Mazarine Pingeot is a philosopher and novelist. She is the author of Living Without: A philosophy of lack.
In her latest work, she explains how the market economy has transformed lack into financial and moral value. The exponential use of the word "without", which consists of transforming absence into a supernumerary presence through linguistic sleight of hand, is remarkably intelligent. This transformation is a way of eradicating absence itself, this very distressing horizon for commercial society, embodied in decline. The system has a totalitarian claim to the extent that it does not only want to interfere in our purchasing actions, but in spheres that are supposed not to fall under this consumerist logic. The use of this terminology actually has to do with its etymology, which comes from "total." It is closely linked to the dialectic of the market, the objective of which is to fill the gap and transform everything that could be negative into positive. We find it on products certified "without added sugars", "without sulphites," etc. Malaise dans la langue française is a work edited by Sami Biasoni. It is about inclusive writing. Should we see this as another object of denial of lack? We are wrong to deprive ourselves of this “symbolicity” by thinking of language as a thing, the horizon of positivity, he says. We already tolerate lack only on the condition that it allows desire to be resuscitated, particularly consumerist desire. In reality, this lack hides another, more structural one: that of our condition, the one that pushes us to surpass ourselves through the creation, the quest, and the production of meaning, relationships. In short, everything that we could not do if everything was full. This is the first condition of man, which does not seek to transform the lack into something positive - this is the transhumanist promise, for example - but into something symbolic which doesn't evacuate the questioning. The instructions cannot be invented without being aware of the problem.