Objet Petit a: The Object-cause of Desire (Lacan and Zizek)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ย. 2024
- We are all desiring subjects. But once we get what we desire, we cannot desire it anymore and the void that we wanted to fill, only shifted. But what is at the cause of this desire? And what is Objet petit a, and why does Lacan place this in the very center of his registers?
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I got exactly what I wanted from this video, and now I'm completely satisfied.
underrated comment
there's no complete satisfaction! :)
then you came here in the comments to what exactly? xD
Hearing this news is sooooo much better than only finding out about it when I die. Thank you.
I had a college essay last semester and instead of reading How to Read Lacan, I just worked off this video and cited the quoted pieces of text. I got an A+
Hahaha you made my day! That is lovely to hear, congratulations! Happy we could help 😄
:)you 'Ferris Bueller'd it! Here, here!
I understand you feel clever. But you still paid for that class. That's all the school really wants, you know. Do not flatter yourself that the professor did not know. It is much more likely the professor did not care.
@@paulcanis6297 It was 2 years ago; I was in a university I didn’t like studying a degree I didn’t like on a full scholarship. I used the credits from that class transfer to a different one and switch my degree. But I agree; outside of the grind it doesn’t make sense to act like that
@@paulcanis6297and this person also learned something, it’s not like they are some sucker
Chinese audience here, watched from bilibili. Can’t believe such high quality video about modern life wants with such low subscription. Although i spent my uni time in Australia, still got the question: what modern life under capitalism really like in the west?
Not great!
@@princegobi5992every thing is not great
I'm so glad I found this channel. I searched for a long time and I had never found a content that explained Lacan in such a concise and rigorous way. I'm already looking forward to more videos about Lacan and Zizek. Congratulations on the excellent work. I cheer for you!
Moral of story ; if born poor ,practice antinatalism and play dominos with thyself,,,
Look up Plastic Pills
As an answer to the purported despair Lacan's message should instill in us, I might say that it makes one feel more despair, not knowing whence despair emanates. As soon as we can understand reality, there is a quiet contentment in knowing the almost poetic paradox of existence.
That's beautifully said! 😀
Yes, I believe it is similar to the enjoyment of tragedy, which demonstrate the even the greatest and most successful among us are dissatisfied and self-destructive, resulting in a sense of the sublime. There is a certain dignity in being able to contemplate the truth about ourselves despite the fact that this truth is disturbing.
This is the first channel i found that actually explains these concepts in a way i can understand. Thank you!
This really is some great stuff. I’ve been meaning to get into Lacan for a while, but it’s been pretty intimidating. I really do appreciate this, please don’t stop making these!!
I'm currently in a Master's program in Psychoanalysis and your videos have been an invaluable resources in helping me understand the non-sens of psychoanalysis. Merci !
Thanks for your comment! Happy to hear! 🙂🙃
For the first time, despite reading about it a lot, I have understood the meaning of 'object petit a' and why it is in the centre...
you are amazing - I've never encountered Lacan explained so succinctly and clearly! Bravo!
I like to substitute Jouissance with Paradise and place God beyond the Real to not get suuuper depressed. Great video, thank you so much 😭
You have elaborated these hard concepts in so easy manner. Thank you so much.. I m feeling so grateful to find this channel 😊
I just found this video and cannot be more grateful! The explanations and the quotes are really useful. Thank you!
Thank you for making this video!
Great video! It's hard to find such good videos explaining Lacan's philosophy so well!
The explanation is sublime! I'm very grateful for your videos and channels. Please keep this noble mission, and I wish more people could benefit their lives from your videos! Best luck!
From "we recognize that the image in the mirror is not us" to "we lack something" and then to "we realize that we are not the only object of desire of the other", he completely lost me. I can't see how these propositions follow one from the other.
But I could add that I tried for years to understand the meaning of the lacanian provocative thruths ( such as "il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel") and never found an explanation that I could consider clear ...
This very well maybe the most insightful video I’ve ever seen!!
Amazing! Excellent dissection of human desire, and where it originates from.
Amazing. Exactly what i was looking for. Finally. Lacan makes sense. Phewies.
This channel is great. You are really good in explaining Lacan’s thought!
