This winter term, I will be spending some time with my anthropology colleagues at Paris-Nanterre as part of the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie comparative (LESC), part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
One part of my research stay is devoted to working on my current project: “Towards an anthropology of statelessness”. I will be speaking at the Department’s Colloquium in December (see plan below). I will also be teaching a course in legal anthropology … more about this one later.
The colloquium is free and open to the public, everyone is welcome.
On July 28, 2024 at 4.30pm, my dear Akbar Hussain passed away.
We have known each other for over a decade and as is the case with many central interlocutors in anthropology, there is never a way to thank them enough for what they are enabling us to achieve. Akbar Hussain was born as Mohammad Akbar Hussain Khan. He descended from a well-known Turkic Qizilbash family of high-ranking warriors, originating from Lankaran in what is now Azerbaijan. His ancestors had fought in the British Army and their heroic services were rewarded with name titles – such as “Captain” – and with land titles – such as a grant given to Akbar Hussain’s great-grandfather in 1886 that allowed him to relocate from the Northern part of British India to Burma. While the family raised their children in Myanmar, they continued to go back and forth to countries in the East such as Pakistan (since 1947) and the West (Akbar Hussain himself lived in the USA for many years). Theirs was a polyglott Muslim family as most Muslim families are in Myanmar. In contrast to his ancestors, however, Akbar Hussain did not serve any army; he served his mosque in downtown Yangon. He knew its history better than most, and due to the location of his appartment, he also knew its present: who would go in and out, at what time and for what purpose. He was curious enough to engage with my curiosity, multi-lingual so that we could easily communicate about the most complicated matters, very knowledgable and yet modest and able to admit when he did not know something – suggesting that I probe literature instead of his brain.
This is a very blurry picture of the two of us, but somehow, it says so much about our relation. Akbar Hussain was always there when I needed him and even, when I did not know that I needed him. He always kept to the background or to the sidelines, observing everything, commenting quietly afterwards or hinting at things, pointing at people, alerting me what to pay attention to, and whom to listen to more closely. Translating from Urdu to English for me at times, and always making sure that I get home safely at night after a procession or another long day spent at his house with him and his lovely wife.
He passed away and I could not say goodbye properly, neither in person, nor at the graveyard. He had asked me many times to come see him during the last few years. We communicated via a third person who would scan his handwritten letters to me in an internet café … as if it were the 1990s, as if there was a military dicatorship in place … wait … oh. And I would write self-censored emails back, because I knew that I was sending them to an address and a person whom I did not know and that I relied on that person to print them out and give them to him when he came to pick up his ‘mail’. So he knew all about my private life in safe Europe, but little of my fears and worries for him, his wife and everyone in Myanmar, really, as there was no way to ask how he was really doing in the current situation. He never spoke of politics, he sticked to writing about his health, his religion, the weather and of course reported meticuously about all upcoming festivities at the mosque.
We met at the mosque over 10 years ago and soon I realized that he frequently stayed at the managing trustee’s house at the time. He was his right hand, but also a careful observer as the person was very old and also not uncomplicated, feared by some even. Akbar Hussain knew how to handle complicated people, he even knew how to deal with a female German anthropologist who intruded into the daily life of the mosque, too, but – in contrast to tourists or journalists who dropped in and out, sometimes coming only for one day in the year – Ashura – to witness, record and distribute gruesome images of men flagellating themselves or walking over burning coal – to then disappear again, thinking they had understood something, he dealt with me as someone who would always come back and stay because I somehow never understood enough. And he kept explaining. Eventually, when he thought, I had acquired enough knowledge, he asked me: “Hey, when will you become Shia?” In my book, I recall this sentence and have interpreted it in the following way:
‘Hey, when will you become Shia?’ he often asked, which indicated to me that it would have been easier for him to conceive of me as a converted ‘member’ than as someone who was simply very interested (and increasingly knowledgeable) in what it means to be a Shia in Yangon. My interest and knowledge in the Shia religion were fine, but they were not what mattered in the end: membership in the community did (Beyer 2024 ,8)
He is on the cover photograph of my Myanmar book, as usual at the sidelines, with his back even turned away from where supposedly the ‘action’ is, yet later able to deconstruct and interpret the event with me in all its details. Since we often sticked together, everyone initiatially wondered who I was. The following conversation is from a transcript I made between Akbar Hussain, me and another person from the mosque who explained to me how Akbar Hussain would answer this question in my absence.
