Undoing the Master, or Reinventing Order: Notes for a Political Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This text intertwines the instances of truth, history and fiction. The unique conditions of each of these three instances converge in a more pragmatic field when considering their impact on the plane of immanence of the Master, a conceptual character that in some Lacanian formulations is represented by the term S1 - in an attempt to allude to the function of a precedent signifier related to a chain of signifiers that follows it. Through a bibliographical investigative method, we sustain the question: can we conceive alternative epistemologies for the conceptual and clinical practice of a psychoanalysis that assumes this Master, S1, as a production in an après-coup? Inherently, a second question arises: what are the potentialities of reclaiming a conceptual psychoanalytical corpus from the connection with studies on gender, coloniality and racial relations - and how this operation can offer optimal deviations to the field of psychoanalytic thought?