A surprising aspect of psychoanalytic texts of the post-Lacanian community is their unexpected connection with postcolonial theory. Although, at the level of the general message, there would probably not be a psychoanalyst who, in a fit of devotion to Lacan’s teaching, would not consider it his duty to distinguish himself from yet another social philosopher who dared to rely on Lacan, we have to admit that they are sharing the same field here. What at first glance looks like a stream of mutual overthrow and overcoming, in fact does not go beyond the framework of history, which was already well known to Lacan himself. A story to which he managed to develop a special attitude in the form of the specific nonsense of his speech. Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančić are known for their distrust of what often appears in Slovenian School texts under the name of “neoliberal politics of tolerance”, “postcolonial” or “intersectional” theory. We can say that the exposure of left-liberal identity politics has become a kind of marker of the school. The strategy for unveiling in most cases is as follows: the listener is introduced to simple but well-known leftist proposals for expanding inclusivity or breaking through the latest social and cultural boundaries, and then, as a second step, points out to what extent these beautiful proposals are not only themselves indebted to repressive ones. framework, but also carefully hide what could really influence the situation. So, for example, identity politics or even Butler’s performative theory hides the “real” part of gender from us, and multiculturalism in fact turns out to be a substitute for free choice, a pseudo-choice that hides from us the work of the “university discourse” (Zizek’s favorite example with the hijab). The final argument of the debunking invariably becomes a speech about lack with reference to Lacan. Its presence and inescapability are affirmed over and over again. There is no sexual relationship, you are fucking with a fantasy, you cannot meet another, etc. This kind of adherence to a speech about lack, about a loss in being, is in itself fraught, since each time one has to implicitly assume that there is a different situation, the inaccessibility of which one has to come to terms with. Together with the quick revelatory moves, we are offered the entire disposition, in other words, not only the statement of lack, but also the idea that this statement is valid. What is clearly read here is, if not a proposal to fill the lack (the Slovenians are not so simple), then the work of localizing it and, moreover, expropriating it by the author guided by Lacan, as if in the very speech about the lack it was not reflected without the knowledge of the speaker. The latter allows us to assume the presence of space due to lack of free space, even if they do not believe in it. This circumstance turns out to unexpectedly unite the Lacanian text with its supposed rival - the postcolonial text. In the case of speech about a certain gap in desire or the non-existence of sexual relations, as well as in the case of a speech about an anonymous body marginalized by a repressive matrix, it is not difficult to detect painfully familiar disputes about the position of lack in the structure. If we allow ourselves a moment to think about individual differences at the level of the hypotheses involved in a particular school of thought, a perspective emerges where we have speech of the same type. It seems that irreconcilable opponents are speaking about the same thing - something that falls out, is not taken into account by the structure, but at the same time is accessible only, as Žižek puts it, through its dead ends. If this kind of remark is fair, the mutual accusations of the gender critic in turn turn out to be unfair and psychoanalyst. The problem lies not in the social critic's inattention to the functioning of the subject's desire or the psychoanalyst's carelessness in relation to the repressiveness of the instrumentation, but in the problematic nature of the situation itself, in which both critic and analyst are equally caught up. It should be pointed out thatthat when you have to talk about lack, it makes itself felt in another place. At the level of the act of utterance, lack manifests itself where the content of speech about lack is constructed in an intuitive and moral way that does not tolerate reservations about incompleteness. If you undertake to talk about the unaccounted for or the real, you will have to act as if you knew exactly what happened and what is worth it, or ⎼ if you don’t believe in completeness ⎼ you shouldn’t regret it. Thus, for example, the Lacanian psychoanalyst usually points out that the lack is found in the area of ​​symptomatology. Neurosis or psychosis turns out to be a response to a loss in being, a positioning of the subject in relation to castration. If the speech is taken by a social philosopher, the lack is indicated in the form of a failure of a social project, while the specific content of this project in this case does not matter. It doesn’t matter how exactly the thinker proposes to deal with shortages and what name the policy he advocates is given: both Zizek and Stavrakakis find themselves on the same side: one way or another, they are guided by an intuitive moral feeling. Despite the fact that those who talk about lack often point to its structural nature and thus break with the so-called ordinary experience, lack is still sought and found in places that refer to dissatisfaction, failure, almost to the fear that the