The revolution of encounter

We have grown accustomed to thinking that radicality lies in polarization, that strength resides in the ability to exclude others, to mark them as enemies. The true revolution of our time, however, consists precisely of the opposite: in the subversive act of seeking what's common amid difference. There is nothing more radical than building bridges where others construct walls.

The search for the universal is not a form of cowardice nor an attempt to dilute conflicts. It is, on the contrary, the bravest act: recognizing in others, even in those who antagonize us, a humanity that challenges us. The true revolutionaries of our time are not those who shout the loudest from their trenches, but those who dare to cross the dividing lines.

The paradox is that commonality doesn't emerge from minimizing differences but from recognizing them in their full magnitude. Only when we accept that the other is radically different can we begin to build authentic universality. Real dialogue doesn't begin with agreement but with the deep acceptance of disagreement.

The signifying interval

Analytic work shows us a paradoxical truth: the subject is not a substance that pre-exists language, but the very effect that emerges in the play of signifiers. We are not the cause of our saying, but its consequence: we appear as that fleeting flash that arises when one signifier articulates with another, in that interstitial space where meaning is produced.

Subjectivity resides in no fixed point nor stable essence: it is that perpetual movement that slides between words, that productive absence that allows signifiers to chain together and produce effects of meaning. Like a shadow that exists only between the objects that project it, the subject emerges in the interval between signifiers.

What we call "I" is merely the attempt to give consistency to this elusive play of representations. The true subject is not the one who speaks, but the one who is spoken in the signifying chain, the one who appears as an effect of meaning between the words that name and constitute it without ever being able to capture it completely.

The invisible scriptwriter

The analytic experience confronts us with a disturbing truth: we are not the sovereign authors of our discourse. Far from being ventriloquists who consciously manipulate their words, we are more like puppets repeating borrowed voices without knowing it. The discourse we believe our own is woven with threads of borrowed words, echoes of others who inhabit us without our notice.

The unconscious operates as an anonymous scriptwriter who writes our most intimate lines. Each slip of the tongue, each failed act, each dream reveals the presence of this hidden author who speaks through us. We don't choose the words that mark us: they choose us, emerging from a place we don't control, following a logic that exceeds us.

What we call "speaking for oneself" is actually a complex network of inherited voices, signifiers that preceded us, words that named us before we could name. The illusion of originality is precisely that: an illusion that analysis comes to disturb, revealing that we are spoken more than we speak.