Contenu du sommaire : Lacan

In Argentina, Oscar Masotta is an icon in the domain of cultural history in general and in the history of psychoanalysis in particular. In the 1960s and 1970s, he became the main introducer of Jacques Lacan in the Spanish-speaking world. However, in the 1950s he already played the role of the modern intellectual, not to say « the true Existentialist ». He wrote about Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and psychoanalysis, while he worked as a literary critique, philosophy teacher, semiologist, happening producer, pop art and cartoon sponsor, while the French structuralist perspective progressively became his new world vision. Moreover, for some intellectuals, Masotta was always a Marxist. For others – mainly psychoanalysts –, he never was. In this article we show to what extent dialectic materialism was for him a reference as changing as important, in a long road that led him from Sartre to Lacan, having Althusser as a temporary stopover. Once Masotta arrived to Lacan, he began to abandon Marxism as a political ideal as well as an epistemological model. We intend to delve deeper into this winding road and the final breakup, taking into account the European and the Argentinian contexts.

The article attempts a twofold operation: a synthetic presentation of the overall trajectory of Elvio Fachinelli (1928-1989), an Italian psychoanalyst who was both close to Lacan and to the Leftist movements of the 1970s; and a close reading of a short text by the latter, « The Fascist Phenomenon », in which the psychology of Fascism is seen as being sustained by a work of denial of the crisis of nationalisms engendered by the First World War and by an obsessive ritualization of the political.

The article focuses on some features of Lacan's return to Freud, which may be read as an anti-naturalistic position in so far as it links the system of the Unconscious to the system of language, and leads to the definition of the subject as speaking subject. Lacan's move, starting from the « Stade du miroir » (Mirror stage), entails according to Althusser, not only the distinction between psychoanalysis and psychology, but also a general renewing in the epistemology of human sciences. It governs the dissolution of the double myth of homo psychologicus and homo oeconomicus, which is important also in the field of Marxism, for it constitutes a refutation of « empiricist ideology ». It appears, then, that Lacan's rationalist epistemology, constantly refuting the « qualitas occulta » of affect and « mother nature », might offer us some precious claims for a contemporary critique addressed to the categories of « monism », « animic subject », and « living »: these categories stand at the core of contemporary anthropology constructed upon the refusal of any « sociocentric » perspective indebted to structural analysis.

Who wants to develop Freud's work needs to carry always further the effect of « narcissist humiliation » which he had identified in psychoanalysis. Lacan made it possible for himself through a continuous rectification of his own constructions anchored in the anthropological discourse, and the invention of a topography which he defined as « topology », where the experience of psychoanalytic treatment can be framed. Such spaces are bound to produce disorientation rather than stability. But Lacan wanted to remain in command of the adventure. In the end, he recreated servitude out of emancipation, particularly for the community of analysts who claimed his legacy. The lesson remains that the two effects are inhabiting the same neighbourhood in a fragile equilibrium.

In taking the movement between Lacan's four discourses as an analytical category, the article develops a framework to study the transformations and new formations of capitalist subjectivity as the overdetermined effect of the (regressive or progressive) relations between the four discourses and not as the realization of any one isolated discourse. In contrast, the fifth discourse constitutes a closed circuit that appears to be blocked to the dynamic rotational structure of the four discourses. Yet even the fifth discourse needs to be taken differentially, according to the respective conditions of the divided and the excluded subjects (such as the proletariat). The formalization in Lacan's four discourses (and the fifth one) is not only in homology to Marx's critique of classical political economy, it also complements it. It enables a space to articulate the personal psychic economies with the social libidinal economies and to connect the « private and anonymous » place of the clinic to the « public » space of psychosocial analysis.

This article proposes a fresh reading of the theory of « Four Discourses » elaborated by Lacan in his Seminar XVII from the year 1969-1970. Its argument is, first, that the theory must be replaced in a double context in order for its intentions to be revealed and its dense system of allusions clarified: the immediate aftermath of the 1968 uprising in France, when the academic institution (in which Lacan himself had become integrated) was violently contested and the idea of revolution became again extremely popular among « leftist » students, and the intellectual debate among several protagonists of the « structuralist » moment, who elaborated competing theories of « discourse », notably Foucault and Althusser (but also, in a sense, Deleuze and Guattari). Above all, it argues that the consideration of the additional « discourse » (the discourse of capitalism), insistently but also elliptically mentioned in subsequent texts and interventions, does not lead to a completion of the theory (making it possible to fill the gap between the Lacanian and the Marxian concepts of domination, through the equivalence of the « surplus enjoyment » (plus-de-jouir) and the « surplus value » (plus-value), but to a deconstruction of its latent tensions. Negatively, this leads to accepting that Lacan's aim was to define psychoanalysis as an antipolitical discourse, neutralising the antagonism of capitalism and socialism, and stigmatizing revolutionary movements as expressing the desire of the Master. Positively, it leads to describing the « alliance » of the analyst and the patient (« hysteric ») as a radical antithesis to the dominant « discourses » (i.e. structures) of power and knowledge, and a privileged path towards the understanding of the « non-relation » (or impossible relation) that prevents every social relation from achieving stability.

The interview focuses on the content of two books by Stéphanie Roza published in 2024: they rehabilitate the philosophical-political enterprise of synthesizing Marxism and humanism beyond its condemnation by Althusser, who seemed to have buried it for good. The first, Le marxisme est un humanisme, compares Sartre's 1950s proposal for an « existentialist Marxism », whose Marxism and humanism proved problematic, with the work of Georg Lukács, profoundly transformed by the discovery of the 1844 Manuscripts in the early 1930s. The second book, Marx contre les GAFAM, draws on concepts developed by Lukács and Henri Lefebvre, another great humanist Marxist, in an attempt to understand the pathologies of subjectivity in the context of contemporary neoliberal capitalism.

The concept of private property dominates the imaginary of modern Western societies. This domination has the indirect effect of inhibiting critical thinking about alternatives to private property. Against this tendency, this article returns to the very concept of property, analysing its nature and structure to show how intrinsically open and fertile it is. Property is defined as a three-term relational structure that shapes an individual's relation to the world according to the imaginary representations of each society. This approach supports a broader understanding of property relations that highlights how they shape one's relationship to things and social spaces, to their perception of other members of the society, and even to the affects experienced in these social relationships. The analysis thereby enriches the Marxist critical literature on property and the common.

The hegemonic power that the United States had acquired after the war also extended to agriculture and food. This is an area often overlooked when approaching the hegemonic cycle structured around US power. If this agricultural and food power could be challenged by the European Union in the years 2000-2010, the war in Ukraine is a manifestation of a broader challenge to this power. Since then, Russia has established itself as a leading agricultural power, while the US has had recurring trade deficits. This article looks back at a war that has brought to light the agricultural rivalries between the Western bloc and Russia. The balance of power in world capitalism also involves the issue of agriculture and food.