PSYCHOANALYSIS AND POLITICS: CONTEMPORARY HOSTILITY TO THE NEW

ABSTRACT:

The present article is the result of a theoretical research in psychoanalysis still ongoing dedicated to investigate possible devices within the contemporary rationality operating in a hostile way to processes capable of inscribing a radical new. History shows that some insurrections and forms of popular resistance, which seemed to demonstrate the power to produce a new, resulted in a retrogression or another form of alienation, with a semblance of new, making explicit the presence of an impasse around the conception of the new. Therefore, the research makes use of the Lacanian concept of analytical act and the notion of Event in Alain Badiou, in order to identify indicators capable of instituting a new with political power for radical transformation. Both clinic and politics show that the production of a novelty requires a sudden and contingent break, outside any order established by knowledge. The new comes in disarticulation with the field of existing knowledge, thus comprising a unique invention, which finds no place in the predictable and calculable horizon, which nurtures neoliberal reason.

Keywords:
Psychoanalysis; event; new

RESUMO.

O presente artigo é resultado de uma pesquisa teórica em psicanálise ainda em andamento, que se dedica a investigar possíveis dispositivos no interior da racionalidade contemporânea que operam de forma hostil a processos passíveis de inscrever uma novidade radical. A história mostra que algumas insurreições e formas de resistência popular, que pareciam demonstrar a potência de produzir uma novidade, resultaram, no entanto, num retrocesso ou numa outra forma de alienação, com semblante de novidade, explicitando a presença de um impasse em torno da concepção do novo. Diante disso, esta pesquisa lança mão do conceito lacaniano de ato analítico e da noção de acontecimento em Alain Badiou, a fim de identificar indicadores passíveis de instituir uma novidade com potência política de transformação radical. Tanto a clínica quanto a política evidenciam que a produção de uma novidade exige uma ruptura abrupta e contingente, fora de qualquer ordem estabelecida pelo saber. O novo advém em desarticulação com o campo dos saberes existentes, compreendendo, pois, uma invenção singular, que não encontra lugar no horizonte previsível e calculável, do qual se nutre a razão neoliberal.

Palavras-chave:
Psicanálise; acontecimento; novo

Resumen:

El presente artículo es el resultado de una investigación teórica en psicoanálisis aún en marcha, que se dedica a investigar posibles dispositivos en el interior de la racionalidad contemporánea que operan de forma hostil a procesos pasibles de inscribir una novedad radical. La historia muestra que algunas insurrecciones y formas de resistencia popular, que parecían demostrar la potencia de producir una novedad, sin embargo, resultaron en un retroceso o en otra forma de alienación, con semblante de novedad, explicitando la presencia de un impasse en torno a la situación concepción de lo nuevo. En este sentido, esta investigación se desprende del concepto lacaniano de acto analítico y de la noción de Acontecimiento en Alain Badiou, a fin de identificar indicadores pasibles de instituir una novedad con potencia política de transformación radical. Tanto la clínica como la política evidencian que la producción de una novedad exige una ruptura abrupta y contingente, fuera de cualquier orden establecida por el saber. El nuevo viene en desarticulación con el campo de los saberes existentes, comprendiendo, pues, una invención singular, que no encuentra lugar en el horizonte previsible y calculable, del cual se nutre la razón neoliberal.

Palabras clave:
evento; nuevo

Introduction

In June 2013, a wave of protests invaded Brazil, spreading to several Brazilian states, initially under the agenda of claims against the increase in bus fares. One of the biggest popular revolts that the country has been the stage of in its recent history began organized both by middle-class students and from peripheral sectors. The movements contingently took to the streets, and it was not known what would take place from there or how large it would take. According to Singer (2013), the demonstrations were even compared to the “June Journeys” of the European civil wars of 1848.

What started with a predominantly young audience, was being incorporated by other layers of the population and organized movements, which claimed from different places. Before the entry of other segments, the demonstrations were treated by the media as vandalism and riots, in such a way that some demonstrators were even criminalized and imprisoned, accused of forming a gang and depredation. Arnaldo Jabor in one of his columns criticized the movement, calling it a “criminal organization”, which, aimlessly and without a cause, showed nothing more than profound political ignorance (Jornal da Globo, 2013).

