Guy Briole is a psychoanalyst practicing in Paris. He is a member of the WAP and an Analyst Member of the School of the ECF. He is a psychiatrist, and a professor at the Val-de-Grace hospital.
Probably presented at the ZADIG Forum – Discourses that Kill, on 1st December 2018 in Brussels.
Published as p237-249 of The Lacanian Review, Issue 09 – Still Life?, Spring 2020, Download, translated by Domitille Krupka, reviewed by Philip Dravers at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Briole)
Headings
Brouillage and Gray Discourse[2] TN: The French term brouillage, like the English term “jamming,” refers to the use of interference to block or otherwise distort a radio signal. The French term evokes the word brouillard, “fog,” hence the link to a gray discourse.
Discrimination Through Negligence
A Few Examples, Forms, and Styles of Gray Discourse
A Fault in Transmission
Alexithimia
Alexithimia is a neologism constructed by Peter E. Sifneos using Greek terms-a (which is privative), lexis (word) and thymas (breath of life)-to refer to a characteristic feature of speech, i.e. the lack or even the absence of words to express emotions and feelings.
The Torn-out Tongue
The Refusal to Know!
When the Accused Becomes the Accuser: Obscene Discourse
Death Died in Auschwitz
References to Jacques Lacan & Primo Levi & Simone Weil
Briole, In his 1964 Seminar, Jacques Lacan underlined the fact that no meaning given to history whatsoever can justify the horror of the Holocaust or the “offering to obscure gods of an object of sacrifice.”[l] Who can possibly resist this “monstrous spell?”. “Ignorance, indifference, an averting of the eyes may explain beneath what veil this mystery still remains hidden.” And Lacan adds that this is precisely the point toward which we must turn a courageous gaze.
[1]Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A Sheridan (NewYork/London: Norton,1978), p275
24th June 1964, p274-275 of Alan Sheridan’s translation,
There is something profoundly masked in the critique of the history that we have experienced. This, re-enacting the most monstrous and supposedly superseded forms of the holocaust, is the drama of Nazism.
I would hold that no meaning given to history, based on Hegeiano*—Marxist premises, is capable of accounting for this resurgence—which only goes to show that the offering to obscure gods of an object of sacrifice is something to which few subjects can resist succumbing, as if under some monstrous spell.
Ignorance, indifference, an averting of the eyes may explain beneath what veil this mystery still remains hidden. But for whoever is capable of turning a courageous gaze towards this phenomenon—and, once again, there are certainly few who do not succumb to the fascination of the sacrifice in itself—the sacrifice signifies that, in the object of our desires, we try to find evidence for the presence of the desire of this Other that I call here the dark God.
* Italian/Spanish/Portuguese for Hegelian
See Seminar XI The Four Fundamental Concepts (1963-1964) : from 15th January 1964 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640624 or 19640115 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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P240 Briole, It prolonged it, albeit in a different form, that of discrimination through negligence, treatment of the victims was ill-adapted. We know that many died because, after wanting food so badly, they were given far too much of it. In some camps the liberating troops set fire to the buildings, justifying this as a fight against the risk of epidemics. Except that this perceived risk concerned their own men and not the victims who had survived there.[6] Here they were dragged out in a perfunctory manner for the sake of hygiene, thrown outside in the cold, with no backup plan, and thus dying in numbers. Simone Veil showed very well how saving them (the Jews) was not a priority.[7] Liberators must also ponder this negligent attitude which is another name for discrimination against the Jews.
While prisoners of war went straight back to their home countries which were mobilized to retrieve them, one must bear in mind that this was not the case for the Jews. They had still to suffer the reprehensible shillyshallying of the nations who were uncertain whether to accept or refuse them, followed by endless journeys in lorries or trains.[8]
- Simone Veil, Une vie (Paris: Stock, 2007), 90.
- Ibid., 91.
- Ibid., 91.
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P241 Briole, For the Jews, ‘outside’ the camp was still in the camp.’ True, it was a different camp but there was still no return to one’s family, as though their lives had no reality for other people. And, Primo Levi adds, there was this “penetrating nostalgia” eating at you, “a limpid, but nagging pain.”[10] This feeling of utter strangeness with close relatives persisted beyond the failed reunion: “My house was still standing, my family was alive, no one was waiting for me,” owing to the fact that “we could feel running through our veins the poison of Auschwitz.”
