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.
So, in this subjective destitution, in accepting my non-existence as subject, I have to renounce the fetish of the hidden treasure responsible for my unique worth. I have to accept my radical externalization in the symbolic medium. As is well known, the ultimate support of what I experience as the uniqueness of my personality is provided by my fundamental fantasy, by this absolutely particular, non-universalizable formation.
Now, what’s the problem with fantasy? I think that the key point, usually overlooked, is the way that Lacan articulated the notion of fantasy which is, ‘OK, fantasy stages a desire, but whose desire?’
My point is: not the subject’s desire, not their own desire. What we encounter in the very core of the fantasy formation is the relationship to the desire of the Other: to the opacity of the Other’s desire. The desire staged in fantasy, in my fantasy, is precisely not my own, not mine, but the desire of the Other.
Fantasy is a way for the subject to answer the question of what object they are for the Other, in the eyes of the Other, for the Other’s desire. That is to say, what does the Other see in them? What role do they play in the Other’s desire?
What is their role in the desire of the Other?’ This is, I think, absolutely crucial, which is why, as you probably know, in Lacan’s graph of desire, fantasy comes as an answer to that question beyond the level of meaning, ‘What do you want?’, precisely as an answer to the enigma of the Other’s desire.
Here, again, I think we must be very precise. Everybody knows this phrase, repeated again and again, Desire is the desire of the Other.’ But I think that to each crucial stage of Lacan’s teaching a different reading of this well-known formula corresponds.