Aris Kalaizis

The Triumph of the Subject over the Vatican

The psy­cho­ana­lyst Fotini Ladaki offers a sur­pris­ing read­ing of the paint­ing »make/​believe« that shows how Pope Bene­dict XVI. is ulti­mately a sub­ject with autonom­ous agency

make/believe | Oil on wood | 23 x 32 in | 2009
make/believe | Oil on wood | 23 x 32 in | 2009
»If ter­ror seems to be the basis for some of my pro­duc­tions, then I’d allege that this ter­ror does not come from Ger­many, but from the with­in the soul.« (Edgar Allan Poe, Tales, 1840)

Leipzig in 2009, Kala­izis painted ‘make/​believe’. It depicts Pope Bene­dict XVI who, with open arms as if in a wel­com­ing ges­ture, seems to be hur­ry­ing towards a guest. Behind the Pope stand car­din­als and oth­er rep­res­ent­at­ives of Cath­ol­ic power. On his right is a mem­ber of the Swiss Guard; on his left an angel with large wings dressed in a lounge suit point­ing to the floor


…is an angel in the shape of a male fig­ure with enorm­ous wings, dressed con­tem­por­ar­ily. He is point­ing to anoth­er, altern­at­ive path


The picture’s com­pos­i­tion is remin­is­cent of ‘The Ambas­sad­ors’ painted in 1533 by Hans Hol­bein the Young­er, in which rich mer­chants are depic­ted in their finery. Their clothes, jew­ellery and pre­cious objects demon­strate the power of wealth and prosper­ity – all apart from a con­cealed object on the floor: a shield. Only from a cer­tain angle can the skull on the shield be made out. This naked sym­bol from the many depic­tions of car­casses and ossuar­ies is a memento mori, a remind­er of tran­si­ence and death. Everything is tran­si­ent – and a shroud has no pock­ets. How­ever, this clear ref­er­ence is not present in Aris Kalaizis’s paint­ing. Instead, a com­pletely dif­fer­ent dis­course appears to be float­ing above it, and also a dif­fer­ent heav­en: the heav­en of the Vatican.

Hans Holbein t.Y. | The Ambassadors | 1533
Hans Holbein t.Y. | The Ambassadors | 1533

Did this paint­ing epi­phan­ic­ally or tele­path­ic­ally fore­tell some­thing destined to hap­pen four years later?


Four years after the pic­ture had been painted, Pope Bene­dict XVI resigned. True, a whole string of Popes had been forced to leave office due to infight­ing or power struggles at the Vat­ic­an, but only one had pre­vi­ously resigned in order to return to being a her­mit: Celestine V. Bene­dict XVI vis­ited Celestine’s tomb twice before announ­cing his decision.


…psy­cho­ana­lys­is and the Cath­ol­ic church are incompatible


Resign­ing for such pro­fane reas­ons as the infirm­ity of old age was unpre­ced­en­ted in pap­al his­tory. There are many regions in Italy where all traces of Bene­dict XVI have been wiped out. Per­haps one day he will even be deleted from the list of Popes out­right. After all, his decision cer­tainly put the cat among the pigeons of the Vatican’s dis­course and Cath­ol­ic suprem­acy with its can­on­ized phant­asms. A Pope is only sup­posed to leave the Chair of Saint Peter by his nat­ur­al or even some­times unnat­ur­al demise (there have cer­tainly been a few pois­on­ings over the cen­tur­ies), the decision lying solely with the Curia.


But Bene­dict XVI acted as only a psy­cho­ana­lyt­ic­al sub­ject can, accord­ing to Lacan. Of course, the word ‘sub­jug­a­tion’ res­on­ates in ‘sub­ject’. And the sub­ject of psy­cho­ana­lys­is is itself a sub­jug­ated sub­ject – the dif­fer­ence being that the laws of the uncon­scious are quite dif­fer­ent from those of the Vat­ic­an. The sub­ject of psy­cho­ana­lys­is is a speak­ing sub­ject (or, to use Lacan’s term, ‘par­lêtre’).


Because the uncon­scious is con­sti­tuted like lan­guage, we are only deal­ing with lan­guage. For this reas­on, psy­cho­ana­lys­is and the Cath­ol­ic Church are irre­con­cil­able. While psy­cho­ana­lys­is always speaks of God as the great oth­er, as it also does with regard to reli­gious edu­ca­tion, the Church would have loved to for­bid psy­cho­ana­lys­is alto­geth­er and excom­mu­nic­ated it.


