Lacan, the Devil
ANNAËLLE
LEBOVITS-QUENEHEN
Lacan, Music
JUDITH MILLER
DIEGO MASSON
How Lacan
BENOÎT JACQUOT
Lacan's Smile
FRANÇOIS CHENG
Lacan
PHILIPPE SOLLERS
Lacan the Poem
FRANÇOIS REGNAULT
Lacan on the Spot
CATHERINE CLÉMENT
Lacan, Red Lights
ADRIAN DANNATT
The Split Collector
GÉRARD WAJCMAN
Lisa Yuskavage
CL INTERVIEWS JA
Lacan, Red Lights
[excerpt]
It will be famous forever, Vie de Lacan by Jacques-Alain Miller, for its astonishing revelation that the great man had an absolute hatred of traffic lights, or rather of red lights, that he simply could not abide them, refused to obey them.
[...]
After all, the traffic light is a staple of semiotics. An easy example for anyone starting studies of Saussure is the question of why, and how, we come to associate these colors with stop and go, the most straightforward demonstration of signifier and signified.
Red originally meant danger because of the color of blood and of fire, there is nothing more fundamental than that, and in French the word feu rouge makes this obvious. Should one wish to delve into Cabbalistic letter-games, one might even ponder the way the word feu is included in "Freud" and whether Feu rouge might not suggest a jumbled approximation of Freudien.
What are we to make of the man who coined the concept of the "drive" reacting so strongly on being stopped during just such a drive, being halted on his own drive?
[...]