Know and truth

Abstract

Sight-knowledge and blindness-ignorance are united at a certain point in Freud’s work and sustained by the Oedipal myth (Sophocles). The myth articulates real and unreal meanings. Freud, resorting to myth or primal phantasies, shows the subordination
of psychic reality to symbolism in his thought. The individual’s truth (of his desire, unconscious) always escapes or is swindled
in conscious speech -yet here error or uncertainty carry us closer to truth in the unconscious.
Knowledge-truth and individual are the elements present in the text in which Foucault refers to the Oedipus to think of the Power structures. I reflect on the text from the psychoanalytic perspective, highlighting the enriching contributions to psychoanalysis from the structural field together with the deficiencies or risks entailed -particularly in relation to the fading or disappearance of
the individual. Foucault sums power and knowledge in the figure of King Oedipus. From our reading, we construe the ego-functions of unknowing, the need for denial and the presence of a truth powerful insofar it articulates castration -while power itself
remains on the side of deceit. We underline the difference with Freud, who uses the myth as a psychoanalytic
resource, in attributing the circulation of desire to it. We may thus infer the oedipal structure where the subject’s individuality is
always at stake.