The authority as possibility of bonding between the foundation and the transmission

Abstract

This research proposes a dialogue between Sigmund Freud's and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and Hannah Arendt's thought through the concept of authority, taking into account the interconnection of this concept to the ideas of foundation and transmission. Initially, we define the difference of these authors' realm of analysis from the ideas of plurality of individuals in Arendt and the subject of the unconscious in psychoanalysis. Then, we describe the concept of authority in Arendt. According to the author, the first model of authority in the public sphere was proposed by the Romans, when they used an external source of authority in order to demand obedience from their subordinates, namely, the founding act of Roma city by their ancestries. This reference to an external element establishes a hierarchy, and the subordinates consent to the authority of the governors. In this way, authority is connected to the transmission of the tradition, and it is a way to preserve the past. However according to Arendt, this concept was modified during the American Revolution, when the Americans distinguished the power source, the people, from the authority source, the Constitution, referring to the product of his own act and no longer to their ancestry act in order to sustain the authority. When analyzing the foundation of this new political body, the author points out that the transmission of this novelty happens by authority, and it is an impasse for modern politics. Towards psychoanalysis, we approach the murder of primal father's myth and the Oedipus complex in order to point out the relation between the foundation of society and the transmission of law; showing that, like Arendt, psychoanalysts also understand that the authority comes from a disparity relationship, but, in turn, it uses the transference concept to comprehend authority at a metapsychological level. At this point, it is possible to recognize a divergence on the author's position related to the possibility of a clear separation between childhood and adulthood, which allows us to make a dialogue between the subject of the unconscious and the political individual. The research is going to be realized in a theoretical way through the reading and writing operations, as it is postulated by psychoanalysis; this means that we are going to take into account the signifier dimension of the texts which implies going back to the letter of the authors in order to produce articulations that add something to the meanings consecrated by their commentators.