However, through the wide diffusion of the movement in the streets, and with the entry of other segments, such as the white middle class and organized groups, which used the insurgency and total disidentification with the public power, the demonstrations were federalized and took, by media, another aesthetic. When, for example, Jabor takes up the theme again to try to recant himself by making a correction in his analysis. On this occasion, he says that he had act thoughtlessly into the previous interpretation (Jornal da Globo, 2013). This movement of narrative recovery about the movement of the streets, had become a general trend of the big media.

According to the analysis by Souza (2016), it was only after the media’s perception of the power of criticism that the demonstrations had on the government and the potential impact that could destabilize it, that its coverage was changing and gaining another design. Protests came to be seen no longer as vandalism, but as peaceful democratic expressions (Souza, 2016). Now with a nationalist content, the protests were broadcast with faces painted in green and yellow and Brazilian flags, denoting a moralistic face of the anti-government movement, now represented no longer by young protesters, but by the traditional family.

A part of the press, considered by some sectors as conservative, manipulates the initial agenda of the demonstrations, reconfiguring and redirecting its central theme to the end of corruption (Souza, 2016). The different faces spread under discourses shaped by a duality, where on the one hand there is the “good citizen” and on the other the internal enemy, which must be eliminated (Gallego, 2018).

In this sense, the British human rights organization Article19 published an infographic on the mechanisms of restrictions and repression from the demonstrations from June 2013 to 2018. Violations of the right to protest, attempts to criminalize popular demonstrations, practiced under institutional articulation between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers aimed to promote a series of restrictions that repressed and silenced voices (Marques & Rielli, 2018).

That said, what June 2013 suggests is that a revolt that seemed to have the transforming power of the current political and social reality, despite the apparent strength to produce political subjects and those involved in the action of protests, resulted, in contrast, in a wave of radical conservative narratives, armed with the signifier “anti-corruption”. In addition, there was an inflation of hate speech, aversion to any popular mobilization and a considerable increase in segregation, or at least brought to the scene what was suppressed (Gallego, 2018).

Some readings believe that June 2013 triggered a catastrophe without any horizon of hope to rely on, without the production of new narratives or social transformations, culminating in the crisis of democracy experienced during the 2018 elections, with the takeover of power by the extreme right. According to Safatle (2018), the current political and social strength of what he calls the ostensible right is a result of what happened in 2013 and the events that followed. The extreme right, under destabilizing artifices, articulated a long and patient work to regain power.

A similar situation is pointed out by Marx (2000) in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in the famous “June Journeys”, where in an attempt at an insurrection for the overthrow of Bonaparte, the Parisian proletariat ended up being defeated by a strong repression with bullets, commanded by the General Cavaignac: “The Mountain had wanted to force the impeachment of Bonaparte. His defeat was, therefore, a direct victory for Bonaparte, his personal triumph over his Democratic enemies. The Party of Order gained the victory; Bonaparte had only to pocket it” (Marx, 2000, p. 68).

Marx attests that Bonaparte’s victory had the opposite effect to that intended by the Mountain. In other words, the bourgeoisie emerged victorious and took power absolutely. “Only one thing was needed to complete the true character of this republic: to make the recess permanent and replace Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité with the unmistakable words Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery!” (Marx, 2000, p. 73). For Marx (2000), Bonaparte did not represent that peasant dissatisfied with their reality, insurgent, progressive, which proposes to fight as a way of resisting the imposed conditions of existence. On the contrary, he portrayed the peasant with their own traditional and conservative interests, who want to solidify their property, who want security and guarantee of benefits, under an imperialist imagination (Marx, 2000).

