The Act
| French: [[acte]] |
| French: L'acte |
The Act (L'acte)
The act (l'acte in French, Akt in German) represents one of the most radical and consequential concepts in Lacanian psychoanalysis and contemporary continental philosophy. An act is not mere behavior—such as that characteristic of animal activity—but a uniquely human intervention that fundamentally transforms both the subject who performs it and the symbolic coordinates that structure reality itself.[1] "To our knowledge there is no other act but the human one," Lacan emphasizes, situating the act at the intersection of ethics, subjectivity, and the transformation of symbolic reality.[1]
The act must be rigorously distinguished from related but structurally different phenomena: acting out (which addresses the Other but leaves symbolic coordinates unchanged), passage to the act (which represents catastrophic exit from the symbolic scene), and ordinary behavior or pragmatic action (which operates within established symbolic parameters without transforming them).
Conceptual Framework
The Act as Ethical Concept
The act is fundamentally an ethical concept insofar as the subject can be held responsible for it—yet this responsibility extends beyond conscious intention to encompass unconscious desire. The psychoanalytic concept of responsibility is complicated by Freud's discovery that, in addition to conscious plans, the subject also harbors unconscious intentions. Hence someone may commit an act that appears unintentional yet analysis reveals expresses an unconscious desire.[2]
Freud called these acts "parapraxes" or "bungled actions" (Fehlleistungen)—"bungled" only from the perspective of conscious intention, since they successfully express unconscious desire. A bungled action is thus successful from the standpoint of the unconscious, though this success remains partial because the unconscious desire manifests in distorted form.
Responsibility and Unconscious Desire
In psychoanalytic treatment, the subject faces the ethical duty of assuming responsibility even for unconscious desires expressed in actions. The analysand must recognize apparently accidental actions as true acts expressing unconscious intention and assume this intention as their own.
This distinguishes the authentic act from both acting out and passage to the act: in neither of these does the subject fully assume responsibility for their desire. Acting out stages desire for the Other without transformation; passage to the act exits the symbolic scene catastrophically. The authentic act, by contrast, involves the subject's full assumption of their desire, transforming both subject and symbolic order.
The Act and the Death Drive
When fully and consciously assumed, Lacan provocatively claims, "suicide is the only completely successful act."[3] This statement must be understood precisely: the act expresses completely an intention that is both conscious and unconscious—the conscious assumption of the unconscious death drive. A sudden impulsive suicide attempt, by contrast, is not a true act but rather a passage to the act.
The death drive (Todestrieb) is thus intimately connected with the ethical domain in Lacan's thought. The death drive does not simply seek biological death but rather the dissolution of the symbolic identity that constitutes the subject—the "death" of the subject's symbolic being. The authentic act mobilizes this death drive not toward literal destruction but toward symbolic transformation.
Historical Development in Lacan's Teaching
Early Formulations
Lacan's theorization of the act develops gradually across his teaching, receiving increasingly sophisticated elaboration. Early formulations emphasize the act's relation to speech and symbolic intervention, but later work positions the act as fundamentally transforming the symbolic order itself.
Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-60)
In Seminar VII, Lacan develops his ethics through the figure of Antigone, whose decision to bury her brother Polyneices despite Creon's prohibition exemplifies certain dimensions of the act.[4] Antigone's act is not passage à l'acte (catastrophic exit) nor acting out (demonstration for the Other) but rather an assumption of desire "beyond the beautiful" in confrontation with das Ding (the Thing). Her act redefines the Good itself outside Creon's Law, creating new ethical coordinates.
However, as Žižek later notes, Lacan's reading presents interpretive challenges: does Antigone truly assume her act without reference to the Other, or does she invoke the Thing (her future family she sacrifices) in a way that maintains her within masculine logic?[5]
Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts (1964)
In Seminar XI, Lacan emphasizes that the act is uniquely human, distinguishing it from animal behavior through its relation to the signifier and the symbolic order.[1] The act occurs at the intersection of the real and the symbolic, neither purely within language nor entirely outside it.
Seminar XV: The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-68)
Lacan dedicates an entire year of his seminar to the psychoanalytic act specifically—the act performed by the analyst in the conduct of treatment.[6] The psychoanalytic act differs from interpretation or transference handling in that it fundamentally restructures the analytic situation and moves the analysand toward the end of analysis.
