A blind spot of Civilization and its discontents : Science in the Age of Installation

Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the conceptual key to the Freudian diagnosis of Civilization and its discontents is unable to grasp the changing place and social functioning of science in culture. The reason for this is deemed to reside in his conception of science, supposedly the only form of discourse capable of guaranteeing a relationship neither illusory nor infantile with human weaknesses. Such a conception of science is incapable of apprehending how it can be assimilated by technique, as Heidegger puts it in his text The question concerning technology. As an example of this assimilation, I analyze the recent change in psychiatric epistemology and its assimilation by marketing techniques, as well as the subjective effects of these new ways to name suffering. In the conclusion, I discuss the critical impotence of the Freudian conception of science in face of such assimilation and the different meanings of truth at play.