The meaning of the words “Universo Paralello” is “Parallel Universe” in Portuguese, the native language of the land of Samba, from which the festival originates.

The word “Supernova” refers to the explosion of a massive star, causing an immense burst of light in galactic terms.

What can one imagine when these concepts intertwine during the upcoming Sukkot holiday? 🤩

We assume that you can already imagine the result…

(Or perhaps not?) 🙃

These lines are from the “public relations” text for the “psy-trance” music festival organized just near Gaza, calling Israeli youth to “entrance their psyche” in The Coming Great Festival [1].

While this text, which exudes mystifying positivity in every line, never mentioned Gaza, one cannot avoid the impression that this unauthorized anonymous-crowd-pleasing organization in the grey zone involved what is commonly known as “youthful excitement” or otherwise medically known as “adolescent risk-taking behavior”, especially when the event is considered a week afterwards (nachträglich).

Psychoanalysis is contrary to democracy because democracy is concerned with the topics that everybody opens whereas psychoanalysis is concerned with the topics that everybody closes. So the “Parallel Universe / Supernova” festival, after the fateful massacre happened, turned into a topic that everyone closes and thereby stepped into the field of psychoanalytic considerations.

Sigmund Freud associated the father-son conflict enacted around the mother with the myth of Oedipus who killed his father. Since the fantasies of “Rebel against Father!” were too convenient for the “anti-authoritarian” themes that closed the previous century, the other side of the action-reaction equation went unnoticed, which is the counter-Oedipal drive linked to the fantasy of “the father killing his son” (I use the term “son” referring both to boys and girls) [2].

Remember the beginning of the Oedipus myth: the father Laios, precisely by abandoning to the wild (by a pre-emptive strike) the baby Oedipus who was prophesied to kill him, personally caused the chain of events that would reach their end by realizing the very prophecy that he feared. Given that the chain of events linked to “Rebel against Father!” fantasies have reached their neoliberal end and thereby left humanity without a ground, it is high time we took into consideration the counter-Oedipal drives around the theme “getting rid of the unholy son”.

I’ll assert a very simple thesis: The adolescent son deliberately endangers himself in order to cock a snook at the father’s counter-Oedipal fantasy, so that the son is saying to his/her father: “If you are setting me at naught, then I am going towards death with my very own feet.” Of course, as everybody knows, “in fact, the father is being called to draw lines around the world of his son” but one mustn’t read the son’s suicidal behavior as a mere call for prohibition, because a dialectic shall begin through his/her symbolic suicide.

The son wants to provoke the father because the father’s indifference shall erase or blur the world (it shall leave the scene to Thatcheresque maternal superego blackmails [3]). Fighting the father (negative transference) is for sowing the seeds of the future world. The son can only shape his/her world by fighting the father or teacher or judges or presidents and then making fun of each of them (by establishing and then dissolving negative transferences – this making-fun is irony as opposed to cynicism).

When there is no future left for the youth (consider the climate breakdown coming right under our noses) the increased violence of the counter-Oedipal drive is not so surprising. And in such extreme circumstances a maniac neighbour coming to kill one’s children can gain the status of “a gift from God”. This is the symptom that closes the curtain over the topic of the festival.

(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 “Tribe Of Nova Presents: Supernova Sukkot”, “Sigmund Freud ‘Halkla İlişkiler’in dayısı ve eniştesi mi?”

[2] In a previous text I called this drive Boğaçhanian in reference to the Dede Korkut tale: “Zanla Telafi: Oku Baban Gibi Eşek Olma”

[3] See “Üstben Hilesi: Babuşka seni görmeyi çok ister” Slavoj Žižek, “Validevi Yutucu Kuş” Slavoj Žižek