Zadig. A radically decentralised, flexible and interplanar organisation.

The UK can heave a sigh of relief now that Theresa May has been brought back down to earth on the question of her real worth – “strong and stable, my arse!” as artist Jeremy Deller so eloquently put it.

We can go back and pick up the threads of our lives while Parliament considers its options. I find the idea of a hung parliament very appealing right now, and not only because it gives time to stop and think. Simone Weil’s slim tome “On the Abolition of all Political Parties” is sitting on our kitchen table, the translators note alone is worth the price of the book! Listen: “Once in a blue moon, on strictly non-political issues, dealing purely with questions of ethics, members of Parliament are allowed to make a ‘conscience vote.’ A conscience vote – what an extraordinary notion! It should be a pleonasm: don’t we all assume that every vote – by definition – is being made by MPs who listen to their consciences, instead of following some diktat from a political party?” (translator: Simon Leys.)

The word ‘vote’ is etymologically linked to the word wish. It is not simply a voice, but a voice that has thought and desire behind it. Without thought and desire there can be no ethical position, no ethical action. It is the opposite of what you can expect from an automaton. It is a position in which one can respond to an event and invent some new solutions. Response-able. Responsible.

As you know, I am off to Paris today to be ready for a meeting tomorrow organised by Envers de Paris. And in July I am going to the PIPOL meeting in Brussels which is organised by the EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis. In London I belong to the London Society of the New Lacanian School. The NLS (itself, one of 7 schools that make up the World Association of Psychoanalysis) includes societies and groups in several different countries. The Lacanian community of psychoanalysts is made up of practitioners who are fixed to a spot (at least some of the time) and who also move around a lot. Psychoanalysis has even been described as the 7th continent – created through its ideas and language, and sustained through the movement of its members, travelling across geography to speak to each other in person. There is a wide network that operates across a several land masses, national borders, and languages. The network changes its form over time. It depends. And right now, as Jacques-Alain Miller put it when he spoke after the defeat of Marine Le Pen in the French Presidential elections (he was speaking in Madrid on 13 May): “we are in engaged in a long-term effort which demands a new vehicle, a radically decentralised, flexible and interplanar organisation, capable of perpetuating and extending the unprecedented alliances which have been knotted in the context of the Forums.”

 Miller proposes an Alpha Network, known familiarly as Zadig (recalling the novel of Voltaire). It would be a way to think without feet of clay but without leaving the planet either. “Zero Abjection Democratic International Group” [La Movida Zadig]. Patricia Bosquin-Caroz, the current President of PIPOL, has taken up Miller’s proposal and made this the theme for Sunday’s programme for the PIPOL meeting in July: “The rise of populism in Europe: what is the response of politicians, intellectuals and psychoanalysts?”.

“Practitioners in the analytic orientation, whether they are in private practice or in mental health institutions, are learning how to outfox the modern Master, to give him the slip, to find another way; off the beaten track.” (Patricia Bosquin-Caroz, translation by Raphael Montague)

This presents an especial challenge to those of us who work in the UK whose trajectory has been set to leave the EU. It is indeed a challenge. But today’s election result shifts the prospects once again. It is a challenge. We have to make sure we are up to it.