“Pandora’s Box

Abstract: This essay proposes a diagnostics of the current predicament C

R
of Lacanian psychoanalysis, based on the recent political crisis of the I
WAP, in 2017. Based on this critical study, we then investigate the S
history of different articulations between Marxism and psychoanalysis in I

Has Been Opened”:

S
order to delineate the underlying ideological relation currently allowing
psychoanalysis to consider itself a judge of political thinking. Finally, &
we confront this ideological position with a schematic theory of the C
compossibility between fields, a different way of conceiving the non-

Lacanian
R
relation between forms of thought which does not continue to reproduce I
T
this problematic articulation. I
Q

Psychoanalysis and
Key-words: WAP, crisis, non-relation, compossibility U
E

/
1. Lacanian revolutions Volume 6 /

Politics after 2017

Lacan’s answer to the political militants who interpellated him during his Issue 1
seminar in Vincennes, on December 1969, is well-known:

“the revolutionary aspiration has only one possible way of

ending, only one: always with the discourse of the Master,
as experience has already shown. What you aspire to as
revolutionaries is a Master. You shall have one!”1

Gabriel Tupinambá
Years later, in Television, Lacan would further ratify the intensity of
his original reproach: “They got on my back, which was the fashion
at the time. I had to take a stand” - and extract from the effects of his
intervention the correctness of his stance: “A stand whose truth was so
clear that they've been crowding into my seminar ever since. Preferring
my cool, after all, to the crack of the whip”2.
However, it is quite remarkable that, three years prior to the
famous “incident” at Vincennes, Lacan had been adopting a rather
different position with regards to the “revolutionary aspiration”. In his
Response to philosophy students, from 1966, he declared: “in order to
avoid any misunderstanding, take note that I consider that psychoanalysis
has no right to interpret the revolutionary practice”3. But if it was not
psychoanalysis which had the right to interpret revolutionary practice,
who was it that interpreted the desire of revolutionaries, three years
later, at Vincennes? A man called Jacques Lacan, of course. In fact, it
is quite easy place ourselves in Lacan's shoes, losing his temper, trying
to captivate the interest of a young audience in his complex theories,

1 Lacan 2007, p. 207

2 Lacan 2001, p.534

3 Ibid, p. 208

341 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017

but being constantly interrupted and made fun of. It does not take much C and psychoanalysis, and his long letters to Lacan on the problem of C
R R
- certainly no psychoanalyst - to call a group of disorderly teenagers a I constructing a theory for the clinical practice, the Marxist philosopher I
bunch of hysterics searching for a leader. S was also crucial in helping Lacan to reestablish his teaching in a new S
What should grab our attention here is rather how Lacan did not I academic setting and with a new audience. It should not come as a I
S S
interpret the situation: how could he not realize that, by “crowding” surprise, then, that Althusser was sufficiently implicated in Lacan’s
into his seminar, these students had already chosen their master - & institutional trajectory to intervene, almost twenty years later, at the time &
precisely the one who had ascribed some meaning to their desire? Here C
of the dissolution of the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP). In 1980, during C
psychoanalysis is effectively at stake, but not as a clinical praxis so R a gathering in which the dissolution of the school was to be voted by its R
much as an ideological resource which allows us, psychoanalysts, to I members, Althusser asked to speak in order to denounce that there was I
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distinguish the delirious desire of revolutionaries, supposedly trapped I something strange in the way the vote was being dealt with, as if Lacan I
in an “imaginary” circuit, from the purported truth-effects of an out of Q had performed an “analytic act”, which should then be “worked through” Q
place analytic intervention: “a stand whose truth was so clear” that led U by the remaining members of the institution, when in fact there was a U
E E
revolutionaries to abandon their aspirations for a master and come crowd political and juridical process in course, one in which the founder of the
Lacan’s seminar! / organisation did not have any more say than anyone else8. What should /
If it is true that “wild interpretations” outside of a clinical setting Volume 6 /
surprise us, perhaps, is how easily Althusser’s old students, as well as Volume 6 /
usually say more about the interpreter than about the one being Issue 1 Lacan himself, disregarded his intervention - even interpreting it as a sign Issue 1
interpreted, then it might be useful to utilize this preambule as a point of his poorly resolved transferential relation with Lacan9.
of inflexion, leaving aside the question of a Lacanian theory of political What makes this 18 year interval between the foundation and the
revolution in order to focus a bit more on the revolutionary cycles of dissolution of the EFP so significant is, of course, its repetition: in 1998,
Lacanian psychoanalysis itself. The term “revolutionary cycle” does the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP), founded by Jacques-
imply here some of the irony that Lacan ascribed to it - when comparing Alain Miller in 1992, reached a critical point and split into two fields:
political transformations and astral orbits4 - but it is employed more the WAP, still led by Miller, and the International Forum of the Lacanian
in the sense of the “cyclical crises” of which Marxists speak, or of the Field, under the guidance of Colette Soler. The irony of finding, within
“economic cycles” of Kondratieff and Kuznets, which correspond to more psychoanalysis, the same dramatic scissions, the same accusations of
or less determinate temporal sequences of productivity and subsequent revisionism and the same mixture of personal and theoretical disputes
economic stagnation. In fact, the history of Lacanian psychoanalysis which are so easily recognised in Leftist political organisations -
displays a cycle of more or less 18 years, and which now undergoes the problems which psychoanalysts in fact commonly evoke as justification
closure of its fourth turn: 1963, 1981, 1998 and - as we will argue here to keep away from the “neurosis” of political militancy - might have been
- 2017. Approximately every 18 years a new institutional crisis takes so evident that no one bothered to reflect upon it. Nevertheless, it is
place within Lacanian psychoanalysis5, followed by a new debate on the again in Althusser’s work that we find a theoretical anticipation of this
articulation between politics and psychoanalysis - and, curiously enough, tragicomical solidarity between Marxism and psychoanalysis. Already
a new reference to the figure of Louis Althusser. in 1978, in a text called Marx and Freud10, he described how the tendency
The tensions at stake in Lacan’s so-called “excommunication” within Marxist and psychoanalytic institutions to undergo a movement
from the Societé Française de Psychoanalyse (SFP), in 1963, are well- of “truth-revision-scission” was in fact an effect of the constitutive and
known6 and, even at the time, the political dimension of his conflict paradoxical structure of each field, an effect of their status as “conflictual
with the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) did not escape sciences”.
Althusser7. Besides the seminars and articles dedicated to Lacan If Althusser was no longer with us by 1998, there was still - and
perhaps more active than ever - a movement, initiated around the time
of the EFP’s foundation, in 1963, which remained faithful to his project
4 Ibidem, p. 420

