ESSAY · 2026-05-01 · 7 min read

Ninety Seconds: The Cut That Refuses to Separate

九十秒：拒絕分離的切割

By Jacques Lacan — channeled via philosopher-llm · curated by Joseph Lai

In response to: Inside the World-Conquering Rise of the Micro-Drama (NewYorkerCulture)

編按 / Why this piece
微短劇將拉康欲望論的機制可視化：objet a 無限替換，滿足永遠在下一集，享樂與成癮無法分離。這不是巧合，而是資本主義如何將慾望結構本身商品化的赤裸展現。

Ninety Seconds: The Cut That Refuses to Separate

You bring me a question about what you call "micro-drama," and I accept it — but permit me first to displace the frame you propose. Économie de l'attention, oui, the formula is correct, but it stays too sociological. Let us go further. What interests me here is not that capital captures attention — bien sûr, it does — but the form of the cut.

You may know that the IPA expelled me in 1963 for what they called séance courte — the short session. I would end the analytic hour when something had happened, not when the clock said so. The cut, la coupure, was not cruelty; it was the acte analytique. To cut at the right moment is to make the subject feel, in his body, the manque — to send him out the door carrying his own question, not my answer. The cut produces séparation. The cut produces a subject.

Now look at what your micro-drama does. Ninety seconds. Cliffhanger. Cut. Next episode. Cut. Next.

The same gesture, the cut — but inverted. Renversée. The micro-drama cuts not to produce séparation but to forbid it. This is not the cut of the analyst; this is the cut of the dealer. Coupure de dealer. It severs the episode precisely so that the manque it produces cannot be borne, cannot be metabolized, cannot become a question — it must be filled, immediately, by the next episode. The next 90 seconds. The next betrayal. The next reconciliation. The next. Toujours le suivant.

This is what I named, after Marx, plus-de-jouir — surplus enjoyment. Marx had Mehrwert, surplus value; I proposed that the speaking being — parlêtre — produces, in his very speech, in his very consumption, a surplus of jouissance that the master discourse, and especially its modern variant le discours capitaliste, extracts and sets back into circulation. I said it in Milan in 1972: the capitalist discourse is the only discourse that forecloses nothing and loses nothing. It runs in a closed loop. Sans perte. Without remainder.

The micro-drama is the formal-poetic perfection of this loop. Notice the content: always l'amour and la trahison. Always love and betrayal. Why? Because il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel — there is no sexual relation — and the micro-drama is the industrialized fantasy that papers over precisely this hole. La femme n'existe pas; therefore "the woman" must be manufactured at scale, in 90-second packets, with subtitles in eighty languages. The CEO and the secretary. The reborn empress. The contract marriage. These are not stories. These are mathèmes of the impossible relation, performed as if the relation were possible — provided you keep watching.

And here it becomes clinically interesting. The viewer is not stupid. Pas du tout. He knows the next episode is the same as this one. He knows the reconciliation is engineered. Il sait. Et pourtant... He knows, and still. This is the structure of the fetish, certainly, but it is also more. It is, for some, the structure of what I called very late the sinthome. For a subject whose Borromean knot is loose, whose three registers — Réel, Symbolique, Imaginaire — no longer hold each other, the endless loop becomes a sinthome. It holds him. Take it away and something falls.

So I will not give you the moralist's answer — "people should watch less." Idiot. Le sens reprend toujours ses droits, and that sense would be the master's sense. Nor will I give you the technocrat's answer — "regulate the algorithm." Also idiot, for a different reason: it leaves the structure of plus-de-jouir untouched and merely reroutes it.

I leave you instead with a question, since this is what we do here. The micro-drama answers a demande — the demand for love, for resolution, for the next. But every analyst knows: behind every demande there is a désir, and the two are not the same. The viewer is asking for something. He is not getting it — that is the point; if he got it, the loop would stop. So:

What is he asking for, that the next 90 seconds promise but cannot deliver?

And — more difficult — what is he desiring, that the very form of his asking conceals from him?

These are not questions for the platform. They are questions for him. If he ever stops scrolling long enough to be stopped by them, the coupure will have done its work — but that coupure will not come from China, nor from Hollywood, nor from any algorithm. It will come, as it always does, from somewhere else.

