aims to show how Badious notions of the count-as-one and the
forming-into-one can profitably be put to work in order better to understand Lacans notions of
the unary trait and the S1, the master-signifier. What is at stake in both cases is the relation-
ship between structure and metastructure, presentation and representation. Furthermore, this
article provides an outline for a set-theoretical formalization of the relation between conscious-
ness and the unconscious as developed by Lacan in Lidentification. Lacans breaking of the solidar-
ity between unity and totality allows him to work with parts: from the inexistence of totality as
a one follows the possibility of thinking the part as partial system. Lacan identifies this system
with the unconscious. Applying a number of set-theoretical axioms, this article argues that the
existence of the unconscious as partial system ultimately relies on the in-existence of the void, or,
more specifically, the existence of the void as part that in-exists as element.
Keywords: Badiou; Lacan; Ontology; Psychoanalysis; Set-theory; Subject; Identification;
Number
Let us give Lacan his due: he was the first to make a systematic use
of numericality
Alain Badiou
Introduction
According to Alain Badiou, psychoanalysis thinks the amorous procedure, one of
the four procedures for the sake of which the abstract categories of his Being and Event
www.cosmosandhistory.org 68
Lorenzo Chiesa 69
have been formulated. Badiou invites psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic theorists to

practice these categories in their own field. Against the background of such an invita-
tion, in this paper, it is my intention to outline a possible application of some of the most
important conceptual propositions advanced in the first two parts of Being and Event to
the key psychoanalytic issue of the identification of the (conscious and unconscious)
subject as expounded by Jacques Lacan in his ninth Seminar, Lidentification. More spe-
cifically, I aim to show how Badious notions of the count-as-one and the forming-into-
one can profitably be put to work in order better to understand Lacans notions of the
unary trait and the S1, the master-signifier. What is at stake in both cases is the rela-
tionship between structure and metastructure, presentation and representation, starting
from the common premise that the one, which is not, solely exists as operation (BE 24)
(Badiou), as an instrument (Lacan) which is not the one of Parmenides, nor the one of
Plotinus, nor the one of any totality. It should be noticed that, although Lidentification
arguably remains one of Lacans most abstract Seminars, it is nevertheless the case that
the topics it discusses have vast repercussions for basic technical questions concerning
the cure, such as the handling of the transference and the emergence of anxiety. Ap-
plying Being and Event to the practice of psychoanalytic thought will thus also implicitly
indicate its relevance to the practice of psychoanalytic treatment.
In Being and Event, Badiou endeavours to think philosophically, that is meta-ontologi-
cally, what circulates between the modern theories of the subject, in primis the Lacanian
one, and ontology understood as axiomatic set-theory (BE 3). As Justin Clemens and
Oliver Feltham rightly remark, Badiou does not merge ontology into the theory of the
subject, rather, the tension between the two drives his investigations. This tension is
what appears to be annulled when one practices Badious categories across Lacanian
psychoanalysis. While a significant amount of research has recently been carried out
that carefully investigates the similarities and differences between Badiou and Lacans
theories of the subject, less attention has been paid to the direct relationship between the
. I would like to thank Ana Alvarez Velasco, a true non-working mathematician, for her invaluable advice.
I am also grateful to Alberto Toscano for his Badiouian comments on an early draft of this article.
. Alain Badiou, Ltre et lvnement, Paris, Seuil, 1988, p. 10. The English translation, which is otherwise
excellent, curiously omits this reference to psychoanalysis, replacing it with a reference to artwhich does
not appear in the original, Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham, London, Continuum, 2005,
p. 4 (henceforth BE).
. Lesson of 29/11/61 from Jacques Lacan, Seminar IX (1961-1962): Lidentification, unpublished (henceforth
Seminar IX).
. Alain Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, ed. and trans. Justin Clemens and Oliver
Feltham, London, Continuum, 2003, p. 6.
. See, for instance, Slavoj iek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, New York, Verso,
2000, pp. 127-70.; Slavoj iek, Foreword to the Second Edition: Enjoyment within the Limits of Reason
Alone, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 2nd, London, Verso, 2002, pp. lxxxi-
lxxxviii. See also Bruno Bosteels, Alain Badious Theory of the Subject: The Recommencement of Dialec-
tical Materialism? (Part I), Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 12, 2001, pp. 200-29, pp, 220-9. and Bruno
Bosteels, Alain Badious Theory of the Subject: The Recommencement of Dialectical Materialism? (Part
II), Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 13, 2002, pp. 173-208, pp. 197-208.; Ed Pluth and Dominiek Hoens,
70 COSMOS AND HISTORY
latter and Badious set-theoretical ontology. Badious ontology of the One and the Mul-
tiplethe a priori conditions of any possible ontologyrelies on the law that the one
is not (BE 23, 28). By Badious own admission on page 1 of Meditation One of Being and
Event, this law is closely associated to Lacans pathbreaking principle according to which
there is [symbolic] Oneness (BE 23)or better, there is only symbolic Oneness. What
Badiou fails to emphasize in this context is that this principle is, for Lacan, confined to
a theory of the subject: in spite of proposing important hypotheses about being, Lacan
never really developed any ontology independently of his notion of subjectivity.
My considerations should therefore always be measured against the threat of a short
circuit in Badious magnum opus, which I do not intend to investigate any further in this
occasion. On the one hand, Badious theory of the subject-event in Being and Event may
rightly be labelled as beyond Lacanas the title of Part VIII of the book suggests
due to his rigorous philosophical appropriation of Paul Cohens mathematical notion
of forcing. On the other hand, in spite of its reliance on the radical thesis according to
which ontology [] is nothing other than mathematics itself (BE xiii), Badious solid
ontological edifice is itself amply anticipated by Lacans own theory of the subject. The
latter is indeed based on the principle that there is only symbolic Onenessor, adopt-
ing a formula closer to Badious own terminology, there is no One except in math-
ematicsalbeit in an often hesitant and imprecise manner. Thus, the least we can say
is that, in practising the ontological categories made available by Being and Event across
Lacanian psychoanalytic notions, we will not be surprised to discover a high degree of
compatibility between them. The ideal result of such a practice would be nothing less
than an accurate set-theoretical formalization of the relation between consciousness and
the unconscious, succeeding there where Lacans courageous attempts to demonstrate
that mathematical topology is structureand meta-structurefailed.
Count-as-one, One, Phantom of Inconsistency