5 In the following analysis, we will focus on the trajectory that connects the SFP, the EFP, the ECF, the
Forum of Lacanian Schools and the WAP - even if the actual ecosystem of Lacanian School is rather 8 Obid, p.125
vast and pulverised.
9 Althusser reports that his intervention was met with a blunt interpretation by one of the presents:
6 Roudinesco 1997 “One may wonder on which couch you are in order to speak as you do”, Althusser 1999, p.182

7 Althusser 1999, p.151 10 Althusser 1999

342 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 343 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
of never accepting psychoanalysis or Marxism such as they currently C in the critique of the political positions of other Leftists - such as the C
R R
present themselves, constantly forcing them to be rethought in the light I already famous diagnosis of the “narcissism of the lost causes” - a I
of their interactions. Even Jacques-Alain Miller himself had defended S dangerous syllogism was proposed: (I) psychoanalysis depends on S
this project for a certain time11, as have many others, who continued I freedom of speech, (II) only the State of Law guarantees this freedom, I
S S
on this path long after the Cahiers and after Miller himself moved in (III) both the radical Right as the radical Left are willing to suspend the
another direction. This is the movement to which diverse names such as & State of Law, hence (IV) to defend the practice of psychoanalysis is to &
Alain Badiou, Michel Pecheaux, Chantal Mouffe, Luce Irigaray, Ernesto C
fight against both of these political fields14. C
Laclau, Jorge Alemán, Judith Butler, David-Pavón Cuellar, Slavoj Žizžk, R The institutional mobilisation by the ECF around the affirmation R
Alenka Zupančič, as well as many others, belong: a heterogeneous I that there is only one political position that is coherent with the I
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set of philosophers, psychoanalysts and political militants who have I “discourse of the analyst” marks a new sequence in the history of I
maintained a theoretical basis in both Lacan and Marx, and who have Q Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is surely undeniable that the last two Q
further investigated the project of extracting lessons from psychoanalysis U decades were filled with a myriad of public polemics involving prominent U
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for emancipatory politics, while always reassessing, through philosophy figures from the WAP and other Lacanian schools, but their positions
and psychoanalysis, the political legacy of the XXth Century. So it might / were as debatable as those of any other public figure, coming down, in /
also not be a coincidence that, at the same time in which the crisis of Volume 6 /
most cases, to provincial quarrels. However, even if we are not short Volume 6 /
the WAP came to the fore in 1998 - and without this split demanding any Issue 1 of examples of situations in which the institutional apparatus of the Issue 1
reevaluation of the political dimension of psychoanalysis on the part of Lacanian schools was put to an ambiguous use as means of giving further
Lacanians - the popularity of this heterogeneous movement of thinkers visibility to a personal political position - only to repeat the problem of
of Lacanian inspiration reached its peak. The missed encounter between mixing personal and institutional dimensions which has accompanied
politics and psychoanalysis was staged at this new scansion point once both psychoanalysis and political organisations for ages - this had never
again: Lacanian institutions, ever more worried about protecting their led, until now, to a concrete politics of re-orientation of the WAP as a
clinical orientations - but to protect them from whom?, it should be whole.
asked - observed with outright despise and distrust the popularisation In the beginning of 2017, the WAP created an international forum
of Lacan’s ideas and their absorption by the Left, as if nothing useful for to internally debate the political orientation of Lacanian analysts around
psychoanalysis could come from this process. the world15. In the submission form to partake in the forum, one can find
This brings us, finally, to the present. In 2017, the École de la an explicit clause claiming that analysts who are affiliated to a political
Cause Freudienne decided to position itself - not as a group of public party or movement are not allowed to participate16. At the same time,
intellectuals, but as an institution - against the candidacy of Marine Le psychoanalysts who have been engaging with party politics at their
Pen in the French presidential elections. Several activities were planned own risk have been “denounced” by the WAP as perverting the truly
and an “Anti-Le Pen front”12 was created by the ECF, who also promoted “coherent” form of political participation of an analyst - which has led, for
the circulation of a petition against the reactionary candidate13. But the exemple, to the circulation of a petition against the presence of a famous
concern with her possible election did not only justify the mobilisation of Italian Lacanian psychoanalyst in a school for the formation of political
the School’s institutional apparatus, it was also used as a way to delimit, militants within the democratic party in Italy17. Analysts in Spain and in
within the political field, the idea of a certain transitivity between the Argentina, who have directly or indirectly participated in Leftist populist
defence of psychoanalysis and the defence of the neoliberal candidate movements, were accused of “unconsciously” desiring the suspension
Emmanuel Macron: to criticise Le Pen was not enough, it was also of the State of Law - and, therefore, of desiring the consequences that
necessary not to support Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the centre-left candidate, this suspension has historically led to, such as the persecution of Jews18.
and, most of all, to avoid the nostalgic universe of the radical Left. And
besides the abundant use of psychoanalytic-inspired interpretations
14 Miller 2017a

15 Material on the “La movida Zadig” Forum can be found at http://lacaniannet.weebly.com/

11 Hallward & Peden 2012
16 The submission form can be read at: http://lacaniannet.weebly.com/sinscrire.html
12 http://www.causefreudienne.net/event/forum-anti-le-pen/
17 Focchi 2017
13 Lacan Quotidien n.632: Appel des Psychanalystes contre Marine Le Pen - available at: https://www.
lacanquotidien.fr/blog/2017/03/lacan-quotidien-n-632/ 18 Miller 2017b and Miller-Rose & Roy 2017

