I think that we (our contemporaries) have become far to invested in the idea that there is something hidden in or behind everything, which makes it other than what it is, something underhanded, dangerous, unconscious. Sometimes, attending to what is on the surface is preferable.

This seems to be especially the case in our interactions with other persons. Just listen to what people say, ask them questions about what they mean, try and understand what they’re actually to present. If we begin from the surface we can better grasp what isn’t, what’s missing.

This is actually much closer to the method of psychoanalysis—actually listening to the speech of the analysand, actually exploring the meanings that are presented in the things they say, the gaps and pauses and everything. It’s not about forcing some external thing to tidy it up.

The thing is that when we speak and in our conscious discourse, we use language and concepts which are freely circulating. But that’s because we’re trying to communicate something—often something about which we are uncertain and trying to find the language to communicate.

When we project hidden motives onto the surface of what people are saying, that’s something we ourselves are doing, not something that is present in the language of the other. They’re just trying to say something using the language and ideas that they have ready to hand.

The same goes for Marx—Marx’s critique of political economy is not based on the premise that Smith, Ricardo, etc. were trying to deceive anyone. Rather, he read them carefully in order to discover that which remained unthought in their discourse, which doesn’t mean it’s hidden.

This is also why I think Badiou is correct to call ‘love’ a truth procedure, because when we become genuinely intimate with a person (erotically or not), we have just enough certainty that we are safe to explore our thoughts and emotions, desires and fears without reproach.

Lovers and friends can actually ask one another the question ‘what are you afraid of?’ and participate together in a process of actually discovering what it is that we fear because it’s not as if we have some knowledge ahead of time of what our feelings are trying to say to us.