With this, the Brazilian and European June demonstrate that even protests that seem to have the power to produce some transformation, can be no more than semblances, as Lacan demonstrated to students at a conference in Vincennes, in 1969. Some protests result, on the contrary, into a setback or a new form of alienation. About 800 students, taken by the effects of May 1968, confronted the psychoanalyst: “And it would be good for Lacan to say now what he thinks about the need to leave the University, and stop fumbling with words [...] If we have to fuck the University, this will be from abroad, with the others who are out there” (Lacan, 1992, p. 195). To such provocation, Lacan responds:

If they had a little patience, and if they accepted that our improvisations continue, I would say that the revolutionary aspiration has only one chance, that of culminating, always, in the discourse of the master. This is what experience proved. It is what you aspire to as revolutionaries, to be a master. You will have it (Lacan, 1992, p. 196).

This intriguing response by Lacan, according to Massara (2018), was indeed a strict psychoanalytic interpretation: “Wherever you seek the freedom to enjoy the structural indeterminacy of desire and life forms, you will find it, without knowing it, transfigured into the identity principle of new forms of social alienation” (Massara, 2018, p. 117). Lacan’s interpretation demarcates that not even resistance is outside the bonds of power. As Foucault (1988/2013) denounces in “The history of sexuality”, when he says that resistance to the insignia of power may not be external to it, but, on the contrary, be within its own logic: “[...] where there is power, there is resistance, and yet (or rather, for that very reason) it is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (p. 91).

In Lacan’s discourse of the master, he wants to emphasize a modality of social bond in which power is not in force, but in the signifier. The power is of the word, or of words that enjoy a value of social recognition, and that, precisely for this reason, have a double effect: they capture and paralyze the subject, sometimes petrifying them in an identity linked to an utterance, and on the other denotes the prescriptive, performative force of utterances. In this sense, going against the discourse of the master in the form of a mere protest does nothing more than introduce himself into the grammatical structure that himself formulates. The universe of possible signifiers, including those of protest, are already part of the semantic body of the discourse of the master. In this sense, protesting would be the same as collaborating with it. The protest against the discourse of the master does not reveal the semblance of which they are made. They reiterate, reinvigorate. That is what Lacan tried to warn the 1968 students.

This is also possible to be read in Butler (2003) and her critique of feminism in the 1980s, for example. The author states that there, the struggle of feminism based on a woman category, where the destitution of the place of object was claimed, so that at last the woman could become a subject, was not out of the logic that he contested. In other words, when feminism, as a practice of resistance, insists that women must assume their place of subject on an equal basis with men, it is not, with this, contesting the masculinist and heteronormative logic. This is not where phallocentrism is actually fought or criticized. On the contrary, it is still alienated from the same logic it is dedicated to denouncing.

What we want to demarcate with this is that sometimes, even though certain facts convey a series of representations as being new or transformative, they do not always, in fact, carry a novelty. Rather, they result in a return to something that has been repressed or in another form of alienation, which maintains and sustains the regime from which they rebel.

But what is characterized as new, with transforming power of a reality, which does not result in a mere return to the same place or another form of alienation? In this investigation, we use the psychoanalytic clinic, especially Lacan’s theory, where it is possible to locate some indicators capable of instituting the new, with political power for revolution and radical transformation (Teixeira, 2015).

According to Lacan, a truly transforming operation, which has the power to establish something authentic, would be close to the dimension of the analytical act, since the act is what reveals “more clearly the true dimension of transformation that a revolutionary action must have to produce” (Safatle, 2017, p. 221). Lacan demonstrates that in the analytical act there is a power to establish something new, which in turn does not result in a setback, but in an sudden rupture.

This issue that involves the statute of the new and its establishment process is also possible to be considered in the political context, taking as reference the theory of Alain Badiou, and his formulation of the concept of event. For this author, the event is unfounded and institutes, as an effect and result of its process, the inscription of an effective new.

In this sense, it is from the conception of the new in the clinical and political context and taking as a reference Lacan’s proposal (1953/1998) that the psychoanalyst must apprehend “in their horizon the subjectivity of their time” (p. 322), that we aim to investigate devices within contemporary rationality that operate in a hostile way to processes capable of inscribing a radical new. This is a theoretical research in psychoanalysis that is still undergoing, so the questions developed here refer to initial investigations, supported, above all, by the Lacanian theory and by some commentators.

