Edito My Way 22 : Segregation, subversion, separation
Lacan had long predicted the increasing effects of segregation in our post-modern world. The acceleration of the production of these effects in recent years, their sheer scale and the ravages which they provoke, has all of a sudden awakened us, and at the same time produced a vertigo, similar to being caught in a mirror effect.
What is striking in the contributions presented in this 22nd issue of My Way is that these effects of segregation and rejection contain a common thread: an “all alike”. It can be formulated under the sign of “humaninity”, a wonderful neologism which Eugenio Díaz Massó offers us regarding the “unanimity of humanity” which dehumanizes in the form of the “uberisation” of society, also a relatively new signifier, proposed by Benoit Delarue, the principle of which is “cross-evaluation”, implying that everyone evaluates everyone else. Or, as Aurélie Pfauwadel puts it: by means of a totally imaginary, vague-desire for parity (equality) between the sexes, which comes to be substituted, by means of segregation, in place of a link with the symbolic. The effects which return are inevitable: rejection of difference, isolation, communitarianism of jouissances a return to the worst [au Pire]…
Psychoanalysis responds by subversion and according to Miller’s excellent formulation based on the symptom: “the rebellion of not like everyone else”, like no other, singularity beyond the norm, which offers the subject the possibility of doing-with the unprecedented freedom it presents. It gives access to a separation such that it is precisely the opposite of segregation. This is clearly demonstrated in Araceli Fuentes’ short but precise text which is based on his work in an institution where applied psychoanalysis is practiced, one born through the desire of a group of psychoanalysts in the heart of Madrid.
Moreover, the force of creation is not absent in any of these contributions and indeed “art” can be a marvelous response to the “poubellication” of culture. It is so for artist Dominique Maes whose work, as well as a short interview film, features in this issue, Very refreshing!
Translated by Raphael Montague
