In 1951, regarding the Great War, Freud made the following reflection: “(…) the affront and painful disappointment that we experienced due to the uncultured conduct of our fellow citizens of the world in the present war were not justified. They rested in an illusion of which we were prisoners. In reality, they did not fall as low as we feared, because they had never risen as high as we thought” (1).
The statement can be extrapolated to this dystopian present, and it is worth remembering the Freudian notions on which culture is based: dams, reactive formations, instinctual renunciation, repression, sublimation. In short, the human creature only laboriously consents to the requirements of life in common, since “the primitive soul – that is, the untamedness of the drive and its deadly drifts – is imperishable in the fullest sense” (2) and easily gives way to regression.
This being the case, it is necessary every time, in every time and in every place, to build the more or less weak edges that demarcate a possible space for social bonding.
In Argentina, a sublimation operation of this nature is the one carried out by the victims of State terrorism of the last dictatorship – Mothers, Grandmothers, Children and other actors and human rights organizations – who, faced with the horror darker and more unbridled, they forged a series of signifiers – Memory, Truth, Justice, Never again, 30,0000 detained-disappeared, Neither forgetting nor forgiveness – that served as a border and gave support to the democratic pact.
The siege to which these signifiers have been subjected for almost ten years – since “the work of human rights.” from now on– reaches its most cynical point in the questioning of the number of missing people, when the inaccuracy of the number is used, as if it were possible to know how many disappeared in a ruthless and clandestine repressive system, as if there were no declassified documents that allow us to deduce that the figure could be even greater than 30,000, that signifier whose value lies, precisely, in its condition as such.
The results of the attack on the S1 of Argentine democracy are visible: decomposition of ties and coexistence, increasingly extreme and frequent manifestations of hatred and violence.
Unlike the master’s discourse, the analytical operation does not consist of sacralizing the S1. Even more, Lacan took it upon himself to denounce the “indecent”(3) of writing them on the walls, thus referring to the claim of universality and eternity of the three of the French Revolution. Racism is rooted in the brotherhood of the body (4), he predicted, and today we are faced with a new version of cruelty that can be exercised in the name of freedom.
Analytical discourse is concerned with producing the S1 of a subject to empty the mortifying enjoyment attached to them and enable other uses, or a new invention, always singular. “In his individuality, the signifiers are modeled by man and probably even more so with his hands, which are his soul” (5), Lacan said regarding sublimation. How, where, when can craftsmanship take place that enables a full discourse, that is, a new bond, where hatred is rampant? May the spark of a desire or a fortunate contingency come to light it, and may it be soon, because it is urgent.
Ana Cecilia González is a psychoanalyst. She is a member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis and the Lacanian School of Guidance. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Grades:
(1) Freud, S., “Of war and death. Current issues”, Complete works, vol. 14, Buenos Aires, Amorrortu, 1992, p. 286.
(2) Ibid, p. 287.
(3) Lacan, J., The Seminar, book 19, …. or worse, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2012, p. 73.
(4) Ibid., p. 231.
(5) Lacan, J., The Seminar, book 7, The ethics of psychoanalysis, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2007, p. 148.
