The path to forgiveness between Derrida’s deconstruction and Lacan’s psychoanalysis

In the second half of the Twentieth century, the reflection on the idea of forgiveness thrived. Jacques Derrida has been one of the protagonists of the French debate, taking a particularly challenging position: forgiveness, if exists, is paradoxically always forgiveness of the unforgivable. Its conclusions, at a first reading, seem to stop on the border of this impossibility for humans to do the impossible. We argue that, through a dialogue with the perspective of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, we can find a path to go further. The deconstructive analysis can then be kind of psychoanalyzed. Both authors strive to go beyond language, even if they both think we’re totally and inescapably immersed in it. Thanks to categories such as jouissance, sinthome and lalangue, we can envision a common path towards the real of forgiveness. This absolute forgiveness, nonetheless, it is not something to be said or communicated, in commonly rational or logical terms, but rather something we can have experience of.