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==Little other verus Big Other==
The [[symbol]] ''[[Objet (petit) a|a]]'' stands for the first [[letter]] of the [[word]] "''[[autre]]''" ("[[other]]").
It is always lower case to denote the "[[little other]] rather than the "big Other]]" [[symbolized]] by the capital ''A''[''utre''].
The use of the lower case marks the distinction between this [[object]] and the "[[big Other]]" [[symbolized]] by the capital ''A''[''utre''].
Unlike the ig Other, a exists within a relationship with the ego and is described as belonging ot the order of the imaginary.
The earliest references to 'a' appear in the 1950s, and it initially designates the eog, with 'a' designating the specular image of the mirror-phase and 'A' the unconscious or the discourse of the Other.
'a' is imagined by the subject to be an object that can be separated from the body in such a way as to take on an existence of its own.
from the 1960s onwards, a comes to mean an object of desire that can never actually be atained.
to that extent, it can be viewed as the cause of desire rather than a concrete object that is actually sought by the drives.
Lacan later describes it as an object-cause, defined as any object of desire that sets the drives in motion.
It can be a source of anxiety as wel as a promise of pleasur.e
Rather than seekign to attain or possess it, the drives endlessly circle around it.
===Translation===
The term -- which can be translated as "[[object small a]]" -- often remains untranslated.
The term -- which can be translated as "[[object small a]]" -- is often left in the [[French]] at [[Lacan]]'s insistence.
This term has sometimes been translated into English as 'object (little) a', but Lacan insisted that it should remain untranslated, "thus acquiring, as it were, the status of an algebraic sign."<ref>Sheridan, Alan. "Translator's note." {{E}} p.vii-xii</ref>
===Algebraic Sign===
--
The symbol ''a'' (the first letter of the word ''autre'', or 'other') is one of the first [[algebraic]] [[sign]] which appears in [[Lacan]]'s work, and is first introduced in 1955 in connection with [[schema L]].
It is always lower case and italicized to show that it denotes the little other, in opposition to the capital 'A' of the big Other.
Unlike the big Other, which represents a radical and irreducible alterity, the little other is "the other which isn't another at all, since it is essentially coupled with the ego, in a relationship which is always reflexive, interchangeable."<ref>{{S2}} p.321</ref>
In [[schema L]], then, ''a'' and ''a''' designate indiscriminately the [[ego]] and the [[counterpart]]/[[specular image]], and clearly belong to the [[imaginary order]].
--
In 1957, when [[Lacan]] introduces the [[matheme]] of [[fantasy]] ($ <> ''a''), ''a'' begins to be conceived as the [[object]] of [[desire]].
THis is the [[imaginary]] [[part-object]], an element which is imagined as separable from the rest of the body.
Lacan now begins to distinguish between ''a'', the object of desire, and the [[specular image]], which he now symbolizes ''i(a)''.
--
In the seminar of 1960-1, Lacan articulates the objet petit a with the term ''[[agalma]]'' (a greek term meaning glory, an orgnament, an offering ot the gods, or a little statue of a god) which he extracts from Plato's ''Symposium''.
Just as the ''agalma'' is a precious object hidden inside a relatively worthless box, so the ''objet petit a'' is the object of desire which we seek in the other.<ref>{{S8}} p.177</ref>
--
From 1963 onwards, ''a'' comes increasingly to acquire connotations of the [[real]], although it never loses its imaginary status; in 1973 Lacan can still say that it is imaginary.<ref>{{S20}} p.77</ref>
From this point on, ''a'' denotes the object which can never be attained, which is really the [[cause]] of [[desire]] rather than that towards which [[desire]] tends; this is why Lacan now calls it "the object-cause" of desire.
''[[Objet petit a]]'' is any object which sets desire in motion, especially the [[partial object]]s which define the drives.
The drives do not seek to attain the ''objet petit a'', but rather circle round it.<ref>{{S11}} p.179</ref>
''[[Objet petit a]]'' is both the object of anxiety, and the final irreducible reserve of libido.<ref>Lacan. 1962-3. Seminar of 16 January 1963.</ref>
It plays an increasingly important part in Lacan's concept of the treatment, in which the analyst must siutate himself as the semblance of ''objet petit a'', the cause of the analysand's desire.
--
In the seminars of 1962-3 and of 1964, ''[[objet petit a]]'' is defined as the leftover, the remainder ([[Fr]]. ''reste''), the remnant left behind by the introduction of the symbolic in the real.
This is developed furhter in the seminar of 1969-70, in which Lacan elaborates his formulae of the [[four discourses]].
In the discourse of the master, one signifier attempts to represent the subject for all other signifiers, but inevitably a surplus is always produced; this surplus is ''objet petit a'', a surplus meaning, and a surplus enjoyment ([[Fr]]. ''plus-de-jouir'').
This concept is inspired by [[Marx]]'s concept of surplus value; ''a'' is the excess of ''[[jouissance]]'' which has no 'use value,' but persists for the mere sake of enjoyment.
--
In 1973, [[Lacan]] links ''objet petit a'' to the concept of [[semblance]], asserting that ''a'' is a "semblance of being."<ref>{{S20}} p.87</ref>
In 1974 he places it at the center of the [[Borromean knot]], at the place where the tree [[order]]s (real, symbolic and imaginary) all intersect.
---
The very centerpiece of Lacan’s thinking on desire, the objet a is most readily defined by the fact that it is not coincident with any particular object at all, but only with the desire for desire: "What makes an object desirable is not any intrinsic quality of the thing in itself but simply the fact that it is desired by another. The desire of the Other is thus what makes objects equivalent and exchangeable" (Evans 38). Absolutely unattainable, then, the objet a is little other than the name we give to that absence that structures signification, subjectivity, and desire; it is "the object which can never be attained, which is really the cause of desire rather than that towards which desire tends," objet a is ‘the object-cause’ of desire" (Evans 125). It is the object-cause of desire in that it is not exclusively the one or the other, but a retroactive cause of its own desirability. That is, the objet a is the name we give to the lack generated by the infant’s entry into the symbolic (at the injunction of the law in its incarnation as the paternal function); it identifies that which is lost as the individual becomes a subject. As such, it is both the object of the subject’s desire (and hence, due to the biological constraints of temporality, coincident with the death drive) and its cause. It is the object of desire insofar as the subject compulsively strives toward it. It is the cause of desire in its phylogenetic persistence in the psyche as a trace of that lost plenitude toward which desire tends; without this trace experience, desire would have neither object nor cause – it would not exist.