According to Garcia Roza (1993), the theoretical study submits Psychoanalysis to a critical analysis in order to verify its internal logic, the conceptual structural cohesion and the conditions of its possibility. Among the main works used in the development of this study are seminar 15 “The analytical act” and seminar 17 “The other side of psychoanalysis”, by Jacques Lacan, as well as some contributions by Alain Badiou.

Analytical act: “a saying that founds a fact”

When Quinet (2006), referring to Lacan, states that the act is “a saying that founds a fact” (p. 30), he highlights that the clinic of the analytic act is both on the order of a foundation, that is, it implies an inaugural character, as well as the dimension of a discourse, because saying, not being exactly the order of speech, refers to the order of the discourse. Lacan makes references both to the discourse character of the act’s structure and its inaugural status in several passages during the development of this concept. In other words, a fact here means what has resonances, what has an ethical effect. It does not refer to empirical data, but to something that has ethical and political consequences, hence its necessary link to the concept of act in Lacan.

The analytical act is a notion introduced by Lacan and developed above all in the seminar with the same title, given in the mid-1967s/68s, in a troubled political situation in Europe, therefore, the theorizing of this concept in this scenario is no coincidence. Right from the start, Lacan demarcates the distinction between act, action and motricity, in such a way that the latter consist of an organicist reading, which is not properly suited to the conceptual definition of the analytical act. That is, the act does not contain, in its structure, an organic response, corresponding more to an inscription, an intervention somewhere, than necessarily to an action performed (Lacan, 1967-68).

This character of intervention of the act is correlated with the notion of subversion, in its sense of rupture, of crossing, which implies a change in the subject’s position. In other words, if we can point out an action value in the analytic act, Lacan says that it is a subversive action: “if I can walk from one side to the other here talking to you, this does not constitute an act, but if one day it goes beyond a certain threshold where it places me outside the law, that day, my motricity will have the value of an act” (Lacan, 1967, p. 08).

The notion of subversion arises in the sense of confronting and modifying something, it has the potential for disarticulation and disorder in a given mode of established operation. The subversive trait of the analytic act indicates that its movement implies a collapse, a break. It is, therefore, a disruptive character of the act, concerning a type of precise and abrupt intervention capable of radically modifying the subjective position. That is, conceptually, the power of rupture of the act will allow a change of position: “The psychoanalytic act concerns, and very directly, in the first place, I would say, to those who do not make a profession [...] it is about something as a conversion of position” (Lacan, 1967, p. 23).

Since the abrupt rupture caused by the act implies the dimension of an overwhelming reality, in its double movement, it places the subject in front of the unbearable, at the same time that it will allow the production of a new narrative, singular and emancipated, linked to what was broken. That is, the movement of the act, at the same time that it breaks with the symbolic organization, proposes a new way out, invented by the subject (França, 2014; Safatle 2017).

Before proceeding with this innovative character of the analytical act, we emphasize that, at times, its movement is correlated with the concept of political revolution, although, with regard to Lacanian theory, it is necessary to make some reservations about this concept. In some moments of his theory, Lacan conceives the concept of revolution as being a mere repetition in history, something that “returns to the same place”, and that, therefore, does not result, in fact, in something new. “I have already spoken of the ambiguity of this term revolution, which can mean, in the use given to it in celestial mechanics, a return to the starting point” (Lacan, 1992).

An example of this is when Lacan analyzes astronomical movements, such as the Copernican revolution, arguing that there is no transformation there, any change, whether hierarchical, in unity or centrality, as only a shift from the centrality of the earth to the sun took place. For Lacan (1998) “there is nothing in itself that subverts what the signifier center preserves by itself” (p. 58). In other words, there is no radical change in structure and position.

The same happened in Vincennes with the students under protest, as mentioned above. There, Lacan attributed to the term revolution a return to the absolute and authoritarian Other, that is, there was also no approximation to the production of the new, being, therefore, just another way of maintaining alienation from the Other, albeit with a semblance of resistance. Therefore, what Lacan considers effective and true revolution consists of something whose effect does not result in a mere repetition, in a mere return to the previous place.

