Changes

[[Desire]] has to be placed at the heart of [[analysis|analytic]] [[theory]] and [[practice]]: the title of the [[seminar]] does not indicate a mere juxtaposition of the two [[terms]], it ties [[them ]] around the essential function of [[language]]. [[Desire]], if the [[libido]] is its [[psychic energy]], indicates the [[subject]]'s dependency on the [[signifier]]s which constitute the [[structure]] proper. This is what the [[cure]], based on [[speech]], must make clear beyond the [[analysand]]'s [[demand]]. [[Lacan]] even asserts that "[[desire]] is its own [[interpretation]]."

In approaching this [[seminar]] one might be aided by [[reading ]] the seven lessons on <i>[[Hamlet]]</i> (1959) published by [[Jacques-Alain Miller]] in <i>[[Ornicar?]]</i> in 1983. After [[Freud]] [[Lacan]] offers a new [[interpretation]]. <i>[[Hamlet]]</i> is the [[tragedy]] of [[desire]]: this is why "we are in the midst of [[clinical ]] [[experience]]." What is this "bird-catcher net in which [[man]]'s [[desire]] is articulated according to the coordinates of [[Freud]], [[Oedipus]] and [[castration]]?" The [[structural ]] [[analysis ]] of the play, which [[orders ]] not only the characters' positions but also the succession of events, should lead us to "situate the meaning and direction (<i>le sens</i>) of [[desire]]." The enigma is that of [[Hamlet]]'s inability to [[act]]: he cannot kill Claudius - his father's killer, his mother's lover, and the usurper) - he cannot [[love ]] Ophelia, "he cannot [[want]]." When, at the end, he discovers his desire - by fighting Laertes in the [[hole ]] that has been dug out to bury Ophelia - this revelation is ineluctably linked to the [[death ]] in which they all [[disappear]]. This tragedy shed light on the masculine drama of desire and on the [[anxiety ]] of "To be or not to be," hopeless truth of modern man.

On the [[Father]]'s side, the disappointment is beyond remedy: "[[There is no Other of the Other]]." The [[dead ]] King wanders in quest of an [[impossible ]] redemption. The [[Other]], the [[place ]] of [[truth]], does not contain the [[signifier]] that could be the [[guarantor ]] of such [[truth]]. The [[phallus]] is unavailable in the [[Other]], which is rendered by the [[sign]]: - F. This would explain the almost desperate tone in [[Lacan]]'s next [[seminar]], <i>L'éthique...</i>. What if the [[masculine]] [[subject]] turns toward his [[mother]] to praise her [[woman]]'s dignity? Then he comes up against what she manifests of her [[desire]]: "not [[desire, ]] but a gluttony that is engulfing." The [[horror ]] of [[femininity]] rules over the play and hits Ophelia, the virgin fiancée, in the face. Her [[character ]] is fascinating because it embodies "the drama of the [[feminine]] [[object]] caught in the snare of [[masculine]] [[desire]]," but above all because she is at the same [[time ]] the [[object]] and the touchstone of [[desire]]: <i>[[objet a]]</i> ([[part object]]) of [[desire]] and [[phallus]] ([[present ]] in Ophelia). The two terms are not quite distinguished and if Ophelia can only be discovered in [[mourning]] - "I loved Ophelia" - such [[mourning]] is both that of the [[object]] and that of the [[phallus]]. Against [[Jones]], whose definition of [[aphanisis]] was an attempt to find in the [[fear ]] of [[being ]] deprived of one's [[desire]] a factor common to both [[sexes]], [[Lacan]] maintains a radical asymmetry in the rapport to the [[phallic signifier]]. [[Man]] "is not without having it" and [[woman]] "is without having it." The only [[object of desire]], and at the same time its only [[signifier]], seems indeed to be the [[phallus]], which only appears "in flashes," during decisive phallophanias where death is at the rendez-vous.

[[Slavoj Zizek]] [[notes ]] that for [[Lacan]] the [[phallus]] is the pure [[signifier]] that stands for its own opposite, that it functions as the [[signifier]] of [[castration]]. The transition from pre-[[symbolic]] [[antagonism]] (the [[Real]]) to the [[symbolic order]] where [[signifier]]s are related to meaning takes place by way of this pure [[signifier]], without [[signified]]. "In [[order ]] for the field of meaning to emerge, for the series of [[signifier]]s to [[signify]] something, there must be a [[signifier]] that stands for [[nothing]], a [[signify]]ing element whose very [[presence]] stands for the [[absence]] of [[meaning]], or rather for the [[absence]] <i>tout court</i>." This [[nothing]] is the [[subject]] itself, "the [[subject]] <i>[[qua]]</i> [[S]]." This [[Lacan]]ian [[matheme]] designates the [[subject]] deprived of all [[content]].

<b>Le séminaire, Livre VI: Le [[désir ]] et son interprétation.</b><br>[[French]]: unpublished.<br>[[English]]: unpublished.

|width="100%"| [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan, Jacques]]. [[Seminar I|Le séminaire, Livre II: Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse]]. Ed. [[Jacques-Alain Miller]]. [[Paris]]: Seuil, 1977. 374 pages, Language: French, ISBN: 2020047276. <small><small>Buy it at [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/2020047276/nosubject-20/ Amazon.com], [http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/2020047276/nosub07-20/ Amazon.ca], [http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/2020047276/nosub-21/ Amazon.de], [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/2020047276/nosubjencyofl-21/ Amazon.co.uk] or [http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2020047276/nosub04-21/ Amazon.fr].</small></small>

|}<!-- Start of [[right]]-column -->