As hysteric subjects we are all refractors and refractresses. We refer & act with respect to Master-Signifiers and refract them into multiplicities of knowledge. Reference is the aspect of narrating a fantasy that pertains to the symbolic order, whereas action is the properly hysteric aspect of staging a truth [1]. Since the hysteric subject psychically embodies the tension in the refer-action, (s)he can only experience it negatively as a refraction. This repeated fraction of the soul is called a symptom.

The refracting symptom is necessarily experienced as a nonknowledge, it’s a widening crack in the assurance that knowledge is supposed to afford, a stain that embodies unknowledge. This is very frightening and threatening for the obsessional subject who reacts the symptom by mobilizing a hatred of ignorance to neutralize its refracting capacity. The obsessional is unable to acknowledge the reality of the crack, (s)he instead perceives the refracting symptom as an infirmity that must have been caused by ignorant foolery. This deep fear of the unknown fuels the obsessional’s faith in the positive subjects-supposed-to-know such as experts and specialists. As a result, the obsessional attempts and fails in knowing knowledge, which can only be an imposture. The obsessional infer-action relies on a perceived infraction.

The psychoanalyst is different from an expert in that, as a negative subject-supposed-to-know, (s)he assumes the position of knowledge not to fight the refracting symptom and neutralize its effect, but to convert the hysteric refraction into analytic diffraction. The analyst embraces and furthers the tense refer-action of hystericization while at the same time converting it into a differ-action that brings relief to the soul. The differentiating act of analysis reveals new signifiers that enable the acknowledgement of the symptom’s widening crack as a positive articulation. The analyst is at peace with unknowing knowledge and this reconciliation lets him/her to know unknowledge [2].

Being a diffractor or diffractress is not at odds with also being a refractor or refractress. The analyst is essentially an hysteric with an additional capacity to differentiate. The analyst is able to deploy the differ-action of signifiers only through enacting the hysteric refer-action with respect to the symbolic order. These two actions combine to make up the staging of truth. Refraction stages the truth poetically, while diffraction stages the truth mathematically; but this is just a shift of perspective: Mathematics is poetical in its origin; poetry is mathematical in its destination.

This is not to say that hysteric poetics cannot become allies with perversion. If symptomatic refraction is not addressed to the interpreting diffraction, it can fuel factories of imaginary fascination which can in turn substantiate fascism. Behind every refraction that has turned into a proto-fascistic fascination, there is a failure of analytic diffraction [3]. The production of imaginary fascination is essentially a perverted process, but it’s still subjectively fueled by hysteria. It is a certain unfortunate alliance between unforgivable disavowers of private sins (perverts who serve the big Other’s enjoyment) and forgivable repressors who “know not what they do” (hysteric subjects who inadvertently fuel the perverted spectacle).

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 “Narration of Fantasmatic Reality and Staging of Symptomatic Truth”

[2] See “Making the combinatorial unworld of the unconscious permeable”

[3] Compare: “Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution.” (Walter Benjamin) This is why Žižek has deep political suspicions of poetry: “The Poetic Torture-House of Language” Slavoj Žižek