Freedom of expression

The title of my speech should not lead you astray. It would suggest that I support the common opinion that would make freedom of expression to a side, for example, freedom of conscience, freedom of movement, information or something in other words, the word freedom is likely to be used in plural, depending on certain material that could be put behind the concept. This is an absolutely terrible misuse of language, since it confuses, then freedom with its practice, which as you know, is usually authenticated by company, and legalization itself defines what name is in fact self-reliance. However, it is very important to see that freedom and autonomy are not confused, nor are distinct on one side, the code (the so-called law,) which is a purely sociological reality, and what to call the standard, which is a strictly ethical concept.

It is therefore necessary to carefully distinguish between what is social, and what is the moral distinction that we are extremely difficult to perform since the language we use every day telescope almost always the two plans. Just take, for example, the concept of “law” it is to take it in its legal sense, or morality? And when we speak of our “moralists” writers;  are these thinkers who are interested in morality, or good manners? See, again, our “Academy of Moral and Political Science ‘in this expression, which content includes the epithet’ moral” And what about that famous “moral duty” in which people of my generation were still high. But the need for my welfare, and, as such, it is my responsibility it involves, while morality is a matter of fault, of guilty and not responsibility.

At this rate, the concept of freedom is a moral concept, it must not be pluralized, unlike the concept of autonomy. Freedom is one or not. Okay, let me tell you, but at this point, speaking of “freedom of expression,” you are still at odds with yourself. Not least if, as I suggested, you agree with me to define “expression” as the manifestation of our desire to say, a desire which is involved both in our messages to our or our being. And what morality teaches us, specifically, is that if indeed we do share our humanity, it is precisely because we can not say anything, do anything or any being, it is self-censorship of our desire that allows us to access, unlike the animal, to freedom, that is to say, basically, neither more nor less than self-control . And if we examine today the “discourse,” the investment of our words by our desires, we will not lose sight, provided that the manner in which we express as a substitute for all our other behaviors.

These reminders are made, I leave a well-known to all: as you know, all children at some time in their life, yield to the temptation of saying “big words” which never fails to disconcert some parents and educators. Why? Simply because, they are awakening to the standard, and they are imbued with discourses of “big people” (for speech, again, I mean the desire to say that invests in our words,) they understood that everywhere, in the words of these “big people” coarseness flush, even if their words, as they say, are “punished” (at least in theory!) We can not understand the phenomenon if we do not pay the child the feeling (even if it is confused,) the adult, continuously watered down his remarks, sweetening, paradoxically, is in line infringement, since it is good for adults, “say anyway,” which is nothing other than practice, say the “euphemia” (a word formed from the Greek prefix eu-, meaning “good” and phemi, which means “I speak.”) In fact, the euphemism is the result of men capacity to say without saying, to say without seeming to. You want to start the word of Cambronne, for example, but we try to do our best to speak otherwise, what does that euphemism as a culmination, when you can not really control yourself? The dirty word, or, as it also says the word “thought” which are basically successful in meeting the “principle of pleasure” made against the resistance, tell against the self of our desire to say. But the child that has not yet learned the subtleties, is simply naive and very depths of our discourse is that he has felt that all our adults words tend to transgression (hence the expression of popular wisdom: “Truth comes out of the mouths of children.”)

But be careful! This transgression I have described should be well distinguished from what is called the offense. You find here the distinction, once again very difficult to do, between the plane of our social existence, and that of our moral existence. I remind you that the transgression on our being as it is moral, while the offense relates to our being as a person, that is to say, our social being, and say that if transgression that defines the incorrectness, the offense, meanwhile, defines rudeness. In other words, we must distinguish between what one does not allow to itself, which, whatever group they belong, based correction, and enforcement of prohibitions arbitrarily coded by a particular group, it founded politeness. It is true that Freud did not help at all to make the distinction, since, in one of his books among the best known (Totem and Taboo,) he confused, too, in what he calls “taboo” code (which is the sociality), and the standard (which is the morality), that is to say, he admits to transgressions as if they are offenses, only in where they give rise to condemnation by the group. And just in general, all psychoanalysts, who, under the name “Law” (with a capital,) confusing the legal and legitimate, or if you want, politeness and propriety. And this confusion, I might add, is even more widespread than usually, as you know, but not necessarily, a standard is socialized into a law, in other words, is codified, it is legalized. But it is clear that if the standard can be a social treatment which legalizes, this is not what a treatment is: the social norm that bases the legitimacy of our words -and thus our actions.

Under these conditions, you will understand that we must not fall into the trap of attaching particular importance to the erotic nature of scatological verbal transgressions made by children at a certain age in their lives. It is just that, by impregnation, they learned that adults socialized form of transgression (though they do not know yet, obviously it is a transgression socialized) specific to the Judeo Christian. But know that if you were an Eskimos parent, for example, your kid probably would treat his girlfriend as a “seal” rather than “idiot” because, among Eskimos, the taboo of language is on uttering the name of the animal that is hunted, and not at all like us, the erotic and scatological vocabulary.

And you see the same symbol, how linguists, educators and psychoanalysts who are interested in this erotic and scatological symbolism of rude words in children are engaged in an absolutely complete deadlock, because, simply, it has to be defined, first, the concept of correction (or legitimacy), which is, you know now, a moral concept, and, secondly, that of politeness that is him, arbitrary that characterizes social code for example, legally. And if I come back here on the totally arbitrary nature of the social code, is better for you that the standard it has nothing arbitrary. Codification, so it varies, as everyone knows, according to times, places and cultures. However, that proves precisely this variation except that the principle of the standard is also to know the self-control?