Everything turns on mastering the gap between the presupposition (that must be
rejected) of a being of the one and the thesis of its there is (BE 23). For Badiou, the
one is not, yet it exists as an operation, the count-as-one. The count-as-one is not a
presentation either: what presents itself, a situation, is multiple. However, every situation
is structured by means of the operation of the count-as-one. Thus, the relation between
the multiple and the one is retroactive: the multiple will have preceded the one only after
What if the Other Is Stupid? Badiou and Lacan on Logical Time, in Peter Hallward (ed.), Think Again:
Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, London, Continuum Books, 2004, pp. 182-90.
. For a discussion of Lacans ethics as an ontological ethics, see Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano,
Ethics and Capital, Ex Nihilo, Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious,, no. 1, 2005, pp. 9-25. And Chapter 5 of
Lorenzo Chiesa, Lacan and Subjectivity: A Philosophical Introduction, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007.
. Lesson of 17/5/1972 from Jacques Lacan, Seminar XIX (1971-1972), Ou pire, unpublished.
. Topology is not made to lead us to structure. Topology is this structure (Jacques Lacan, Ltourdit,
Autres crits, Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 483.).
Lorenzo Chiesa 71
having necessarily been structured by means of the count-as-one. As Badiou puts it, the
count-as-one (the structure) installs the universal pertinence of the one/multiple couple
for any situation (BE 24). This amounts to saying that, with regard to presentation, the
one is also an operational result (BE 24, my emphasis). A concomitant splitting occurs
on the side of the multiple: inconsistent multiplicities, multiples that are retroactively
understood as non-one as soon as being-one is a result, are to be distinguished from
consistent multiplicities, multiple[s] as several-ones counted by the action of struc-
ture (BE 25). We can thus conclude that the law that the one is not is at the same time
the law that the one is a law of the multiple (BE 25).
It is vital to stress that, according to Badiou, what is normally presented in any
situation is the fact that the one is: all that is presented in a situation is counted-as-one,
which is to say that the principle the one is not cannot be presented in it. At this level,
inconsistent multiplicity is solely the presupposition that prior to the count the one is
not (BE 52). Having said this, we should also keep in mind that the one is an operational
result, and that for this reason, there must be something of the multiple [that] does
not absolutely coincide with the result (BE 53). In other words, in situations, which are
as such always structured, a remainder exceeds the one of consistent multiplicities, and
this can be nothing other than the very operation, the law of the count-as-one, from
which the one results. With regard to a given situation, inconsistent multiplicities, the
pure multiple, are therefore included as an exclusion: adopting a quasi-psychoanalytic
terminology whose Lacanian affinities, as we shall later see, are remarkable, Badiou
suggests that this inclusive exclusion is what causes the structured presentation to waver
towards the phantom of inconsistency (BE 53, my emphasis). This phantom, a retroactive
by-product of the count-as-one, cannot itself be presented, yet it is included in the situa-
tion in the name of what would be the presentation itself, the presentation in-itself ,
if what the law does not authorize to think was thinkable: that the one is not (BE 53).
Put differently, from the structured situational standpoint for which the law is the one
is a law of the multiple, the phantom of inconsistency amounts to the excluded law that
the one is not.
More specifically, the pure multiple, unpresentable insofar as it is excluded by the
law the one is a law of the multiple, is nothing from the standpoint of the situation. As
Badiou observes, being-nothing is different from non-being: There is a being of noth-
ing, as form of the unpresentable. The nothing is what names the unperceivable gap
[] between [] the one as result and the one as operation (BE 54, my emphasis). But
being-nothing is not, just as the one is not: the there is of being-nothing does not instigate
any search for the nothing, and thus avoids falling back into an ontology of presence:
The nothing is neither a place nor a term of the situation. For if the nothing were a
term that could only mean one thing: that it had been counted as one (BE 54). Rather,
the nothing is the non-one of any count-as-one; or, the phantom of inconsistency is the
name nothing, which is not a-nothing [un-rien]. At this stage, it is important to empha-
size that, for Badiou, the nothing is both the pure unpresentable multiple, the name of
unpresentation in presentation, and the operation of the count, that which exceeds the
one-result. The nothing, or better the void as its localyet unlocalizableoccurrence,

has a dual status.
Let us consider this question further. Being qua being is neither one nor multiple; al-
though being is certainly presented as multiple, being indeed occurs in every presentation,
being does not present itself (see BE 27): being qua being is what presents (itself) (BE 24),
and, it is as such, in being foreclosed from presentation (BE 27), that it is sayable. Thus
the void is the name of being insofar as the void indicates precisely that nothing is pre-
sented; by means of the void, presentation gives us the non-access to an unpresentable
(see BE 56). However, in addition to naming being as an unpresentable, a non-one that
wanders in the presentation in the form of a subtraction, the subtractive face of the count
(BE 55, my emphasis), the void also concomitantly names being in the very operation
of the count-as-one which, in exceeding the presentable one-result, sutures a situation to
its being (a suture is quite literally an operation). Again, the void is the name of being in
two inextricable ways. Both exclude the possibility that the void may be localized and
thus encountered in the normal regime of structured situations: Badiou believes that,
from the situational standpoint, the void as name of being is equivalent to an absolute
unconscious of the void [inconscience du vide] (BE 56). The phantom of inconsistency
cannot be conscious.
Unicity, Forming-into-one, Anxiety of the Void

Badiou states that there are four meanings concealed beneath the single signifier
one (BE 89). The first two distinguish the count-as-one from the one: as we have
already seen, the one, which is not, can only be the retroactive and fictive effect of a
structural count, the count-as-one. Since being is always presented as multiple, multiple
of multiples, what is really counted as one through the nominal seal [sceau] of the count-
as-one is the multiple-of-multiples (BE 90): multiples are counted by the count-as-one
as one-multiples, consistent multiplicities, multiples as several ones. In other words,
the couple one/multiple installed by the count-as-one qua structure should ultimately be
understood as the couple one-result/one-multiple.
The third meaning of the signifier one is, for Badiou, unicity. Unicity is not a being,
but a predicate of the multiple (BE 90). Multiples are unique: this simply means, a mul-
tiple is different from any other (BE 68). What differentiates a multiple from all other
multiples is its proper name, that is, being counted as one-multiple by the nominal seal
of the count-as-one. A notion of unicity that has done with any filiation from the being
of the one and only accepts the one as result, is what allows us to think the relationship
between the same and the other in a new way: given that the one is not, it is in regard
. The law of the count as condition for existence, which renders presentation possible by precluding the
presentation of inconsistent multiplicity (i.e. being itself), is ultimately indiscernible from the ontological
inconsistency whose presentation it forecloses, Ray Brassier, Presentation as Anti-Phenomenon in Alain
Badious Being and Event, Continental Philosophy Review, 2006, [available on-line at: http://www.springer-
link.com/content/k3r6782060171279/?p=1661625d348044a1b73f87e8d0c3fd49&pi=4]
Lorenzo Chiesa 73
to themselves that the others are Others (BE 33). A multiple is Other than any other
multiple only due to its unicity. Or, the Other [] cannot designate the gap between
the one and the others-than-one [autres-que-lun], because the one is not (BE 33 trans.
modified). Put simply, the Other is coextensive to the unicity of the others, not the one.
Finally, there is a fourth meaning of the signifier one, which Badiou designates as
forming-into-one [mise-en-un]. This is basically a second count, a count of the count
(BE 83-4 my emphasis), which should be understood in two inextricable ways according
to the two sides of the couple one-result/one-multiple installed by the first count, the
count-as-one. Indeed, the forming-into-one indicates the concomitant possibility of both
count[ing] as one an already counted one-multiple and apply[ing] the count to the
one-result of the count (BE 90). Such an operation is possible insofar as, after the first
count, the one is not really distinguishable from the multiple: given that the one is the
result of the structuring count that makes the multiple consist, it remains immanent to
presentation, which, as such, can present only multiples. Differently put, the one-multiple
results from the count-as-one, and for this very reason the one-result can only itself be a
multiple.
If we now consider that the count-as-one is, as we have already remarked, a law that
produces a namethe proper name of each multiple as uniqueit also follows that
the forming-into-one will be nothing other than submitting to the law the names that it
produces (BE 90). It is important to emphasize that the resulting multiple of names (BE
91), the product of the forming-into-one, is itself a multiple: even after the second count
has taken place, the one is solely a retroactive fiction, albeit a more elaborate one, since
it now transcends presentation into representation. At this level, the one as representa-
tion can be distinguished from presentation as multiple, yet it remains a re-presentation
of a multiple and thus a fiction. On the other hand, notice that retroactive representa-
tion will necessarily have a retroactive effect on retroactive presentation: it is also in this
sense that I understand Badious suggestion according to which forming-into-one is not
really distinct from the count-as-one (BE 91).
The relation between the two counts, the counting-as-one of presentation and the
forming-into-one of representation, is to be conceived of in terms of a relation between
structure and metastructure, situation and the state of the situation. Although Badiou
insists on differentiating the two countsthey are absolutely distinct (BE 83)he also
affirms that the reduplication of the count is necessaryevery structure call[s] upon
a metastructure (BE 84)and consequently structure and metastructure, situation and
its state, are not really distinct. The reason for this necessity is countering the danger
of the void, warding it off from structured presentation (BE 84): all situations are thus
defined by an inevitable anxiety of the void [angoisse du vide] (BE 93). As we have seen,
the unpresentable and unlocalizable character of the void as the name of a situations
(inconsistent) being is what guarantees the consistency of this very situation, the emer-
gence of consistent multiplicity. That is to say, it is only insofar as a structured presenta-
tion does not encounter its own void that the situational one is not ruined. However, we
have also seen that, within presentation, something exceeds the count: the very opera-
tion of the structural count-as-one qua nothing. This means that the errant void could fix
itself in the guise of structure: It is [] possible that, subtracted from the count, and by
consequence a-structured, the structure itself be the point where the void is given (BE
93). In order to counter the danger of the void, it is therefore necessary to structure the
structure or that the there is Oneness be valid for the count-as-one (BE 93).
Significantly, according to Badiou, this redoubling, the second count, should be
understood as an imaginarization of the first: if the count-as-one as a (symbolic) opera-
tion retroactively produces a fictional (imaginary) one-result, the counts undergoing,
in turn, the operation of a count is equivalent to the fictionalizing of the count via the
imaginary being conferred upon it (BE 95). Put simply, while the first count symboli-
cally produces the one, the second count, the count of the count, imaginarily is one.
Unary Trait as Trait Unique, or La Multiplicit Actuelle