Third person (to me): they all ask ‘where is she from, where is she from?’ Akbar Hussain then always says ‘my relation’ #00:08:44-6#
AH Because my relation are all foreigners #00:08:49-8#
J That is true #00:08:51-8#
AH So they thought that you are my relative #00:08:57-3#
J That’s good – we can keep it this way (laughs) #00:09:02-9#
AH They ask me ‘from America?’ ‘No, I say, from Germany.’ They are very inquisitive (laughs) #00:09:18-7#
J That’s fine, I am also inquisitive #00:09:23-9#
(all laughing) #00:09:26-6#
All his relatives are foreigners, he said, because Akbar Hussain had chosen to never give up his Pakistani citizenship. He loved Myanmar and Yangon, the downtown area, his street and the mosque, but his home was in Pakistan where he spent his youth and went to university. He was fiercely political, one of the harshest critics of the mullahs in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, of those who perverted his beloved religion and his culture. He was proud and knowledgable and sometimes so outspoken that when he picked up the microphone at the mosque to condemn the killing of innocents, the endemic corruption or anything else going on in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Northern Africa, one could mistake him for being radical himself. He was radical in the sense that he did not only believe, but stood up for what he believed. But this concerned politics and religion abroad. He was careful to not position himself publicly when it came to Myanmar – knowing that he was a foreigner by choice. Someone who had to frequent the downtown visa section of the Ministry of Foreign affairs every few months to renew his residence status. While he had tried to incorporate me into his ‘community’ and even his family, he himself had remained Other all the time … we both occupied the same positionality, I later understood.
I read about Akbar Hussain’s death on the Facebook page of a friend of mine from Yangon. She is the wife of the late managing trustee and knew Akbar Hussain very well. He saw her getting married at a young age, he saw her two children growing up, he went in and out of her house in downtown for many years and he supported her late husband in many ways. She is thankful for him, her story being one of the numerous stories that need to be told because they are paradigmatic for Myanmar’s Muslims: for the way religious divides are being bridged, for the way religious tolerance is being practiced at a low level, for the way in which the people of Myanmar are capable of transcending the categories that have been imposed upon them throughout colonial history. These are the stories we do not get to hear about too much, but they exist and they matter. Just like the people that tell them.
One last conversation in person. Spring 2020 (photo: Felix Girke)
Akbar Hussain, may you rest in peace and … thank you.
During the winter term 2024, I will be continuing my research project on statelessness in Europe at the Department d’Anthropologie. Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative(LESC) at the University of Paris Nanterre.
I will be teaching a course on the anthropology of law for first and second-year MA students and give lectures on the Anthropology of Statelessness.
In seiner hommage an Jacques Lacan anlässlich der Erstveröffentlichung von Seminar XV, L’Acte psychanalytique, sagte Jacques-Alain Miller folgendes:
‘Moi, la vérité, je parle’ … In dieser Eigenschaft lehrt Lacan. Sich verständlich zu machen ist nicht lehren, sondern das Gegenteil. Man versteht nur das, was man bereits zu wissen glaubt. Genauer gesagt, man versteht immer nur einen Sinn, dessen Befriedigung man bereits erfahren hat. Das bedeutet, dass man immer nur seine Phantasien versteht. Und man wird nie belehrt, außer durch das, was man nicht versteht.[1] (Jacques-Alain Miller 2024, min. 1:19:12)
Der Satz Moi, la vérité, je parle! („Ich, die Wahrheit, spreche“) ist aus einem Vortrag Lacans entnommen, den dieser im November 1955 in Wien an der Neuropsychiatrischen Universitätsklinik gehalten hatte.[2] Und es ist dieser Vortrag, auf den sich Lacan am Ende des 9. Kapitels des Seminars X bezieht:
Es ist Diana, die ich als die Flucht (fuite) oder die Fortsetzung (suite) dieses Dings (Chose) zeigend bezeichne. Das Freud’sche Ding ist das, was Freud hat fallen lassen – aber es macht weiter nach seinem Tod, und es reißt noch die ganze Jagd mit sich, in der Gestalt von uns allen. Diese Verfolgung, wir werden sie das nächste Mal weiterführen“ (Lacan 2010: 164).
Dieses Seminarende, so gesprochen am 23. Januar 1963, ähnelt dem Sitzungsende am 19. Dezember 1962. Da sagt Lacan:
… es gibt die Jagd Dianas, über die ich Ihnen zu dem von mir gewählten Zeitpunkt, dem Zeitpunkt der Hundertjahrfeier von Freud, gesagt habe, dass sie das Ding (Chose) der Freud’schen Suche war. (Lacan 2010: 108)
Was ist „das Ding der Freud’schen Suche“, auf das sich Lacan in Seminar X bezieht? [3] Und was hat es mit der „Jagd Dianas“ auf sich?
