La société toxique : sommes-nous tous empoisonnés ? //Humanités avec Clotilde Leguil

And we’re off. Développé. s, the podcast of inquests into fixed ideas.

Today's programme is hosted by Olivier Jacquemond, doctor of political philosophy. I’m pleased to be joined by another doctor of political philosophy, Clotilde Leguil. -Of philosophy.

-What did I say? -Political philosophy. -I added political.

Simply of philosophy. A thesis on Lacan and Sartre. -That’s right.

-Sorry about the introduction. So you are a doctor of philosophy, but also a psychoanalyst. Exactly.

You’re a member of the Cause freudienne, the very Lacanian Cause freudienne. Is that right? You’re also a lecturer in psychoanalysis at Paris 8 University.

Yes. You are a writer. You’ve written a book which we’ve already presented in this programme, which is: “I” Crossing of Identities.

Yes, A Crossing of Identities. A Crossing of Identities, to use the exact words. There was a work that came in between before this book here was published, which we will talk about today, The Toxic Era, in 2023.

What came in between, was: Giving in is not consent. Giving in is not consent, yes. It was my essay on the issue of consent and The Toxic Era is kind of the next part.

I imagine they run on from each other, even with the issue of “I”, and there is a logical connection between these excellent works. And I’ve seen that recently, you are also a producer of a programme on France Inter, co-producer, there are other associated producers, on a programme about the subconscious. -Yes.

-You work quite well in cinema too. Well, this is a podcast that you can listen to on the France Inter platform called Subconscious which is then on the air on Sundays. Have I left anything out?

I could also maybe say that I practise psychoanalysis and that indeed, the books and essays that I write are also based on my experience of psychoanalysis, both on my own experience, what I’ve been able to do personally, and on my clinical experience too. Precisely, talking as a clinician, it’s maybe in the surgery where you have heard the word toxic for the first time when talking with your patients. In any case, it’s a term that comes up quite regularly: toxic relationship, toxic boss, toxic love.

Initially, you say, in the work anyway, that there was almost a caution reflex regarding the appearance of a new concept. It was not a concept yet. What do we do with it?

Is it useful? Is it useful in your practice? Yes, it’s true that at the start, this term toxic wasn’t part of my own language.

I didn’t use it. Like everyone else, I had noticed its use was more widespread, almost becoming viral, because it was heard more and more when talking about different kinds of relationships. But what struck me, is actually to also hear it from patients, I noticed that through this term, they could name something existentially difficult, something awkward.

And above all, I’d say that the starting point for me, as a philosopher and psychoanalyst, when you’re a philosopher and when you’re a psychoanalyst too, you’re interested in words. The starting point for me was noticing that this term toxic, which was being used more and more at the time, had also changed in meaning. In other words, it was seen to have a new usage, a metaphoric usage that hadn’t existed in the 20th century.

And I think that this was really the starting point for my work. The wish to interpret this metaphor, because what struck me, is that this term toxic, in the 21st century, is no longer only referred to in the field of ecology or in the field of toxicology, but it’s referred to in the field in relation to the other one to be part of something to do with poisoning, unease, anxiety. And that was my starting point, ultimately, ask myself both what had happened to us in civilization for the term toxic to be imported to discuss the relationship with the other one and also, ultimately, what it could end up meaning in a more intimate way in the experience of the subject.

We’ve changed dramatically, if we go back to the early 20th century, a use which is “toxic substances”, to talk about drugs, to “self-toxic”, which is not quite the same. And we’re under the impression that toxic, the toxic moment that you refer to, also indicates an addictological society, a society of too much, too full, of overconsumption, of overproduction. Is that right?

Yes, I think it can be approached in that way. It’s important to emphasize what you’ve just pointed out yourself, that is this shift from plural to singular. In other words the term toxic, which at first referred to a variety of substances, toxic substances, now indicates a singular substance, which is a substance in a metaphorical sense, but which at the same time, we can try to define, because it’s rather puzzling, knowing what this substance is that interfered in human beings, that became part of our speech and our body.

What is this substance and how can it be interpreted? So, indeed, first of all, I wanted to show that if the term toxic had become so widespread, it’s also maybe because we were at a certain point of excess, with too much, of asphyxiation, suffocation. So many terms, ultimately, that the meaning of toxic refers to.

So finally, what I asked myself, was: what do we mean when we say: “It’s toxic". When we say a romantic relationship, when we say a social bond, when we say an experience at work, is toxic. What are we trying to say?

