Razorsmile:
Hi and welcome to a series of interviews that I will be carrying out with Eric Harper and we're going to be interviewing psychoanalysts who have engaged in activism and have used their practices to take part in social change. And we're exploring with them the role in which psychoanalysis plays in that and the role that they find themselves placed in as psychoanalysts. And this week we are talking to Carolina Bessowain, who's a psychoanalyst and activist from Chile. In fact, let's ask that first question. Are you an activist or a psychoanalyst or both?
Carolina Besoain:
Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Eric, for this great invitation. We met with Eric at the Freud Museum last January and he asked me the same question and I remained thinking about it. For me, psychoanalysis and politics, intersectional feminism in particular, name a journey, a practice, and a desire flux that cannot be really separated. Psychoanalysis and feminism have been both... a space to craft my own path. And for me both are about desire, about expanding life, creativity and about dignity. I grew up in a country divided by violence. My childhood saw the end of Pinochet's dictatorship and the beginning of democracy, which has been a very conflicted and painful process until now. Politics have been part of my life since the very beginning. I was very young when I started working with people in the urban peripheries of Santiago, and especially women. These women were struggling to build and preserve a home. When I graduated as a psychologist in 2008, I began my PhD in psychosocial studies, seeking to understand how homemaking, was related with becoming a subject. I conducted this psychosocial work and research and at the same time, I did my training as a psychoanalyst. This gave me a very unorthodox and psychosocial approximation to my psychoanalytic practice. This is not uncommon in Latin American psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis in our region. has always been a multiple and hybrid process of appropriation of tradition that has been used for multiple local purposes. As Mariano Rupert to Chilean psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst and also a history as historiographer has argued, psychoanalysis in Latin America has always been an overflowing knowledge. Of course, We also have official psychoanalytic institutions and official historiographies. They don't often recognize these local practices and knowledge as genuine psychoanalysis. And they usually ask, is this still psychoanalysis? And honestly, I don't care much about that question because I think it's a colonial question. From the very beginning, the psychoanalytic movement in Latin America has pushed the boundaries of the psychoanalytic field. through what using the concept of ingenuisine I call acts of citizenship in psychoanalysis. About my work, I want to share with you today an ethnographic constatation. Intersectional feminist collective action has shaped and impact Latin American psychoanalysis the last 10 years. In saying so, I would like to make a shift in the way we have usually thought. about the relationship between psychoanalysis and politics. As progressive psychoanalysts, we often focus on the emancipatory potential of psychoanalytic theory and how psychoanalysis can be used to promote liberation and emancipation processes. But there has been little attention on how collective action and political mobilizations in one particular territory can shape psychoanalysis. psychological theory, clinical practices and organizational forms. Well, I'm looking for that. In May 2018, feminist mobilizations experienced a very, very intense peak here in Chile when feminist takeovers occurred in more than 32 universities across the country. In that process that became known as the Chilean Feminist May, my friends and I founded Trenza Colectivo. Through collective action, during that intense and highly political time, I authorised myself both as an analyst and as a feminist. From a broader perspective, since 2015, Latin America has been experiencing a significant wave of intersectional feminist protests. It began in Argentina, where after the murder of a 14 year old girl, Chiara Perez, a cycle of mobilizations started from Argentina to Mexico denouncing gender violence with the slogan, ni una menos vivas nos queremos, no one less, we want to stay alive. Under this influence, Trensa Collective was born. Our collective is a platform that brings together psychoanalysis, feminist studies, and queer thought. We offer supervision, study groups, reading workshops and clinical seminars to psychoanalysts but also to other people, not only psy -workers that have found something meaningful in our work. In the middle of the pandemic, we founded a clinical network that provides low -cost psychoanalytic and gender -informed treatment. Today our network encompassed 20 professionals that provide low -cost analytic treatment to over 150 patients. Last April, we just launched the first version of a more extensive training program that we are very excited about. And another enterprise that was launched by the force of this intense use of mobilization, is a research project that had me living nomadically between Santiago, Ria de Janeiro and Buenos Aires between 2022 and 2023. Spending periods of three to four months in the city, my aim was to develop a multi -sided ethnography within psychoanalytic organizations and networks that were doing clinical work committed with intersectional feminist activism. with the support of my friend and colleague, Tania Rivera, a brilliant psychoanalyst and scholar based in Rio de Janeiro, and with the Chilean government support with a grant, I developed my research journey. I attended several seminars, colloquium, analyzed media posts, publications in digital independent journals, and also I conducted... 