Economics, talent of thinking

In the photo : a detail from the monumental Sicilian cart on which clearly visible is the quote from ‘The kiss’ (1859) by the painter Francesco Hayez – Milanese by adoption – whose art, proven and excellent, is also often referred to that unitary inspiration of the movements that constituted the Risorgimento until the advent of Garibaldi – present, by the way, in the room dedicated to the ‘Opera’ – and therefore dedicated to the liberation of Italy. This room is instead dedicated to ‘Sicily’, where the designer Domenico Dolce is originally from, with the master craftsmen at work in the proposed videos.

‘Dal cuore alle mani’, by Dolce & Gabbana[1] – Palazzo Reale, Milan.

If it were only a matter of wonder – rightly prompted by the magnificent displays of the exhibition – however, we would still be partial.

What precious artefacts gradually offer us - with the enviable humility of an almost forty-years-old Haute Couture workshop and which to this exhibition continues to attract long queues of visitors, often including foreign ones - is the description of a job which keeps professionally hidden its most laborious and painful part – ‘beloved’ is the correct word – for a result that, to be able to be offered to the client and the public, must first and foremost be personal and one’s own.

The subjects is about one’s liking for work – where no reductivity is allowed if an undoubtable success rewards its bearers, excellent stylists and entrepreneurs – as an absolutely individual path until you can meet your partner, and not instead as a fixation to an object in which one can never invest talent. Thinking here moves along multiple paths – as the unconscious correctly does when wants to communicate, overcoming the darkness of an aggressiveness which not belongs to that – and the high road is not always the most useful if it had to cut down forests and flatten hills : here are the well-marked and effective side streets, which then also say a lot about a woman who is desired and known, not unattainable.

The male position maintains a superiority over the female, despite the different environments of the exhibition, but it is only explained towards the end of the exhibition – and strongly recalls, even it is not mentioned, ‘The storm’ by the sixteenth-century painter Giorgione (1477 – 1510) in which the man defends the young mother – where on the throne is a small, precious trunk which depicts her head and smiling face, she is flanked by two knights behind which the renewal watches of an Art mosaic, maybe the Byzantine Christ and Pantocrator. The dazzling of enormous paintings, that repurposed tinkling of crystals and mirrors, the anguish of a devotion that does not reveal itself and those mighty traditions, powerful as pillars of ancient gods until the explosion of luxury, the superabundance of the ‘Opera’, from which even a furred and arrogant Attila[2] draws : all these mix and confuse sensations without losing that unshakable thread of one’s thinking, which however constitutes us only when – once established the place for the partner - we keep it.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – May 19, 2024

[1] ‘Dal cuore alle mani’ is ongoing until July 31st : in the exhibition, presented as Craftsman of Art, selected artefacts are displayed, Haute Couture clothes and accessories, from ‘Dolce & Gabbana Srl’, based in Milan and founded in 1985 by the Italian stylists Domenico Dolce e Stefano Gabbana. The atelier, and Haute Couture workshop, has been reconstructed at the center of the exhibition.

[2] Attila (395 a.C. – 453 a.C.), king of Huns.

“We note that ‘Inc’ (Unconscious) does not coincide with one’s removed; it remains correct to assert that everything removed is ‘inc’(unconscious), but not that every ‘Inc’ (Unconscious) is removed. Even a portion of one’s own ‘I’, a portion God knows how important, can be, and indeed is, ‘inc’(unconscious).”[1]

“… there’s no significant that is supported except in the reference to another significant : up to observe, extreme, that there is no existing language for which the question arises of its insufficiency to cover the field of meanings, given that an effect of its existence as a language is to respond to all its needs.”[2]

Memory of one’s experience cannot be surrogated by an offer of  classification, albeit significant it can be : but it is especially in the experience of satisfaction – thinking and affection of satisfaction and conclusion – that there is resistance[3] to that individual laboratory which is one’s own memory, whose one’s body is the representative, and that one’s brain can draw on, when corrected one’s renunciation and its fraud.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – May 1, 2024

[1] Cited from : ‘Coscienza e inconscio’ in ‘L’Io e l’Es’, S. Freud (1923) – OSF Vol. 9 Bollati Boringhieri, pp.480-481.

