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4 L. & Critique 3 (1993)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq4 and id is 1 raw text is: Law and Critique Vol.IV no.1 [1993] CRIME AS A MODE OF SUBJECTIVIZATION: LACAN AND THE LAW by RENATA SALECL* In Totem and Taboo, Freud demonstrates how the universal law has its roots in crime and how, with the prohibition of two crimes, incest and parricide, both social and moral rules are founded in the individual. But what is the distinction between the moral law which governs the individual in his inner self and the legal norms which govern an individual in the outer world? The fact is that al- though this inner law is ambivalent, the external law does not al- ways function as a restriction on our inner morality. On the con- trary, it could function either to alleviate an unbearable tension caused by the subject's inner law or as a purely instrumental regu- lator, whose presence the subject does not perceive as an obstacle. In this paper, I will try to demonstrate how murder bears upon this question of the two laws and how the act of murder is not only a violation of the law but can also be a demand of the subject to be sub- jected to law. Psychoanalysis and crime Criminology usually explains a criminal act either by locating the instigating cause in external factors (such as poverty, family disfunctions, peer pressure, etc.) or in psychological factors (such as addiction, aggression, manic-depression, or other psychiatric per- sonality disorders). Significantly, such an explanation tends to de- humanize the criminal: the criminal is perceived as an irresponsible entity caught in the interplay of either social or unconscious psychic mechanisms, or both. In this scientific approach to crime, as well as in the legal treatment of the criminal, the offender is not perceived * Department of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

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