40 in person, more than 14 person, and online interviews with psychoanalysts based in Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Fortaleza, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Curitiba. I have been writing about this experience in different journals and platforms. I am still in the middle of this enterprise. And what I have learned is that since... Since 2015, Latin American psychoanalysis has become deeply political. But this is not the first time. In the 70s, many psychoanalysts fought against civic military dictatorships and human rights violations. Psychoanalytic practice and activism have overlapped since then. In the context of revolutionary forces, and the dictatorial backlash that our region experienced in the 70s and the 80s, several acts of defiance took place in Latin American psychoanalysis. Perhaps one of the most well -known was the ropter of the Argentinian Psychoanalysis Association led by Marie Lange, one of its founders. In 1969, after the Argentinian... the APA association supported a general strike declared against the violent repression of workers and students and a significant number of psychoanalysts, Marilangue in between them, began to express their leftist and Marxist views inside the institution. Then some analysts traveled to participate in the International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Rome. the first since the French May of the 68. And there some analysts withdrew to discuss topics that were excluded from the official program. These meetings were called Contra Congress and from them emerged the group Plataforma. Upon returning, Plataforma Argentina was born with 11 members of the APA. Later, after the dismissal of an analyst for political reasons, a new group, called Dogumento, emerged. Political tensions increased within the APA and in the 27th International Congress of Psychoanalysis held in Vienna in 1971, another platform, Contra -Congress, took place. They questioned whether psychoanalytic practice was contradictory to political practice. And at the official Congress, Marilangre presented this... wonderful paper, Psychoanalysis and or Social Revolution. In that piece, she proposed using her biography as an analyst and as an activist that Marxism and psychoanalysis were complementary. The paper was supposed to be published automatically in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, but it was not due to lack of space. Upon returning from the Congress, the situation within the APA became unattainable. the members of the platform and group documental resigned from the APA just with two days apart. And this represented the 10 % of the members of the association. And this, well, this rupture was an act of what I think about like an act of citizenship that changed the history of psychoanalysis in Argentina and in Latin America, because it created for the first time conditions for training psychoanalysis outside the official institution. and opened the flux of collaborations between activists and psychoanalysis that continues until the present. For instance, collaborations between psychoanalysis, just like Sylvia Blechman, and the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo were very important for the truth and memory process in Argentina in the late 80s. Additionally, in the 80s, Lélia Gonzalez, a Brazilian intellectual and activist who was crucial to the Afro -Brazilian anti -racist movement, was closely connected to psychoanalysis and her ideas are being revitalized today by anti -racist psychoanalysis collectives across all of Brazil. Another example of this collaboration is the role that psychoanalysis played in the legalization of free abortion in Argentina in the 2020. the arguments of Argentine feminist psychoanalysts such as Marta Rosenberg were used by legislators in their speeches. In particular, a brilliant colleague and scholar, Veronica Gariboto, she wrote about this, how psychoanalytic notion of the desire was crucial in the parliamentary debates. This concept, the concept of desire, dismantled the common pro -life argument that abortion leads to killing to a human being. As without desire, there is no human being to begin with. As Martha Rosenberg stated in her address to Congress during the debates surrounding the law, she said, it is only through women's desire in work that a pregnancy is destined to birth. Thus, The links between past and present activist movements within psychoanalysis in Latin America are very numerous.
Eric:
I'd just like to ask you a question on the intersectionality. It's something we try to teach our students and I just wanted to hear how you understand intersectionality. But one of the ways that I like what Collins says about intersectionality for Collins intersectionality represents the insight, not that black women experience race and gender. as simultaneous oppressions, although this is obviously true, but that the structures of race and gender are themselves related. Race is always already gendered and classed and sexualized and nationalized category. And gender always already a race and classified and sexualized category. Not race plus gender, but how gender is racialized.
Carolina Besoain:
Mm -hmm.
Eric:
not capitalism plus patriarchy, but capitalist patriarchies in inseparable forms of oppression. So I was curious how you, because you talk a lot about intersectionality, I was curious how you think about intersectionality.
Carolina Besoain:
Well, I think very similarly about how in a way very similar you are talking about, but I want to give you like maybe some example of how this is working here in, for example, in the feminist May in 2018, the takeovers had this slogan. And it's a very interesting slogan because it was about calling to the streets, like making explosion of the category of women. They say we all live precarity. So students, workers of the university, mothers, you all come to the street, you know. And I think this is like one of the most... interesting political strategies or political condition of international feminism is that you can never stabilize the category, for instance women. So we can use any identity category and make the same destabilization. So I think... That's very, very important to acknowledge because if you don't, maybe you can become in this narcissist identity struggles between groups. You know, no, we're talking about race. No, no, we're talking about class. No, no, we're talking about gender. And you have to understand that when you address the issue, you must make the identity category work in a way. that can move on through different, the different, yes, piegues, I don't know the word in English. It's like the different avenues in which this, it's a flow that it's come, comes all together, you know, it's like, they are interested to us to divide, you know, but when you go to the... to the movement. And I think that that's the incredible virtue that have this politicization times that they cannot be forever. You don't have this kind of high intensity movement in the streets all the time. You cannot live like that. But that's the time where you do can move. and make work this and go push all the frontiers of these categories, you know, in the bodies, in the street, in the experience. And that creates the possibility of them working together, making different kind of networks. And I think that was what, that is something of what happened here in Latin America in these last years. We are now like trying to work with. the openings of that intensities.