- Primo Levi, The Truce (London: Bodley Head, 1965).
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P247 Briole, In his seminar The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psycho-analysis, Lacan underlined a recurring tendency to “reason about men as if they were moons,[28] calculating their masses and gravitation.” He added that Mein Kampf “dealt with relations between humans as if they were relations between moons.”[29] Excluding a part of humanity from a possible relationship to otherness is tantamount to regarding it as a mass. It remains to define the criteria of what constitutes that mass in order to split them away as a group, and carry on relentlessly with the program. There are no more limits.
- Jacques Lacan, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (New York/London:Norton, l99l),235.
- lbid.,235.
25th May 1955 Seminar II, p235 of Sylvana Tomaselli’s translation,
Last time, 1 left you with a somewhat strange question, but one which came ‘directly out of what I was saying to you – why don’t the planets speak?
1
We aren’t at all like planets, that’s something we can have a sense of whenever we want, but that doesn’t prevent us from forgetting it. We always have a tendency to’ reason about men as if they were moons, calculating their masses, their gravitation.
That isn’t an illusion peculiar to us, us scientists [savants] – it is quite especially tempting for politicians.
I am thinking of a work which has been forgotten, though it wasn’t that unreadable, because it probably wasn’t written by the author who signed it- it had the title Mein Kampf. Well, in this work by the said Hitler, which has lost a great deal of its topicality, relations between men are spoken of as being like relations between moons. And there’s always the temptation to construct a psychology and a psychoanalysis of moons, whereas all you need do to see the difference is refer directly to experience.
For instance, I am rarely altogether happy. Last time, I wasn’t at all happy, no doubt because I tried to fly too high – I wouldn’t have engaged in all that flapping of’ wings if everything had been well prepared. However, several kind people, those who accompany me to the door, told me that everybody was happy. Rather an exaggeration of the position, I imagine. No matter, that’s what I was told. Moreover, at the time I wasn’t convinced. But why not! So I said to myself – if the others are happy, that’s the main thing. That’s where I am different from a planet.
See Seminar II The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954-1955) : from 17th November 1954 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19541117 or 19550525 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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P248 Briole, It is this outlandish perspective that prevails in the specious argument that indicates, in spite of the denials, a will to counterbalance horror by assessing the numbers and percentages involved-which means emphasizing the number of survivors compared to those who died, grouping this horror together with other dark moments in the history of humankind, and making everything equivalent through the use of statistics. Care is taken to use the same words but here in mathematical abstraction in such a way that, in this ratio of the masses, what inspired the ideology that led to the Holocaust re-emerges in this retrospective assessment as the step taken toward negation. So for those who survived, there is only shame left. There is no life without death, any more than there is war without death. Death partakes of life; it is in everyone’s destiny. For Freud, it gave a particular appeal to the ephemeral, and for Lacan it made life bearable.[32]
- Jacques Lacan, “Conférences de Louvain,” La Cause Freudienne, no. 95 (June 2017): I l
The Death is from the Domain of the Faith : 13th October 1972 (Louvain, Belgium) : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721013)
P7 to 8 of Anthony Chadwick’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com, I have been, like that, a little drawn along to note that, on the subject of biology, psychoanalysis finally has not brought along a lot and yet, that’s all it speaks about: life drives then and “I suck you down”, death drives. Well have you heard a little bit about it, yes or no? because without that I’ll pass on, yes or no, is it “yes”, or is it “no”. Ah! You can’t trust all this chatter (applause). Let’s be serious! … Death is in the domain of faith. You are quite right to believe that you are going to die, of course; it keeps you going. If you don’t believe that, could you bear the life you have? If one wasn’t solidly based on that certainty that it will end, could you bear this tale; nevertheless it’s only an act of faith; to top it all, you are not sure of it. Why wouldn’t there be at least one man or woman who could live for 150 years, but really, it’s there that faith regains its strength. So, in the middle of all that, you know what I am saying there, it’s because I have seen it, there’s one of my patients …