The purpose of thinking is authorization, whose model is to be an interlocutor [1]. Authority indicates any purpose to which a person turns on the ground of intention and will. The crisis of authorization consists of all the problems that thinking goes through. The crisis of authorization constitutes the topic of thoughts that (are made to) miss their purpose, the orientation of desires that disrupt intention and will, and the field of truth that transcends rightness.

Daily life puts a bridge between authority and body. A person as a singular interlocutor has a body. A group as a plural interlocutor can only be attributed an abstract body. The interlocutor’s body turns into an abstract fantasmatic being via the concept of the ‘Other’. Around the ‘Other’, a tension arises between masculine and feminine forces, both sexual and political: The masculine force endeavors to separate the authority from the body and prove its independence by relying on fantasies, whereas the feminine force endeavors to show symptoms and be evidence for the authority’s dependency to the body. The crisis of authorization thereby takes the shape of an authority-body complex with an inner tension [2].

Philosophy puts a bridge between will and system. According to philosophy there must be a link between the will that grounds authorization and the system that grounds embodiment; the will-system connection is the fantasmatic basis of the reality in which daily life takes place. For instance the capitalist system remains standing due to various activities that people conduct with their free will. Philosophy, after establishing the will-system link, may call one system or another right or wrong and in the name of rightness it may invite people to abandon some systems and turn to other systems.

Philosophy has assumed the duty of solving the crisis of authorization; but it can only provide fantasmatic solutions, because it needs to rely on the rightness of the will for the success of authorization. This makes philosophy tragic.

The reflection of the masculine and feminine forces on philosophy can be found in the intention/will difference. The masculine force which endeavors to make authority independent becomes hegemonic in the philosophical discourse by establishing a fantasmatic continuity between intention and will, whereas the feminine force which emphasizes the bodily dependency constitutes the symptom and blind spot of philosophy by sharpening the difference between intention and will. This feminine symptom which Freud called the “dark continent” is the field of desire and truth and is the topic of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis puts a bridge between desire and malfunction [3]. According to psychoanalysis there must be a link between the desire which disrupts the will and the malfunction which disrupts the system; the desire-malfunction connection constitutes the symptom that breaks the fantasmatic consistency. For instance, in thinking the crises that disrupt the capitalist system, one must certainly account for the desires that orient people. The inner tension present in the authority-body complex (life) was repressed by the will-system fantasy (philosophy), the symptom as desire-malfunction complex (psychoanalysis) is the return of this repressed inner tension. The return of the repressed desires shatters the basis of the rightness of the will and undermines philosophy. This makes psychoanalysis comic and opens the field of truth (and falsity). One can access the truth of the crisis of authorization only through psychoanalysis.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Interlocutorship and the Four Discourses”, “Separation of Authorization from Embodiment”

[2] See “Cinsiyetsiz Ödül ve Ataerki”, “The Traversal of the Phallus”, “Proof is masculine, evidence is feminine”, “The Authority-Body Complex”

[3] See “Desire and Malfunction”, “Authority, Body, Will, System, Desire, Malfunction and the Coronavirus”

This text was translated into Spanish to be published in Intempestivas 12 edited by Slavoj Žižek.