Razorsmile:
You get a really interesting account of the history of psychoanalysis in Latin America. And Mary Langer, obviously, is a famous figure in this. And there is clearly, when we read the histories of psychoanalysis, a different history in America, a different history in Europe, and it appears like a different history in Latin America. Is it? I mean, should we talk about psychoanalysis in Latin America? Is it helpful to do so? Or is it a kind of Europeanized imposition of a space? Do you think there's something specific and unique about the particular history there that offers so many lessons because of the way in which it's engaged so directly in quite harsh levels of social struggle?
Carolina Besoain:
Yes, that's a very interesting question, Matt. And I have also explored that in my research. I believe there are commonalities between the countries in our region because we have experienced similar political processes. Collective action has shaped and now is shaped in psychoanalysis. And the mobilizations and the processes are regional. Now, particularly in these times, more recently since 2015, but especially around 2018, South American psychoanalysis was deeply affected by feminist mobilizations. And many, many psychoanalysts joined forces, developed collectives and networks inside and outside psychoanalytic institutions. This generated a rupture. in theory, in practice and in the habitus of psychoanalytic organisations. Additionally, there has been a very interesting diffusion of protest tactics and modes of organisation from feminist movements to psychoanalysis. These tactics were used and are being used by psychoanalysts to question, reframe and reconfigure several psychoanalytic concepts. and in what I have labeled as reactivation practices. And this is happening all over Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Of course, if each country has developed different paths or trajectories for these collective acts of defiance or for the use of these tactics that are related to local political background and contingencies. For instance, in Brazil, the coup... that removed Dilma Rousseff from office in 2016. The murder of Marielle Franco in March 2018. Marielle, I don't know if you know her, but she was an Afro -Brazilian feminist activist serving the city as, serving as city councilor in Rio de Janeiro when she was assassinated. In the same year, Yair Bolsonaro was elected. So this created a social and political situation of, intense, intense violence, real violence, body violence, street violence, but also symbolic violence that provoked directly, I can say, collectivization among Brazilian psychoanalysts. The impotence in the face of Bolsonaro's violence was transformed into a question, a very interesting question, that several psychoanalysts redirected toward themselves. They said, okay, So what am I going to do? What are you going to do? What am I going to do? And psychoanalytic collectives became an answer, a way to do something. It was very interesting because politicization of psychoanalysis was a response on this kind of experience of impotence in the face of violence. Of course, in Argentina and in Chile, the process was different because we didn't experience that intensity of... violence in that moment. We have a lot of violence but not in that particular contingency. So for example in Argentina the process had much more to do with institutional resistance. Psychoanalysts inside the institutions of psychoanalysis making trouble and organizing and making different kinds of groups and discussions groups but inside the institution. Some of them broke with the institution, but it was more like institutional resistance. In Chile, the process was different because we had this incredible cycle of mobilizations. So mobilization itself, the participation in mobilization was a trigger to creation of different kinds of collectivities. So it's like more like the path of... mobilization was more frequent in the Atelian experience. So we have this difference. But I think, and I have been thinking about this, like Alain Badiou thinks about the event. We experience an event that fractured and created a void, providing an opportunity to invention. And when I am... working with and trying to think about is how this event opened a rift in front of which an act process, an acting process, took place in Latin American psychoanalysis. These were acts that destabilized psychoanalytic knowledge, practices, and opened an invention flux in theory, in practice, and also in who and what can be said in psychoanalysis name. Very interesting. And I think this is not really random, because I think this is about not only about politics, but also about what feminism in particular does to psychoanalysis. I think that feminism does not bring to psychoanalysis mastery or any kind of fixed knowledge, but a destabilizing opening that relaunches the unconscious by the path of acts. And I think that this is what we have been seeing in Latin American psychoanalysis.
Eric:
I'm curious how you as a psychoanalyst understand violence, how you as an activist understand violence, and as a feminist, how you understand violence. And I'm curious whether the responses would be different or if there's any overlap.
Carolina Besoain:
Thank you. It's difficult your question because I don't know if this is in a way I have experienced it about understanding violence but about struggling and experiencing it in your own body, you know, so in that in that regard I cannot really separate like my analytic self to my activist self to my woman self so I do think that we have been, I grew up in a very violent country. And even if some of that violence had stopped in a kind of way, in another way, violence is going up and up and up all the time. And I think that really, It was and it is about violence the moment that when you decide that it has no sense to separate any more intellectual work, analytic training and political commitment, you know, because it's in violence, this has no sense, you know, to be separated. Then we have to think about it. And I think it's a great. question and enterprise to try to think about violence in the middle of that violence, violent experience. I, we, when we were in the pandemic with Tensa Collective, we used to say something like, we're trying to take notes. It was like, we're trying to take notes. Let's take notes. So maybe with then we can do something with this because I think we are in times that. it's really difficult to do something else than to take notes and maybe then try to articulate something. I think we are, for example, when I think about Palestina and about all that, the catastrophe of everything that is happening over there and over us when we see and when we commit with that violence, with that horror, looking at that horror, I think, okay, we must do the effort of thinking about what is happening here because this is not... They have an agenda and we must... think about that and dismantle this. But I think it's like thinking from another organ, from another corporal thinking maybe. I read some weeks ago something that Avisa Getopoulou wrote over the violence she experienced in her biography when she was... in in in in tibet no and then ⁓ thinking with palestina in her body no but she had to go to her own violence violence and ⁓ migration and segregation experience you know to to to acknowledge something about that no i think we are like in this kind of thinking these days like going through thinking with our bodies. We cannot do anything else, I think.