Diana und Actaeon
Diana („die Leuchtende“) ist die römische Göttin der Jagd, der Natur, und die Schutzherrin der Frauen und Kinder. In der mythischen Erzählung von Ovid wird sie als „hochgegürtet“ und „jungfräulich“ beschrieben. Sie badet mit ihren Nymphen in einer Quelle in einer Grotte inmitten des Waldes, ihre Waffen und Kleider abgelegt, als Actaeon, der Enkel des Kadmos, Gründer und König von Theben, in ihren Wald eintritt. Er trifft in der Grotte auf die Göttin und sieht sie ohne Kleider. Die erboste Göttin bespritzt ihn mit Quellwasser und verkündet „Nun darfst du gern erzählen, du habest mich ohne Kleid gesehen, wenn du es noch wirst erzählen können!“ Sie lässt Actaeon ein Hirschgeweih wachsen, spitzt seine Ohren zu, gibt ihm Hufe und „auch noch die Angst“ (lat. pavor). Actaeon ergreift in dem Moment die Flucht, in dem er sein Spiegelbild sieht. Ovid schreibt allwissend: „[s]obald er aber Gesicht und Geweih im Wasser gesehen hatte, wollte er „Ich Elender!“ sagen – aber keine Stimme folgte! … nur sein früheres Bewusstsein blieb erhalten.“ Actaeon wird sodann im Wald von seinen eigenen Hunden gewittert, die ihn nicht mehr erkennen, ihn verfolgen und letztendlich reißen. Erst dann war der Zorn der Göttin Diana gesättigt, so Ovid.
Die Hundertjahrfeier, die Lacan im Zusammenhang mit der „Jagd Dianas“ anführt, war jene zu Ehren von Sigmund Freuds 100. Geburtstag in Wien. Im daraus entstandenen Vortragstext, findet sich eine Stelle, in der Lacan seine Zuhörer als „Spürhunde“ bezeichnet (Lacan 2019a: 484), sowie einen sehr langen Absatz, in dem er zunächst Freud als Actaeon darstellt, der sich „fortwährend durch von Anbeginn auf die falsche Spur gesetzte Hunde losgelassen, bis zur Verbissenheit darum bemüht, dass sie seine Verfolgung wieder aufnehmen, ohne den Lauf zu [sic!] verlangsamen zu können, worin allein seine Leidenschaft für die Göttin ihn führt. Ihn so weit führt, dass er erst in den Grotten anzuhalten vermag…“ (485). Lacan bezieht sich meines Erachtens hier auf all das, was vor Actaeons Verwandlung in einen Hirsch geschehen ist – das, was ihn überhaupt vor die Göttin hat treten lassen. Nach Ovid ist Actaeon in dem ihm „unbekannten“ Wald „herumgeirrt“, seine Schritte seien „unsicher“ gewesen und es sei „das Schicksal“ gewesen, dass ihn in die Grotte geführt habe. So wie ich Lacan lese, schreibt er Actaeons Eintritt in die Grotte dessen Begehren zu. Das Begehren ist nichts, was man verstehen könnte, nichts, zu dem ein Subjekt unmittelbaren Zugang hätte.[4] Es ist vielmehr etwas, das einen sich unsicher fühlen und herumirren lässt. Aber es ist auch das, was in Richtung Wahrheit zieht. Und so führt Lacan in seinem Wiener Vortrag weiter aus, die Grotte Dianas sei „für seine [Freuds] Schüler noch weit davon entfernt erreicht zu werden, sofern sie sich nicht gar weigern, ihm dorthin zu folgen, und damit ist der Aktäon, der hier in Stücke gerissen wird, nicht Freud, sondern sehr wohl im Maße der Leidenschaft, die ihn entflammte … jeder Analytiker“ (Lacan 2019a: 485). Der Vortrag Lacans in Wien ist somit auch eine Abrechnung mit der Wiener Psychoanalyse nach Freud, weil Lacan der Ansicht war, dass man von dieser Jagd abgelassen habe.[5]
Wahrheit, Begehren und die Angst
Wenn Lacan sagt Moi, la vérité, je parle, dann ist nicht er der Wahrheitsverkünder, genauso wenig wie Freud es war, sondern es geht ihm darum, die anderen „Hunde, zu denen Sie werden, wenn Sie mich vernehmen…“ (484) auf ihren Weg in die Grotte anzuleiten, näher heran an den Ort an dem die Wahrheit „von/für sich“ spricht“ (481).[6] Lacan möchte, dass man wie Actaeon seinem Begehren nicht nachgibt, dass man wie jemand ist, der nicht weiß, was ihn antreibt, der aber Freud und Lacan hörend und lesend, sich auf den eigenen Weg macht.
