Nadia Bou Ali (American University of Beirut)
Social Hell
The talk develops a concept of social hell using Marx, Dante, and Lacan. In it I focus on the social hell of original accumulation and place it in relation to Lacan's theory of discourse. Lacan’s theory of discourse is based on the original sin of identifying with the narcissism of God, doubled in the subject of the unconscious. The hell that is the “impotence of discourse” is inaugurated in original narcissism, located in the imaginary, and canalized by capital. Imaginary narcissism is both sustained and questioned by the gaze, one of the objects of the drive. How is the Lacanian notion of two deaths, a symbolic death in the wake of the encounter with the object of the drive, and a “mortal” death that is immanent to the body, relevant to our contemporary moment of protracted endings? Televised genocide, photogenic images of extreme weather conditions, the return of fascism in the form of liberal adjudications over the law and its exception… The capitalist model of the future is played repeatedly as we spectate, what seems to matter the most, in terms of the gaze, is which circle of capitalist hell the images of death, destitution, abjection, misery, and pain, are seen from. To understand why we cannot fix our gaze, ochii fissi as Dante put it, we may need to rethink the universality of the impotence of discourse through a theory of uneven development of discourse. The subjectification of death in analysis cannot ultimately overcome the resistance of discourse. Marx offers a strong critique to this problem by refusing to give discourse the remit of mediation, discourse does not mediate, social forms do.