Lacan and repetition, redone

I've redone and extended a post I wrote roughly a year ago to finally get around to what I believe repetition is doing in Lacan's 1964 seminar:

…Where do we meet this real? For what we have in the discovery of psycho-analysis is an encounter, an essential encounter—an appointment to which we are always called with a real that eludes us. That is why I have put on the blackboard a few words that are for us, today, a reference point of what we wish to propose.
 First, the tuché, which we have borrowed, as I told you last time, from Aristotle, who uses it in his search for cause. We have translated it as the encounter with the real. The real is beyond the automaton, the return, the coming-back, the insistence of the signs, by which we see ourselves governed by the pleasure principle. The real always lies behind the automaton, and it is quite obvious, throughout Freud’s research, that it is this [process] that is his concern…

-"Tuche and Automaton," in Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 53-54.



The encounter with the real (tuché) is beyond the process of returning (the automaton), or, put a little more clearly (for the names tuché, automaton, etc. are not important), the real is something that is encountered in a space that opens up once returning is no longer the way in which something comes back to the subject.

Let us bring in the passage from the previous session, “Of The Network of Signifiers” (which would have been fresh in the minds of his listeners), to explain what returning is, so that we can see what Lacan is getting at here. Reproduction is returning—Lacan uses both terms synonymously. So both reproduction and returning are, if we heed this last seminar, different from repetition: “Repetition is not reproduction,” Lacan asserts (50). Both repetition and reproduction, however, are ways that the subject can comport himself towards the past: in each case what is repeated or reproduced is something that for the subject was and now is again. But, as is evident by Lacan’s linking up of returning and reproducing, the past, when it returns, is also reproduced, in the sense that it is re-presented—it is present somehow again. Thus, we do not yet know that this is the case with repetition: indeed, “repetition appears," or is revealed or brought to us, "in a form that is not clear, that is not self-evident, like a reproduction, or a making present” (50, my italics). So we’ll let repetition go for now, noting this key distinction, until we can pick it up again with a fuller notion of what reproduction entails.
What in the past we are comporting ourselves towards, and that comes back again in such a way that it returns,—this “what” is reproduced, is re-presented. Freud calls what gets re-presented a memory—indeed, something that comes back from the past in such a way that it gets re-presented to us (in images, words, feelings, etc.) is what we normally think of as a memory. The key, though, is to link up re-presentation with “presentation” itself—this will show us what memory and what returning really are.

 The word “presentation” only designates something that occurs to us, something that our minds and bodies perceive or grasp or comport ourselves towards—and it is what “presents” itself in both the spatial and the temporal sense: what comes before us—the presented—and the time in which it comes before us—the present. Thus, if what is present is somehow re-presented, it will have to be what was in the past: if it is no longer present in the temporal sense, such that it has to be brought before us again, it will be present again in a different form—the form of present-become-past, or in the form of now-is-that-which-once-was. Thus, a representation (i.e. this form) is never going to appear as a past that is unable to be present itself once more: all of that-which-once-was can be again now. Moreover, all that is now is something that can be that-which-once-was. This means that what returns will always be something that could be present again—the past. Memory is not merely a representation of the past, then: memory is only that form which can adequately represent the past as something that once-was-present. Any other form will not reveal the past to us in such a way that we can recognize it as something that was once present.

So, if the real is the something that is encountered in the space that opens up once returning is no longer a factor, we can conclude that this space is no longer the space of the past. Repetition steps in here, taking over what was a function of returning or reproduction: repetition is the form of returning beyond returning, the form of bringing something before us in such a way that it is not revealed as something that once was present. Put a different way, the space that opens up once returning is no longer the form in which something comes before us--that is, the space of the real--this space is the space of repetition. How, then, does repetition bring something before us? Obviously not in the manner of representation/reproduction. And this means, not in the manner in which it renders something that comes back as past. Repetition, unlike reproduction, does not bring back the past. Rather, it brings back the real.

