Writing the Subject's Knot

Lacan’s focus on jouissance in the nineteen-seventies led to a fundamental revision of his entire theoretical work. The structure of jouissance, incompatible with the principles of non-contradiction and the exclusion of the third, requires the use of ternary logic. This logical necessity led Lacan to approach the question of structure with the help of Borromean topology and to rethink psychoanalysis in the light of writing and of the written traces a subject produces based on his knowing-what-to-do with his sinthome. This article shows the foundations of this logical necessity and the forms of writing which result from it.