Les effets de subjectivité induits par le discours idéologique sectaire

Abstract

According to Althusser, every discourse produces or inducts an effect of subjectivity. Still, we need to precise its
effects. Assuming the French structuralism’s conception of the discourse, we consider the relationship between the subject and the ideological discourse in the light of the sectarian discourse. Thus, the discourse is regarded as being the arrangement and the articulation of signifiers within the social field; this arrangement structures the relationship between individuals and determines the social bond. Therefore, the study of sectarian ideologies gives us informations not only on the cultic modalities of organizing the social bond but also on the effects on the subject inducted by these ideologies. Following Lacan’s teaching about the “discourse of the capitalist” (1969-1970, 1972) and by the mean of a clinical approach – that is to say, listening to each subject’s singularity –, we can show the sectarian ideological discourse’ effects on the contemporary subject. In other words, our approach consists on learning from the subject within the discourse (the cultic follower) the original solution he/she applies to live within a de-subjectivizing discourse. In particular, we point out a
de-dialectization of the religious enunciation: the “great narratives” of human emancipation (Lyotard, 1979) in favour of univocal, de-symbolized “little narratives” that do not alienate so much the subject of the unconscious as it rather aims its foreclosure [Freudian Verwerfung], its aphanisis, in favour of an in-dividualistic Ego. Besides, this symbolic violence deprives the language of its poetic function (foreclosure of the phallic function) in favour of a “twittering of enjoyment” (Barthes, 1973) [babil de jouissance]. The semantic transformations (neologisms, new definitions, holophrases) within the sectarian ideological discourse have effects on the subject who lives in the language and borrow the signifiers which organize his/her subjective structure (neurotic, psychotic or perverse). Finally, the ideology repudiates discursively the “homo dialecticus” (Foucault) – a way to preclude the revolutionary dimension of the unconscious (Sauret, 2008).