In this way, the true revolution, correlated to the analytical act, is one that, on the other hand, goes beyond the position of submission to a dynamic of restoration and thus causes a change within the structure of knowledge. “There is no effective revolution without a transformation in the ability to enunciate language” (Safatle, 2017, p. 218).

It is in this sense that Lacan brings the term revolution closer to the notion of analytical act, as the act highlights the true dimension of transformation that “links to the modification of the knowledge/power structure” (Safatle, 2017, p. 221). In the act, it is not a type of revolutionary action that returns to the same place or that transfers knowledge to consciousness, which it previously had no access to (Safatle, 2017).

It does not mean re-appropriating knowledge. Because this displacement would only be the reiteration of the same regime of knowledge and action, only now available to consciousness. It is useless to praise the practice if this practice is still dependent on the same grammar of knowing that had subjected us (Safatle, 2017, p. 221).

On the contrary, what Lacan evokes as the revolutionary character of the act says of the possibility of originating a new desire. The psychoanalytic act is what modifies “retroactively the symbolic-imaginary coordinates of the subject, brings with it a policy that takes into account the lack/desire and points to the creation of new possibilities by modifying what was considered determined in a subject’s life” (Costa & Marinha, 2018).

The act, therefore, allows new arrangements to take place. The rupture caused enables the production of a new symbolization, this one invented by the subject and linked to what was broken. The subject no longer responds from a place formerly occupied, dislodged due to the disruptive power of a representational chain. “The notion of the analytical act allows to see emancipation appear as a possibility for the subject to emerge as a normative power capable of producing singularizations” (Safatle 2017, p. 216).

This character attributed to the notion of act is evidenced mainly when Lacan (1967-68) states that “it is necessary to classify it again and even unheard of if we give it its full meaning” (p. 28). And even: “it is conceivable that the act constitutes [...] a true beginning. Finally, let there be an act, let it be creative and let the beginning be there” (p. 78). This is its true structure, and it is what shows its inaugural character.

In this direction, in the analytical act, the analyst starts to “ex-sist” and make possible an opening to the subject of the unconscious, in an original way, which is not limited to the field of the imaginary. There is an ethical and non-technical question in the structure of the act, so that its orientation is to the real (Ratti & Estevão, 2015). In this way, the psychoanalyst, like the poet, must not “let themselves fall into a utilitarian or consoling determinism of what is set, and must bet on the inventive sources of contingency, misunderstanding and encounters” (França, 2014, p. 7). Therefore, the analytical act indicates an inaugural character, as it allows the subject an opening to new outlets and inventions.

Event: “a new way of being”

It is approximately at the beginning of the 20th century, with the philosophy of the last phase of Walter Benjamin, that the study of what happens is highlighted. Benjamin as well as Franz Rosenzweig propose a critique of the historicist model view of the time, which was based on the ideology of progress and on a totalitarian and progressive view of history. For the authors, historicism was nothing more than a “falsification of reality”, being necessary to consider a theory that operated in discontinuity, that considered not the historical flow, but its transformational character. Therefore, the so-called metaphysical view of history, in contrast to historicism, is proposed in order to reflect on the great and radical occurrences of the beginning of the century, such as the outbreak of war (Cantinho, 2011).

Nevertheless, according to Beck (2017), from the point of view of social and historical sciences, for decades the study of the event was rejected, since it particularized history, and went against the theological view, which was predominant at the time. Only later, with the so-called “historicism crisis”, at the end of the century, the study of the event returns, breaking with the univocal and consistent status of historicism, assuming the expression of a “single and singular occurrence that marks a before and an after in the flow of history” (Beck, 2017, p. 49).

One of those who dedicated themselves to resuming the study of the event and began to analyze the main facts that occurred in contemporaneity from it on was the French philosopher Alain Badiou. Badiou has stood out in such discussions, especially for his main work L’Être et l’Événement, translated as “Being and event”. In it, he provides an original and unique reading, incorporated into an “acute political vision, beyond the discursive dimension in order to properly assess the event’s rupture potential and distinguish it from other events, of a more reformist or even reactionary character” (Prado, 2013, p. 10).