Doch was passiert in dem Moment, wo Actaeon auf die Göttin trifft? Er bekommt von Diana als Strafe die Sprache weggenommen und sie gibt ihm die Angst. Im Deutschen sagt man „es verschlägt einem vor Angst die Sprache“ und so ist es bei Actaeon tatsächlich. „Auf welche Distanz muss ich die Angst halten, um zu Ihnen darüber zu sprechen …?“ fragt Lacan daher in Seminar X. Dies sei „seit Beginn“ seine Frage gewesen. Angst ist ein Affekt (Lacan 2010: 24, 30) und als solcher nicht verbalisiert. Aber Angst ist auch das, was nicht täuscht (101).[7] Deshalb ist der in einen Hirsch verwandelte Actaeon der Einzige, der noch weiß, wer er ist – im Gegensatz zu seinen Hunden und seinen Dienern. Indem Diana Actaeon Angst gegeben hat, hat sie sein Begehren bestraft.[8] Aber was genau war das Objekt seines Begehrens? Warum führen Lacan und auch Freud diesen Mythos überhaupt an? Eine mögliche Interpretation ist, dass gar nicht die Göttin in der Gestalt der schönen Jungfrau begehrt wurde, sondern die Wahrheit (lat. veritas), die sie verkörpert.[9] Lacan sagt: „Denn die Wahrheit erweist sich darin als vom Wesen her komplex, demütig in ihren Diensten und fremd der Realität, aufsässig gegen die Wahl des Geschlechts, verwandt mit dem Tod und, wenn man alles zusammennimmt, eher unmenschlich, Diana vielleicht…“ (513). Lacan setzt hier Diana mit der Wahrheit gleich. Und er folgt Freud, wenn er sagt „die Wahrheit [packt] im Munde Freuds besagtes Tier bei den Hörnern: ‚Ich bin also für Sie das Rätsel derjenigen, die sich, sobald sie erschienen ist, entzieht …“ (481).
Im letzten Teil dieses Textes von 1956, den Lacan „Die Ausbildung künftiger Analytiker“ nennt (512), zitiert er die bekannte Aussage Freuds, dass es sich bei Erziehen, Regieren und Psychoanalysieren um „unmögliche Unternehmungen“ handle bei denen das Subjekt solange verfehlt werde, wie es sich „in dem Spielraum, den Freud der Wahrheit vorbehält, aus dem Staub macht“ (513). Auf dem Weg der Wahrheit geht es also darum, sich nicht aus dem Staub zu machen. Aber dies bedeute im Umkehrschluss gerade nicht, dass man sich als Analytiker mit seinen Analysanden auf den staubigen Weg durch den Kamin begeben soll – in Anlehnung an die von „Anna O“ geprägte Metapher des chimney sweepings auf die Lacan am Ende der Sitzung vom 23. Januar 1963 in Seminar X anspielt.
Freud selbst, so Lacan, habe „das Ding“ (laChose) fallenlassen, indem er wollte, dass Breuers Patientin diesem „alles sagt.“ Wenn es um die Wahrheit gehe, dann sage er sie zwar immer, so wird Lacan es einige Jahre später in Télevision (1974) formulieren, aber er sage sie nie ganz – denn dies sei unmöglich.[10]
In Seminar X verwendet Lacan verschiedene Jagdmetaphern: Netze, Schlingen, Knoten, Spuren und das Ausstreichen von Fährten. Doch auf dem Weg zur Wahrheit kann es keine Spuren geben, denen man folgen könnte: die Wahrheit ist das Einzige, was noch nicht geschrieben ist. Das Einzige, was stets noch erfunden werden muss. Dass, was in der Zukunft liegt – so formuliert es Jacques-Alain Miller in seiner hommage an Lacan vom Februar 2024.[11] Und deshalb beschäftigt sich Lacan so ausführlich mit der „unmöglichen Unternehmung,“ andere einem folgen zu lassen, um „die Stunde der Wahrheit zu finden“:
Treten Sie auf meinen Ruf hin in die Arena und heulen Sie mit meiner Stimme. Schon sind Sie, siehe da, verloren, ich widerspreche mir, ich fordere Sie heraus, ich stehle mich fort: Sie sagen, dass ich mich wehre (Lacan 2019a: 484).[12]
In einem Vortrag aus dem Jahr 1988 in den USA vor amerikanischen Psychoanalytikern bezeichnete Jacques-Alain Miller sich als underdog (Miller 1991: 84) und verwendet damit Lacans Hundemetapher. Miller war eingeladen, etwas von der Psychoanalyse zu erzählen, aber er wusste nicht recht was, denn zu groß schien ihm der Glaube seiner amerikanischen Zuhörer daran, bereits alles über die Psychoanalyse zu wissen. Wissen und Verstehen hilft auf dem Weg zur Wahrheit aber nicht: Die Natur der Wahrheit ist es, verschleiert zu sein und man kommt ihr nur näher, indem man den Schleier hebt, so Miller.[13]
