Feb 01

Das Ding & Le Petit Objet a (Part 1)

Posted by N. under: Jacques Lacan, Objet a, Subjectivity Share: | Delicious | Digg | Facebook | Reddit |

This post is mostly an expository post, attempting to understand how the petit objet a and das Ding function within the Lacanian system. Over the space of a few posts, I'll try to come to terms with these concepts and outline the various uses and functions that these two (closely related) concepts have, and how they do (or do not) fit together. In part, my interest here is in grasping what appears to be, perhaps, the central concept of the Lacanian system - situated, as it is, in the centre of Lacan's famous Borromean knot. My use of the phrase "grasping" may already be off, insofar as it suggests the ability to substantively grab onto the meaning of these concepts - a notion made problematic by their paradoxical nature and, as we will see, their functions. Caveats aside, though, a methodical look at central concepts such as these is key to judging the worth and value of Lacan, whether it be in its psychoanalytic, philosophical or political use (a point that I believe is central to Lorenza Chiesa's recent in-depth study). Before beginning, we can provisionally outline the various ways in which objet a and das Ding appear, in order to schematize and later highlight the relations between them: A) opens up the space for desiring; constitutes the subject as desiring (formula of phantasy) B) is the object-cause of desire C) it makes an appearance in the various developmental stages of the child (oral, anal, phallic) D) it can appear as the gaze (which is not reducible to the eye of the other) E) it can appear as the voice F) it is the radical Otherness in the other G) the virtual unity, or regulative idea, of perceptual objects over time With these multiple functions accorded to this concept, the question arises as to whether and how they all fit together. Perhaps some functions are apparent only in Lacan's early evocations of these ideas, and are later left aside. Perhaps, rather than being a function of Lacan's development, they are in fact aspects of the subject's own temporal development. Or maybe the concept is meant to be polyvocal, or is just inherently contradictory. (I should mention too, that in Subjectivity & Otherness, Chiesa outlines 5 more functions of the objet a too. I'm purposefully leaving aside his discussion because it is a rich source of ideas that will get its own post in the near future.) This then, is one of the major questions I'm aiming to at least approximately answer. Das Ding: Prior to ever naming objet a as such, Lacan first began work on a closely related concept, das Ding (or the Thing). In its original German, das Ding suggests Kant's famous concept of the ding-an-sich or the thingin-itself - the concept referring to the non-phenomenal source of all intuitions, or the world as it hypothetically existed outside of our particular way of cognizing it. As we will see, retaining the German term helps in reminding us of the similarly non-phenomenal nature of Lacan's das Ding. In Richard Boothby's discussion of das Ding, he distinguishes between two aspects of it. On the one hand, there is das Ding as the virtual object functioning to unify perceptual images into a single object over a

duration of time (G). On the other hand, is das Ding as the radically unknowable aspect of the human other - the truly Other of the other (F). Both ideas, however, point to non-phenomenal aspects that exceed the Imaginary coherence of the world. In its function as that which unifies a manifold of perceptions, objet a serves to provide the basis for attributing multiple perceptions to a single object. In doing so, Boothby notes that Freud identifies das Ding with both (1) the gap between memory (past perceptions of an object) and perception (present, differing perception of the object), i.e. the ungraspable aspect of novelty, and (2) a constant underlying aspect of the object. The key to uniting these 2 features is to recognize that das Ding is simply the content-less, constant gap between perception and memory: "The Thing is thus a pure posit, an empty and ideal locus of being amid a shifting whirl of other aspects of the perceptual complex that are more familiar to memory." (Boothby, 210) It is this notion of a pure space of absence that Lacan will pick up on. If the Imaginary alone does not provide unity to objects in the world, then this is because they necessarily rely upon and refer to a perpetually absent space which would provide unity to objects over time, i.e. the Real, unknowable aspect of phenomenal reality. In this way, the Imaginary is less the source of unity than it is the imaginary (in its normal sense) filling out of the lack - it works to create the appearance of a substantial reality by veiling the gap of the Real. This idea is key to the next function of das Ding - as that unknowable aspect of the human Other. In terms of the Imaginary, and the egos that compose this reality, intersubjectivity is based simply upon relations of sameness and difference. Oversimplifying, we identify with images of ourself and attribute images to others, and use these as the framework for various intersubjective relations. But at certain points, something happens that exceeds this framework of difference and identity. These are the situations in which the Other's desire becomes a question - we are incapable (at the time, since it may later be symbolized) of understanding the actions and behaviour of another as their desire escapes our knowledge of how egos are supposed to operate. In psychoanalysis, the prototypical example of this is the confusion the child faces when it realizes its primary caregiver (generally the mother) does not solely direct its desire towards the child. In such cases, the Imaginary coherence of the world is again disrupted - this time, not by an imperceptible locus of unity, but rather by an unknowable desire. In response to this unknown aspect of the Other, the individual (necessarily?) represents its unrepresentability through a privileged image, thereby attempting to cover over the gap. (In the clinical situation, this response can be seen in the way that certain, seemingly neutral, images can provoke distress in the analysand. These images have covered over and are associated with traumatic incidents that have not yet been worked through.) What then, is the relation between das Ding as the unknowable desire of the Other (F), and objet a, as the cause of desire (B)? Put simply, the unknowable aspect of the Other's desire is what originally causes desire in the subject. For example, faced with an Other who refuses to pay full attention to it, the child is left with the question, what does the Other desire? What could be taking its attention away from the child? "Object a can be understood here as the remainder produced when that hypothetical [identity between the Other's desire and the child's desire] breaks down, as a last trace of that unity, a last reminder of. By cleaving to that rem(a)inder, the split subject, though expulsed from the Other, can sustain the illusion of wholeness; by clinging to object a, the subject is able to ignore his or her division. That is precisely what Lacan means by fantasy, and he formalizes it with the matheme $<>a." (Fink, 59) This idea is still obscure, however, so further explanation is warranted. The idea of a rem(a)inder here seems to suggest some sort of substantial object, but that contradicts everything we've earlier said. Moreover, how does the subject ignore its division from the Other's desire by holding onto the objet a - substantial or not? The way to unravel these questions is to note that the objet a is here an object that is always already lost in its original situation where it was supposedly possessed (the mythical unity with the mOther), there was no object since there was no subject/object or ego/alter distinction made yet. It is only once the question of the Other's desire arises, when the unity with the mOther is lost, that the child is then forced to recognize external objects and truly Other desires. In making these distinctions, the objet a is formed as the object which (if hypothetically found) would return the subject to that primal unity. Hence, we can see why the objet a in its function as object-cause of desire, is not a substantial object: there simply never was such a thing to begin with. The objet a, therefore, again functions as an perpetually absent space, this time opening up the space for the subject to desire (lack being constitutive of desire in Lacan). We can see here too, the beginnings of how to relate objet a to its function of constituting the subject (A). So far then, we have seen that das Ding acts as an absent space (which is not nothing) that disrupts the unities formed in the Imaginary. In both the case of an object and the case of the Other, das Ding is that

which escapes the normal operations involved in memory and perception (both based on images, or the habit synthesis as in Deleuze). Lastly, these functions, F and G, are related to the object-cause of desire (B) by virtue of acting as the retroactively posited rem(a)inder of the original, mythical wholeness that could hypothetically be attained. Login Follow the discussion

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BdF 195 weeks ago If you wish to use the French expression, it's "objet petit a", not "petit objet a", the "petit" being a synonym of the French for "lower case". :-) Reply

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