subject something was stolen. It does not matter whether he was deceived initially, appeared along with this loss, or whether the subject is only charged with it. The failure of social action, described in the spirit of the failure of some project, or symptomatic inconvenience, suffering, spoken by the analysand, are the favorite places where lack is usually sought. Despite a whole series of reservations, lack is presented in the form of what the subject seems to lack, although Lacan managed to show quite convincingly that talking about things that disturb the subject is not connected with anxiety, which signals approaching the real. On the contrary, the willingness to point out disturbing and perhaps truly terrifying circumstances and sensations demonstrates that the subject has managed to channel the anxiety. Obeying an intuitive-moral feeling, firstly, they consider it necessary to speak out on the topic of the importance of lack, and, secondly, they involuntarily speak in a certain jargon. The situation is reminiscent of what Adorno calls the “jargon of authenticity” in existentialist thought, only instead of a metaphysics of depth and surface (in the form of dichotomies of genuine choice and inauthentic existence, deep experiences and alienation), we are confronted with a different type of jargon. Obeying the same metaphysical scheme, we are invited to feel the bitterness of lack and painful lack of relationship with another, the depressing suffering of a neurotic, etc. Instead of a hole the size of God, there is a lack the size of a phallus. In a word, what crowns a complex theoretical discussion about the desiring subject turns out in fact to be something not only deeply pre-Lacanian, but also pre-theoretical, this is the kind of matter about which one could become emotional or take on a stoic and stern appearance. In the end, despite numerous structuralist reservations, through such articulation we are invited to penetrate into the discourse of lack, to literally feel it. Along with the unexpected connection of social theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, no less striking seems to be the discrepancy between how Lacan himself dealt with lack, and the way the psychoanalysts who succeed him deal with it. In contrast to the anxious tone that any talk of scarcity takes today, Lacan himself does not seem to have been so fatalistic. Moreover, this matter itself was of little interest to him, as evidenced by the ease with which he was ready to shift the emphasis of the seminars, either dismissing or, on the contrary, returning a whole galaxy of signifiers. Signifiers that were subsequently literally stuck in his audience, who for some reason were unable to treat them with their characteristicLacan with ease. “Truth”, “desire”, “real”, “Other” and, finally, “lack”, became something that the seminar audience first quickly picked up and then could not get rid of: in Lacan’s words, in order to speak independently, his listeners All that was missing, perhaps, was a little shame. It seems that today the lion's share of what Lacan said has been shamed. While Lacan spoke, others were silent; when Lacan fell silent, the aphasics began to speak, and to speak silently. Lacan defines this specific aphasia as the inability to problematize the function of knowledge, an inability of which the thinking subject, the product of the discourse of the university, becomes the bearer. Driven by shame, he enjoys the truth, moves along the battery of signifiers, and produces a humanitarian product. A true indication of pleasure is that something is repeated, for example in the form of the impossibility of getting rid of the signifiers introduced by Lacan and their ceaseless affirmation. Lacan's knowledge, seen through other eyes, was elevated to law, this led to the emergence of truth on the one hand and the disappearance of knowledge itself, on the other. The place of Lacan's psychoanalytic knowledge was replaced by the struggle for Lacanian truth. We can observe a struggle of this type between the postcolonial philosopher and the psychoanalyst who remains faithful to Lacan with all his might. The difference in the positions they occupy is exclusively political - in the place of the law there appears S2 of a different nature, but what remains common is its fall into the rank of a symptom. At the same time, it cannot be denied that we owe a lot to this struggle for truth: it is this that leads to the resumption of the production of knowledge. After all, if there is a split subject - one to whom the truth is far from indifferent, then there is also the discourse of the analyst, where one can somehow get by with the enjoyment of the notorious truth. In the discourse of the analyst, the function of knowledge can be problematized again. Lacan found himself in a rather piquant position, his own knowledge returning to him in the form of truth. What, in Freud's words, the author gets rid of in the process of defecation by writing, returns to him in the form of a subject captured by this writing - an aphasic, incapable of producing knowledge. Fussing with the discarded anal object, bringing the dominant signifier of the other to the level of the act of utterance turns, at best, into S2 babble at the level of content. The product of the closest and often random other can be provided with references in the dissertation work or responded with a revealing text. But what remains unchanged is that the obsessive subject does not detect his own anxiety, he is filled with the anxiety of another discarded in the product. In the end, in