THE JEW, THE WOMAN AND THE PSYCHOANALYST: A MODEL OF NON-SEGREGATIVE SOCIAL BOND

O judeu, a mulher e o psicanalista: um modelo de vínculo social não-segregativo

ABSTRACT:

This article demonstrates how the universal produces segregation. It identifies what is common to the Jew, to the woman and the psychoanalyst from the universal formula defined by Lacan as “all” [tout]. Here the Jew is caught up in the model of analysis of the process of segregation. This article approaches the “not-all” [past-tout], a concept invented by Lacan, which designates the unlimited as a mode of response to segregation. The method chosen here consists of studying the texts by both Freud and Lacan on identification, racism and segregation. Approaching the concept of segregation through the universal and identification means taking into account the reality of the unique and singular jouissance of each subject.

Keywords:
psychoanalysis in extension; segregation; universal; not-all; identification

Resumo:

Este artigo demonstra como o universal produz segregação. Identifica o que é comum ao judeu, à mulher e ao psicanalista, a partir da fórmula universal definida por Lacan como “tudo” [tout]. O judeu é abordado no modelo de análise do processo de segregação. Este artigo aborda o “não todo” [past-tout], conceito criado por Lacan, que designa o ilimitado como forma de resposta à segregação. O método consiste em estudar os textos de Freud e Lacan sobre identificação, racismo e segregação. Abordar o conceito de segregação pelo universal e pela identificação significa levar em conta a realidade do gozo único e singular de cada sujeito.

Palavras-chave:
psicanálise em extensão; segregação; universal; não-todo; identificação

INTRODUÇÃO

And when we return to the root of the body, if we revalorize the word brother, he is going to enter under full sail at the level of good feelings. [...] know that what is arising, what one has not yet seen to its final consequences, and which for its part if rooted in the body, in the fraternity of the body, is racism, about which you have yet to hear the last word. (LACAN, 2011, p. 236).

These are the words that Lacan uttered in 1972 during the last lesson of the seminar Ou pire […or worse]. Although more than forty years have passed since he pronounced those words, they are more relevant than ever. In a political and social context where segregation doesn’t cease to spread and to propagate in the heart of democracies, it seems imperative for us not to look away, and to investigate this phenomenon. In Seminar XX, Encore, Lacan has a definition of the symptom: “I don’t want to know anything about it” (LACAN, 1975 p. 9). And it is up to us, psychoanalysts, to try to find out something about it.

What is it that establishes social bonds or social links? What are the causal factors of racism? Is it the rejection of the other? Why and in what way can psychoanalysis respond to this phenomenon? Those are the questions I would like to address in this article.

Jews and segregation

In the Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the Psychoanalyst of the School (LACAN, 2001), Lacan establishes the grounds for guaranteeing the psychoanalyst. He speaks of his wish to come up with a model, which is different from that of the IPA (International Psychoanalytical Association) - essentially, a model that is not based on identification. That is the pass. We are interested in this text because it deals with segregation - a product of the Universal. Lacan interprets racism and segregation as a rejection of the jouissance of the Other and advances the “not-all” as a mode for establishing social bonds that is not through identification.

To this end, Lacan seeks to abolish the separation between what he calls “psychoanalysis in intension” and “psychoanalysis in extension”. Psychoanalysis in intension is the individual experience of the analysis of a subject. Psychoanalysis in extension is the discourse of psychoanalysis, theory, and knowledge of psychoanalysis.

At the end of the Proposition, Lacan mentions the Nazi concentration camps and prophesizes the extension of segregation to the extent of the scientific progress. The question therefore arises as to what is the link among: the “Jewish Question” from the standpoint of segregation; the training of the psychoanalyst; the end of the analysis; and the School of Psychoanalysis.

It should be noted that there exist two versions of this Proposition: an oral version from 1967 (LACAN, 2001, p. 561-591) and the other written version which was not published until 1978. The reference to the Jews differs in the oral version than in the written version. We will now take a close look at the findings from these two versions and try to understand why Lacan speaks of the segregation of the Jews and examine how this might be related to psychoanalysis.

