De Bello. Can We Withdraw from the Logic of War?

Where human beings are no longer bound by the necessitarian solidarity of the struggle for survival, they must cultivate a reflection on the effects of language at the very root of their structuration, and therefore on their functioning – both as parlêtres uti singuli and as collectivities. The psychoanalytic clinic practice has shown, ever since Freud, that the human being is profoundly de naturalized by language: unlike animals, humans have turned nourishment, species reproduction, and the struggle for existence into something other than mere instinct. Every deed, word, or thought circulates through a symbolic re working – that is, through culture; in other words, through the symbolic order, that is, through language. Since the word is not the thing, language inscribes in every parlêtre a structural lack of being – a lack that inexorably propels the speaking being to seek its filling. Unless one reflects on the structural nature of this lack – and its inherent unfillable quality – one may fall into the futile attempt to saturate it with various objets (petit a), which, as elements of a different logical register, can never truly erase it. The wars waged by peoples throughout history over territorial possession are nothing but doomed attempts at erasing this linguistic effect on man. From that standpoint, the functioning of the individual is in no way different from that of a collectivity. Aggression erupts if one fails to transform this structural lack into more than deprivation – namely into an opportunity for invention and the discovery of new perspectives. Once aggressivity enters the dominant discourse, the next step is war – since aggressiveness and war are modes of jouissance for the speaking being. As such, they are ineradicable. From this perspective, it is essential that those entrusted with steering states come to an intimate – and disturbing – recognition: man is not what he wishes to be, but what he is. Nothing whatsoever can be built upon a misreading of the Real.