The ethics of psychoanalysis enjoin the analyst to assume responsibility for their acts (interventions in treatment). The analyst must be guided by an appropriate desire—what Lacan calls the desire of the analyst (désir de l'analyste). An intervention constitutes a true "psychoanalytic act" only when it succeeds in expressing the desire of the analyst—that is, when it helps the analysand move toward the end of analysis.
This involves the analyst occupying the position of semblance of object a, causing the analysand's desire without imposing meaning or knowledge. The psychoanalytic act thus operates at the limit of interpretation, transforming the conditions of analysis itself.
Later Developments: Sygne de Coûfontaine
In later teaching, Lacan moves from Antigone's vocal protest to the more enigmatic act illustrated by Paul Claudel's character Sygne de Coûfontaine in The Hostage. Whereas Antigone maintained her desire through protest against external prohibition, Sygne's act of taking the bullet meant for her despised husband represents an act done according to "the innermost freedom of her being."[7]
When her husband asks why she saved him, Sygne does not reply; instead, her body responds with a tic, a grimace—not a sign of love but the refusal of explanation. Sygne's "No" is not a "No" to particular content but rather "a 'No as such,' the form-of-No which is in itself the whole content, behind which there is nothing."[8] This tic embodies a piece of the Real, "the excremental remainder of a disgusting 'pathological' tic that sticks out of the symbolic form."[8]
Structural Characteristics of the Act
Transformation of Symbolic Coordinates
The authentic act fundamentally transforms the symbolic coordinates that determine what counts as reality. As Žižek formulates it: "An act accomplishes what, within the given symbolic universe, appears to be 'impossible', yet it changes its conditions so that it creates retroactively the conditions of its own possibility."[9]
The act short-circuits the realms of contingency and necessity, immanence and transcendence, politics and ethics, cause and effect. It is performed without strategic calculations or consideration of outcomes, opening a moment when absolute freedom coincides with unconditional necessity—a moment when the subject is suspended between being and meaning.
Retroactive Causality
The act operates through retroactive causality or what Hegel calls "positing the presuppositions" (Setzen der Voraussetzungen). The act does not simply work within pre-existing conditions but rather retroactively creates the conditions that made it possible. This Hegelian concept, central to Žižek's reading, means the act "does more than intervene in reality in the sense of 'having actual consequences'—it redefines what counts as reality."[10]
Examples:
Antigone's refusal retroactively opened space to posit the Good outside Creon's law
Christian God's sacrifice of his son opened space for belief
Lenin's contingent act of revolution in Russia (1917) retroactively mobilized the working class under communism, exposing exploitation of Tsarist rule
Yugoslavia's 1948 declaration as non-aligned state exposed a crack in the Stalinist communist movement
Exposure of Symbolic Inconsistency
At its most fundamental, an act reveals a deadlock or inconsistency at the core of the socio-symbolic order; it exposes how reality is split from within. "An act disturbs the symbolic field into which it intervenes not out of nowhere, but precisely from the standpoint of this inherent impossibility, stumbling block, which is its hidden, disavowed structuring principle."[9]
The act does not operate from outside the symbolic order but entirely within it, yet once decided, reveals how this order is "not-all" (pas-tout), incomplete. It opens up the void for which the Symbolic stands in.
Subject Transformed
The authentic act transforms the subject who performs it. The subject is "wiped out and born again"—their symbolic identity dissolved and reconstituted through the act.[10] This distinguishes the act from acting out (which maintains the subject's fantasy structure) and passage to the act (which reduces the subject to object without transformation).
The Logic of "Striking at Oneself"
Authentic acts often entail a logic of "striking at oneself"—sacrificing what one treasures most to go beyond the limits of the Law, to act without the guarantee of an Other.[11]
Examples include:
Lacan's dissolution of his École freudienne de Paris (1980) cleared the path for new beginning
Howard Roark destroying his own building in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
Sethe killing her children in Toni Morrison's Beloved to free them from slavery
Keyser Soze killing his family in The Usual Suspects to free himself from pursuers' hold
This self-sacrifice distinguishes the authentic act from both hysterical acting out (staged for an Other) and psychotic passage à l'acte (meaningless destruction that suspends the Other).
