Alexander Smulansky

transl. by Ignas Gutauskas

The Anatomy of Impasse: the Three Traps of the Post-Lacanian Subject

 

These reflections by Alexander Smulansky trace the subtle ways in which contemporary intellectual spaces often trade rigorous inquiry for the comfort of repetitive ritual and shared silence. They observe a landscape where the sharp demands of theory are increasingly smoothed over by seductive but hollow substitutes. Ultimately, what emerges is a portrait of a field where the loss of conceptual rigor is replaced by a pervasive atmosphere of moralizing humility. The three major lines followed here reflect on the procedural impotence: collective readings as an attempt to simulate Lacan’s presence through the infinite repetition of the text, devoid of its theoretical assimilation; false substitution: an attempt to fill this theoretical void with “imaginary” concepts (such as those of Green) provide a lure of instant comprehension while eroding analytical distance; on ethical perversion: in the absence of rigorous method, thought collapses into moralizing gestures, elevating a 'lack of knowledge' into a mandatory ethics of humility.

 

1. Hermeneutic Sterility¹

 

For decades, Russian Lacanians have had a specific practice of engaging with Jacques Lacan’s texts, called “collective reading.” It is usually carried out in the form of a gathering of specialists who read excerpts from Lacanian texts paragraph by paragraph interspersing them with inviting the attendees to engage in “free speech” about what was read.

The method employed is never reflected upon or defined, except purely ethically, in a negative-calming manner: it is often stated that this type of reading “ensures the horizontality of the procedure” or insures the reading assembly from the emergence of a privileged interpreter who could take on the position of a “subject supposed know (everything)”—a situation psychoanalysts fear to the point of achieving a comic effect, as if there was anyone close to such a figure in their midst.

In practice, this results in the “readers’”—without them realizing it—resorting to a deeply pre-Lacanian (from the perspective of the method’s history) form of engaging with the text, in their practicing “naive hermeneutics,” where all interpretations are equally authorized and completely untenable. Against this pseudo-democratic background, sooner or later turbulences of repetition inevitably begin, consolidating peculiar twists of understanding, passed from mouth to mouth, from one event to another; while the Master expelled from the procedure returns to it by other means, at the level of knowledge acquired by the participants themselves.

The procedure itself also never evolves depending on the presumed “mastery” of the material. Once the reading group takes on the “fifth” or “eleventh” seminar, it can return to reread it in exactly the same format years later, as if during the first reading nothing happened. Resolutely enduring “hermeneutical sterility,” the readers practically never resort to additional literature, as if there were not hundreds of works devoted to various aspects of the “Seminars,” that would make these melancholic readings at least slightly more productive. In some cases, if the reading group is oriented towards the Millerian school, its members may allow themselves to be offended by some of his comments in respect to the Maitre, but they never go beyond this.

This hermeneutic sterility ultimately results in the complete sterility of the participants themselves: it is impossible to understand why the readings are being held and what their productive outcome is. The results of their practice remain the content of the black box: no scientific texts emerge from them, no research findings are reported, no clinical or theoretical hypotheses are put forward, no research manifestos are issued, even no coherent essays are written. It is not even known whether analysts use the fruits of these readings in their clinical practice. In the end, the “readings” have no justification beyond, once again, those borrowed from the clinical domain: just as personal analysis allows one to grasp what analysis is as such, so too must the “personal” and independently experienced “living encounter” with Lacan’s texts supposedly grant participants something authentic, inaccessible from the side of “university discourse,” which Lacanians use to intimidate their listeners and which allegedly has the power to irreparably destroy this authenticity.

Freud claimed that not everyone who undergoes analysis becomes an analyst—extending this analogy allows one to come to terms with the fact that not everyone who diligently reads Lacan will become a researcher of his concepts, let alone a continuer of his work. But within the institutional logic of “readings,” no one becomes an “analyst”: the reading never ends—starting in the late 90s in Lacanian circles, it continues in the same form in 2022, departing from the same nonexistent point. Wake a sympathetic observer after decades, and he will confidently bet that Russian Lacanians continue a paragraph-by-paragraph reading of the eleventh seminar on vacant territories, untainted by any scientific research gesture capable of fitting into today’s world of Lacanian theory and its numerous consequences.

At this point, following the analytical tradition laid down by the Maitre, one should ask about the “desire of Lacan himself”—whether there is something in these “readings” that satisfies his hidden perverse side, expressed in the fantasy of creating a peculiar “neatness”—which, as is well known from Marquis de Sade, serves as a formative prelude to an orgy. Or not, because not everyone becomes a libertine either, so there is a risk of everything staying limited to neatness.​

2. A Lacanian Warning²

 

Contemporary Lacanian psychoanalysts not affiliated with particular schools are occasionally overcome by a certain unease, an urge to change the order of the addends. As a consequence of this, they begin to propose to stop clinging to Lacanian theory as if it was the last resort, and opt to broaden their horizon by turning to neighboring clinical teachings. For humanitarian non-clinicians, this logic will be difficult to comprehend, but for some reason, Wilfred Bion or André Green are often suggested as the alternatives closest to Lacan.

