Fantasy, Otherness and Violence

Abstract

In the previous two chapters, and from a philosophical and psychoanalytic perspective, I theorized the notion of the void — absence, death, blank space — as the starting point, or even condition of possibility of meaning formation, subjectivity and historicity. In this context, the reading of Lacan’s Seminar X became particularly helpful to start articulating what seemed at first sight a mere existential question into the material reality of the body. The notion of anxiety as theorized in this Seminar served to build a bridge between the abstract notion of language and the physical character of meaning formation and desire. As we saw at the end of the previous chapter, to theorize anxiety as linked to the void was also a way to start grasping the paradoxes, aporias and vicissitudes that cross identity formation and the relation self-other. Furthermore, the notion of anxiety pointed in the direction of action, a notion that confronts us with ethics, responsibility and certainly politics.