On the political power of the inhuman:

Returning to the criticism of humanism through Antigone1

Men can be defined as having a relationship with their end,

in the fundamentally mistaken meaning of this word.
Jacques Derrida

I told the founders of the Humanistic Union, who had invited me to be a member, that, if the
organization were known as the Inhuman Union, I might be inclined to join them, but I can't
associate myself with a group that defines itself as humanistic.
Theodor Adorno

Humanity free of the figure of human beings

We are becoming ever more willing to accept the diagnosis of our times to the effect that we
are in an era of exhaustion of the humanity of human beings. We are now able to understand that the
philosophical project of modernity has forged, as one of its essential elements, the image of humanity
as the quality of that which is human. This would seem to be a basic legacy, since the possibilities for
human beings to socially attain humanity are posited as a stable horizon for regulating what we
understand as a free and just society. Such a society would be one that could provide the institutional
conditions for carrying out a project that men and women have taken on, a project by which people
can express their “inner selves” through fundamental attributes that would enable them to implement
what we might term the fully determined essence of what is human. In this sense, we have come to
see our political struggles and our strategies of criticism of what exists as based on the identification
of obstacles that come up against transformations or evolution of these attributes into a judicial form
of general rights. But at the founding moment of political modernity, with the proclamation of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, in 1793, with its first article enunciating general
happiness as the objective of social life, the horizon of the political seemed to be evaluated by the
distance that still had to be traveled before the attributes that define the humanity of human beings
could be socially implemented.
But present-day society seems to want to carry out something closer to the approach
presented by Michel Foucault, when he said that, "As the archaeology of our thought easily shows,
man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. [...] [W]e can certainly bet that
man might be washed away, like a face drawn in the sand at the water's edge." 2 In saying this, he
seems to be talking about an oceanic dissolution that, at one and the same moment, would seem to
be dragging down the humanity of human beings along with its promises for social rationalization.
When Foucault made this statement forty years ago he was referring to a certain liberation that could
only take place if we were to accept the inexorable disappearance of human beings, in the same way

1
Vladimir Safatle, Professor at University of São Paulo, invited-professor at universities of Paris VIII, Paris VII,
Toulouse and Louvain, coordinator of Center of studies in Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy
(LATESFIP/USP), author of, among others, La passion du negative: Lacan et la dialectique (Georg Olms, 2010).
2
FOUCAULT, Michel; Les mots et les choses, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, p. 398.
1
that we passively accept the movements of the ocean's waters. But we tend today to see the death of
man not as liberation, but as the liquidation of the potentialities of the political in favor of what
Foucault himself called the "entification of the technologies of power centered on life." He was
referring, in other words, to processes of control based on the biopolitical management of bodies
(and, why not?, of genes), in the colonization of desire through apparatuses of the management of
sexuality. But might this be reason to go back to forms of edifying discourses on humanism as a
mode of practical attainment of the conditions needed to assert the humanity of human beings?
Would it be correct to say that our fate knows only two roads: the defense of humanism, and the
acceptance of the biopolitical management that attains decisive dimensions thanks to the
contemporary evolution of technology? And what if we were to show that these two positions are
closely allied? What if we were to show that both should be criticized at the same time?
This is exactly what I am proposing here, and this implies a return to something that may
seem out of date today, namely, the criticism of humanism that was so present in French thinking
during the 1960s (especially, but for different reasons and with different results, in thinkers such as
Lacan, Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze). Each in his own way strongly affected the School of
Frankfurt, especially Adorno, and they are all authors who took upon themselves the problem clearly
posited by Derrida, echoing here a perspective that, in a certain way, brought Nietzsche and
Heidegger together. Derrida said: "The history of the concept of man is never questioned. Everything
goes on as if the sign 'man' had no beginning, no historical, cultural or linguistic limitation, or even
metaphysical borders."3
But I would nonetheless like to take up this return to the criticism of humanism by starting
off with an aspect of this criticism that has been only minimally explored, namely, the defense of the
“inhuman.” This implies defending that the ability to confront the inhuman is the most important
condition for regulating any policy whatsoever that is supposedly still loyal to the general demands of
emancipation. But it is a fact that we have learned to associate the inhuman with the enormity of
historical catastrophes. It is a little as if the doors of destructive violence or the disaggregation of
rules had always been wide open, when we forget what human beings should be, what the essential
features of their humanity are, and what the predicates are that determine it. We feel secure when we
re-encounter an identifying image of mankind, to the point that we imagine that the absence of this
image can only generate chaos and the abdication of any project for social rationalization. This could
hardly be any different, since reason is not just a way of orienting oneself in judgment. It is rather
normativity aimed at producing a way of life where the full determination of the humanity of human
beings could be possible. But I would like to show that this way of thinking is limited because it is in
the ability to recognize oneself in what does not bear the identifying image of human beings that the
basis for a non-normative and renewed determination of reason can be found. Bringing about a
humanity free from the image of human beings may provide us with a new horizon for political
struggles and for strategies aimed at criticizing what exists.
3
DERRIDA, Jacques; Os fins do homem, In: Margens da filosofia, Campinas: Papirus, 1991, pp. 154-155. In fact,
at least two distinct currents can be found in this general group of authors in terms of the questioning of
humanism. One understands the problem as the exposure of the collapse of the regulating category of subject. We
can find this theme in authors like Deleuze, Derrida and, especially, Michel Foucault. But another group, closely
related to the dialectic tradition (Lacan and Adorno, for example) sees this problem as a necessary moment, to be
overcome by renewing the theory of the subject. In fact, at no moment does either Lacan or Adorno do away with
the figure of the subject as agent. But neither do they admit of attempts to regulate this agency on the basis of
concepts that might lead us to believe that the humanity of human beings has already been attained. As for the
strategic proximity between these two authors, see, for example, SAFATLE, Vladimir; A paixão do negativo:
Lacan e a dialética, São Paulo: Unesp, 2006, pp. 299-324).
2
Autonomy, authenticity and unity