Razorsmile:
I'm kind of interested in this relationship to violence because it seems to be part of the reason I'm noting this noticing it is and you referred to Palestine there is in America the rupture inside the psychoanalytic institution that's occurring almost as we speak I mean and has been occurring for the last year and a half is around the particularly the book psychoanalysis under occupation and in the she and and the way in which the kind of response has been confused and polarised and in many sense wanting to be elsewhere. People have almost wanted it not to arrive in the face of psychoanalysis. They've not wanted it to be in the consulting room in a political sense, only in a personal sense. And so, violence is encountered in one way just as something that's happened to an individual rather than as a kind of institutional or structural issue. So when you mention impotence in the face of violence, which I think is a really important and difficult subject, there's also, on the other hand, the way in which there's a kind of potency that some people take up in relationship to violence, which cannot simply be dismissed as, I think, particularly from the side of the oppressed and those who are struggling, it cannot simply be dismissed as a mistake. There's a kind of complicated relationship.
Carolina Besoain:
Mm.
Razorsmile:
And Fanon talks about this, of course, in his own work about the relationship that the oppressed have in taking up a kind of potent relationship to violence. The complexities of violence, is it possible to deal with them beyond the individual as psychoanalysts? Are we always caught in just dealing with the implications and the effects on the individual? Can we actually, as it were, think of violence psychoanalytically and politically? In other words, collectively? Is it? possible to do this. You mentioned something like thinking with a new organ. I mean, I'm interested in that kind of idea. You speak a little bit more to that about how we might better explore that without venerating or giving a value to violence that we don't want to give.
Carolina Besoain:
Yes. No, no, of course. Well, I do think we can address the potency, the potentiality that opens violence without doing an apology to violence. And I think we must think about that because if not, we are going to die in impotency. So I think that... What I have seen here in Latin America, particularly in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, it's the countries that I know better. Of course, they are in Brazil, for instance, it's an immense, it's a continent, so I cannot talk about all about it, but I can say some things I have seen. And is it that collectivity is the answer? It's like, and collective thinking is the way in which people is, it's not the theoretical way, it's the... in a pretty good way in which people are struggling with this. So I have seen that violence provoked collectivization because in the face of impotency they say no, we're going to do something. This is very interesting because it's like analysts talking to analysts, not to the... to the world, but to themselves. Let's withdraw a little bit and start thinking about what are we doing and let's try to invent some kind of thinking or networking or different kinds of... Let's go to the streets. For instance, I have seen that incredible work that... some groups of psychoanalysis in the streets are doing in Brazil for the last 15 years. It's like incredible. They put themselves in a square in the middle of the city and put two chairs. Well, you met Anderson Santos, Eric, in that wonderful encounter we had in the Freud Museum. He talked about this. And they opened the analytic listening. hearing to the people and you go and they dismantle all the framing we had on our training and they are thinking while they are acting and that's what I think it's so interesting because they are not waiting to have a theoretical background like... to be authorized by anyone, they go to the square, to the street. They started doing something before they understood what they were doing. And I think that that's why I'm so seduced these days with the concept of act, to think analytically about the act, because I think that's a way of... thinking also, that is so close to the unconscious flux. And I have seen how that has been happening in Latin America. And about Palestine, I wanted to say something because, well, we have differences in different countries in Latin America because we, in Tilian people, we have a great... great great color Palestinian colony. It's like I have lots of friends and we we have lots of solidarity with Palestinian people because they I believe they are the most big Palestinian colony in the world here in Chile. So we cannot be neutral. We are not being neutral. And I think here in second analytic circles, there are very... No one can not speak out because it's too close to us. But I have seen the division that this... genocide has provoked in the Argentinian psychoanalytic realm because there it's much more difficult to think about the sensitivity about antisemitism because there's a lot of... Well, I think there's a terrible confusion, but it's also political instrumentalization of suffering, you know, that this supposedly struggle between supporting Palestine and talking about genocide and being anti -Semites, it's like it has no sense. But that kind of breakings are happening. very, very deeply in Argentina, more than in Chile, I think this is because we do have like this, like very, very profound solidarity with the Palestinian people because they are, we are Palestinian also, like as a country.
Eric:
I'm curious about who you are inspired to work with and where you work with them and who you need to work with to be able to eat and pay your rent. In other words, how much of your work is happening in private practice on the couch and how much of your work is similar to your colleague De Santos in Brazil? And how do you think about that? Yeah.