The central notion of Lacans ninth seminar is arguably what, in an explicit attempt
to echo the function of the one in set theory, is designated as the unary trait [trait unaire].10
Generalizing and elaborating on Freuds notion of the einziger Zug,11 Lacan believes that
identification is ultimately based on identification with the signifier, and the unary trait
is what all signifiers have in common, their support.12 More precisely, the one as unary
trait is the instrument13 by means of which identification is made possible: the unary
trait is not a one but an operation, a count, that constitutes the foundation of the one of
identification with the signifier.14 Simply put, the unary trait should be understood as
what produces a stroke, /, not a unity, let alone a totality:15 Lacan openly denies that
he is taking into consideration any of the many significations of the one proposed by
philosophical tradition, rather it is a question of the 1 [] of the primary teacher, the
one of pupil X, write out a hundred lines of 1s for me!, namely strokes [which have]
always been sufficient for minimal notation.16
In describing the unary trait as a count, and even as a first count, the count-as-one,
that as such is to be distinguished from a second count, I am far from forcing Lacans
own terminology. The unary trait begins the function of counting: this initial activity
of counting [that] begins early for the subject should not be confused with the activity
10. Seminar IX, lesson of 6/12/61.

11. According to Freud, in some cases, identification is [] partial [] and only borrows a single trait from
the person who is its object, Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. XVIII, London, The Hogarth Press and the
Institute of Psychoanalysis, 2001, p. 107.
13. Seminar IX, Lesson of 29/11/61.
15. See Seminar IX, lesson of 29/11/61.
Lorenzo Chiesa 75
of establishing collections.17 In other words, the count-as-one of the unary trait is what
produces the one, many ones, as strokes ///; however, at this stage, there is no second
count, or addition, that can count the strokes as 1s, or put differently, that can count the
operation of the first count as an operation. As Lacan observes, the unary trait []
supports [] one plus one and one again, the plus being meant there only to mark well
[a] difference, where the problem begins is precisely that one can add them together,
in other words that two, that three have a meaning.18 In order to stress how / + / +
/ is not the same as 1 + 1 + 1, Lacan goes as far as suggesting that a child may well be
able to count up to two and three without being able to operate with numbers: two and
three are in this case nothing but a repetition of the / produced by the unary trait, and
should be distinguished from the number 2 and 3 understood as 1 + 1 and 1 + 1 + 1.
This early counting is ineffective when dealing with numbers higher than 3: we should
therefore not be surprised when we are told that certain so-called primitive tribes along
the mouth of the Amazon were only recently able to discover the virtue of the number
four, and raised altars to it.19 What is at stake in the gap that separates these two counts
is nothing less than the birth of the subjects identification as modern Cartesian subject
split between consciousness and the unconscious.20
In what precise sense does the + of the / + / + / mark a difference between the
strokes produced by the count-as-one of the unary trait? This question certainly has to
do with the fact that, throughout Seminar IX, Lacan indiscriminately alternates the
phrases trait unaire and trait unique: put simply, a unary trait is a single trait. If the unary
trait, as instrumental operation, is the most simple structural trait in the sense that it
presents no variations,21 its sole property will be its unicity. That is to say, the + separat-
ing / from / denotes the singleness of the trait as such, the absence of any qualitative
difference in it,22 and thus works as an indicator of signifying difference, difference in
the pure state.23 Or, every count, every / is absolutely different from any other / without
its ever being a question of counting the trait as a qualitatively differentiated 1: as we
have just seen, the unary trait precedes number stricto sensu.24
Two crucial specifications should be made. Firstly, the unary trait marks difference
as such,25 which does not mean it is difference as such. This is a straightforward way to
distinguish the unary trait from the full-fledged signifier which it supports. While the

20. For a description of the Cartesian God as the cogitos unary trait, see lesson of 22/11/61.
24. Lacan affirms that the signifier as such serves to connote difference at its purest, and, we can add, it is
all the purer because it precedes even number, M. Safouan, Lacaniana: Les sminaires de Jacques Lacan * 1953-
1963, Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 193.
unary trait is a stroke, and, significantly enough, it is as letter that it can be differenti-
ated from all other strokes,26 the signifier is the one as difference, that is, following Saus-
sure, simply being what the others are not.27 Thus, unlike the unary trait, the signifier
implies [the] function of the unit [] qua pure difference.28 According to Lacan, the
one as difference, the emergence of the one [which] as such is the Other,29 that is the
fictional big Other, necessitates the second count.
Secondly and most importantly, at its first appearance, the one manifestly desig-
nates actual multiplicity [multiplicit actuelle].30 The count-as-one of the unary trait as trait
unique produces nothing other than consistent, that is actual, multiplicity: Lacan also
refers to it as a distinctive unity [unit distinctive].31 In order to illustrate this last point, he
evokes a scene of everyday pre-historic life:
I am a hunter [] I kill [an animal], it is an adventure, I kill another of them, it
is a second adventure which I can distinguish by certain traits characteristic of the
first, but which resembles it essentially by being marked with the same general
line. At the fourth, there may be some confusion: what distinguishes it from the
second, for example? At the twentieth, how will I know where I am?32
Like a child who counts without numbers, our primitive man can initially distinguish
the second adventure from the first by certain imaginaryintuitively qualitativetraits
that are then symbolically presented as a stroke / on an animal rib-bone. Yet, as soon as
this occurs, his two adventures are marked by the same general line, the same kind of
stroke which leads to signifying sameness, //. Although qualitative difference is never
eliminated completely, the fact that each adventure is, for a limited time, intuitively
experienced as new proves to be all the more secondary inasmuch as quality is precisely
what is overshadowed by the signifying in-difference of the traits //.33 From a slightly
different perspective, all this amounts to saying that the distinctive unity of the unary
trait is still immanent to the situation it counts, and thus runs the risk of becoming indis-

31. Safouan even names this concept distinctive one [un distinctif], Safouan, Lacaniana: Les sminaires de
Jacques Lacan * 1953-1963, p. 202. To the best of my knowledge, Lacan never uses this expression in Semi-
nar IX. In the lessons of 13/12/61 and 20/12/61 he also refers to the distinctive trait, which I take to be
synonymous with unary trait.
33. Lesson of 6/12/61. Lacan concedes that, while the function of the unary trait is linked to the extreme
reduction [] of qualitative difference, even just at the level of the imaginary appearance of the stroke
itself, it is quite clear that there will not be a single [trait] like another. Commenting on this point, Safouan
rightly observes the following: It is clear that the function of these notches is not more related to their
[qualitative] differences than it is to the elimination of these differences. It is not because the traits are dif-
ferent that they work differently, but because signifying difference is different from qualitative difference,
Safouan, Lacaniana: Les sminaires de Jacques Lacan * 1953-1963, pp. 192-3.
Lorenzo Chiesa 77
tinguishable from the non-situation of a primitive man who is still lacking any method
of location.34 Thus, marking signifying difference as such results in nothing other than
signifying sameness, in-difference, if the count is not itself counted, if the actual multi-
plicity /, the one-multiple that presents the hunters adventure, is not itself represented
as 1. We can then understand why Lacan pays so much attention to the later appearance
in pre-history of a series of strokes carved on an animal rib-boneFirst two, then a lit-
tle interval and afterwards five, and then it recommences.35 It is only at this level, that
of the count of the count, where 1 + 1 retroactively replaces //, that the properly human
symbolic dimension begins: this is the subjects own identification with the signifier.
Finally, it is quite remarkable that, in this context, Lacan himself draws a compari-
son between the use of the / made by the primitive hunter and the notion of the one
with which set theory operates. Against what we are taught at schoolYou cannot add
up oranges and apples, pears with carrots and so on36the primitive hunter counts as
one a multiple adventure made by irreconcilable objects and things. In the same
way, in set theory, you can very well add up what you want.37 More technically, Lacan
acknowledges that in what one calls the elements of sets, it is not a matter of objects, or
of things, it is rather a question of the multiples of a multiple. In other words, at the level
of presentation, the set is a one-multiple, what Lacan refers to as actual multiplicity: the
count-as-one of the unary trait presents a multiple-of-multiples, or to put with Badiou, a
multiple as several ones (BE 25).
In order to appreciate better the proximity between Badious consistent multiplic-
ity and Lacans distinctive unity we should not lose sight of the following convergence.
Badious consistent multiplicity, the one-multiple, is initially determined solely by its
unicity, in all cases; unicity is the property of consistent multiplicity qua counted-as-one,
independently of any other possible property of a situation (or set). What matters at the
level of presentation without representation is the proper name alpha, a letter that seals the
multiple, rather than the extension of what is being presentedthe terms or elements
of the situation. Indeed, extension is not properly defined before the second count takes
place and the state of the situation is established retroactively: only at that stage, the
one-multiple will have been counted as a situation (or, ontologically, all the parts of a
set will have formed the elements of a set as the powerset). A situation is not identical to
what is being presented in it. Following Ray Brassier, another way to put this would be
to say that presentation as such, presentation without representationthe prehistoric
hunters adventureis an anti-phenomenon.38

