This November, the NLS newsletter circulated a text[1] by Angelina Harari, originally published more than a year and a half ago. In March of 2017, Harari, among many others around the world, was already signaling the rise of a political choice towards the extreme right. At that time, the fight was against Marine Le Pen in France, while this year, it was against Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The fight was lost. Bolsonaro won.
Since October, when we had the result of the presidential elections in Brazil, the place and praxis of psychoanalysis have been matters of concern among psychoanalysts. Schools and universities organized themselves to discuss and elaborate not only the political moment but also its effects in our clinic. One of those events was organized by UERJ – a public university whose Department of Psychoanalysis completes 20 years of work this year. The symposium’s title was: Psychoanalysis and the Paradoxes of the Politics of Difference. A title that articulates signifiers that are being directly persecuted and threatened by the extreme right discourse. Paradoxes and differences have no place in an authoritarian policy, which is precisely the policy advocated by Bolsonaro.
Psychoanalysis is about the clinic of the difference.[2] Language and the end of analysis attest the work with the singularity of each subject. How can psychoanalysis, the clinic of the difference per se, survive the political choices that invalidate and disallow what is different? Psychoanalysis is of the multiple and the extreme right discourse is not.
The symposium mentioned above was then an act – of resistance and desire. It was an act addressed to the Other, an Other that has become more intolerant and aggressive.
During his campaign, Bolsonaro said: “the minorities have to bow down to the majorities; they have to suit the majorities or simply disappear” (author’s translation). No minorities, no paradoxes, no differences. Hence the need to not allow the word to stop circulating. Psychoanalysis depends on it.
[1] Les Choix Politiques au XXIème Siècle in https://www.pipol8.eu/2017/03/24/les-choix-politiques-au-xxieme-siecle/
[2] Marcus André Vieira in his presentation on Notes to the citizen analyst’s pocketbook.