Reading of the Proposition of 9 October 1967 in its two versions

The written version - The universal and the real

Before proposing a form for it I want to indicate that, consistent with the topology of the projective plane, it is on the very horizon of psychoanalysis in extension that the internal circle we outline as the gap of psychoanalysis in intension knotted. (LACAN, 2001, p. 256).

Let us unravel some elements of this quotation:

“Before proposing a form for it”: this form is that of the pass, the form according to which a psychoanalyst can testify to what the experience of his own analysis has been for him.

“I want to indicate that, consistent with the topology of the projective plane”: For psychoanalysis there is no interior or exterior. The topology of the projective plane subverts the interior and the exterior in such a way that there is no longer a point of reference between the inside and the outside.

“it is on the very horizon of psychoanalysis in extension that the internal circle we outline as the gap of psychoanalysis in intension ties and closes”: psychoanalysis in intension is the analytical experience of a subject; how his analysis will unfold, how he will identify or interpret his symptom or his fantasy for instance, what the subjective effects of his analysis will be, how he will conclude, etc. What we have just referenced is a gap because we can neither know nor predict it. This ties, knotted, closes, and encircles the very horizon of the psychoanalysis in extension. Psychoanalysis in extension - which is the discourse of psychoanalysis, the theory, and the knowledge of psychoanalysis - is tied to psychoanalysis in intension, and there is no benchmark for distinguishing one from another. Analytical knowledge feeds on the clinic.

Here Lacan brings up again the question of the didactic analysis. This divides the personal analysis into two parts and necessarily results in the identification of the analysand with the analyst.

For Lacan, psychoanalyst is the product of psychoanalysis and only of that (LACAN, 2001, p. 254-255). Psychoanalysis in extension does not determine psychoanalysis in intension since each analysis is singular and unpredictable; it does not take place on demand, we would say. In other words, what guarantees the psychoanalyst is his analysis in intension, not a didactic analysis.

The didactic analysis, a model that Lacan call into question, leads to the identification of the analysand to the analyst, who is his guide, and it is the alliance with the healthy part of the ego that resolves the passage to the analyst. What good is a passage through the experience in this case, he might wonder. For him, the theory of psychoanalysis does not determine the analysis of a subject. If this were the case, the analysand would have to conform to the theory and identify in him the concepts addressed in the theory. Rather, it is a matter of acting in such a way that the analysis of the subject enriches the discourse of psychoanalysis.

Lacan concludes his article by discussing what ties psychoanalysis in extension to psychoanalysis in intension. This interests us because it is precisely on this knotting point that Lacan refers to the history of the segregation of the Jews.

It is on the very horizon of psychoanalysis in extension that the internal circle we outline as the gap of psychoanalysis in intension closes.

I would like to center this horizon with three vanishing points of perspective, each one remarkable for belonging to one of the registers whose collusion in heterotopy constitutes our experience (LACAN, 2001, p. 256).

Psychoanalysis in extension is knotted with the three registers - symbolic, imaginary and real - all of which constitute the experience of psychoanalysis.

Symbolic: in the symbolic, we have the Oedipal myth. It is thus facticity. This myth, which comes from outside of psychoanalysis, poses a problem; however, Lacan asserts that if it is removed, then psychoanalysis in extension would fall under President Schreber’s delusion.

Imaginary: this is the unity of the society of psychoanalysis dominated by the executives of an international scale - a second obvious factuality. This structuring is due to what Freud proposes as a model of group structure: the Army and the Church. The important point to make is that this Freudian model is based on imaginary identifications - an identification with the leader (FREUD, 1991, p. 31-38). As such, Lacan does not find it surprising that psychoanalysis in intension is chained and limited in its scope due to this Freudian model of group structure, as we have just mentioned above.

