I intended to write about self-diagnosis and how, despite embracing subjectivity, we remain surprisingly rigid in our approach to mental health. But as I began, I realised we’re no longer in that era. Our post-pandemic moment feels less like millennial self-reinvention (think tote-bag activism, workplace revolution fantasies) and more like a 1930s newsreel – all looming crisis and fractured trust.
With no claim to political expertise, I turn instead to Lacanian discourse theory, which I also can’t really make any claim on. This is a highly simplified take, naturally prone to gaps, but it might help clarify how certain ideas gain weight. Since every era begins with ‘the word’, ours is surely ‘pandemic’, which I’ll use as an exemplification throughout.
The four discourses
In his later work, Lacan outlined four positions in language that structure discourse. Language, for Lacan, binds us into intersubjectivity – every word is addressed to another, shaping both speaker and listener. These discourses, which act as social scripts, are the Master, University, Hysteric and Analytic (though I’ll focus on the first three here).
The Master
Every society has its Masters: governments, cultural norms, institutions and family authorities. Masters project unwavering confidence, evident in slogans like Make America Great Again. This confidence, however, conceals the uncertainty that fuels it. If America were already great, there’d be no need to ‘make it great again’. These narratives emerge from a sense of loss, masking a fundamental lack of power.
Lacan draws on Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic: the Master’s authority exists only because the Slave recognises it. In this sense, the Slave’s knowledge sustains the Master’s power, not the other way around. Think back to the pandemic – world leaders declaring, we’ll beat this virus together! Even as cases soared and lockdowns dragged on, we clung to their certainty, even though part of us knew they didn’t know, but we enjoyed the illusion of stability all the same. AI discourse takes on a similar Master role: it will revolutionise everything! We embrace it with a knot in our stomach, desperate for something to make life easier, all the while knowing it won’t actually do that.
The University
The Master, being built on air, requires reinforcement. Enter the University discourse. This discourse justifies power through ‘objective’ knowledge, using institutions (media, corporations, even sometimes academia itself) to frame authority as fact. Consider how pop evolutionary psychology often upholds patriarchal norms as scientific truths. The issue isn’t knowledge itself, but the illusion of neutrality.
The Hysteric
When the Master and University discourses fail, the Hysteric emerges. While that term is loaded with problematic historical connotations – which require a great deal of emphasise here – Lacanian psychoanalysis tried to shift its meaning, away from irrationality and towards its rebellious potential. The Hysteric questions the Master’s claims, demanding: Why? Prove it!
Historically, revolutions have carried the spirit of the Hysteric, challenging authority and exposing contradictions. But the risk is that in dismantling one narrative, we often erect another in its place. The need for certainty can drive us to adopt new absolutes, even when rebelling against old ones.
For example, during Covid, anti-vaccine movements didn’t just reject mask mandates, they accused governments of corruption and Big Pharma of greed. Their scepticism exposed real issues: vaccine hoarding, corporate profiteering, inconsistent mask policies. Yet, in their rebellion, some replaced the institutional dogma with conspiracy theories (Covid is a hoax!), merely trading one illusion for another.
Why this matters
We’re entering an era of increasing division, much of it playing out online in discursive form. Recognising these patterns doesn’t predict the future, but a sense of it, an ability to see it, might help us face that anxiety it both provokes and comforts. In so doing, we might be better off making choices that can bear that uncertainty, rather than fleeing into discursive positions that minimise it.
Because if nothing else, uncertainty isn’t a bug in society, but its core feature. The pandemic didn’t break our systems – it revealed they were always broken. Covid revealed how easily we fall into familiar roles: obedient citizens, data-worshippers or angry rebels. But understanding these discourses allows us to rewrite the next act. In that way, ‘truth’ isn’t found solely in authority, expertise or rebellion: it’s in that horribly dirty and hard-work-loaded space in between them.
Written by Molly Fitz