Great analysis and elaboration of the topic, thanks a lot! Can't help but notice again that psychoanalysts really don't even pretend to be interested in crafting unambiguous terms.
This helped massively. Please keep making content. Subscribed!
Thank you. I'm almost done reading zizek's sublime object of ideology and this was very helpful 🙏🏻
what's the film in the beginning?
Eíndelijk opheldering!! 👏Het Nederlandse accent is nu zelfs charmant!
Thank you. It is clearer now. Great content.
I am blessed to have subscribed to this channel. Be blessed channel too.
Thank you so much! 😄🤗
Thank you very much for this video! This was very helpful and I'll be sure to keep reading!
The quantumness of it all!
It is a greater tragedy to never attain one's object of desire, for it is only by its attainment that it can be falsified whether the object-cause of our desire is satisfied by our objects of desire. Isn't it better to have gotten everything you wanted and to learn it does not bring happiness than it is to be forever uncertain whether it will or will not?
where is this from?
I found this video to be very uplifting. Lacan, and I guess Zizek as well, are the two philosophers who come the closest to my understanding of reality which is found in the radical non-dual message (or sharing, or suggestion) of such people as Tony Parsons, Jim Newman, Andreas Müller, Paul Morgan-Somers, Izzy Cloke, among many others. Radical non-duality is to be contrasted from the much better known form of nonduality taught by people who label themselves, or get labeled as, spiritual teachers. People such as Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle, Gangaji, Andrew Cohen, among many others. In the former, there is no you and nothing anyone can do to become free. In the latter, there are "spiritual" practices one can do in order to become free and that one's fundamental nature is "pure consciousness" or other such concept. For the radical nondual variety, as Lacan speaks of about "The Real," no concept can do anything but conceal "The Real" because it is that which can never be symbolized, conceptualized, or imagined. Radical nonduality points to That which is "beyond" all ideas, and therefore all philosophies, even Lacan's. In "The Real" there is only muteness and always already and forever no "I am."
Jiddu Krishnamurti ?
I desire to watch this video again and again to attain my jouissance because it is so satisfyingly succinct
I needed to see this - thank you OP
thank you so much! i'm begin to discover your channel and it seems really promising to me!
Please don’t stop making videos!
very well explained; gonna send this to my friends
Nice work
Excellent video - instantly subscribed
So cool to see you here, I enjoy your content!
@@charlie3k I appreciate you 💚
I'm not a philosophy student, but a student of life who's curious.
That is very nicely put! 😄
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 q
Great video! New to this content and trying to piece it all together. How do more nominal desires like say "scratching an itch" fit into this schema? Surely they are not linked to prohibition?
Ahhh my fault, now watching more of your videos, you answer this in the graph of desire part 2, if I understand correctly, it would, Lacan would designate this as a need.
Ahhh my fault, now watching more of your videos, you answer this in the graph of desire part 2, if I understand correctly, it would, Lacan would designate this as a need.
wow , great vid , tnx
To think that what makes us human beings miserable is called objet petit a…
Hey man, great video! I have one question though: what is the title of the background music? Kinda reminds me of Mendelssohn's "Lieder ohne Worte".
excellent!!!!😊
amazing job
If Nietzsche was alive, he would have called this life denial.
Embrace the wanting. These priests want you to sleep.
Also, does he say anything about those desires that you realize that really do make you happy over time? This things do exist, even materialistic things like nice cars.
Really appreciate your comment! You know Nietzsche well and he would be proud. By chance our next video will be on Nietzsche. I do believe that philosophy could use some extra Nietzsche. 🙂
Where did you find the quote from Sean Homer, Jacques Lacan at 6:45?
Astonishing.
There is a wonderful blog by the Dangerous Maybe and he wrote an article called Lacan’s Concept of the Object-Cause of Desire (objet petit a). There is some really great stuff there! 😄
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Thank you so much! I'll be for sure checking it out.🙂
Why is Russel Crowy doing Lacan?
Can you explain at 6:00 how you tie together 'the desire only emerged after the restriction of jouissance itself' and 'a jouissance we never even had in the first place'? The logical step here, from the idea of perceived restriction, to the conjuring of an idea state of complete 'jouissance', this is something that would require empirical verification, to show that somehow all people really did this. But they don't. I mean, they kinda do a bit in some ways, to some degree, and through experience constantly modulate their expectations. So why should one think that this is some kind of fundamental underlying mechanism?
