The Semblant and the Act

Abstract

One of the central tasks of Lacan's later teaching is to elaborate a theory of the semblant as a solution to the problem of access to the real. Badiou, likewise, encounters the problem of the semblant in his inquiry into the possibility of a non-destructive passion for the real via the act of subtraction, an operation that exposes an irreducible gap between the real and its semblance. Taking up an inquiry into the structural implications of these two radical attempts at theorizing access to the real via the semblant, the aim of this paper is to show that there is a possible solution to the following problem: how is it possible to produce a radical interruption and, consequently, to create a radical novelty in a reality that is made of nothing but semblants by way of an act which sets in motion the semblant in order to produce a minimal difference that separates the real from itself?