36. This amounts to a very advanced definition of addition which supposes a number of axioms which
would be enough to cover the blackboard (Seminar IX, Lesson of 6/12/61).
38. See Brassier, Presentation as Anti-Phenomenon in Alain Badious Being and Event.
Letter and Proper Name, or A is not A

The most basic formula of identification is A is A. Lacan believes that its apparent
simplicity conceals a number of problems. It is therefore only insofar as we question
this formula that we can really grasp the difficulties involved in identification. This
questioning is strictly related to the [signifying] function of the one and, conversely,
the extended use of the signifier in mathematics.39 More specifically, for Lacan, A is A
presupposes first of all the existence of A, the emergence of the letter, which, as we have
seen, should be understood as a unary trait, a first count. Lacans bold propositions ac-
cording to which A is A is a belief and There is no tautology are thus always to be
considered against the background of the dimension of the letter. It is not insofar as the
first A and the second A mean different things that I say that there is no tautology, it is in
the very status of A that there is inscribed that A cannot be A;40 A is not A means that A
is not identical to itself, or, to use a well-known Lacanian locution, A is barred, not that A
is actually B: more precisely, the letter A as unary trait counts as one but is not a one.
Lacans theory of the proper name and his theory of writing aim to show how the
true nature of the proper name is the letter as unary trait, which in turn is inextricable
from the written mark. The proper name cannot be understood as a word for particu-
lars, a definition proposed by Bertrand Russell: this would soon lead us to paradoxes
such as Socrates not being a proper name since, for us, it is no longer a particular but
an abbreviated descriptionSocrates is indeed Platos master, the man who drank the
hemlock, etc.or, conversely, the demonstrative this is a particular and could there-
fore be designated as John. Relying in part on the linguist Alan Gardiner, Lacan be-
lieves that a proper name functions on the basis of the distinction between meaning and
signifying material (signified and signifier); however, departing from him, he specifies
that it should not be identified with a distinctive sound to which the subject pays partic-
ular attention as sound. From a structuralist standpoint, it is indeed a matter of fact that
all language is based on the differentiality of distinctive sounds, or phonomes; what is
more, it is absolutely not true [] that each time we pronounce a proper name we are
psychologically aware of the accent put on the sonant material as such.41 In other words,
the problem with Gardiners notion of proper name is that he relies on a psychologically
substantialist idea of the subject: the subject is for him simply someone who pays atten-
tion to signifiers when they are proper names. On the other hand, for Lacan, the subject
can be defined only with reference to signifiers, not as someone underlying their func-
tioning;42 the central role played by proper names in the subjects identification should
thus be explained solely in terms of the signifier, especially according to its most basic
appearance, the unary trait of the letter. There cannot be a definition of the proper
name except in the measure that we are aware of the relationship between the naming

Lorenzo Chiesa 79
utterance and something which in its radical nature is of the order of the letter.43
Most importantly, the proper names relation to the letter as unary trait is itself
dependent on the logic of the written mark. Lacan plainly points out that the charac-
teristic of the proper name is always [] linked to [] writing.44 As Aaron Schuster
remarks in his elegant commentary on the fourth lesson of Seminar IX:
The crucial point for Lacan is that writing emerges first as the isolation of the
signifying trait (unary trait) which then becomesagain, retroactivelythe basic
support for the phoneticization of language, i.e. the treasury of signifiers proper.
Far from being simply the translation of a more original speech, it is speech itself
that ultimately finds its basis in the exteriority of the written mark. What results
from this, Lacan adds, is that the proper name qua brand [] ought to be linked
not with sound la Gardiner, but with writing. The proof of this is found in the
decipherment of unknown languages: one always begins by looking for proper
names since they remain the same across all languages []. In the proper name,
one thus rediscovers within the synchronic order of language a signifier in its pure state, a state
represented in diachronic (pre-)history by the primitive hunters notched bone.45
Let us dwell on these issues. It is doubtless the case that mans vocal utterings preced-
ed writing, chronologically speaking; however, language stricto sensu as determined by
the function of the signifier is, for Lacan, ultimately retroactively dependent on writing.
Conversely, the letter as writing potential was waiting to be phoneticized: this is what
we have at a first stage in prehistory, the simple traits, or strokes, of primitive bone etch-
ings. Lacan is careful in specifying that, as we have already seen, the letter as unary trait
always involves an initial imaginary dimensionsomething figurativethat is soon
effaced:46 this is valid both for the simple stroke / carved on an animals ribwhich
originally marked the image of an adventureand, even more so, the more sophisti-
cated traits used in ideographic notationthe schematic representation of the head * of
the animal I killed during my adventure still functions as a unary trait.
At a second stage, the writing of the traitthat designates something imaginaryis
accompanied by the utterance of a phoneme; but, for the time being, the utterance m
is not as yet detached from the image represented by the trait *. Put differently, phoneti-
cization here depends on the designation of an object via the marking of the trait. In a
third and final stage, which determines the retroactive passage from prehistory to his-
tory, we witness the reversal of this relation: now the marking of the trait depends solely
on phoneticization. This is writing proper: the letter is retroactively transformed into a
signifier and, being an element in a differential structure of other signifiers, acquires a
life that is completely independent of the object it used to designate.
From a slightly different perspective, we can say that writing properand language
stricto sensu with itonly really begins when the marking of the trait * is phoneticized

45. A. Schuster, Commentary on Lacan Seminar IX LIdentification, 20 December 1961, unpublished (my emphasis).
as trait, that is, named as such. At that point, * becomes the support of the phoneme m
which was previously the mere sound of the object designated by *the mooing head
of the animal I killed. We retroactively move from theultimately animalicsound m
to thehumanphonematic signifier m only when m can even be regarded as a proper
name M. As Lacan has it, It is a fact that letters have names, a is named alpha.47 We
should pay particular attention to this apparently trivial remark which, in its expanded
form, reads as follows: it is only insofar as a has a name, insofar as A is a proper name,
that the letter a can be said to be a, that a is identical to itself (albeit as part of a dif-
ferential sonant structure). The idiotic character48 of the proper nameits meaning-
lessness, the fact that, as already noted by John Stuart Mill, it is not the meaning of the
object that it brings with it49is nothing less than the precondition of identification:
Lacan is Lacan only if Lacan is a proper name.
More specifically, the proper name [] specifies as such [] the rooting of the sub-
ject precisely insofar as it is more specially linked than any other, not to phonematiciza-
tion as such, the structure of language, but to what in language is already ready [] to
receive this informing by the trait.50 The proper name is closer to the letter than to the
symbolic proper: it approaches the unary trait by redoubling its operation, the idiotic
in-difference of its count, and in this way guarantees the consistency of the structure of
language, the differentially phonematic chain of signifiers. In other words, the proper
name make[s] us question ourselves about what is at stake at this radical, archaic point
that we must necessarily suppose to be at the origin of the unconscious, that is, primary
repression.51 And this in two complementary ways: the proper name as the redoubling
of the letter, the unary trait, raises the issue of the attachment of language to the real,52
as well as that of negation as directly involved in the genesis of language in the guise of
an existential relationship.53 If the letter as unary trait is that which retroactively makes
the real object exist as negated (be it the killed animal or the mothers breast), the proper
name is that which, operating retroactively on the letter, allows the subjects own iden-
tification by naming this very negation.
= There exists a negation