Real: The third facticity is the real: “all too real, real enough for real to be more prudish than the tongue that promotes it” (LACAN, 2001, p. 257). Here appears a reference to the history of the Jews: the horror of the camps.

Lacan states:

Let me abbreviate by saying that what we have seen emerge from this, to our horror, represents the reaction of precursors as compared with what will go on developing as the consequence of reshaping social groups by science, and especially of the universalization it introduces into them.

Our future as common markets will be balanced by an increasingly hardline extension of judicial acts of segregation. (LACAN, 2001, p. 257).

The segregation of Jews is the model of what the future promises us with the progress of science and the universalization that follows. It’s real. And the School proposed by Lacan takes into account the real, the hole in the symbolic. As a result, the real is taken into account in the analysis of a subject.

Lacan asks the question of why Freud might have wanted one universal psychoanalytical society. Could it be because he himself was the object of segregation as a Jew?

Is it necessary to attribute to Freud the wish, given his introduction from birth to the age-old model of this process, to secure in his group the privilege of universal buoyancy that the two above-named institutions benefit from? (LACAN, 2001, p. 257-258).

Freud’s battle was indeed in making psychoanalysis universal (FREUD; FERENCZI, 1996, p. 71) and preventing it from being considered as a Jewish science. He fought all his life on this prevention initiative. Lacan recalls that thanks to its universal buoyancy, the Mittel Europa IPA has not lost any of its members in the camps.

This Lacan’s suggestion does not leave us indifferent and it invites us to reflect. Let us try to understand why universal buoyancy might have allowed IPA members to escape from going to the concentration camps.

That the Jewish analysts of the IPA were men of the Enlightenment, as Freud himself, is something we can safely presume. So, they believed in the Universal but the Universal always produces waste, the objet a. What does not fit into the all or whole of the Universal is segregation, an aspect that we will develop later in this article. The IPA members persecuted as Jews in their countries left the organization. In order to leave and to think that elsewhere one can be saved, one must have the idea that in this elsewhere the Universal works and that the waste is the Nazis themselves. This is what allowed these analysts to leave on time. That is our hypothesis concerning what Lacan formulates.

The oral version - The existence of Jews: a model of knotting

Let us now move on to the oral version of the Proposition with regards to the knotting and closing of psychoanalysis in intension and psychoanalysis in extension. Note that in this version, it is about the three registers, functions, not points of leakage or facticities.

The three functions are as follows: in the Symbolic, famillialism with Oedipus; in the Imaginary, identification with the ideal father; and in the Real, the segregation due to the subject of the science.

It is about the real that the difference between the two versions - written and oral - is significant and that the existence of the Jews is summoned. Let us begin by quoting Lacan:

The solidarity of the three principal functions which we have just traced finds its point of intersection in the existence of the Jews. […]

It is impossible to be liberated from the constitutive segregation of this ethnic group with through Marx’s considerations, through Sartre’s even less so. This is why, especially why, the religion of the Jews must be questioned within our hearts. (LACAN, 2001, p. 588-589).

Let us formulate:

The three registers - the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary - are not only present, but also tied and knotted (unified) in the existence of the Jews.

To be acquitted of unburden oneself of the constitutive segregation of Jews, the Jewish religion must be called into question by psychoanalysis.

Now the questions arises as to why Lacan might have removed this passage from the version published in 1978? It is impossible for us to know. The important thing is for us to try to grasp the stakes in this passage, since it was stated by Lacan and we should investigate the link between the segregation of Jews and the psychoanalyst of the School.

What Lacan seeks is “to be liberated from the constitutive segregation of this ethnic group”; let us intend to comprehend why Jews have always been segregated. We have the idea that there is something constitutive, hardwired in the Jews that dooms them to become the target of secular persecutions. For Lacan, neither the economy nor the class struggle, and not even the idea that the hell is Other people - the Other here being embodied by the Jew - would explain the segregation of the Jews.

