Abstract

RABINOVITCH, Gérard. Figures of barbarism. Psicol. rev. (Belo Horizonte) [online]. 2005, vol.11, n.17, pp.11-28. ISSN 1677-1168.

Modern barbarism is commonly associated to a semantics of ‘regression’, which refers back to its emblematic manifestation: Nazism. Freudian clinic operates a different configuration of that picture: with his theory of drives, Freud builds a decentralized representation of the psyche. That decentralization replaces the relation between Barbarism and Civilization, but not in the logic of mutual exclusion, from which the two notions sprang up. The epistemological consequences of Freudian clinic reject the idea of a barbarian involution. Barbarism is not considered a ‘regressive’ accident, disconnected from the temporal linear vector of cultural maturation. Thus, part of the Nazi enigma can be displaced to another one: the process of facilitating, through which the hybris of deadly destructibility passions invades the ordinary societal order, ‘civilized’ and modern. The author investigates some contemporary signs of a possible ‘barbarism’ to-be.

Keywords : Barbarism; Civilisation; Nazism; Contemporaneity.

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