The whole Badiou’s theory is strongly marked by a philosophical and political engagement, influenced by the turbulent situation of the 60s. And it is in this period that this author finds himself grappling with this notion of event as an essential part of the world, especially with the eruption of radical episodes that marked not only his militant life, but also had a strong influence on the theoretical-political development of this concept.

It is, above all, in “L’Être et l’Événement”, that Badiou will outline a detailed discussion about the notion of Being and event. The author supports the idea that it is mathematics, specifically “set theory”, that allow to pronounce what is of being-as-being, that is, ontology. For that, Badiou uses the Plato's formula given in Parmenides: “if the One is not, nothing is”, that is, everything that concerns being is not submitted to the One, since the One is not. In such a way that it remains to conceive of nothingness, the void being the being itself (Badiou, 1988/1996).

If being is not established by unity, if it is not under the dimension of the One, it can only be thought of as a multiplicity, in its purest form. It is within this formula that Badiou tries to think of void as a pure multiple, which cannot be reduced to a unit. “If the one is not, what comes in place of ‘various’ is the pure name of emptiness, while only it subsists as a being” (Badiou, 1988/1996, p. 37). They are, therefore, inconsistent multiplicities or multiples, which are not represented by any predicate that unifies them, they are, therefore, represented by themselves.

However, there are also consistent multiplicities, which Badiou (1988/1996) specifies by “situation”, which in turn, unlike the inconsistent multiplicities, are under the operation of the count-for-one. According to Zizek (2016), what Badiou calls “situation” is the particular and structured multiplicity, such as French society or modern art, and it is this structure that will allow counting for One. In this situation, there is only knowledge, its transmission and imposition, it is a system that already presupposes certain predicates, and therefore there is no opening to the new. The situation is precisely what limits the opening to possibilities.

In the field of situation, inconsistent multiples are not represented, as they present themselves and are outside the regime of the One. Everything that is not subjected to the regime of the One, which is not yet symbolically structured, although included in the situation, is not re-presented by it: ‘the plebs ‘not integrated’ in a social situation, etc.” (Zizek, 2016, p. 148).

These inconsistent multiples by not being re-presented (Zizek, 2016) by the situation, they show a point of excess in it. Insofar as they are not re-presented, they characterize precisely what escapes the power of nomination. In other words, the multiple subtracted from the situation is also what escapes it, and, therefore, is not apprehended by language and knowledge. Badiou (1988/1996) attests that such multiples, as they are not subjected to the count-for-one regime, show the symptomatic torsion of knowledge, they are correlated to what Badiou calls truth.

In this way, Badiou declares as truth what he does not allow itself to be determined in the situation, nor by any device of knowledge. Since it is also a multiple, the truth itself has a particularity. “For a truth to affirm its new, there has to be a supplement, which is given to chance. It is unpredictable, incalculable. It is situated beyond what exists, I call it Événement” (Badiou, 1994b, p. 178).

Thus, “a truth is a multiplicity composed of the consequences of an event, and which is therefore suspended from an unfounded being” (Badiou, 2015, p. 170). The term “Événement” or, in the established translation, event, refers to an unfounded emergence, an evanescent and contingent multiplicity, which finds no foundation in the situation in which it takes place. It works as a rupture in the situation, disorganizes what Badiou (2012) calls “the normal disposition of bodies and languages” existing in a given particular situation. Something that arises from time to time, unexpectedly, given to chance, and bars the repetition of knowledge, allowing the truth to found a novelty there (Badiou, 2015; 1994a).

That is why Badiou, above all, makes the following assumption: “a truth is, first of all, something new. What transmits, what repeats, we shall call knowledge” (Badiou, 1994b, p. 177). Pure multiplicity, also subtracted from the regime of the One, the event bears a specific character, it is established in an unpredictable way, impossible to calculate, which makes it a supplement, an excess of One or the “ultra-one of chance, on the basis of which the void of a situation may be retroactively discerned” (Badiou, 1988/1996, p. 53).