In order to clearly explain this point we must first understand exactly what human being is
the object of our criticism. Let us say that this human being is principally the support of three
essential and determining attributes that traditionally define the humanity of human beings. The
meaning of these attributes becomes mixed in with the very development of modern thought and
has strongly affected psychoanalytic clinical practice. First there is the individual autonomy of the
will and behavior. This autonomy is related to the ability of subjects to establish their own moral
law and thus become moral agents who are able to govern themselves. On the one hand, by being
their own legislators, subjects can determine themselves. This idea of self-determination is central
because it brings to within what is human a movement proper to what we know as "prime
substance," namely, the movement of being a cause of oneself, causa sui. Autonomous subjects
can determine themselves because the cause of their action is immanent to them. It is not outside
them because it is the result of their own freedom.
On the other hand, since subjects are autonomous, they are able rationally to decide on the
safe ground of their interiority, like those who create a type of "mental court" where the can
judge their own acts, whether already carried out, or potential. I can distance myself from them
and thus transcend my inclinations and desires by basing myself on the Law that makes me a
subject. Since subjects can judge for themselves they are accountable, that is, imputable. They can be
held responsible for what they do and what they desire since, through rational decisions, they can
always do something other than what they are doing. That is, they can impose a norm on the desires
they consider irrational or immoral. This explains why people who do not have autonomy (either
because they are insane or because, like children, they have not yet developed the psychological
aptitudes needed for making serious decisions, are not legally accountable.
Just as the first attribute of the humanity of human beings is autonomy, the second is
authenticity, which enables subjects to postulate for expectations expressing their autonomous
individuality in the social dimensions of labor, language and desire. Traditionally, authenticity
allows subjects to recognize themselves in exteriority as unsubstitutable individualities capable of
producing and expressing themselves on the basis of their own singular styles. The notion of style
should be understood here as "a modality of an individual’s integration into a concrete process of
work, which is necessarily present in all forms of practice."4 Through the singularity of their style,
such individualities are able to give form to what, until that point, has it reality connected only to
the intentionality found in the irreducibility of pure interiority. In this regard, authenticity is an
attribute that guarantees the existence of right, of a principle of expressibility between the
potentiality of my own individuality and the intersubjective exteriority of the dimensions of
language and labor.
We see how these two attributes described above, autonomy and authenticity, create a
tension that must find a balance in the humanity of human beings. When this tension is dissociated,
it creates two models of freedom, one characterized by moral autonomy and the other by
individual authenticity.
But to conceive of overcoming this division could be seen as a broader task of organizing
the development of moral philosophy. By admitting of the task of overcoming this division, we see
a third attribute for determining the humanity of human beings, namely, the reflexive unity of what
is conscious of itself. This unity places subjects firmly on solid ground of self-identity that may
4
GRANGER, Gilles-Gaston; Filosofia da estilo, São Paulo : Perspectiva, 1974, p. 17
3
not only guarantee that all my mental representations can, in fact, be recognized as mine, but that
can also base the consistency of the personality that makes psychological development a
movement where each particular moment opens up further aspects of one and the same identity.
This unity could be sundered, for example, by symptoms or mechanized automatisms where I no
longer recognize myself, like a type of authenticity that can no longer assert itself. We might recall
how the unconscious in Freud appears largely as the domain of the Es, in other words, of the id, the
this, which is seen as a foreign body inside oneself, as something that insists on not submitting to the
first person singular and that ends up lodged in the indeterminate third person. But in principle we
believe that interruptions in the continuum of this unity are pathological situations that can be
overcome by reconstructing units that are less rigid but no less effective in their power of synthesis.
It is clear that autonomy, authenticity, unity, together with their derivative concepts such as
accountability, self-determination, individuality, style, interiorness and self-identity are the cardinal
attributes of the humanity of human beings. This explains why we find these terms in the constitution
of laws and regulations of the numerous fields of reflection on human action. It is not at all by
chance, for example, that "autonomy" and its opposite, "alienation," are basic terms used in moral
philosophy and politics, as well as in clinical observation, treatment of psychological facts, 5 and
aesthetics (the foundation of which field is mistaken for discussions on the autonomy of works of art
and on the advent of autonomous form).
The same can be said for "authenticity," an important value both in aesthetics and in criticisms
as to the stereotyped nature of the world of work. This type of issue was foremost in the enthusiastic
social criticism that exploded in May 1968, with its demands for rethinking practices on the basis of
creativity and to end all uniformization, as the sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello showed.6
Authenticity also appears in politics when people talk about the "spontaneity" of the masses, and
discuss social movements as a type of regulating value. Likewise, the clinic of mental suffering refers
to impediments to authenticity as empty speech, for example (to use a term dear to Jacques Lacan). 7
I do not think we have to insist on the polisemy of "unity," because the use of the same term in very
different fields of knowledge and practices only indicates how, whenever the question of man is at
stake, the same horizon of validation and judgment appears.
But it is quite symptomatic that autonomy, authenticity and unity are basic attributes of the
humanity of human beings because, in their own way, they are also attributes of the divine being.
As is often said, human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. The traits of this
similarity are the sharing of attributes that provide regulating horizons such as, 1) being one's own
cause (autonomy), 2) not knowing any irreducible difference between potency and act
5
One of the basic dimensions of Michel Foucault’s work was his exposition of modern psychiatry, based on the
thinking of its founders, Pinel and Tuke. Foucault showed how psychiatric practices are oriented by diagnostic
analysis based on concepts of regulation, such as “autonomous will” and “alientated will.” See, for example,
FOUCAULT, Michel; Le pouvoir psychiatrique, Paris: Seuil, 2003..
6
See BOLTANSKI, Luc and CHIAPELLO, Eve; Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1999. Among
other points, we find here an explanation of how deregulation in the world of work and the frequent use of notions
such as "flexibility," "risk," and "continuous change" are used to justify the capitalist ethos. This is intimately
related to the absorption, by capitalism itself, of a criticism based on demands for authenticity, which found an
extra dose of energy in the movements of May 1968. That historical moment included a type of criticism directed at
capitalism that the authors call "artistic criticism," since it is related to attempts to put into practice a Bohemian
way of life aimed at pointing out the growing disenchantment and unauthenticity of the world of work.
7
Regarding the function of demands for authenticity in the relationship between subject and language, as approached
in Lacanian psychoanalysis, see DEWS, Peter, “A verdade do sujeito: linguagem, validade e transcendência em
Habermas e Lacan” In: SAFATLE, Vladimir; Um limite tenso: Lacan entre a filosofia e a psicanálise, São Paulo :
Unesp, 2003, pp. 75-106
4
(authenticity) and, 3) always being identical to oneself in the multiplicity of one's actions (unity).
As Deleuze wrote, "Human or divine, they are always the same predicates, whether they belong
analytically to the divine being or are synthetically connected to the human form." 8 It is as if, in
the final countdown, human beings were an astute theological and political project, a theological
project that imposes itself in its socio-political consequences. In this regard, no matter how
counter-intuitive this may seem, in the last resort, the criticism of humanism, so present in Lacan,
is criticism of the determination of the possible field of experiences through ways of thinking
inherited from theological constructions.

