Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

279for fantasy is the mysterious object of desire that determines the barred subject’s oscillationbetween attraction to and repulsion from the object of its desire. This fluctuation is related towhat Lacan calls the objet a (or what is most often called the sublime object cause of desire)which keeps postponing the pledge of filling up the gap at the core of our being while it is in factthe materialization of that gap. Lacan often argues that the subject holds its position in regard tothe real Thing through the construction of a fantasy about how the Thing is inscribed in the bigOther:I am speaking of the mark on the skin, which, in this fantasy, inspires nothing other than asubject identifying itself as the object of jouissance. … Whose jouissance? Is it thejouissance of whosoever carries what I am calling the glory of the mark? Is it certain thatthis means the Other’s jouissance? Certainly, this is one of the ways in which the Otherenters one’s world, and assuredly, it is an irrefutable one. But the mark’s affinity withjouissance of the body itself is precisely where it is indicated that it is only throughjouissance, and jouissance alone, that the division distinguishing narcissism from therelation with the object is established. (The Other Side of Psychoanalysis 49)Jouissance or (surplus-jouissance) is in fact a painful transgression of the pleasure principle, atransgression that produces the objet a. This is elegantly explained by Žižek: “This point is theobjet a, that which is subtracted from reality (as it's impossible) and thus gives it consistency - ifit gets included in reality, it causes a catastrophe. In what sense does the objet a (surplusenjoyment)frame reality? Think for example of the ‘production of a couple’ motif that frames aHollywood narrative about a big historical event like a war or natural catastrophe: this motif is,quite literally, the film's ideological surplus-enjoyment” (The Plague of Fantasies xvi-xvii;emphasis original). The inscription on the body registers the painful circuit of jouissance. Such