{"id":7334,"date":"2011-03-14T18:27:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T23:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7334"},"modified":"2011-03-14T20:38:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T01:38:05","slug":"7334","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/03\/14\/7334\/","title":{"rendered":"drive desire objet petit a"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boyle, Kirk. \u201cThe Four Fundamental Concepts of Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u2019s Psychoanalytic Marxism.\u201d\u00a0 International Journal of \u017di\u017eek Studies<\/em> Vol 2.1 (2008) 1-21.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek\u2019s more recent theorizations of capitalism have turned away from the Lacanian notion of desire<\/strong> to the concept of drive<\/span>. The previous section discussed the reflexivity of desire<\/strong>, how desire<\/strong> is desire<\/strong> for the object-cause of desire<\/strong>, objet a<\/span>.<\/p>\n

We saw how this desire could not be satisfied in any lasting way, that it was infinite, an infinite metonymy of desire. Drive<\/span> distinguishes itself from desire in a short-circuit of sorts. Its object is the loss itself of objet a<\/span>, not the fantasmatic objet a<\/span> that never yields its promised jouissance, but what \u017di\u017eek calls the \u201cobject-loss of drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He writes, \u201cin the case of objet petit a<\/span> as the object of drive<\/span>, the \u2018object\u2019 is directly loss itself \u2014<\/p>\n

in the shift from desire<\/strong> to drive<\/span> we pass from the lost object to loss itself as an object\u201d (\u017di\u017eek 2006b: 62). Where desire<\/strong> suffers from the repetitive failure to obtain full jouissance, drive<\/span> finds triumph in this very failure.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Desire<\/span> acquiesces to the surplus-enjoyment it receives from partial objects that are metonymies for the impossible Thing<\/strong>; drive<\/span> finds satisfaction in the loop around an object.<\/p>\n

If the hysterical libidinal economy of desire works in cahoots with capitalism to produce and reproduce consumer society, then drive may offer a possible way to break out of this endless chain of metonymic commodities. \u017di\u017eek writes:<\/p>\n

drive<\/span> is literally a counter-movement to desire, it does not strive towards impossible fullness and, being forced to renounce it, gets stuck onto a partial object as its remainder \u2014 drive<\/span> is quite literally the very \u201cdrive<\/span>\u201d to break the All of continuity in which we are embedded, to introduce a radical imbalance into it, and the difference between drive<\/span> and desire is precisely that, in desire, this cut, this fixation on a partial object, is as it were \u201ctranscendentalized,\u201d transposed into a stand-in for the void of the Thing. (\u017di\u017eek 2006b: 63)<\/p>\n

The above passage posits drive in opposition to desire, which, in turn, is represented as creating a transcendental world of partial objects, all of which sustain the illusion of the \u201cThing as the filler of its void\u201d (\u017di\u017eek 2006b: 63). Desire, in fact represents the horizon of Lacan\u2019s early theorizations of psychoanalysis, which remain thoroughly Kantian. In this early stage, Lacan posits a lost jouissance of the inaccessible \u201cmaternal\u201d Thing with objet a<\/span> serving as a leftover or remainder of this primordial enjoyment. The regulative ideal implicit in this formulation requires the subject to renounce the Thing and accept substitutive satisfactions in its stead. Hence, the stoicism often associated with the Freudian field (the point of maturity where we accept the fact that \u201cit\u201d never is \u201cIt!\u201d).<\/p>\n

The drive<\/span> disrupts the homeostasis implicit in the position that one must keep a proper distance to the Thing less one gets burned by it. \u017di\u017eek replaces this \u201cGolden Mean\u201d or \u201cGoldilocks effect\u201d\u2014in Freudian terms, the \u201cpleasure principle\u201d\u2014with a notion of drive<\/span> which \u201csuspends\/disrupts the linear temporal enchainment\u201d (\u017di\u017eek 2006b: 63). In order to \u201cbreak the All<\/span> of continuity in which we are embedded,\u201d the subject of the drive<\/span> tarries with the negative and becomes caught up in a repeated circuit of jouissance<\/span>, a self-propelling loop beyond the pleasure principle.\u00a0 Drive<\/span> exists in both a pre-and post-fantasmatic space, at once prior to the passionate attachments of desire and beyond them.<\/p>\n

The realm of the drive<\/span> is a primordial abyss of dis-attachment in which the subject exists out-of-joint with its environs. Such a description of the drive<\/span>, however liberating we might imagine it, smacks of a romantic, individualistic form of resistance, a critique that has been cast at \u017di\u017eek (especially in his examples of the psychoanalytic act<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

The subject of the drive<\/span> sounds awfully like the existential artist-hero who withdraws from society and its fantasmatic lures, confronts the void, and in true Nietzschean fashion fully affirms the eternal recurrence of the same. \u017di\u017eek, however, is far from proffering the drive<\/span> as a line of flight from the deadlocks of desire. The opposite, in fact, is the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lesson of drive<\/span>,\u201d he writes, \u201cis that we are condemned to jouissance<\/span>: whatever we do, jouissance<\/span> will stick to it; we shall never get rid of it; even in our most thorough endeavor to renounce it, it will contaminate the very effort to get rid of it\u201d (\u017di\u017eek 2000: 293).<\/p>\n

What at first glance appears to be a radical act to break out of the linear continuity of the hysterical economy<\/strong>, now becomes a compulsion to repeat, to obtain jouissance<\/span> by circulating around the goal-object.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek puts an end to all flirtations with the transgressive nature of the drive<\/span> when he associates it with the machinations of capitalism. After acknowledging that capitalism addresses individuals on a subjective level when it \u201cinterpellates them as consumers, as subjects of desire<\/strong>, soliciting in them ever new perverse and excessive desires,\u201d he claims that: Drive<\/span> inheres to capitalism at a more fundamental, systemic level: drive<\/span> is that which propels the whole capitalist machinery, it is the impersonal compulsion to engage in the endless circular movement of expanded self-reproduction. We enter the mode of drive<\/span> the moment the circulation of money as capital becomes \u201can end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The circulation of capital has therefore no limits.\u201d (\u017di\u017eek 2006b: 61)<\/p>\n

At the level of drive<\/span>, capitalism does not address individuals. In a sense, capitalism addresses itself. Drive<\/span> inheres to capitalism in a quasi-objective manner. \u201cThe capitalist drive belongs to no definite individual,\u201d writes \u017di\u017eek, \u201crather, it is that those individuals who act as direct \u2018agents\u2019 of capital (capitalists themselves, top managers) have to display it\u201d (\u017di\u017eek 2006a: 61).<\/p>\n

These acephalous agents are the ones we see flailing around the stock market floor or rushing through airports juggling their techno-gadget accoutrements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boyle, Kirk. \u201cThe Four Fundamental Concepts of Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u2019s Psychoanalytic Marxism.\u201d\u00a0 International Journal of \u017di\u017eek Studies Vol 2.1 (2008) 1-21. \u017di\u017eek\u2019s more recent theorizations of capitalism have turned away from the Lacanian notion of desire to the concept of drive. The previous section discussed the reflexivity of desire, how desire is desire for the object-cause … Continue reading “drive desire objet petit a”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,125,24,72,123,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-drive","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-sinthome","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7334"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7356,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7334\/revisions\/7356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}