Since the uncon­scious is con­sti­tuted like a lan­guage, we are only con­cerned with lan­guage here. For this reas­on, psy­cho­ana­lys­is and the Cath­ol­ic church are incom­pat­ible. While psy­cho­ana­lys­is is always talk­ing about God as the Great Oth­er and reli­gious edu­ca­tion, the church would have pre­ferred to not only ban psy­cho­ana­lys­is but also excom­mu­nic­ate it long ago. Lacan claimed (not without cause) that the wealthy and the Cath­ol­ics were impossible to ana­lyse. So what did Bene­dict, the blessed or rhet­or­ician, do? He acted. He clearly sep­ar­ated him­self from his office and erec­ted a bar­ri­er between it and his iden­tity. Lacan claimed not only that the beg­gar was mad when he thought he was a king, but also that the king him­self was mad when he thought he was a king. Sla­voj Žižek hit the nail on the head: 


the mas­ter-sig­ni­fi­er … is by defin­i­tion ‘empty’, and the ‘Mas­ter’ is the one who, by mere acci­dent, occu­pies this empty space. For that reas­on, a Mas­ter is ulti­mately – that is, con­stitutively – an impost­or: the con­stitutive illu­sion of the Mas­ter is that his being a Mas­ter res­ults from his inher­ent cha­risma, not from his acci­dent­al occu­pa­tion of a cer­tain place in the structure.

This sep­ar­a­tion between the sub­ject and the office is, how­ever, not acci­dent­al. It is pre­ceded by a true act – an act inscribed with a sense of urgency. Accord­ing to Lacan, the sub­ject per­forms a “pas­sage à l’acte”. Such acts include sui­cide – actu­al or attemp­ted. As Jacques Alain Miller put it


any true act in the Lacani­an sense of the word is said to be a ‘sui­cide of the sub­ject’, inver­ted com­mas indic­at­ing that the sub­ject is reborn. This is what defines the act: the sub­ject who comes after the act is not the same as the one before it. This jus­ti­fies the use of the term ‘muta­tion’ … that any true act, any act which is not only arous­al, emo­tion, motor­ic release, any true act, any act that leaves a mark, that counts, is an over­com­ing. … as seen from his­tory, there is no true act which does not con­tain an over­com­ing: an over­com­ing of what? Of a code, a law, a sym­bol­ic whole.…

A little later, he adds anoth­er import­ant point:


At the core of every act is a ‘no’ emer­ging in oppos­i­tion of the oth­er. And this actu­ally jus­ti­fies Lacan’s defin­i­tion that the act always takes the place of speech. Basic­ally, an act without a there­after is in itself an act.

Bene­dict dared to act like a speak­ing sub­ject. He assumed the status of the sub­ject in psy­cho­ana­lys­is and thus spir­ited away the mys­ti­cism of the church and the laws of the coun­cil. Accord­ing to Lacan, he thus took the place of the speak­ing subject. 


In Aris Kalaizis’s mys­ter­i­ous paint­ing, is Bene­dict XVI merely walk­ing towards the vis­it­ing appar­i­tion of his own act? Is he ulti­mately tri­umph­ing over his own act? For, accord­ing to Jacques Alain Miller, the act is always a pas­sage, because it has to do with the ‘pas­sage à l’act’. Bene­dict has to find the real way out in order to achieve ful­fil­ment. Does Kalaizis’s pic­ture visu­al­ize the mys­ter­i­ous pas­sage between the Swiss Guard – as the rep­res­ent­at­ive of a sys­tem of polit­ic­al sur­veil­lance – and the angel on the oth­er side, the sym­bol of the heav­enly order accord­ing to the Vat­ic­an? Is the artist employ­ing icon­o­graph­ic visu­al­iz­a­tion to show the pas­sage which Bene­dict must take in order to per­form the tri­umph of his own act? 


that's what actu­ally gives the act its rel­ev­ancy – that the sub­ject after is dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent from the one before


And there was light – again. And there was man­kind. For man­kind is defined by lan­guage and logos.
Bene­dict acted dif­fer­ently from Moses. He did not resign him­self to the powers of the Vat­ic­an in order to give cre­dence to the dis­course on God by way of mys­ti­cism. Is art per­form­ing a tele­path­ic act here? Freud did not con­sider tele­pathy part of psy­cho­ana­lys­is, since it does not come from the uncon­scious, and there­fore not from with­in; it always comes from without. But is there also a with­in inside the without?


Art, too, has a mor­al­ity, even though it may not always coin­cide with the mor­al­ity of the church. Did Aris Kalaizis’s paint­ing fore­shad­ow this unusu­al event? Did Kala­izis per­haps slip into the role of Bene­dict XVI partly in order to demon­strate true sov­er­eignty? Didn’t Velázquez achieve some­thing sim­il­ar in his pic­ture ‘Las Men­i­nas’? After all, he placed him­self in the fore­ground as the true sov­er­eign. Accord­ing to Velázquez, the artist – not the king – is the true sov­er­eign, for he cre­ates from the creare ex nihilo, just as God once did. Is that why James Joyce once put the artist in place of God?


