From "Lebesborn" to cloning: An irreversible effect on the structure

PEUSNER Irma C. W.

In its ethics the psycho-analytical position implies tuning up the relation of the subject to desire. Any devices that favor a policy of suppression of subjectivity lead us to meet with our Ethics. It is in the Era of the Freudian discovery of the unconscious that the "Shoah", this most radical ravaging of the subjectivity, occurred. An experiment that does not cease to question the foundations and the, until then unsuspected, limits of the "parlêtre"structure. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate some of the aspects of the Nazi phenomenon and its possible effects on today's Clinic and Science.

Two Argentine psychoanalysts, Juan Carlos Cosaka and Perla Sneh, set an interesting hypothesis: "The Grammar of Nazism consists in the extermination of discourse, in a radical cancellation of the unconscious" (1). The performers of the "final solution", a euphemism that means univocally "the extermination of the Jews", exerted their power through the manipulation of language. They were very meticulous on this issue in order to carry out and to hide their crime. The "sprachregelung" was their technique, that is, also univocally, "the use of language to meet the goals of the regime"(2). "The sign in itself is sufficient for that someone to seize language as if it were a simple instrument" (3). An instrument to serve the regime. A "holophrase" language that cannot be interrogated; imposed from a position of unquestionable power. A language within which by Führer's commands the logic of the signifier does not apply. It is built upon a set of equivalent signs that neither generate metaphore nor slide metonymy. They crush language's polysemy. There is no subject of the (enunciation) statement; only imperative statements that are fulfilled without any possible interrogation. No interval through which desire could filter even though numerous evidences reveal its unwavering insistence. A series of linguistic techniques that estrange the subject from his act were part of the "spracheregelung". They used euphemisms and terms imported from Clinical Bacteriology in order to designate their victims.As far as the subjects chosen for extermination were called "infectious agents", they had to be exterminated because they contaminated racial purity. The criteria for these selections were biological, based upon supposedly "scientific grounds". But what kind of science is it about ? There is no question as Science proceeds. Racism appear as an answer supported on "a priori" grounds, an unquestionable truth "of the blood". Racial theories disclaim the subject of the signifier and replace it for a supposed blood genealogy that science, as scientific discourse, does not sustain either. As Lacan states, the scientific discourse almost has "the same structure as the hysterical discourse; at least, it takes its impulses from it" (4,5). This discourse is emitted , it is organized and set forth from the subject divided by language. It has the structure of a question and therefore the answer is not known "a priori". Scientific knowledge, as well as the knowledge of the unconscious, is also a product of the discourse that, in the site of the truth, always keeps a remainder that shoots new questions.

On the contrary, "a minor thing swirls and your Master discourse displays all that is changeable into a capitalistic discourse"(6). Here a signifier does not represent a subject for another signifier; it presents itself as a Master significant unchained in the place of the Truth . The mating of this capitalistic discourse with science results in the birth of the so-called "technosciences", disciplines whose ideal is to exhaust the real without remainder. A direct result of this techno-scientific method is today's system of numeric classification of mental diseases, the DSM IV, a code that is technologically and not scientifically supported.

Let's now remember that for Nazism the "scientific" basis for racial difference is a certainty that does not admit any questioning; this concept starts a particular form of using science coupled with the capitalistic discourse. It was this device that made the extermination machinery feasible. It was a matter of purifying the race; on the one hand, inferior races, like Jews and Gypsies, had to be exterminated; on the other hand, the reverse , a superior Arian race had to be promoted. The latter is the reason for designing "Lebensborn", a term that means "Life Source". A figure of the fatal continuity of the real of life (see ref.7). The aim of this experiment was social control of human breeding in order to improve the germinal plasma of the race. For this, "racially pure" men and women were selected to secretly reproduce and then hand over their children to the SS who would be in charge of their education (2). It was an early and an unsuccessful attempt at cloning because the technique for avoiding sexual reproduction had not been designed yet. In its widest meaning, biological sexuality consists of mixture, exchange of genes, and the production of unexpected differences with respect to their progenitors (7). This real of the difference reappeared again and again in these children who were born distinct from expectation due to their parents "pedigree". The "different ones" were "discarded" and sometimes sent to die like Jews and Gypsies at the extermination camps (2).

In the year 2000, after analyzing the rough draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, scientists have come to the conclusion that only one race exists, the human race. From the point of view of the genes the definition of race has no biological meaning :"race is not a scientific concept". Up to here the latest news on the "scientific" bases of racial theories.

Some of the Nazi doctors that had experimented with human beings were put on trial at Nuremberg. Since then a legal limit has been put on human experimentation according to a Code that rules over this practice. In these days of cloning we should remember one of the doctors who escaped trials and had a particular inclination for experimenting with twins (Human Clones that are produced spontaneously).

Human experimentation was not prohibited but legalized. One of the clauses in the Code states that there must be "an informed consent" on the part of those who submit to the research. Recently, experimentation with human embryo cells that may be cloned for organ transplant purposes was authorized. "Discarded embryos" from "In Vitro fertilization" technique will be used (8). For the time being it is only a matter of cloning cells. However, it is disquieting that something there could become untied and that the frozen "embryos" were used for something else. In order to be true to the news, I am obliged to say "embryos". What we find suppressed there is the involvement of a couple who desired a child and, for this reason, they underwent an Infertility treatment.

The subjective ravaging perpetrated by the Nazis does not cease to question us. It is our ethical standpoint to attempt to read on its effects in today's clinic and to hear the subject of desire, specially there where it tries to be suppress

Irma C.W. Peusner

8) Nature 406, 815 News, August 24, 2000. Macmillan Publishers, England.

This work is also related to the research cartel :" Shoah: Structure and Memory".

Translated from spanish by Osvaldo Peusner.