Carolina Besoain:
Yes. Well, yes, that's a very important question and a difficult one because, well, I used to work in the university. I was there with a contract and with my old stability that came with that for several years. But in the 2020, I decided to resign and I started to work independently. only and in the collective, Terenza Collective, and to try to get some grants and funding to do stuff. But for a very, very, very long time, Terenza Collective has been supported by desire. It's like we don't have, we have not had any money to do that. So of course I have to work and I have my private practice and then I work for money, you know, also. But I don't think that's really, it has not for me. I don't have children. I live in a very free way, you know, but I have been able to do both and to support with my work in my private practice. the activities that we are doing in the Transa Collective, internet has helped a lot because we do use very much online work, you know, and that's a way of being, of things are not that expensive when you use these kind of platforms, you know, so you can... You can work with a lot of people, you can do a seminar, a colloquium, an encounter with very, very much people and you don't need to have an auditorium. So we work a lot with these online resources. But also we have made an incredible network of people that is colleagues that... they do want to participate and give time. And time is so important. And that's amazing because really these collective projects, you don't need so much money to do things. Of course, we're not saving the world. It is impossible to save the world. But to do the things, to make some kind of difference. In our work, money should not be really the excuse to not do that, I think, in my experience. But of course, that only can work if you work with others, if you are a collective. Because then money, I mean, then time can... Multiplicate, you know, that's for instance, that's the logic of second analysis in Brazil, second analysis in the streets. You don't have the same analyst every week, every weekend in the square. You're an analyst and you donate a morning in the month, monthly for instance, or by two months. But you do go to the collective reunions and you do supervision. of the cases, but there's no one analyst for one case. There are several analysts for one case. So that's the way I think you have to play with resources, you know? And I think that it's incredible to think about transference also and about unconscious, you know? We can't invent another lot. Capitalism wants us to think that there is no way to do anything. because we don't have the money. That's not true.
Razorsmile:
Yes, I'm particularly inspired by that kind of idea. And I think it connects with when you talk about the idea of thinking while acting, I was reminded of the Zapatistas and their kind of slogan of walking, we ask questions. But the idea that the act almost comes first to try and do something and learn from it and learn how to solve a problem, learn how to begin to move forward. And I think often we are blocked. as activists, as revolutionaries, just as much as anyone involved in society by this sense of somehow needing a perfect picture, a perfect solution, rather than take a step forward and work out how to take the next step. So I think that's a kind of crucial idea. I'm kind of interested in particular texts or events that might have helped you navigate things that you might be able to offer others as points of contact. Is there some?
Carolina Besoain:
Okay.
Razorsmile:
inspirations in texts or events other than the events of the histories that you've described in Latin America. But things that other people might be able to sort of connect to and find ways into a different approach to psychoanalytic practice inside the movement for struggle.
Carolina Besoain:
Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well, as I told you, we have been committed in writing in Transa Collective a lot. And when we celebrated four years as a collective, we invited our friends and mentors to a friendly bookstore nearby and read out loud a text with five voices and we called the text, The Power of the Collective. I can share that with you. In it we wrote about the creative and political power that friendship can wield. And when you asked me about my inspiration, I have to say that for me psychoanalysis has not been about ODP -cal, patriarchal, hierarchical transmission. Feminism has provided us with an alternative mode of transmission and transference, a highly collective process of free reading. translating and sharing experience of the unconscious. So I have to start saying that my main inspiration are my friends of Friends are Collective. And of course, I'm also so deeply grateful to many of my supervisors, teachers, my analysts. I have had wonderful teachers. I want to, there's a... a writer, intellectual, cultural critic Leonora Fuch. She has been for me like great inspiration. She's Argentinian. She sadly passed away in 2021. But I learned about her, about the power of art, the power of literature in disputing memory in Latin America. And she wrote several books. I can't... give you the name and the reference for that because she's wonderful and I miss her every day. But also I have been being inspired for recently with another people that I have met for instance these incredible groups of second -handers in the streets in Brazil they have wrote also stuff and I can share that with you. because they are amazing, they don't only do amazing things, they also do amazing writing. And also, I, well, literature for me has been, for us as Trensa Collective, has been a great source of inspiration. We always say when we were together, we were working together that so many times we have been ashamed of psychoanalytic writing. Yeah. And theory usually arrives too late. So for many, many times literature has come to our rescue, shedding light on what has yet to be conceptualized. And I think that that's what literature does. For example, there is a writer, an Argentine writer, I am in love with her. Her name is Camila Sosa Villala. She's a trans writer from Argentina. She writes beautifully and brilliantly about trans sex work experience. That's amazing. And of course we have in TV also Pedro Lemebel. He was like this great artist, writer, but also performer. Very, very, very, very important for the resistance to dictatorship. he and Pedro Casas founded this collective name, Yehuas del Apocalipsis or Apocalipsis, I don't know the translation for Yehuas, the horse but the woman of the horse. What's the name of that in English? Horse. Yehua, I don't know that translation. The feminist, the female for horse. What would that be that?
Razorsmile:
I think we'd call that a mare, as in a nightmare, in fact. The mare is...