the place of knowledge in the discourse of the university there is a call from the master - continue to learn, and the obsessive will learn, closing the circle of pleasure, guilt and knowledge. It is these three categories that mark the position of the obsessive subject holding a public speech. A position marked by the incessant production not of knowledge, but of self-examination, the maintenance of truth, forcing one to either fall into aphasia, or do nothing but shyly move along the S2 chain. The situation described is familiar to any more or less sensitive thinker, and it did not escape the representatives of the Ljubljana school. Warnings about truth and attacks on the discourse of the university have long been a favorite move of modern Lacanians. Žižek’s well-known method of parallax vision, that is, the displacement of the critical gaze relative to the program of criticism, demonstrates the blind spots of the revelatory toolkit, including in the texts of those for whom Žižek’s own speech was symptomatic. It can be said that Žižek is one of the few who have managed to turn attacks on their own listeners into a method. But no matter how sophisticated this critical move is, even if it is a critique of criticism itself, it still speaks directly to the audience as if it could correct its actions and this time not elevate knowledge to the rank of law. Listeners herecontinue to educate, preserving both the prejudice regarding their innocence and the assumption of the healing properties of such didactics. At the same time, Freud already clearly pointed out that something remains undigested by the audience, and is even more often quickly assimilated and immediately used for needs far from the tasks of psychoanalysis, but not due to the ignorance or naivety of the listeners, but for reasons not personally dependent on them , - we are talking about repression. Moreover, in a prepared audience, it can make itself felt to an even greater extent. It is not a matter of “inconvenient” or “boudoir” topics, as Freud himself suggested; on the contrary, “ladies and gentlemen” are not only ready for obscenity, but also expect it. The inconvenience of the psychoanalyst lies in his ability to problematize the function of knowledge, to point out how the subject enjoys the truth. Moreover, the analyst does not suppress pleasure, he is in no hurry to form a subject, critically aware that something is eluding the neurotic. Instead, following the indication of pleasure, which even a social critic can handle, comes the second step of interpretation - a new dominant signifier that is not in danger of getting stuck at the level of the act of a university product. This S1 is alien to the subject, but rather takes it for wit, if not for stupidity. In the light of this resistance, the analyst appears as something scandalous because of the nonsense in his speech, that part of it that cannot be elevated to the dignity of truth, and therefore cannot be enjoyed. At first glance, what seems unreal and meaningless is what is not grasped by the tentacles of the subject’s characteristic way of enjoying. But this is precisely what, in interpretation, turns out to be able to influence the situation. If we agree that Freud did not say nonsense, what remains is to find out what then are the rather meaningless parts of his psychoanalytic text and interpretations? It is known with what enthusiasm psychoanalytic knowledge was first taken up by the community as “new” and “emancipatory”, and then with the same swiftness discarded as hopelessly “outdated” and “repressive”. First of all, this does not escape the attention of the analysts themselves, since the concepts of obsolescence or repressiveness are purely pre-analytic. Nevertheless, individual theories of Freud, be it the pseudo-anthropological theory of the primitive horde or the view of oedipalization and penisneid, are constantly questioned about their correspondence with the latest discoveries of the humanities and natural sciences. At the same time, whether the researcher remained inspired by psychoanalysis or was disappointed does not matter: in both cases, they do not express more than they already know, and they know with very specific - bureaucratic knowledge. Bureaucracy itself cannot be reduced to dusty corridors or an archive catalogue: if we are dealing with the discourse of a university in the Lacanian sense, then discourse can do without not only things, but even without words. In the end, all kinds of breaks with the university only return the subject to the bildung of tradition, and the more breakthrough, breaking with everything musty, the renewed university appears, the more actively the subject has to educate himself, humanize himself, relying on knowledge, as if he had produced it, and not I used the function from S2 to support my own desire. This process leads to the repression of everything that would be connected with the matter of desire. The subject is by no means innocent and cannot be reduced to the content of speech about himself. As a result of this repression, he obeys S1 “keep learning” and avoids aspects that can problematize the function of knowledge. It is S2, and not a specific bad bureaucrat, who is the agent of the discourse of the university, that is, such knowledge that acts anonymously for its bearer and at the same time allows him to locate himself only near the source of pleasure - truth. Repression also has a downside: the anxiety caused by the analytical position. The psychoanalytic text begins to resemble nonsense, and the analyst himself, even if he.