There exists a particularly dangerous contemporary fantasy: that of being able to remain "outside" of politics. As if a neutral position were possible, as if silence weren't already a way of taking sides. We are political beings in the same way that fish are aquatic beings: it's not a choice, it's our condition of existence.
In every daily gesture, in every complicit silence, in every "I don't get involved in politics," we are already doing politics. The difference lies only in whether we are conscious of our position or if we prefer the comfort of believing ourselves neutral. We don't choose whether to participate in the political game, only if we do it actively or passively, if we swim with or against the current.
The myth of neutrality serves perfectly the interests of established power. When someone says "I don't do politics," they are doing precisely the politics that the system needs: that of the passive spectator, the silent accomplice. The only real choice is between being conscious of our political position or letting others choose it for us.
Contemporary clinical practice reveals an uncomfortable truth: there is no neutrality in speech. Every word we pronounce is a position taken, a way of locating ourselves in the social field. When we speak, we don't just communicate: we establish power relations, defend symbolic territories, construct or destroy realities. Language is never innocent: it's a battlefield where each phrase can be both an act of resistance and of submission.
Analysands who come to consultation usually believe their symptoms are purely personal, until they discover that their way of speaking (or staying silent) reproduces social discourses that run through them. Their words are trenches where they take refuge or from which they fire. Each session is a potential small revolution, where worn-out words can acquire new meanings, where imposed silences can transform into cries of freedom.
The true analytic act consists in making visible this political dimension of speech. It's not just about interpreting symptoms, but helping the subject discover how their discourse positions them in the world. Each intervention by the analyst is also a political act: it can reinforce existing power structures or open spaces for new ways of speaking and being.
Contemporary clinical practice constantly confronts us with this uncomfortable truth: the power of the master's discourse resides not in its rationality or justice, but in its pure arbitrariness. It doesn't need to make sense to function; it functions precisely because it can dispense with meaning. Its authority doesn't emerge from the logic of its arguments but from its ability to impose itself without needing to argue.
What makes this discourse effective is precisely its indifference to coherence or justification. The master doesn't say "this is so because..." but simply "this is so." The absence of justification isn't a weakness of this discourse but its strength: by not depending on reasons, it becomes immune to rational questioning. Power sustains itself in its own exercise, not in its legitimacy.
The paradox is that the more arbitrary the command, the more effective it becomes. The master's discourse produces obedience not despite its senselessness, but because of it. Its ability to reign doesn't depend on its content but on its pure form of imposition. It's a discourse that seeks not to convince but to subdue, aspires not to truth but to dominion.