344 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 345 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
In Slovenia, an absurd and slanderous campaign, explicitly supported by C situation, some indifferent to it, while others still reserve their critiques C
R R
the WAP and its publications, is currently in place against Slavoj Žižek I to the private sphere, having already become accustomed to working I
and the School of Theoretical Psychoanalysis, accusing them of having S through these conflicts outside of the public domain21. S
hindered the development of “true” clinical psychoanalysis in the region, I It remains to be seen how many of us - sufficiently distant from I
S S
due to their political and theoretical commitments to socialism19. At the the seductive episode at Vincennes so as not to forget Lacan’s previous
same time in which these and other actions are being promoted, the & position regarding revolutionary practice - will feel motivated by this new &
WAP has created new platforms for debating the political orientation C
historical scansion to question what underlying impasses in Lacanian C
of Lacanian psychoanalysis - which also means the creation of filters, R theory might have led, or at least allowed, for this sort of dangerous R
determined by the institution itself, as to who gets to participate in these I political appropriation, and to investigate what kind of new alliance I
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discussions. In one of these publications, we find the following interview I between psychoanalysis and revolutionary politics is necessary today in I
with Jacques-Alain Miller: Q order to meet the challenges of this new conjuncture. Q
U Our own wager is that there are structural reasons for the current U
E E
“Pandora’s box has been opened for too long! We have now Žižek, predicament of Lacanian psychoanalysis, amongst them its supposedly
who “žižekianises” Lacan, using the rudiments of a doctrine that I / political effects, which is why a preliminary process of disarticulation /
have taught him in my seminar. We have Badiou, who “badiouanizes” Volume 6 /
between the two fields is necessary if we want to break out of this Volume 6 /
Lacan, which is not good at all. It is time to close once again Issue 1 repetitive cycle. However, as we will see, this process of disentanglement Issue 1
Pandora’s box. Now that the analysts of the ECF have been convoked does not entail that we are no longer allowed to conceive of a political
to take the streets and to position themselves as psychoanalysts in dimension to psychoanalysis. Rather, it prepares the ground for us to
the political debate, carrying the flag of the State of Law against the recognise the absolutely ordinary status psychoanalysis acquires when
heirs of the Counter-Revolution, those who amuse themselves with considered politically. Despite all the specificities of the analytic clinical
Lacan’s toys, for the pleasure of mesmerised audiences and who tour practice, and all the important consequences that the existence of
American universities with pseudo-communist threats, need to drop psychoanalysis entails for other fields of thought, one of the crucial
it, or change their tune. Laughs are over! As Lacan would say”20 insights we can extract from the current crisis of Lacanian institutions
is that the time has come for us to see psychoanalysis under a new
This was the year of 2017: the end of the cycle, initiated in 1998, of a more light, one which combines the affirmation that psychoanalysis is not in
or less stable disarticulation between psychoanalysis and its political itself political with the recognition that, from the political standpoint,
interpreters, but also the beginning of a new phase in its history, one in psychoanalysis is subjected to all the regular ideological, geopolitical
which we can no longer laugh at the missed encounters between Lacanian and economic constraints that organize our contemporary social world.
psychoanalysis and politics. It has now become undeniable the possibility If it becomes impossible to simply derive from psychoanalytic theory
that a Lacanian institution might make use of its theoretical framework as the basis for its political positions, we are then invited to recognise the
means to reject, slander, segregate and delegitimise - the irony! - precisely autonomy of political thinking itself and to confront the same challenge
the intellectuals and militants who have found, usually outside of the small that engages us all when deciding how to orient ourselves and our
province of Europe, the need and means to continue the program of the institutions within the political world. To fight for political novelty - in
Cahiers pour l’Analyse, in search of a new articulation of psychoanalysis psychoanalysis as elsewhere - is ultimately a political struggle, one that
and Marxism. Most of them, in fact, directly associate themselves to the cannot avoid a direct confrontation with political ideas.
post-Althusserian legacy, who after all returns once more to the stage. But before we can begin to sketch what such a (non) relation
And the recognition that this new use of Lacanian psychoanalysis is between politics and psychoanalysis could look like, let us first step
possible is further reinforced by the silence with which it was met amongst back and contextualize the saturation of the previous cycle, from 1998 to
Lacanian intellectuals and analysts - some quite satisfied with the 2017, within the long history of articulations between psychoanalysis and
politics, as this will help to clarify the basic premises of this project.

19 Nina Krajnik - the main spokesperson of this campaign - has an illustrative interview in Gilbert
201=7, but we can also find other articles, with sensationalist titles such as “The Truth about Žižek”,
or “Žižek, the Fraud”, in WAP’s official publication Lacan Quotidien: https://www.lacanquotidien.fr/ 21 One of the few serious public responses of intellectuals who were not directly cited by Miller in
blog/2017/06/lacan-quotidien-n-720/ this polemic (as it was the case with Jorge Alemán) came from David Pavón-Cuellar - who chose
however to focus on “millerian” politics, rather than on the underlying structural problem which
20 Miller-Rose & Roy 2017žŽižek,ni,framework. See Badiou, Tupinambá lar 2017b10 determines it, Pavón-Cuellar 2017b