Badiou (1994a) locates some events around history: a totally innovative artistic creation, such as the appearance, with Aeschylus, of theatrical tragedy; a discovery in the field of science, such as the emergence, with Galileo, of mathematical physics; a love encounter; or the French Revolution of 1792. Another peculiarity of the event is that it is not decidable by itself, that is, there is no a priori predicate that decides it.

When Mallarmé in his poem “A throw of the dice” writes that “every thought emits a throw of the dice”, it must be concluded that there is no way to decide on the existence of an event, it remains to bet. From this poem, Badiou points out the undecidable character of the event, as “Nothing permits us to say 'Here begins the truth.' A wager will have to be made.” (Badiou, 1994a, p. 45). It is, therefore, the nominal fixation of the event that marks its temporal singularity. That is, as it is nominated, inscribed, it establishes a before and an after, in such a way that, from then on, a new time starts to be counted (Badiou, 2002).

No rules allow deciding that the Événement is an Événement. Nothing permits us to say 'Here begins the truth.' A wager will have to be made. This is why the truth begins with an axiom of truth. It begins with a decision, a decision to say that the event has taken place. (Badiou, 1994b, p. 179).

The decision to bet on the truth of an event is taken by a subject, so that this, by itself, is the result of the choice to be faithful to the event, to a process of truth. “A subject is just a point of truth; or, the merely local dimension of the process of a truth” (Badiou, 2015, p. 177). This means to say that the subject is not something that exists a priori, that is pre-determined, and in face of the truth process, it will assess and decide on the event. On the contrary, the subject who bets on the event is itself an effect of the truth. The very fact of deciding on an indiscernible event is what also affirms it as a subject.

Even when the human animal, which still remains from the event process, resists, the militancy of the subject to a truth must prevail. Badiou (1994a) names this persistence, of subjective consistency, which is what keeps the rupture of the event preserved. “There is subjective consistency when someone is faithful to a fidelity” (p. 113). This means that the subject of a truth, called the body of a truth, becomes the bearer of the new that comes with the truth of the event.

This status of new implies an inventiveness on the part of the subject. That is, the new also suggests a unique invention, uncommitted to existing knowledge, no available predicate can provide avenues for invention. In this process, the subject is summoned to a new way of being and existing in the world, “is precisely that it is only by means of such invention that the event finds a welcome and an existence in language” (Badiou, 2009, p. 58). What underlies the very idea of a transformation is the infinity of language.

In view of this, we emphasize that the ability to make a new suddenly appear is the basic characteristic of the event, as Zizek (2017) attests. Since the truth in its production destabilizes and disarticulates any system that has been stable until then, it reveals, as a result, a reality, previously denied or repressed, which could favor the occurrence of a novelty. “[...] the true new arises through the narrative, the account, in purely reproductive appearance, of what happened - it is this account that opens up space (the possibility) to act in a new way” (Zizek, 2017, p. 139).

Badiou affirms that contemporaneity no longer sees as necessary the concern to produce something new, which is the effect of a truth. On the contrary, Badiou states that “The contemporary world is thus doubly hostile to truth procedures.” (Badiou, 2009, p. 19). We inquire, therefore, if there are, in the interior of contemporaneity, in a structural way, devices that operate as resistance to truth processes. Could there be something within contemporary rationality that would hinder the emergence of a novelty?

Contemporary hostility to the new

In “Theory of the subject”, Badiou (2015) asks: “What happens when an entire world is approached from the point of view of truth? What happens at the ontological level when the point of view of generic multiplicities is adopted in relation to ordinary multiplicities”? (Badiou 2015, p. 173). He then asserts that when a subject’s narrative is produced by a process of universalizable truth, knowledge or the state of the situation declares an absence of meaning in this new narrative. A “significant without any meaning. Slip without enough stitch. In fact, the meaning of a subject-language is under condition” (Badiou, 1988/1996, p. 313).

That is, the situation, occupied by knowledge, by subtracting the truth from its symbolization field, excludes any narrative that comes from it. It is in this sense that Badiou later stated that “the contemporary world is like that, doubly hostile to the processes of truth” (Badiou, 2009, p. 19). Contemporary society reveals in different ways a symptom of hostility to processes that are constituted as truths and that may have the power to produce new narratives. These narratives have no implication for the identities and definitions already established by knowledge. According to Foucault (2013), what science aims at is to mask or exclude true processes, in order to avoid any disorder in the course of reality or the economic order.