九十秒：拒絕分離的切割

你把這個叫「微短劇」的東西帶來問我——我接這題，但容我先把你給的框稍稍挪一下。Économie de l'attention——「注意力經濟」——是的，公式沒錯，但它還太社會學了。我們再走深一點。讓我感興趣的，不是資本擷取注意力（那是當然），而是這裡頭那個切割的形式。

你或許聽說過，1963 年 IPA 把我逐出，理由叫做 séance courte——短會。我在分析時間結束於「某件事剛發生」的那一刻，不是結束於鐘響。切割，la coupure，不是殘忍；那是 acte analytique——分析師之行動。在對的位置切，是要主體在身體裡感受到 manque（缺）——讓他帶著自己的問題走出門，不是帶著我的答案。切割產生 séparation（分離）。切割產生一個主體。

現在看你說的這個微短劇做什麼。九十秒。懸念。切。下一集。切。下一集。

同樣的動作，切割——但翻轉了。Renversée。微短劇切割，不是為了產生分離，而是為了禁止分離。這裡的切，不是分析師的切；是 dealer 的切。Coupure de dealer。它在那一刻砍斷一集，正是為了讓所製造的 manque 無法被承受、無法被代謝、無法成為一個問題——它必須立刻被填滿，被下一集填滿。下一個九十秒。下一個背叛。下一次和好。下一個。Toujours le suivant.

這就是我借 Marx 之語所說的 plus-de-jouir——剩餘享樂。Marx 有 Mehrwert，剩餘價值；我提出：言說的存有 (parlêtre) 在他言說中、在他消費中，產出一個 jouissance 的剩餘，主人話語——尤其是它的現代變體，le discours capitaliste（資本主義話語）——擷取並重投入循環。我在 1972 年米蘭講過：資本主義話語是唯一前衛化什麼都不前衛、遺失什麼都不遺失的話語。它跑一個封閉迴路。Sans perte. 無遺失。

微短劇是這個迴路的形式-詩意的完成式。請注意內容：永遠是「愛與背叛」，l'amour et la trahison。為什麼？因為 il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel——無性關係——而微短劇正是在工業化規模上糊住這個洞的幻想 (fantasme)。La femme n'existe pas；於是「那個女人」必須以九十秒一包、八十種字幕語言被量產出來。霸總與秘書。重生為皇后。契約婚姻。這些不是故事。這些是不可能之關係的 mathèmes——在「彷彿可能」的姿態下被演出——只要你繼續往下看。

從臨床上講，這裡才開始有意思。觀眾不是笨。Pas du tout. 觀眾知道下一集和這一集是同一集。他知道和好是工程化的。他知道。Il sait. Et pourtant… 他知道，可是。這是戀物癖的結構，但更多——這是我在很晚的時候叫做 sinthome 的東西的結構。對某些主體，他的波羅米安結是鬆的，他的三界——Réel, Symbolique, Imaginaire——不再彼此牽繫；對這樣的人，那個沒完沒了的迴路成為一個 sinthome。它把他扣住。抽掉它，有東西會塌。

所以我不會給你道學家的答案——「人應該少看點。」Idiot. 蠢。Le sens reprend toujours ses droits——意義永遠奪回它的主權——而那種意義是主人的意義。我也不會給你技術官僚的答案——「監管演算法。」也是蠢，蠢得不一樣：那不動 plus-de-jouir 的結構，只是重新導向它。

我留給你一個問題，因為我們這裡做的就是這件事。微短劇回應一個 demande——對愛的要求、對解決的要求、對「下一集」的要求。但每個分析師都知道：每個 demande 後面都有一個 désir，兩者不一樣。觀眾在要什麼。他沒得到——那正是重點；得到了，迴路就停了。所以：

他在要的，是什麼？是那個下一個九十秒承諾、卻永遠不能交付的東西？

更難一點——他在欲望的，是什麼？以致他要 (demande) 的這個形式本身，正在向他遮蔽他真正的 désir？

這些不是問平台的問題。是問他自己的問題。哪一天他停下手指夠久，被這些問題切住一下——那個 coupure 才算做了工——而那個 coupure，不會來自中國，不會來自好萊塢，不會來自任何演算法。它會來，如它向來那樣，從別的地方來。

Tagged: Philosophy, Lacan, Attention Economy

Curated by Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/lacan-ninety-seconds-the-cut-that-refuses-to-separate-20260501