Did Bene­dict XVI com­mit hubris as defined by the Cath­ol­ic church? Did his act call into ques­tion the mys­tic­al pos­i­tion of Vat­ic­an eth­ics? And in doing so, veri­fy Lacan’s state­ment that there is no oth­er than the Great Other?


We know what’s on earth and in heav­en – neither con­tains God – and the ques­tion is what we make appear there in the dis­junc­tions con­sti­tuted by our techniques.

Bene­dict sinned as a desir­ing sub­ject. But not accord­ing to Lacan, who main­tained in his sem­in­ar ‘The Eth­ics of Psy­cho­ana­lys­is’: “The laws of heav­en in ques­tion are the laws of desire.” And anoth­er pro­pos­i­tion of Lacan’s is also val­id in this con­text: his asser­tion that speak­ing sub­jects only betray them­selves if they do not fol­low their desires.

Detail "make/believe"
Detail "make/believe"

Does Kalaizis’s pic­ture visu­al­ize the mys­ter­i­ous pas­sage between the Swiss Guard – as the rep­res­ent­at­ive of a sys­tem of polit­ic­al sur­veil­lance – and the angel on the oth­er side, the sym­bol of the heav­enly order accord­ing to the Vat­ic­an? Is the artist employ­ing icon­o­graph­ic visu­al­iz­a­tion to show the pas­sage which Bene­dict must take in order to per­form the tri­umph of his own act? 
And there was light – again. And there was man­kind. For man­kind is defined by lan­guage and logos.


…Is art per­form­ing a tele­path­ic act here? Freud did not con­sider tele­pathy part of psy­cho­ana­lys­is, since it does not come from the unconscious


Bene­dict acted dif­fer­ently from Moses. He did not resign him­self to the powers of the Vat­ic­an in order to give cre­dence to the dis­course on God by way of mys­ti­cism. Is art per­form­ing a tele­path­ic act here? Freud did not con­sider tele­pathy part of psy­cho­ana­lys­is, since it does not come from the uncon­scious, and there­fore not from with­in; it always comes from without. But is there also a with­in inside the without?


Art, too, has a mor­al­ity, even though it may not always coin­cide with the mor­al­ity of the church. Did Aris Kalaizis’s paint­ing fore­shad­ow this unusu­al event? Did Kala­izis per­haps slip into the role of Bene­dict XVI partly in order to demon­strate true sov­er­eignty? Didn’t Velázquez achieve some­thing sim­il­ar in his pic­ture ‘Las Men­i­nas’? After all, he placed him­self in the fore­ground as the true sov­er­eign. Accord­ing to Velázquez, the artist – not the king – is the true sov­er­eign, for he cre­ates from the creare ex nihilo, just as God once did. Is that why James Joyce once put the artist in place of God?


Did Bene­dict XVI com­mit hubris as defined by the Cath­ol­ic church? Did his act call into ques­tion the mys­tic­al pos­i­tion of Vat­ic­an eth­ics? And in doing so, veri­fy Lacan’s state­ment that there is no oth­er than the Great Other?
We know what’s on earth and in heav­en – neither con­tains God – and the ques­tion is what we make appear there in the dis­junc­tions con­sti­tuted by our techniques. 


Bene­dict sinned as a desir­ing sub­ject. But not accord­ing to Lacan, who main­tained in his sem­in­ar ‘The Eth­ics of Psy­cho­ana­lys­is’: “The laws of heav­en in ques­tion are the laws of desire.” And anoth­er pro­pos­i­tion of Lacan’s is also val­id in this con­text: his asser­tion that speak­ing sub­jects only betray them­selves if they do not fol­low their desires.


Ref­er­ences:


J. Lacan: The Tri­umph of Reli­gion, Polity Press, Cambridge/​Malden, MA, 2013, p.36
Jacques Lacan: The Eth­ics of Psy­cho­ana­lys­is, Sem­in­ar VII, Quad­riga, 1996, p. 325
Jacques-Alain Miller: „Von einem ander­en Lacan“, Turia und Kant, 1994, pp. 102 – 105
Sla­voj Zizek (ed.): Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitch­cock), Verso, London/​New York, 1992, p. 236

Fotini Ladaki, photographed by Anna Papoulias (daughter of former Greek president Karolos Papoulias)
Fotini Ladaki, photographed by Anna Papoulias (daughter of former Greek president Karolos Papoulias)

Fotini Ladaki was born in north­ern Greece in 1952. A psy­cho­ana­lyst after Lacan and Freud, she works in her own prac­tice in Cologne. She is also a freel­ance writer. In addi­tion to sev­er­al essays on art and psy­cho­ana­lys­is, plays, stor­ies and poetry, she has also writ­ten ‘Mor­itz’ by Ger­hard Richter. About the hor­ror of see­ing the exper­i­ence of being. Her oth­er pub­lic­a­tions can be found on www.praxisfls.de.


©2017 Fotini Ladaki | Anna Popouli­as | Aris Kalaizis

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