The father declines
The father déclines. Let us highlight the effect of the paradox: the more the father declines, the more the father comes in a thousand different forms and shapes. [Vincent Dachy] The more the father declines, the more we summon patriarchy; and the more we make patriarchy exist, the more it is questioned. It is not about passing a judgement on this fact, it is rather to note that a strong father, if he is restored – with the nuance on the repaired father of the Freudian hysterics – this is done to accuse him and to attempt destroying him by creating another [father], through displacement. Thus, a metonymic repetition of patriarchies grinds on; patriarchies that are called into question so that they can continue to exist. Everywhere we hear repeated that one is fed up with the father, and yet, at the same time, we have to keep him upright, make him fall, get him up again, prop him up and, to not be left with nothing in face of the maternal ravage. “To use him without believing in him”[1] [Dossia Avdelidi]. What a hystory [quelle hystoire] ! Thus, in order to reinforce justification, we focalise our attention on those fathers of whom we could say that “the pervert always wins”. [Laura Costa] Let us just say that he wins by obtaining jouissance at the expense of him or her of whom he is taking advantage of. Since the #MeToo movement, the father no longer wins with impunity. That does not make him a failure either, if we consider him in terms of his modes of jouissance, which have their source in the suffering of the other, whom he transformed into his object. Serf object in a stronghold that has locked him up and which means that the pervert continues to gets his jouissance from the person he has degraded and turned into a slave of his jouissance, why he publicly displays his suffering in the media, in books, in courtrooms, etc. The mark remains.
From fathers in patriarchies
It is therefore no longer the father who is declining, rather, it is modern discourses that declines him and produce as many versions as there are fathers. [Marie Rosalie Di Giorgio] We are coming from the father-version [père-version] to an infinite version of fathers, among which are those fathers who refuse to occupy a place that they decline – permissive, resigning [Aurélia Verbecq] –, partial–objects–fathers, – players, pedagogists, easy-go-luckies – or styles of modern fathers: detached from any ideal of virility without being feminised, modern fathers that are close to their children under the reign of mothers, [fathers] who have renounced to authority by trading the voice of authority for that of love. But all of the sudden this love begins to invade everything, becomes burdening. “Far from creating a lack, it suffocates” [Hélène Bonnaud]; it does not kindle desire.
Tailor-made
All that remains to do is to build one suited for oneself, to “be a child of the century” [Sylvie Mothiron] in a renewed world, where the word patriarchy will have disappeared, yet only from dictionaries. Thus, following what Lacan announced in Vincennes[2], a master could come to fill the emptied space that was left vacant. Putting all versions of ideals aside, the target could be a perspective, where the importance given to the ties that link the subject to the universel discours [Luciana Fracchia], would allow the subject to hold himself up by his semblants. This is to be differentiated from identifying with discourses that are in vogue.
References from the author:
[1] Cf. Lacan J., The Sinthome. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXII, Established by J.-A. Miller, Translated by A.R. Price, London, Polity Press, 2016, p. 118.
[2] Cf. Lacan J., The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII, Established by J.-A. Miller, translated by R. Grigg, London, W. W. Norton & Company, 2007, p. 239.
Translation: Eva Sophie Reinhofer
Proofreading: Ana-Marija Kroker
Picture : © Emmanuel Kervyn