However, it is not only that the systems of these authors are not even close analogs of the Lacanian apparatus, neither in their powerfulness, nor in the logic of their construction; there is a much more significant circumstance that does not allow to leave Lacan for greener pastures with impunity. The reason consists in that a really strong theory often differs not only in the quality of its conclusions—in any case, contrary to the popular opinion, it differs in this not primarily—but in what might be called the theory’s creator’s ability to evade judgments that can evoke in the public unjustifiably rapid understanding and unhealthy excitement related to it. Whereas a weaker theory not only fails to avoid using means to cause such excitement, but often goes along with it.

Green is almost an ideal case here because, being engaged in the theory of narcissism, he himself turned out to be captivated by it as a completely mythologically real—not an invention of clinicians—Narcissus. As a result of this, he produced a whole host of hackneyed (and hence clearly imaginary), yet highly seductive truths for both professional and broader audience. For instance, he asserted that narcissism and reality contradict each other, or that the narcissistic type loves no one, including himself (but himself slightly more after all—and this “slightly more” Green apparently considered a genuinely revolutionary discovery of his).

On the one hand, it could be argued that he was unable—and did not have to be able—to anticipate in what will soon result a frenetic, almost obscene interest in the concept of narcissism. In contrast, Lacan, who worked decades before Green, not simply managed to foresee and sense it, but also took a number of precautionary actions to not to get caught by it in any way and to steer his students away from such a perspective. The cautiousness of these actions fully corresponded to that unquestionably excremental found in the usage of the concept, making it so attractive.

It is for this reason that psychoanalysis has to hold onto Lacan just as political thought (not science, of course, because there is no such thing as political science) holds onto Marx. The inevitability of fastening onto the latter was realized, among others, by thinkers as original and self-standing as Marx himself, such as Adorno or Deleuze, who acknowledged that while visiting can be good, every thought returns to Marx and that there is no alternative to this return.

This lack of alternative is primarily connected to the fact that, as it was expressed by Lacan, Marx, along with a narrow circle of other thinkers (whom Lacan undoubtedly associated with), “never spoke bullshit.”

Having reached this part of Lacan’s text³, some readers, as if offended in advance, become irritated and demand “concrete examples” (which is in itself bullshit). But in this case, the sought-after example stares one in the face: it is precisely the protracted voluptuous analysis of the concept of narcissism (not every analysis, of course, because it might be handled as correctly as it was handled by Freud, who did not draw any ethical conclusions). The relentless, inherent attempt in contemporary psychotherapy to fit into this concept the entire darkness of the world, the absolute horror and madness of self-conceit according to Hegel, while also simultaneously enjoying the very engagement of this signifier, is obviously in sharp opposition to Freud.

This opposition, camouflaged by the superficial reverence of classical analysts towards Freud, clearly shows itself in Green’s work “Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism,” which was published in 1983, as if in celebration of the recent death of Lacan. It can be claimed that precisely because some petty masters and their readers after them regard such titles as good ideas, one has to keep to Lacan and the path to Freud opened by him practically undisputedly.

In connection with this, it is interesting that psychoanalysts are sent for supervision when they encounter difficulties with their analysands, for example, when they experience sensuality towards them or disproportionately overvalue the significance of their relationship with them. However, no one ever recommends supervision when those same specialists face analogous difficulties with concepts. To put the matter bluntly, the relationship with concepts, as with subjects, can also be complicated by affection, and the transference, with all the infatuation that comes with it, is also possible here. There you have the truth that corresponds to the spirit of the Lacanian warning.

3. A Comment on Žižek’s Foreword to Tupinambá’s "The Desire of Psychoanalysis"⁴

Žižek’s reading of Tupinambá’s book highlights the socio-economic privileges of psychoanalysis but overlooks the subtler ways authority is produced within Lacanian communities, through cultivated ignorance and ethicalized humility. In contrast to these practices, Lacan’s own position rested on a structurally different handling of “lack,” one that his followers transform into a mechanism of exclusion.

A Russian translation of Gabriel Tupinambá’s book, “The Desire of Psychoanalysis,” is being prepared for publication. The book is one of the few works on psychoanalytic theory that managed to inspire Slavoj Žižek, who saw in it an elaboration of his traditional bitter struggle with orthodox Lacanianism. When dealing with the original manuscript, it is curious to assess what Žižek, who wrote the foreword to the book, actually managed to make out of Tupinambá’s expositions and what, on the contrary, remained a kind of blind spot for him, in particular, given Žižek’s lack of experience in immersing himself professionally in the typical content of discussions within the clinical community.