A therapeutic project

But saying this is still saying very little. In the final analysis, to hold that a certain way of
thinking is related to schemes that were inherited from mythical-religious ideas is trivial. It would be
hard to find any type of thinking that, in one way or another, was not based on ideas inherited from
mythical-religious constructions. As Hegel said, these constructions are social elaborations aimed at
letting subjects think, even if not in fully elaborated ways. This process is unconditional and is meant
to have universal validity. In this sense, such constructions are special moments, although incomplete,
of all forms of thinking that reflect on universality and unconditionality.
We can therefore wonder about what form of life this theological-political project related
to the fate of the category of "human beings" presupposes. Which experiences are possible and
which are impossible for human beings (remembering that the term "impossible" as used here,
does not mean "non-existent," but simply "not thinkable”)? What experiences cannot be thought
of and integrated into life because of the advent of human beings? Any theological project imposes
a separation, and this leads us to wonder about what is separated from the subject's experience
because of the advent of human beings.
These are ways of questioning whether the values of autonomy, authenticity and unity
would not end up producing a life that is necessarily mutilated because it cannot integrate and
conceive of experiences that human beings necessarily repress, deny and eject from themselves
with all their might. Such experiences could only be conceived where the image of human being is
dissolved, and this is why I would like to insist on the position that the human being is fundamentally
a way of thinking. This becomes clear if we remember that man's unity presupposes the elevation of
the principles of identity and non-contradiction to the condition of ontological postulates, beyond
mere logical premises. Man's autonomy presupposes belief in strategies for the transcendental
constitution of objects of experience. His authenticity presupposes the reality of singular terms.
Taken together, these three articulated procedures (unity, autonomy and authenticity) produce what
Deleuze once termed image of thinking, the way that thinking constitutes objects and processes that
merely reiterate the rules of grammar that it accepts naturally as unquestionable presuppositions. This
represents a naturalization of grammar, the final result of which is the necessary entification of a
sensus communis.9
8
DELEUZE, Gilles ; Logique du sens, op. cit., p. 130
9
Here the term "image" means that which determines the regime of visibility of thinking. In other words, it is that
which can see, access and determine, a little like we determine and distinguish things in space. This condition of the
visibility of thinking is related to the implicit pre-suppositions that turn thinking in the right and "natural" direction.
This means to raise relationships of philosophical language with pre-philosophical language to the condition of a
broader philosophical problem. It is this pre-philosophical, or "ordinary" language proper to common understanding
that gives philosophical thinking its tacit set of non-problematized presuppositions. This can be seen clearly in
statements like the following quotation from Deleuze: "Postulates in philosophy are not propositions that philosophers
5
 On this basis, I would like to present a hypothesis to be evaluated: this hypothesis is that
human beings, as entifications of a certain system of thinking, are not only a theological-political
project. They are, more importantly, an eminently therapeutic project.
The concept of therapy in this context is understood as a set of procedures aimed at both
imposing a certain normality as a standard of normativity of life, and to strengthen life, once
normalized, against anything that might make it sick, remove it from its norm. When one refers to
therapy, one is talking about freeing oneself from an earlier state of suffering. In fact, the human
being, as a basic regulating project of modernity, appears as a defense mechanism against a state
of suffering that we might well describe by using the expression coined by Axel Honneth,
"suffering from indetermination."
In this regard, we might also remember an important phrase from Hegel, who was perhaps
the first to systematically understand modernity as the historical moment when the spirit "lost" the
immediateness of its substantial life, where nothing appears to the spirit as substantially based on a
power that can unify the various social spheres of values. Decades after Hegel, the social theories
of Durkheim and Max Weber constituted similar descriptions to characterize modernity in a way
that would be proper to a certain subjective feeling of indetermination and anomie resulting from
the loss of stable horizons for socialization. The autonomization of the social spheres of values in
modern life and the erosion of traditional authority based on ritualized customs and habits seem to
have brought about a loss of references for how to structure relationships with oneself, and this
situation allows no return to the spontaneity of subjects-agents. From that point on, the subject
can only appear as "this night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity – a
wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of
which are present. This [is] the Night, the interior of [human] nature, existing here – pure Self –
[and] in phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly
shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this Night when
we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns terrifying. [For from his eyes]
the night of the world hangs out toward us."10
We could say that mankind as a therapeutic project appears precisely as a defense
mechanism against this night of the world that “hangs out toward us.” Counter to this trend,
Hegel saw this night as an expression of a potency of indetermination and de-personalization that
inhabits every subject. This potency of indetermination is another possible name for what Hegel
understands as infinitude, since the infinite is what evidences the instability of all finite
determination, the collapse of any analytic of finitude. For Hegel, subject is the name of an
operation of inscription of infinitude on the dimension of what exists.
Much could still be said about this Hegelian way of relating the theory of the subject to the
philosophy of the infinite. But we can at least say that this articulation reveals the real political
problem left by Hegel: how can one build universalizing institutional structures that can hold up to
the demands of the recognition of non-substantial subjects who tend to appear as pure disruptive
and negative potency? To begin to answer this question, maybe we should abandon the human
being.
This must be said because, contrary to Hegel, we learn to deny by flaunting the belief that
ask us to accept. They are rather themes of propositions that continue to be implicit and that are heard in a pre-
philosophical way. In this regard, conceptual philosophical thinking has as an implicit pre-supposition an image of pre-
philosophical and natural thinking taken from the pure element of common understanding" (DELEUZE, Gilles;
Différence et répétition, op. cit., p. 172).
10
HEGEL, Quoted from The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6), PART I. Spirit according to its
Concept. Accessed on 9.16.09 at http://www.marx.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/jl/ch01a.htm.
6
the articulation among autonomy, authenticity and procedures of synthetic unity derived from the
I allows us to create normativities that can safely guide us in our acts and judgments. We insist on
this aspect: the humanity of human beings and their attributes appears as a promise as a cure for
indetermination. It is as if we were constantly looking at human beings and saying, "Outside this
Being, or [outside] this Form, you will only have chaos." 11 This is a promise of separation from a
potency of indetermination that makes us unaccustomed to finitude and that, for this reason,
seems to lead us to the dissolution of ourselves. This might show us that our most terrifying
suffering is related not to some specific way of feeling the indetermination that results from the
loss of substantially grounded social relationships. Rather our most terrifying suffering is that
which results from the repressive character of identity.
This is a major theme today, for example, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, with its constant
criticism of what we might call the "egological reduction of the subject." For Lacan, modernity is
the historical era of the rise of the ego to being the figure of the grounds for everything that seeks
objective validity.12 In the case at hand, this means the era of the compulsive and rigid resource to
subjective self-identity as the underpinnings for our conduct and as orientation for thinking. It
seems to be the era when we begin to ask ourselves how much we should pay so that the unity,
autonomy and authenticity of human beings can impose themselves as reality. What must the
experience of ourselves undergo for it to be seen as a field that submits itself to these categories?