Only psychoanalysis can unburden liberate this problem by questioning the religion of the Jews. If we follow Lacan, the religion of the Jews therefore has the effect that the three registers of Symbolic-Real-Imaginary are inscribed and knotted in the existence of the Jews. Why is that and in what way?

We believe that circumcision illustrates the knot of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real in the existence of the Jews. On the real side, it is a specimen, a cut part of the body. But this real act is also part of the symbolic register since it is the inscription of the covenant with God from which these laws arise. The Imaginary dimension lies in the fact that Jews identify with each other and recognize themselves as a community gathered around these laws.

Lacan’s concern is to protect psychoanalysis from segregation. How dangerous is the segregative model for psychoanalysis? What is the danger of the universal? And what does the history of the Jews gives us to think about these questions?

The not-all: a response to segregation

There is something in common, it seems to us, between the position of the Jews and psychoanalysis in extension.

Let us first turn to the universal and remember that Lacan warns us of the illusion it gives. Indeed, we believe that the logic of the universal opposes segregation and prevents it from being spread. Actually, that is not the case; Lacan states that it is just an illusion, a lure. In 1967, when the atmosphere was opening up the borders, favorable to Europe, Lacan already prophesied the rise of racism which is one of different forms of segregation. The universal - a product of science - in reverse to what is conveyed by the current discourse, pushes towards segregation.

The universal is defined by Lacan as all or whole. It builds on Aristotle’s logic, but makes a different use of it. He uses it in order to establish how the subject fits as a man or a woman in relation to the phallic function (LACAN, 2001, p. 458).

The inscription of a subject as man is based on two formulae:

$\forall \mathbf{X}\mathbf{}.\mathbf{}\mathbf{}\mathbf{\Phi }\mathbf{X}\mathbf{}⫽\mathbf{}\exists \mathbf{X}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}.\mathbf{}\mathbf{}\mathbf{n}\mathbf{o}\mathbf{t}\mathbf{}\mathbf{\Phi }\mathbf{x}$

For all x, the phallic function is satisfied; but there is an x for which the phallic function does not apply. In other words, the all supposes a limit. It takes an exception for this all to exist.

The inscription of a subject as woman operates on the basis of the following formula:

There is no x such that non-Fx

This formula poses the all as unlimited. There are no exceptions that would limit an all or whole of the women.

Lacan retains the term all [tout] to designate the limited all, but to designate the unlimited, he invents the not-all [pas-tout]. It should be specified that this not-all can only be constructed to the extent that there is a universal. And that the masculine side of the picture is the side of all speaking beings such as men and women. Indeed, women are also on the side of the all in terms of phallic function.

The not-all is not the rejection of the Universal. Just because you’re on the not-all side doesn’t mean you’re not in it, in the all. To put it another way: just because you’re not-all in it doesn’t mean you’re not in it at all.

The consequence of the universal is segregation; the not-all is something else. For example, the universal is: “all Jews”, “all Christians”, or “all men.” Curiously enough, it doesn’t exclude any at first but inevitably leads to an exclusion. There will always be those that do not enter in the all, the rejections, the objet a.

To fully understand what this is about, it is worth remembering that in the logic of the Universal, two quantors are used - that of the universal: “for all” and that of existence: “it exists.” In other words, the Universal does not exist. As soon as we say, “for all”, we are necessarily outside of the Universal since there is always an exception. This exception makes the group (the all) to exist and at the same time it is outside of the all and implies that the Universal does not exist. Hence, there is something in the Universal that will never be agreed upon. Having established this, we are now better equipped to answer our aforementioned questions.

Let us now return our attention to psychoanalysis in extension. Lacan does not want psychoanalysis on the side of the Universal. Rather, he wants it on the feminine side, on the not-all side, which is to say that “all psychoanalysts” does not exist. There is no equivalence, that is to say there is no the psychoanalyst. It is not a community founded on an exception and not an ideal-oriented all. There is a series of ‘barred subjects’ or ‘crossed-out subjects’ [sujets barrés]; there is a psychoanalyst and a psychoanalyst and a… etc. The Lacanian formation is singular, carried out one by one; it’s a singular journey. The Lacanian logic seeks to escape all discourse of domination. Faced with universality, Lacan determines the existence.