[2] Cited from : ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ Vol. I, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Giulio Einaudi Editore SpA (2002), p.492

[3] “Law is one’s thinking – thinking ‘on’ nature – that has been made memory on a memory already formed by the first experience of satisfaction through Another one. It is conscience outlawed, i.e. outside this law, not in compliance with the law, that opposes one’s memory, and such a conscience is all the more in opposition to the law-memory the more Power’s ambition becomes over one’s law-memory.” Cited from : ‘Inconscio. Precisazione’ in ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, by Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), p.166

“Jokingly I asked Hans if his horses happened to wear glasses, to which he responded negatively, then if his father wore glasses, to which he responded negatively again, against all evidence, and if, with black around the mouth, he didn’t mean the moustache : then I revealed to him that he was afraid of his dad, precisely because he loved his mom so much… After this consultation I received almost daily reports on the changes in the little patient’s condition… As it turned out, now the possibility of revealing his own unconscious productions, and of having his phobia expire had opened up to him.”[1]

“Oedipus is completely unusable, except for that crude reference to the character of obstacle, constituted by one’s mother towards the investment of an object as the cause of the desire… Yes, this recourse to Oedipus mith is truly formidable. It’s worth pausing for a moment.” [2]

The perception of reality triggers one's unconscious : not at all innate[3] and not yet collected, it remains silent, even conflicted, but it is already an assessment.

The perception itself of reality can be collected as a matter of fact, or instead suspended, slowed down, even inhibited : and all this, well before learning a verbal language.[4]

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – March 8, 2024

[1] ‘Il piccolo Hans’, by S. Freud (1908) / Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore - ‘Univ. Econom. Feltrinelli’ (2010) translation by M. Marcacci, pp.123-125

[2] ‘Al di là del complesso di Edipo’ – ‘Il padrone castrato’ in ‘Il seminario Libro XVII – Il rovescio della psicoanalisi 1969 - 1970’, by J. Lacan with J.A. Miller’ afterword / Bibliot. Einaudi (2001), p.120

[3] “Elsewhere I have already formulated the hypothesis that the real difference between a ‘inc’ representation (or thinking) and a ‘prec’ representation consists in the fact that the first one is produced in relation to some materials which remained unknown, while in the second one (‘prec’), a connection in addition with verbal representations occurs.” Cited from : ‘L’Io e l’Es’, by S. Freud (1923) in OSF Bollati Boringhieri - Vol 9, p.483

[4] “ ‘Father’ is the name of a legal law… of hereditary benefit : it establishes the Subject as beneficiary of all Others. The pair of terms Subject / Other, both Subjects as a matter of facts, is the legal concept of a legal inequality of places – not other real inequalitiy – as a condition of benefit. In this distiction, the beneficiary is a child by definition : ‘heir’ to the real of nature but a heir who is such by adoption… In other words : the law is posited, not presupposed… This is why it is a law ‘of’ nature : not because of the delirium by which such a law would be written in nature… but because of – a practical reason that is a legislative one indeed – an adoption of nature, starting from that privileged point of it which is man… The law of nature Freud encounters in its crisis… because permanently alive in the possibility of the so-called killing of the Father. Being excluded from the beginning that this is about killing a real person… it’s about killing the concept, that is the ‘thinkability’, in everyone’s thinking, of such universal legislation, that is of a killing-disauthorization of the subject’s thinking. Which is the very conceivableness of a law of satisfaction, or of benefit that, if it were and to be, it would and should be the law of the subject as a child, unequal in position with respect to every Other.” Cited from : ‘Cap. III ‘I sessi nella legge - 1. Padre come norma della legge di beneficio’ in ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, by Giacomo B. Contri - SIC Edizioni (1998), pp. 153-154

An excellent economist, Professor Mario Draghi seems to understand plumbing too. His presidency at the ECB (2011-2019) was characterized as a matter of fact by measures designed to encourage the marketability of European government bonds, and so their liquidity to move outside Europe : in this, proposing not a secondary role for the central banking body, traditionally responsible only for monetary policy, but with the realistic aim of an accredited presence of the currency, and of European Union itself, in the world.

