in its purest state “the [post-Oedipal] demand for love doesn’t satisfy anything but
itself, which is to say [pure] desire as an absolute condition.”^80 In order to avoid
any gross misunderstanding, it should be made explicit that this sentence is mean-
ingful only if we assume that what the purifiedstate of demand categorically excludes
is precisely the request to be loved.Yet, at the same time, if “we can only approach
[desire] by means of some sort of demand,”^81 then we must also assume that this
will be valid a fortioriwhen puredesire is at stake. We should therefore ask ourselves
the following crucial question: which sort of (purified) demand allows us to ap-
proach pure desire? (If not to reach it, since, as we have already seen, it elides it-
self.) I argue that, in its purified form, demand will be a demand beyond demand,
a demand that demands nothing, or rather, demands nothingness itself, the void/
lack of the desire of the Other, and does not demand the demand of the Other—
as happens in neurosis. In other words, pure demand, as an approximation to pure
desire, does not demand to be loved back (to be recognized) by the Other, but
simply desires what in the Other equally desires without demanding. Desire and
love are structurally incompatible. Desire is the desire of lack, or, more precisely,
“that which desire looks for in the Other is less that which is desirable [le désirable]
than that which desires [le désirant], that which the Other lacks.”^82 To put it differ-
ently, the pure desirer desires the desire of the Other, to be understood as that
which in the Other desires (le désirant dans l’Autre), that is, the Other’s lack. As Lacan
notes, for this very reason, as a pure desirer I cannot desire the Other’s desiring me,
I cannot desire to be loved: if this happens, I “abandon desire.”^83
On a concrete level, pure desire will therefore be a demand that purely desires
“le désirant dans l’Autre.” My final suggestion is that, in everyday life, such a transfor-
mation of demand into pure desire is paradoxically achieved when, instead of al-
ways demanding “something else,” we contingently demand something specific
in an inflexible way, at any price. Not giving up on one’s desire, the well-known
motto of Lacanian ethics, necessarily presupposes—and, in practice, problemati-
cally resolves itself into—not giving up on one’s demand.5 3 The Subject of the Fantasy and the Object a
On the basis of my explanation in Section 5. 2 , it could rightly be suggested that
Seminar V adopts a “panoramic” view of desire by analyzing the way in which it
differs from need and the demand for love. On the other hand, Seminar VI is mainly
concerned with the specific emergence of desire in relation to the object ain the
fundamental fantasy. In this section, I shall first of all look at several crucial lessons
from Seminar VI which focus on the precise dynamics of the relationship at work
in the fundamental fantasy Sa.I will then supplement these observations with anthe subject of the fantasy... and beyond