Žižek, S. (2005). Connections of the Freudian Field to Philosophy and Popular Culture. Interrogating the Real. In R. Butler & S. Stephens (Eds.), Interrogating the Real (pp. 62-88). New York, NY: Continuum.
First, already in the 1940s, ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ alludes simply to the paranoiac structure of desire, to the structure of envy, to put it simply.
Here, the desire of the subject is the desire of the Other; it is simply this kind of transitive, imaginary relationship. It’s basically the structure of envy – 1 desire an object only insofar as it is desired by the Other, and so on.This is the first level, let us say the imaginary level.
Then we have the symbolic level where ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ involves this dialectic of recognition and, at the same time, the fact that what I desire is determined by the symbolic network within which I articulate my subjective position, and so on. So it is simply the determination of my desire: the way my desire is structured through the order of the big Other. This is well known.
But I think Lacan’s crucial final formulation arrives only when the position of the analyst is no longer defined as starting from the place of the big Other (A), that is to say, the analyst as embodiment of symbolic order, but when the analyst is identified with the small other (a), with the fantasmatic object. In other words, when the analyst gives body to the enigma of the impenetrability of the Other’s desire.
Here, ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ means I can arrive at my desire only through the complication of the Other’s desire precisely insofar as this desire is impenetrable, enigmatic for me. I think this is the first crucial point, usually forgotten, about fantasy: how true fantasy is an attempt to resolve the enigma of the Other’s desire. That’s the desire that is staged in fantasy. It’s not simply that I desire something, that I make a fantasy. No.