I don’t think we ourselves know what we really mean. That’s what I found interesting. This is where there is a possible interpretation.

We don’t really know what we mean, but in any case, we’re trying to name a form of unease, a form of anxiety in relation to an experience that exposes us to an excess, to hubris, to outrageousness, whether this is an excess, to use a psychoanalytic term, an excess of youth or an excess of effort too, or a kind of experience that’s, let’s say, forcing. That’s the term I wanted to introduce. And ultimately, with “It’s toxic”, at least, what we can say to begin with, is that we mean there is an excess.

And so, the question is knowing what there’s an excess of. In the field of work, we could say it’s a kind of pressure that can lead to burn-out and which means that a subject can say at some point that what’s happening to them at work, in their professional environment, is toxic. In the field of romantic relationships, there may be something similar to a kind of feeling of poisoning, of control, which is also similar to a destructive relationship, but which, at the same time, is a relationship in which we feel some kind of enjoyment but which we can’t get out of.

So, you’ve mentioned the term addiction. I think it’s also a good term to shed light on a new mode regarding the body, enjoyment, the other thing in our civilization. Yes, because one of the turning points of the work and which is perhaps the most difficult for neophytes to understand, is: if we’re prisoner of a toxic relationship, we’re the victim of a toxic relationship, but it’s also an enjoyable place.

Yes, it’s difficult to understand. And you’ve pointed out that in my book, I didn’t once write, except maybe for a story by Musil which I mention, but I didn’t write the term victim. This means that I definitely didn’t approach toxic from a psychological or behavioural perspective which would imply that there was an “other” toxic from one perspective, a toxic personality and so a victim of a toxic personality.

In fact, it’s true that from a psychoanalysis point of view, things aren’t dealt with in that way. Things are dealt with based on the subject’s experience. So, we’re interested in what happens to us as the subject.

So, we discuss what’s puzzling about what happens to us. And so, personally, what I questioned instead, is this toxic experience for the subject themselves, in other words in what way the subject can also try to get themselves out, but while attempting to decipher what’s happening to them and not just blaming the other thing for what happens. For the subject, it seems, and you also say this, something happens to them, a kind of blurring of standards, a blurring of the matter of desire.

They don’t know anymore and they get lost. In reality they don’t know where they are in this story. I thought when reading that, about the recent testimony, the one by Godrèche, where we see the series that has come out and we feel that there is work being done with a blurring of lines, and which looks for meaning inside this grey area.

That's right, indeed, perhaps the second term that we could also introduce, is the term control, because this is a term that has also been used to describe some kinds of romantic experiences or some type of obedience, submission, and equally, undoubtedly an addiction all the same, which occurs and causes the subject to have an experience that they themselves are unable to get out of. So personally, what I was interested in, if you like, is to question toxic in relation to the matter of consent. Because I think the toxic experience is interesting from this point of view in which we’re unable to say for definite if consent has or hasn’t been given for an experience.

It’s an experience which is almost lacking consent. An experience in which we get carried away, even diverted, we are led by what’s happened to us without really wanting it, but at the same time, taking part in it anyway. I think this is important to note.

I feel this is a point that psychoanalysts can make clearer, we take part. Nevertheless, afterwards, they come back to us with something like: “it was controlling, it was toxic". In other words deep down, the dimension of consent and of desire is ultimately abused by this experience.

There’s another case, because of course we think about romantic relationships that are controlling, but there’s another literary case that you quote. You take Musil and the student Törless to describe this situation of being led, actually a situation that today we would call school bullying with a participating witness. And the matter of being led, which is interesting because you take it to the point where you say: Sometimes, we are led by saying, it will happen.

It will happen to the other person too, the desire for humiliation. And yet, being led, is abdicating for yourself, but it’s also abolishing the notion of borders. That’s right, that’s absolutely right.

It’s true that today, matters of bullying are also at the heart of civilization and at the heart of difficulties that can be seen at schools, educational institutions, universities. And social media of course helps to intensify this possible dimension of a bullying kind of relationship with the facts of mass psychology which Freud had already described well, which makes something seem limitless, there is a kind of bullying action which seems to be unstoppable, nothing will stop it. So, in this story by Musil, a story from 1906, which is not very well-known, but it is very contemporary in terms of what it describes, it’s about the disarray of a student at a military boarding school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, far from Vienna.

The disarray that this student felt when he was taken, actually led by others using a bullying method by another student who is the scapegoat among his comrades. Musil really lets us get absorbed in this experience in which, at the start, he lets himself be carried away. He himself is not the one who initiates the bullying, but he will be almost hypnotized by the discourse of the class leaders, who will be almost poisoned.

