When Words Fail. A review of Wittgenstein and Lacan at the Limit: Meaning and Astonishment, Maria Balaska (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Abstract

In his 1955-’56 seminar on psychosis, which was primarily devoted to an intricate analysis of Freud’s case-study of the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber, Lacan at one point invited his listeners to contemplate the possibility of their being suddenly overcome, at the end of a stormy and tiring day, by a peculiar subjective experience which expresses itself in the thought of “the peace of the evening [la paix du soir]”. What is the relation, Lacan asked, between this symbolic expression and the experiential condition associated with it? What does “the peace of the evening” mean to the subject who is unexpectedly and quite involuntarily overcome by the thought? What exactly does the thought capture? What, if anything, does it point towards?