< >   lacanian ink  symposia  messageboard  sitemap  perfume  links 

© lacan.com 1997/2001

 

- 10/11/01 - Marco Mauas replies to Zizek

I did not say we must put in a series the Shoah and this evil act of the WTC. I said in my answer it cannot be situated properly without a reference to the Shoah. I also quoted Lacan, who did not believe the Shoah can be dialectized. I dont believe, either, it can be. I do not have the ambition of thinking everything. I don't believe it is possible to think everything. There is a limit. The Shoah is unthinkable with Hegel, we need Sade which was not, according to Lacan, so close to his own evil, as to try to obey the "love thy neighbour". That is the reason Lacan makes a series :Freud-Sade. Both were at a prudential distance from their own evilness, so not to try to convert their neighbours, neither to convince them of their system, and much less to make accessible to love the thing that cannot be loved.
            Was Sade a thinker? Was Freud a thinker? I guess not. I am much in favour of Lacan's definition of "the analysand"--that is to say, the one who has chosen to go to an analyst:

  "Le psychanalysant est celui qui parvient a realiser comme alienation son 'je pense', c'est a dire a decouvrir le fantasme comme moteur de la realite psychique, celle du sujet divise." (Autres Ecrits, p. 358) And a few lines before:

"Ce choix est le choix de la pensee en tant qu'elle exclue le 'je suis' de la jouissance, lequel 'je suis' est 'je ne pense pas'." (Autres Ecrits, p. 358)

Namely, "thinking" excludes "jouissance", and the analysand is that who realizes--makes real-- his "I think" as a form of basic alienation. To be in analysis is to discover how close you are from your own evil, because you discover your "think" as a basic defense position. No, I don't believe Freud was a thinker, nor I believe we can think beyond your own fantasme--unless you make with it something else. So you did something else, that is to say, you did not use it to "think".
            Of course, we can talk, and that is what we are doing now. We are trying to circle this horror with some words, some words that we try to be as close as possible to life. And life without jouissance is unthinkable, but also unbearable. So the question for psychoanalysis is: how to choose life, in a bearable, livable way.