A school of psychoanalyst that operates on the side of the “all” is tantamount to asking for the same training for all the psychoanalysts, 3 years of personal analysis, and 3 years of didactic analysis, etc. We are junior, then senior, and like that we climb up the hierarchy. All the same, that is a segregative principle. What Lacan says is that believing to escape segregation by science and the Universal, Freud already saw its return.

Psychoanalysis in extension cannot be an objective science, unrelated to subjectivity or to the subject in analysis. It is a question of preventing psychoanalysis in extension from tipping towards the Universal, because, as Lacan has shown, the Universal does not allow us to take into account the singularity of each, in other words the Freudian unconscious or the real Lacanian.

This is the whole complexity of psychoanalysis. It is a science; it has a structured theory. So why are we questioning its place at university? It’s because while being a knowledge, what nourishes and enriches it is the subjective clinic of each subject in analysis, one by one, which is what makes it singular at the same time. Each analysis is singular; each symptom, fantasy, etc. is singular in the sense that it is determined by the signifying chain of each subject. There is the structure unlocked by the theory - by the knowledge of psychoanalysis - and there is the subject who inhabits the structure with his own history - his singular logic.

Psychoanalysis can only occupy a different place in university and in science. It cannot fully enter an institution; it must remain independent.

This idea of integrating psychoanalysis into the system of university structure occurred to Freud and then also to Lacan. Lacan resolved this issue by developing four discourses. It [psychoanalysis] can be taught at universities to the extent that the university’s discourse is differentiated from the discourse of the analyst. And, importantly, the psychoanalysis curriculum does not guarantee the psychoanalyst.

For Freud as well, we can see it in his text Should psychoanalysis be taught at university (FREUD, 1984). University teaching cannot train an analyst. One’s own analysis and supervision under other analysts would constitute the training for a psychoanalyst.

The danger of universalism on the global scale is the expansion of segregation and namely the rise of racism. The danger of universalism on the scale of a psychoanalytical society is to crush the desire of the psychoanalyst. To make an all the psychoanalysts, the risk is to obscure the singular reality of each. The real of his jouissance, of his drive. If the dimension of the real is absent in the constitution of a psychoanalytic society, it will also be missing in psychoanalysis in intension since one refers to the other as we have shown above. Taking the real into account is to block out or strike out the group. The mode of jouissance of one cannot be confused with the mode of jouissance of another. It’s absolutely singular and unique. What precisely limits the Universal, which is not universalizable, is jouissance - each individual’s mode of jouissance (MILLER, 1985).

The segregation of psychoanalysis as a community manifests in the fact that it is not accepted in the social bond; it is rejected by the discourse of science. And when it is admitted, it is at the cost of bastardization. Being adaptive, it becomes a psychology and therefore subject to the Other, to the discourse of the master.

The Jew and psychoanalysis in extension

Let us now return to our original question of how the conception of psychoanalysis in extension relates to the existence of the Jews.

Psychoanalysis is oriented by the not-all. Is the Jew also on the side of the not-all?

The Jews are in the nations and at the same time apart, on the outside. While standing on the side of the Universal, of the all, they separate themselves from others by their laws. We can finally say that the Jews, while being on the side of the all, are on the side of existence. The formula “it exists,” as we have seen, means that the Universal does not exist. In this sense, Jews make objection to the Universal as Jean-Claude Milner explains in his book Democratic Europe’s Criminal Inclinations (MILNER, 2003).

To be Jewish like the others and therefore to enter into a community, into an ensemble or group of Jews, the Jew sacrifices a part of his body to the Other, an act by which he differentiates himself from the others. This is how Lacan approaches it in the seminar on anxiety (LACAN, 2004). It is an act which he does not want to renounce, and what results from it, according to Jacques-Alain Miller (MILLER, 1986), is that in the end the Jew does not want to sacrifice his difference to the Other. He wants to stay different.

