Speaker
Description
Speaking about the abyss is always speaking from the edge. Once the ground beneath one’s feet is lost, there is no more support, and in the act of falling, every cry for help turns into a scream. Diffuse fears often feel strikingly concrete, and the physical sensation of falling is accompanied by a loss of orientation in time and space.
In the face of the bottomless, the symbolic function of language capitulates. Abysses—however they may be conceptually framed—such as "trauma," "death," "dementia," or "crisis," always signify the absence of the symbolic and the abrupt cessation of chains of signifiers. From a psychoanalytic perspective, trauma poses a hermeneutic challenge: it encircles a void that escapes symbolic safety nets.
However, as long as it is not crossed, the phenomenon of the boundary, as a demarcation line of the utmost and the extreme, releases metaphors. For instance, the aesthetic representation of death is rich in words, while clinical death remains silent.
On a societal level, the archaic fear of the bottomless and uncontrollable can manifest in times of crisis through defense mechanisms provided by "hard" ideologies. The "uncontrollable" is often fenced in by ideological enclosures, though at the cost of rigid ideologies amplifying the psychotic aspects of the personality, thereby fostering conspiracy theories.
Even if the abyss itself cannot be symbolically represented, it is possible to inquire into its "effects of presence." These effects, as profound disturbances of the subject, generate fears that are sometimes countered with destructiveness and violence.
| Keywords | abyss, void, trauma, the symbolic, 'hard' ideologies |
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| bettina.rabelhofer@uni-graz.at |