The child comes into the world as an object – this is its first status – it endures language and is marked by it. This orientation provides a fundamental clinical compass [1] and runs through several of the texts presented in this newsletter. The statements that have left their mark on the subject in what has been said, kept quiet, whispered, yelled or shouted at them, what Lacan has called lalangue, which always has to do with the subject’s relationship to desire and to the impenetrable jouissance of the Other [2], can only ever be misunderstood.
In her text “Hijos del malentendido” [Children of Misunderstanding], Licene Garcia highlights the extent to which we are subject to the language of the Other and how we have woven a fabric out of it that we consider to be our destiny. The important question she raises is : how do we escape ? Therein lies the paradox of analysis : using language – the one that has determined us as subjects – to achieve a “defamiliarization” of language.
Sylvie Mothiron’s essay, “L’enfant témoin” [The Child Witness], introduces us to Lacan’s text “Le malentendu”, one of his last talks, in which he states : “There is no other trauma : man is born misunderstood”[3], and it is up to analysis to “exploit” that misunderstanding.
The primary status of the child as an object is also a point of reference for an institution that welcomes children and their parents : how do we deal with the object that presents itself ? This is the question raised by Christelle Arfeuille.
In “Fa-male!”, Céline Menghi affirms, with Lacan, that in stories of violence and abuse against women, it is always a question of jouissance. And a woman can just as well be an abuser, for example when the mother’s jouissance is expressed in complicity with the man’s jouissance, or when she reduces the child to the object gaze.
The question of the mother’s jouissance is also raised in Catherine Klein’s text, which takes us into the television series La Mesías, in which a brother and sister confront their traumatic childhood in the grip of an abusive mother who has become a fanatical Catholic, a mother who has become mad about All, about God. How does one become a subject after being abused ?
The title of Cristiano Ventura’s text is evocative: “Faire famille, après le génocide rwandais” [Making family, after the Rwandan genocide]. It is about Gaël Faye, a Franco-Rwandan writer who writes about an unprecedented social bond : the “making of a family” that was imposed on orphaned children in Rwanda. Marked by the silence of his family, Faye weaves a family bond through fiction.
I hope you enjoy reading these fascinating texts !
[1] Laurent É., “Protéger l’enfant du délire familial”, La Petite Girafe, no 29, March 2009.
[2] Miller J.-A., “Une lecture du Séminaire D’un Autre à l’autre”, La Cause freudienne, no 65, March 2007, p. 121.
[3] Lacan J., “Le malentendu”, Aux confins du Séminaire, established by Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris, Navarin, 2021, p. 74.
Translation: Ana-Marija Kroker
