viduation—is possible (in the unconscious) only insofar as it is partly reduced to
the demand of the Other (in self-consciousness). This is particularly visible in the
case of the hysteric—“the subject for whom... it is difficult to establish a rela-
tionship [with the Other] that allows him to preserve his place as a subject”^72 —
but should be regarded as universally valid for all subjects. Lacan thus speaks of a
“fundamental situation of man between demand and desire”^73 which ultimately
accounts for the fact that ( 1 ) desire is always the desire, or rather the demand, of
autre chose,and consequently ( 2 ) the satisfaction of desire essentially consists of the
preservation of its own unsatisfaction, since a subject remains a subject only inso-
far as—to use the full meaning of the denomination manque-à-être—he is a desir-
ing lack-of-beingthat wants-to-be.^74
As Lacan himself shows in a particularly dense passage of Seminar V, the phal-
lic “structuration of the subject’s desire”^75 by no means excludes demand. “It is
thanks to the mediation of the phallic signifier that [the subject] is introduced
beyondthe relation with the [pre-Oedipal demand of the] Other,” yet “as soon as
that [beyond, desire] is constituted, from the moment the phallic signifier is
there in the guise of [the signifier of ] the desire of the Other, [the phallus] does
not remain at this place but is integrated into the speech [and hence the demand]
of the Other and comes... to occupy its place on this [conscious] side,in the origi-
nal place of speech with the mother.” As we shall soon see in greater detail, “it
is there [on the conscious side] that it plays its role and assumes its [imaginary]
function [asφ].”^76
My reading of this passage is confirmed by Lacan’s subsequent admission that
“this beyond,” the subject’s desire as instigated by the Other’s desire, “remains un-
conscious for the subject,” and that “it is by now here [in self-consciousness] that
the dialectic of demand takes place, without [the subject] knowing that this di-
alectic is possible only insofar as his desire... finds its place in a relationship with
the desire of the Other that remains for him unconscious.”^77 If one were to use
Lacan’s algebraic notations to express all this, one could propose that the uncon-
scious desire of the subject in Sais always more or less “masked”^78 by S-D,^79 the
fading of the (post-Oedipal barred) subject before the Other’s demand. At this
stage, it should not be too difficult to see why Lacan also designates S-D as the al-
gebraic notation of the drive:it is in fact only insofar as desire is partly submitted to
the demand (of the Other) that the subject’s drive can partially be satisfied; when
one moves to “pure” desire, the fantasy is undone and the drive can no longer be
satisfied.
What alternatives do we have to neurotic desire? Where should we locate the
radical notion of “pure desire” in the context of the interplay between demand and
(impure) desire? In analyzing the formula of desire, we came to the conclusion that
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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