Although the origins of writing lie outside the concerns of Badious general onto-

52. Seminar IX, Lesson of 10/1/62. But what is it that inscribes [the fact] that a real exists? It is the sym-
bolic as such. Thus, we will say that 1 is the digit of the symbolic. The 1 is the unary trait, that is to say, the
minimal possible Other for the pure letter of the real, Alain Badiou, Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, et aussi Zro,
unpublished.
Lorenzo Chiesa 81
logical edifice, it is nevertheless profitable to begin to accommodate Lacans reflections

on the proper name to the notions made available by Being and Event. Using Badious
terminology, we could suggest that, for Lacan, the proper name can be situated on
two different levels, that of the situation and that of the state of the situation, while
preserving the same sealing function. The proper name as letter, the stroke / on the
primitive hunters bone that counts as one the multiple of the hunters adventure works
exactly like the proper name stricto sensu, the name Lacan: indeed, the latter forms-into-
ones the multiple[s] of names (BE 91) (bluntly put, the multiples p.s.y.c.h.o.a.n.a.l.y.s.
t., d.o.c.t.o.r., b.u.f.f.o.o.n., f.r.e.n.c.h., b.o.u.r.g.e.o.i.s., s.q.u.e.a.k.y., s.m.o.k.i.n.g.,
e.t.o.u.r.d.i.t. etc.) made of proper names as letters. We could also suggest that the
proper name stricto sensu is equivalent to structure in the metastructure, presentation
in representation. It amounts to the insistence of the unary trait of the first count in its
meaningless unicity, the insistence of the letter, within the state of a situationwhere
number and meaning as such are now possible. Consequently, the proper name ac-
counts for the fact that the state of the situation can either be said to be separate (or
transcendent) or to be attached (or immanent) with regard to the situation and its native
structure (BE 98).
At this point, there is a question we cannot postpone any longer: how does Lacan
account for that which is being counted, and thus named, by the unary trait of the let-
ter? What is involved in early countingwith regard to both the phylogenetic adven-
ture of the primitive hunter and the ontogenetic emergence of number in the childis
first and foremost the functioning of the sensorium.54 This means that it is only with the
/ of the unary trait that something really exists for the subject, that the judgement of
existence begins.55 Yet, one should note that the unary trait is always necessarily associ-
ated with the retroactive effect of negation: the in-different notch on the bone presents
the primitive mans adventure as effacedsignificantly enough, under the sign of a kill-
ingjust as the early counting of the child marks a proto-symbolic relation with an
object insofar as he has been frustrated of it. In opposition to what he terms Bergsons
nave realism,56 Lacan believes that negation is not the negation of a primordial affir-
mation which would affirm the existence of a real that is immediately given. It is doubt-
less the case that negation supposes the affirmation on which it is based but this does
not in the least entail that such an affirmation is the affirmation of something of the real
which has been simply removed;57 affirmation does not precede negation; negation and
affirmation occur concomitantly by means of negation. Put differently:
There is no more, and not at all less, in the idea of an object conceived of as not
existing, than in the idea of the same object conceived of as existing, because the
idea of the object not existing is necessarily the idea of the object existing with,
in addition, the representation of an exclusion of this object by the present reality

taken as a whole.58
To cut a long story short, according to Lacan, what is being counted by the unary
trait is the possibility of the real (its affirmation) through the preservation of the rights
of the nothing.59 In opposition to the false axiom for which anything real is possible, one
should always start with the axiom for which the real takes its place only from the not
possible: the possibility of affirming that something exists always relies on a law that
safe-guards the nothing. But if the real, or better reality, only originates in the not pos-
sible, this not possible, presented as such by negation, is the real. Here, Lacan uses the
term real in two ways: a) as the possible that follows the not possible; b) as the not pos-
sible that originates the possible. But it is in fact possible to think these two acceptations
together: the real qua reality takes its place only from the possibility of the not possible,
the possibility of the real as such. Indeed, this real exists, Lacan says, as exception or
exclusion.60 In other words, there is not only the not possible at the origin of any enun-
ciating, but also the possibility of the not possible: the origin of any enunciating is the
enunciation of the nothing,61 the affirmation of negation accomplished by the unary trait.
Badious philosophy thinks meta-ontologically a set theoretical ontology which relies
on the very same axiom, the axiom of the empty set, which formalizes existence at its
most basic level. As he writes in Being and Event, the axiom of the empty set states, in sub-
stance, that there exists a negation (BE 86 my emphasis); it is necessary that the absolutely
initial existence be that of a negation, the existence of an inexistent (BE 67). What nega-
tion as the absolutely initial existence negates is belonging: no elements belong to the
void-set, not even the void. If, for Badious set theoretical ontology, the void presents the
unpresentable as that which alone in-exists (BE 69), for Lacans theory of the subject,
the possibility of the not possible affirms the real that ex-sists as exclusion. If for Badiou,
the in-existent void subtractively sutures a situation to its being (inconsistent multiplic-
ity), for Lacan the ex-sistent, or ex-timate, realthe real-of-the-symbolicretroactively
reminds a subject of the undead (an inconsistent real which was and will be not-one,
barred in itself, before and after the presence of the symbolic).62 If, finally, for Badiou,
the void as set is absolutely in-different in the sense that nothing differentiates it, its
unicity is not based on a difference that can be attested (BE 68), for Lacan, the real-
of-the-symbolic is the other side of a distinctive unity whose unicity precisely resolves
itself, as we have seen, into in-difference. (It is important to bear in mind that the count

62. Although the notion of the undead has been employed profitably by iek in a number of ways, La-
can appears to delimit it within a particular domain: the undead refers to the closed world of the animal
as that which is always already dead from the perspective of the individual and immortal from that of
the species or nature, see for instance Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book I, Freuds Papers on
Technique, 1953-1954, trans. John Forrester, Jacques-Alain (ed.), 1st American ed., New York, W.W. Norton,
1988, pp. 121, 137.
Lorenzo Chiesa 83
of the unary trait is two-sided. Moreover, this two-sidedness is somehow unbalanced

towards one side, that of the nothing/void: just as, for Badiou, the void as name is both
unpresentation in presentation and the operation of the count, which as such exceeds the
one-result, so for Lacan the enunciation of the nothing is both the real-of-the-symbolic
as the possibility of the not possible and the very operation of the unary trait, which as
such exceeds the distinctive unity).
We must then take seriously Lacans provocative remark according to which A
is A signifies nothing.63 Initially, there exists a negation, non-A, no element belongs
to the empty set : in order for the set alpha to exist, in order for A to be A as a set to
which at least one element belongs, the nothing must first be enunciated, signifierized.
At this stage, it is crucial to emphasize that if the primal fact64 is the enunciation of the
nothingthe void as name, the void-setthen we witness here nothing less than the
collapse of the traditional categories of unity and totality. Lacan explains this point quite
clearly: Unity and totality appear in the tradition as solidary [] totality being totality
with respect to units [and] unity being [] the unity of a whole; such a solidarity is
what is being shattered by the other meaning of unity he proposes, that of distinctive
unity, the -1 brought about by the enunciation of the nothing.65 From now on, any pos-
sible semblance of totality (or unity for that matter) can only be based on the -1, since the
primal fact is that the one is not. Note that this is exactly what is ultimately at stake from
a philosophical, or better, metaontological, perspective in the revolutionary contribu-
tion of axiomatic set-theory. As Badiou remarks:
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the entirety of speculative ontology is
taken up with examinations of the connections and disconnections between Unity
and Totality. It has been so from the very beginnings of metaphysics, since it is
possible to show that Plato essentially has the One prevail over the All whilst
Aristotle made the opposite choice.
Set theory sheds light on the fecund frontier between the whole/parts relation
and the one/multiple relation; because, at base, it suppresses both of them. The
multiple [] for a post-Cantorian is neither supported by the existence of the one
nor unfolded as an organic totality. The multiple consists from being without-one
(BE 81).
Interestingly enough, in this context, it is Badiou himself who bends his fundamen-
tal ontological thesis according to which the one is not towards a formulation, being
without-one [sans-un], that is reminiscent of Lacans -1, the one-less. Unity and totality,
the particular and the universalor better their semblancescan only be conceived of
if one begins from the multiple, which initially un-presents itself in the void-set as being
without-one. The fact that both elements and sets are multiples-of-multiples and thus
become indistinguishable collapses the traditional distinction between unity as an ele-

