Zupančič, Alenka. The Ethics of the Real. New York: Verso. 2000.
In relation to Lacan’s commentary on Antigone, stress is often laid on the formula ‘ne pas céder sur son desir‘ and on Antigone as a figure of desire. 250
But another, very unusual phrase in Lacan’s commentary deserves our attention: ‘the realization of desire’.
We might say that what makes Antigone Antigone is not simply that she does not give up on her desire but, more precisely, that she realizes her desire.
This implies that she is not simply a figure of desire, since desire opposes itself, in its very nature, to the realization of desire. So what does this ‘realization of desire’ mean?
It is clear that it does not mean the fulfilment of desire: it does not mean the realization of that which the subject desires. In Lacanian theory, there is no such thing as the desired object.
There is the demanded object, and then there is the objet-cause of desire which, having no positive content, refers to what we get if we subtract the satisfaction we find in a given object from the demand (we have) for this object.
Essentially linked to this logic of subtraction which gives rise to a (possibly) endless metonymy, desire is nothing but that which introduces in to the subject’s universe an incommensurable or infinite measure (Lacan’ s terms).