Feminine Logic and the Not-All
The authentic act follows the paradoxical logic of Hegel's "negation of negation" (Negation der Negation) and Lacan's formula of feminine sexuation. The act does not position itself against a master-signifier or work in opposition to a symbolic order—it exists totally within it, yet once enacted, reveals how this order is "not-all" (pas-tout), incomplete.[5]
Žižek distinguishes two readings of Antigone's act:
Lacanian reading (Seminar VII): Antigone's act is authentic because she redefines the Good itself outside Creon's Law, operating from feminine logic of the not-all.
Alternative reading: When Antigone lists what she sacrifices (future life with husband and children), she does not totally identify with her Cause but presents herself as exception, invoking the Thing for which her sacrifice is made. This places her within masculine ethics, becoming a sublime figure drawing pity.[5]
Žižek contrasts Antigone with two women who sacrifice their Cause in the name of nothing: Medea (killing her children to destroy Jason's precious Thing) and Sethe (killing her children to save them from slavery). These figures commit authentic acts following feminine logic—not sacrificing for something but sacrificing as such.[5]
The Act and the Master-Signifier
Drawing from Schelling's metaphysics of "contraction and expansion," "form and ground," and "the rotary motion of the drives," Žižek posits that the act and the master-signifier are logically interconnected.[12]
While the act breaks through a limit, deadlock, or crack in the Symbolic, simultaneously the symbolic order unfolds to "normalize" the act. The act and master-signifier are not two distinct phenomena but rather two sides of the same entity. There is no first primordial act serving as temporal beginning; rather, there is an ongoing cycle of master-signifier and act in logical (not causal) sequence.
The rotary motion of drives opens onto desire; movement from the Real to the Symbolic occurs in series of doublings and re-markings. The act reveals how the symbolic order is already split from within, radicalizing the Other and reconfiguring its founding coordinates.
Political Dimensions: The Act Today
Subtraction and the Minimal Difference
Under contemporary capitalism—which assumes every transgression, becoming a system that no longer excludes its excess but posits it as driving force—Žižek proposes a political act based on subtraction rather than positive program.[13]
Following Badiou's notion of subtraction and Hegel's Aufhebung, Žižek proposes withdrawal from being immersed in a situation "in such a way that the withdrawal renders visible the 'minimal difference' sustaining the situation's multiplicity, and thereby causes its disintegration."[13]
A political act today would not be a new movement proposing positive agenda for change, but rather an interruption of the present symbolic order.
Bartleby's "I Would Prefer Not To"
Hermann Melville's Bartleby exemplifies this contemporary political act.[8] His incessant, ambiguous retort "I would prefer not to" does not oppose or transgress against an Other but rather opens space outside the dominant hegemonic order and its negation.
Bartleby's gesture (his act of saying "No") "is what remains of the supplement to the Law when its place is emptied of all its obscene superego content." It opens the space of the gap of minimal difference "between the set of social regulations and the void of their absence."[8]
This more silent act—affirming a non-predicate—represents what Žižek calls the purely negative category of the act: it offers a way for the subject to break out of the limits of Being, opening the gap of negativity, a void prior to its being filled in.[10]
Act vs. Event: Žižek and Badiou
Žižek distinguishes his theory of the act from Badiou's concept of the Event:
Lacan insists on the primacy of the (negative) act over the (positive) establishment of a "new harmony" via the intervention of some new Master-Signifier, while for Badiou, the different facets of negativity (ethical catastrophes) are reduced to so many versions of the "betrayal" of (or infidelity to, or denial of) the positive Truth-Event.[10]
For Žižek, as for Lacan, it is the death-drive at work in the authentic act. The act is purely negative category—not establishing new positive order but opening gap of negativity preceding any positive content.
Enlightened Catastrophism and Retroactive Change
In later works, Žižek combines Hegel's "positing the presuppositions" with Jean-Pierre Dupuy's "enlightened catastrophism" to propose how an act could retroactively change the past (of our future).[7]
The logic: our situation (physical survival, ecological catastrophe) is doomed. The only way to save ourselves is to act as if the apocalypse has already happened. By positing that the worst has occurred, we would be free to retroactively create conditions for a new order, to choose a path not taken, a prior cause given up as lost.
We repeat not the same event in variation but rather bring into being (through repetition in the sense of repeating the cycle of abyssal act and master-signifier) something new. Every ethical edifice is grounded in an abyssal act, and psychoanalysis "confronts us with the zero-level of politics, a pre-political 'transcendental' condition of the possibility of politics"—the gap opening space for the political act.[7]
Real change must coincide with acceptance that there is no Other; with this formal opening, actual freedom could erupt from an authentic political act changing the very field of possibility itself.
