Today a pervasive crisis of the normative dimension (that of having to be) is accompanied by the sterilization of the corresponding aptitude towards symbolization (individual and collective) : the constituting symbols of a project of civilization (from the political dimension to the existential one up to the religious one), and thus, at the base, the desires that these symbols are capable of identifying and using as vehicles (formalizing).
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010
A possible example of this strikethrough of desire can be tracked down in the declarations of adolescents about the frequent use of prostitution, their “because you get further quicker” the aridness of the sphere of symbolization, which is expressed in the gesture of paying in a disengaged fashion (while it is challenging to manage the approach and seduction in a relationship), it expresses an incapability of managing an encounter with another person, its intrinsic randomness and unpredictability: the unbearable nature of the possibility of being told “no”. The weakened capability of symbolizing, that is of creating one’s own internal world of meanings whose expression is desirable and motivating, prevents the formalization of a meeting with another person, but, in more general terms, it is «certainly a potent springboard for behaviours in which violence, sadism and the impact of these turn-ons on the psyche tend to substitute the satisfaction and perception of fulfillment derived from acting or operating in a ways rich in meaning, in intentions, in motivations, rooted and structured in the symbolic dimension.» (M. C. Bartolomei, La dimensione simbolica. Percorsi e saggi, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli 2009, pp. 11-12)
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010
It is important to remember how the symbol in Greek tradition was born so to speak from the humus, from the earth, and how it takes on, from the very beginning of its conception, a material form. Symbol is in fact a tablet of terracotta used to produced a mutual acknowledgment between two parties (like an “id card” or a “guest card”: in this case it can be touched, held in one’s hand, it can be seen. There is writing on it, broken in an asymmetrical fashion and guarded by each of the parties, it permits and guarantees that both, in the moment of the perfect union of the two halves, recognize themselves and in the same way acknowledge each other as fundamental components of an agreement.
As was meant from the very origins of its formulation, it is precisely this, aware, the symbol is not an idea in itself (as indeed the integral tablet is not yet a symbol, while the fragments put back together, recomposed, are.) In the example of the Greek terracotta tablets, it is not for example the pure idea of an agreement made: it is rather that very form of conscious choice to allude to it, to remember it and make it be thought of as a project, as a memory of and for the future: «each of the two parts of the card bring with themselves the memory and renewed current significance of the pact.» (M. C. Bartolomei, La dimensione simbolica. Percorsi e saggi, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli 2009, pp. 28)
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010
And that the symbol has plummeted and been used outside of a symbolic awareness marks instead the catastrophe.
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010