{"id":9729,"date":"2012-11-13T19:59:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T00:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9729"},"modified":"2012-11-13T19:59:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T00:59:40","slug":"object-cause-of-desire-and-object-loss-of-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/13\/object-cause-of-desire-and-object-loss-of-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"object-cause of desire and object loss of drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taken from \u017di\u017eek’s criticism of Lacanian Left<\/em> by Yannis Stavrakakis<\/a>.\u00a0 Glynn Daly compares the politics of \u017di\u017eek and Essex Lacanians<\/a><\/p>\n

Modern society is defined by the lack of ultimate transcendent guarantee, or, in libidinal terms, of total jouissance<\/span>. There are three main ways to cope with this negativity: utopian, democratic, and post-democratic.<\/p>\n

The first one (totalitarianisms, fundamentalisms) tries to reoccupy the ground of absolute jouissance<\/span> by attaining a utopian society of harmonious society which eliminates negativity.<\/p>\n

The second, democratic, one enacts a political equivalent of “traversing the fantasy”: it institutionalizes the lack itself by creating the space for political antagonisms.<\/p>\n

The third one, consumerist post-democracy, tries to neutralize negativity by transforming politics into apolitical administration: individuals pursue their consumerist fantasies in the space regulated by expert social administration.<\/p>\n

Today, when democracy is gradually evolving into consumerist post-democracy, one should insist that democratic potentials are not exhausted – “democracy as an unfinished project” could have been Stavrakakis’ motto here. The key to the resuscitation of this democratic potential is to re-mobilize enjoyment: “What is needed, in other words, is an enjoyable democratic ethics of the political.”(269) The key question here is, of course, WHAT KIND OF enjoyment:<\/p>\n

Libidinal investment and the mobilization of jouissance<\/span> are the necessary prerequisite for any sustainable identification (from nationalism to consumerism). This also applies to the radical democratic ethics of the political. But the type of investment involved has still to be decided. (282)<\/p>\n

Stavrakakis’ solution is: neither the phallic enjoyment of Power nor the utopia of the incestuous full enjoyment, but a non-phallic (non-all) partial enjoyment. In the last pages of his book, trying to demonstrate how “democratic subjectivity is capable of inspiring high passions”(278), Stavrakakis refers to the Lacanian other jouissance<\/span>, “a jouissance<\/span> beyond accumulation, domination and fantasy, an enjoyment of the not-all or not-whole”(279). How do we achieve this jouissance<\/span>? By way of accomplishing “the sacrifice of the fantasmatic objet (a)<\/span>” which can only “make this other jouissance attainable” (279):<\/p>\n

The central task in psychoanalysis – and politics – is to detach the objet (a)<\/span> from the signifier of the lack in the Other \/…\/, to detach (anti-democratic and post-democratic) fantasy from the democratic institutionalization of lack, making possible the access to a partial enjoyment beyond fantasy. \/…\/ Only thus shall we be able to really enjoy our partial enjoyment, without subordinating it to the cataclysmic desire of fantasy. Beyond its dialectics of disavowal, this is the concrete challenge the Lacanian Left addresses to us. (280-282)<\/p>\n

The underlying idea is breathtakingly simplistic: in total contradiction to Lacan, Stavrakakis reduces objet (a)<\/span> to its role in fantasy – objet (a)<\/span> is that excessive X which magically transforms the partial objects which occupy the place of the lack in the Other into the utopian promise of the impossible fullness of jouissance<\/span>.<\/p>\n

What Stavrakakis proposes is thus the vision of a society in which desire functions without objet (a)<\/span>, without the destabilizing excess which transforms it into a “cataclysmic desire of fantasy” – as Stavrakakis puts it in a symptomatically tautological way, we should learn to “really enjoy our partial enjoyment.”<\/p>\n

For Lacan, on the contrary, objet (a)<\/span> is a(nother) name for the Freudian “partial object,” which is why it cannot be reduced to its role in fantasy which sustains desire; it is for this reason that, as Lacan emphasizes, one should distinguish its role in desire and in drive<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Following Jacques-Alain Miller, a distinction has to be introduced here between two types of lack, the lack proper and hole: lack is spatial, designating a void WITHIN a space, while hole is more radical, it designates the point at which this spatial order itself breaks down (as in the “black hole” in physics).<\/p>\n