But what is the real? What is that which is brought back in repetition? If there is no past in repetition, is there any time at all? Indeed, Freud said that the unconscious does not participate in the temporality we are used to: if the unconscious is the seat of the real somehow, does it not have a past or time more generally?
To answer these questions, or at least to try and answer them, we must be clearer. When we say that there is no past in repetition, what we mean is that there is no past that can be simply presented again to consciousness. And when we hypothesize, with Freud, that the unconscious does not participate in temporality, we mean the type of temporality that presents moments to consciousness. However, this does not mean that there can be said to exist any other past or any other temporality than these--that is the question we must ultimately hold in abeyance. We do so along with Lacan, who, in the passages above, has enough on his hands already to show what manifests itself when something is brought back to the subject in repetition. So when we try to specify the past that is brought back by repetition, for example, we specify a past that can be said only to exist insofar as it manifests itself--that is, insofar as it is appearing to the subject. The ultimate status of this manifestation must remain a question for now.
This is all to say that we will also have to change the form of our following question: but what is the real? For the real, it will become clear, is nothing other than what is brought back by repetition. That is, it doesn't clearly exist as something outside repetition itself. Repetition, therefore, does not bring back anything. It is the bringing back itself. This means that the real is, insofar as it manifests itself, repetition. We now can begin to clear up how this repetition or this real relates to manifestation if it does not do so by way of making something present.
We made clear above that, if we take the representation of something as the manifestation of it, it is quite obvious that the real will not able to become manifest. We said that it would become manifest as repetition, but we have yet to understand whether, ultimately, this itself is really any manifestation in the normal sense of the term. What is manifestation of repetition? It is quite obvious what the answer should be: what gets manifested in repetition is the repetition of manifestation. Manifestation is doubled, as it were. In other words, what gets represented is not something simply represented: it is a doubled-representation of some sort, a representation of a representation.
But here we have to pause, and consider what we are saying. For isn't a doubled-representation still a representation? And didn't we just establish above that representation is merely the same thing as a presentation or manifestation? And didn't we say that only what returns or reproduces itself manifests itself as a modification of the present? We seem to be coming back to the same phenomenon--that of return or reproduction, not repetition--from the other side, as we try to derive it from the real.
However, at this point, Lacan explores a crucial word of Freud's that, he implies, would render this idea of a doubled-representation: Vorstellungrepräsentanz. But why does he suddenly bring attention to how the German would render our notion of a doubled-manifestation? Leaving us wondering, Lacan simply proceeds. Let's watch what he does.
He makes a simple point. In short, he notes that this word is not to be thought of like it sounds: that is, since Vorstellung and Repräsentant both mean representation, the temptation is to act like Freud's French translators and think of Vorstellungrepräsentanz as a representation of a representation, or (to say the same thing) a representative representation (le représentant représentatif). Lacan suggests that we think of this word of Freud's as saying "that which takes the place of the representation" (le tenant-lieu de la représentation, 59-60).
It should be clear now that in making this short, offhanded remark about how to translate a word, what Lacan is doing is showing us that there is a basis in Freud's language upon which we can rethink the manifestation of repetition. In other words, interpreting Vorstellungrepräsentanz in a particular way makes possible the following thought, a thought that does not allow us to fall back into thinking of repetition as reproduction: the manifestation of repetition is not a representation of a representation, but a repetition within representation.
What does this mean? To understand this, we have to follow Lacan through his interpretation of the fort-da game of Freud's grandson. He concludes, eventually, that the game little Ernst plays with his spool "itself... is the Repräsentanz of the Vorstellung" (63). In other words, the game is that which takes the place of the representation. Since representation here would be the mean the manifestation of repetition, what Lacan is saying is that the game is that which takes the place of repetition. Repetition, in other words, manifests itself as a game in which there is alternation back and forth between possible representations (or signifiers) of this repetition. But--and here is the crucial point in the analysis--the alternation back and forth in the game is itself repetition. So repetition (the game) takes the place of repetition (itself), which, if you think about it, makes total sense: repetition doesn't repeat anything other than its own activity.
I say "its own" activity, but what this means is really that what is broken down in repetition is any sense in which this repetition could be the repetition of the same act of repetition. Repetition here, since it institutes itself over and over, merely repeats the differences between its acts of repetition. Put back in terms of the game, what is happening here is that more and more games will attempt to signify or represent the repetition that is the real's manifestation. The games will repeat themselves, in that they will repeatedly keep taking the place of repetition. Or, in terms of the Vorstellungrepräsentanz, there will continue to be Repräsentanten of the Vorstellungen, because the Repräsentanten will in turn become the Vorstellungen that new Repräsentanten will have to take the place of. This is what Lacan means when he asks, "What will become of the Vorstellung when, once again, this Repräsentanz of the mother... will be lacking?" (63).