Schluss
Es ist das Begehren, welches Actaeon in die Grotte und in sein Verderben führte. Da er keine Angst hatte, als er auf die Göttin traf, musste sie ihm von ihr erst gegeben werden. Bei uns Menschen steht die Angst jedoch bereits zwischen Begehren und Wahrheit. An diesem Ort verhindert sie, dass wir ungeschützt hinter den Vorhang blicken. Es macht nämlich einen Unterschied, ob der Akt des Vorhang-hebens allein vollzogen wird, wie bei Actaeon, der in Tizianos Gemälde in dem Moment eine Abwehrbewegung macht, in dem er wortwörtlich die nackte Wahrheit sieht, oder ob eine Annäherung an die Wahrheit im Rahmen einer ‚analytischen Aktion‘ (acte analytique) erfolgt. Das Begehren, die ganze Wahrheit erfahren zu wollen, ist dabei jedoch immer verfehlt.[14]
„Gerade durch dieses Unmögliche“, so Lacan in Télévision, „hängt die Wahrheit am Realen“ (Lacan 1974, 9). Die Angst, die sich zwischen das Begehren und die Wahrheit stellt, schützt uns also vor der ultimativen Konfrontation mit dem Realen. Wir verlieren durch sie zwar kurzzeitig unsere Sprache, aber immerhin nicht unsere menschliche Gestalt.
Freud, Sigmund. 1911. Varia. “Gross ist die Diana der Epheser” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse 2 (3): 158-159.
Harris, Oliver. 2017. Lacan’s return to antiquity. Between nature and the gods. London and New York: Routledge.
Katz, Maya Balakirsky. 2021. Great is the parable of Diana of the Ephesians! American Imago 78 (2): 389-418.
Klossowski, Pierre. 1980 (1956). Le bain de Diane. Paris. Gallimard.
Lacan, Jacques. 2010. Die Angst. Das Seminar, Buch X. 1962-1963. Übersetzt von Hans-Dieter Gondek. Wien und Berlin: Turia + Kant.
Lacan, Jacques. 2017 [1960/1961]. XXV. The relationship between anxiety and desire. In: Transference. The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VIII, übersetzt von Bruce Fink, 360-371.
Lacan, Jacques. 2019a [1955/1956]. Die Freud’sche Sache oder Sinn der Rückkehr zu Freud in der Psychoanalyse. In Jacques Lacan. Schriften I. Übersetzt von Hans-Dieter Gondek. Wien und Berlin: Turia + Kant, S. 472-513.
Lacan, Jacques. 2019b [1958-1959]. Desire and its interpretation. Seminar VI. Übersetzt von Bruce Fink. Medford, MA: Polity.
Lacan, Jacques. 2015 [1959]. Zum Gedenken an Ernest Jones. Über seine Theorien der Symbolik. In Jacques Lacan. Schriften II. Übersetzt von Hans-Dieter Gondek. Wien und Berlin: Turia + Kant, S. 205-238.
Lacan, Jacques. 1974. Télévision. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Logan, Marie-Rose. 2002. Antique myth and modern mind. Jacques Lacan’s version of Actaeon and the fictions of surrealism. Journal of Modern Literature 25 (3/4): 90-100.
Malem, Sandrine. 2008. Un point de vue excentrique. Che vuoi ? 29 (1): 111-119.
Mathews, Peter. 2021. The symbolism of clothing. The naked truth about Jacques Lacan. CLC Web. Comparative Literature and Culture 23 (4): https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3740
Miller, Jacques-Alain. 2009 [1980]. Another Lacan. Vortrag gehalten auf “Rencontre Internationale du Champ Freudien”, Caracas, Venezuela. Veröffentlicht in Symptom 10, übersetzt von Ralph Chipman.
Miller, Jacques-Alain. 1991. The analytic experience. Means, ends, and results. Vortrag gehalten 1988 in den USA. In Lacan and the subject of language, herausgegeben von Ellie Ragland. New York und London: Routledge, S. 83-99.
Miller, Jacques-Alain. 2016. La verité fait couple avec le sens. La Cause du Désir 92: 84-93.
[1] „‘Moi, la vérité, je parle‘ … C’est à ce titre que Lacan enseigne. Se faire comprendre, ce n’est pas enseigner, c’est l’inverse. On ne comprend que ce que l’on croit déjà savoir. Plus exactement, on ne comprend jamais qu’un sens dont on a déjà éprouvé la satisfaction. C’est dire qu’on ne comprend jamais que ses fantasmes. Et on n’est jamais enseigné sinon par ce que l’on ne comprend pas.” Wenn nicht anders angegeben, stammen alle Übersetzungen von mir.