Therein resides the difference between desire and drive<\/span>: desire is grounded in its constitutive lack, while drive<\/span> circulates around a hole, a gap in the order of being.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, the circular movement of drive<\/span> obeys the weird logic of the curved space in which the shortest distance between the two points is not a straight line, but a curve: drive<\/span> “knows” that the shortest way to attain its aim is to circulate around its goal-object. (One should bear in mind here Lacan’s well-known distinction between the aim and the goal of drive<\/span>: while the goal is the object around which drive<\/span> circulates, its (true) aim is the endless continuation of this circulation as such.)<\/p>\n

Miller also proposed a Benjaminian distinction between “constituted anxiety” and “constituent anxiety,” which is crucial with regard to the shift from desire to drive<\/span>: while the first one designates the standard notion of the terrifying and fascinating abyss of anxiety which haunts us, its infernal circle which threatens to draws us in, the second one stands for the “pure” confrontation with objet petit a<\/span> as constituted in its very loss.<\/p>\n

Miller is right to emphasize here two features: the difference which separates constituted from constituent anxiety concerns the status of the object with regard to fantasy. In a case of constituted anxiety, the object dwells within the confines of a fantasy, while we only get the constituent anxiety when the subject “traverses the fantasy” and confronts the void, the gap, filled up by the fantasmatic object.<\/p>\n

However, clear and convincing as it is, this Miller’s formula misses the true paradox or, rather, ambiguity of objet (a)<\/span>: when he defines objet (a)<\/span> as the object which overlaps with its loss, which emerges at the very moment of its loss (so that all its fantasmatic incarnations, from breasts to voice and gaze, are metonymic figurations of the void, of nothing), he remains within the horizon of desire – the true object-cause of desire<\/span> is the void filled in by its fantasmatic incarnations.<\/p>\n

While, as Lacan emphasizes, objet (a)<\/span> is also the object of drive<\/span>, the relationship is here thoroughly different: although, in both cases, the link between object and loss is crucial, in the case of objet (a)<\/span> as the object-cause<\/span> of desire, we have an object which is originally lost, which coincides with its own loss, which emerges as lost,<\/p>\n

while, in the case of objet (a)<\/span> as the object of drive<\/span>, the “object” IS DIRECTLY THE LOSS ITSELF – in the shift from desire to drive<\/span>, we pass from the lost object to loss itself as an object.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is to say, the weird movement called “drive<\/span>” is not driven by the “impossible” quest for the lost object; it is a push to directly enact the “loss” – the gap, cut, distance – itself.<\/p>\n

There is thus a DOUBLE distinction to be drawn here: not only between objet (a)<\/span> in its fantasmatic and post-fantasmatic status, but also, within this post-fantasmatic domain itself, between the lost object-cause<\/span> of desire and the object-loss of drive<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The weird thing is that Stavrakakis’ idea of sustaining desire without objet (a)<\/span> contradicts not only Lacan, but also Laclau, his notion of hegemony: Laclau is on the right track when he emphasizes the necessary role of objet (a)<\/span> in rendering an ideological edifice operative. In hegemony, a particular empirical object is “elevated to the dignity of the Thing,” it start to function as the stand-in for, the embodiment of, the impossible fullness of Society.<\/p>\n

Referring to Joan Copjec, Laclau compares hegemony to the “breast-value” attached to partial objects which stand-in for the incestuous maternal Thing (breast).<\/p>\n

Laclau should effectively be criticized here for confounding desire (sustained by fantasy) which drive<\/span> (one of whose definitions is also “that what remains of desire after its subject traverses the fantasy”): for him, we are condemned to searching for the impossible Fullness.<\/p>\n

Drive<\/span> – in which we directly enjoy lack itself – simply does not enter his horizon.<\/p>\n

However, this in no way entails that, in drive<\/span>, we “really enjoy our partial enjoyment,” without the disturbing excess: for Lacan, lack and excess are strictly correlative, the two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n

Precisely insofar as it circulates around a hole, drive<\/span> is the name of the excess that pertains to human being, it is the “too-much-ness” of striving which insists beyond life and death (this is why Lacan sometimes even directly identifies drive<\/span> with objet (a)<\/span> as surplus-jouissance.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taken from \u017di\u017eek’s criticism of Lacanian Left by Yannis Stavrakakis.\u00a0 Glynn Daly compares the politics of \u017di\u017eek and Essex Lacanians Modern society is defined by the lack of ultimate transcendent guarantee, or, in libidinal terms, of total jouissance. There are three main ways to cope with this negativity: utopian, democratic, and post-democratic. The first one … Continue reading “object-cause of desire and object loss of drive”<\/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":[125,12,21,72,20],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-9729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive","category-fantasy","category-jouissance","category-objet-a","category-zizek","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9729","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=9729"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9735,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9729\/revisions\/9735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}