What is the inhuman?

There is a way to answer these questions that has to do with the attempts to define a
subject that can no longer be conceived of on the basis of the attributes that are the foundations of
the humanity of human beings. In other words, we seem to be looking for a subject that will be
the actualization of the inhuman. If we define the humanity of human beings through the
articulation of the attributes of autonomy, authenticity and unity, then it should come as no
surprise to discover that the three essential figures of the inhuman are de-articulations of these
three attributes.
First, we should not understand the inhuman as the heteroclitic set of everything that is not in
accord with the image of man. This would mean to define "human" and "inhuman" on the basis of a
relationship of indifferent exteriority. In fact, these two terms hold a deep and complementary
relationship of opposition. When we say, for example, that "working conditions are inhuman," we
show how "inhuman" designates what "human" is, by exclusion. The inhuman is what the human
negates in order to assert itself as such, it is what man negates in order to be able to recognize
himself in the image of the human. This negation is all the stronger because, we might say in passing,
the inhuman is a potentiality to which man can always return. It is one of man's internal limits. But if
we define the humanity of man as the articulation of the attributes of autonomy, authenticity and
unity, there will be no surprise involved upon discovering that the three fundamental figures of the
inhuman are de-articulations of these three attributes.
Against autonomy, the inhuman appears as the sphere of animality that is always
potentially present in human beings. Here we find the classical distinction between humanitas and
animalitas. Animality indicates the blind submission of behavior to the mechanical regime of the
causality of nature. It is as if nature is necessarily the other of freedom, the space where human
freedom cannot be found. But we can ask whether what we know today about nature does not
11
DELEUZE, Gilles ; Logique du sens,op. cit., p. 129
12
Ver, LACAN, Ecrits, p. 283
7
require us to re-examine this dichotomy.
But to say that the need for humanity is nothing more than animality or is not radically
different from animality means, especially, to deny with all one's might everything that, in me, has
some mimetic affinity with what is not immediately human. This denial is easily inverted into
domination and violence against what, in me, insists on seeing itself through the opaque eyes of an
animal. Therefore, the peremptory assertion of the humanity of human beings is finally converted
into savagery against everything that, in me, still retains the traces of animality (such as impulses,
the body, the drives, "pathological" desires, etc.). Humanity is thus actualized in the inverted form
of distorted animality, as animalesque brutality against animality. And this brutality can only be
deactivated by recovering the dimension of the inhuman13.
Next, against authenticity, the inhuman is the dimension of what is radically impersonal
and depersonalized. In this respect, "impersonal" should be understood here as what can no
longer be individualized through the institutionally recognized reality of the person, or the
psychological personality, of the I. As Lacan clearly demonstrated, the I results from a process of
alienation derived from socializations that operate basically through identifications in which I
internalize modes of synthesis and qualities of another. In addition, "person," as the term is
generally understood today, is a category historically derived from the Roman law of property
(dominus). It is a category that, since it still retains traces of its origins, has been seen by
philosophers such as Hegel as "an expression of disdain,"14 due to its merely abstract and formal
nature that arose from the absolutization of the relationships of property. We can thus state that
the impersonal is a corrosive form that allows me to conceive the Self beyond the modes of
individuation proper to a legal entity with rights, and also proper to the psychological ego, or I. In
this regard we might recall how, for Hegel, the absolutization of the person could only lead to errors
such as those that approach every intersubjective relationship on the basis of the form of the contract
between owners. An example of this "barbarism," according to Hegel, would be the way Kant
understands marriage as a contract between two persons of different sexes in view of the reciprocal
possession of the other's sexual attributes.
But to connect the Self to the dimension of the impersonal is clearly a counter-intuitive
operation. However, it is not by mere chance that decisive moments in contemporary art have
been animated by the struggle against expression and style, a modernist theme par excellence. The
objective was to decry style as the trustee of a reified grammar of forms, and to see in subjective
expression the attempt to fetichize a "second nature." One of the greatest writers of the 20th
century, Franz Kafka, wrote in a disaffected language that mimetized the dry impersonality of this
"speech by nobody," specifically, bureaucratic language. This is a clear demonstration of how
"[A]rt knows the expression of the inexpressive, the weeping that lacks tears."15 As Samuel
Beckett showed us, art that is loyal to its contents of the truth mistrusts first-person pronouns. It
should also be recalled that the main function of reflection on the arts in the configuration of
clinical processes in Lacan. We can therefore say that these aesthetic experiences help back up
Lacan's attempts at seeing the progress of analysis on the basis of experiences of the destitution of
the subject.
13
See, for example, HORKHEIMER, Max; The revolt o f nature, In: Eclipse of reason, London: Continuum, 2004,
pp. 63-86
14
HEGEL, G.W.F.; Fenomenologia do espírito II, op. cit., p. 33. The rejection of the category of “person” can
also be found in Lacan, for whom: Rappeller ici que la persona est un masque, n´est pás um simple jeu d
´étymologie; c´est évoquer l´ambiguité du procès par ou la notion em est venue à prendre la valeur d´incarner une
unité qui s´affirmerait dans l´être (LACAN, Ecrits, p. 671)
15
ADORNO, Theodor; Ästhetische Theorie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973, p. 179
8
 Finally, against unity, the inhuman is the sphere of monstrousness. But here
"monstrousness" is understood as having a high degree of anomaly. In this respect, Georges
Canguilhem wrote that "the Greek word omalos refers to that which is uniform, regular, or
straight. Etymologically, therefore, anomaly is an-omalos, in other words, it is unequal, uneven or
irregular, in the sense that these words would be used in reference to types of terrain."16 In this
regard, the monstrousness of the inhuman means something so irregular that it cannot be
conceived under the normative form of human without, at the same time, attaining some other
completely actualized form. For this reason there is something amorphous and shapeless in all
monstrousness.
But here we can bring up a central question that Canguilhem asked about monstrousness:
"To the extent that living beings stray farther from a specific type, are they abnormal and [do they]
threaten the specific form, or are they pathmakers that open up roads for new forms?" In this
regard, would not the inhuman, as potency that corrodes a determined form of the human, be the
condition for subjects to cease being the slaves of a currently actualized figure of a human being?
We should note that all true historical experience as a break with the dead repetition of the past
was action that brought with it a critical questioning of the figure of the human being at that
specific time. We can therefore wonder whether our incapacity to think and to integrate the
inhuman into our forms of life is not a clearer symptom of a fear of history and, more deeply, of a
fear of The Political. For this reason, we can say that The Political is not, as Aristotle held, the
main attribute of this animal that is the human being, zoon politikon. On the contrary, The Political
is this space where human beings unceasingly seek to create ways of recognition through the
inhuman, of this night of the world that demands that we go where the image of oneself cannot
reach.

The true catastrophe

It would be worthwhile to end up this conference by explaining the point brought up