[2] „La chose freudienne“ im Original oder „Die Freud’sche Sache oder Sinn der Rückkehr zu Freud in der Psychoanalyse“ (2019a [1956]) in der deutschen Übersetzung.
[3] In den früheren Seminaren V und VIII finden sich ebenfalls Diana-Referenzen.
[4] Lacan, Sem. X, S. 36: „Deshalb gibt es für mich nicht nur keinen Zugang zu meinem Begehren…“, siehe auch Lacan 2017: 361.
[5] In dieser Hinsicht ähnelt Lacans Botschaft der von Freud (1911), der selbst einen Diana-Text verfasste, welcher, so Katz (2021), bisher als eine unzureichende religionswissenschaftliche Abhandlung interpretiert wurde. Katz liest Freuds Text jedoch als eine versteckte Kritik an der damaligen Wiener Psychoanalyse.
[6] In der Sitzung vom 21. November 1962 unterscheidet Lacan „analytische Theorie“ von „analytischer Erfahrung“ und es ist die letztere, die er als die „Quelle“ (source) bezeichnet, zu der er seine Seminarzuhörer führen möchte.
[7] Der deutsche Kladdentext zu Sem X ist daher missverständlich. Er fasst den Inhalt des Buches wie folgt zusammen: „Es geht um die vielfältigen Erscheinungsformen der Angst in ihrem Täuschungs- und in ihrem Wahrheitscharakter.“ Nach Lacan hat die Angst keinen Täuschungscharakter – und ihr Bezug zur Wahrheit ist zentral, aber nicht als ein Aspekt der Angst, sondern vielmehr als das, was jenseits der Angst liegt.
[8] Siehe auch Lacan, Sem VIII: “In order that anxiety should be constituted, there has to be a relationship at the level of desire” (Lacan, 2017, 363; und: “… anxiety [angoisse], inasmuch as we consider it to be key to the determination of symptoms, arises only insofar as some activity that enters into the play of symptoms becomes eroticized – or, to put it better, is taken up in the mechanism of desire.” Lacan 2019b [1958-59], S. 12).
[9] Für andere Interpretationen siehe Klossowksi (1980 [1956]), Logan (2002) oder vergleichend Harris (2017).
[10] “Je dis toujours la vérité: pas toute, parce que toute la dire, on n’y arrive pas. La dire toute, c’est impossible, matériellement: les mots y manquent…“ (Lacan 1974, 9).
[11] “Non, tout n’est pas écrit. La vérité n’est pas déjà là, elle s’invente ; elle s’invente, elle est au futur…“ (Miller 2024).
[12] Ähnlich auch: „Was ist Lehren (enseigner), wenn es das, was es zu lehren gilt, nicht nur dem zu lehren gilt, der nicht weiß, sondern eben dem, der nicht wissen kann? Und man muss zugestehen, dass bis zu einem gewissen Punkt, geht man aus von dem, worum es sich handelt, wir hier alle im selben Boot sitzen (logés à la même enseigne)“ (Lacan, Sem X, 28).
[13] “… son statut natal est le voilage. La vérité comme telle est cachée et on n’y accède que par une levée du voile.” (Miller 2016, 87).
[14] Siehe auch Beyer 2023; Malem 2008; Mathews 2021.
They must have boarded at Finsterwalde – the East German equivalent to the Black Forest – at least as far as the name is concerned. The shiny new Berlin airport was along the regional train’s route to Wismar on the Baltic Sea. The train was overcrowded and I had to leave my legs dangling outside of our joint compartment as the floor was blocked by their suitcases onto which each of them had rested one protective hand. A hand bag occupied its own seat, equally guarded by the elderly women’s hand; a small wedding band in silver caught my eye.
After we had exchanged a friendly ”Hello” and talked a bit about how packed the train was, but that for me it was just a short ride to the city center, the woman’s grey-haired, orderly combed husband, who was wearing a rain jacket, suddenly pointed at a dilapidated building that appeared on our left side. We turned our heads: “It’s the Gymnasium!”he exclaimed. Not his Gymnasium – “a” Gymnasium. He also recalled its name – the name of the street. The train continued its way through what used to be the countryside, but what is now – thanks to the airport – part of Berlin, home to 6.3 million people.
“We are getting a free city tour with our ride” she said amused and both looked outside their common window – she to the left, he to the right. I had planned to continue reading, but soon realised that listening closely to their conversation and especially following their pointing index fingers with my eyes would be more worthwhile.