​Thus, Žižek predictably, though no less shrewdly, focuses on the critique of the privileges of the economic and social order associated with the place occupied by the psychoanalyst. This could manifest as the pure and excessive respectability of specialists, even when limited to a narrow circle of their community, or mutual economic responsibility implying that the original meaning of the didactic analysants’ payment turns into a sort of artel or community fee for the right to carry on with their own practice. Another aspect to examine is the psychoanalysts’ depreciation of contributions to psychoanalytic theory made by non-clinicians, such as philosophers.

However, there is something Žižek underestimates. First and foremost, it is precisely the way in which privileges are won and sustained within the communities that cannot be fully assessed from the viewpoint of a mere socio-economic critique of psychoanalysis. This way is aptly illustrated by the famous dispute within the Lacanian community about “the (im)possibility of knowledge” or “the subject supposed to know,” which Žižek mentions only indirectly and hastily considers resolved.

This dispute, though, is crucial for the functioning of Lacanian communities. Furthermore, it is necessarily and intentionally maintained as unresolved, since its very practice contains the possibility to separate “the pure from the impure” and redistribute privileges. A clinician who raises this question invariably appeals to those places of Lacanian exposition where Lacan reminds us that the subject by its very “nature” cannot rely upon the completeness of knowledge either in relation to oneself or to any external authority.

The conclusions drawn from this set of Lacanian assertions indicate the dynamics of internal and external struggle in professional communities, whose members paradoxically compete but in the opposite way than implied by Žižek. Thus, the winner here is usually the one who managed to insist that, in relation to the unfathomable Lacanian doctrine itself, he is modestly prepared to declare himself the least “knowing” of all. These sorts of gestures are called upon to demonstrate that such a subject has come to terms with his “lack” to a greater extent. In this way, he is likely more immune to common temptations, which supposedly makes his position more “Lacanian-authentic”.

Against this background, it is noteworthy that Lacan himself never lamented about it and did not make these sorts of claims to his followers. Rather, he reproached them for their lack of assiduity in further theoretical investigations. Lacan’s indication of the psychoanalyst’s lack is based on a completely different theoretical—more so than simplistic ethical—rationale. It can be summed up in only one requirement, namely, not to infer the coincidence of the instance of the signifier and the place it creates, a misalignment required by the signifier “psychoanalyst” in the first place.

In this sense, a practitioner of “professional self-deprecation” differs from Lacan himself, who did not need to resort to any ressentiment in order to maintain the misalignment between his own nomination as a psychoanalyst and the “place” he thus occupied. In his case, it sufficed to do something beyond psychoanalysis, which does not mean that he abandoned the latter’s field. Nevertheless, he operated within this field quite ambiguously, given that this ambiguity has never been as scandalous as it is usually perceived.

On the contrary, the remarkable thing about this ambiguity is the fact that historically, it was legitimized by Freud himself, who also held his place by virtue of his constant passages to other fields of knowledge, along with a number of not always transparent institutional vicissitudes. For a contemporary psychoanalyst, the circumstances related to these vicissitudes, including the biographically discovered ones in Freud’s and later in Lacan’s own positions, are truly nightmarish. Perceiving them as evidence of the impurity of the procedure of “analyst production,” they cannot afford them under any circumstances.

Thus, the radical distinction between the way of maintaining the sought-for misalignment between the signifier and the place inherent to Lacan on one side, and his followers on the other side, is revealed. The erroneous ethical reassessment of this misalignment requires the subject to incessantly struggle with the intention to claim a special status of “psychoanalyst per se,” perceived as a temptation and a lure. “Remember, no one here is a full-blown analyst since no one has privileged access to the totality of clinical and theoretical knowledge,” a judgment Žižek rightly exposes as creating a false sense of democracy because everyone is well aware that this maxim has no truly democratizing impact on the professional community. In any given community, there will always remain elder psychoanalysts whose status is not questioned and cannot be abused by them or those around them.

We have to demonstrate—and this is what Žižek precisely does not do—that the roots of this malpractice cannot be reduced to the breakdown of the “democratizing judgment” itself, which ostensibly fails for some external reason (e.g., the “general irremovability” of power hierarchies in any human community). On the contrary, this failure is envisaged by the act of judgment itself since it contains the erroneous employment of Lacanian ideology. There is no need to demonstrate specifically that the imperative “do not claim authority and be mindful of the common lack” is fraught with a peculiar and malignant psy-practice of humility; nor is there any necessity to explain that there is nothing more alien to the Lacanian spirit than the obsessive activity of this sort. It is not hard to show that what hides behind such humility—as it often happens in the echo of religious discourse that emerges here—is an even greater volume of pretensions and intolerance toward analysts who “are not entirely pure” in their professional thoughts.

It is more than likely that if Žižek were as battered and tempered in psychoanalytic couloirs as the author of the book, all the theoretical and topological demonstrations practiced by Tupinambá, including an implicit critique of Jean-Michel Vappereau (which adds extra piquancy for those who are acquainted with the topic), would have made the Žižekian approval more purposeful.​