[...] but because in reality nothing obliges truths or subjects to exist. A life based on the pure administration of titles and properties, centered on the enjoyment of bodily pleasures without any mention of the search for universal truths, is not only possible, it is the motor of the consumer society of our times (Neto, 2014, p. 195-196).

We are talking about a logic based on a horizon of control and formalization, where what escapes pre-established knowledge is rejected or inserted into standardization protocols and processes. As in the case, for example, of the demonstrations of June 2013, already mentioned. These only acquired legitimacy after being federalized, that is, framed in a formalization, in order to obtain political and social recognition. Its character of chance, of contingency, typical of a legitimate democratic revolt, was totally ignored or simply annulled.

This type of normative logic organizes social relations and way of life of people, placing the body as an object, the target of a business administration, which produces not active subjects, but specialist individuals and self-owners. Bodies are molded from disciplinary and prescriptive devices, where the contingent is always seen as a threat (Safatle, 2016).

From this rationality, a narcissistic culture is produced, supported by an imaginary of autonomy, of individual managers and entrepreneurs of themselves, who carry identities, attributes and predicates. Thus, individuals occupied exclusively with their own interests. For Foucault (2013), these are power relations, which have the function of interdicting, organizing silences and normalizing forms and ways of life. It corresponds to a hostile model of life, which moves in the opposite direction to the event, since it is marked precisely by the dimension of indeterminacy, alien to the law or any form of totalitarianism and attributes.

It is noted, therefore, that the individual inserted in this logic is not independent, emancipated or autonomous, on the contrary, contrary to the subject category, the individual is the product of this power relation, an effect of the logic of state control, which resists to contingent and to the processes of political emancipation (Foucault, 1977/2010).

In this way, the possibility of opening to processes that establish a new vanishes, as the need for the production of identities and management of bodies overlap and resist any movement crossed by contingency and that produce political and emancipated subjects. Contemporary or neoliberal society, governed by the imperative of unbridled jouissance, by the business logic and the imaginary of autonomy, does not allow a place for the inscription of the new.

Final considerations

The interface between psychoanalysis and politics made it possible to develop the problematic around the notion of the new, taking into account specific concepts that establish a connection between them. Making use of the June 2013 demonstrations as casuistry in the political field, we identified that certain facts, even though they promote a series of meanings as being new, do not always in fact bring about a radical change. This, in turn, requires an abrupt break, in the order of the real. It is in the reading of the analytical act, based on Lacanian theory that we come across the problematic surrounding the new. Through an abrupt and, therefore, contingent rupture, the act institutes something that is not limited to a return to the same place. The act founds a fact, it means to say that this foundational character allows the subject a singular opening to new outlets and inventions, there is a change of position at stake.

Just like the analytical act, we found another way of establishing a reading that touches the dimension of the new, based on an abrupt disruption. It concerns the concept of event, in the reading of Alain Badiou. The contingent fissure given to chance caused by the event, produces a truth and a faithful subject to what was broken. Like the analytic act, the event produces a new way of being, as Badiou pointed out, the truth produced can then found a new.

However, what both the clinic and politics show is that the production of something new is becoming increasingly rare in contemporary logic. The predictability and safety devices, as well as the anxiogenic logic of calculating everything, increasingly distances us from the contingent and disruptive dimension, proper to the production of the new. This suggests a contemporary position of resistance to the processes of truth, so that the move that is assumed is to close access to everything that escapes the predictable and calculable dimension.

Contemporary rationality maintains its eminently identity logic, supported by power and affect relations, in such a way that control, repression, delegitimation, and concealment function as mechanisms used to reduce or extinguish the potential of an event. The defense against the production of the new, of the truth and of any contingent dimension, therefore, disturbs any possible access to singular inventions and to a new way of being.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Mar 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  11 May 2019
• Accepted
  10 Aug 2020