Perverse America

Abstract

This chapter explores various examples of ``American Wisdom.{''} American wisdom is a fragmented structure of discourse which currently prevails within American society. On social media, printed on bubble gum wrappings, on the sleeves of coffee cups, and so on, there are symbolic inscriptions which are meant to retroactively alleviate the real trauma of subjective destitution. Lacanian clinicians have also noted that this is the discursive structure of addictions. Addiction is not only epidemic within America, but it is probably what is most American about America. Within America, the universal prohibition of the father has been replaced with the particular affirmative declarations of the maternal superegoic voice.