above. For this purpose, we might comment on the Greek tragedy Antigone. We have learned to
define both socio-historical catastrophes and subjective impasses as the result of our having
forgotten the essential attributes of the humanity of human beings. But maybe we should state the
contrary, namely, that such catastrophes result from our incapacity to recognize ourselves in what
no longer has the form of the human being. But we have known this since Antigone.
Much could be said about this tragedy, which, at least since the period of German
Idealism, seems to accompany the reflection on the tension between the demands for recognition
of subjectivity and the structures of social normativity. Especially deserving of attention are the
mutations that the interpretation of this tragedy has undergone with time. A long discussion would
be in order as to how texts like Antigone and Oedipus Rex constitute, as Adorno and Horkheimer
said of the Odyssey, a pre-history of subjectivity with decisive outcomes for understanding the
tensions deposited in the modern category of subject. As George Steiner clearly showed, this
discussion would also have to explore how the recovery of interest in Antigone is closely related
to the advent of the French Revolution and its acute and critical questioning of the possibility that
what has universal validity could part from the sphere of the legal system and find its place in the
principle of subjectivity.17
But I would like to insist on one basic aspect brought out by one of the most influential
16
CANGUILHEM, Georges; O normal e o patológico, 5 ed., Rio de Janeiro : Forense, 2002, p. 101.
17
See especially the first chapter of STEINER, George, Antigones, Yale University Press, 1996.
9
interpretations of Antigone presented during the second half of the 20th century, that of Jacques
Lacan. I will not try to provide an exhaustive analysis of Lacan's reading of the tragedy, but
merely recall how he stated the problem of the confrontation with the inhuman in the central
theme of the story. And this leads him to say that the enigma presented by Antigone is, "This
aspect of an inhuman being," of someone who "goes beyond the limits of what is human."18 In the
same way, Sophocles was called in to show how "For us, the human being is decomposing."19
On the other hand, it would seem important to remember that Antigone was the first Greek
text where we find the word αύτόvoμoς (Line 821). This word refers to the protagonist's decision, of
her own will, to be the first to descend to Hades alive. We can see how autonomy appears here as a
will that is disposed to disregard the physical safety of the agent in order to realize itself. Here one
opens into the dimension proper to something like "moral integrity," which might be described as the
subjective calculation of the need for actions that can, under certain circumstances, relativize
demands proper to the hypostasis of the principle of self-preservation.
But let us get back to Lacan’s lecture. First he insists that the figure of Antigone is
inhuman because she acts beyond all utilitarian calculation of pleasure and displeasure by refusing
everything that could individualize her as a person who has individual interests. When Lacan says
this, he is thinking especially about the fact that Antigone knows that, if she buries Polynices, she
will never again be able to play her social roles that determine her socially recognized identity,
namely, being a mother and a woman. She will thus be expelled from the symbolic world that
sustains the polis and will therefore be twice dead, physically and symbolically. But she acts
nonetheless, and then repeats her action.
For Lacan, it is important to note this action that does not calculate because it lets him
defend the position that Antigone shows something of an ethics beyond the pleasure principle. But
we should also note the particularity of this strategy. The assertion of actions that are carried out
without taking into account the utilitarian calculation of maximizing pleasure and avoiding
displeasure does not necessarily lead to a distinction between, on the one hand, particular desires
related in a special way to "pathological" objects, and, on the other, autonomous pure will, able to
comply with the requirements of universality. In this regard we cannot say that her decision is in
accord with the model that urges one to provide a moral law for oneself enunciated from a
position of autonomy. Everything takes place as if, through Antigone, Lacan were trying to
conceive of a model of rational decision where the "heteronomy" of a pathological bond of object
is able to express a universal requirement of validity.
This point gets lost when we read, from a particularist angle, the reasons that led Antigone
to disobey the law of the polis by burying her brother. Lacan insists that we must not forget how,
for Antigone, her action of carrying out funeral rites for her wrong-doing brother showed, on the
contrary, the particularism of the law of the polis enunciated by the contingency of a human being,
Creonte. It is in this context that her most important words were: “Yes, Zeus was not the one who