346 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 347 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
 2. A brief history of the relations between psychoanalysis C Nonetheless, even if he never disregarded the enormous influence of C
R R
and politics I collectivity in the genesis and maintenance of individuality, Freud’s I
It is possible to divide the history of the relations between psychoanalytic S research led him to consider the relations which individuals establish S
theory and Marxism into at least three distinct sequences, roughly I with their social environments - be those familial, religious or political I
S S
speaking22. - as being active ingredients in their libidinal economies, and, therefore,
In a first moment, we have the autonomous theories of Marx & as relations that can be distorted by our own expectations of personal &
and Freud themselves: trajectories which, given the very amplitude of C
satisfaction. Because of this, even if Freud never denied the necessity C
their respective projects, had to ultimately cross and contrast. It is not R of social change, the Freudian perspective challenges Marx and all R
our purpose to reconstruct these tensions here, but it is not difficult I revolutionaries to show that their worldview and strategic vision are not I
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to recognise that, rather than composing a harmonic whole - as if, on I conditioned by unrealistic expectations of well-being and social harmony. I
Marx’s side, we had a theory of society and, on Freud’s, a theory of Q In other words, the intersection between these two autonomous Q
individuals - it is the very superposition of the two authors which prevents U projects, far from uniting them, comports a series of quite abstract U
E E
the establishment of any direct compatibility between them: Marx had conceptual challenges, given that none of the two fields directly
his own theory of individuality and psychism, while Freud had his own / depended on the other in order to continue its own development. This /
concept of culture, civilisation and social structure. Volume 6 /
“disarticulation-by-superposition” is quite distinct from the association Volume 6 /
The work of Marx is evidently centred on politics and economics, Issue 1 between psychoanalysis and Marxism which characterises the following Issue 1
and his theories adopt a point of view which allow us to think the internal sequence, which might be called - in a very broad sense, and not
logic of a world in which social exchange and social reproduction are without some conceptual loss - the “Freudo-Marxist” period. By this
almost exclusively organised by commodity exchange - leading to the denomination, usually restricted to the project of the Frankfurt School,
commodification of labor, money and natural resources. But we also a very general theoretical strategy is being singled out, one which
find here several contributions concerning individuality - both in what includes thinkers who sometimes have almost nothing in common: the
concerns the social constitution and reproduction of individuals under project of developing a critical framework that would unite both Marxism
capitalism as well as to the pathological dimension which accompanies and psychoanalysis and which would mobilize both Freud and Marx in
these specific social constraints. However, even if Marx clearly the attempt to understand a common object or phenomena whose very
recognised the value and importance of individuality in a new society, existence would require the simultaneous adoption of both points of view.
he opposes it to the idea of individualism, that is, to bourgeois ideology An important example of this sort of object, which would require the
and the centrality of personal satisfaction through the consumption of elaboration of such general critical theoretical standpoint, was the failure
commodities. For Marx, no great change in the social determinations of of the Weimar revolution in 1919. According to a somewhat orthodox
our world could come from an exclusively individualist transformation, reading of Marxist theory, a socialist revolution should find a more fertile
tailored to the measure of personal consumption. On account of this, the ground in more advanced capitalist countries. However, even with the
Marxist perspective challenges Freud and psychoanalysts into showing instability created by the war, even with a politicised worker’s movement,
that the transformations promoted by the analytic theory and clinic do with strong leaderships, and even with the productive forces in Germany
not merely aim to adequate its patients to the constraints of bourgeois offering effective means of a greater socialisation of wealth, still the
society. promise of a socialist revolution gave way, instead, to a republican
On the other hand, we have Freud’s writings, which investigate the constitution with restricted popular participation and, right after it, to
psychic apparatus and the process through which each one constitutes the rise of nazi-fascism. Different aspects of this perplexing situation
themselves as individuated beings, with their own identities and their suggested the need to complement Marxism with a psychoanalytic view,
own modes of satisfaction and suffering. However, throughout his study since the analytic concepts seemed to increment the understanding of
of the psychic “interior”, Freud never ceased to highlight the fundamental the ideology and culture of the middle classes, the enigmatic logic of the
role of external elements in this process of individuation: natural aspects, masses, the dangerous fascination with authority and the notable effects
pertaining to the organic and physiological structure of humans, as well of the instrumentalisation of reason.
as social ones, such as the role of culture, customs and familial relations. It is important to note that the idea that this renewed encounter
between Freud and Marx was in fact required by these social phenomena
themselves did not only lead to a program of theoretical unification, but
22 A beautiful work of reconstruction of the nuances of this long history can be found in Pavón-Cuél- also allowed for different strands of Freud-Marxism to find a formal place
lar 2017, a book which I have reviewed elsewhere, Tupinambá 2017, pp.752-763

348 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 349 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
within academic institutions. The Frankfurt School, associated with the C grasp and transform. Once the unconscious and political economy were C
R R
Institute for Social Research of the Frankfurt University, was founded in I decoupled as theoretical objects, what was left as a common ground I
1923 and, even if many of the thinkers connected to it did not share the S was only a similar epistemological statute, that of being “conflictual S
same view of what this “critical theory” would be, they still shared the I sciences” - sciences whose objects of investigation include aspects of I
S S
affirmation that it was the very objects of research which brought about the very science which seeks to apprehend them, which is, in fact, the
the need to articulate Freud and Marx23. & reason why both fields would present similar institutional histories, &
From abstract challenges to common objects, the history of this C
filled with scissions, internal conflicts and new organisations, constantly C
articulation can be punctuated yet a third time, insofar as thinkers R immersed in internal debates and processes of revision. This common R
such as Louis Althusser or Jacques Lacan countered the previous I method allowed Althusser to identify, in each of these fields, internal I
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view and proposed, in different ways, the emptying out of any positive I problems and open questions and, through this, to initiate a process I
interconnection between psychoanalysis and Marxism, allowing only for Q of theoretical reform which did not presuppose that the solutions to Q
certain structural isomorphisms between these theoretical perspectives. U outstanding impasses already lay dormant somewhere in the writings U
E E
If the failure of the Weimar revolution, and the subsequent rise of of its founding fathers. In the case of psychoanalysis, for example,
fascism, informed the Freudo-Marxist research program, we can surely / Althusser considered that the Freudian theory of sublimation had not yet /
associate the failure of the “de-Stalinization” of Marxism to the political Volume 6 /
found its proper formulation, up to the measure of Freud’s own rigor. In Volume 6 /
and theoretical project of Althusser24. The famous twentieth congress Issue 1 the case of Marx, a series of open and fundamental problems could then Issue 1
of the Soviet Communist Party, in 1956, put on the agenda of a whole be tackled, such as the development of a materialist theory of ideology,
generation of European Marxists the need of settling accounts with a new comprehension of historical causality, a new view of the role of
“Marxism-Leninism”. The so-called “secret report”, presented by Nikita theory with regards to political strategy and practice, to name a few.
Khrushchev, denouncing the horrors of the Soviet regime under Stalin, It is also worth noting that the problems with interested Althusser
made common knowledge the already known limits of the Soviet project were, usually, formulated as epistemological obstacles internal to the
and led many Marxists to find ways to distance themselves from the very theoretical fields which he so ardently defended, rather than as new
official interpretation of Marx - for example, seeking in his early writings social phenomena - even if the crisis of Soviet Marxism, the challenges of
the basis for a more humanistic view of political action. Althusser’s Maoist cultural revolution and the anti-colonial struggles were undeniable
project could be defined as the one which, identifying both the irreflexive influences in his project. The fact that these problems were considered
adoption of Marxism-Leninism as well as its humanistic revision as essentially theoretical obstacles to be overcome by an appropriate
equally problematic deviations, found in the question of the method25 - theoretical method also allowed Althusser to remain within an academic
rather than in some new social object - the basis for reformulating the environment. However, given that these impasses did not correspond to
Marxist theory, a method which, for Althusser, could also be recognised in well-defined sociological objects, but to the need of establishing new
Freud’s thinking. positions within the conflictual realities of psychoanalysis and Marxism,
For Althusser, psychoanalysis and Marxism share no common Althusser was equally obliged to remain connected to the psychoanalytic
object: the first deals with the critique of the “homo psicologicus”, and political organisations of his time - as demonstrated by his
while the latter deals with the critique of the “homo economicus" - and engagement with Lacan’s EFP and the French Communist Party.
even if the ideology of psychology feeds economic ideology, and vice- Lacan, like Althusser, also argued that psychoanalysis and Marxism
versa, these are in fact totally distinct conceptual fields26. However, for had no common objects, and he also claimed that the revitalisation
him both fields make use of a common method: both are materialist of the psychoanalytic movement was conditioned by the traversal of
discourses, which seek to know reality through means that are irreducible obstacles that were internal to its own theory and practice. Still, and
to individual experience, and both are dialectical discourses, in which even if it is not possible to underplay the effect that the Second World
the subject is immersed in the world which she seeks to conceptually War had on his work, the “historical failures” which explicitly mobilised
Lacan’s teaching were rather the “social decline of the paternal imago”
23 The canonical work on the history of the Frankfurt School remains Jay 1996
- a transformation which required psychoanalysis to let go of some
theoretical presuppositions hindering the update of clinical practice - and
24 Elliot 2009 the decadence of the International Psychoanalytic Association, which had
25 Althusser, 2006 and 2016 allowed for the revision and outright neutralisation of Freud’s greatest
26 We refer here, once more, to the essay Marx and Freud in Althusser, 1999

