Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.
By keeping object a separate from the ideal ego, the analyst emphasizes the originally separating role of object a itself. I take this to mean that another dimension of object a is brought to the fore — not its dimension as something that the Other is supposed to desire, and that I must therefore desire or identify myself with in order to get recognized by the Other. Rather what we see here is the dimension of object a as the Other’s desire as such, in its very inscrutability. This means that the object a refers one to the originally inscrutable and eventlike nature of the Other’s desire.
A subject can perhaps only be separated from its identity, from its ego-ideal, as well as from object a as something that is desired by the Other, when the eventlike nature of the Other’s desire is recalled. This shows that the other aspect of object a, it’s imaginary aspect as an object that the Other desires, is an invention. When the object a as the Other’s desire as such is recalled, the ego ideal loses its ground. The plane of identification would then be crossed. The subject would no longer have any motivation to identify with the analyst or with any particular signifier (131).
What crossing the plane of identification, traversing the fantasy, or an act amounts to is a return to an original position, one in which a subject is first subjected to a signifier. Does this not also mean to the moment at which a subject is first produced by a signifier?
WE KNOW THAT AN ACT IS SUPPOSED TO TRANSFORM AND ALSO RECREATE A SUBJECT.
There is a fundamental difference between fantasy and act, and what happens during an act is perhaps not simply the continuation of a fantasy structure. … An act entails an entirely different relation to the Other’s desire, and that, as a result, the relation to the Other entailed in an act is such that one cannot speak about an identification occurring in it (132).
In an act, there is a relation to the Other’s desire that does not consist of identifying with what that desire is supposed to be for — a quest for the signified of that desire. Rather, the signifying impasse characteristic of the Other’s desire is preserved and handled in a new way in an act, instead of being merely avoided or covered up, which is what an identification does, and this would be the “real” dimension of an act the way in which the real “excedes” in an act, as Badiou would put it.
If identification can still be spoken of here, then what we have is not an identification with a particular signifier that functions as an object of the Other’s desire but an “identification” with desire as such. The end of analysis can then be seen not as a mere repetition of the subject’s origin, but a repetition that recreates, bringing about a new way for the subject to be in relation to signifiers, the Other, and the real.
A distinction needs to be made between:
- the Other as a site that can function to guarantee meanings and grant recognitions and
- the Other’s desire, which ruins any such site.