Again a very interesting question!
I would say that the order is as follows: The subject encounters the objective world starts describing himself to himself (creating a signifier for the subject, i.e. the "I"). This I then encounters the Big Other, or the symbolic dimension. In this encounter we see that our I is not yet the Ideal I. We lack something. Now, by encountering the signifying chain (language) our desires are sometimes prohibited. So lets say that somebody tells me that I cannot drive through a red light. By prohibiting me from driving through a red light, I might get the fantasy that doing so gives me some form of Jouissance. I never had this Jouissance, yet by prohibiting me, my imagination create this idea that it will fill my lack somehow. This is analogous to the theory of the Death drive by Freud, where I want things to happen over and over again even though it might hurt me in the end. Then, if I convinced myself enough, I might drive through the red light, giving me the momentarily feeling of satisfaction. But sooner rather than later, I find that I will not get this permanent pleasure, my Jouissance by doing this. It was only ever a desire which was no more than a fantasy consisting of nothing other than worlds in my mind. And so the desire shifts to a new desire. A new objet petit a.
By prohibiting the action, a desire was created for the Jouissance of attaining what I desired. Yet upon attaining the desire, it appeared that there was never any Jouissance and the desire shifts again.
I hope this is somewhat clear. Again I think that this becomes more clear in the videos on the graph of desire. I am very curious what you think! Again thanks for your comments!
İ try to improve my English because of my curiously mind :) thanks for that video
its like being led by the nose... great insight, would love to reject being a slave to this set up. perhaps this is what xtianity meant by renouncing the world....the world is this big other creating the lack.
I don't understand the relationship between language and desire. Is language (metaphorical/metonymical language) a means of expressing our desire? Or the framework for our desire? Something outside of us? How does the name-of-the-father and the phallus fit into this picture? They are both signifiers? How do signifiers relate to desire?
Thanks for your question! I am happy to give a short summary here, although I do recommend to watch our two part video on the Graphs of Desire. Here the theory is explained in more detail. If you still have questions I am more than happy to answer them in the comments.
Is that okay? 😁
I think those videos do not go over your question about how desire relates to signifiers specifically so: Take the example of a door with the sign "stop". This sign implies an inherent desire to go through that door. Hence our signifiers have behind them a desire. And it is the occupation of the psychoanalyst to find out what those desires are behind our signifiers. And this is often done by analysing the metaphors and metonymy that we use in speech. Just like we explained in the video on the signifier and the signified, where it is stated: "His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful", where the sheaf is substituted for Boaz, implying an inherent desire in Boaz, or in general, to be neither miserly nor spiteful. It furthermore shows the hidden desire to be liked because of this sheaf. It is the repressive aspect of being a subject to the signifier.
I hope this helps a bit! 😄
thanks
Who is speaker with large audience before the actual video starts ?
Its from the movie The Life of David Gale (2003) with Kevin Spacey🙂
Which movie is in the beggining?
The Life of David Gale
Does ANYONE here, think or see that this concept is what neuroscientists call "opponent process reaction". By responding to the stimulation it gets with an opposing or "opponent" reaction, the brain prevents emotional extremes.
Which movie is that in the initial clip?
The Life of David Gale
What's the difference between jouissance and death drive?
Thanks for your comment! Jouissance is the happiness that we think we want after we are castrated. It is the desire that is retroactively created after the encounter with the big other. Death drive (wanting things over and over again to achieve the presumed jouissance) is using a form of jouissance that has a negative effect on our wellbeing in the long term. So jouissance can be a part of the death drive, but not all jouissance has to be a death drive. Hopefully this helps! 😄
this theory only holds if you believe that desire is the most important thing. but i dont mind not desiring anything once i obtain it. so i dont miss that loss. why does it give so much emphasis on desire being the thing we value most?
the phallus's status is fantastic not symbolic. Also what's the movie called with kevin spacey in the begining?
Just wanted to say that at least for lacan the phallus “operates in all three registers”. - No Subject. Had to check after I read yr comment.
The music really dampens the message
the more i read the more i tend to develop an idea that the idea of God fits more into object a than as a master signifier. thoughts?
