The father of patriarchy is the father who is confused with God. This all-father is a sweet myth that is gradually evaporating under the effect of the discourse of science. It is because no father is God that each father can be one on a case-by-case basis, as Éric Laurent points out in Nobodaddy of February 26th[1]. This is what each of the five authors of this new edition approaches from a particular angle.
There is no more mater semper certa est, pater est semper incertus, now contradicted by the manipulation of gametes. This ancient argument is the subtle issue of August Strinberg’s play, which Jean-Philippe Cornet tells us about in this eleventh Nobodaddy. This father, whose certainties about his descendants are shaken, falls into madness, ready to devour his child, like Saturn.
In the course of the Judeo-Christian tradition, this mythical figure was to give way to the patriarch in flesh and blood. In the fourth century BC, we do not speak of a patriarch, but of a genarch. This is what Christos M. Alexandris tells us in a detailed lexicological study. The question of filiation was then lost in the mists of time where the ancestors finally joined mythical characters.
It is the New Testament that introduces the version of a merciful father who redeems sins, and it is in this rather evangelical filiation coming back from the United States that the principle of restorative justice that has just been voted into Italian law is inscribed. Aurora Mastroleo argues that by replacing the criminal sanction, restorative mediation runs the risk of making the crime ambiguous at the cost of liquidating the principle of subjective responsibility.
In this respect, Matteo Bonazzi puts his finger on the tip of Lacanian ethics beyond the father, inviting us to demonstrate on a case-by-case basis that the indestructible exists, “and that this point – rather than the idea of justice – rests on the constitutive ambivalence of the object”[2].
Sexual injustice is what presides over the birth of the writer Chahdortt Djavann, about whom Fouzia Taouzari tells us. Everything is there and everything comes back to it: it is through the dictatorship of the body that patriarchy seeks to domesticate the female jouissance that escapes it, but this is without counting on the courage of women whose desire is directed towards the exception, dear to Lacan.
Enjoy your reading!
References from the author:
[1] Cf. Laurent É., “The father after patriarchy”, Nobodaddy, Pipol 11 Newsletter, 26 February 2023, available online: https://www.pipol11.eu/en/2023/02/16/le-pere-apres-le-patriarcat-eric-laurent/.
[2] Bonazzi M., “A bad awakening: from deconstructionism to wokism”, in this Newsletter#11 (untranslated in English).
Translation: Ana-Marija Kroker
Proofreading: Polina Agapaki
Picture : © Nathalie Plisnier