350 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 351 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
insights27. This double challenge led Lacan, on the one hand, to consider C it is possible to imagine - and, effectively, to invent - new indirect ways C
R R
in innovative ways how both contingency and social structures affect I to relate them. It is under the orientation of this immediate non-relation I
the constitution of subjectivity and, on the other, to reconstruct Freud’s S between Freud and Marx that we should therefore understand, for S
theoretical apparatus in such a way as to avoid the same conceptual traps I example, the project of the Circle D’Épistemologie, which joined together I
S S
that led to the psychologising revisions of the IPA. young Lacanians and Althusserians, like Jacques-Alain Miller and Alain
Unlike Althusser, however, Lacan did not claim that Marxism and & Badiou31. &
psychoanalysis shared a common method, rather asserting that there C
The attempt of the “young Miller” to propose a mediation between C
was a “homology” in the “logical space’ mobilised by both fields28. R the discourse of historical overdetermination, in Althusser, and the R
That is, both Freud and Marx would have considered the same logical I discourse of unconscious overdetermination, in Lacan, through formal I
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paradox in their theories on libidinal satisfaction and surplus-value, I logic and a critique of the Frege's project is a paradigmatic example of I
respectively - even if these two theories do not deal with the same object, Q the effort to produce “ruled transformations” between the two fields Q
nor do it in a similar way. Still, if, on the one hand, Lacan claimed that U - here, through a philosophy of science of Bachelardian inspiration32. U
E E
this underling recognition of a fundamental paradox at the heart of the Another example would be the position of Slavoj Žižek, who sought
logic of representation led both Freud and Marx “not to bullshit”29, on the / to substitute the mediation through formal logic for an innovative use /
other, Lacan recognised an essential asymmetry between psychoanalysis Volume 6 /
of Hegelian dialectics, proposing a “borromean knotting” between Volume 6 /
and Marxism: while psychoanalysis would fully assume the structural Issue 1 philosophy, politics and psychoanalysis, so that not only the relations Issue 1
role of this paradox - leading, for example, to a universal theory of the between Freud and Marx ought to be mediated by Hegel, but also the
“discontent” in civilisation - Marxism, which theorised it as the specific relations between Hegel and Marx should go through Freudian theory,
characteristic of a particular historical period, would remain attached to and so on33. The same can be said of the project of mediating the relations
the illusions its overcoming and the coming into being of absolute social between psychoanalysis and Marxism through a theory of hegemony
harmony.30 and discursivity, as in the work of Laclau e Mouffe34, or of the project of
Althusser and Lacan demarcate, in this way, the beginning of a reclaiming the challenges of a general ontology while respecting the
new phase in the articulations between Freud and Marx, a sequence autonomy of “generic procedures” such as psychoanalysis and Marxism,
characterised, paradoxically, by the non-relation between the two. For as with Alain Badiou35. The examples abound and, as never before, they
Althusser, this lack of articulation opened up mostly to epistemological extrapolate the confines of Western Europe36.
questions, given that the theoretical reformulation of each field relied on Another property shared by these different projects is their
a total separation of their objects, while requiring them to recognise the increasing distance from any organised institutional project - political
immanent contradictions to their theoretical and practical apparatuses. or psychoanalytic. Besides the complex relations with the academia
For Lacan, this “non-relation” had an eminently ontological status, - increasingly distrustful of both psychoanalysis and Marxism - these
so that the only admissible conceptual solidarity between Freud and thinkers have generally placed themselves at a certain distance from
Marx concerned the very “topology” of the representational space, a political parties as well as from the analytic schools, contributing to
feature both of libidinal and political economies, while the asymmetric the mutual distrust between “clinical” psychoanalysts - increasingly
treatment given to this ontological impasse in each field justified the concerned with the “purity” of Lacanian thinking - and those who
psychoanalyst’s underlying distrust in revolutionary aspirations. continued the project of articulating psychoanalysis and politics
This sequence was both accompanied by a call to the “return” - increasingly frustrated with academia, institutions and political
to the original positioning of Freud and Marx - given that both authors organisations. This distance was clearly recognisable at the time
invested in a similar immediate separation between psychoanalysis and
politics - as well as a new sort of invitation or conceptual challenge: if
31 Hallward & Peden 2012
there is no direct relation between psychoanalysis and Marxism, then
32 Ibid

