attempt to draw some final conclusions about the various significations which can
be attributed to the object a:this will be done by referring to Seminar X which, as
Safouan points out, “carries the theorization of the object aas far as possible.”^84
As we have already seen, the fundamental fantasy is nothing less than what
structures the unconscious to be understood as primal repression: in this sense, it
is both “fundamental,” insofar as it constitutes the synchronic structure of the
unconscious according to which the “true articulation between desire and its ob-
ject”^85 should be understood, and “minimal,” precisely insofar as it limits itself to
providing a basic “imaginary support”^86 to desire by combining the barred speak-
ing subject S and the (unconsciously) imaginary object a.Lacan is thus able to say
that the fantasy is “the locus of reference by means of which desire will learn to
situate itself ”:^87 the subject’s desire is not adjusted to a pregiven object, but must
learn to adjust itself to a phantasmatic object. In other words, the fantasy is that
which “introduces an essential articulation” within the original “non-opposition”
of the speaking subject to the object (think of the way in which the child still iden-
tifies with the objects of the mother’s demand during the dialectic of frustration).^88
Such a non-opposition is nevertheless even present in the fantasy itself, which is
one of the reasons why the fantasy is repressed: this allows Lacan unhesitatingly to
state that, since “the subject [as manque-à-être] is desire,” making him pass through
the object a“is as legitimate as making him pass through S.”^89
How should we understand this oscillating relationship between the subject
and the object of the fantasy? The phantasmatic object is first and foremost the sup-
port which the subject gives himself insofar as he is a “failing” (défaillant)subject.
As we have repeatedly seen from different perspectives, during the second stage
of the Oedipus complex the child is confronted with the fundamental lack in the
(m)Other—with the fact that his own demands cannot ultimately be recognized
by the Other—and thus “fails in his certitude” of being the exclusive imaginary
object of the (m)Other’s love: at the same time, and for the same reason, the child
is equally unable symbolically to “name himself as subject,” he “fails in his desig-
nation as subject” precisely inasmuch as there is no Other of the Other, there is no
signifier that “might guarantee the concrete consequences of any manifestation of
the signifier,” that is, the child’s symbolic demand for love.^90
The only way out of this impasse, the only way to constitute himself as subject,
is for the child precisely to locate himself at the level of the lack of the Other as a
failing/lacking subject. The object aserves this purpose insofar as it is the paradox-
ical object that represents the subject as lacking—or, more specifically, it is the rep-
resentationof the lacking subject brought about by the representative function of
the phallic signifier—and, in so doing, simultaneously institutes him as a “ten-
sion,” a desiring manque-à-être.The most important point to emphasize here is that
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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