“The University, if that is what I am explaining to you, is perhaps The Woman, But it is the prehistoric woman: the one you see is made of folds. Evidently, it is in one of these folds that she shelters me. She does not realise – when you have a lot of pleats you don’t feel too much – otherwise, who knows, she might find me cumbersome.” Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, book XXI, The non-dupes err, lesson of June 11th 1974, unpublished.
The University is perhaps The Woman, but prehistoric, made of folds and pleats hidden at first from herself. The University does not know how to contain Lacan, his many children, and even more so, any singularity that is lodged within. For her part, The Woman does not know how to recognise herself in what she sometimes experiences, i.e. a jouissance that is all the more secret, even opaque, because it escapes language. When she realises this, she finds herself encumbered, and the hysteria begins.
Translation Joanne Conway