Carolina Besoain:
Amen. ⁓ right. This is the apocalypse. Mea. That's the name of the collective. It's incredible. It's Pedro Lemebel, but also some contemporary writers like Alia Trabuco. She's a great, great artist. Writing about, she's a lawyer also, so she had wrote about the encounters between the... the lore, narrative, and gender issues and literature. It's really, really incredible. So another one is Maria Enriquez, for instance, is also Argentinian. So I can go forever with a list of that kind of inspiration, but literature and women and feminist writers, Latin American writers has been very important.
Eric:
It's incredibly inspiring to listen to you talk, to observe your thinking, your engagement. It's truly inspirational. I don't want to sound depressing, but I want to just ask a question. It's a Guatari's question. The fascist within all of us, the fascist within any group. I mean, we see it in psychoanalysis, we see it in revolutionary movements, within activism. It's around. I don't know if you have some thoughts around that.
Carolina Besoain:
Yes, yes, Eric, I think it's a very important topic to discuss. Because many times when we think and speak about collective action and collective thinking in psychoanalysis, we have difficulties going beyond the Freudian mass psychology model. And I believe fascism cannot be the only destiny for collectiveness. Of course, we experience fascism, and in our social context and within ourselves. But I do think there is more to it. For instance, group analysts have been exploring the potential of collective unconscious since the last century. Additionally, there are contemporary brilliant psychoanalysts. You have Raluca Sorano, for instance, and Aminoso, who we both meet. who are engaging in this project of reimagining the collective also. Beyond this mass psychology and mob fantasy, like Raluca calls it, I believe this fantasy, the mob fantasy, is widespread among psychoanalysts and sometimes inhibits our creativity to join, act and speak. We cannot prevent ourselves from acting. We will inevitably, of course, face the unexpected. unexpected consequences of our actions too and we must confront them with responsibility but however I believe that prophylactic thinking about collectiveness only serves to maintain the status quo.
Razorsmile:
Building on that a little bit, I'm familiar because I'm involved in a revolutionary organization with the difficulties of bringing psychoanalytic thinking. I'm not a psychoanalyst myself, but I try to bring psychoanalytic thinking into that space. And there's some acknowledgement of it. There's some awareness of it and welcoming to it. For example, Mark Fisher's text, Capitalist Realism, which brings to the... to the table a kind of recognition of the way in which the psyche is involved in politics and the way in which it's colonized or manipulated and pushes an idea that somehow some response to this also needs to be developed. At the same time, there's often a kind of, I wouldn't say rejection, but a slight resistance to taking psychoanalytic engagement too seriously amongst those involved immediately in political activity. So what has been your kind of experience of activists? How do activists respond when the analyst comes along? What is your experience of that?
Carolina Besoain:
Thank you. Yes, yes. Well, I have had really nice experiences about that. For instance, last Friday, here in Santiago, we as Transsecolective held a colloquium where we invited queer and trans activists to discuss psychoanalysis, dissidence and collectivity. That was the title of that encounter. And I think our desire was to learn about activism. and it struggles. So we listened. So I think that's a very simple but important clue to address activism. We had a lot to learn about activism and to learn about their strategies. So for instance, because I think activists, many times, not only from psychoanalysis, but from academy, more broad. way, they think, they feel that they are not taking, they've been taking serious, see, taking serious. So, for instance, we invited this incredible trans activist and writer, she's also a scholar, so she moves through different worlds, but Deborah Fernandez, and she gave us a class, a master class about why the trans movement has chosen identity as a priority in the fight for their rights. Despite the queer theory that aims to dismantle identity and gender categories, because we have that kind of problems between theories, scholars and activists, because they are demanding identity as an important political category, And at the same time, we're in the university saying, okay, let's dismantle identity, let's dismantle gender. So how do we move in these two levels in these problems? So she was like very, very, she made a brilliant, but really, really, really important point because she said, well, identity, well, it's the minimal baseline to exist. So... if we don't struggle for identity first, identity is like to be recognized as in the realm of human rights. That's first, no? And to the pathologization, you know? So we as psychoanalysts, I think we must, it's crucial that we understand this kind of stuff, like... Especially when, for example, for instance, we have here, and I know that you are having there also this important crisis of the affirmative healthcare for trans children, because there's all these panic narratives about how to be precautious with not pushing trans children to transitioning. and because we don't have the evidence of what is going to happen to them and what if they want to do transition and all that kind of narratives that what are really making a breaking, it's the idea that they are like, yes, they are using the idea that to be a trans child is something we must not, we must be precautious of. Like, it's not a good idea to have more trans children or more trans adolescents. So we have to be really, really sure that they want this, you know, because if not, it's like, we're not really, really addressing the human rights principle that there's nothing bad on them. There's nothing to be cautious about. the existence of trans children, you know? For instance, and that kind of points, the activists can tell us from their struggles. I think they're so important for us not to be sometimes like anxious about all these evidence -based arguments about we must... have all the clues about what is the consequence of any treatment before we do anything. Because and I think we don't have that kind of precaution for another kind of interventions with children because we know that some things are like basic for existence. So I think for instance that kind of exchange when we... as psychoanalysts go to be, to learn, to listen, not to give that masterclass, but to be the students of activists, I have had a really, really good experience in that kind of exchange.