Therefore, he concludes, while acknowledging the difficulty of thinking it this way, one cannot consider the history of the segregation of the Jews as if the Jewish position were only passive. Practically, Jews are victims on a large scale:

[...] but there is still an active principal there. There is an active principal in Judaism. These effects of segregation are prepared because one can call Jewish exclusivism, by election. Indeed, if there is indeed a sacrifice of subjective difference which is constitutive of this community, it must also be said that there is collectively the culture of this difference. It can be said that the Jew does not want to sacrifice his difference to the Other. And he pays an extremely heavy price for it. There is a certain “all but not that” or “everything but not that” [tout mais pas ça] properly Jewish. (MILLER, 1986).

So, it’s about the Jews; it’s an everything but not that.

Psychoanalysts, while being like the woman one by one, form nevertheless a group of psychoanalysts in a school of psychoanalysts oriented by real.

The not-all woman

We see a use of not-all in the Jew (everything but not that) and in the psychoanalyst, who is distinguished from the not-all of the woman. Women do not constitute an ensemble.

Why does Lacan place the woman on the side of the not-all? This is precisely because she is not-all inscribed or inside. She is not-all in the Universal, without forming a set of women outside of the Universal. No exception comes to establishing an all of the women.

In the seminar Encore Lacan states: “The woman (Woman) does not exist, an article defined to designate the universal. There is no ‘The’ woman (Woman) since [...] of her essence, she is not all” (LACAN, 1975). So, a woman has this peculiarity of being not all, of being a stranger to herself. There is something in the essence of the woman that makes her Other to herself. Nothing can be said of the woman, of her jouissance. If nothing can be said of the woman, then she cannot constitute an ensemble.

This point leads us to the hypothesis of an equivalence between the Jew and the woman. This strangeness, this mystery is attributed to the Jew as well. According to Emmanuel Lévinas, an irreducibility of anti-Semitism which is “not simply the hostility felt by a majority towards a minority, nor only a xenophobia, or some form of racism, was that the ultimate reason for these phenomena from which it derives? For anti-Semitism is the repugnance felt towards the unknown of the other’s psyche, the mystery of his interiority or, beyond any conglomeration into a whole or any organization into an organism, the pure proximity of the other man - in other words, sociality” (LEVINAS, 1982, p. 223).

Let us recall that Freud duly noted the analysis of little Hans: “The castration complex is the deepest unconscious root of anti-Semitism […] The relation to the castration complex is what is common to the Jew and to the woman” (FREUD, 1954, p. 116). But it stopped there, the woman remained an enigma for Freud. As he wrote to Marie Bonaparte: “The great question that has remained unanswered, and which I have never been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the female soul is: what does a woman want?” (JONES, 1958, p. 445).

The woman remains enigmatic and impossible to define. We find this same impossibility in defining what the Jew is. Let us recall Freud’s words in his preface to the Hebrew edition of Totem and Tabou:

No reader of [the Hebrew version of] this book will find it easy to put himself in the emotional position of an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers - as well as from every other religion - and who cannot take a share in nationalist ideals, but who has yet never repudiated his people, who feels that he is in his essential nature a Jew and who has no desire to alter that nature. If the question were put to him: ‘Since you have abandoned all these common characteristics of your countrymen, what is there left to you that is Jewish?’ he would reply: ‘A very great deal, and probably its very essence.’ He could not now express that essence clearly in words; but some day, no doubt, it will become accessible to the scientific mind. (FREUD, 1993, p. 67-68).

Thus, we can better understand some anti-Semitic slogan such as:

Everything that happens serves the interests of Israel. Behind all the events, look for Israel, look for the Zionism and you will find that their invisible hand is interfering in a great number of societal changes. (TAGUIEFF, 2015, p. 59).

