The “University” Symptom: The Capitalist Trap of a Relaxation of the University. For a Clinical Practice of the Discourse of the University

Humans have traded their ecological niche for a language habitat: language is both the means and what needs to be transmitted for the process of humanization to be sustainable. Lacan theorizes this habitat, defining it in terms of a social bond, and combining four modalities of discourse to hold the subjects together. The circle of these discourses presupposes their distinction, made possible through the advent of the Discourse of the Analyst. The situation is complexified by neoliberalism, which both benefits from science and accommodates a deterioration of the Discourse of the University (and of the University). Such is the university symptom, which is deleterious for science, for the social link, and for the subject himself. No grafting of knowledge will restore it, aside from the reiteration of an act analogous to the one by which Freud welcomed analytic knowledge. From this is drawn a concept of the teacher-analyst.