Love beyond Law

Lacan conceives of love as a narcissistic misrecognition which obscures the truth of desire.

Love Beyond Law

"Love beyond Law" involves a "feminine" sublimation of drives into love. Love is no longer merely a narcissistic (mis)recognition to be opposed to desire as the subject's 'truth' but a unique case of direct asexual sublimation (integration into the order of the signifier) of drives, of their jouissance, in the guise of the asexual Thing experienced in the ecstatic surrender. One must bear in mind that this Love beyond Law is inherently nonsensival, beyond meaning: meaning can only take place within the (symbolic) Law; the moment we trespass the domain of Law, meaning changes into enjoy-meant, jouis-sense. "Love beyond Law" entails the eclipse of meaning in jouis-sense.

Either we conceive the conclusion of treatment as the assertion of the subject's radical openness to the enigma of the Other's desire no longer veiled by fantasmatic formations, or we risk the step beyond desire itself and adopt the position of the saint who is no longer bothered by the Other's desire as its decentered cause. In the case of the saint, the subject, in an unheard-of-way, "causes itself", becomes its own cause. Its cause is no longer decentered, i.e., the enigma of the Other's desire no longer has any hold over it.

By way of positing itself as its own cause, the subject fully assumes the fact that the object-cause of its desire is not a cause that precedes its effects but is retroactively posited by the network of its effects. The subject "causes itself" by way of retroactively positing that X which acts as the object-cause of its desire. This loop is constitutive of the subject.

[One should always bear in mind that the status of the subject as such is hysterical: the subject 'is' only insofar as it confronts the nigma of Che vuoi? - "What do you want?" - insofar as the Other's desire remains impenetrable, insofar as the subject doesn't know what kind of object it is for the Other. Suspending this decentering of the cause if thus strictly equivalent to what Lacan called "subjective destitution," the de-hystericization by means of which the subject loses its status as subject.

[The most elementary matrix of fantasy, of its temporal loop, is that of the "impossible" gaze by means of which the subject is present at the act of his/her own conception. What is at stake in it is the enigma of the Other's desire: by means of the fantasy-formation, the subject provides an answer to the question, "What am I for my parents, for their desire?" and thus endeavors to arrive at the "deeper meaning" of his or her existence, to discern the Fate involved in it. The reassuring lesson of fantasy is that "I was brought about with a special purpose." Consequently, when, at the end of psychoanalytic treatment, I "traverse my fundamental fantasy," the point of it is not that, instead of being bothered by the enigma of the Other's desire, of what I am for the others, I "subjectivize" my fate in the sense of its symbolization, of recognizing myslef in a symbolic network or narrative for which I am fully responsible, but rather that I fully assume the uttermost contingency of my being. The subject becomes "cause of itself" in the sense of no longer looking for a guarantee of his or her existence in another's desire.

The "subjective destitution" changes the register from desire to drive. Desire is historical and subjectivized, always and by definition unsatisfied, metonymical, shifting from one object to another, since I do not actually desire what I want. What I actually desire is to sustain desire itself, to postpone the dreaded moment of its satisfaction. Drive, on the other hand, involves a kind of inert satisfaction which always finds its way. Drive is non-subjectivized ("acephalic").

The drive is an 'undead' partial object that functions as a kind of impersonal willing: 'it wants', it persists in its repetititve movement, it follows its path and exacts its satisfaction at any price, irrespective of the subject's well-being. This drive is that which is 'in the subject more than herself': although the subject cannot ever 'subjectivize' it, assume it as 'her own' by way of saying 'It is I who want to do this!' it nonetheless operates in her very kernel.

Source

• Love beyond Law. Centre for Theology and Politics. 1996. <http://www.theologyandpolitics.com/Files/Zizek%20CTP%20Love%20beyond%20Law.pdf>. Also listed on Lacan.com. <http://www.lacan.com/zizlola.htm>.