Introductory Lectures on Lacan by Gessert Astrid;

Author:Gessert, Astrid;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Karnac Books

Das Ding and sublimation

In 1959, still during Seminar VII on Ethics, Lacan arrived at another important milestone on the way towards his invention of object a. He articulates the way in which the object is marked by the exclusion of das Ding. Again he intervenes by a return to a gap in Freud's writings. Freud had never published his promised metapsychological article on sublimation, and Lacan set about to try and define it. He now gave his famous definition: sublimation elevates the object “to the dignity of the Thing” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 112). In this definition, the ultimate destiny of the drive links the object to das Ding. His elaboration around the Freudian Ding suggests a found object that was never really lost, and this paradox would open up the question of repetition and of what it is that repeats if there was nothing there in the first place. Lacan suggests that as das Ding itself cannot be represented, it will always be represented as “another thing” or “something else”, to use Freud's words. The object is already different from the Thing, and each object which represents das Ding will represent it by means of difference itself. Its being different each time is its very essence, and it will appear each time as a new creation. This “otherness” is the trace of das Ding which marks any object with the original lack. The void is represented here as a difference. Thus the object of desire always moves on to another object. No empirical object could fill in the place of das Ding, as there is no possibility to fill the void it has left. It is the movement from one object to another which indicates das Ding as an exterior motor which motivates the change from one to the other. As Lacan puts it:

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