It took me a while to understand what I found interesting: they were only looking at “old” things: the dilapidated Gymnasium, „Jannowitzbrücke“ – he named the bridge over the river Spree, when we entered Ostkreuz train station, they both said „Wasserturm!“, pointing their index fingers at the art nouveau landmark tower that is permanently closed. But for the elderly couple it seemed to have remained open. I tried to imagine seeing Berlin the way they were seeing it, actively unseeing everything “new”: the renovated train stations? No comment. Not there. The massive glas office buildings? No pointing. Not there. A building aptly called “Futurium”? No remark. Not there.
Suddenly both erupted in laughter when they saw the (formerly) white pavilion in front of the Alex: “Just like in the old days!” The train passed over the bridge that separates the “Museum Island” from the main land. “Repair work” she said. Oh! I noticed a break in the pattern. But then he told her: “It’s because they are repairing the war damage!“ “But the Bode Museum is still as it was?” she asks. “Yes, because they can only repair one building after the other.”
I was travelling with a couple who not only travelled through Berlin for the first time in decades, I was travelling with a couple who travelled through Eastern Berlin as if the war had just ended and through Western Berlin as if the wall had just come down.
But before I could tell them how much I liked them for this, another hand pointed its index finger onto the hand bag which had travelled comfortably on its own seat with us. A young Asian-looking man with grey glasses and headphones looked at me. I smiled and pointed towards the elderly lady. His index finger left the bag and now carefully tipped onto the woman’s shoulder. She had not noticed him, her body was turned towards the window where the past continued to pass by.
Both looked at the young man and the elderly man shouted a loud “No!” into his face that made me and him jump a little. I looked at the two without saying a word, the woman then took her bag and placed it onto the small table in front of her and the man assumed the handbag’s seat. “… oder ok” murmured the husband and both turned their heads again … I felt a stitch. Had this been a racist reaction? I looked at the young man, making sure he was ok. He wasn’t.
As soon as we had reached Hauptbahnhof where most people got out, the handbag reclaimed its seat as the young man quickly found himself another place to sit. Then a Black man arrived. He pointed at the handbag which was from a German brand and which depicted many people with different skin tones, wearing colourful clothes and sporting hairstyles! This time, the woman immediately reacted and nobody spoke a word. They were sitting quietly until I had to get out. I wished them safe travels and they wished me a “good night”, assuming that because I had been up since 5am, I was about to go to sleep. I did not correct them.
Walking through Berlin I contemplated: what if all the “different looking” and “different speaking” people were as “new” to this elderly couple as the shiny glass dome on top of the “Reichstag” was for them? What if they equally erased everyone as they had erased everything they did not remember from the past? What if “their past” was not gone?
We cannot assume that we are inhabiting the same world.
We also cannot assume that we are seeing the same things even when we are looking outside the same window.
We even cannot assume a “we” that is united by more than jointly passing by.
If you are a recent graduate (MA-/MPhil-degree holder) with an interest in pursuing a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology under my supervision, please consider applying for a PhD position at the newly established Graduate School “Post-Euroentric Europe. Narratives of a World-Province in Transformation” at the University of Konstanz.
Together with 10 other professors we have worked hard in the last years to realize an ambitious and highly relevant programme that is aimed at decentring and questioning narratives about Europe.
“Where is Europe?” we might be tempted to ask. “And is it even one place?” (Attali 1994). Is Europe to be found in the minds and hearts of the refugees detained in camps on its southern border, for whom it is place of longing, even as it denies them entry or sets up hurdles in their way? How and to what extent do “soft” cultural factors in the form of collective narratives and imaginations solidify into “hard” institutional realities, which in turn have a reflexive effect on the availability of narrative resources?
While it has long been customary to regard “Europe” and “modernity” as more or less synonymous, only recently has there been a systematic examination of the fact that the European continent was and is permeated by political-cultural demarcations and asyn-chronicities, even within its own borders. Increased attention to non-European traditions or those marginalized in Europe’s dominant self-narrative not only guides a redefinition of Europe’s position in world affairs; it also requires us to diversify notions of Europe from within.
The work of our graduate program aims to contribute to the historical and contemporary demonopolization of the concept of Europe in local contexts, which has been tightly restricted to dominant traditions in the West-Central European area.
Within this interdisciplinary Graduate School, I am particularly interested in supervising anthropological PhD projects with a focus on statelessnessin Europe or its border regions or on one of the various European independence movements (e.g. in Catalonia, Bretagne, Basque Country, Scotland, Celtic Nationalism, One Tirol, … ). Other topics are possible, too, as long as they fit the programme and are based on ethnographic field research and lie within the field of political and legal anthropology.
Make sure you read the entire research programme carefully before preparing your application! If you have questions, contact me under my uni-konstanz email-address.The deadline is already 30 June 2024!
In contemporary Britain, it is no longer only migrants who are being targeted by the government, but those who fend for them just as well.
