Lack in the Subject and the Other: A Lacanian Reading of Psychoanalysis and the Political
Volume 15, Issue 2, April 2025, Pages 191-213
https://doi.org/10.30465/os.2025.51111.2030
Bayan Karimy
Abstract Introduction
The formation of the subject and its transformation in connection with the symbolic realm is aware of the reciprocal interaction between the individual and the social realm from the very beginning. Our basic question is whether Lacanian psychoanalysis and his concept of the unconscious subject were able to breathe new life into political theory and socio-political analysis. Lacan believed in a socio-political analysis based on psychoanalysis, even if this objective field cannot be reduced to traditional essentialist views of social objectivity. Moreover, the link between psychoanalysis and politics does not mean that we create a single meta-discourse by linking the two fields. Psychoanalysis has always been present in the political realm in different ways. The meaning of civilizational and social values and the nature of individual desire are in conflict with each other. Society is a restrictive process that makes the individual a victim of the collective, and there is no way to circumvent it, even under the freest or most permissive social conditions.
Materials & Methods
the research method used in this study is descriptive-analytical. First, Lacan's thoughts on the concepts of the subject, the lack, the other, the political and the relationships between them are examined and analyzed. We will then evaluate the possibility or impossibility of the political on the basis of various positions. The author has made an effort to gather important themes from written documents, library sources and reputable databases in order to analyze and compare them.
Discussion & Result
Psychoanalysis is pessimistic about idealistic approaches to politics, and even those that seem desirable at first sight are confronted with a kind of aporia and contradiction. From this perspective, a politics that has its origins in Lacanian psychoanalysis is not only concerned with maintaining the status quo, but always seeks to uncover the lack in the symbolic realm and, consequently, change and transformation. However, not all change can be permanent and stable, and the construction of any form of ideology is ultimately impossible. This politics not only challenges existing laws and norms, but also gives no space to major beliefs and political parties. In psychoanalysis, the return of lack is a revolutionary and transformative event that the symbolic realm deals with on various levels. On the other hand, each symbolic realm has a center of gravity that it seeks to preserve and maintain in order to avoid its own collapse. Since the elimination of the real element is necessary, psychoanalysis adapts to the inevitability of lack. Therefore, Lacanian politics aims to expose violence, elimination and lack, rather than offering a positive and definitive solution to it.
Conclusion
There are moments in psychoanalysis that play an important role in analysing political and social phenomena. Identifying the hidden layers of power and violence, criticising ideology and exposing the fundamental flaw within the symbolic order can be seen as the most important task of the political. The central insight of psychoanalysis in the social and political realm lies in its focus on the lack within the symbolic order and the big Other. Psychoanalysis has a stabilising function insofar as it assigns a fixed purpose and definition to the subject, the Other and the lack inherent in them; at the same time, it exposes the contradictions and obstacles within subjectivity and the symbolic order. Psychoanalysis is fundamentally political and capable of intervening directly in the political realm. However, this intervention is not aimed at advancing positive ideologies (such as liberalism or feminism); but identifies the elements that are excluded in the formation of ideology. The acceptance of the lack means the emergence of political and progressive political transformations — transformations that idealist approaches have previously prevented by preventing the uncovering of such hidden layers within political identities.
Intercultural philosophy with emphasis on the role of "the other" from the perspective of Bernard Waldenfels
Volume 13, Issue 2, February 2023, Pages 25-45
https://doi.org/10.30465/os.2023.44612.1891
Ali Hojjati; Aliasghar Mosleh
Abstract How to deal with "the other" and then its decisive role in adopting an intercultural approach is of undeniable importance among the philosophers of this field. Bernard Waldenfels, a contemporary intercultural philosopher, considers encountering with "the other" to be a kind of paradoxical encounter that can be referred to as the presence of the absent. This German philosopher has chosen a maximalist opinion regarding the encounter with "the other" and separated himself from others by saying "،the Alien" instead of "the other". While "the Alien" is not a negation of the subject and is rooted in "I", it cannot be reduced to a familiar thing or my property, nor can it be reduced to the previous order.The important theoretical consequences of this attitude with the "phenomenology of the alien" method are in line with the requirements of the contemporary polyphonic world and today's life, and not just today's life, but in general, human life is nothing but a constant movement of In-betweenness, and such a requirement has become possible due to the human body. The intercultural philosophy of Waldenfels is to deal with this issue with all the innovations and to solve the previous problems with an innovative foundation.
Encountering the crisis of the relation between the self and the other within covid-19 pandemic: A study based on Ricour's theory of practical wisdom
Volume 12, Issue 1, September 2021, Pages 43-58
https://doi.org/10.30465/os.2021.37164.1743
seydeh akram barakati; yousef shaghool; mohammadjavad safian
Abstract In managing the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, what is most heard is the emphasis on keeping your distance from the others. But whether this spacing could make changes over time in the usual behavioral norms? Could we reconstruct and renovate this various broken rules and norms which like narrative plots had the role of unification? In this paper, we would analyze the crisis of the relation of the self to the other within this situation. We explain Ricoeur's epistemological approach towards the relation of the self to the other in the light of the concepts of ethics and social responsibility. Then, on the bisis of Ricour's theory of practical wisdom, we try to show some possibilities for encountering the crisis of this relationship in the pandemic situation. By grafting the concept of law onto the ethics through the practical wisdom, we obligate oneself to the order of political institution as an interior command which is the call of conscious. This call is an ethical order from the others within us. It could arise the hope that people and political institutions cooperate with each other to pass the current crisis.
Levinas and Ethical Subjectivity
Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2015, Pages 21-36
Mehdi Banaee Jahromi
Abstract This paper attempts to explain why Levinas defends subjectivity, as opposed to philosophers like Heidegger and Foucault and also against structuralists like Strauss, and to show that the ethical subjectivity is a central and constant theme in Levinas’s thought. Levinas believes that ‘ethics’ is first philosophy and defines it as ‘the putting into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other’. So the structure of ethical subjectivity is ‘the other within the same’ or disposed towards the other. The ethical relation to the other is described by Levinas in terms of infinity. He thinks, according to the philosophy of Descartes, that the human subject has an idea of infinity, and this idea is a thought that contains more than can be thought. In his view, relation to the infinity (other) is ethical and cannot be reduced to comprehension