issued these proclamations for me, nor did Justice, who dwells with the gods below, define such
laws among mankind. I did not think your proclamations so strong that you, a mortal, could
overstep gods' unwritten and unshakable traditions. Not today or yesterday but always they live,
and no one knows when they appeared."20
The core of this statement is that the action is not legitimized simply in the name of the

18
LACAN, Jacques ; Seminaire VII, op. cit., p. 306
19
LACAN, Seminaire VII, p. 319
20
Sophocles, Antigone. Translated with Introduction and Notes Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett. Copyright
© 1996. All rights reserved. Accessed on 9.16.09 at http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/ant/antigstruct.htm.
10
natural bond of blood relationships and of the unsubstitutible character of Antigone's brother.
Basically, it is legitimate because divine law has given the members of the family the obligation to
recognize the unconditionality of the position of the subjects beyond the contextual
determinations of actions. This unconditionality is expressed in the obligation to carry out funeral
rites. As Lacan said, "Antígone représente par sa position cette limite radicale qui, au-delà de
tous les contenus, de tout ce que Polynice a pu faire de bien et de mal, de tout ce qui peut lui
être infligé, maintient la valeur unique de son être."21
At this point, Lacan is faithful to an essential aspect of Hegel's reading of Antigone. Hegel
rejects the position that the relationship of the members of the family is a relationship of sensitivity
or exclusiveness of love. It is rather, "[P]lacing the Singular for family, subjugating (unterjochen)
its naturalness and singularity and educating it for virtue, to live in the universal and for the
universal." But it is certainly symptomatic that Hegel says that this formation of the Singular to
live in the universal is carried out in the most refined way in the funeral rite, in the care rendered
to the dead brother. This brother is "He who, from the long line of his dispersed Dasein, is placed
in a finished figuration [the figure venerated by memory] and was raised to the unrest of life
contingent on the quietude of universality." This permanence of an act that has unconditional
value and that should be conserved unconditionally is the essence of the divine law that Antigone
expresses. But this law itself is the "potency of the pure abstract Universal that, since it is the
basis (Grund) of individuality, re-leads individuality to pure abstraction." 22 This means that divine
law is the first position of individuality as unconditionality or, for the time being, as abstraction.
But Hegel never ceased to recall that this is the basis of individuality itself, and something of this
foundation must necessarily appears in which was founded.
In this regard, we can say that, for Hegel, the impossibility of posit the foundation in the
polis shows the unactualized character of the notion of ethicality in the Greek world. In this
regard we might remember how Hegel insists that the polis must comply with a double law (the
divine law, which has its core in the family, and the law of the community). By obeying this double
law, the polis must be sustained on the tenuous borderline that offends neither of the two. But this
is an impossible task because the position of one implies a limitation of the other in terms of
particularity. Stated more clearly, it is an impossible task unless the polis can be organized on the
basis of demands of recognition of a general universality that is the universal basis of singular
consciousness and essence of the law of the family. However, this is not the case of the Greek
polis, because the polis had not yet developed the conception that the subject is actualized in a
State devoid of communitarian and identitary traits. In other words, it is not a question of
annulling what is strongly embedded in the underground world of the family, but of showing how,
although imperfectly, this world sets up demands of unconditionality that the polis is still unable to
deal with. Femininity – this "eternal irony of the community" – insists on remembering this fact.
The community therefore produces the principle of its own destruction through repressive
action against a force it will not recognize. In the end, what was posited by the government as
particular interest shows the particularity of the government's own interest, and it undermines the
immediacy of its bond with the law. From that point on, the ethical substance is merely formal
universality. In other words, the community becomes devoid of that spirit of the Roman rule of
law. Therefore, contrary to what Lacan held, there is no promise of reconciliation at the end of
Hegel's reading of Antigone.
21
LACAN, Jacques; idem, p. 325. See also: Cette pureté, cette séparation de l´être de toutes les
caractéristiques du drame historique qu´il a traversé, c´est là justement la limite, l´ex nihilo autour de quoi si
tient Antígone  (idem, p. 325).
22
HEGEL, G.W.F.; Fenomenologia do Espírito II, op. cit., pp. 12-13
11
The humanity of those who recognize the inhuman

