The function of giving sacrifices to God is to convert impossibility into insufficiency and thereby make way for a surplus [1]:

— Impossibility is pushed back into the past and covered by nostalgic dreams.
— Insufficiency supplants impossibility and contains the present time [2].
— The ideology of present time hopes to reach a surplus in the future.

The impossibility that gets sacrificed in the name of society is hysteria, the insufficiency that establishes itself through this sacrifice is obsession. This is the original sin.

If you ask the obsessional [3], he says he will overcome the present insufficiency by progressive accumulation, he may even express nostalgia and say “like the old days”; but his true insufficiency lies in his inability to (sur)pass the impossibility, his inability to end the past (suture the past), his inability to erase the stain on his hand that he got by sacrificing hysteria. This stain that the obsessional got from the hysteric will be the Trojan horse that will help the hysteric avenge her sacrifice (sacrifice her sacrifice) [4].

Now let’s divide the diagram into two parts and expand them:
1) The present insufficiency pushes impossibility to the past, this is ex-sistence.
2) The surplus projected to the future contains the present insufficiency, this is containment.

1) Ex-sistence is the perpetual sacrifice of hysteria by obsession; this is the ahistorical/emergent dimension of society; as soon as it is determined, its content must be projected either to the social past or to the excluded foreigners; this is the sacrifice of the Primal Father (Freud). In ex-sistence there are three consecutive phases:

— At first there is widespread symmetric tension (equal impossibility).
— The tension explodes at some point and scatters its pieces (impossible equality).
— It results in an uncanny asymmetric feeling of emptiness (equal insufficiency).

2) Containment is how the obsessional (who is guilty of the original sin) constantly produces new surplus (via hyperego) in order to vindicate himself (from superego) [4]; this is the history of class society. In places where the obsessional can vindicate himself, he can enforce laws and ensure relative welfare (modern situation); where he cannot, the laws are invalidated, the society disintegrates and precarization follows (postmodern situation). In containment three consecutive phases take place side by side:

— Those who suffer deprivation from the asymmetry are kept as the reserve army of cheap labor-force (insufficient equality).
— Those who are “more equal” (Orwell) constitute the middle class (professional managers) (more equality) [5].
— The clique that rules the asymmetric surplus carries the political flag or the identity that orients the society (equal surplus).

(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 “René Girard: Symmetric Breaking and Symmetry-Breaking”

[2] See “The Moon is Split: Scope, Cache, Context”

[3] For simplicity I’m matching female-male pronouns with the hysteric-obsessional but it could easily be reversed.

[4] See “Ben De: Kadınlar Erkekler İçin Feda Olmayı Reddediyor”

[5] See “Hiperego: Yenilemeyen Yineleme Boştur, Yinelemeyen Yenileme Kördür”, “The Conning of Reason Brought About The Hyperego”

[6] See “The Demand for Equality is an Escape from Equality”