And Musil really describes the discourse of two boys who are involved in this bullying as discourse that will be absorbed in the flesh of Törless and which will almost start flowing in his veins, makes him feel a kind of enjoyment and above all make him lose his bearings, his bearings about morals, about ethics, about what’s needed, about what’s not needed, about what he himself desires. I think Musil really describes than in a very, very prophetic way also today in relation to these issues of bullying which at some point have to do with a cycle which is put in place and which may ultimately go very far in, let’s say, a kind of bad enjoyment if nobody, no words or no authority comes to put a stop to it at some point. So it’s true that in this respect, I think Musil’s story is really very valuable for us as well to ask ourselves about our moment.

Essentially, what he again describes, now this takes place in 1906, again he describes something like the toxic effects of discourse that can end up encouraging you to force the ethical limits within yourself, in some way. Volker Schlöndorff, the Franco-German director who adapted The Confusions of Young Törless into a film in the 1980s, produced a really interesting interpretation of this story by Musil showing that ultimately, what was happening here to these young boys completely prefigured the effect that Nazi discourse would have. I think it’s really interesting as an interpretation because we also see, for example, with an author like Victor Klemperer, who lived under Nazi rule and who, as well as being able to write his diary in secret, was a philologist and he was able to describe the transformations of the language of the Third Reich, transformations that lead to attempts at forcing something like subjectivities themselves.

He actually describes the way in which words can sometimes be like doses of arsenic that end up poisoning you so much that you start using them and you no longer know very well yourself what you think, what you want, but it’s as though you’ve finally been hypnotized by a discourse that becomes your own. It’s true that Nazism, ultimately, demonstrated the possibility of real poisoning on the scale of civilization by a discourse that forces the limits of ethics. Yes, and all things considered, of course, when you talk about burn-out and the managerial situation, about the managerial discourse which, through self-evaluation or other means, will get into the bodies of employees and they’ll have this kind of discourse inside and hanging over them, telling them: “You’re not doing enough, you need to perform better, you need to be more successful, you need to do more.

" This is forcing of the body and of the living body. -That’s right. -Really the essence of being.

That’s right. And that’s why this term toxic is actually used a lot to denounce certain kinds of management. We talk about toxic management and I’d say that it shouldn’t, ultimately, be taken lightly, it’s not just a fad.

Of course, we could say it quickly at a first, superficial glimpse, but essentially, if it’s imposed in this way and in these different fields, it’s also because firstly, the matter of living is a primary matter that concerns us today and which gives rise to ethical questions asked in this new time, time of the living, as said by philosopher Frédéric Worms. And in the field of work, it’s true that the management techniques which, ultimately, force a kind of positivity which makes subjects have to stick to rules, which actually don’t necessarily tie in with the meaning of their work, this kind of discourse ends up having a toxic effect, not only because in some way they force the possibility to even feel satisfied at work, but also because they end up making it impossible to keep working. In other words it backfires.

For instance, if working implies being submitted to a kind of superego that means we never have to be satisfied with what we do, always having to evaluate ourselves, criticise ourselves, to in some way put ourselves on trial and continuously set goals that would always be different from those we’ve already achieved. In this kind of discourse, we’re not in a position where we want to work. We’re caught up in a cycle where ultimately, after a while, we no longer know ourselves what we answer to.

We no longer know what the meaning is, what the work we do is. And even if we want to work, there is a moment when something living starts to be forced in such a way that it stops. We’re also under the impression that this is the viral effect that you mentioned at the start.

It gets into the most private cells of human beings, the place where they’re most vulnerable. And that’s also the specific nature of toxic, we’re in a moment when, with the development of a new sensitivity which is private sensitivity, and so perhaps new criteria for pain and perception of pain. Yes, it means that this term toxic, if we take an interest based on the subject’s experience, which is what I suggest, we can therefore ask ourselves what subject it refers to.

So, how can we define this subject that may have a toxic experience? Because here, this is not just poisoning in an organic sense. This is poisoning in a psychological sense.

But if we say toxic, it means our body is also at stake. So anyway this is where I’ll introduce a reference to psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who rightly defined something as a new version of the subject, which is not only the subject of thought, which is not only the subject of speech, which is not only the Cartesian subject, which is not only the Kantian subject, but which is a subject that in some way takes root in a relationship with the body, which begins on the body, says Lacan, and he defines it as a subject of enjoyment. And this subject of enjoyment, it’s precisely to do with the fact that we are also living beings, we are talking beings, but we are also living beings.