Taking the above into account we can return to Lacan's reading in order to understand a
few of its most important characteristics. Many readings have insisted on the insoluble conflict
between the law of the family and the law of the polis, between Antigone and Creonte. But, at
least on this point, Lacan tends to make a break with this tradition, whose strongest support is in
Hegel and that asserts the ethical importance of Antigone when facing Creonte's imposition. The
interpretation that I suggest might explain why Lacan does not see in Creonte a principle of law
that is confronted by a different principle. What Lacan stresses most is Creonte's desire to inflict a
second death on his enemy Polynices. According to Lacan, this desire to inflict a second death is
expressed in a "language of practical reason." In other words, Creonte is trying to transform the
well-being of all into "a Law without limits" in order to annihilate any point of excess that does
not submit to the enunciation of the law.
In fact, this Lacanian reading is proper to a time that no longer believed in the possibility
of a current figure of the Law that could sustain social interactions and can encompass what is in
the sphere of the requirements of the recognition of subjects. We could even say that, in situations
of the collapse of ethicality, there seems to be nothing to do but resort to the irreducibility of
subjectivity. That is why Lacan must insist that the Law observed by Creonte lost its substantiality
long ago. But his skillfulness here consists of asserting that the proof of this loss is the fact that
the Law of the polis is no longer able to encompass the imperatives of universality. These
imperatives of universality were enunciated from a position that, from the point of view of the
polis, appears as particular.
In this regard, we can better understand this ethical imperative proposed by Lacan, of "Not
backing down on your desire." This is certainly not some particularistic type of a profession of faith.
On the contrary, it is, in the last resort, a way of saying that, at moments when desire raises a singular
bond to the condition of universal, when someone desires a universal based on a singular situation, it
is ethically inadmissible to back down because in such a singular situation this would be equivalent to
putting in check the very possibility of actualizing the universal. Lacan's proposal is equivalent to
something like: There are situations where a pathological bond with singular objects is a way for
the universal to be actualized. In these situations, it is unthinkable to back down.
Let us try to understand this point more clearly. One possible way of reading Lacan’s Seminar
VII is to say that, through reflections on the nature of moral action, Lacan set out mainly to criticize
a model of rational thinking based on the autonomy of the will. He insists that psychoanalysis could
not be conceived as a clinical process of reconstructing the subjective conditions for autonomy, or
even of lost authenticity and unity. Lacan thus insists, throughout the entire seminar, on connecting
moral action to the subject's ability to recognize himself in something that disarticulates both his unity
and his identity. The subject should recognize himself in something that imposes itself over action
not as a slowly maturing project that he states for himself as the fruit of his own free will, but as
"heteronomous" jouissance from the perspective of the interests of the system of self-conservation of
homo psychologicus. This is not the free will of a project, but the mental suffering of a jouissance
that shows how "It is the force of the great characters not to choose, but simply to be what they
want and [what they] carry out."23
But we should remember how, in Lacan, this jouissance is closely related to the recovery of
something from which the subject had to separate in order to constitute himself as an autonomous
23
HEGEL, Vorlesungen über Ästhetische, p. 546.
12
and self-identical I. This, therefore, is radically foreign to one's own unified image, "an absolute Other
of the subject,"24 to use Lacan's words. On this point it might be interesting to recall how the
psychoanalytic experience eventually produces a break with linear evolutionist perspectives. In the
process of development and maturation, the subject should not only go through phases. He must also
know how to recover the aspirations of what remained behind in these processes and internalize what
remains under the marks of a demolished past. This ability to hear the voice of what was destroyed
by the advance toward individuation will enable the subject to constitute non-narcissistic relationships
with himself and with the other.