Eric:
You've used the word collectivist, you've used the word network. We could throw in the word assemblage if we were Delirzian. When I used to work in Africa, we used to think about alliances. Matt and I think about the intersection of one -to -one group and community relationships. What would be some practical tips? Some in terms of... collectivists or networks, just people coming together, just some practical recommendations or thoughts on this.
Carolina Besoain:
I think that... I thought about two things when you talk. I remember this wonderful psychoanalyst based in Buenos Aires, Lida Feldman. She's also a writer, a wonderful writer. And when I interviewed her, she talked about hacer Maria. This is building a tie. That's the expression. Hacer Maria is a expression. from the Ni Una Menos movement and for that and interwined with the the Valization of Abortion campaign in Buenos Aires. It was very important this Hacer Marea. And she talked about how they do that. They built ties between different collectives. So for instance, if she was going to give some kind of seminar or colloquium about they were discussing about abortion and about in the 2020 with a group they had this way to spread the notice so that the other networks and the other groups they can come but also maybe they don't compete. with another activity in the same day, in the same time. So they were like not in... there was no schedule, I see, weekly or annual schedule. No, no, that's not the logic. The logic is, okay, we're going to do this, this day, this time, come here if you want, and if not, please don't put another thing in the same time. And that was the way they built this tie, she talked about, no? It's so simple. It's not like really... It doesn't demand a lot of resources. It's just like we are all together. It's another logic, not competition. You can come and you cannot come if you don't want, but please do know that we are doing this. For instance, that was so interesting for me hearing that building attack. And also I thought about how Transference is working with all of this. Because I don't have really a tip more than love. No? Like, when you, for instance, when we join as a network and people start writing us and we did, last week, weeks we end at... We wanted to grow as a network, as a clinical network, to another territories. So we make this call to psychoanalysts in Valparaíso, near the Valparaíso Viña del Mar department, near to Santiago. We received a lot of people wanted to work with us and we cannot receive them all for the network, but we were so... happy to have this interest and you can't, it's not that difficult to be kind, you know, to say, okay, we cannot work all together now, but we will have you in our radar and next time we need something to do, we're going to call you and they all like, ⁓ yes, thank you so much for answering me. Thank you so much for having me in mind. Like, it's not that... difficult to be kind. I remember Fernando Huioa, this is a great psychoanalyst, an Argentinian psychoanalyst that wrote very much about the effects of violence, of political violence in subjectivity and he talked a lot about tenderness. Tenderness as like... a way of treating, a treatment for cruelty and for violence. So let's take that way. We can be kind to each other, you know? It's not that difficult.
Razorsmile:
Yeah, this reminds me of this when you mentioned friendship earlier, and this is a concept that's come up in various different spaces in the radical left. But that seems to me to be connected to this idea of kindness, being able to treat yourselves as friends, being able to find a relationship to each other, not as competing elements, but as friends. But at the same time, there's... there's a sense perhaps in which in order to have your friends, you also need to perhaps know who your enemies are. Would that essentially, would you feel that that's also a justifiable relationship that one might need to develop? And perhaps that's where the complication in friendship occurs. It's because people are too quick or not quite clear about what it is they're struggling against, who it is they're struggling against. So whilst we need to develop the friendship, there is that relationship to the enemy.
Carolina Besoain:
Yes, of course. Yes, of course. We do know who are our enemies. Yes, and we laugh a lot about that because we, I think humor also, it's a good treatment for that kind of conflicts. But yes, we, for instance, we used to publish in a platform, as Trensa Collective, we had this writing... connection with some psychoanalyst platform that started publishing anti -trans stuff and we stopped publishing there because we don't want... we take sides, you know, of course we are not going to publish there so yes and we are like honestly enemies like okay we cannot be... anymore, you know, because you think and I think that's like also like You can't have ethics with your enemies too Like this isn't what we when you are like dishonest maybe like You're thinking this we cannot support that like not not ambiguity with that It's like an ethical enemy
Razorsmile:
Yes. I mean, I'm reminded of a conversation I've recently had in my political organisation, which has taken quite a while, but I was quite proud of the fact that this conversation went so well. And it was to do precisely with this relationship to what we call red lines. There are some things that we find as a red line and that there are kind of points at which we think, if you go over that red line, then we are no longer able to easily work with you. But if something changes in the future, perhaps then things can be different. And this arose in relationship to the Palestine situation because in Germany, there's what's called the anti -Deutsche. There's a group of leftists who are much more concerned with anti -Semitism than they are with Palestinian resistance and have difficult positions. And developing a relationship to how we could say to some people, we can no longer work with you, but... in the future if there's something else. Being able to say to some group or another organisation, this is too much, but this doesn't mean forever. And there's a difference, I think, that's important to be able to articulate. And it's where it's important for us to recognise, I think, sometimes that in collective conversations, we also need to be able to state when we are different and we do have differences. and that complicated relationship because at that point, obviously, that sense of collectivity is disturbed slightly. And that sense of being together and the unification relationship that we have there, that's disturbed. I think it's one of the more complicated ways in which analysis and activism can come together, perhaps. And I say, I think around this concept of friendship and developing what it is we mean to be a friend, just as we would say to a friend in our own life if we thought they were perhaps. doing something that wasn't entirely helpful for their life.
