{"id":975,"date":"2008-09-29T00:06:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-29T04:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=975"},"modified":"2011-02-26T15:58:45","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T20:58:45","slug":"objet-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2008\/09\/29\/objet-a\/","title":{"rendered":"objet (a)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slavoj Zizek,\u00a0The Indivisible Remainder<\/em>.\u00a0Verso: 1996.<\/p>\n

The symbolic order (the big Other)<\/strong> is organized around a hole in its very heart, around the traumatic Thing<\/strong> which makes it ‘non-all’; it is defined by the impossibility of attaining the Thing; however, it is this very reference to the void of the Thing that opens up the space for symbolization, since without it the symbolic order would immediately ‘collapse’ into the designated reality \u2014 that is to say, the distance that separates ‘words’ from ‘things’ would disappear.<\/p>\n

The void of the Thing is therefore both things at the same time<\/em>: the inaccessible ‘hard kernel’ around which the symbolization turns, which eludes it, the cause of its failure, and the very space of symbolization<\/em>, its condition of possibility.\u00a0 That is the ‘loop’ of symbolization: the very failure of symbolization opens up the void within which the process of symbolization takes place.\u00a0 145<\/p>\n

Sean Homer, Jacques Lacan<\/em>. Routledge, New York 2005.<\/p>\n

The objet a<\/span> is not an object we have lost, because then we would be able to find it and satisfy our desire. It is rather the constant sense we have, as subjects, that something is lacking or missing from our lives. \u00a0We are always searching for fulfilment, for knowledge, for possessions, for love, and whenever we achieve these goals there is always something more we desire, we cannot quite pinpoint it but we know that it is there. \u00a0This is one sense in which we can understand the Lacanian real<\/strong> as the void or abyss at the core of our being that we constantly try to fill out. \u00a0The objet a<\/span> is both the void, the gap, and whatever object momentarily comes to fill that gap in our symbolic reality. \u00a0What is important to keep in mind here is that the objet a<\/span> is not the object itself but the function of masking the lack. 88<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The objet a<\/em> is the left-over of the real; it is that which escapes symbolization and is beyond representation.<\/p>\n

Bruce Fink. The Lacanian Subject<\/em> Princeton UP. 1995<\/span><\/p>\n

Desire has no “object” as such. \u00a0It has a cause, a cause that brings it into being, that Lacan dubs object (a), cause of desire. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Object (a) as the cause of desire is that which elicits desire: it is responsible for the advent of desire, for the particular form the desire in question takes, and for its intensity. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

… a certain way a man has of looking at a woman may sum up for that woman everything she really wants in a man<\/span>. (Not what she says she wants in a man, appealing to typical American discourse about needs: “I need affection, support, and encouragement.” \u00a0For that is all conscious ego discourse: verily and truly the discourse of the Other, the social American Other.) \u00a0That particular way of looking, that \u2014 to use an example \u2014 impertinent, unblinking way of looking, may be what really causes her to desire<\/span>, stimulating in her a desire which cannot be extinguished by all the fine qualities revindicated by the ego: a man who is caring, a good father, a good provider, and so on and so forth. \u00a0It is the desire-causing look<\/span> that determines for her what Freud called “object choice” and what I will call the choice of companions<\/em>. \u00a091<\/p>\n

The breast is not, during the first experience of satisfaction, constituted as an object at all, <\/strong>much less as an object that is not part of the infant’s body and that is largely beyond the infant’s control. \u00a0It is only constituted after the fact, after numerous vain attempts by the infant to repeat that first experience of satisfaction<\/strong> when the mother is not present or refuses to nurse the child. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is the absence of the breast, and thus the failure to achieve satisfaction, that leads to its constitution<\/strong> as an object as suc<\/strong>h<\/strong>, an object separate from and not controlled by the child. \u00a0Once constituted … the child can never again refind the breast as experienced the first time around: as not separate from his or her lips, tongue, and mouth, or from his or her self.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once the object is constituted, the “primal state”<\/strong> wherein there is no distinction between infant and breast, or between subject and object (for the subject only comes into being when the lacking breast is constituted as object, and qua relation to that object), can never be re-experienced<\/strong>, and thus the satisfaction provided the first time can never be repeated. A kind of innocence is lost forever, and the actual breasts found thereafter are never quite it.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

object (a)<\/span> is the leftover of that process of constituting an object, the scrap that evades the grasp of symbolization. It is a reminder that there is something else, something perhaps lost, perhaps yet to be found … It is the rem(a)inder of the lost hypothetical mother-child unity. \u00a094<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slavoj Zizek,\u00a0The Indivisible Remainder.\u00a0Verso: 1996. The symbolic order (the big Other) is organized around a hole in its very heart, around the traumatic Thing which makes it ‘non-all’; it is defined by the impossibility of attaining the Thing; however, it is this very reference to the void of the Thing that opens up the space … Continue reading “objet (a)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,72,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-objet-a","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","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=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1015,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/1015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}