27 Roudinesco 1997 33 Žižek 1989

28 Lacan 2008 34 Laclau, & Mouffe 1985

29 Lacan 1999 35 Badiou 1982

30 Lacan 2007 36 Pavón-Cuéllar 2017a

352 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 353 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
of the crisis of 1998, when the separation between the institutional C critical of identifications - as the rituals of seduction amongst Laconians C
R R
impasses of the WAP and the thinkers interested in the relation between I attest to everyday. In other words, it is part of the very paradigm of I
psychoanalysis and politics led to a near-absolute theoretical silence S Lacanian thinking, certainly due to the collateral effects of its mission to S
about that institutional scission. I recuperate the subversive edge of Freud against later revisions, to treat I
S S
all strategies of defence against the real as intromissions coming from
3. Lacanian ideology & outside of the “proper psychoanalytic” practice. &
This rather brute overview of the history of the relations between C
At the same time Lacanian theory expanded in unheard ways C
psychoanalysis and Marxism clearly does not consider the near infinite R the clinical and theoretical reach of psychoanalysis, it also removed R
ramifications, anticipations of later moments, persistences of previous I from the proper practice of analysis the legitimate existence of I
T T
paradigms, and important exceptions that would most certainly enrich I identificatory and hierarchical structures without which it would have I
this panorama. But it is quite sufficient for our purposes, as it allow us Q been impossible to found a school, and much less to internationalise it. Q
to make two introductory observations concerning the current Lacanian U The very act of dissolving the EFP can be read in this same key: what U
E E
ideology. most likely perplexed Althusser, after all, was the way Lacan reduced the
Before anything else, our attempt to localize Lacan as one of / organisational problem of an institution - whose social network extended /
the great proponents of a new way of articulating Freud and Marx, Volume 6 /
not only to the main “cadres” and the remaining analysts, but also to Volume 6 /
psychoanalysis and politics, also implied the inscription of the previous Issue 1 the analysands and their families - to a narcissistic decision, as if the Issue 1
analysis of the “cyclical crises” of Lacanian organisations within a “ossification” of his teaching was an offensive and unexpected process,
more general theoretical paradigm. This begs the question, then, of the the product of tendencies external to psychoanalysis itself 37 Rather than
relation between the paradigm of the “non-relation” - and, specially, demonstrate the capacity of the analytic position to remove itself from
the asymmetric treatment given by Lacan to analytic and revolutionary identifications, the dissolution of the EFP would then serve as a good
aspirations - and the limitations of the Lacanian field when thinking about example of how the process of dis-identification can perfectly function
its own social, economic and political existence. as just another social identity, precisely when the “real” of a situation
In fact, if, on the one hand, Lacan sought to preserve the structural required psychoanalysts to respond like any other collective organisation
dimension of the “sexual non-relation”, such as conceived by Freud, and to engage with organisational challenges as anyone would - that is,
and thereby using the “realist” severity of psychoanalysis to counter the politically38. And it is precisely this other face of the real - not as cause of
utopian and delirious aspirations of non-psychoanalysts - that is, if he desire, but as its consistent support - that remains beyond the theoretical
identified psychoanalysis as the discourse which is capable of abstaining limits of Lacanian psychoanalysis, insofar as “consistency”39 has been
itself from this mirage - it is then perfectly understandable that the reduced within its theoretical framework to an imaginary effect and
identification process within the Lacanian field takes place in opposition therefore has no place within the “analytic discourse”.
to the dramas of group formations, mastery and institutionalisation in This brings us to the second crucial observation, which also stems
general. The very way in which Lacan named his formulas for discursive from the effort of situating, within the paradigm of “non-relation”, the
structures - the discourse of the “analyst”, of the “master”, of the new moment of the WAP, since 2017 - which, as we previously described
“university” and of the “hysteric” - suggests that within psychoanalysis it, can be defined by the institutional proposition of a transitivity between
there is no threat of imaginarization or identificatory sutures: when these the analytic and the political positions. It is, however, not a matter of
effects emerge, we are already in another discourse, which supposedly
describes not psychoanalysis, but its “others”. The structures we
consider to be more “productive”, such as discourse of the analyst or the 37 Lacan’s position is particularly clear in his text Monsieur Aa, written just after Althusser’s inter-
vention, where Lacan talks about the transformation of psychoanalysts into “jurists” and negatively
hysteric, take on names that refer them back to the analytic framework, compares the School to a trade union - as well as makes some dismissive remarks about Althusser
while “unproductive” or outright demonised discourses - of the master - the text is available at: http://espace.freud.pagesperso-orange.fr/topos/psycha/psysem/dissolu9.
and the university - take on the name of political or academic instances. htm#monsieur%20A
But none of this alters the fact that this theory of the four discourses was 38 Yuan Yao and I have analysed the details of this dialectics between identification and dis-identifi-
elaborated by psychoanalysis itself, and that the objects and situations cation in the case of the EFP’s dissolution in Tupinambá & Yao 2013
it legitimately refers to all take place within the clinical, institutional and 39 Already in 1979, Alain Badiou warned us that the philosophical and epistemological presupposi-
conceptual universe of psychoanalysis. Nor does it alter the fact that tions of psychoanalysis could lead to unsurpassable obstacles for the Lacanian theory of the real,
it remains perfectly possible for one to identify with a discourse that is whose effects could be minimal in clinical practice, but were palpable when psychoanalysis sought to
think political processes within its own framework. See Badiou 1982

354 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 355 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
contrasting the paradigm of a non-relation between psychoanalysis and C 4. After the non-relation C
R R
politics and this immediate identity between clinical practice and the I However, what could it mean to think once again Lacanian I
defence of the State of Law, currently upheld by the WAP, but rather of S psychoanalysis? That is, how could we abdicate, as psychoanalysts, from S
recognising that the latter is only possible under the auspices of the first. It I the standpoint of psychoanalysis such as it exists today, without thereby I
S S
is perfectly coherent with the Lacanian paradigm the fantasy that, if only leaving our own field? To remain within the schematic considerations
psychoanalysis is capable of dealing with the constitutive dimension of & we have sketched in this study, let us consider the different ways in &
our discontent - which is why not even the analytic method is shared by C
which psychoanalysis can position itself with regards to other fields - C
psychoanalysis and political thinking - then only psychoanalysis can truly R generalizing some insights already gained in our periodisation of the R
guide contemporary politics. This realisation could help to clarify, in fact, I relations between Freud and Marx, while signalling a possible alternative I
T T
the symptomatic dimension of the justification so commonly presented I route to our current predicament. I
by so many psychoanalysts as to why one should keep a distance from the Q Let us consider, then, the four general orientations through which Q
tradition of emancipatory politics, as well as from collective organisations: U psychoanalysis might articulate itself to other practices and fields of U
E E
on the one hand, it is said that “clinical work is already politics”, thus thought.
recognising the importance of politics and social transformation, on / /
the other, all other forms of political work are to be avoided because Volume 6 /
A. Unilateral contribution. A first possible strategy here is to Volume 6 /
politics itself cannot avoid trying to suture, harmonize or overcome our Issue 1 claim that the psychoanalytic field has access to a certain dimension Issue 1
constitutive discontent. In other words, once the asymmetry between the of life which, despite only being intelligible from within the analytic
analytic procedure and concrete political practices is established, given frame, has relevant consequences for other fields and practices. For
that only the former “touches on the real”, while the latter covers it up with example, psychoanalysis alone is capable of considering the libidinal
idealisations, the autonomy of psychoanalytic thinking becomes no longer dimension of group identifications, while politics, which would be
a regionally defined - that is, it no longer needs to respect the limits of attached to an underlying commitment to ideals, cannot articulate by
its legitimate application - and becomes generalised, as if it could set the itself a critique of ideals - hence psychoanalysis would have something
criteria of validity of any other field of thought, politics especially. to add to the political field. Here politics is thought from the standpoint
In light of this interpretation - in which the supposed monopoly of psychoanalysis: there is nothing of the analytic practice or theory at
of “the real” by psychoanalysis leads it to simultaneously reject and stake in this contribution, the object of intervention - political practice - is
identify with political practice - it also becomes quite clear why the French localised outside of the analytic domain.
presidential election ended up prompting the political campaign of the
WAP. Let us imagine a victory of Le Pen, the right-wing candidate: the very B. Correlation. It is also possible to propose a less asymmetrical
fact that nothing would change for psychoanalytic practice would depose articulation between the two. One might recognise, for example,
against the fantasy that clinical work is, by itself, committed to some some similarity between specific aspects of both fields, allowing the
subversive political effect. It was necessary therefore, to fight against her psychoanalyst to orient herself by it when taking a political stance.
candidacy, but not due to what it would change for France, but because of The paradigmatic case here is probably that of democracy: insofar as
what it would leave exactly in its place. Lacanian psychoanalysis would Lacanian psychoanalysis claims to orient itself clinically by the singular
survive unharmed to her government, what could rather not survive was and radical alterity of each subject’s mode of enjoyment, and insofar as
the fantasy concerning the immanent politic effects of the psychoanalytic democracy is associated to the construction of a heterogeneous social
clinic. It is not a surprise, then, that instead of a grand institutional “act”, space in which divergent and even contradictory positions co-exist, there
what we witnessed was rather a massive staging of this very fantasy: the would be a certain correlation between the analytical orientation and the
time had come for psychoanalysts to position themselves politically as fight for democracy. To defend democracy is a compatible commitment for
psychoanalysts. a psychoanalysts, just as psychoanalysis is a practice that is in dialogue
It is up to us now to inscribe this new moment in the history of the with the challenges of democracy - preparing individual subjects to deal
relations between psychoanalysis and politics, just as other historical with the alterity of others, with the empty centre of power or with the
events which led us to rethink this articulation and to recognise new arbitrariness of social representations.
scansions within this process - that is, it is up to us to inscribe this
moment as a historical failure, perhaps the first one which Lacanians have C. Separation. There are also strategies which invest in the negative
no “other” to blame. articulation between psychoanalysis and its others. One might argue, for