Carolina Besoain:
Yes, yes. And of course you also can have some fights and there's times where the intensity grows and grows and grows and you split. But I think that kind of phenomena also, that splitting one, is creative. It's an experience for both of them, for them and for us. I... think about, for instance, the rupture of the analytic association in Argentina that Merylanger directed, or many ruptures. For instance, what had happened recently with the TDCS Prize that Avisa Ketopoulou and Anne Pellegrini won for her brilliant essay about a feminine boy. I don't know if you know the case, this wonderful book called Gender Without Identity. that is now being going to be translated to Spanish. We're translating it into Spanish with a Mexican published house. But, well, this was an article that was supposed to be published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, of IEPA, you know, because they won this Tirassias Prize. That is the prize that the committee of... gender and sexuality diversity in the IPA was given this prize to innovation in the field about these issues and all. And they won, but then they couldn't be able to publish because the editors were concerned about the acknowledgement part when they gave the welcome. to queer analysts and candidates and not only patients. And that footnote was the beginning of a escalate tension of intensities that ended with the International Journal of Psychoanalysis rejecting the article. And they decided to make this wonderful book, Gender Without Identity, when they not only published the... the text, the article that is wonderful article about trans boy. But also they tell the whole story. So they built the book through this impasse. And I think that's the way things happened in psychoanalysis. And that's the way we start thinking the new because we cannot... When we talk about friendship and about ethical enemies and all of that, yes, I subscribe to that. But also I think we cannot be prevented from unconscious struggling. And I think these high intensity impulses, for instance, we had this... I wrote about the connection of this case of Aguizac Getoculo and Angel Egrini and another impasse that happened here in Latin America and Argentina between Francois D 'Aultot and Silvia Blechmar in the late 80s. When Francois D 'Aultot came to Argentina and she said in an interview in the news that if appropriated children, returned to the families, original families, appropriated children in that dictatorship, they would experience a second trauma. She said, she talked like that. And of course, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and psychoanalysts as Sylvia Blechmar complained. And Sylvia Blechmar made this wonderful answer to Francois D 'Aultot where she developed this concept of constructive trauma. It's like there's sometimes where trauma, another trauma is needed to restructure the psychism, so the psyche. So I think that we don't have to be so much... Don't, don't, don't, what's the word? Let's welcome a little bit of empaths also because they open the thinkable and the imaginable.
Razorsmile:
I'm going to ask you a little question at the end again. This is for people to sort of be able to get access and find their own routes into things. You kindly read the text we produced on breath and breath is something that you and your friends thought about during COVID. What other keywords or concepts do you think would be maybe interesting for people to begin to think about for analysts and activists? What other keywords and concepts could analysts and activists engage with, maybe open up some of their thinking?
Carolina Besoain:
Yes, well I was deeply touched by your text and the way you approached to breathing as the first act, the initial molecular drive of life you say, but also the last resistance base in the face of murder and I believe the pandemic has shown us that breathing is not guaranteed, you know, and and at times literally and at other times metaphorically we have all experienced suffocation these days. So with my friends on Intrensa Collective we thought and wrote about making outsideness in the pandemic and in order to keep breathing and keep physically alive. I think that's a really interesting connection with your text. Well, currently I talked about this, but I am very interested in rethinking the act as a concept, the concept of act for psychoanalysis and for feminism. Because we often, well, we have talked about this, but Marie Lange was very, she detected this distrust that psychoanalysts have towards any action project very, very early. And I think we do have... Like, it's a very interesting field to think about, the field of the act. Well, and maybe all that concepts that can help us to think about hybridization, diversification, multiplicity. I think that's the key words for sustaining life now and in the future, if we don't address that kind of stuff. we're going to be in trouble. So I think all that, all concepts that can open space for not for purity of concepts, but for gaming and relations between free use of concepts, hybridization, diversification, multiplicity. I think that's very important.
Razorsmile:
Thank you very much, Carolina. That's been really, really interesting conversation. And I think we may well be getting in touch again at some point about particularly about notions like the act. I think you're right. There's something very important around that concept at the moment that has a particular impact in psychoanalysis, but also has a particular impact amongst a whole range of the population when it feels an impotence in the face of peculiar politics that we are currently living through. Have you got anything you'd like to wind up with Eric?
Eric:
No, it's just incredibly again, inspirational. And I suppose it's just very humbling to listen to you. And what I found very enlightening is that it's not from Europe. That the life and the thinking is happening from what is considered the South or the periphery from a European perspective. But it seems like the innovation. is happening in a place that's not Europe, that's not traditionally seen as the West. And so often in the West, it's almost like being has to be a Western thinker who has to discover something that's already been said elsewhere for it to be seen as a concept. So it's just you've given us so much to think about and it's been a treat or really appreciative.
Carolina Besoain:
Thank you. It was really wonderful to meet you, to talk, to think together. So I'm very grateful.