In “‘Illegal’ migration and the Othering of activist lawyers in the UK“, I argue that human rights solicitors, who pride themselves in fending for their marginalized clients, have become targets of state officials who began to call them “activist lawyers” in 2020. The current populist atmosphere in British politics regarding the topic of “illegal migration” not only others those who seek asylum, but also their immigration lawyers and NGO workers who are committed to supporting their clients in their asylum claims. Those lawyers who began to publicly reclaim the term “activist lawyers”, a term initially hurled at them as a slur, effectively managed to strip the state’s vocabulary of its negative attributes. What makes the term “activist lawyers” and the way it is being handled by im/migration and human rights lawyers particularly interesting is that it is no longer exclusionary words about others that lawyers are dealing with here, but words about themselves.
Through this reversal, lawyers brought the former slur in line with their profession’s ethical stance as well as their own personal biographies. The podcast and platform “Activist Lawyer”, hosted by the human rights solicitor Sarah Henry, has been covering this development since 2020 and features many interesting audio formats as well as texts. Make sure you visit “Activist Lawyer – and read my full text here.
Two new publications came out this month — one on my last research with ethno-religious minorities in urban Yangon in Myanmar, the other based on long-term fieldwork in Central Asia, in rural Kyrgyzstan.
In “Legal Pluralism in Central Asia“, published for an edited volume on the Central Asian World by Routledge, I put forward the argument of a rhetorical emergence of legal pluralism, combining literature from legal and linguistic anthropology. I argue that “we should understand legal pluralism not as the precondition that allows for cases to be dealt with and adjudicated in a plural legal manner; rather, it should be considered a possible outcome whose rhetorical emergence empirically varies from case to case. Depending on the situation, legal pluralism does not define the set-up of a case from the beginning, but rather becomes created intersubjectively in situ by the disputing parties involved in the case” (410). I conclude with a caution: “As anthropologists, we should refrain from advocating legal pluralism in such contexts [where claims about ‘custom’ are competitive rather than descriptive] as a more “culture- friendly” or encompassing way to deal with questions of order, sanctioning or indeed harmony, since “Plurality may actually reinforce structures of inequality as the plurality of forums available decreases the binding power of any law” (418, von Benda- Beckmann et al., 2009, p. 12).
In “Community as a category of empire“, published for History and Anthropology, I argue that ‘community’ is a category that is inextricably bound up with the historical development of the British empire. It was in this context that modern social theory took root, including, eventually, publications on community in anthropology and sociology that profoundly influenced nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought and that continue to shape everyday understandings of the category within and beyond academia. I first elaborate what type of work the category ‘community’ was intended to do in the British empire. I then introduce two key figures who were responsible for designing, distributing and implementing two contrasting imperial theories of community. Subsequently, I sketch the migratory history of the category following the ancestors of today’s so-called ‘Burmese Indians’ across the Bay of Bengal from India to Burma. The final part of the article presents the repercussions ‘community’ has in contemporary Myanmar, drawing on recent legislation around ‘race and religion’ as well as my own ethnographic data from religious processions of ethno-religious minorities who find themselves in a subaltern position vis-à-vis the Buddhist majority population and an ethnonationalist state.
This is a peer-reviewed journal article that developed out of two years of Cartel work within the Lacan Circle of Australia (Melbourne). I presented the topic in 2021 and worked on this publication in which I combine psychoanalytical theory with an anthropological outlook on contemporary politics.
In this article I explore the psychoanalytical underpinnings of the recent purchase of the original manuscript of Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom by the French state from the perspective of Jacques Lacan’s concept of perversion. I argue that in declaring de Sade’s book national heritage, the French state has tried to empty the text of its transgressive characteristics and reduced it to a fetish object. By placing the textual artefact inside the National Library of France, where it remains inaccessible, it has installed this object at the centre of the State in an effort to prop itself up while at the same time trying to veil a void. While this case is spectacular, we can abstract from it a distinguishing characteristic of the 21st century: the installation of fetish objects in an increasingly deserted symbolic order as well as the reappearance of the Name-of-the-Father in the imaginary order where the State acts as if it was the progenitor. This article aims to demonstrate the usefulness of Lacan’s teaching on perversion for a critical psychoanalysis that is “in the world”.
Jacques Lacan wrote “On Kant with Sade” in 1963; six years after the French state dropped a ban on Marquis de Sade’s book “120 Days of Sodom” (1904). Since 2021, the book is part of France’s “national heritage”.
I am currently beginning new work in a Cartel on “Brave Waste World” that is devoted to studying Lacan’s teachings in regard to the concepts of waste, the exiled and the world. The topic of my Cartel contribution is “Waste of the world. On statelessness.”
judith beyer 
