US Blues—Bury the Hatchet

By | November 22nd, 2018|LRO 106|

Asked about her commitment to running for and again leading the United States House of Representatives as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi replied "It's an urgency I can't resist.”[1] This use of the relatively uncommon (at least, in the United States) word urgency of course evokes the upcoming Congress of the New Lacanian School [...]

The Security State

By | November 19th, 2018|LRO 105|

Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers has for years been unremittingly brutal. It isn’t because those seeking asylum are criminals, since to seek asylum is not a crime; and it isn’t because those arriving by boat lack grounds for seeking refuge, since over 80% are eventually assessed as being legitimate refugees. The conditions under which the [...]

Are there judges?

By | November 11th, 2018|LRO 103|

In Israel, Judges, especially those of the Supreme Court, have the function of protecting and defending human rights and liberty, of standing against any kind of segregation. Where are they when the spirit of democracy ceases to function as their compass? Theirs is a very complicated and difficult position. The State of Israel does not [...]

“[…] and I did not open my mouth anymore”

By | November 3rd, 2018|LRO 101|

In Europe today, the question of politics as faced with human phenomena is effaced in favour of a discourse of necessity. The decision makers think that they are managers. The logic of numbers buries the political question. This cold discourse creates a climate of exclusion and widespread disquiet in a silent world faced with the [...]

Liquid Times Are Over. Solid Monsters Are Back

By | October 20th, 2018|LRO 98|

When I proposed that the book written with Professor Bauman be entitled "The Return of the Pendulum" it was because those words, suggested in his mail of 08/23/2012, strongly caught my attention. Wise is he who can read between the lines of the social discourse not only what is happening in the present but also [...]

The Cambridge Analytica Scandal as Symptom?

By | September 29th, 2018|LRO 93|

States began treating civil populations like data sets in the late 1990s.[1] In 2002, the National Security Agency (NSA), established its Information Awareness Office (IAO), whose motto is Scientia est potentia – knowledge is power. Since knowledge was now being produced in “ones and zeroes”, the agency understood it had to reorient its gaze.[2] A [...]

Millenarianism 2.0

By | September 26th, 2018|LRO 92|

Discourses on technology are capable of generating far more delusional metaphors than the field of science. These metaphors have fostered the creation of identity groupings, "communities of jouissance", which make the fetishization of technology into the foundation of a mystical preaching. Part of the explanation is that technologies reach much more extended spheres of human [...]

Turning One’s Back

By | September 22nd, 2018|LRO 91|

Psychoanalysis has shown us that the parlêtre’s life is based on the disharmony which exists between the sexes, on the impossibility of complementary enjoyments since in fact we make love with our unconscious. This is the idea condensed in the Lacanian aphorism: there is no sexual rapport. But certainly, a little movement of the body [...]

Refugee Lives Matter

By | September 7th, 2018|LRO 87|

As psychoanalysts we can hardly claim to have answers to all the ills, political or otherwise, of modern civilisation. But as practitioners of speech and language we can at least strive to pay attention to what is at stake in some of the discourses currently taking shape around us. The recent resurgence of far-right political [...]