ment of a totality and totality as a set of unities. Using natural language paradoxically,
we could suggest that a particular unity is always already a one-multiple whilst being
an element of a universal totality which is never as yet a one-multiple. Thus, there is
only one possible relation between sets and elements, belonging, which indicates that a
multiple is counted as element in the presentation of another multiple (BE 81). Besides
this, all we can do is count the multiple according to its parts. This is the relation of inclu-
sion, which indicates that a multiple is a sub-multiple [or part] of another multiple (BE
81). Such a relation is dealt with by the axiom of the powerset, the set of subsets, among
others: this affirms that between belonging and inclusion there is at least the correlation
that all the multiples included in a supposedly existing alpha [the initial set] belong to a beta
[its powerset]; that is, they form a set, a multiple counted-as-one (BE 82 my emphasis). Let us
dwell on this last point, which is crucial for Badiou. According to axiomatic set-theory,
the following can be stated:
1. inclusion is derived from belonging as the sole primitive relation between sets
and elements, yet belonging and inclusion are distinct;
. the fact that inclusion and belonging are distinct entails that there is an excess
of inclusion over belonging, the powerset over the set; this excess is an excess in
belonging: there is always at least one element of the powerset which does not
belong to the initial set;
. nothing belongs to the void, not even the void itself;

4. the void is a subset of any set: by the very fact that nothing belongs to the void,
the void is included in everything;
. the void possesses a subset, the void itself; hence, the powerset of the void must
also exist;
6. the powerset of the void is the set to which the void alone belongs, since
everything included in the void belongs to the powerset of the void; the void, or
better its name, is therefore an element of the powerset it forms while it is not an element of
itself.
Badiou can thus conclude that the powerset of the void, the set to which the name
of the void alone belongs, is the first set that is able to count-as-one the result of the first
count, the relation of belonging. Thus, the powerset of the void is what gives us the
forming-into-one: indeed, it is only once [] the forming-into-one of [] is guar-
anteed via the power-set axiom applied to the name of the void [that] the operation of
forming-into-one is uniformly applicable to any multiple supposed existent (BE 91 my
emphasis). If, on the one hand, what is presented by the forming-into-one is always the
multiplethe effect of its operation is again a one-multiple, the same as on the level of
the count-as-oneon the other hand, it is nevertheless the case that the powerset of the
void accomplishes something quite remarkable, namely counting the name of the void, the -1,
Lorenzo Chiesa 85
as an element, a 1. In this way the powerset of the void operates against what Badiou calls
the errancy of the void, the fact that, after the first count, the void is included in all sets
without belonging to them. As a consequence of this, it is inevitable that we consider the
second count as an operation which, by turning the -1 into an element, representing the
name of the void, somehow preserves the semblance of the distinction between unity as an
element of a totality and totality as a set of unities, even though what is being counted
are multiples-of-multiples.
This in no way means that, after the second count has taken place, the void does not
continue to err on the level of the first count; after all, the state of a situation can be said
to be separate (or transcendent) with regard to the situation. While the retroactive
effect of the forming-into-one on the count-as-one definitely makes the void take place
in a part [that] receives the seal of the one (BE 97), its errancy is far from being inter-
rupted within this circumscribed partial place. Here, it would certainly be reductive, if
not misleading, to regard the situation as a mere part of the state of the situation, since,
in a sense, the state is attached (or immanent) to its structure (the powerset is still a
set); rather, we should acknowledge the following: the situation as situation character-
ized by the errancy of the void takes place in a part of the situation as state of the situa-
tion. From a slightly different perspective, we can propose that both the initial counting
of the multiple in the set and the second counting, that of the parts of the set as elements
of the powerset, both structured presentation and metastructured representation, ulti-
mately rely on the void-setthe initial multiple as absolutely initial point of being (BE
48)which should always remain errant. As a matter of fact, what should be avoided at
all costs as the catastrophe of presentation, is a fixation of the void, the presentations
encounter with its own void (BE 93-94).
It should be stressed that Badiou himself seems implicitly to distinguish the errancy
of the void in a situation as such, the pure errancy of the void (BE 96 my emphasis) from
the errancy of the void at the level of the situation after the state of the situation has been
established: this second, impure errancy is nothing other than what he refers to as the
unconscious of the void. Given Badious deliberate choice to employ psychoanalytic
terms to describe the basics of his meta-ontological edifice, I do not think I am forc-
ing his argument in finally suggesting that the unconscious of the void amounts to the
unconscious status of the situation under state control, or put simply, the states uncon-
scious. The unconscious of the void, or, significantly enough, the phantom of inconsistency, is the
name retroactively imposed on the name void, the letter , by state repression. Having said this, it
must be observed that Badiou fails to emphasize the following: as long as the state of a
situation (consciousness) remains both separate from the situation (the unconscious) and
attached to it, repetition is the movement that prevents the taking place of the void in the
phantom of inconsistency from degenerating into a fixation of the void.66
66. Badious failure to account for the function of repetition in the phantom of inconsistency gives rise to
terminological ambiguity when he describes the difference between the taking place of the voidwhich
wards it offand its fixationthat is, the ruin of the One (BE 93): how does the fixation of the void,
its becom[ing] localizable (BE 56), differ from its taking place if one does not specify that the latter still
The Subject as an Error of Counting

