POST-VERBUM

Don’t give way on your desire, a formulation that continues to make psychoanalysts tremble when they read it, only in order to disavow it, nonetheless seems to have become society’s emblematic catchphrase. Traditional political demands thus seem to have become rather moral, and the denunciation of everything that gets in the way of the realisation of desires—whatever they may be—the rule.

The only problem, and the one that makes the difference, is that the suffering of the one Lacan deals with no longer has much to do with the above-mentioned. What rules them in effect is the relation to a sublime, object, technologically perfect, and only an arbitrary privation of it is capable of allowing one to experience the dimension of being disinherited.

La seconde différence est que le désir concerné est devenu moins celui d’un sujet que celui recommandé et orienté par les offres mirifiques du marché. C’est ainsi que l’Autre a cessé d’être le vôtre et a toutes les raisons – outre le made in China – d’être devenu étranger.

The second difference is that the relevant desire has become less that of a subject, than that which is recommended and oriented by the marvellous offers of the market. Thus the Other ceases to be yours and has every reason—besides being made in China—to have become foreign.

Thus the risk is that between xenopathy and submission, and the path forward seems difficult to us.