Lacan makes the same point in Le séminaire livre IV,p. 47.
Nevertheless, Lacan acknowledges that Freud’s notion of the death drive as the Nirvana
principle is “very suspect in itself ” (The Seminar. Book VII,p. 212 ).
Ibid., p. 211 (emphasis added).
Ibid., p. 212 (emphasis added).
Ibid., p. 211. In this sense, Lacan also claims that the dimension of the death drive is “that
of the subject. It is the necessary condition for the natural phenomenon of the instinct
in entropy to be taken up at the level of the person” (ibid., p. 204 ).
Ibid., p. 209.
Ibid. “Remembering, historicising, is coextensive with the functioning of the drive in
what we call the human psyche.”
Ibid., p. 212 (my translation).
Ibid., p.13 4.
35 .Le séminaire livre V,p. 246.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 245.
Ibid.
“There is never either complete generation or total death in the strict sense.... What we
call generationis unfolding and growth; just as what we call deathis enfolding and diminu-
tion.” It goes without saying that Leibniz applied this notion only to the nonhumanbody
(Monadology,in Philosophical Texts[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 ], p. 278 ).
See Le séminaire livre IV,p. 51.
We could provocatively argue that there is only one structural distinction between a
pre-Oedipal baby—or a fortioria fetus—and a dead person, namely that the big Other is
able to individuate imaginarily only the former. The more clearly we can identify the
“human” shape of the fetus—thanks to technological innovations—the earlier we tend
to consider it as “alive.” Apart from this, the fetus and the dead person are bothsymboli-
cally alive for the big Other, and equally unable to individuate themselves.
S. Zˇizˇek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology(London and New York: Verso,
1999 ), p. 379.
See, for example, The Seminar. Book VII,pp.232‒233.
Ibid., p. 268.
S. Zˇizˇek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime(Seattle: W.C. Simpson Center for the Humanities,
2002 ), p. 20.
Or by a permanent desubjectivation in the Other’s fantasy, as in the case of psychosis,
which ultimately corresponds to a complete alienation inthe Symbolic.
47 .Le séminaire livre IV,pp.119‒120.