Lacans breaking of the solidarity between unity and totality allows him to work with
parts. Repudiat[ing] the reference to totality does not prevent one speaking about the
partial; rather, from the inexistence of totality as a one follows the possibility of thinking
the part as partial system. This system is, for Lacan, the unconscious.67 At this stage,
it would not be exaggerated to suggest that the Lacanian unconscious can properly
be understood according to a third set-theoretical axiom, that of separation (For any
multiple supposed given, there exists the sub-multiple of terms which possess the prop-
erty expressed by the formula (a)) (BE 46). Paraphrasing Badious explanation of this
axiom, we could propose that, for Lacan, language separates out, within a supposed given
existencethe undead real as not-onethe existence of a sub-multiple, the uncon-
scious as partial system. This partial system is constituted from terms which validate lan-
guage, that is follow its metonymic and metaphoric lawsthe famous thesis according
to which the unconscious is structured like a language. Against common accusations
of idealistic structuralism, for Lacan, language cannot induce existence, solely a split
within existence; his notion of the unconscious breaks with the figure of idealinguistery
and is therefore materialist (BE 47). We are now able to see why Badiou himself briefly
refers to Lacans notions of the symbolic and the real as an exemplification of the axiom
of separation: the supposed given existence of the undead real as not-one anticipates
what language, the symbolic, retroactively separates out from it as implied existence, the
unconscious partial system. Such an implication concomitantly entails conscious reality, a
semblance of existence which, rather successfully, attempts to totalize the partial uncon-
scious, turning the systemthe structureinto the mirage of a one/whole.
Applying both the axiom of separation and that of the empty set, it is important to
emphasize that the existence of the unconscious as partial system ultimately relies on the
in-existence of the void, or, more specifically, the existence of the void as part that in-exists
as element. Indeed, the most basic sub-multiple that languagethe unary trait as first
countseparates out from the undead real as not-one is the void which un-presents
itself as the part object, the object a. Unsurprisingly, Lacan identifies the void as part with
the breast; the primal fact, which, for what we have seen, should also be conceived of
as the primal existence, is the enunciation of the nothing as the -1 of the absent mamma.
entails (repetitive, circular) movement? In Saint Paul, Badiou seems to suggest that repetition should rather
be associated with fixation, a fixation of the subjects desire which is, however, a fixation of the law (and not
aimed against it): The law is required in order to unleash the automatic life of desire, the automatism of
repetition. For only the law fixes the object of desire [], Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Univer-
salism, trans. Ray Brassier, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 79. Beyond terminological confu-
sion, should we not identify such a repetitive fixation of the law with what Being and Event defines as the
taking place of the void?
For a recent critique of Badious unsatisfactory notion of repetition with regards to the political subject, see
Slavoj iek, Badiou: Notes From an Ongoing Debate, International Journal of iek Studies, vol. 1, no. 2,
2006, http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/zizek/article.cfm?id=21&issue=3 [available on-line at http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/
zizek/article.cfm?id=21&issue=3].
Lorenzo Chiesa 87
In this way, a fundamental un-presentation functions as the radical support for any
relationship of inclusion. More precisely, Lacan explains how we can formulate a defini-
tion of the traditional category of classif you really want to guarantee it its universal
status68only by means of the un-presentation of the -1: the mammalian class can only
be postulated on the basis of the absence of the mamma.
There is first of all the absence of the mamma and [then] one says: it cannot be
that the mamma is missing, here is what constitutes the mammalian class. [] The
zoologist, if you allow me to go this far, does not carve out the mammalian class
in the assumed totality of the maternal mamma; it is only because he detaches the
mamma that he can identify the absence of the mamma.69
The in-existence of the un-presented mamma which nevertheless exists as void-part de-
termines both the particular existence of the mamma and the representation of the pos-
sible absence of the mamma with regard to the mammalian class taken as a whole. How-
ever, Lacan immediately specifies that, if the construction of the whole relies on the
un-presentation of the -1, then it is the product of an error of counting, and consequently
universality can be regarded only as a semblance; in order to obtain the universal, the
enunciation of the nothing, the void-set as -1, must necessarily be primally repressed.
More precisely, Lacan believes that it is the subject who necessarily makes an error
of counting: there is a constituting necessity [that] the subject should make an error in
the count.70 This count is a second count for the subject since, on an initial level, he is
nothing other than what dis-counts itself by means of the unary trait, the very un-pres-
entation of the -1. Put differently, initially, the subject as such is minus one71 insofar as
he identifies with the absent object, first and foremost the mammaIn the [first form
of the] identification relationship [] what the subject assimilates [] is him in his
frustration.72 It is only at a second stage, which works retroactively on the first and car-
ries out identification proper, the splitting between the unconscious and consciousness,
that we are going to rediscover the subject [as] first of all established as minus one []
as [himself] verworfen, primally repressed.73 Identification proper is then the subjects
retroactive counting of himself, a - 1, as a 1. More specifically, the second count con-
comitantly brings about in a retroactive way the conscious subjects primal repression of
himself as the un-conscious un-presented -1 and his unconscious seeking (or, desiring)
himself as that very same un-conscious un-presented -1, that is, the enunciation of the
nothing, the void-set. (Strictly speaking, what precedes the second count is not uncon-
scious: the unconscious, just like consciousness, is a retroactive effect of the second count
on structure qua count of the unary-trait).

Lacan clearly states that, with regard to the subject, the fact that should most inter-
est philosophers and psychoanalysts is that his inaugural mistake is what allows him to
express, or name, himself as a subject. Thus, it will not be a matter of simply rectifying
the means of knowing in order to avoid the mistake: what is ultimately involved in it
is the subjects conscious access to reality (the re-presentation of structure) and, at the
same time, his endless unconscious search for the real qua not possible74since, as we
have seen, the real is precisely what in-exists as enunciation of the nothing. The second
count has therefore a retroactive effect on the original counting of the un-conscious
unary-trait ///; more specifically, the latter should now be understood in terms of un-
conscious repetition, in the precise sense of a compulsion to repeat something which is
as such unrepeatable.75 Consequently, repetition is characterized by unicity, the unicity
as such of [each] circuit of repetition, just like the counting of the un-conscious unary
trait ///.76 As Lacan puts it, repetition in the unconscious is absolutely distinguished
from any natural cycle, in the sense that what is accentuated is not its return, the same-
ness of the cycle; what is accentuated is rather the original unary trait /the initial
enunciation of the nothing as the real qua not possiblewhich has marked the subject
as -1.77 Each circuit of repetition is unique since repetition, the making of / always anew,
amounts to the impossibility of repeating the signifying uniquity of the first /, the un-
presentation of the part-object.
The subjects conscious access to reality, his knowledge [connaissance], presupposes
a mistake, an error of counting, about which he knows nothing, and which moreover
forces him into an endless unconscious search for what preceded it. It is important to
remark that this mistake, bluntly put, the turning of -1 into 1, originates at the very mo-
ment the initial enunciation of the nothing, the void-set, is turned into the absence of the
part-object, the void as part. In Being and Event, Badiou clarifies precisely this point when
he discusses the operation from which the property the void is a subset of any set is
obtained, the fact that the void is omnipresent in all structured presentation, its errancy.
As Badiou has it, this fundamental ontological theorem is deduced as a particular case
of the logical principle ex falso sequitur quodlibet: if a statement A is false (if I have non-
A) and if I affirm the latter (if I posit A), then it follows that anything (any statement B
whatsoever) is true (BE 86-87). The void as part which is universally included in all sets
supposed given follows from a falso; it relies on the negation of the true negative state-
ment advanced by the axiom of the empty set, that is, there is a negation, or nothing
belongs to the void, not even the void itself. The void as included part tacitly presumes
the existence of an element that belongs to the void.
This kind of negation of negation is precisely the error, or falso, on which Lacans
symbolic structured like a fiction, the big Other qua one as difference, is based. As we

Lorenzo Chiesa 89
have seen, for Lacan, initially we have non-A, which is why taking A is A as the basis
of identification is so problematic; the A of lAutre is barred and tautology is possible only
at the price of making a mistake. More specifically, in Lacans theory of the subject, the
void as part of all sets supposed givenwhose existence as formed-into-one is itself af-
firmed only starting from the in-existence of this part as universally includedshould
be located on the level of what he calls the symbolic object. During the dialectic of
frustration between the mother and the child at the beginning of the Oedipus com-
plexthe time of the un-conscious counting of the unary trait ///, of structure without
metastructurethe symbolic object is the object which the child demands beyond the
object of need, the object as grasped in what it lacks. Remarkably enough, Lacan also
specifies that the symbolic object is not nothing since it has the property of being there
symbolically;78 the part-object as there is the nothing as part, the void-part, results
from the falsity of the negation of the initial true enunciation of the nothing, the void-
set. The mistaken falsification of truth as the real qua not possible is what allows any af-
firmation whatever to be symbolically true, first of all that which proclaims the existence
of the void as part. This error will then be aggravated retroactively by the second count,
an operation (a metaphor) which Lacan refers to as the Name-of-the-Father; through
the Name-of-the-Father, the part-object as the errant, and thus potentially dangerous,
void-part itself receives the seal of the one, taking its place as a part in the phantasy -
a. The Name-of-the-Father operates on the extimate part-object in which the subject
identifies himself as vanishing in the same way as the forming-into-one operates on the
in-existent part of a situation that initially does not belong to it.
Nous Nous Comptons Comptant