356 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 357 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
instance, that psychoanalysis simply has nothing to do with politics - a C evaluate the limits of psychoanalysis - a position which would just mean C
R R
position which can be defended in at least two ways: one might argue I a return to the first form of articulation proposed above - and questioning I
it out of principle - claiming that each field has its own object, its own S the limits of a discipline from the standpoint of the exigency that it remain S
practice and purpose, and therefore have no effective intersections - or I compossible with the challenges of another. After all, who today would I
S S
because we identify some inherent deficiency in the other - claiming, as maintain that revolutionary politics was ever capable of articulating a
we have seen, that politics is so caught up in certain commitments that & complete doctrine of social equality? But, at the same time, which other &
it would just be impossible for it to absorb any serious psychoanalytic C
field of thought is truly in condition of interdicting the claim that the C
input. Here, the only legitimate form of relation that remains is therefore R development of this doctrine is a legitimate political challenge, perhaps R
a critical or negative one: to constantly revise the different idealised links I the limit-point out of which politics constructs for itself the renewal of its I
T T
that we create from time to time amongst fields, forcing a proximity that is I thinking? Compossibility is, therefore, neither an asymmetrical relation I
not truly capable of preserving what is essential to each discipline - if the Q between different fields, nor a correlation, nor even a pure effort of Q
disarticulation has been argued out of principle - or to psychoanalysis - if U separation between them. It is a matter, instead, of affirming that the task U
E E
it has been argued through the depreciation of another field. of formulating the interiority of a practice or theory should not entail the
However, it is not the case of choosing between these three / legislation over the limits of the possible within other fields of thought - /
positions - even if we might formalize the current crisis of the WAP as Volume 6 /
hence the conditional form: “if x and y are possible…”. If it is part of the Volume 6 /
displaying a closed circuit between these three alternatives. It is, after Issue 1 interiority of politics the possibility of thinking equality in its own terms Issue 1
all, perfectly possible to maintain, simultaneously, that psychoanalysis - which does not imply that “real equality” should be a concept with any
can contribute to the reformulation of non-psychoanalytic questions, that pertinence for psychoanalysis as such - then what would psychoanalysis
the analytic field has affinities with non-trivial positions in other spheres have to be so that both forms of thinking are possible within the same
of life and thought and that it is also necessary to criticise impostures world?
and imaginary articulations between psychoanalysis and other theories. The relation of compossibility most certainly does not substitute
What should be noted, however, is that in none of these three positions other possible forms of articulation between these two fields, but it
psychoanalysis appears as one of the terms under scrutiny: be it as the introduces an indispensable operator in the search for a new paradigm in
field which contributes to another practice, as the one which provides our the history of articulations between psychoanalysis and politics: a form
orientation within other discourses, or as that which should be preserved of partnership which would allow us to find support in the autonomy of
from the intromission of others, psychoanalysis is always present as the other fields of thought in order to better think the autonomy of our own
place from which one thinks, never as what is given to be thought. An practice. If the third type of articulation we introduced - the operation
observation which brings us to the fourth possible articulation between of separating politics from psychoanalysis to better protect the second
psychoanalysis and other fields of thinking. from possible deformations - postulates an absence of relation, we could
define the paradigm of compossibility as the proposition of a positive
D. Compossibility. This fourth case would be the one in which the “non-relation”, that is, a solution which allows us to orient ourselves
affirmation of a commitment that is extrinsic to psychoanalysis demands by the common conviction that both politics and psychoanalysis
that we also reconsider its own limits or foundations. It is the strategy have the tools to formulate and solve their own problems. This is a
at stake in claims such as “what must psychoanalysis be if I affirm that productive separation, rather than a restrictive one, because it imposes
x or y is possible for politics?” - for example: if there is such a thing as as a condition for the development of thought - to both critical and
a consistent thinking of real social equality in the realm of the material constructive efforts of a given field - the imperative that it do not rely
conditions of social existence, then what are the consequences of this for on the extrinsic interdiction of a similar movement within the interiority
our understanding of the idea of singularity in the clinic? Or even; what of other fields. From the standpoint of compossibility, psychoanalysis
is it that singularity cannot mean for psychoanalysis if it must respect the and politics do not think the same thing, nor do they think within similar
possibility of a thinking of social equality in politics? conceptual frameworks - but this does not entail that any of them should
It is crucial to note that this fourth position is not simply an thereby lose its status as a legitimate form of thought, which implies
inversion of the first, in which psychoanalysis appeared as that which that both should remain equally capable of finding, formulating and
questions and supplements other fields from its own establishes overcoming their own historical limits.
position. There is an essential distinction between taking the current The most explicit formulation of such operator can be found in
state of political or militant thinking for a safe harbour from which we can the work of the philosopher Alain Badiou, one of the main proponents

