Abstract

My purpose here will be to try and outline the principle upon which a political bond, free from the imaginary and symbolical preconceptions which allegedly define the nature of political subjects can be founded. In other words, a political bond which would not be determined by ’society’, and the imaginary and symbolic identifications it forces upon it. Such politics – that I define as minimal – ought to be impervious to the currently prevailing social discourses. It cannot possibly rely on upon them. Devising politics in such a way boils down to drawing the lessons from history : basing the political bond upon any Other (be it God, race, sex, money etc.) always ends up justifying inequalities, exclusions, even executions, in the name of that Other and its imperatives. Should one refuse to conceive of politics in such a way, what happens ? On the one hand, the subjects – whom we now should call citizens -, thus freed of any social identification, will enjoy equality and universal rights ; on the other hand, one must have the courage to accept a political bond whose legitimacy does not stem from that Other. Thus judicial and political minimalism enables citizens to form political bonds independently of social relationships : political bonding necessarily entails a rejection of social bonding.
To conceive of a bond which will not be subservient to a master signifier, to attempt to ‘decomplete’ the Other and to conceive of the relationship as a non-relationship cannot be done without the contribution of Lacan’s works. Once again, it leads us to tackle the oft-discussed question of the connection between politics and psychoanalysis.

Keywords: politics | law | psychoanalysis | non-relationship