Citation: Checketts, Levi. 2023. The Poor as Symptom: A Lacanian Reading of the Option for the Poor. Religions 14: 639. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel14050639 Academic Editors: Peter Admirand and Thia Cooper Received: 13 April 2023 Revised: 4 May 2023 Accepted: 6 May 2023 Published: 10 May 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article The Poor as Symptom: A Lacanian Reading of the Option for the Poor Levi Checketts Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China; checketts@hkbu.edu.hk Abstract: Latin American liberation theology contributed perhaps the most significant theological contribution of the twentieth century in the “preferential option for the poor”. This insight has been an uneasy call to conscience for the magisterial Catholic Church, which has often buttressed the positions of the powerful. However, despite the central significance of this discovery, liberation theologians themselves often betray their own positions by romanticizing the poor, speaking on their behalf, diluting the meaning of poor and other such seeming shortcomings. This article argues that the incongruence regnant in discussions of the preferential option can best be understood through the Lacanian notion of a “symptom”. As “woman is the symptom of man”, the poor are the symptom of the upper classes. In order for nonpoor to understand their own socioeconomic position—including academically trained clergy—they must posit the poor as an Other against whom they understand themselves. As such, reaching “the poor” is an impossibility for anyone who is in a position to truly advocate for them. However, the insight of the preferential option tells us that the impossibility should be pursued nonetheless, with full understanding that it is an impossibility. Keywords: Jacques Lacan; option for the poor; liberation theology; Emmanuel Levinas; ideology 1. Introduction The “preferential option for the poor” has enjoyed being the center of focus in Latin American Catholic liberation theology (hereafter referred to simply as “liberation theol- ogy”) since it was coined in documents leading up to the Second Latin American Episcopal Conference in Medellin, Colombia. Although liberation theology has remained a contro- versial mode of theology within mainstream Catholicism, this central tenet was formally adopted into magisterial teaching in Pope John Paul II’s social encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis in 1987 (John Paul II 1987). While Pope Francis has expressed some criticism of what he considers liberation theology’s excesses, some have argued that his papacy has “reconciled” liberation theology with the Vatican (Løland 2021). It is tempting to say that the mainstream tolerance of liberation theology, as well as its expansion beyond merely the “poor” to include various other marginalized groups (e.g., in various other branches of liberation theology such as black liberation theology, Mujerista theology, Minjung theology and so forth), shows the unquestionable significance of this tradition. However, two challenges remain open. The first is the challenge ushered by more conservative strands of theology. The passing of fifty-five years, the end of the Cold War and the ravages of global capitalism have not been enough to soften the visceral reaction of some against any perceived creep in of Marxist ideology or methodology. This is a point of ideological dispute, so the intractability can only be resolved through ideological means. The other problem, however, is more subtle, and it is the subject of this paper. As liberation theology has gained more prominence it has, ironically, dulled its prophetic bite. Liberation theology’s preferential option has always been its strength and is perhaps the single greatest theological insight of the twentieth century (cf. Goizueta 2003, p. 143). This insight, liberation theologians are right to note, requires an entire reorientation of Religions 2023, 14, 639. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050639 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions