Recognize the symptom

On the eve of the next New Year, Kolta cannot get rid of the habit of summing up, at least intermediate ones. Evgenia Vezhlyan , Anna Narinskaya , Ella Rossman and Olga Sedakova - from different countries and cities - about what is happening to us today.

A typical case is a dream of one witness of the first years of fascism. He decides to openly express his protest against the Nazi regime. Obeying the fact that consciousness considers it a moral duty, he is taken in a dream for a protesting letter. But, having sent him by mail, he understands that he sent a clean piece of paper in a carefully sealed envelope.

Bruno Bettelheim,
"On the psychological attractiveness of fascism"

We are a minotaur
Our labyrinth

Olga Vinogradova, poem "Minotaur"

Before Sasha Skochilenko’s verdict, an interview with an elderly woman was published in the “Paper”, let's call her G., who, seeing anti-war price tags in one of the stores of St. Petersburg, wrote a statement to the police. It laid the foundation for the case of the "fakes" about the Russian army, which for Sasha turned out to be seven years in a general regime colony.

Opening this interview, I expected to read typical discussions about the traitors of the Motherland and the LGBT instructors of NATO-and here I was not disappointed. Nevertheless, the text surprised me - and first of all by the fact that, in addition to what I expected to see, there is absolutely everything in it. There are confident statements that data on victims in Ukraine on price tags are misinformation, which almost without the transition follow the justification of these victims (“there are always peaceful victims”). There is frank hostility to opposition activists, whom G. calls only “Codla” - and recognition of “insanity” on the Decembrists, apparently, is quite sincere. G. calls himself a pacifist, but immediately adds that “good should be with fists” and “fools and in the church beat” (for pacifism in its pure form, the denial of any violence is still characteristic, “pacifism with fists” is nonsense). G. is interpreted the war in Ukraine, explaining that it is some kind of “bastards” “hit Russian people from both side”, or still Russian people beat each other, but they “make them fight” (in another fragment they no longer beat each other, but are engaged in protection-who and from what, it is difficult to find out from this text). Finally, a deep distrust of the regime, for example, rejection and criticism of the election institution (“I do not go to the polls, this is a booth”), are adjacent to this interview with the support of its main guarantor - Vladimir Putin (primarily for the “return” of Crimea).

Similar contradictions, and even the neighborhood of complete opposites are present in speech, no matter what topic the city addresses. It is interesting that G., it seems, is also aware of this, which can be understood by its many reservations and answers to potential opponents (whose views and arguments, by the way, is very well informed). But most of all, I was not struck by these discrepancies on their own. I was struck that although, following the academic training, I note for myself the illogicality of the text and full porridge in the reasoning, at the level of household logic it is absolutely clear to me what is at stake. Despite the two-year emigration, I still read this language, I recognize all its codes, and I see how the things that are connected cannot be connected for G.. I understand why some unexpected passages go to others, and how this whole shaky (and at the same time amazingly stable) design rests. I am oriented in this speech so much that I can complete the sentences, not reading how lovers end the phrases of each other or how a blind person confidently moves around the apartment in which he lived all his life. No matter how I sympathize with Sasha Skochilenko, no matter how condemn the actions of G., I share with the last language in which she speaks, his understanding is common between us. Or, which seems to me more accurate, I share the symptom into which this speech has turned.

Freud defined the symptom as an education, which, in its essence, is a compromise - in the sense that the symptom of “mixing” among themselves unconscious impulses that cannot be fully satisfied, and a conscious life of a person. As a result, an encrypted message is born, which, like a symptom in medicine, abrupt , it interferes with the course of everyday life and unfolding speech. The symptom signals the existence of a contradiction, and the content of this signal can be recognized (deciphered) in working with a psychoanalyst who will pay attention to details, for example, reservations or dreams.

It seems to me that almost all public speech in Russian turned into one big symptom: to say something directly was almost impossible, and both from the inside of Russia and from emigration, where, it would seem, there is no fear of sitting down for words, which means that it should be easier to speak. In reality, this is not at all the case. All earlier, quite suitable words are now felt as inaccurate and inappropriate in the process of writing, and after the publication of the written meaning, their meaning begins to experience mutations, which the heroines of the film “Annihilation” did not dream of. The fact that the poststructuralists claimed about the “death of the author” and the interpretation of the reader was suddenly apparent and brutal. And these are not only my personal impressions: I constantly hear from acquaintances who are professionally engaged in texts, that their skills seemed to beg (symptomatic, that it was this word that came to my mind in the first place): that they were best able to put ideas in words, find new topics, conducting a dialogue, it became suddenly impossible and unbearably. This applies to those who left, and the remaining, and those who used to write and spoke easily, and passing in this process through great resistance. I am saved only by the fact that most of my academic work I now lead in English. But sometimes I write texts like this-and again I feel like during the reception of a psychotherapist, which I have to admit in some terrible and shameful secret. I try to get around him, but he climbs into the light, unceremoniously capturing the space of my speech.

I do not know what the symptom that I am talking about signaling is about, what he sends us to, what requires for us to solve about him. I do not know how to be with that holey speech, whose obvious inconsistency is only slightly smoothed with affect (which is why it is so necessary for it) - for almost two years since the beginning of a full -scale invasion of Ukraine, it has become the norm of a language that does not bring us closer to each other or finding outs of the current situation. I don’t even know where this speech came from - except for state propaganda, it, according to the sensations, is large (traumatic, imperial, substitute the right word) history and many different sources. Finally, I do not know what alternative we can offer this speech, which for many reasons is so difficult to approach - it is not only logically lignified, but also extremely paranoid, so that it seems to be impossible to “argue” with the help of the revelations of the regime (this will only strengthen the nonsense of persecution). What should be a reparative reading , which will allow this speech to regain coherence and foundation, and the symptom will be resolved?

What I know is that the first step towards understanding the symptom should be the recognition that we are in it (“you are here”). That, even if we never agree with the act of such a person as G., at the level of everyday speech, we understand what it is talking about, and we ourselves are inside this language, no matter how terrible and disgusting. This language literally captured our speech, he occupied it - you feel how I can’t go beyond the same disgusting set of metaphors? It seems to me that, only by recognizing the symptom, signing in lifelessness, which we share even with those with whom we are ideologically out of the way, we can take the first step towards another speech. Speech, which will again express our positions, views and desires, and not just refer to the horror of the inexpressible - and so far inexpressible.