And language affects us, language has an effect on our body. Words can poison us in the same way that they can also produce a stimulating effect on us which is extremely revitalizing. But of course, with this idea on the subject of enjoyment, Lacan encourages us to think, let’s say, about a new subject which is also related to what is felt in terms of language in the body.

I think that what Lacan called the subject of enjoyment in the '60s and '70s today allows us to shed light on what happens to us with our toxic moment. In this case, should we compare the subject of enjoyment with the subject of desire, or should we not make a comparison? We could distinguish between them perhaps, rather than compare them.

But indeed, with desire, there is also enjoyment. There is no desire without enjoyment, of course. But Lacan certainly made a distinction which I think can help us unravel the complexity of these experiences of forced consent, of these experiences where the subject is led without really knowing what they want, the complexity of these toxic experiences.

And ultimately, it’s a distinction between what falls under desire, in other words enjoyment that will tie in with desire, not only desire in a sexual way, but desire in a Spinozist sense too, insofar as desire is what makes us be, it’s what makes us keep going. So on the one hand there is this dimension of desire that Lacan considers an ontological dimension, the desire that makes us be, and on the other hand, the dimension that only concerns enjoyment, but in terms of mortifying enjoyment, in the sense of destructive enjoyment, which is what Freud called death drive. In the end, in each of us, at the same time there’s a place for desire, provided that we make sure we’re prepared, as Lacan says, to pay the price for access to desire.

But each of us is also faced with a certain destructive dimension, because enjoyment goes through this destructive dimension too. Anyway, here we can pay tribute to Freud for having known how to describe what he called Beyond the Pleasure Principle in an article in 1921. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which is an essay by Freud on the fact that we are kind of disturbed in our relationship with pleasure, us human beings, in our relationship with pleasure, which is to do with drive and which means that pleasure doesn’t lead to harmony, to a kind of homeostasis, but quite the opposite, pleasure always leads us to search beyond, to forcing so that we feel even more.

This is what Lacan also called called surplus-enjoyment. This may seem far from what happens to us, but I think when we talk about addiction, ultimately, whether it’s an addiction to another thing or an addiction to work, we also refer to this dimension of enjoyment, but which leads us to a form beyond which can go back to destructive mode. Absolutely, that’s what we also find in practices like binge-watching, we always want more, we want more series, more episodes, we want to have more feelings.

There’s also vision, the scopic drive that was mobilised in this society for instant gratification, because that’s what social media works really well on. Sorry, I’ll get back on track, would one of the ways to manage not just be speech? Resuming speech and talking about desire.

That’s right, yes, indeed. In any case, this is what’s shown by psychoanalysis. That all things considered, speech is also what allows us to detoxify what may have poisoned us.

What may have poisoned us is also the order of speech, this is what is extraordinary, we have each been affected by discourse, by speech which may have had an impact on us and ultimately led us to also identify ourselves in a certain way and to suffer from this. And we may have also been hypnotized by discourse. After all, we can read over the experience of analysis as an experience of speech.

Yes, of course, that’s how it was defined by Freud, by Lacan, but we can also reread it as an experience of speech which detoxifies us, in other words pharmakon speech, remedy speech in relation to speech which has been poison. But I’d say that nowadays, of course there is psychoanalysis with the importance this attaches to speech. But psychoanalysis is not the only thing.

For some people, there will be creation. For some people, there will be love, friendship. But essentially, in any case, what appears, is that when we’re at a point where we need to breathe in relation to an ordeal of a kind of asphyxiation.

And this asphyxiation can be interpreted as a sort of excess of enjoyment, too much drive acceleration, too much drive intensification. And the response to that, we see that there’s a call for that too, it’s also an aspiration, actually being able to kind of clear your mind, make space for less, make space for emptiness to be able to find a connection with desire. I think that’s rounded things off perfectly because the first question called for this very response, almost, to this call for emptiness and to listening too, and to opening up.

That’s right, absolutely, opening up to others. Clotilde, to finish up, there’s an exercise we usually do, which is to give you this blank space and see what word could echo this interview, this exchange or continue it. That’s a good word.

. . Antidote.

Could you explain it? Of course, essentially, we’re looking for the antidote that could ultimately get us out of these so-called toxic experiences, these so-called controlling experiences and the antidote is to do with logos, with speech and with desire. Great.

Clotilde Leguil, thank you very much for coming. Thank you. So that’s it over.

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