Examples and Illustrations
Historical and Political Acts
Lenin's April Theses (1917): Lenin's contingent act of declaring immediate socialist revolution (rather than waiting for bourgeois-democratic stage) transformed what counted as politically possible, retroactively mobilizing the working class and exposing Tsarist exploitation.[10]
Tito's Non-Aligned Declaration (1948): Yugoslavia's declaration as non-aligned state accomplished "the impossible," revealing a crack in the Stalinist world communist movement from another communist.[14]
Haitian Revolution: Created new symbolic space for thinking freedom and humanity, transforming the meaning of human rights beyond European particularity.
Literary and Cinematic Examples
Antigone: Her refusal to bury her brother without proper funeral retroactively provided opening to posit the Good outside limits of Creon's law.
Medea and Sethe: Both commit authentic acts murdering their children—Medea to destroy Jason's Thing, Sethe to free her children from slavery—following feminine logic of sacrificing in the name of nothing.[5]
Sygne de Coûfontaine: Her silent act (taking bullet for despised husband) followed by bodily tic represents act beyond symbolic justification, pure "No as such."[8]
Bartleby: His "I would prefer not to" opens space outside dominant order through subtraction and minimal difference.[8]
Distinctions from Related Concepts
The Act vs. Acting Out
| The Act | Acting Out |
|---|---|
| Transforms symbolic coordinates | Addressed to the Other |
| Changes subject and reality | Maintains symbolic scene ("makes a scene") |
| Cannot be interpreted (it creates conditions for interpretation) | Calls for but resists interpretation |
| Traverses the fantasy | Maintains fantasy structure |
| Restructures libidinal economy and symbolic field | Provides cathartic demonstration without transformation |
The Act vs. Passage to the Act
| The Act | Passage to the Act (passage à l'acte) |
|---|---|
| Remains within symbolic order while transforming it | Catastrophic exit from symbolic scene |
| Subject wiped out and reborn | Subject becomes object |
| Assumes full responsibility for desire | Cannot be addressed to Other |
| Traverses the fantasy | Maintains fantasy structure despite appearance of escape |
| Retroactively creates new conditions of possibility | Changes nothing fundamental (leaves coordinates unchanged) |
The Act vs. Behavior/Pragmatic Action
| The Act | Ordinary Behavior/Pragmatic Action: |
|---|---|
| Uniquely human (involves signifier and symbolic order) | Operates within established symbolic parameters |
| Performed without guarantee or calculation | Calculates consequences and strategies |
| Transforms the very conditions that made it possible | Does not transform fundamental coordinates |
| Opens moment of absolute freedom coinciding with unconditional necessity | Animal behavior lacks dimension of act entirely |
Theoretical Implications
Madness and Ethics
Because an act is grounded only in itself, it appears mad or even monstrous according to norms of the socio-symbolic order; but once enacted it serves to reconfigure what is taken as mad, ethical, and even real. Thus:
Act is therefore not "abyssal" in the sense of an irrational gesture that eludes all rational criteria; it can and should be judged by universal rational criteria, the point is only that it changes (re-creates) the very criteria by which it should be judged... it does more than intervene in reality in the sense of "having actual consequences"—it redefines what counts as reality.[10]
The Impossible as Possible
What Žižek's theorizing of the act offers is a way to conceive of the impossible as possible, to see that reality is incomplete and split from within, that there is another world to construct, even if we cannot grasp it in our present moment.[7]
The act reveals that the symbolic order is not ontologically complete—there is an inherent impossibility, stumbling block, serving as its hidden, disavowed structuring principle. By acting from the standpoint of this impossibility, the subject opens the gap that allows for transformation of the entire field.
See Also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 50.
- ↑ Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), in Standard Edition, vol. 6.
- ↑ Jacques Lacan, Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson (New York: Norton, 1990), pp. 66-67.
- ↑ Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2008), p. 154.
- ↑ Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre XV: L'acte psychanalytique (1967-68), unpublished.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2012), p. 81.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), p. 83.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), p. 121.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 1999), pp. 171-172.
- ↑ Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989).
- ↑ Slavoj Žižek, The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters (London: Verso, 1996), pp. 155-161.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London: Verso, 2009), p. 129.
- ↑ Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out, revised edition (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 46.
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