358 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 359 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
of a new paradigm for the relation between psychoanalysis, politics C Another philosopher who proposes a similar form of articulation C
R R
and philosophy today. For Badiou, both psychoanalysis and politics I is the Japanese Marxist philosopher Kojin Karatani, who elaborated I
are autonomous forms of thinking, fields capable of formulating their S a sophisticated theory of the “parallax”42 - one that Žižek himself has S
questions in terms of their own vocabularies, and of disposing of the I discussed at length43. Through a innovative reading of the theme of I
S S
immanent means to overcome their practical and theoretical obstacles - “transcendental reduction”, from Kant to Husserl, Karatani devised a way
what the philosopher calls “generic procedures”40. It is under the emblem & of thinking the articulation of fields which are incommensurate precisely &
of compossibility which Badiou then reconstructs, from the historical C
because of their almost absolute superposition. Here, the central operator C
existence of these generic procedures, the role of philosophy: for him, R is that of “abstraction”, which Karatani defines as a suspensive practice: R
philosophy does not produce new truth-statements, nor does it legislate I for example, in Kant, so that the object of scientific investigation might I
T T
over what is and what is not possible, it can only make an effort to know I constitute itself - the object of statements concerning truth and falsity I
the historical singularity of the different non-philosophical procedures Q - we must first abstract, suspend, or “bracket” all questions concerning Q
- such as the art, science, love and politics of its time - and try to U the beautiful - is it pleasing/displeasing? - and ethics - is it right/wrong? U
E E
systematise in a creative and provisory fashion a certain common horizon This suspension of aesthetic and moral domains is what operates the
of what has become thinkable and possible within a certain historical / transcendental reduction of the thing into the object of science. But this /
moment. Volume 6 /
does not entail an absolute exclusion of what has been abstract, given Volume 6 /
However, even if the term “compossibility” is itself a Badiouian Issue 1 that what has been bracketed can be recuperated, and other objects Issue 1
one, it is not hard to recognise the same impetus of overcoming the constituted in a new process of abstraction: the suspension of the true/
limits of the paradigm of “non-relation” within the work of other great falsity question and of right/wrong lead to the constitution of the object of
contemporary thinkers. Slavoj Žižek, for example, has elaborated a aesthetics, and so on. The consistency of science, ethics and aesthetics
“borromean” theory of how to relate psychoanalysis, politics and is, thus, a relative one, insofar as they depend on the fields each abstracts
philosophy, one which - through a different strategy than Badiou’s from, but this does not mean that any of them touch less on the absolute
proposal - also respects the autonomy of each field at the same time that of their own domain, nor that they do not cover the totality of the
it requires it each of them to be aware of the developments in the other objects of their interest - in fact, it is precisely because each bracketing
ones41. The borromean structure, just like the operator of compossibility, constitutes a different totality that they are ultimately incommensurable
helps us think both the interiority as well as the relation between the amongst each other.
fields it articulates. On the one hand, such structure implies that there As these examples show us - all extracted from the works of
are not complementary relations between any two of these fields: different post-Althusserian thinkers - to think the compossibility
philosophy and psychoanalysis, politics and philosophy, psychoanalysis between psychoanalysis and politics is to investigate, simultaneously,
and politics, are all unstable constructions which can only become the separation and the solidarity between incommensurate regions
stabilised through the - silent or explicit - mediation of the third field. of thought. Ultimately, it means to rely on the autonomy of other fields
Philosophy and psychoanalysis can only articulate through political in order to better determine and conceptualise our own. As we have
decisions, the relation between politics and psychoanalysis depends on tried to show, neither one of the three great sequences binding Freud
philosophical commitments, and so on. On the other hand, if this regime and Marx in the XXth Century have truly explored this operation - and
imposes a generalised “non-relation” between these fields, it also we have recently witnessed some of the pernicious effects of insisting
imposes another clause, namely, that every interiority is inconsistent: on an asymmetrical separation between the two, which silently places
psychoanalysis, when taken far enough, poses problems that do not psychoanalysis in a privileged position amongst other fields of thought,
belong to its own field - questions that require political or philosophical called upon only to further reinforce the static closure of our own field.
reformulation - and the same happens with the other two fields. It is the Strangely enough, a consequence of the historical saturation of
combination of these two clauses - the first of “non-complementarity” the current paradigm is that it becomes no longer enough for anyone
and the second of an “immanent transition” - which justify calling this interested in the advancement of “pure" psychoanalysis today to simply
operator a “borromean” one. remain within psychoanalysis, for the very interiority of our practice is

40 Badiou 2006 42 Karatani 2003

41 Žižek 1989 43 Žižek 2009

360 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017 361 Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Politics after 2017
epistemologically dependent on several extrinsic “crochets” we do not C BIBLIOGRAPHY C
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recognise - but which make themselves legible once they are mobilised I Althusser, Louis 1999, Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan, New York: Columbia Press I
by our sense of superiority concerning other fields of thought. To truly S ---------- 2006, For Marx London: Verso S
gauge the current state of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the actual shape of I ---------- 2016, Reading Capital London: Verso I
S Badiou, Alain 1982, Théorie du Sujet, Paris: Seuil S
its interior development, we must therefore begin by severing these silent ---------- 2006, Being and Event London: Continuum
ties, by criticising the means through which we have achieved the closure & Elliot, Gregory 2009, Althusser: a detour of theory, London: Brill &
Focchi, Marco 2017, Petition contre la reduction de Pasolini a l’etat de “intellectuel organique,
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I Gilbert, Alexandre 2017, Interview Nina Krajnik & the Dream of Uncle Zizek em Times of Israel - I
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/ ----------1980 Monsieur A., Espace Freud - available at: http://espace.freud.pagesperso- /
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Volume 6 / ---------- 2001, Autres Écrits Paris: Seuil Volume 6 /
Issue 1 Laclau, Ernesto & Mouffe, Chantal 1985, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso Issue 1
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Miller, J-A 2017a, Le bal des lepenotrotskistes, Blog de Campagne
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