History, Yet To Come*

by Julieta Lucero

Abstract

We approach history with a vision that allows us to point out not how the events occurred in the past, but what place an event occupies, from now on, for those who make that decision, the one of redirecting the sense of what happened and, not least, bear it.

Keywords History – Real – Continuity

Date of reception: March 2016. Acceptance date: April 2016.

“History is a crucial discourse because the essential of the subject is deciphered from the discourse of history” (Garcia, 2005,17)*FBR.

Someone enters the office, speaks, complains, and goes to the past. The patient most likely resorts to a phrase that sounds more or less like this: “I did the same thing once again. I have gone backward.” However, the possibility of turning this affirmation and the case itself, towards “this never happened to you before” turns psychoanalysis operative. Even if one sentence condenses “that nodal thing,” the detail that refers to the past enables someone to narrate.

In the same act, we count with elements referring to the past, leading thought, to what is yet to come. It seems that, in this way, -the past will be what is told-. Thus far, what is related to “history is not written in the past,” yet needs material to acknowledge it. In this logic, storytelling has the purpose of being there. The object sustains the subject in front of which it is divided. However, and this is the exciting thing, recounting shows a possible exit. He can, perhaps, locate himself and orient himself to be able to continue. It is not a matter of explaining how things were and how rooted the events are in someone but how it continues and what matters in the present. For Lacan, according to Erik Porge (Porge, 2007, 57), the story must be put into a story, what is to be done with it.

Without this element, we have no history, but without its updating either. History thus shows us the use of the senses, which consists of pointing out what place an event (Bloch, 2012, 32-37) occupies.

Within this framework, it is possible to think of the end of history as not only a completion of the stories along with their respective traditional references but also the opportunity to introduce something there. Note that it is possible to move from loss to empowerment to tell a story. The way Germán García summarizes Lacan’s claim deserves to be taken into account: “Lacan’s theory is how to lead a subject to the point where there is nothing, to force him to invent” (García, 2014, 34)*. History can become like that (pre)established thing that works from there on in us but an invention. This history is the history of the one who writes it (Musachi: 2014, 1). The complicated relationship used to disengage oneself between history and origin is finally discarded. The other allows us to clarify the real related to something and, from there on, begin again. We confirm that nothing is done at all if nothing is done to historicize in the face of the real. It vanishes in the insistence of the ties to the past.

It would seem that the real is for those who decide to redirect the sense of what has happened and, no less critical, to endure it.

Translated from the original:

“La historia es un discurso fundamental porque lo fundamental del sujeto se descifra del discurso de la historia” (García, 2005, 17). FBR

*  “La teoría de Lacan es cómo conducir a un sujeto hasta el punto donde no hay nada, para obligarlo a inventar” (García, 2014, 34). FBR

 

* Translated from the Spanish by Florencia Bernthal Raz. In LEAP.

Bibliography

Bloch, M. (2012) “La historia, los hombres y el tiempo”. En Introducción a la Historia. México. Fondo de Cultura Económica.

García, G. (2005). La entrada del psicoanálisis en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Catálogos.

García, G. (2014). “Clase Dos”. En Diversiones Psicoanalíticas. Buenos Aires. Otium.

Musachi, G. (2014). “El acto en cuestión, su objeto”. En Revista Virtualia N°29. Disponible en: http://virtualia.eol.org.ar/029/template.asp?Psicoanalisis-y-literatura/El-acto-en-cuestion-su-objeto.html.

Porge, E. (2007). Transmitir la clínica psicoanalítica. Buenos Aires. Nueva Visión.

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