#objet a

[funeral]

Accepting the reality that there is no cure for our existential malaise keeps us from wasting our life in chasing the untenable goal of healing our lack. That is, accepting the lack of a definitive cure allows us to direct our attention to endeavors over which we have some control; it frees us to pursue modalities of living that are both realistically attainable and potentially even rewarding—gratifying despite being imperfect. Unfortunately, because the mundane objects that contain the objet a are by necessity mere pale imitations of the Thing-in-itself, it can take prolonged mourning to reconcile ourselves to the reality that these imitations, these faint echoes of the Thing, are the only portion of the Thing that will ever be available to us. Yet I believe that those of us who have managed to make peace with this reality possess the best chances for fashioning a life that feels both rewarding and dynamic.

Mari Ruti, “When the Cure Is that There Is No Cure: Melancholia, Mourning, Creativity” in Meaningless Suffering: Traumatic Marginalisation and Ethical Responsibility

[funeral]

Real-life objects that give us such an intimation of the missing Thing contain the object a. The objet a—which is yet another product of our fantasy life—can be characterized as a tiny morsel that has become detached from the Thing and that we unconsciously deposit in tangible objects of desire in order to render them desirable. That is, the objet a is not an intrinsic—native—component of our object of desire; instead, it is a piece of the Thing that we ourselves fantasmatically place in the object to make this object sparkle with a special iridescence. In this sense, even though we believe that our object is the cause of our desire, in reality, we have, without realizing it, manipulated the situation in such a way that it is the object a—which we ourselves have installed in the object—that mobilizes our desire. One could say that it is fundamental to the structure of desire to be based on fantasy—a fantasy that ultimately has to do with our wanting to fill the lack within our being by inserting into it an object that contains a strong residue of the missing Thing.

Mari Ruti, "When the Cure Is that There Is No Cure: Melancholia, Mourning, Creativity" in Meaningless Suffering: Traumatic Marginalisation and Ethical Responsibility

[nearlyb]

[nearlyb]

[publicatiosui]

"

Object a is no being. Object a is the void presupposed by a demand, and it is only by situating demand via metonymy, that is, by the pure continuity assured from the beginning to the end of a sentence, that we can imagine a desire that is based on no being - a desire without any other substance than that assured by knots themselves. [...]

That's not it" means that, in the desire of every demand, there is but the request for object a, for the object that could satisfy jouissance. The latter would then be the Lustbefriedigung presupposed in what is improperly called the "genital drive" in psychoanalytic discourse, that drive in which the full, inscribable relationship of the one with what remains irreducibly the Other is supposedly inscribed.

-- Lacan, Seminar XX

[bardass]

The gaze is tricky, huh? Grade my meme (Part 3/3)

[despsychanalystes]

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

This dimension beyond the signifier is the Lacanian Real, or, to be more specific, the lost ‘object a’ that is forever lacking for the speaking subject, causing his ever shifting desire.

Why do we call it “truth”, how does it differ from mere knowledge? One could answer that truth always concerns desire and jouissance, but the same goes for the Freudian knowledge from the very beginning, e.g. his ideas about Lust (pleasure) and Wunsch (wish). The essential characteristic of truth is that it confronts us with the ultimate point where knowledge about desire and jouissance can no longer be put into words. Knowledge itself always stays within the realm of the signifier, truth starts within this realm but evokes a dimension beyond it, that is the main reason why we invented poetry. This ultimate dimension of desire and jouissance is the driving part of it – and driving comes from drive. This dimension beyond the signifier is the Lacanian Real, or, to be more specific, the lost ‘object a’ that is forever lacking for the speaking subject, causing his ever shifting desire.

Verhaeghe P. -  Teaching and Psychoanalysis: A necessary Impossibility, in: M.Stanton & D.Reason (eds), Teaching Transference. On the Foundation of Psychoanalytic Studies, London, Rebus Press, 1996.