Ya devlet başa (ya kuzgun leşe).

Either the state has the force (or the raven has the corpse).

According to this Turkish proverb:
1) There is a good combination.
2) There is a bad combination.
3) The good combination functions and performs.
4) The bad combination is faulty and destructive.
5) Choosing the good combination excludes the bad combination.
Lacan uses a French formula to signify the same thing: “Le père ou pire / Father or worse” [1]. Let’s give another Lacanian expression to the same formula:

Either the paternal metaphor or the fragmented body.

The paternal metaphor is the basic knot that upholds the symbolic order by ensuring that every signifier has a signified, so that every uttered word means something. If this knot is unravelled (or is cut off) the assurance of meaning is lost and one falls down to a meaningless void, in which the wholeness of one’s body disintegrates and is dragged to the vortex/blackhole of an enjoyment that knows no rules/bounds. All modern ideologies are based on this formula. Here is its mathematical expression:

y = F(x)    ⊻    z = H(t)

Techno-functionalism (F) claims to deal with every scope (x) that it may encounter and produce the relevant output (y). But in case this technologic achievement claim falls flat, entropic decomposition (H) shall possess the flow of time (t) and envelop distance and depth (z) [2].

In postmodernity the combinations are reversed. The postmodern version of the proverb goes like this:

Either the raven has the force (or the state has the corpse).

The raven here can be interpreted in various ways:
1) Posthumanism overcoming anthropocentrism by giving the center stage to non-human animals and objects.
2) If we go back in time, one recalls the dreariness of the malevolent gaze in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” [3].
3) If we go further back, one encounters the trickster raven that creates the world in Native American mythology.
4) If we go even further, one encounters the “black winged” raven who propagated Zoroastrianism as its messenger.
5) In mythology, raven is, on the one hand, death, war and ill omen, on the other hand, prophecy and insight.
6) In the field of logic, people articulated the Raven Paradox: Can the fact that we observe millions of things in the world that are neither raven nor black lend the smallest confirmation to the claim that all ravens are black?

The operator “either / or” in the standard proverb has let us distinguish what is logical, reasonable, right from what is illogical, nonsensical, wrong. The main issue with the postmodern version is that it disables this operator of distinction; so we should write it as follows:

Both the raven has the force (and the state has the corpse).

Here is the same in Lacanese:

Both the fragmented father and the body metaphor.

The postmodern condition is the following: Although the father is in power, he constantly fragments and victimizes himself, so that we individuals are forced to shield him with our own bodies, and like a vast herd of billions of sheep, we run towards the abyss at the edge of the Earth, which has been flattening with each passing day [4].

(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 “Freud and the Political” Mladen Dolar

[2] See “The combinatorial ground of spatiality”

[3] See “The Raven” Edgar Allan Poe

[4] See “Don’t Look Up to the Sky, Look Down at the Symptom”

Image: Snowboard School/Shutterstock