While Badiou only hints at the distinction between the metastructured state of the
situation and the structured situation as a distinction between consciousness and the
unconscious of the void, Lacan attempts to delineate the two concomitant sides of the
second count, the Name-of-the-Father, in a more elaborate manner. He does this pre-
cisely by thinking consciousness as both immanent and transcendent with regard to the
unconscious: just as the situation will have been the unconscious of the void of the state
of the situation, so the un-consciousthe count of the unary trait as structurewill
have been consciousnesss unconsciousthe phantasy -a as the repressed structure of
repetition. The phantasy -a to be read as the subject split by the signifier in relation to
the object a is the unconscious result of the operational metaphor of the Name-of-the-
Father. Insofar as it seals as one the phantasy as unconscious structure, the Name-of-the-
Father can also be designated as the S1, the master-signifier. Concomitantly, the sub-
jects proper name, which is equivalent to the possibility of saying I, having an ego, will
be nothing other than the conscious (metastructural) side of the Name-of-the-Father.
Note that the S1 as the metastructure that structures the unconscious signifying chain
78. Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire livre IV. La relation dobjet, 1956-1957, Paris, Seuil, 1994, p. 155 (my emphasis).
amounts to a resumption of the unary trait at another level. Put differently, the un-con-
scious unary trait as structure will have been the S1, the structural, that is unconscious,
side of the metastructure. It would also be correct to suggest that the S1 is the unary trait
as repressed. Lacan himself stresses the similarity between the unary trait and the S1
when, in Seminar XI, the first seminar to introduce the notion of the master-signifier, he
openly refers the S1 to the notch made by primitive hunters on sticks in order to signify
the killing of an animal.79
Let us conclude with the following remarks:
1. Initially, the subject in-exists as -1, it is what dis-counts itself by means of the
original unary trait as enunciation of the nothing; more precisely, at this
level, the subject should be regarded as the gap, or cut, between the structured
presentation of signifiers, or more precisely letters, which signify the subjects in-
existence, and their inextricable void, the symbolic object. After the operation
of the Name-of-the-Father, the second count, has taken place, the subject as -1
counts himself as 1; this 1 should rather be understood as a new gap between
the structured presentation of letters, now turned into the signifiers of the
unconscious, and metastructured representation, that is, conscious discourse.80
. The first gap, between structure and its void, which causes the latters errancy,
designates the metonymic dimension of demand, the unstoppable sliding of the
symbolic object (the object of love) beneath the objects of need. On the other
hand, the second gap, between structure and metastructure, designates the
metaphoric dimension of desire. In order to pass from the gap of demand to the
gap of desire the subject must carry out a positivizing organization of the void:
the void must take place within the phantasy -a by means of the metaphor of
the Name-of-the-Father.
. The subject that counts himself as 1 is equivalent to the subject as the gap of
desire who is represented in the unconscious phantasmatic object a as enunciation
of the nothing; that is, the subject is 1 in the unconscious insofar as he appears
there as not-one, -1.81 More precisely, the subject continues to make 1 in the
unconscious phantasy precisely because, as enunciation of the nothing, he is
not-one. Differently put, the subject can name himself I in consciousness
and thus value himself [se compter]only because he repeats the act of counting
himself [se compter] as not-one in the phantasythere where in fact the object a
79. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, London, Vintage, 1998, p. 141.
80. The gap between a (which counts-as-one the belongings, or elements) and (a) (which counts-as-one
the inclusions, or subsets) is [] the point in which the impasse of being resides. [] I said that a and (a)
were distinct. In what measure? With what effects? This point, apparently technical, will lead us all the way
to the Subject and to truth (BE 83-84, my emphasis).
81. See especially lesson of 3/6/1959 from Jacques Lacan, Seminar VI (1958-1959), Le dsir et son interpretation,
unpublished.
Lorenzo Chiesa 91
functions as a lost name.82

4. The subjects naming of himself as I is what allows him to count numbers,
1,2,3,4,; this counting is nothing other than the conscious side of the unconscious
repetitive circuit traced by the phantasy and sealed as one by the S1. While the
latter manages to accomplish an organization of the void, this by no means
amounts to saying that the void is eliminated: the organization of the void is
thus repressed and this operation can be considered as an error of counting.
At the synchronic level of the unconscious, the identifying representation of
the subject as 1 in the object a necessarily preserves the -1 and thus gives rise to
the repetitive series //// in which each count is started anew, each go is
absolutely unique. On the other hand, at the level of consciousness, the subjects
naming of himself as I mistakenly adds 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 and obtains 2, 3, 4,
which is to say, the diachronic temporal continuity of his lived experience.
. The fact that the subject as 1 is, at the same time, a subject as gap means
nothing other than that the subject is himself a one-multiple.83 The two counts
retroactively differentiate three levels of the multiple: the inconsistent undead
real as not-one; the consistent multiplicity given by the metonymic slide of the
objects of demand (marked as letters); the subject as split between conscious
signified and unconscious signifier. The split subjects multiplicity is an empirical
fact attested by the existence of the formations of the unconscious, such as
symptoms, jokes, and slips of the tongue. However, the subjects multiplicity is
repressed by the second count, just as the inconsistency of the multiple is un-
presented by the first count. The second count both symbolizes the void and
carries out, through repression, an imaginarization of the first count, that of the
letters as pure signifiers; the void is symbolized as phantasmatic desire, but
desire is itself repressed and can be approach[ed] [consciously] only by means
of some sort of demand.84 Finally, the phantasy where the void takes place
should also be considered as a picture in which anxiety is framed and thus
tamed, placated, admitted.85
Lorenzo Chiesa
School of European Culture and Languages,
University of Kent, UK
82. Seminar VI, lesson of 3/6/1959.

83. Put differently, negation is irreducible (Seminar IX, lesson of 24/1/62).
84. Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire livre V. Les formations de linconscient, 1957-1958, Paris, Seuil, 1998, p. 330.
85. Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire livre X. Langoisse, 1962-1963, Paris, Seuil, 2004, p. 91. For a detailed analysis
of the three logical times of anxiety with regards to phantasy, see Chapter 5 of Chiesa, Lacan and Subjectivity:
A Philosophical Introduction.
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Badiou, Alain, Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, et aussi Zro, unpublished.
Badiou, Alain, Ltre et lvnement, Paris, Seuil, 1988.
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Clemens and Oliver Feltham, London, Continuum, 2003.
Badiou, Alain, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier, Stanford,
Stanford University Press, 2003.
Badiou, Alain, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham, London, Continuum, 2005.
Bosteels, Bruno, Alain Badious Theory of the Subject: The Recommencement of
Dialectical Materialism? (Part I), Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 12, 2001,
pp. 200-29.
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Dialectical Materialism? (Part II), Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 13, 2002,
pp. 173-208.
Brassier, Ray, Presentation as Anti-Phenomenon in Alain Badious Being and Event,
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Chiesa, Lorenzo, Lacan and Subjectivity: A Philosophical Introduction, Cambridge, MIT Press,
2007.
Chiesa, Lorenzo and Alberto Toscano, Ethics and Capital, Ex Nihilo, Umbr(a): A Journal
of the Unconscious, no. 1, 2005, pp. 9-25.
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Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 2, no.

Count-as-one, Forming-into-one, Unary

have been formulated. Badiou invites psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic theorists to

Count-as-one, One, Phantom of Inconsistency

one-result. The nothing, or better the void as its localyet unlocalizableoccurrence,

Unicity, Forming-into-one, Anxiety of the Void

Unary Trait as Trait Unique, or La Multiplicit Actuelle

10. Seminar IX, lesson of 6/12/61.

17. Seminar IX, Lesson of 7/3/62.

26. Seminar IX, Lesson of 6/12/61.

34. Seminar IX, lesson of 6/12/61.

Letter and Proper Name, or A is not A

39. Seminar IX, lesson of 29/11/61.

43. Seminar IX, Lesson of 20/12/61.

= There exists a negation

47. Seminar IX, Lesson of 10/1/62.

logical edifice, it is nevertheless profitable to begin to accommodate Lacans reflections

54. Seminar IX, lesson of 7/3/62.

58. Seminar IX, Lesson of 17/1/62.

of the unary trait is two-sided. Moreover, this two-sidedness is somehow unbalanced

63. Seminar IX, lesson of 6/12/61.

. nothing belongs to the void, not even the void itself;

The Subject as an Error of Counting

68. Seminar IX, lesson of 7/3/62.

74. Seminar IX, Lesson of 7/3/62.

Nous Nous Comptons Comptant

functions as a lost name.82

82. Seminar VI, lesson of 3/6/1959.

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