This echoes the phrase “Look for the woman...” which places the responsibility in women for the inexplicable behavior of men. Alexandre Dumas, for example, says: “There is a woman in every case; as soon as someone brings me a report, I say, ‘Look for the woman!’” (DUMAS, 1871, p. 247). And even in a letter addressed to National Assembly on September 1st 1876, we can find the same wording: “Next to all the crimes, there is the woman. Look for the woman and you will find the culprit” (Wikipedia).

Racism is the rejection of the jouissance of The Other

We have seen in the Proposition of 9 October 1967 that Lacan deduced the segregation of the Universal and tied the question of segregation in civilization to the psychoanalyst.

On October 22nd, 1967 in Address on Child Psychosis, he put it bluntly: “how we, I mean, we psychoanalysts are going to answer it: segregation put on the agenda by an unprecedented subversion” (LACAN, 2001, p. 363).

In 1973, Lacan introduced jouissance in order to think about racism. And Jacques-Alain Miller asks him the following question: “From another direction, what gives you the confidence to prophesize the rise of racism? And why in devil do you have to speak of it? (LACAN 2001, 534).

Lacan will respond:

Because it doesn’t strike me as funny and yet, it’s true.

With our jouissance going off the track, only the Other is able to mark its position, but only insofar as we are separated from this Other. Whence certain fantasies - unheard of before the melting pot.

Leaving this Other to his own mode of jouissance, that would only be possible by not imposing our own on him, by not thinking of him as underdeveloped.

Given, too, the precariousness of our own mode, which from now on takes its bearings from the ideal of an overcoming, which is, in fact, no longer expressed in any other way, how can one hope that the empty form of humanhysterianism [humanitairerie] disguising our extortions can continue to last?

Even if God, thus newly strengthened, should end up ex-sisting, this bodes nothing better than a return of his baneful past. (LACAN, 2001, p. 534).

In his article Racism (LAURENT, 2014, n. 371), Éric Laurent reveals the logic developed by Lacan; a logic of jouissance. Laurent points out that it is not the clash of civilizations; rather the clash of jouissances. The subjects ignore the jouissance that could orient them; they only know how to reject the jouissance of the Other. It can be understood as a desire to normalize or fit in - for example, the jouissance of the immigrant to assimilate (to the norm) for his own “good”. Lacan interprets this will as a contempt for the Other: “Leaving this Other to his mode of jouissance, that would only be possible by not imposing our own on him, by not thinking of him as underdeveloped.”

Lacan’s response to racism, therefore, consists of founding a human ensemble in a different way including an ensemble of psychoanalysts as well, since the psychoanalyst must answer for what is at work in civilization.

Laurent shows us how Lacan’s logic differs from that used by Freud in his famous text Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, the difference being not inconsequential.

For Freud, a community is formed based on an identification, from a love for a leader: “the most interesting example of such structures are the Church, a community of believers - and the Army” (FREUD 1991, p. 31-34). It should be noted that in these two artificial groups, each individual is tied libidinally, on one hand to the leader (Christ, commander-in-chief) and on the other hand to the other individuals of the group. But hatred unites as much as love:

The leader or the leading idea might also, so to speak, be negative; hatred against a particular person or institution might operate in just the same unifying way and might call up the same kind of emotional ties as positive attachment. (FREUD, 1991, p. 38-39).

For Freud, the social bond is formed on the impulse-based foundation of identification. Taking up “Lacan’s Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty (LACAN, 1966), Laurent shows us that Lacan’s point of departure is impulse rejection, not identification in the construction of the social bond. Logical time “leads to a proposition that all human assimilation follows three temporal phases through which the subject and the social Other are articulated” (LAURENT, 2014, n. 371):

• A man knows what is not a man;

• Men recognize themselves among themselves;

• I declare myself to be a man for fear of being convinced by men that I am not a man.