That is a good hypothesis and I could see what you mean. However, I would say the following:
I will start with Schopenhauer, but I promise I will get to Lacan. For Schopenhauer the world is devided into "will" and "representation". For Kant this would be the devision between the thing in itself and the representation. Here, the representation is the vague shadow of reality that is constructed by symbols and language. So, for lacan this would be the devision between the "real" and the "symbolic". Our world, that is our subjective world, only exitsts in representation and the relation between these representations. We can never know the real. Now, if the world exists of representations, the question is, where do we get this world? The answer, we get it through culture, that is, through the big other. This is in Christian terms God. The representation above all representations. Its father culture. It is the beginning of self consciousness in language, or, as the bible says, "in the beginning was the word".
Okay, so now we have the real, and the big other, or god, since God is the master signifier for culture, for morality, for language, for everything that is symbolic. Now, from this culture also arises desire. We start to desire things that are more than the thing itself, in other words, our objet petit a. We are told by culture, or by God for that matter, what we should desire. In this way I agree with you that we can find God as an objet petit a in objects. However, I would say that still the objet petit a is the result of God (of a master signifier). For the (decadent) christian I would say that it is God (the master signifier) that tells them, literally, what to desire, what their objet petit a should be. That is, a world of peace, love the poor, give money to the church, listen to the priest because only then you reach heaven, and so on. The objet petit a is in this case power, and they use god as a justification.
Anywaay.. I wonder too far off, but I hope this a somewhat coherent representation of my thoughts. I wonder how you see this! 🙂
@@eversbrothersproductions1476
your reply definitely makes things clearer in my mind which further leads me to wonder: Is it more fitting to say, Religion is a Master Signifier, while God is the object a?
3:55 wir hatten nie die volle, vollständige, voll befriedigte Lust; aber in dem Moment, wo unsere Lust eingeschränkt wird, entsteht retroaktiv das Bild der Möglichkeit einer voll zu befriedigenden Lust zu Beginn; die Lust wird eingeschränkt durch einen bestimmten großen Anderen (symbolische Dimension); den Vater, Gott, Ideologie, das Gesetz, Konventionen, Normen etc. 4:43 jouissance = Mehrlust; die Lust, das Ziel zu verfehlen 5:26! Das System selbst (des großen Anderen) will die Mehrlust steigern, um das Begehren seins Mediums (des Subjekts) weiter aufrecht zu erhalten oder dieses Begehren sogar weiter anzuheizen, um sich (stärker) reproduzieren zu können 7:10! 8:00! 9:10 ab11:00!!! symbolic, imaginary, real 12:45 Imaginärer "Teil" darf nicht als Mittel des Symbolischen gedacht werden, erst ist genauso fundamental wie symbolischer und realer "Teil", nur im Rahmen des Imaginären kann das gespaltene Subjekt zum Begehren und zur Art des Begehren aufgerufen werden; I (S1); Imaginäres wird immer mitgedacht, dass es als Vermittler zwischen Symbolischem und Realen dient wiederspricht dem nicht 13:30! we want to fill our void (weil wir selbst symbolisch vermittelt und damit gespalten sind UND unser Begehren nur durch nicht zu füllendes Loch erzeugt wird) with the (imagined) Image of the fullness of others, die symbolische Struktur bzw großer Andere selbst füllt seine eigene Leere / seinen Mangel durch die positivierende Bezeichnung dieser Leere (z.B. "Ich"), zumeist gleichzeitig mit einer imaginierten Fülle (die mit dem Ich vorgestellt wird, oder mit Realität, König, Coke etc.) 14:50! Zsmfassung
Hey! Just wanted to comment. In this video, you claim that the Unconscious is placed in order of the Real; however, it's more fittingly placed in the Symbolic order, as it is composed of repressed signifiers. The drives, on the other hand, are definitely in the Real.
is there anyway i can cite this video?
