Supplement
Supplement==obscene supplement of the law==Here, however, it would be productive to introduce the distinction between the public symbolic Law and its obscene supplement: the notion of the obscene superego double-supplement of Power implies that there is no Power without violence. Power always has to rely on an obscene stain of violence, political space is never "pure" but always involves some kind of reliance on "pre-political" violence. Of course, the relationship between political power and pre-political violence is one of mutual implication: not only is violence the necessary supplement of power, (political) power itself is always-already at the roots of every apparently "non-political" relationship of violence. The accepted violence and direct relationship of subordination in the Army, Church, family and other "non-political" social forms is in itself the "reification" of a certain ethico-political struggle and decision - what a critical analysis should do is to discern the hidden political process that sustains all these "non-" or "pre-political" relationships. In human society, the political is the encompassing structuring principle, so that every neutralization of some partial content as "non-political" is a political gesture par excellence.
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
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