“If some countries can use their fiscal space but others cannot, then the impact of all spending is lower, as none are able to achieve climate or military security.” [1]

Specifically it is about this accreditation  - let’s just say reliability – of all Countries, as well as individual economic entities and up to the citizens of the European Union themselves, where Mario Draghi spoke again after his lecture in U.S.A.[2] last July, with a recent intervention in ‘The Economist’ that was carefully listened to by the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in view of the next commitments, not only European but also of the individual member states, to the point of deciding to entrust Mario Draghi with an indicative, and therefore planning, synthesis as regard the maintaining of the competitiveness of the European Union in the world.

“If Europe were to federalise some of the investment spending needed for today’s shared goals, it could achieve a similar balance (to U.S.A. – editor’s note). Federal borrowing and spending would lead to greater efficiency and more fiscal space, as aggregate borrowing costs would be lower. National fiscal policies could then be more focused on reducing debt and building up buffers for bad times.”

We are interested in the fact that reliability of individual states in managing their public spending – involving their spending objectives and financing too - is becoming subject of a sanction that we can call a ‘reward’ if this can first and foremost be the credit obtainable by the European Central Bank, and in general with reference to a shared European economic policy.

“More automatic fiscal rules would become feasible, and member states could credibly fail. Such reforms would mean pooling more sovereignty, and would therefore require new forms of representation and centralised decision-making.”

If, as we know, the system of sanctions in a fiscal policy is highly indicative of the level of civilization of that state, or Federation of states, Draghi’s proposal opens up a novelty in the political landscape.

While the base of the European Union is expanding with new member States - and it is certainly good news – it could be infact a mistake from the past not recognizing the authority of that economic entity already engaged with innovative tools for growth, in a global socio-political environment where the ability to deal with new shocks can make a difference, with the opportunities and social costs that such shocks would entail.

It is maybe convenient then that the ‘reliability’ of a State, when recognized as a merit to be rewarded, includes this new political and economic ability, which on the other hand also needs new instruments to collect and analyze the data.

It is an ability that the individual in his or her health – psychic as well - already tests and applies.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 18, 2023

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[3].

[1] All the quotes here reported have been drawn from : ‘Mario Draghi on the path to fiscal union in the euro zone’, by Mario Draghi upon invitation of ‘The Economist’ - September 6th, 2023. This intervention follows the lecture held by Mario Draghi on July 11st, 2023 at Cambridge (Massachusetts, U.S.A.), as an ECB invited guest. 

[2] As an ECB invited guest at the 2023, 15th ‘Annual Feldstein Lecture’ (Cambridge/ Massachusetts, U.S.A.), professor Mario Draghi held on last July 11 the lecture entitled : ‘The next flight of the Bumblebee : The Path to Common Fiscal Policy in the Eurozone”. The ‘Annual Feldstein Lecture’ is organized in U.S.A. every year by NBER ‘National Bureau of Economic Research’, of which the economist Feldstein – careful EU observer - was president from 1978 to 2008.

[3] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at the ‘Politecnico’ in Turin he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’. He created the character ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the magazine ‘20 Minuti’ in Switzerland of which he also published two collections. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the Swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’.

“A special function is established to periodically explore external reality…, and that is the function of attention. This activity meets sensorial impressions rather than waiting for them to appear. An annotation system was probably established at the same time, whose task is to store the data of this periodic activity of consciousness : a part of what we call memory… An impartial pronouncement of the judging activity took over, whose task was to establish whether a given representation was true or false, that is whether it was in agreement with reality or not and that decided about it by resorting to comparison with the memory traces of reality… Thinking was probably originally unconscious.”[1]

 “Now, it is extraordinary that for as long as there have been economists no one, coincidentally, has observed… that wealth is the property of the rich… When it comes to wealth, why not start with the rich ?... The rich has a property. He, or she, buys, buys everything, well let’s say he, or she buys a lot. However… the rich doesn’t pay. We believe he or she pays, for accounting reasons concerning the transformation of the more-than-jouissance into surplus value. But first of all we know well that the rich adds regularly the surplus value to himself, or to herself. There is no circulation of the more-than-jouissance. And above all, there is one thing that the rich never pays – learning… Why, since he or she, becomes rich can buy everything without paying ? Because the rich has nothing to do with jouissance. But that is not what the rich repeats. The rich repeats his - or her - purchase… the rich buys back everything that comes his or her way.”[2]

The 'rich‘ by Jacques Lacan is not the master at all, as he or she has given up one's envy[3]  that characterizes failure, and can free himself - or he‘rself - from masochism, as a pathological submission to the binary of sadistic repetition : here, this involves the vocational forming a psychoanalyst.