Good question. Where do you want to cite it?
first, thank you for your video but ı have a question about the part of the video 6:10 "object petit a comes in part". I'm not a native English speaker and ı don't understand what you say exactly. Maybe you can write to me. Because ı can not follow the sentences, it is fast speaking for me. Thank u again it is great work I am close to understanding what Lacan's petit a :)
Heyy, thanks for your question! So there is first the process of prohibition and our realization of a lack. A lack that we observe through the process of consciousness which is expressed in language (the big other). We think that we lack something, we always feel this void within us that we want to fill, and what we want to fill it with is the cause of our desire. Our desire arises from a need, a want, a lack - and the desire is often not for the object itself. If we buy cloths for example, we often do not buy them for their utilitarian characteristics, but we buy them to show some social status or identity. Hence, there is something in the object, that is more than the object, that is the object petit a.
A nice example would be that of Coke as Zizek explains. We also have a video explaining this called "Coke as the sublime object of Happiness", and it was after this example from Zizek that I myself really understood the objet petit a. (I always need examples to understand something 😁)
I hope this helps! And if you still have questions please let us know! We are always happy to help 😄
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 thank you again ım understand now :) after the finished video, it explains everything
Why most things in philosophy are so hard to comprehend? (In comparison to math, Ecosystems etc.)
Good question. I think because we are not taught philosophy like we are math for example. The first time you see a differential equation you might say that you will never understand it. Bet then you learn the language and step by step you solve your problem. The same applies to philosophy, but most of us are not taught in school or at home, even though it is the backbone of science (a PhD is a doctrine in philosophy). So I would say, just learn the language and you will understand, and I hope that these videos can help you somewhat in that journey 😊
But what happens if what you desire is death? Is death the only attainable desire?
It is not that one cannot attain what one desires, it is that the desiring itself will never stop. With death this is of course difficult to interpret. However, if we look at Schopenhauer then death is not the solution to stopping desire since the suffering in the world is not reduced (on the contrary even). Furthermore, for Kierkegaard, death is not the sickness unto death, the real sickness unto death is despair i.e. loosing the self.
So we might desire death, and even obtain it. But the total desiring in the world is thereby not reduced. The desire is still there.
this assumes that people do things only for a desired outcome. that we think by doing x,y,z we will be happy. but that isn't necessarily why people do things at all. this theory tries to make universal claims about the way people think and there is just no way you can do that
Hello! Watching this video for our report on Psychoanalytic Criticism. Is there any concrete examples of Objet petit a you can share, more specifically concerning films? Like examples of films that tackle this, maybe? Thanks a lot!
The eodipal stuff has no basis in reality, it's the legacy of a wacky guy who made a lot of stuff up and claimed that the veracity of it could be shown by his own accounts of whether or not his patients got better. How did it ever gain so much traction in academia? As for Lacan in general: a 'theory' which, as far as I can tell, presumes 'desire' to be a uniform thing, i.e. has a platonic conception of desire, rather than a recognition of the specificities of things which can be talked about with words like 'desire' (and once you accept specificity it becomes clear that desires do get 'satisfied', and that there isn't really an enduring self-similar 'lack' which is continuous), shouldn't it be discounted immediately on that basis? Or is it fairer to assume that this abstract model accounts for some aspects of what we mean by 'desire', and that on that basis it's kinda handy, even though it's not really unmasking the underlying mechanics of the human psyche, but might sometimes happen to match some psychological configurations that occur in the real world sometimes?
Okay, I will again try to answer your interesting question.
I agree to a large extend with your remark on the theory of Freud. A large part of hit theory turned out to be bullshit. Like that Schizophrenics would have had a problem with their mother causing the problem, but it turned out that these people just have a specific activated gene resulting in the disease. However, and this is big however, there is a lot that Freud introduced that we today think of as self evident and therefore forget how groundbreaking it was when the theory was introduced in the 19th century. The line of reasoning that behaviour is the result of past experiences rather then the divine intervention of God or free will was completely controversia theory. For me personally I wrestled with your concern a lot until I read the works of Bernays. For me a theory is only proven correct if it has the hypothesized outcome in reality. Bernays, the nephew of Freud, used the theory of Freud to create a theory on propaganda and later "public relations", which we now know as marketing. It presumes that by controlling the unconscious of people, you can control their behaviour.