For Lacan this capacity to recognize mimetic affinities with what was refused and destroyed in
the process of the formation of the self-identity of the I is moral in nature because it provides a model
of social action that consists of placing on the horizon broad needs for social recognition. This model
judges action not through the possibility of recognizing another system of individual desires and
aspirations, but through the capacity to recognize a level of otherness that does not allow one to
think on the basis of the figure of some other individual, of some other individual identity with its
own system of interests. Lacan therefore uses the term das Ding to denote it, and this is a way to
recall that it is something that does not immediately submit to the figure of the individual. It is an
otherness that is not exactly the presence of the other, but rather normativity, the resistance against
submitting to the grammar of the norm.
In this regard, for Lacan, Antigone’s action is exemplary, as it shows how the insistence on a
bond with Polynices, who had been ostracized from the field of naming human beings, rekindles the
drive-related dynamics of a desire that is not satisfied with the pleasure produced by the consumption
of objects that are imaginary poles of narcissistic projections of the I. They are dynamics that are
actualized only by constituting an object foreign to the field of social representations, a field related
to the limitations of today's figure of a human being. If we want we can say that the recognition of
these drive-related dynamics allows one to constitute social ties proper to a solid concept of
democracy in its permanent dynamics of indetermination.
My reading could be criticized for apparently avoiding the controversial nature of statements
such as, "Mais Antígone mène jusqu´à la limite l´accomplissement de ce que l´on peut appeller le
désir pur, le pur et simple désir de mort comme tel. Ce désir, elle l´incarne (...) Aucune
médiation n´est ici possible, si ce n´est ce désir, son caractère radicalement destructif.”25 This
might imply that Antigone was the figure of a woman who became fascinated with the purity of a
desire characterized as pure negativity that could only be fulfilled as a raw impulse of destruction.
This point could be discussed at length, but I would like merely to insist that an assertion of this
type should be read within Lacan's effort to integrate the death drive as the main for progress in
analysis. In this regard, Richard Boothby wrote that, "For Lacan, the disintegrative force of the death
drive is directed not toward the integrity of the biological organism, as Freud had concluded, but to
the imaginary consistency of the ego." 26 Freud spoke of a self-destruction of the person proper to the
fulfillment of the death drive. Let us say that, for Lacan, the death sought by the drive is really the
"self-destruction of the person," but on the condition that we understand person as the identity of the
subject in certain legal systems. In this regard we could even say that the death drive does not
necessarily appear within the interior of social ties as destructive violence. It can also appear as
potency that leads us to act beyond the system of interests of the individualized person.
24
LACAN, Séminaire VII, p. 65
25
LACAN, S VII, pp. 328-329.
26
BOOTHBY, Freud as philosopher, op. cit. p. 151
13
 Some have inferred that the destructive character of Antigone's desire should be understood
as a complete suspension of the symbolic order, which would necessarily lead to the destruction of
the city-state, to the refusal of the symbolic pact. But we can also read this problem in a different
way. It is actually not Antigone who destroyed the city-state. In a way it was rather Creont himself,
as of the moment he decided not to submit to the law of the gods, which saw the unconditionality of
funeral rites as a condition for establishing a minimally reconciled society. We might remember how
the obligation of funeral rites, held even for enemies of the State, is a central problem in Sophocles,
and it appears in Ajax as well. In this regard we can say that, by her act, Antigone merely unveils the
fact that the city-state has become an illegal state. It was destroyed in its fundamental substance by
the very power that should have preserved it. 27 Thus we can note once again the assertion that
Antigone's action is not devoid of calculation. At the bottom line, calculation is unacceptable only in
the utilitarian sense, when aimed at maximizing pleasure and avoiding displeasure. There is in fact a
fundamental calculation in Antigone's action, based on the principle that there is no life possible in a
society that is unable to guarantee the conditions for the minimal processes of reconciliation and for
recognizing the inalienable character of the condition of its subjects. This calculation consists in
holding that in situations of this type, the only possible action is to expose the unsustainable character
of the situation.
Finally, I would like to recall how some commentators have criticized Lacan's reading in a very
precise and skillful way, due to his failure to perceive that the essential character for a psychoanalytic
perspective might well be Creonte because he is the only one who changes. He is the only character
who, in the end, learns from his mistakes and changes his subjective position. Phillipe Van Haute
wrote that, "Creonte recognizes his guilt and redirects his history. He, and he alone, is responsible for
what happened. By accepting his own responsibility for what took place, Creonte took on a human
dimension that is lacking in Antigone."28 Patrick Guyomard took this same position. We might recall,
for example, the statement in his classical book The jouissance of the tragic, to the effect that, "for
Antigone, the appeal of the absolute leads to suicide. Estranged from Antigone and faced with the
question of what he calls his ‘madness,’ Creonte, beyond his unhappiness, can open up to a different
road. On this road, no longer seeing in 'madness' an absolute, nor in loneliness, the last bastion of
[Antigone's] pride, can say how he came to this point."29 In other words, Creonte can reflexively
understand his fate through an act of self-criticism.
However, we can look for an alternative reading and say that, if Lacan insists on the centrality of
Antigone's action, his purpose night be to stress that Creonte is the one who one day obeyed a false
law marked by the triple interdiction of recognition of what appears as inhuman. First the polis
expelled Oedipus for the monstrousness of his being "placeless," an unnamable, for having
disarticulated the elementary structures of kinship. Secondly, the polis relegates Polynices to the
dimension of animality, the dimension of he who has not even the dignity to be buried and must
perish "like a dog," for having questioned the process of succession and having wanted to take
power of the State by allying himself to a foreign power. Finally, the polis walls in Antigone alive,
actualizing her fate to be depersonalized, as incapable of fulfilling herself as a person, and for having
shown up the particularist character of the law of the polis. And someone who once complied with a
law that is sustained by the reiterated expulsion of the inhuman can only become human too late.

27
On the concept of “illegal state,” see SAFATLE, Vladimir; Do uso da violência contra o estado ilegal, In
SAFATLE e TELES, O que resta da ditadura, São Paulo : Boitempo, 2010
28
VAN HAUTE, Phillipe; Antígona: heroína da psicanálise, In : Revista Discurso, n. 36, 2006, p. 308.
29
GUYOMARD, Patrick; La jouissance du tragique  Antigone, Lacan et le désir de l´analyste, Paris:
Flammarion, 1992, p. 115
14
Someone who makes monstrousness, animality and depersonalization the empty place of the
unnamable, of the radically separated from contact with [other] human beings, can only become
human too late.
But it should be noted that the inhumanity of Antigone is in itself humanity because it is the
liberality of those who are able not to refuse what is not similar to them. This “non-similar” is not
only the otherness of another consciousness, but the a-normativity of what puts into question the
system that sustains her way of life. This is why Antigone is the figure of a humanity that no longer
seeks the image of human beings. We might say that she is a promise of a humanity yet to come,
which, for us, can only seem like "inhumanity." This is why Antigone is the only one who can
enunciate that the State moves toward its own destruction by being absolutely attached to the current
figure of human beings. In more up-to-date terms, we might say that this State is nothing more than a
State of fear and exception. The fear it instills transforms it into "a frightening encounter of
frightened humans."30 This is the fear of those who can no longer utter Theseus's words to the
inhuman Oedipus: "In fact, your lot must be terrible and I shall not be indifferent to you, as I grew
up in exile and am an outcast like you. Like no one else, I risked my life often struggling on foreign
soil. This is why, today, I could not refuse help to any foreigner like you."31

This State is ours.

30
ZIZEK, Slavoj, Virtude e terror, Rio de Janeiro : Jorge Zahar, 2008, p. 30
31
SOFOCLES, Édipo em Colono, In; Trilogia tebana, op. cit., p. 136
15