The tripartition of the paternal function – real, imaginary and symbolic – in Lacan’s teaching is a fundamental conceptual reference point for distinguishing the fathers targeted in the various critiques of patriarchy. The symbolic father insofar as he is dead, is not the ferocious imaginary father and agent of deprivation, nor the real father, too often interpreted in the imaginary register, a father who is always failing to fulfil his function. Lacan distinguished two functions of the Name-of-the-Father. That of the paternal metaphor, the importance of which Valérie Lorette reminds us, and then towards the end of his teaching, that of nomination,...

“One day, I stopped having sex with men”, thus concludes the prologue to Ovidie’s latest essay. Even if the author does not turn it into a feminist manual, she denounces how heterosexuality is not free for her and that “since the world is world, women have exchanged sex for something. Material goods, security, love, revaluation”. Taking up Monique Wittig’s expression, she decided to “break the heterosexual contract”. It is not that Ovidie “hates men, but she hates them in bed”. Undoubtedly therein lies the difference with the current trend towards misandry. For some years now, we have been hearing young...

In his autobiography, Johnny Cash (1932-2003), the famous country and rock’n roll singer, looks back on the enigma his father was to him and questions the influence the latter had on his life. Dropped by the father J. Cash tells us that as a child he was exposed to his father’s jouissance. Cash was terrified when the father drank, came home drunk and quarrelled with his wife. His father never had a single loving word or an affectionate gesture for his children. Worse, he denigrated his son’s passion for music even though it was the “best thing in life”....

At the age of twenty-three, Violette d’Urso wrote her first novel, Even the noise of the night has changed (Même le bruit de la nuit a changé). Daughter of Inès de la Fressange and Luigi d’Urso, she lost her father at the age of six, as did the heroine of her book, Anna. The author says: “I couldn’t write a story about him because he is made up of fantasy. During the writing process, the imaginary saved me. It was a door of light. It enabled me to escape, at regular intervals, from the harshness of reality”. This book is...

It is interesting to explore certain aspects of contemporary education in terms of the clinic and critique of patriarchy. A starting point could be the new Education Act in Bulgaria which introduces the concept of the child as a subject with rights and inclusive education. There is some discontent among teachers from it because it is viewed as a destitution of the established order for everyone. Thus, it is still happening sometimes that the education functions according to the old principle of learning while teachers struggle to take into account the exception. This transition allows us to raise the following...

In Force Majeure, a 2014 film directed and written by Ruben Östlund, a Swedish family, Tomas, Ebba and their two children, are at a ski resort in the French Alps. The holiday is supposed to be a chance for the family to get together, as the father is often away at work. An avalanche occurs – a real that Östlund depicts through a white screen and loud sounds. When the avalanche occurs, Ebba cannot escape with her children, she stays with them. Tomas, on the other hand grabs his smartphone and runs away. From running away from work to running away...