Abstract

Regarding scientific development, psychoanalysis has been compared to the Copernican and Darwinian revolution. Freud has added his name to the well-established comparison of Copernicus and Darwin by introducing his notion of three blows to man’s narcissism, defining his discovery of psychoanalysis as the most dangerous last blow. The presentation examines the possible continuation of the series of the biggest scientific revolution in Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Žižek. Derrida has added to Copernicus, Darwin and Freud the name of Karl Marx as the fourth, disrupting one, defining his blow ‘in the name of the revolution’ as a much worse one, putting us today as Marx’s heirs in the position of debt and mourning. Derrida used the Freudian reading of Marx’s blow concerning the horrors of the October revolution, Stalinism, holocaust etc., while Slavoj Žižek – also relating Freud to Marx – examined the succession of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud by ‘many others’. The presentation focuses on Žižek’s idea of these ‘many others’, putting it in the context of Lacan’s return to Freud and prolonging it regarding the feminist revolution. The conclusion is made that Žižek’s elaboration of Lacan’s return of Freud, without and beyond the Lacanian feminist-psychoanalytic insistence on the centrality of sexual difference, can be understood as Žižek’s unfinished Copernican revolution.