As for Lacan, I would argue that desire is universal not only in humans, but in every living AND not living thing. Everything is constantly "becoming". A seed becomes a plant which becomes a seed again. Described in the language of Schopenhauer, we need a motivation to do anything. We are no more that billiard balls on a table, but we need a push. Schopenhauer call this "motivation" (I recommend watching the video on suffering to go further into detail). Whenever you sit still, eventually you get hungry. And at some point this suffering becomes so great, that you will eat, or at least try to. Now, strip away Need from Demand, and we are left with Desire. This is fascinating! Since we now want things that do not have any objective value. And what is more interesting, it that the things that we desire are always the desire of the Other. We want a faster car because someone else wanted a faster car. Woman want to be skinny because other women want to be skinny. We buy the organic apple because someone else told us that we should buy it to be virtuous. This system of symbols is exactly what Bernays used to promote marketing. How he for instance was able to help Marlboro sell cigarettes to woman by marketing it as "torches of freedom", playing on their desire to more like men. A desire that has no basis in need whatsoever, but only in the desire because of some idea. An idea that exists of language, a language that is given by the Other.
Now, as to your comment about this not being a science, I want to try and show how this could be a science. For, in order to be science, a theory has to have one non-divisible origin and it has to work every time it is applied. For the origin I will take it far granted for now since Fichte was able to show with a deduction that it is possible, even though I myself do not yet fully understand the theory. But let us just look at the second requirement. We can apply this theory to every subject! Take any subject and analyse the subject. Say for example you look at the person in the store that buys a toothpaste that has 25% off and that whitens their teith. Two things become immediately clear: 1) the person thinks he gets some toothpaste for free even though he knows that he is paying the full price, and 2) he has the desire to have white teeth. Well, why? Why should he have white teeth? You don't "need" white teeth to survive, no he desires it because white teeth signify something. They signify that white teeth are in some way important for some reason. This reason most likely a reason that is determined by the culture, i.e. the Bit Other. Furthermore, it signifies a capitalist structure that uses money to get an advantage over others by whitening your teeth, etc, etc, etc.
I hope you get what I am trying to say. The theory is universally valid in analysing behaviour, based on the presented theory. I do agree that the psychoanalysts are not that capable in expressing this, but I think that people like Bernays and Zizek prove to be very interesting examples of the theory. Our videos on the graph of desire go a bit further in this analysis, so if you are interested you could always watch those and I would really like to hear your thoughts on this comment and those videos! ☺
Albeit, Lacan brought some fundamentals to the table, the structure of language, he failed grossly to take into consideration the ineffable complexity of the fact that we are mammals and the so called phallic symbolic is none other than the TIT. And the juissance is just a cyclical mechanism of hunger and satisfaction. Everything revolves around the tit. It’s the port sustenance, from mama to the adult kiss, it’s the sucksess of the language. On the Map of the Universe, I reorganise the labyrinth that is the human psyche, and the kill Freudian construct that dragged Lacan down.. lock, stock and barrel. I’m 9.
objet petit a is a commutative diagram? haha
No it is the description of the conceptualization of the symbolic, imaginary and the real which can be visualized using the Borromean knot according to Lacan. The diagram is the communication of the information which it holds, just as a normal equation would be the signifier for some process or principle.
Thus, the objet petit a is not the diagram, but it can be visualized using a diagram.
I compare these theories to my own life, my wants and desires. I don’t see synergy between them, I don’t know if that makes me atypical or whether the theory is male bovine excrement. With n=1 it doesn’t tell me much other than it’s not universally true.
5:00 gluttony via libido
It's interesting to me that Schopenhauer had some similar diagnoses in his essay "On the Vanity of Existence." I wonder, was Lacan influenced at all by Schopenhauer?
I do not know for sure, but I know that Lacan read a lot of philosophy, just like Freud did. I dare say that he read Schopenhauer.
I do know he read Kant, and the step from Kant to Schopenhauer is not that far. And as you point out, the resemblance is uncanny, especially regarding desire.
For example in the world as will and representation: "We see the same thing in human aspiration and desires; the fulfillment of these masquerades as the ultimate objective of our willing, but once we have attained them, they no longer look the same, so that soon, forgotten and out of date, they are almost always set aside as vanished illusions."
you don`t understand Lacan
Thank you for this very comprehensively formulated critique 😄
Your mum
Whats the name of the movie in the beginning?
What is the name of the movie in the first?