Essachess (Jan 2011)
The semiotics of the sacred
Abstract
What is called sacred is an identity, a practice or a social actor who escapes ordinary social practices. In the 18th century, Kant call transcendancy a non religious way of sublimying identities, independant from space and time. So, speaking about sacred and transcendancy is a way to define political matters by their contrary. It is why sacred is a reference for psychic sublimation in unconscious crises. It is why psychoanalysis allows us to understand these forms of sublimation. Sacred is questioned when political identities are contested, and it is why sacred is a more important reference in middle age times (christianism and cathedrals building) or, today (islamic or other religious references). On the contrary, secularism, which means separation between political powers and religious identities, is a major way of taking distance from sacred matters.
