Between jouissance of speech and violence without law a Lacanian study of politics and the political after the decline of the father

Abstract

AbstractThe present paper is a psychoanalytic reading of recent electoral events in Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with the help of the Lacanian theory of the decline of the father and the concepts of jouissance and the sinthome. The case of Greece, where the radicalization of people's electoral and political choices took place in the framework of an unprecedented crisis, is studied emphatically, to highlight the different characters of this phenomenon's two main strands. The first, represented by the incumbent prime minister of the radical left in a coalition with a party of the populist right, is compared with a sinthomatic solution. The second, viewed in the atrocities of the neo‐Nazi party Golden Dawn, is described as the choice for pure violence. With regards to similar cases, such as Brexit Britain or Trump's America, psychoanalysis can highlight the significance of contingency, which could allow the emergence of such solutions.