These temporal phases do not set off from some knowledge of what it would be to be a man, followed by a process of identification. Rather, this logic sets off from what is not a man. The ensemble of human on the fear of rejection, of loneliness. What this essentially is saying is that the one who does not possess jouissance like mine is not a man. Laurent reminds us that when Lacan wrote this text in 1945, Nazi barbarism was still close at hand:

It began by pointing the finger at the Jew as he whose jouissance is not the same as the Aryan’s: a man is not a man because his jouissance is not like mine. The flipside of that is that, within this logic, it may be asserted that whilst men do not know the nature of their jouissance, men do know what barbarism is. Thenceforth, men recognize themselves amongst themselves, but they don’t really know how. Then, subjectively, one by one, I am caught in a movement of haste. (LAURENT, 2014, p. 371).

Out of fear that I will be denounced for not being a man, I hasten to declare myself to be a man. No leader, no identifying model, contrary to Freud’s logic. It is therefore an anti-identifying logic, as Éric Laurent or Jacques-Alain Miller calls it - a logic of non-segregative identifications (MILLER, 2010, n. 74).

Thus, the foundation of social bonds is constructed through identification, or by love according to Freud, and through fear of solitude according to Lacan.

However, it seems to us, that we cannot take Freud’s reasoning as being exactly inaccurate. The masses are capable of identifications. The belief in a leader has been proven to be perfect in history. When Freud wrote Group Psychology of and Analysis of the Ego, he was referring to politics in general. A few years later, his thesis was confirmed to be correct with the emergence of Hitler.

What is the consequence of Lacan’s catching of the logic of social bonds and explaining it away through fear of rejection? We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that any human ensemble harbors in its depths a jouissance that goes off track, which would correspond to an identification (LAURENT, 2014, n. 371).

A fundamental non-knowledge is a breeding ground for various forms of rejection of the other, one of which is anti-Semitism. The rejection of the Jew and that of the woman comes into light in a strikingly clear way. They arouse fear because they embody this gap, this not knowing, due to their impossibility to define themselves.

REFERENCES

• DUMAS, A. Les Mohicans de Paris, I. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform. 2014.
• FREUD, S. Œuvres complètes, XVI, 1921-1923. Paris: PUF, 1991.
• FREUD, S; Ferenczi, S. Correspondance, 1914-1919. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. 1996.
• FREUD, S. Résultats, Idées, Problèmes I (1984). Paris: PUF , 2001.
• FREUD, S. Cinq psychanalyses (1954). Paris: PUF , 1999.
• FREUD, S. Totem et Tabou Paris: Gallimard, 1993.
• JONES, E. La vie et l’œuvre de Sigmund Freud, vol. II(1961). Paris: PUF , 1979.
• LACAN, J. Ou pire Paris: Seuil, 2011. (Le séminaire, 20)
• LACAN, J. Encore Paris: Seuil , 1975. (Le séminaire, 20)
• LACAN, J. Autres Écrits, Paris: Seuil , 2001.
• LACAN, J. Écrits Paris: Seuil , 1966.
• LAURENT, E. Le racisme. Lacan Quotidien, 2014.
• LEVINAS, E. L’au-delà du verset: lectures et discours talmudiques. Paris: Minuit, 1982.
• MILLER, J.-A. Extimité (1985-1986). Séminaire L’Orientation lacanienne délivré dans le cadre du Département de Psychanalyse, Université Paris 8, leçon du 27 novembre1985, inédit.
• MILLER, J.-A. La théorie de Turin sur le sujet de l’École. La cause freudienne, 2010.
• MILNER, J.-C. Les penchants criminels de l’Europe démocratique Paris: Verdier, 2003.
• TAGUIEFF, P. A. Une France antijuive Paris: CNRS Editions, 2015.
• WIKIPEDIA. WIKIPEDIA https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchez_la_femme
  » https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchez_la_femme

• Traduzido do francês por Ellen Kim/ Translated from French by Ellen Kim. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Master of Education, Human Development and Psychology, Cambridge, Estados Unidos. [e-mail]

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Oct 2020
• Date of issue
  Sep-Dec 2020

History

• Received
  15 Oct 2019
• Accepted
  18 Aug 2020