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[[Desire ]] and drive are two closely interconnected [[concepts ]] that run throughout Žižek’s oeuvre, relating to all of his major concerns: [[psychoanalysis]], [[philosophy ]] and [[politics]]. They do most obviously relate to psychoanalysis, of course, and much of Žižek’s [[discussion ]] of [[them ]] could be quite unproblematically described as the [[interpretation ]] of [[Jacques Lacan]]’s [[work ]] on them. But it is precisely by relating desire and drive in the [[psychoanalytic ]] [[tradition ]] to fundamental problems in both philosophy and politics that much of Žižek’s [[theoretical ]] [[power ]] and originality emerge. It is, in a way, “the big [[obsession ]] of my entire work”, as he told [[Glyn Daly]], to read “the [[Freudian ]] [[notion ]] of [[death ]] drive with what in [[German ]] [[idealism ]] is rendered thematic as [[self]]-relating negativity” (''CŽ'': 61).

[[Desire, ]] according to [[Lacan]], is always the desire of the [[Other]], which means that it is a fundamentally [[intersubjective ]] phenomenon and has a rather elusive [[character]]. It is different from mere [[biological ]] [[need ]] (thirst, hunger, cold) in that it cannot easily be [[satisfied]]. Indeed, strictly [[speaking]], it cannot be satisfied at all. What we desire are, namely, not just [[objects]], like drinks, clothes or bodies, but the ''[[Objet (petit) a|objet a]]'', which is really not an [[object ]] (in the [[sense ]] of [[Anglo-Saxon ]] analytical philosophy) at all, but the object-[[cause ]] of desire, that is, that which makes us desire [[concrete ]] stupid objects like drinks, clothes or bodies. The ''[[objet ]] a'' is the [[lost object]], which we are [[looking ]] for in everything and everyone around us: where is that which will make me “whole” again after entering [[language ]] and a [[world ]] of unpredictable surroundings, in which immediate and [[harmonious ]] [[satisfaction ]] is no longer possible?

What I desire is the Other’s desire, [[meaning ]] that I [[want ]] the Other to desire me, and therefore I try to guess what the Other wants from me – what I could do to make the Other desire me. The things that I desire, my tastes, wishes, choices, are thus directly informed by what (I imagine) the Other desires. I wear these shoes, because I suspect that the Other would like (me to like) them. In ''[[The Plague of Fantasies]]'', Žižek makes use of a little anecdote told by [[Freud ]] to illustrate this intersubjective character of desire. One night, Freud noticed that his little daughter Anna was apparently fantasizing [[about ]] strawberries and ice cream in her [[sleep]]. If desire was merely a biological urge, one could reasonably say that, in her [[dream]], she was articulating that she was hungry or that she was longing for the sweet taste of the berries. Žižek’s interpretation is entirely different: while the little [[girl ]] was eating her treat during that day, she was most probably noticing her parents’ [[happiness ]] in watching her enjoying, “so what the [[fantasy ]] of eating a strawberry cake is really about is her attempt to [[form ]] an [[identity ]] (of the one who fully [[enjoys ]] eating a cake given by the [[parents]]) that would [[satisfy ]] her parents, would make her the object of their desire” (PF: 9).

Becoming a [[subject ]] thus entails learning how to desire, and precisely because the ''[[objet a]]'' always evades us, we continue to learn how to desire throughout our lives. (Maybe they [[love ]] me, when I am enjoying strawberries, but did I do it [[right ]] this [[time]]? And can I be sure that they will continue loving me for that?) The [[capitalist ]] [[economy]], of course, thrives immensely on this [[Metonymy|metonymic]] [[logic ]] of desire, where no meaning is ultimately fixed and every satisfaction is always provisional. Commercials instruct us how to desire, and every time we purchase some [[commodity]], we sense that it is not “it”, anyway – and that we should therefore buy more stuff .

If that was all, however, becoming a subject would not be all that [[traumatic]]. The fantasized symbiotic [[state ]] before [[castration ]] might not be within our reach, but we could get some [[enjoyment ]] out of objects and [[signs ]] of love here and there, and, although a bit neurotically, always on the look- out for new forms of approval, we could probably learn how to get it more or less right and live relatively [[stable ]] lives within the safe confines of fantasy. This picture, however, is too easily attained. It is in a way a sterile version of desire and of the ''[[Objet (petit) a|objet a]]'' – what it [[lacks ]] is precisely the [[dimension ]] of the [[drive]]. Unlike much [[philosophical ]] [[theory ]] on [[ethical ]] [[formation ]] and language acquisition, Žižek finds one of his main interests not in the gradual transition from [[helpless ]] [[infant ]] to a competent ([[moral]]) [[agent]], but in the fundamental [[impossibility ]] of this transition; in the [[lack ]] (of meaning) that it always leaves behind. The imposition of the [[symbolic ]] [[order ]] creates not only the perpetual question “What do they want from me?”, but also questions like “How did we get into this mess? And how do I get out again?” [[The symbolic ]] order does not provide any justification of its [[existence ]] (other than the [[signifier]] as such), and this lack, in a quite literal sense, cannot even be directly addressed – since we have only the language of the [[symbolic order ]] itself to address it with.

Drive is the subject’s answer to this fundamental [[impasse]]. It is not a [[repressed “natural ]] “[[natural]] urge” that must be domesticized, but on the contrary the most radical result of domestication itself. Much of the contemporary philosophy of formation and [[linguistic ]] normativity (virtue [[ethics]], [[Hegelian ]] [[pragmatism]], etc.) therefore entirely fails to recognize the crucial element in Žižek’s grasp of [[human ]] [[subjectivity]]: the “[[The Night of the World|night of the world]]”, the [[madness ]] of the transition from [[biology ]] to [[culture]]. Human beings are not well-behaved animals that have gradually learned how to suppress their [[animal ]] [[instincts]], but much rather sexualized animals that have become sexualized by virtue of entering the [[domain ]] of second [[nature]]. Therefore, “the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis is that human [[life ]] is never ‘just life’: [[humans ]] are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to [[enjoy ]] life in [[excess]], passionately attached to a [[surplus ]] which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things” (''LN'': 499).