#4 Mariano Horenstein - Worse Than Death

Latin America’s particular relation with death implies something even worse: the practice of disappearing people in connection with State terrorism. The disappearance of rituals, which has reached an unprecedented extent, further exacerbated in times of pandemic, only increases contemporary anxiety. In this context, the analyst’s role is to function less as archaeologists—as Freud imagined—than as forensic anthropologists.” Mariano Horenstein has published three books (Psicoanálisis en lengua menor; The compass and the couch. The necessary strangeness of Psychoanalysis; and Funambulistas. Travesía adolescente y riesgo). He has received some awards, among them Lucian Freud, Ángel Garma, Elise Hayman and FEPAL. He has given seminars and conferences in institutions from Latin America, Europe, EEUU and Asia. Former chief editor of Calibán-Revista Latinoamericana de Psicoanálisis. Current Training Director of the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Córdoba. I If we had to pick just two words as the focal points of an ellipse that might serve as an approach to comprehend the subjects comprising the human species—at least the human species as conceived by psychoanalysis—they would be sex and death. Not only are these words focal points in terms of two points equidistant from the center of the ellipse; they are also sources of illumination that shed light on a large part of the phenomena that psychoanalysis has always engaged with, those inherent to clinical practice, and to daily life. The center of the ellipse can remain empty. There we can put Lack, Castration, and the hole that sex is insistent on refuting, only to encounter it again and again. There also can go death, almost a mute echo of that hole, an impossible representation of the only certainty that inhabits within us. Although psychoanalysis has usually been identified with sex, almost to the point of caricature, death is no less present in its theoretical structure. With his habitual insight regarding psychoanalysis, Woody Allen once said “There are only two important things in life. The first is sex and the second I don’t remember.” Of course he doesn’t remember the second one. And the artist himself offers a clue when he says “My relationship with death remains the same. I’m strongly against it.” It’s well worth approaching the topic of death with humor, because there is nothing funny about what I’m going to discuss. II Sex and death then: Psychoanalysis’ Two Crucial Themes There is no place here for generalizations, because what matters from a psychoanalytical standpoint are the particularities—even more so in a project that emphasizes the value of a Geography of Psychoanalysis, like the one that Lorena Preta imagined—the place where enunciation occurs. Although I have the good fortune to work in different geographical contexts, I speak from one in particular: Latin America, a continent that has proven to be fertile ground for psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, the same has shown to be true for death, to the point that we can consider Latin America to have a certain particularity in relation to death. Here I do not refer to folklore of any kind or to how the Extreme West—as we have sometimes been named—may look through European eyes, from a perspective habitually tinged with a degree of ethnocentrism. This has nothing to do, then, with the greater or lesser visual impact of Mexican culture’s festivities or with the extreme melancholy in some our tango or zamba music, or with sacrificial rituals or anthropophagy practiced by some of this land’s original inhabitants. I want to talk about a particular contribution—if you will permit me a bit of irony—that Latin America’s recent history has made to the human species, showing that it is as capable of committing marvelous gestures as it is of committing abhorrent crimes. Here I am referring to something even worse than death: disappearance. Specifically, I mean the forced disappearance of people, which became a specialty of this continent and my country in particular during the dictatorships in the 1970s. After briefly commenting on why I think this Latin American “contribution” of sorts is even worse than death, I hope to be able to infer several consequences that are important for psychoanalysis as a whole and for the position of the analyst, moving from specifics to generalities. For any geography of psychoanalysis, the same should apply. It isn’t that we Latin Americans are the ones to have invented disappearing people on our own accord. With different variants, Latin American dictators have looked upon the Nazi regime or at least the Prussian military tradition with admiration. It is no coincidence that many Nazi war criminals found refuge in Chile, Argentina, Brazil or Paraguay. The idea that it is possible to make an Other disappear without a trace is not ours. Thucydides had already testified to how Sparta, ...