But, how removing the fog of sublimation which discards one’s removed thinking, and so one's law – only individual – of ‘learning’ ?

The issue was formally open, as we know, and does not like repetition.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – November 30, 2023  

[1] ‘Precisazioni sui due principi dell’accadere psichico’, S. Freud (1911) in OSF Bollati Boringhieri (2012) Vol. 6, pages: 454- 456.

[2] ‘I seminario. Libro XVII - Il rovescio della psicoanalisi 1969-1970’, Testo stabilito da Jacques-Alain Miller – Edizione italiana a cura di Antonio Di Ciaccia, Giulio Einaudi editore Spa (2001) pages: 98- 99    

[3] “…what occurs as ‘psychic occurrence’, ‘psychisches Geschehen’,  in this second time… occurs because the parents, or whoever on their behalf, are there, in the child’s sensitive experience : who applies to them, as Others like every Other, the law already established in 1st. This second time hasn’t autonomy from the first one : ‘Oedipus’ is the law in crisis, as it became partially independent from 1st. Therefore, it has nothing to do with an archetype nor with a more or less elementary ‘kinship structure’… : here, as a cultured thinking, there is the dramatic individual development of the Subject’s competence in one’s law, and as a natural one there is the nature of one’s individual thinking.” Cited from : ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), pg. 189 in ‘2°. Secondo tempo. Costituzione giuridica del desiderio’.

“Obtained the solution described above, the mice’s delirium disappeared.”

(1909) S. Freud[1], ‘The Case of the mouse man’.

“If men arrive to think the symbolic order it is because they are caught up in their being. The illusion of having formed it with one’s conscience comes from the fact that it is on the way to a specific gaiety of an imaginary relationship with one’s fellow, that he, or she, could enter this order as a subject. However he, or she, could only make this entrance through the radical ‘défilé’ of the word, the same one of which we recognized a genetic moment in the child’s play, but that, in its complete form, is reproduced every time the subject turns to the Other as an absolute, that is the Other who can annul him or her, in the same way that the Other can come to terms with him or with her, making Himself or Herself an object to deceive him or her.”[2]

Success is ‘via’ work : here it is the indisputable talent of Freud in his diagnoses, because he acknowledges the success of that knowledge – a science actually – which he began to describe ‘unconscious’, as kept in shadow by a conscience which doesn’t  liquidate the issues, as insisting on dissembling, to no avail, the fierceness of every reactive formation.

To individual right, which is not unrelated – it is work competence, as a matter of facts – it ‘occurs’ that stops planning removal.[3]

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – October 7, 2023

[1]  This is a success thanks to the analytical work, as Freud himself confirmed.  The quote is taken from : ‘Sigmund Freud. Casi clinici 2’/ ‘L’uomo dei topi. Osservazioni su un caso di nevrosi ossessiva’ (1909) Bollati Boringhieri 2017, pag.111.

[2] ‘Il seminario su La lettera rubata’, pp.49-50 in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ Vol. I, translated and curated by Giacomo B. Contri (1974) – Giulio Einaudi editore Spa (1974 e 2002). Original title : ‘Écrits’, Jacques Lacan – Éditions du Seuil, Paris (1966).

[3] “Say that there is no human sexual istinct, that is a natural causality of the movement of one sex towards the other – it is the first thinking introduced by Freud with the ‘Oedipus complex’ – it is to say that human desire is constituted from the very beginning, precisely, humanly, that is for the humanization of the body (Menschwerdung), and exactly as constitution, which is a legal constitution : it is a question of law, ‘natural’ like thinking of a relationship that is constituted after a first time of this constitution, ‘via’ the observation of those Others of a Subject who are the parents, also  identified, in a second time, in their own sexes of Man and Woman,  and already in relationship with each other as  S and O.” Cited from : ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), p.185.