Well, of this rule, each of us as being free, is the only master. But when I say “free,” you understand, I think that this is not to be free to “do what I want” or “say what I want,” as children claim; but free to “take upon itself”, as it was before. That’s all. Otherwise, you are never in the sense most spontaneous of your desire in the direction of your drive or your interest.

That said, let us be more precisely in the speech. We only show our freedom as much as in all our messages, even the most naive, there is always, except deficiency or pathology, to the satisfaction of both our own desire to express ourselves, and the desire to hide something, I mean to refuse to say who, by a kind of repression, thwarting our desire is to say, and this defines the fundamental duplicity of all our words. And if I say “basic” is that all our words are, by definition, double-bottom: as Freud has shown -and so, this time definitive and unquestionable -there is truth nowhere but everywhere ambiguity, across the duplicity. That is what we have got a little hard to admit, since we imagine that there would be any authenticity hidden beneath our words. But the authenticity -or, as they say, spontaneity -what? As to what our company does not say is the cry -or the dirty word -or, the lapses.

What is the process involved in the lapses? To the extent you agree that our speech is the expression of a struggle between the desire to say and censorship that we ourselves do weigh on him, the result usually is a compromise. But in the slip, what they mean and if not both appear in juxtaposition, mixing in some way. There is a failure of information about who we are, basically, the “normal” speech (that is to say formed:) if you exaggerate too much on something you should not say it falls into the slip, that is to say the failure of compromise, and then appear at the same time, and desire, and self-censorship. In this, we can say that the lapses are the passage to the limit of normal speech, when it tends to transgression. And, unlike what is the successful compromise? Well, that is what we call the “joke,” it must take it as the move to limit the success of saying without saying. Without doubt we are dealing here with a kind of lie in this case, we must say that this is a lie that makes us men. And do you feel better the nature of this lie, I will cite an example given by Freud, if I remember correctly, in his book. The joke is a relationship to the unconscious: it relates the famous reply of an Italian countess to Bonaparte, after he had  said that “all Italians dance really bad.” Non tutti,” said the countess, “my Bonaparte. You understand that the Countess in question could afford neither a brutal response, or a silence that would last for approval. Game of homophony in Bonaparte allowed her to lie… and lie, that is to say, to say the without saying. Where do you see that the joke is the personification of pure language.

And then how would you, if you have not learned to discipline language, learn to expect such adolescents to this perpetual joke (for the generalized understatement) what is the literary discourse, and Specifically, make them susceptible to this joke of jokes what the ineffable poetry? All disputes over the teaching of letters will not change anything, because you have understood, there is, on the subject, only one method: spanking granted to the child, for his good, once it knows about. We are very far! But this does not prevent us from talking a little poetry between us, if you wish, before we leave.

To say the ineffable that makes the transition to the limit of the joke of saying without saying, of lying without lying. For if the joke itself is moving to the limit of the success of saying without saying (that is to say the standard speech,) as we have seen, it is conceivable that the speech we say “inspired” is the passage to the limit of a passage to the limit! That is, if you want a passage to the limit in the second degree, what is really the flower of freedom of expression. That allows you to understand that there is no poetry that results from an extreme reluctance of speech and that this ambiguity absolutely irreducible. But this does not mean there under the words, explicit behind, another message decrypted and judged him “authentic.” It is conceivable that the explicit and implicit are in a dialectical relationship permanent. Take the case of the ineffable poetry as expressed, for example, in these two lines of Apollinaire:

Milky Way, oh bright sister

White streams of Canaan…

They say so little that I could just say:

Milky Way, light sister…

Or even – why not? – Only:

Milky Way …

With nothing to lose the charm of the operation carried out by those few syllables, which, because their meaning is literally poor and say everything poetically speaking. You see that poetic expression is the literal sense negation, the negation by which we reach the famous ineffable, but as this position is untenable, this negation is in turn denied, and we are again referred to the primary meaning, which is again denied, etc.. Etc..

A comparison with the oracular speech can, I believe, help us to understand the phenomenon. I think we may well apply to poetry what Heraclitus said of the master which is the oracle at Delphi – Apollo: outé Legei, outé krupteï alla sèmaïneï, “it does not say it not hide it beckons.” What is the speech inspired the Pythia at this in common with the poetic discourse that never gives meaning explicit or implicit: it seems in both cases it is a double word, where words are what they are and what they do not say and do not say. They are thus both, somehow, the word fable, fables, and so always a bit by creating a kind of double designificaction evanescent simulacrum of virtual and ambiguous. But the activity of discourse that grows at its most extreme limit say it is, the oracle and the poetic verse as a widening gap that gives me vertigo of possible meanings, and thus, they are at the same time , pressing invitation to fill this void. I throw a call, I ask them a question, but this call me back like an echo, to say the answer is in me. It is a real domino effect: as the poet, as Valery said, is a reader inspired, the oracle also has the power to inspire those who asked. They have nothing to say, neither one nor the other. And it is surely because it had nothing to say, not by cunning or mercantile caution that the Pythia was reticent in his oracles: “Everything is said, hello to the wise!” She replied, in substance, and men remained silent and gazed with staring eyes. You see, and that is where I finish, what is meant when one speaks of the “depth” of an inspired speech. In the philosopher, for example, the impression of depth is given by the effort that we are asked to enter to his mind. Regarding the inspired speech, the impression is given by the depth, by the time it takes to make our own everything that is a virtual one. In other words, the depth of the inspired speech is nothing but this huge future confusion wrapped in some words, which are simpler. Hugo had already felt: whether “the poets speak in a sufficient language for the future” is precisely because the depth of poetry -but it applies to the oracle, and, again, for the prophecy and parable- appeals to our own depths!

You will ask perhaps: “Can we go further of the freedom of expression?

Well, I would answer: “Yes…by giving it up!”

It is only about to be silent, to allow time in our silence, the silence of meditation, meditation or even prayer.

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